moving backwards

Before Dave and I had our toity Center City apartment we rented a house in a strange little atavistic neighborhood on 19th and Daly in South Philly. We lived there from June of 2000 until May of 2003 and paid $650 a month to do so. We had two bedrooms and the biggest bathroom in the world and a little yard where I grew big fat Jersey Beefeater tomatoes that the malnourished neighbor girls would steal and eat. Sometimes I would give them peanut butter and jellies and anytime we would cook out we would toss them a dog. Sad stuff.

The family across the street was even worse, and you could hear the screams of the four daughters every morning before school. The father was a short drunk construction worker who was angry he didn't have any sons and the wife was so beaten down by life that she just accepted the way things were and never fought for her little girls. I once saw him hold a gun to the wife's head and demand sex. Our bedroom windows were only about thirty feet apart and neither one of us ever closed the curtains.

Once a week I would call children's services and sometimes the police on these two families, but nothing ever came of my complaints.

The other next-door neighbors were practically running a flop house. The people who lived there would throw their trash in our yard and I would go out there every day after work and throw it right back over the fence. They repaid me by shooting up on my front steps.

But, this was a good neighborhood full of good (read:white) people. Just ask the neighbors who thought all white people were good people.

When we first moved in Dave and I were 23 years old and in our second year of law/grad school. After a few months some of The Wives on the street were so overcome by their "newsieness" (that's South Phillese for "being nosy") that they broke down and started asking me questions about us. A few of them mentioned that they saw Dave at the Court House when they were there supporting their husbands and said that they hoped he had a good lawyer and he wouldn't have to go away for too long or pay too much in fines. I delicately explained to each of them that Dave was there for work, that he was in school and was working for the DA. Some of them walked away and never spoke to me again, some asked for his card, and one told me how lucky I was to be married to a man who wore a suit to work.

One day about a year after we moved in, I heard a knock at the door. All of The Wives on the street had brought me a cake. A little late for a housewarming, I assumed they were just being newsy and wanted to take a peek in my house. I didn't let them in, telling them I was on my way out, but thanked them for the cake. BleachBlondeBonnie, the lady two doors down with four boys, stepped forward and said "We are so sorry that you and your husband aren't able to have children but we are glad you chose to live on such a nice family-oriented street anyway. It is a good thing that your husband is going to college and that you are going back to get your GED. It is important for women who aren't blessed with children to have an education and a little job somewhere".

I didn't know what to say. I said thank you, but we have never tried to have children before. I explained that I was in graduate school and asked if they wanted their cake back. Ro, the battered wife across the street said "if you already graduated, why are you in school?" as she took the cake back. Betty, the old lady who lived three doors west of us said "and to think I organized this for nothing!" and stomped back to her house. I knew that Betty wasn't able to have children, and she must have thought that if someone gave her an Infertility Cake somewhere down the line her life wouldn't have turned out so sucky. Rita from a few doors down and across the street said "never tried! Aren't you about 19 or 20 years old? Time is running out, sweetheart. I hope you aren't using those birth control methods." And with that, she rubbed the Jesus that lived around her neck and walked away. Probably mad that she didn't get any cake, that fat thing.

Most of The Wives stopped talking to me after that, but a few would say hello and ask how I was if we were all alone on the street. Bonnie stopped me once and told me in the lowest voice possible that she would give anything to leave her house to meet her girlfriends at 9 o'clock at night and with eye make-up on. Michelle saw me in town one day when I was with my friend Charlie, and whispered to me that I didn't need to worry, she wouldn't tell anyone at home that I was walking down the street with what she called "a colored man".

The guy who ran the store on 18th Street asked me if I was in night school since he saw me with a book bag a few nights a week, and told me that his daughter just went back to high school after dropping out too, and maybe I could help her with her studies.

Everyone on the street wanted us to buy the house we were renting because they wanted to make sure that the neighborhood would remain stable (read again:white).

When we packed up and moved downtown, the neighbors were sure that we were going to die in horrific ways at the hands of hideous villains. Downtown is so dangerous and scary and off limits to so many of the good people of South Philadelphia. Only whores and drug-addicts and suburbanites are crazy enough to go north of Washington Ave. The Wives were appalled that Dave would let me (or make me- which was it? they wondered) go to school and work there, and felt so bad for me that he was making me move there so he could be closer to his job.

Because at the end of the day, all Good Wives should be kept within the 1914x zip codes and chained to the kitchen and punched in the face and be kept pregnant and teach their daughters to do the same and never should they ever exposed to the dastardliness of the man's world uptown.