Lost Boys

DUMBO: Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass. A tiny neighborhood just down the street from Vinegar Hill and some of the worst projects in New York City.

One morning last summer, I opened the store early, while DUMBO was still pretty much asleep. The artists, filmmakers and designers who work in the neighborhood usually don't really get going until about noon. The yuppies who live in the luxury condos were already at work in lower Manhattan. A fresh breeze coming off the East River made the usually reeking air pleasant; the light was bright and clear. DUMBO felt weirdly clean. I left the door to the store open, allowing the crash and rumble of the N train soaring overhead to rattle the store and sprinkle its fine layer of soot on all the pretty objects I was fruitlessly dusting. The Supremes were playing and I was singing along when a man walked who, at first blush, looked to be about 55 or so. It's cliche to say so, but he was built like a brick... A brick with a beach ball glued to its midsection. His face was a shade of red I associate with fishing off a pier and lots and lots of beer. His face shone, his hair was bleached blonde, like a professional wrestler's, and his eyes were a washed out blue. He was sweating and his thick hands kept running themselves over the front of his tent-sized grey t-shirt, like an expectant mother already caressing the baby inside.

"Hiya," he said, and that word alone was enough to establish the fact of his Brooklyn origin. He smiled to reveal a shocking thousand-watt smile.

"Boy has dis place changed! Wow!" He said.

"Yeah," I agreed. "I credit the Jehova's Witnesses."

"Oh yeah, yeah!" he cried. "Doze guys really turned it aroun' huh? Geeze.. I remember this place when it was just the fishing hub."

"Really?" I said with surprise.

"Oh yeah.. It used to be all wooden along the water, like in that movie wit Bando?"

"'On the Waterfront?'"

"Yeah! It was where da whole city got da fish."

"Really? I thought that was the Fulton Fish market.. Now it's at Hunt's Point, right?"

"Oh yeah, but dis was before dat even."

I wasn't sure I believed him. The waterfront in DUMBO is full of converted brick warehouses and factories. The steel stars on their walls, marking the ends of heavy cross beams, dated those buildings to decades before this guy was born. But he went on to talk about what the neighborhood was like when he was a kid and it turned out he was actually in his late seventies- and like my grandfather, he used the word "copasetic" more than once- and his dad, and his dad before him, had all been fishermen. He said it was a little fishing community until the factories came in. He said his parents moved to Canarsie which is where he mostly grew up. In his twenties he moved to Long Island with his wife who is just as byootiful now as she was then. He loves Long Island. He goes fishing out there and goes to the beach most days in the summer. He worked for the city for almost forty years he said, and smiled.

"It's not so bad workin for da city. Dey take care a ya." He patted his enormous belly and smiled wider.

We chatted some more about the nature of changing neighborhoods. He talked frankly about the projects.

"It's not right what dey do to people in dose houses," he said with a frown referring to the Farragut Houses on the hill. The buildings tower over DUMBO, like a decimated chateau in winter, but in the summer they form a reasonably cheerful red edifice. Cycling past them in the spring, the grounds are leafy with sugar maples and community gardens; almost lush. I imagine some of the apartments must have pretty spectacular views of the bridges and the harbor beyond but that does little to make up for the buildings' isolation and decrepitude. A quick look shows windows stuffed with broken blinds and house plants that resemble a starved to death Audrey II. Other windows are draped in stained sheets and plastic insulation. Poverty, we agreed, is crueler and more intractable than the combined luxuries of TV, fast food, trees and Playstations can compensate for. Frank- that was the rotund fisherman's name- and I contemplated the shortcomings of NYCHA and talked for a bit about drug abuse. We thanked our lucky stars we'd never had to deal with that, but...
"My fatha was a terrible drunk," Frank sighed. "Terrible."
We were silent for a moment.
"I tell ya, the more things change, the more they stay the same," he said sagaciously. I nodded at this non-sequitous cliche. "Anyway, nice chattin' witcha. Take it easy, yeah?"
"Yeah, take care," I said, which is something else my grandfather always said.
*************************************

In late summer, a group of young boys from the projects, between 8 and 13, started coming into the store. They were all black except for one white kid. They had first gathered on the stoop outside, using the three steps and iron railing as makeshift monkey bars. One of the younger boys, his head like a bowling ball, peered in. I smiled at him.

"OH SHIT!" he shouted excitedly to the other boys. He waved them over and they pressed their faces to the glass. While some of them unsuccessfully tried to blow condensation circles onto the warm window and scrawl their names, the first boy poked his head in the door.

"Um, can we come in?" he asked, eyes darting all around trying to see everything at once.

"Sure," I said. There were a bunch of customers in the store, and I thought, 'what could possibly go wrong? They're just boys.' (And, yes, I had this thought in spite of having been an after school teacher for two years and watching one of my favorite students try to visciously strangle and stomp the head of his best friend as I pried them apart.)

The boys swarmed in- more of them than I'd realized- rambunctious, loud, but basically sweet. Shouts of "yo, son, look at this! Miss, yo miss! What's this? What's that? Aw, miss! Can I have this?"

"You got five bucks?"

"No."

"Then no dice. Sorry."

"But miss-"

"Yo miss, I could...can I work here?"

"What are your qualifications?"

"My what?"

"What skills do you have that would make you a good employee?"

"Aw shit, he can't do anything. He's in special ed!"

The boys all burst into laughter. Some of them started to wander away from the toy section and I called them back; they came, but reluctantly. There were two boys who seemed to dominate, the white boy and a shockingly skinny boy who towered over the others, but if either of them exerted too much power, the others felt free to punch them. Some of them sheepishly attempted to steal, but were so obvious I just looked at them and jerked my head. "Put it back."

"I di'n't do nuthiiinnn!" one boy whined as his tiny hand struggled to conceal a bright orange hackey sack. I glared at him. He smiled. I smiled back.

"Yo, miss, is this a knife?" I whirled around. The white kid was holding a corkscrew with the little lable knife extended. He made a jabbing motion at the air. "Could you stab someone with this?" His eye glinted at the special ed boy. "Could you kill someone with this?"

I thought as quickly as I could. When in doubt, I let the truth work for me: I trust that a child of 11 will have a basic understanding of right and wrong, and more importantly, I believe that kids that age are really good at sniffing out lies and condescension.. or that's what I told myself as I scrambled to avert disaster.

"That's what's called a sommelier corkscrew. A sommelier is a wine expert who says stupid things like 'this fine grande dame has a nose that hints about chestnut while whispering secrets of butter, but hollers a full bodied flavor imbued with cherries and warm chocolate from Machu Picchu, but with a clean finish like a morning in late October on Lake Superior with a fire just lit by a scullery maid named Laura' (okay, I didn't say that, but it would have been funny if I had... anyway.) That tiny little knife is for cutting labels on wine bottles. You couldn't kill someone with it if you wanted to." He looked at me sideways. I was glad I wasn't lying... I couldn't have stood up to that discerning glare. "Kid, the blade isn't even an inch long. The worst you could do is poke someone and just make them madder." He looked at the little, very sharp blade in his hand and decided this was true. Besides, he'd just spotted the $80 lighters. I didn't bother with words, I just walked over and snatched it out of his hands.

I showed the boys how to play with one of the pop-up toys. I explained to them how analogue cameras- which they'd never seen before- work. They charmed me by asking if I made all this stuff.

"Ok, fellas," I said after about half an hour. "It's been pleasant, but I think it's time for you to get a move on." The boys allowed themselves to be hearded out the door, as I pried various small objects out of their fingers and joked with them about getting jobs and overpriced keychains. I returned to the store smiling, but exhausted. A few customers complimented me on handling so many boys without incident. I appreciated the compliment, but smugly thought "Jesus, they're just kids."

The boys came back every few weeks, descending on the store as a jumble of skinny arms and tee-shirts. They all had that peculiar bad breath I learned to associate with children who eat cafeteria lunches and not much else: an odor more appropriate to old people with chronic heartburn. I'd become familiar with the smell at the schools where I taught. I had tried to grow accustomed to it, to not feel my own stomach churn when some sweet, shy child would whisper in my ear that coming to after school art class was her favorite part of the day. But it's a stench so closely related to poverty- unwashed hair, unbrushed teeth, antibacterial gel, embedded cigarette smoke, roach spray- that I could not bring myself to feel good in the presence of that smell. The boys, some of them approaching puberty also carried the sweet sweat smell I used to love when I went to my brother's basketball games.

Each time they arrived, they pushed the boundaries a little more, and my impatience increased. I came to dread their visits, but once they came in, I found myself smiling and laughing, enjoying their jokes and admiring their chutzpah, even as it drove me crazy. Some of them succeeded in stealing a key ring here, a button there. I didn't freak out. I thought, "they have so little, I can buy 'em a few odds and ends." I guessed at the objects they stole and paid for them with my employee discount. I never once saw a parent with them and they never mentioned any. As the days got shorter, they'd be roaming around after dark, and I had the absurd thought they should think of the store as a safe place. I thought, "maybe they trust me. Maybe they like me."

Then two things happened that made me aware of precariousness of the situation.

The first incident involved an old man, who's name I forget every time I hear it, but you'll know who I mean when I say he's called the Mayor of DUMBO. He was born in rural South Carolina in the 1930s and moved with his family to Harlem as a little boy. He became a musician, got married and when he wasn't touring with big band orchestras and jazz players, lived in the projects on the hill which, he says, were never all that nice, but nicer than they are now. His wife raised their daughter and granddaughters and he's hazy on the details of his role in their lives. He walks with a cane he carved himself, is never without a hat- usually it's a straw boater or a fedora- he wears round, rose tinted glasses. He's a dapper guy, an artist and a musician and a terrific bragger. He stops in every so often to shoot the breeze and pretend to look for gifts for his granddaughter. When I see him coming, I set Pandora to Thelonius Monk and impress him with my totally made up knowledge of jazz: I simply read the descriptions off the computer and he seems impressed. I don't feel too bad about being a fraud since he insists that's him on most of the sax solos and all the clarinet solos. But, really,it could be him. Who knows? I certainly don't.

Anyway, it was just me and the boys in the store one afternoon- the other customers had fled- and most of them were being good, but the white boy, who's name was Sean, had gotten to the lighters before I could and was showing his friends how high the flame could go. I was walking toward him to take it away when Mayor walked in clearly believing he was coming to my rescue.

"Go on!" He shouted. "Get on outta here! What are you boys doing in here? This is a place of business! Don't you be botherin this girl!"

"It's okay-" I started to say, but the damage had been done. Sean puffed out his chest and got less than a foot away from the Mayor.

"Fuck you, old man. Get the fuck outta my face," he said. The Mayor was justifiably frightened and he raised his cane a little. The other boys started randomly cursing and I was reminded of a school of piranhas gathering around a bit of chum.

"Hey!" I shouted in my best strict teacher voice. "That is NOT how you talk to ANYone, let alone the Mayor! Get out. All of you. Put everything down- I said put it down Sean!" I commanded, thanking heaven that I remembered his name. He was startled enough to do as I said. "Mark! Rashawn! That's right!" I said, ever so proud of myself for remembering ALL their names. "Put it back where you found it and march out of here! Amadou! Put it BACK! Do NOT make me tell you again!" The Mayor was threatening to call the police on them and I cursed under my breath, but the boys were out the door. They made a few lewd gestures at the Mayor, but they wandered toward the park and I sighed heavily. The Mayor asked if I was alright and I told him I was fine and I was sorry he'd done that.

"That's not right!" He said. "They shouldn't be in here when you're trying to run a business." He had a point and I said so, but I also felt he would not have come in hollering if the boys had all been white. From my vantage point as an outsider, The Mayor strikes me as a member of the older black generation who grew up with segragation and being a part of the civil rights movement while still maintaing the odd belief that white people should be shielded from seeing black people as full people. That is, he seems to think that black people should always be seen as model citizens: solicitous, pleasant, cheerful and polite. Like a middle class housewife of the 1950s. He kept chatting, wanting to rehash the scene again, discuss what kind of beating the boys deserved, what kind of beating he would have received, and so on, but I was plummeting off the adrenaline rush and made as if I had back-stock I had to arrange.

"Well alright. But you call the po-lice when you see those rascals! They need a lesson!" He frowned as he left muttering to himself. I did busy work for a while and when customers came in, I had a smile, like rigor mortis, on my face again: ready to sell, sell, sell.

I struggled to figure out how to behave around the boys to keep that balance of relaxation and command. I wasn't sure that I even could, given the threats from the Mayor. They sometimes came in when my boss was in, and while they made her nervous she has the best child control weapon I know of: unflappability. I, on the other hand, am totally flappable. I'm generally pretty good-natured when it comes to kids, but they can bulldoze right over that. A total lack of perturbability, on the other hand, thwarts their most violent passions and reduces a pack of roving pre-pubescent boy-beasts to mere children. As I was wondering at my boss's ability to herd cats, the second event occurred.

I was alone in the store, dusting, when they tapped on the glass and asked permission to enter which, because they'd asked, I granted. But they were accompanied by older boys. Boys in their mid teens who affected a domineering, mature role, telling the younger ones not to touch, to shut the fuck up before they got popped, etc. But there was little actual difference between the younger boys and the older boys. The older boys asked the same idiotic questions, marveled over the same products and prices. The only real difference was that the older boys were bolder and more sly in their stealing methods, and the younger ones took note. Luckily, they were more responsive to my requests and demands, and when I said it was time for them to go, the older boys punched and kicked the littler ones out the door.

A few hours later, the younger boys came back without the older boys, full of bravado and looking to prove themselves. There was a yuppie mother and her little tow-headed girl, both in white dresses and eating candy, having an evening of mother-daughter treats. The boys spread out all over the store, cursing, randomly putting things in their pockets and finding all things sharp and flammable. The mother let out a little cry "Hey!" She turned to me and said "that boy just stole something!"She turned to him and told him to put it back. He looked at me with an expression that was half "can I?" and half "I didn't do nothing!"

"Look, you guys, if you want to hang out, you can hang out, but only around the toys. If you steal, if you break stuff, if you curse, you're not welcome here," I said.

"Bitch," Sean muttered. I wasn't sure who he was referring to, but before I could say anything, the mother began to splutter.

"That is very disrespectful! You need- you need to show some respect! Very bad! That's a very bad thing to say! You're a bad boy!" I sympathized with her, if it wasn't her stammering in rage, it would have been me, but I wished she would shut up. She was right to be enraged- lord knows I was- but she was scolding them like they were dogs. "Bad boys! Bad!" She shouted again and the boys saw a rich white lady with a mouth full of candy talking down to them in front of her priveledged little girl who was going to go home with all the things they would not go home with.

"Suck my dick!" Sean said. Then he lit a tall flame on the fancy lighter that he produced from nowhere. I snatched it out of his hand, but not before he played keep away for a second. The mother was flabbergasted. She was speechless. And then she said:

"That's it! You can't get away with this! I'm going to blog about this! You're going to be on my blog. The parents in this neighborhood won't stand for this kind of behavior!"

It was my turn to be speechless. I just stared at her slackjawed. She was going to BLOG about this? Oh. Well that's... just... great. *

"That's it! All of you out! Out!" I shouted. Most of the boys moved to the door, but Rashawn dodged right and tried to make me chase him around the table. "I'm not chasing you" I said as I siezed Mark by the shoulder and pushed him out the door.

"Yo! Get off me! I didn't do nuthin!" He shouted angrily.
Rashawn, apart from his friends looked nervous, but smiled slyly.

"He has something in his hand!" the mother shouted as her daughter absently picked gummy bears from her teeth.

"Rashawn." I said, not sure if I was pleading or commanding. He dodged past me and out the door.

"He's stealing! He's stealing!" The mother shouted. I didn't care. I just wanted him out. I stood in the door. The boys were standing on the stoop ready for a fight. It was chilly out. They were all in in t-shirts. I was furious and they were too.

"Well, that was fun while it lasted," I said. "Don't come back. You're not welcome here anymore." I said. The boys whined a little. Some of them even said "I'm sorry" or "it's not fair!" or "that's racist!" I'm pretty sure it was Sean who said that.

"Look," I said. "You know better than this. If you can't fucking behave like normal human beings, then you can't come here, so stop whining."

"Yo! Yo miss!" Sean shouted at me as I was closing the door.

"What?" I said, knowing it wouldn't be good.

"Have you ever had a dick up your ass?" He asked, his face a sneering mask of angry.

"No," I replied, cool as a cucumber. "Have you?"

The other boys tittered. Sean smiled a little and then his face clouded again.

"No!" he said.

"Well good, I hope it stays that way for both of us," I said and shut the door.

As they walked past the windows they pounded on the glass, displaying the items they had stolen and cursing up a storm, enamored with this new idea of dicks in asses. The mother stood there red-faced and unhappy.

"That was UNbelieveable," she said.

"Blog?" I replied.

She didn't hear me. She told her daughter it was time to go, and after wishing me luck and telling me she thought I should lock the door, they left. I didn't lock the door, but I was afraid. It was because I was afraid that I refused to lock the door. I wasn't going to be bullied by a bunch of little kids, and I wasn't going to let them be bullies. Half an hour later I closed the shop and headed home, looking over my shoulder. I half hoped to see the boys following, but of course, they weren't.


*I recognize the irony, but I hope it's clear that my goal in blogging about this is not to set up a sort of "wealthy white people's neighborhood watch" but to observe the gentrification and the behavior of packs of boys... which is pretty much the same everywhere.