Another sense of home

This is quick. I just want to get this off my chest.

I come home tonight -- somehow, everyone's excited. At 42nd St in my train change-over there is a dark, dirty man (darker from dirt, probably) sitting with a hat for change and three disgustingly dirty and wet kittens. How recently were they born? Does their mother there not care when Dark Man grabs the wettest of the kittens to polish with his shirt, with as much vigor as one might do tarnished silverware? So there is this 'event', as precursor to the show that's actually drawing crowds ten feet away. It's a crew of breakers I have not before seen, at the usual spot where the Christian Scientists yell at you to take their free stress tests. If you ever need to get stressed -- see them. They will yell at you. Ok, but there's a bigmungous crowd around these breakers, firstly because they have enlisted a plastic-bucket drummer -- you've seen him, he's usually busking on the other side of the station -- as their beatbox, and secondly, primarily, they are all shirtless and beautifully RIPPED. I indulged in a free ogle, before they could enlist me to stand still with three sweaty tourists while one of them would vault over our heads and then yell at us for money to have experienced this in 90 degree heat. All respect to these boys who do this to make ends meet (and who have eight-packs). But I'm not hanging around for this one.



OK, so finally home to 136th and broadway, and still, everyone's excited. There's an extraordinary wait at my late-night deli of choice because, for whatever reason, some woman with painted eyebrows is buying ALL her groceries ... at 11:30pm ... probably for her entire family. The counter that is usually graced by no more than ten items a customer is LOADED. Some adolescent brown boy with the body shape of that pink-blob character in Sponge Bob cuts in front of me to buy a lottery scratch card. Ok. So I get out finally with juice to freeze for tomorrow's insta-sweat that is morning class with Oliver (quel j'adore!), and bread, and pineapple (mmm!) and plaintain chips to go with the guacomole that I am going to make. 8 dollars. Yipes. And you know I'll blast through the juice in two days flat.

Shit! So my point! I get home, Tito's hanging on the doorstep with some ladies I don't recognize but who probably live here. He lets me pass, but leaps past me on the stairwell like a child who just got candy -- I make fun of his talking up the ladies, and he's only half talking to me (the other half in his head -- both of them) when he sputters out: "only the middle one! I've been in love wid'her since I was eight ... no, six ..." Tito leaves the door open for me as I, not so much in love after being brushed off by aforementioned boy over the phone yesterday, trudge heavily one step at a time to apartment 15.

Rosario (why is she not Rosaria?) is sweeping -- I love when she calls out to me, "Meh-leenda, Meh-leenda!", this time to express how tired she is (in Spanish). I'm tired too, too tired to attempt a "yo tambien." I reply in English. It's chill.

Excited. Everyone's excited. Plenty o'kids around, I know them, they're related, or live in the building, they are as free here as they are in their own family homes. I am about to pour juice to freeze in my Nalgene and make guacomole and slice a tomato when I see Little Guy waddle towards me. Little Guy is Howie (they say: "ow-ee", so that's what I'm pretending his name is written down). Howie turned two a couple months ago, he's the two-year-old I tell people is a ghetto superstar when I explain what it's like living here. He's young enough to not be afraid to enter my room, and previously we had bonded over his trying on of my shoes. This is a beautiful child. More so to me, tonight, because he recognizes me -- he lives here intermittently -- exclaims recognition, and waddles up to hold my hand. We play our shoe game again -- I give him my sandles to wear, which he does competently (the middle thread sitting snugly between his Little Big Toe and his Little Second Toe), he looks up at me with a confused expression on his face -- too much English? -- but nods when I ask him questions.

Howie's innocent affection frees up all the other kids to interact with me more. And this is the point I am finally getting to. Isaiah tells me about his girlfriend at school. Chaina is excitedly running into the other room to explain in Spanish how Howie is holding my hand. The other little girl, the sweetheart, smiles coyly and just goes with the flow. Howie wants some guacomole. I think it's more that he wants whatever object seems to have drawn my left hand's attention away from his right. He's possessive that way. I like these kids. I like kids. I haven't spent enough time with any to get exhausted to the point of anger -- maybe this is why I don't force time with them. But I enjoy kids.

And I wish I could have hugged these kids ten minutes after our guacomole episode and told them that they did nothing wrong by being boisterous kids, even though Mummy screamed at them, restrained them with her harpee-shriek, and then with her beating hand. She is the one who just gave birth again. She's not had it easy. It's not easy living so tightly together. I get a feeling she never really wanted kids, but it pleases her mother and its what she's supposed to do. But she's become more vicious lately, especially with Isaiah, who loves her dearly, and what I had to get off my chest tonight, before washing the garlic smell truly off my fingertips or bathing my sweaty self, is the feeling I had gurgling inside me while washing my dishes with my back to the sounds of her abuse. This was not discipline, when at other times, her harshness and occasional violence is. I don't pretend to sit on some pedastal of humanitarian concern when it comes to how someone must discipline their kids. But tonight was arbitrary, and somehow I am involved. I'm that kid from next door who got all the kids here in trouble. I'm the one who got them to overstep their bounds, because tonight, everyone in the city was excited. I was inappropriately friendly, and we were having a good time, and somehow that was against the harpee's house rules.

This is only mild tension. So far. And I obey, as did they. I stop talking to the kids, who have all been relegated to their room anyway, the door closed behind them. Howie is left, but follows Tito who distracts him away from crying about my tomato that he can't reach. And I wash a little apple for a pre-bed snack. And I walk into my room, and shut the door. Lifting the screen of my laptop, I wake up a portal to another world and live within my four white walls and this cyberworld alone. The apartment is silent.

I don't know what it is that I represent to her -- God, I don't even know her name, so maybe it's that, and every other similar indication that I don't, won't, can't belong -- but sometimes I think she hates me. No, that's a lot of emotion. She doesn't care about me that much. But I do think she thinks I'm not someone she wants influencing her kids. And I close my door.

This is where I live.
It's starting to feel a little more like a home, in all the senses of that word.