My Mind Is a Bad Neighborhood

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    My mind is like a neighborhood in Wyandanch, if you’re at all familiar. Driving through—windows rolled up, doors locked; the small plastic knob jerks like a piston as you press the lock button again—you can’t help but remember the gunshots. Or more accurately, the rumor of gunshots.

Here, in the cratered parking lot of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal Baptist Church, you are certain a man fell, struck down by a bullet in a starburst of smoke and blood spray. And there, on the corner between the Sunoco and La Plaza Mini Mart, you can place the chalky outline of an eight-year-old girl. Of course, you couldn’t name the victims. You didn’t attend the funerals, didn’t read the obituaries. But you’re positive that you could find them easily enough, sifting through the catacombs of some local newspaper archive. Surely, they’d show up somewhere. 

    In Wyandanch, it’s not always dark out, but it is always night. Questionable characters scuttle like cockroaches up and down the sidewalk. Bent-backed and winged, most likely harmless—but you never can predict how high they might jump. To your left, a woman gathers aluminum Coke cans and glass bottles from the outskirts of a sump. Some of her finds are crack-toothed, worn through by weather and time. But she doesn’t seem to notice. She stows her treasure in a long braid of plastic bags and trudges onward, the procession of her life’s belongings dragging noisily behind her, startling the birds. 

Farther down the road, a shirtless man with a belly like a balloon hauls watermelons from the back of his truck. How he obtained the watermelons, you don’t want to know. But melon after melon migrates from truck bed to wagon, from wagon to Igloo cooler. He’s staked a wooden sign in the dirt that reads: Fresh Summer Melons to Beat the Heat! The heat, you think, isn’t the only thing getting beaten. Street vendors like this might be common in other parts of the world. Even in other parts of the country, with the proper permits. But this is Long Island. The birthplace of suburbia. And you’ve been taught that businesses born from truck beds can only account for crack cocaine. You’re not the only one who thinks so, either.

In the foreground, the drive-through windows of an abandoned Dairy Barn glare at the Watermelon Man all wary-eyed and empty. It’s easy to imagine how, some years prior, a family of patrons might’ve sidled up to the curb in their Toyota Corolla, ordered two black coffees, a quarter gallon of milk, and a pint of Breyers ice cream for the kiddos to go. Back then, the place was profitable. It was a neighborhood staple, bright as a lip-stick stain on the cheek. But today, in this lot where weeds crack through pavement as easily as a corn tortilla, only vagabond gangsters make a killing. As you drive past, the Watermelon Man shoots you a self-assured grin, even though you haven’t once seen him make a sale. 

    A pair of piss-yellow headlights reflects off your rearview mirror. There’s a car behind you. Then another. And another car behind that. So many people passing through, cutting across Wyandanch simply because it’s the quickest route home. You wonder if they’re afraid. You wonder if they’re streaking across the intersection with their heads ducked down, radios silent, listening to their rosary beads rattle off the sun visor like a prayer. Probably not. Most likely, they’re tired from work but at ease. Windows rolled down. The steering wheel tipping gently between their knees. They can hear The Beach Boys blasting from someone’s backyard. They can smell coleslaw and roasted corn, a parade of hot dogs waiting to be placed on the bun. And underneath it all, they can smell you, too. You’re as sure about this as you are about the gunshots. Your perspiration. Your paranoia. Your tuna-salad breath. You can only hope that they mistake your odor for the odor of the area. Like litter on the sidewalk. Like watermelons gone foul in the mid-July sun. It’s a putrid kind of perfume, the type that can only come naturally, festering in the firmament of the place, in the spirit.

Later, you’ll scold yourself for being so small-minded. Deep down—way down, on that subterranean level where the taproot grows—you understand that Wyandanch can’t be all bad. Everybody is somebody’s baby, and every bad neighborhood is somebody’s block. But you can’t help it. You’re a jumpy little white girl, after all. Terrified of spiders. Sprinting from caterpillars as if they were snakes. You’ve never been able to look a stranger in the eyes and smile. So you drive. Eyes forward. Shoulders tight. Head ducked down, bracing for a bullet that probably won’t come—but bracing all the same.

Because at the very least, caution feels like control, even though you know that caution has never stopped a bullet. And it doesn’t stop you from flinching as the car door knob clicks beside you—just in case it wasn’t locked before.