The Quiet Parts Pt. 1
FIRST STORY
“. . . now I’m on 25 milligrams of my medication whereas before I was on 200. The change has been yoga, meditation, self-defense, and just being very intentional about who I surround myself with. I’ve been looking into my astrology, numerology, my north nodes, and it became clear that I’m a pollinator, meaning I gather different types of people to me which I kind of always knew ‘cause I’m queer/poly/kinky and having a difference of people in my life helps enrich me but by focusing too much on them I lose sight of my own goals which is problematic given the gender roles enforced on me by white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. I think of my time when I was so anxious and depressed as being like a seed underground but then I started to grow and it’s scary at first and you’re vulnerable but then my trunk grew stronger and I can cast seeds myself. That’s how my therapist put it. I love her. She’s so strong and feminist and positive. Right now we’re examining this physical trauma I carry because of gentrification—”
“I’m sorry,” says the man across the table from her. “This isn’t going to work.”
Leigh watches as the man who’d introduced himself as Andre a mere thirty minutes ago peels a twenty from his brown leather wallet, enough to pay for his Blue Moon and her Manhattan. After more than a dozen Tinder dates at the Legionnaire on Telegraph, the sight of a man up and leaving before the second round momentarily glitches her brain. When she can think straight, she demands to know, “What isn’t going to work?”
He grinds his teeth as if chewing on the words he wants to speak. A black man in his mid-thirties with a receding hairline, a crooked jaw on his otherwise symmetrical and honest face, he possesses a sleepy charm she finds attractive. Plus he dresses well, crisp bluejeans and a beige sweater.
“You’ve been talking about yourself for half an hour,” he answers at last. “Twice I had to correct you and say I’m a musician, not a DJ. Now you’re sitting here acting like you had no hand in gentrifying Oakland. It’s too much.”
She crosses her arms. “I’m not a gentrifier! I can barely pay rent.”
His leather jacket is already on by the time she finishes her sentence. “I’ve been watching y’all come here for twenty years. First it was hipsters in the Mission. Now it’s techies. You’re going to sit here and pretend you had no part in paving the way.”
She feels a savage hatred towards him. “I really don’t like your tone right now.”
He rises from the wooden bench, leaving the twenty on the table. “You don’t have to.”
“I give back,” she insists. “I work in schools.”
“But you take more than you give. Goodbye.”
Over the years she’s been called a cultural appropriator and a latte-slurping Becky. One black activist woman she’d extended a hand in friendship told her to go die. But nothing hurt worse than gentrifier. It hurts her in the heart and the wallet—after paying rent for May, ramen has returned to the top of her grocery list.
Smug in his assessment of her as a dumb white girl, Andre heads for the exit. Watching him go makes her feel weak, nothing like a badass bitch who fights riot cops in the streets.
“It didn’t happen like you think,” she protests as he gives the bouncer some dap. He is halfway out the door when she shouts, “Come to my house!”
He pauses. A cold sensation sweeps through her. This is risky. Then again, she likes risk.
Andre returns to the table with noticeable swagger. She could tell the moment they met that he likes her outfit—skintight pink jeans, sandals, leopard print silk crop top, leather jacket—and his clear interest in the body beneath that outfit makes it all the sweeter she has control.
He sits back down. “It’s like that, huh?”
“I don’t mean fucking,” she teases. “Everything you know about gentrification is wrong. You’re saying all white people are responsible. What if I offered you proof that’s not true?”
“How? No”—he turns sarcastic—“let me guess. You gonna show me fliers from all the Black Lives Matter protests you been to.”
“No, smartass. Come over my spot because it’s something you have to see. (By the way, I’m hella down with BLM.) We’ll smoke a bowl and I’ll show you everything.”
He considers for a long moment. Then he asks, “Can I invite my boys? I can’t just be going over a stranger’s house alone. Something bad might happen to me.”
His arrogance repulses and excites her. She manages a smile.
“The more the merrier! Like I said”—she pauses for effect—“I’m a pollinator.”
SECOND STORY
Beyond the window of his silver Toyota Camry, the blackened waters of Lake Merritt sit so still they look petrified, like clay kilned and glazed. Clusters of carefree people she recognizes for bar-crawling techies wear their designer jackets zipped against an unusually strong summer wind that sailors manning transatlantic immigrant ships a hundred years ago would have called favorable as they steered their human cargo to Angel Island. On this night the city feels tame, nothing like when she moved here nearly a decade ago. Next to her Andre sits oozing Oakland cool, neo-soul given blood and bone. Relaxed into his leather seat, he guides the wheel with a long-fingered hand, Coltrane on the stereo.
In East Oakland the city ungrids. Numbered streets knot around Highland Hospital. Homes with slate-colored gables cling to the hillsides. Hers is a two-story with cedar shingle siding and tall succulents in the yard. The Winnebago in the driveway means Sequoia is home. On the porch stand two black men, one tall and thin, one tall and fat, hands in their jacket pockets.
“This here’s my bandmate Sam,” Andre says, introducing the fat one. “This is my brother Drew.”
Drew, having soulful eyes and dreads to the small of his back, catches her attention. Losing no time in formalities, she leads them inside; through the foyer to the living room where heaps of unclaimed laundry barnacle the divans; past the adjacent parlor where Sequoia is painting Mt. Shasta at their easel. They are a female-bodied genderqueer person in overalls, gangly and bespectacled. Dirty yellow hair frames their slender face like beams of a collapsed house.
“Meet Sequoia,” Leigh says over her shoulder. The men grunt hellos. “Preferred pronoun: they.” At the same time she introduces them, Sequoia regards the men with a look of surprise that Leigh finds embarrassing, frankly.
In the kitchen, she apologizes for the state of things: on the counter lie greasy tins of leftovers Sequoia procures from their catering job at some Fordist tech enclave; additionally, dirty dishes remain from last night when Leigh’s Communist reading group turned into a party with champagne and oxy. There is a short hall at the rear of the house and the flatulent odor from the bathroom signals Jason made a visit before departing to sell weed to teenagers outside Gilman. She turns on the fan to air out the stench. From a hook above the stove, she removes a set of nine keys. Cumbersome, square-toothed things, their appearance suggests they belong to a hansom cab, dumbwaiter, or other such anachronism. Grunting macho commentary to hide their confusion, the men watch her swagger to the rear hall, the window over the backyard. She feels lurid—a person who lures.
She turns the largest key in a spade-shaped hole in the middle of the apron. Opens the catch and lifts the pane. In front of her—instead of a backyard grown with Sequoia’s lemon trees and vegetable beds—there is the entrance to a cobwebbed hallway. It satisfies her to hear the men gasp.
“Magic!” she cheerily exclaims. They cringe back in fear. “It’s not scary!” she insists, climbing inside and flipping the switch. Four overhead lights buzz to life. “Come on!”
No words are exchanged in the hall. Old woodwork, creaky floors, walls the nauseating yellow of a Lay’s potato chip bag. Leigh thinks of herself as Hagrid at the beginning of Sorcerer’s Stone, in the closet with poor little Harry before he discovers his powers. There are four oaken doors on either side and above each a plaque bearing a name. WILLIAMSBURG. JAMAICA PLAIN. GARFIELD. CENTER CITY. EAST AUSTIN. ECHO PARK. OVER-THE-RHINE. WICKER PARK. At the end of the hall, from floor to ceiling rises a tower of furniture and appliances neither Leigh nor her housemates have use for, but cannot muster the energy to dispose of. A backward glance at the men reveals them biting their lips, biting their fingernails, scratching phantom itches, sniffing at the sudden heaviness in the air that has Leigh congested, too, as months have passed since she last visited the hall.
She unlocks the third door on the left. Silently it opens to a corridor one hundred feet long, six feet wide, grayly lit beneath a single bulb, heavily dusted and floored in newspaper that crackles underfoot. The men follow hesitantly. She receives a text from a friend—we @ uptown u still down to go dance?—her backup Saturday night in case the date got boring or weird. She replies: Nopee havin a gr8 tym ;)
The hall ends at a sheer concrete wall bolted with iron rungs ascending a circular shaft. Climbing them gets her just high enough to stand on the top rung and stretch until her fingertips touch the steel cover. She needs Andre to brace her with his hands on her hips, and she is confident he enjoys the task.
A gold crescent of synthetic light yawns over them as she moves the heavy cover aside. One by one, they climb from the aperture to find themselves kneeling on the gravel of a benighted alley. To their left stands the back wall of a restaurant, sounds of sizzling meat and Mandarin a duet from the open screen door. To their right, unsightly black electric wires hang in disarray over the broad clapboard wall of a home stained snot-gray from years of inclement weather. Their Ninja Turtlish entrance goes noticed by an aproned man smoking by the door who—to Leigh’s delight and her companions’ discomfort—simply nods.
She nearly dances from the alley, then remembers decorum on their way up a cobblestone street between crestfallen Victorians to a thoroughfare of cafés and boutiques. The men shiver in the chill that accompanies a steep decline in temperature. No doubt they are noticing the absence of salt air off the Bay. No tweeting sound effects charitably help blind pedestrians across the street. Apart from black people in heavy coats driving modest cars, the liquored yuppies and zitty punks on the sidewalk create a decidedly un-diverse demographic. Spreading her arms in grandiloquence, Leigh turns to smile upon the questioning men.
“Welcome to Pittsburgh, PA. Garfield.” The men look bewildered. “I want a drink,” she puckishly adds. “Let’s go to Nico’s. My treat.”
TO BE CONTINUED . . .