The Wrong Side of the Tracks

I remember being about 14 and climbing into the back of a friend's station wagon. Her mother was at the wheel. I had been offered a ride to the closest Metro station. My homegirl in question was a product of the private school system, a girl who probably couldn't name five public schools in her sector of the city. Her parents ran a respectable business. I liked them all. And they liked me. And our friendship still goes onto this day. But I've never forget the look on her mother's face when she learned that I was from Southeast.

For those who don't know, DC is split into four quadrants. The Northwest, which houses most of the city's business and wealth, is home to the most affluent (this rule is slightly different now as gentfitication had brought more wealth into other sectors). My friend was from Northwest. I was from Southeast, the most notoriously criminal part of town (though some of Capitol Hill is also a part of it, as well as Hillcrest, one of the largest neighborhoods of upper and middle class black folks the city had to offer).

The one thing I never learned from my own family was a sense of class. Though by the time I came along, both sets of grandparents owned houses and we lived in a condo, I would spent my youth traveling through virtually every kind of area DC had to offerL Trinidad, Benning Heights, Shaw, The Gold Coast, Anacostia, Capitol Hill, The Waterfront, and of course The Village. Fairfax Village was in the middle of a war with two different neighborhoods for most of my youth. And when the wars were over those same warriors began to fight it out over drug turf.

It was at the Academic middle school I went to where I witnessed some of the most vicious beatings that I would ever see. Even more came during my years at the academic high school. And I don't even want to talk about what we all saw while we were in college.

But as Saturday had me walking across the Ellington Bridge from Woodley Park into Adams Morgan, I remembered the countless times that my father took me out of our hood for Ethiopian and Cajun cuisine, for art openings and long walks through the manicured streets of cultural diversity. Because of this, once I became a teenager I saw no boundary lines. While I knew all too well about the places where I had no business traveling, I also knew all the places where my crew didn't go where I might be found welcome. I rolled much as I do now, with a backpack filled with reading materials, my camera, music, and other necessities, spending my money on things that brought me some new experience, some new culture, another puzzle piece in the brave new world of my own understanding. The sky was the limit.

As I had bruschetta and scotch with someone who knows me better than most, a someone who takes pride in telling me about myself because she knows most others look at me through different eyes, she reminded me that DC is still my city. She seemed proud when I ran into a buddy of mine from junior high who told me that everyone who knew me from our old school is aware of the books I put out and what I'm up to. As she explained for the umpteenth time why most women do the things they do and why I'm destined to always walk this path, I felt blessed that things had never changed in the whole time we've known each other, that despite our age or our education or marital status, we always look the same to each other. The same flaws. The same assets. The same everything.

Talking to my boy Glass tonight about how New York isn't the same for him because it isn't the one he grew up in, I understand why I haven't been back to Fairfax Village since I saw all of the townhomes where the woods used to be, since the streets I used to walk became lined with nothing but strangers.

Much like in my youth I continue to seek only what moves me. I continue to embrace only what makes sense. I am looking West now, not toward the setting sun but the next horizon, not towards the people painted plastic but toward treasure sunken in a sea of mediocrity. As change is a constant, I'm just rolling where the wheels take me, knowing that all I might leave behind that is meant to still be mine will be waiting upon my return. Just like my city. Just like my family. Just like the bolts of lightning and heavy rain on one night in the rearview. It may not strike in the same place twice. But it always lands right where it's supposed to. Out.