Occasionally we’d see a convict, goateed and grim, on our street picking up trash. Not far down from our house, a mere three houses away, was the local Madison bar “Just One More”, and it was safe to say that the ice-cream man that circled the house each day wasn’t really selling orange cream-sicles. His spooky melody would chime loud and clear as his rusty white van drove slowly by. I never got a good look at the driver, but I imagined scars and a nervous twitch as he handed out his fudge pops.
I called the area where my brother and I lived during anesthesia school the “ghetto.” Not the original context of the “ghetto” where Jews were abused and forced to live in Europe. No. Our neighborhood was more of the hoodlum and gangster sort of “ghetto.”
We were first welcomed in our house with spray paint, and maybe once a month we’d experience the “ring and run” or pebbles lobbed against the side of the house. We chased them a few times. Jesse gave up, but I hated the injustice of it. I wanted to catch the jerks, perhaps let out a stream of pepper spray in their direction. Then…as they were duly subdued and rolling at my feet—I would reach out a hand and help them up. Justice was served and all would be well with the world again.
That never happened of course so I settled on one evening for the only thing I could think of: fishing line strung across the steps. I excitedly reported the results to my brother the next morning. A silent night and a broken fishing line!
He just rolled his eyes and went back to his cereal.
It might have been a week later when Jesse noticed his hammock missing from the backyard. (Not just any hammock, but one that I had a villager hand make for him while I lived in Guyana for a year.) I was livid. If someone was starving—stealing food was one thing, but I could just imagine the hoodlum’s feet crossed, licking a creamsicle, while he swung in his trophy hammock.
I put a police report on it. Not because I expected it to be actually found, but because I had to do something. I am sure the police probably passed on the joke of the stolen hammock in the patrol cars. “Yeah Frank. 10, 4. It’s blue and yellow with a couple of carabineers. Could be dangerous.”
A few weeks later I was walking around our neighborhood getting the stress of an upcoming test out of my head when I stopped short.
There. Hanging in someone’s backyard, still and serene, was the blue and yellow hammock. I called Jesse who quickly appeared at my side. We knocked on the door, and a short blond lady who had obviously experienced a rough life answered, her cigarette bobbing as she talked.
“Whaddya want?”
“Excuse me mam. I believe you have my hammock in your backyard.” Jesse said.
“Your hammock?”
“It was stolen from us a few weeks back.”
She raised a skeptical painted brow at us.
“I put a police report on it.” I added helpfully. (I guess I was a little proud of the fact.)
She walked outside a little more so she could see around the corner to where it hung. Then she started mumbling how her troubled son had “found it in a ditch.”
“It probably blew down from your yard.” She said, shuffling back to the safety of her door. I felt sorry for her. She waved her hand for us to get the hammock back, and Jesse and I didn’t say much as we retrieved it then went back to our studies.
I try to imagine what she might have said to her boy when he came swaggering home from highschool that day, but at least our doorbell remained silent from then on until Jesse sold the house after graduation.
We didn’t take our chances though. The hammock stayed inside. As did the fishing line.
I was reminded of our ghetto living when a CRNA friend where I work was recently fired. New Haven is an Ivy League ghetto. Yale University (and hospital where I work) is surrounded by a mélange of cute restaurants, slums, and mischievous people sick of NYC. It was also listed as number 18 in America’s most dangerous cities this year. That was a relief when considering that occasionally a surgeon will come into work and display his bruised arms from a mugging the night before, or I would hear about a friend’s car tires being slashed…again.
Why was she fired? Because she was overheard in a conversation remarking that Yale was a “ghetto.” The person who unhappily eavesdropped reported her as being a racist. I should mention that my friend fired was white and the other was not. A slanderous letter was written against her to high authorities in the hospital, and she was quickly booted out. (Out of the “ghetto” I should add in spite.) Her career affected by a trouble-making eavesdropper.
What can we say on such a touchy subject? An injustice is an injustice, and my friend being fired was obviously wrong. Why should race even be factored into it? I felt my old memories of our neighborhood creeping up again when she told me why she was leaving. Could we do something? Can we change the world? I want to try.
But first I’d like to make a police report on a stolen job.
Yes officer. It happened in the “ghetto.”
