Urban Gothic

don’t like me smoking in the house, so you boys are doing me a favor. The longer you hang out, the more nicotine I get in my system.” He lowered his voice and leaned forward conspiratorially. “And believe me, living with her, I need all the nicotine I can get.”

Their chuckles turned to laughter, and Perry’s grin transformed into a broad, beaming smile.

“And I’ll tell you boys why the police haven’t shown up yet.” He sat down on the top step of his porch. Leo and the others took seats around him or leaned against the railing. Leo thought that Mr. Watkins seemed surprised—and maybe a little pleased—by their undivided attention.

“Now, it’s true,” he continued, “that the cops are slow to respond down here. Sometimes it takes hours. About ten years ago, I saw a young man get gunned down right over there.” He pointed. “Took the police three hours to respond, while he lay there and bled to death. It ain’t no thing for them to be late. Most nights, it pisses me off, but sometimes I can’t really say that I blame them. With the economy the way it is, they’re even worse about showing up. Ain’t just the big corporations going broke. It’s the governments, too. All levels. Municipal, city, state—even the Feds. It doesn’t matter who’s in charge. Hell, California almost filed for bankruptcy last year. California—an entire goddamned state!”

“What’s that got to do with us?” Jamal asked.

Perry took another drag off his cigarette. “I’ll tell you what it’s got to do with you. People ain’t got no money, so they don’t pay their taxes or other bills. Then the city goes broke. Starts looking for ways to cope with the budget crisis. Ways to save money. First they go after all the programs they don’t think are necessary—the programs that a lot of folks down here count on to survive. But then they’re still coming up short of cash at the end of the month, so they start laying people off. Parking meter attendants, garbage men, maintenance workers—and cops. Always the cops. In the end, the city ends up with fewer cops, but just as much crime. Hell, more crime even. The worse the economy gets, the higher crime rises. But now there aren’t as many cops to deal with it, and the ones who are left—they’ve got priorities. And our neighborhood ain’t very high on that list.”

The boys were silent, pondering his words, weighing them. Finally, Leo spoke up. “It shouldn’t be that way.”

“No,” Perry agreed. “It shouldn’t. It definitely shouldn’t. But it is. Been that way long as I can remember, and I’ve lived here a long time. On television, the president talks about change, and I’d like to believe that he means it, but down here, ain’t a damn thing changed.”

One by one, their gazes were drawn back to the house at the end of the street. Perry’s cigarette tip glowed orange in the darkness.

Leo frowned. “What is it with that place, Mr. Watkins? I mean, I know not to go in there. Ever since we were little, we’ve been told it was haunted. Hell, it looks haunted. Nobody goes inside. Everybody knows that the people who go inside don’t come out again.”

“True that,” Jamal said. “Not even the crackheads or meth skanks go near there anymore.”

“But why?” Leo insisted. “What’s it all about? What happens to the folks who vanish? There’s got to be a story behind it all.”

“You asking me for the history of that place?” Perry watched them nod, then sighed. “No one knows, boys. No one knows. At least, not anymore. Maybe folks did at one time, but if so, then those folks are dead by now, or old and senile. This neighborhood ain’t got no sense of history. Not like the rest of the city. You think about that for a moment. There’s over a million people living in Philly proper—almost six-million if we count the whole metropolitan area. We’re the fourth largest city in the country. With that many people, you’d think somebody would know the story behind that house over there, but they don’t. They can tell you all about the Liberty Bell and Ben Franklin and the Underground Railroad and the influenza outbreak. They can even tell you about when the police declared war on MOVE and firebombed their house back in the eighties. But none of that happened on our street or on our block, so we don’t matter. We don’t even rate a footnote. Only thing that happens here is black folks killing other black folks, and that don’t make the news unless it’s a bumper between sports and weather.”

He made a broad, sweeping gesture with his hand and continued. “Look around you. You kids see anything to be proud of? You see anything here worth noting or remembering? Of course you don’t. We’ve got no pride because there’s nothing here to be proud of. There’s nothing here that we want to remember. And when that happens— when the folks in a neighborhood lose their pride in where they live, then their history—and the history of that neighborhood—gets lost, too. If you took a drive out there to the suburbs, you know what you’d find?”

The boys shrugged and shook their heads. Dookie admitted that he’d never been outside of their neighborhood.

“Well, if you boys took a drive out there, you’d learn that folks in the suburbs don’t know each other. They go to work. They come home. They go inside with their families. Maybe they know their next-door neighbor, enough to nod at him and shit, maybe exchange some pleasantries—but for the most part, they can’t tell you who lives down the street, or the name of the family three houses down from them. All they know about each other is what their neighbors are driving and which political sign they had in their yard during the election. That’s all. Down here, we know each other. Hell, most of the block is all up in each other’s business. We know when somebody is sick, when they’ve been fighting, when they’ve broken up, when they get arrested, or when they lose their job. We can’t help knowing our neighbors because they’re stuck here with us. But they don’t know each other out there in the ’burbs, and I’ll tell you something else they don’t know—their history.”

“So they’re just like us,” Chris murmured. “That’s what you’re saying?”

“No,” Perry said. “They ain’t just like us. People around here don’t know our neighborhood’s history because they don’t give a fuck about it. Out in the suburbs, they don’t know their neighborhood’s history because in most cases, there’s no history there to know. Most of those suburban neighborhoods didn’t exist until twenty years ago. It’s all new housing and new developments, and all that was there before were cornfields and forests. If there was history there, they’d be all over it—erecting commemorative signs and shit. But they can’t because there’s nothing there to remember. That’s an advantage we have here. Our neighborhood is old. We have history. All we have to do is embrace it. Learn it. But we don’t. And in the end, we’re no better than them. So, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you’re right, Chris. Now that I’m sitting here thinking about it.”

“What do you mean?” Markus asked.

“The fact is, boys, people don’t give a shit, no matter where they live. They’ve got too many other things to worry about. Down here, we worry about drugs, paying the rent, keeping our children out of jail, all these crazy sons of bitches shooting up street corners and playgrounds. The boogeyman living in the haunted house at the end of the block just doesn’t rate when compared to all of those other things. Especially when the only time something happens is when somebody is stupid enough to go inside. It ain’t like most of us can afford to move away from it. So you learn to live with it. Ignore it. Maybe even accept it. As long as it ain’t them or their loved ones going inside that house, people could care less. And if the people down here could care less, then why should the cops and the politicians give a fuck?”

He paused, flicked his cigarette butt out into the street, and then continued. “Shit. This used to be a nice neighborhood. Folks used to hang around together outside, like we’re doing now. Used to have big block parties and work on people’s cars and carry groceries for one another. Now it’s just dark, all the time, even in the daylight—just like that place down there. But you know what? Even when this block was a nice place to live, we still had that fucking house looming over us. We didn’t talk about it, but we knew it was there, just the same. It’s kind of hard to miss. We used to whisper about it then, the way people do now. But that was all we did—whisper. Who knows what goes on in there? Your guess is as good as mine. Some folks figure it’s drug dealers. Personally, I call bullshit on that. Can’t be drug dealers, because this shit’s been happening long before drugs were ever a problem here.”

“Then what do you think it is?” Leo asked. “What’s happened to all them people over the years?”

Perry shrugged. “I don’t know, and I don’t want to know. I mind my own business. I expect the house to do the same. Maybe someday the authorities will take an interest or people will give a shit again. I keep hearing about all sorts of people wanting to buy up all the subprime real estate in Philly so they can get into their urban renewal programs, but so far no one has come knocking at my door or offered me a shitload of money. Maybe they will one of these days. Maybe they’ll buy us all out. Relocate us somewhere nice. The idiots in New Jersey are already fixing up Camden—which is like trying to beautify a two-dollar whore—but sooner or later those same idiots will want to do the same here. Then they can deal with that house. Let them.”