Dance Lest We All Fall Down - Margaret Willson [88]
“Loookin’ fine,” the man around the corner said to me as I returned to the house laden with groceries.
“Not bad yourself,” I replied. He straightened his shoulders in response to my compliment and returned to his engine repair.
Mike pulled up to the front of the house, and I went to the curb to help carry in the furniture. We had just opened the back of his truck when a tall fellow approached. He looked at us and slid his hand down the front of his pants. Mike jumped behind his truck. The man withdrew his hand and pulled out from his trousers—an electric drill. I couldn’t help myself. I laughed.
“What’s so funny?” the man asked.
“Your drill. What’s with the drill?”
“It’s for sale. Wanna buy it? Ten bucks.”
“I don’t think I need a drill.”
“Really? It’s not stolen!”
This made me laugh harder. “Uh huh.”
“Really. Mrs. Williams down the street gave it to me.”
I held out my hand. “I’m Margaret. And you are… ?”
“Clarence. Live around the corner, two blocks down. Born here.”
“Nice to meet you. Why’re you selling the drill?”
“I need some cash to buy gas so I can see my old lady down in Tacoma.” I gave him a skeptical glance. “Really,” he said. “I’m forty-five. I’m a man. You aren’t gonna see me walkin.’”
I looked him over appraisingly. “Forty-five, huh? You can’t be forty-five. You look years younger than that!”
Now it was Clarence’s turn to laugh. He looked over toward Mike, who was still standing behind the truck. “Your friend’s OK,” he said. “She’s spiffed, but she’s all right.”
I offered Clarence my hand again. “Good luck selling the drill,” I said. “See you around.”
“After I get back from Tacoma, because this drill, I’ll sell her tonight.” As I helped Mike carry the sofa into the living room, I ruminated on how race, class, and culture play out in the United States. And my reaction to it. Vashon was beautiful, but I hadn’t been comfortable there; I’d felt out of place. Everyone there seemed self-satisfied, complacent. They were all white; they all looked just like me. They were all more or less middle-class, just like me. I had felt claustrophobic, as though I were suffocating. I’d felt as though I could only show one small portion of myself there; the rest of me would be relegated to sit dusty on a shelf in a closed back closet.
The Central District was alive, and I felt alive within it. Most of the families who lived in the area had arrived forty or fifty years before, many from Louisiana. Perhaps I now liked being the outsider. Perhaps I was addicted to the intensity of having to always be alert, learning from every interaction, never finding the expected. Perhaps the habit of being an anthropologist had grown so deep that I could no longer live in places where my curiosity wasn’t excited daily.
After Mike left, I stood for a time on my front porch. It had been covered with indoor-outdoor green carpet sometime in the past. Water from years of rains had begun to rot the wood underneath. It felt even spongier than the floors inside. Then, on the night air, I heard the painfully sweet tones of a saxophone. I had recently learned that my neighbor was a well-known jazz saxophonist who had played with Miles Davis and other music Greats. The notes curled around the porch banisters and slid down the stairs.
Finally, I thought. Perhaps I had found a home. Then I reconsidered, not completely satisfied with this assessment. Was I merely enticed by the scent of new surroundings, ones I had begun to idealize because they reminded me of parts of what I had loved in Bahia?
But the Central District was, of course, not Bahia. Here I had