It was the summer after I turned sixteen and I was hanging around my girlfriend’s apartment. I had no job and did not intend to get one, as working seemed like an intrusion on my precious free time. That evening a friend of my girlfriend’s mom, a very tan, youngish man in khaki shorts, a perfectly white shirt, and sunglasses propped on his coifed mane of black hair, stopped by–apparently, to talk to me. He was running for RI state representative and needed someone to go door-to-door and drop fliers into mail slots.
“I guess that’s what you’re supposed to do,” he said with a shrug. “Hope it works. Running for this seat is costing me a ton.”
He said he’d pay me $100, which in 1981 was more money than I’d ever had at one time. I agreed as it was only a couple days’ work. He described the territory I was to cover: East of Hope Street, down to Blackstone Boulevard, and West of Hope down to North Main Street. That meant I’d be going door-to-door on Camp Street and its surrounding neighborhood. There were housing projects on those streets, and since elementary school, I’d known that if you were white, you shouldn’t go there. I was older now, though, and a lot of the kids I went to school with lived in that neighborhood.
It was one of those brutally hot Providence summer days when I set out down Cypress street toward Camp. It was just before noon, and most people were at work or staying indoors out of the sun. I slipped the fliers between screen doors without talking to a soul. Soon, I was standing on the corner of Cypress and Camp, the heart of the neighborhood. There was a park just down the street, where some guys were playing basketball, and I could see a mom with her toddler by the swings.
I had lived less than a mile from there all my life but never set foot on that corner. It always seemed too risky, like a soldier striding in full uniform across enemy lines. But standing there, the threat seemed unreal to me. It’s just a place, I thought. I crossed Camp and headed for a large brick apartment building when out of its front door stepped my high school hurdling partner.
“Eric!” I called.
He turned abruptly at my voice, openly surprised. “Billy.” He looked around. “What are you doing here?”
“Passing out political fliers. Here, have one.”
He took one without glancing at it. He was scanning the neighborhood. “So, you’re just walking around here, huh?”
“Yup. It’s hot as hell, but I figured I could use the money. This is where you live?”
“Yeah, yeah,” he said, still looking up and down the street. “Which way you going now?”
“Uh, that way. Back toward Rochambeau.”
“Okay, good. Good. Okay, well, take it easy.”
I said goodbye and headed up Camp. It was nice to see Eric; he was a good running partner. You get to know someone in a certain way when you train side-by-side after school, ride the bus to meets, crouch down in your blocks in adjacent lanes, and cross the finish line tenths of a second apart. He was a year older and a little faster than me, but I hoped I might catch him soon. I never felt like I was racing against him, though. He was my partner. It was the other guys we were racing against.
I started down one of the streets off Camp that led to North Main. I didn’t know these streets at all. Camp was still a major artery running parallel to Hope, one I’d driven through many times, but this one was tucked away. Not much reason to go there if you didn’t live there. The houses had chain link fences and dirt yards, and the apartment buildings all had a boarded-up window or two. I also could see a couple of abandoned houses, squatting dark and broken, surrounded by weeds and rusted engine parts.
I kept going, the street quiet except for the sound of the screen doors squeaking open and closed as I did my job. It had become boring, and I was lost in my thoughts, and it wasn’t until I closed another gate behind me that I noticed an old woman sweeping the front porch of the next house. Something in me froze. She was a stranger, a good two generations my senior, black, and living on this foreign, broken street. Other people’s anger and unhappiness intimidated me, and she seemed to be sweeping her porch with such ferocity–just her and her broom against the world and all its crap. I feared saying one word to her would be like a pinprick release to whatever resentment she’d accumulated over her many years.
I decided to skip her house. I was just starting to cross the street when she called out.
“Hey! Where you going?”
I stopped abruptly and turned. She was standing on the lower step of her porch, leaning on her broom, staring at me.
“Oh!” I said. “Right. Sorry about that. I’m just passing out these fliers.”
“Well, I want to see one. Bring it here. Bring it right here.” She was not mean about it at all. She was instructing me.
“Of course. Right. Of course.” I hustled through her gate and handed her one.
“Hmm,” she said, turning it over, opening it, nodding as she read. “See now, he seems like a very decent fellow. I might just vote for him.”
“Well, great,” I said, feeling horrible. I hated what she might be thinking about the white kid who avoided the old black woman, and I was ashamed that I had been afraid of her. It never feels good to not trust someone–never–but I’d listened to that voice in my head anyway.
I said good-bye and couldn’t get away from her fast enough. I needed to be alone with my shame. Still, she was on my mind the rest of the day. I felt worse because she was so patient with me. I wanted to go back in time and not skip her house now that I knew what I was actually seeing in her fierce sweeping. I had sensed that same intensity when she’d asked for the flier and explained how she might vote for this guy. Now, I liked that fierceness. I thought about how easy it was to make up stories about people.
She was still on my mind when I went down the other side of Hope Street, toward the middle class and wealthy neighborhoods around Blackstone Boulevard. Wealth and poverty were so geographically close in Providence, though they often seemed worlds apart. I wondered if that woman ever crossed Hope Street to come down here. I started imagining her following me around as I finished up my work. Maybe she’d be uncomfortable here and I could help were with that.
A month later I had just climbed on a bus headed down Hope Street when I noticed Eric sitting in the back. I joined him and we talked a bit about the coming school year, but something else seemed to be on his mind.
“Billy, man,” he said finally. “What were you doing down on Camp Street?”
“I told you. I was passing out these stupid fliers for this guy running for office. He’s a dork, by the way. I wouldn’t vote for him.”
Eric shook his head. “Those guys playing basketball in the park were going to kick your ass.”
“What?”
“They came over to me and wanted to know who the hell you were. They were going to jump you but I told them you were okay.”
“Jesus!”
He shook his head again. “You gotta be careful, Billy.”
I thanked him and pictured that afternoon, again. Strange that even though I had grown up being warned about Camp Street, the threat Eric had just described to me still seemed unreal. Maybe, it was. Whatever story those boys had made up about me, apparently, couldn’t stand up to the one Eric had told them. That was the real story, the one we all actually want to believe.
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