Notes on My Neighborhood
Ever since moving to New York I’ve lived on the same street. My first apartment was a block over from where I’m currently at, and it was a nightmare. I stayed three weeks and then moved five minutes away. I know some people find the annual leash of a lease to be an opportunity for new experiences and neighborhoods, but I am not one of those people. For as long as I’m here I do not think I will move.
⦿
Somehow my neighborhood does not feel real. There is a strange sense of being in a protective bubble while I am here. I behave in ways that would horrify a tourist. They would think: Here you are living in the greatest city in the world and that is how you choose to present yourself. I know this because I think it, often, when I catch sight of myself in the reflective surface of a Duane Reade across the street. Standing amidst all the spiffy New Yorkers with their boots and coats. Who is that girl with her unbrushed hair, shuffling along with a giant laundry bag slung over one shoulder, wearing scrappy shorts and a growl in the middle of winter? It is by all standards quite a nice neighborhood, but while I am in it, I am feral.
⦿
I live above a restaurant I used to cry in. The restaurant and I have an affinity because we are both Chinese and because we both moved into the neighborhood at around the same time. When I first landed in New York I was bright and naive, therefore everything bad happened to me at once. I moved into an apartment where the human roommates hated each other and the non-human roommates didn’t care. The non-human roommates were everywhere. I was paying rent but remained simply a guest in their house. I turned on the tap and roaches ran out of the sink. I found roach corpses frozen in the refrigerator. One morning I nearly tripped over a giant roach with a tail and thought I had officially lost it till I realized what I’d seen was a small rat. Today I understand that the term is Infestation, but back then, I just called it Hell. I refused to eat at home because I cared about sanitation, and didn’t dare to eat out because everything was expensive. I signed up for free gym trials around the city and showered there because I didn’t want to be naked in the bathroom at home where a rat or roach might pop up to say hi. I hadn’t factored in the possibility of having to move again and was terrified my money would run out. I wasn’t sleeping either. I could hear the scampering of rodent feet in the walls every time I closed my eyes.
No one else in that apartment seemed to mind. They kept telling me, this is New York, you just have to get used to roaches and rats. Their tone was like, be realistic, girl! I felt like I was going crazy until I hired a professional cleaner and she told me that in her twenty years of cleaning she had never seen an apartment as bad as this. I left in shock and walked aimlessly down the street until I came across this new Chinese restaurant. It might have been the first sit-down meal I paid for in New York; prior to that I’d only had maybe one $1.75 bagel a day (see: money worries) or whatever free food was available at the many school events happening that month (see: money worries). I was nervous about what would happen once the semester began. When there were no longer these orientation parties from various school clubs I could show up at in hopes of a free pizza slice at the end. I don’t even like pizza. Anyway, I went into the restaurant and thought, I’ve been working for a long time, damn it, I can have a bowl of noodles. I sat at the counter and when the herbal chicken noodle soup arrived big fat tears leaked out of my face and rolled into the bowl.
The chef got a shock. What’s wrong with you, he asked in Mandarin, and, I, having been raised in an English-speaking home and country, not knowing how to articulate my heart in my mother tongue, I said, 很好吃. Tastes really good. Alright, he said, eat more. And then he left me alone for the rest of my meal. The public-private nature of my weeping felt permissive, and I stayed there for a long time. Less than a month later, a space opened up in that building. This new apartment isn’t perfect, but when I saw where it was, I just knew.
⦿
One time, hot water went out in my building. Completely. It was the middle of winter. I called a friend who lived a couple of streets down and said, Can I come over to shower. Walking down Amsterdam with my bath caddy and a towel slung around my neck like a scarf, I passed by a gaggle of girls in heels and glitter and furs on their way to a party. I love that shampoo, one of the girls said, and I replied, that’s some killer eyeliner. It really was. The precision of her cat-eye flick was one that could only be achieved with a steady hand and a good sense of balance. We nodded at each other in mutual appreciation and went on our way.
⦿
There’s a man who sells face masks and toys out of a foldable table on the street corner. For the last couple of months, he’s been hawking plush toys, keychains, and battery-powered dancing figurines from the hit Korean thriller, Squid Game. For $5.99 you can have a murderous guard dressed in a red jumpsuit hanging off your handbag. I’m quite fond of that man, because the random street stand reminds me of home, and also because one time while we were chatting he said: We know you can’t be messed with, because you’ve been seen multiple times just walking around in shorts in the middle of winter like some gangster.
The truth is that I am optimistic to the point of idiocy. Somehow I believe that I will not be cold, simply because I am not venturing past a few block radius from where I live. I am nearly always wrong. Yet, even though I was freezing, for a little moment on that street corner, I felt tough.
⦿
I had many ideas about America before I moved here. For example, I did not consider rain in the west. It did not at all occur to me. It is as if coming from Southeast Asia, I had laid claim to it all — rain, mosquitoes, sweat. Westerners, hear me now. Meteorologically, America should just be bringing snow to the table. That is your value add. Unfortunately, America had other ideas. The first time I got a mosquito bite in America, I stared at it in disgust and betrayal. I did not come all the way here to scratch. What is the point of moving away from the equator if I must still suffer the indignities of sweating? And don’t even get me started on my first thunderstorm.
But this interloper has learnt to stake her claim. Now, when it rains, I take my umbrella and go for a walk. Under the cover of heavy rain I can stand in the streets and sing at the top of my lungs. With my outline blurred by the haze of water, I could be anybody. The private and public splash in puddles as they tango. I spin and twirl on the streets, as if by my imagination I have possessed this neighborhood. As if this neighborhood is mine and mine alone.
