I couldn’t get into the Heart Mart. Well, I could. It was a process requiring a certain amount of courage.
I circled the block so, if I changed my mind, I wouldn’t look so obvious and so cowardly. I extinguished the music because I didn’t want to get checked in; I didn’t want the locals thinking I was flossin.’ And I rolled up the windows for security.
If it sounds tedious, it’s because it is. It’s always a head trip when I have to figure just how much leeway to give black folks.
Regular black folks are one thing. Crack-addicted black folks are another.
I looked hard during my first pass, like I was looking for some crack myself.
I tried to see the sign on the door. Were they closed?
The sidewalk was literally strewn with shirtless, sagging, dirty, loud, hunch-backed, dice-throwing, cursing black men. They didn’t care.
Heart Mart must be closed.
It’s a small, musty treasure trove of a thrift store on Wyoming Avenue in Lockland. It sits among black-owned and -operated barbershops, greasy spoons and beauty parlors.
Across the street is what used to be Able’s Beauty Supply, a longstanding venue of hot combs, grease, relaxers kits, wave caps, combs and every other imaginable black hair care product. I hear Indian folks run it now.
Down the street is a corner store that’s changed hands more than a dollar bill.
Heart Mart sells discards from God knows where — luggage, shoes, clothing, jewelry and miscellaneous brick-a-bracks. It’s been there for as long as I can remember. I used to spend my high school allowances there when I was first learning to drive.
Across the tracks from this congestion and cracked-out genocide is Wyoming. For all their divisiveness, those railroad tracks might as well be a river. Wyoming is green, lush, affluent, clean, quiet and protected. Lockland is mostly none of that.
Mainly, Lockland looks run over and broken. It’s a leaner and meaner Newport, which is like Hamilton but with less self-respect.
This situation, however, surpasses the ideology that the two communities have gone in different directions. There’s something invisible yet palpable that stretches across those tracks. It’s like a gauzy spider web.
In all this sociological entanglement, paternalism colors the behavior of Lockland’s Negroes. They keep their self-destructive behavior to themselves and on their own sidewalks. They steal from one another to fuel their habits. They don’t cross the tracks. They don’t demolish Wyoming.
I slowed down to read the sign: Open ’til 4 p.m. I circled and parked across the street. Approaching, I made decisions.
Would I say something? Would I make eye contact? Should I murmur an “excuse me” and go on in like nothing’s going on? I was an amateur actor unsure of my cues.
I stepped though the crap game. I looked at their faces. They looked away. They were agitated and sweating. I felt ashamed — ashamed for not saying something and ashamed that this is what had become of us.
Inside, the stout, elderly white woman running the store was herself agitated. Several black women were shopping. The clerk was gruff with a few of them.
A 50ish black woman came in. She knew the clerk, who blurted out, “I think they’re participating in drug activity out there!” I squelched my first impulse to burst out laughing. Nothing was funny, just absurd.
Turning to face a window, the clerk folded an arm under her breasts and cupped her chin with a hand. She looked worried, like her husband was late for dinner. I exhaled heavily. She wanted us out so she could lock up for the day.
I made a purchase and propped it against the counter so I could look at a window display. I looked out to the sidewalk. The black men were agitated, almost frothing like dogs being teased with food held aloft.
Their postures changed. The crap game was over. The connection had come.
One by pitiful one he serviced them, passing packets of slow death from palm to sweaty palm. He took their crumpled, greasy dollars. He took them. He took them.
As the black men dispersed, I caught a glimpse of familiarity. The loudest, most skittish among them was once a relative by marriage. He was once beautiful like a bar of Swiss chocolate. Now his skin is sunken, his teeth rotting and he walks on wobbling legs.
I saw him in profile, hidden under the low, close brim of a dirty baseball cap. His clothes — dingy T-shirt, baggy basketball shorts and worn basketball shoes — were hip enough to distinguish him from vagrancy, yet they were really the pretend uniform of a player who always gets played.
I left. It was oppressively hot. I felt confused and tired. I drove across the tracks into Wyoming, rolling the window down.
A little black boy held the wrist of a little white girl smaller and younger than him. Like a big boy he tried to guide her across the street. Like a big girl she broke free, and he chased her and called after her.
He looked at me and I smiled feebly at him. It was a relief. ©
This article appears in Aug 1-7, 2001.