There are two different New Yorks. The one they show you in the movies, music videos and TV shows and then there's the other one. The one that they don't want you to see. The one that is old and dirty with its broken, washed out people shuffling along it's broken, war worn sidewalks, territory to countless broken homes. This is the New York that I saw, even if at a distance. And even when years later I saw the city of flashing lights, trendy street walkers and big word talkers; it is the other New York that I remember.
We woke up at four and were on the road no more than half an hour later. It was The Three Nelsons, Basil, my mother and I. My Mom had rented a Dodge van and got Basil to drive.
"And none of your monkey business," my Mom had warned him. "There are going to be children in the car."
The Three Nelsons and I were spread out across the seats with pillows and blankets cushioning and covering us. The plan was to sleep along the way. We had a five hour drive ahead of us and spending most of it sleeping was the most practical thing to do, my mother had reasoned.
I woke up to the mid morning sun; drab buildings, dirty streets and whipping past the window and a full to the bursting bladder.
"Mom."
My mother turned in her seat to look at me. "Yes sweetie?"
"I need to go the bathroom."
"We're almost there hun. Just another 20 minutes. Do you think you can wait that long sweetie?"
I said that I could and half an hour later I was zipping up my jeans in a smelly toilet thanking the God Almighty for the gift of pee.
We were at the facility. It had old linoleum floors that squeaked every time you let yourself shuffle a little bit, dusty florescent ceiling lights that blinked semi rhythmically as if to a muted song that only they could hear, mustard colored walls that had peeled in places revealing the dirty baby blue paint job under it and a smell that was a cross between abandoned house must and hospital anti-septic cleaner.
Squeaking my way down the hall I made my way back to what was ridiculously called "The Visitors Lounge" but what looked more like a decrepit high school cafeteria. My mother sat with Basil at one table and The Three Nelsons sat at another with their mother, Carol. I had heard my mother tell Basil that Carol had been clean for about two months now but wouldn’t be up for review to leave for another two. I didn’t really know what that meant apart from the fact that The Three Nelsons were going to be staying with us for a little while longer.
Bored, I pulled out my Game Boy Color and lost myself in a game of Pokémon. This was not what I had expected when my Mom said that we were taking a day trip to New York. I was thinking the Empire State Building, TRL and Times Square. Not this. This was bullshit. The place was a dump and more importantly there was nothing to do. Not that I made my thoughts known however. With my Mom that would have earned me a slap upside my head. And so I pressed A, B, A, B, B, B, B, A, B, A, A with one thumb and used the other to toggle the direction pad and waited.
It was another half an hour before The Four Nelsons had a very teary and extremely huggy goodbye, Carol thanking my Mom profusely saying that she couldn't thank her enough, may God bless her and answer her every prayer, shaking Basil's hand and wishing him a safe passage with her kids and gingerly patting me on the shoulder and thanking me for being such a good friend to them.
"Don't mention it." I said. And I meant that. Her thanking me the way she did sort of make me feel guilty because the truth is I was a horrible friend to her kids. She or life or whatever had messed them up pretty bad, made them weird as hell and so at school at least I pretended as much as possible without making it too obvious that I didn’t know them. Which meant pretending not to hear them when they called my name down the hall, eating either super fast or super late at lunch so that none of them would be able to sit with me and making sure my seat was always taken on the bus ride back home. I was the cool black kid and I intended to keep it that way.
As we climbed back into the van to head back home I began to think that maybe I had been looking at things all wrong.
"The world is cold." I thought in a brief moment of clarity, vaguely aware of Basil telling everyone to buckle up.
"We need all the friends we can get."
Shapes + Colors: A Mixtape Coming Soon
