When I moved to Flint in 1996 to teach Shakespeare at
the university, I rented an apartment on Avon St. in the East Village (#701),
and, as it happened, the man I married lived a few houses down on the other
side of Avon Street (#710). Mary Jo upon
Avon: the Shakespeare teacher reading
the plays on a street named for the river that runs through Shakespeare’s
birthplace, Stratford-upon-Avon. It was
not chance that determined the street’s name.
It was Edward Thomson, a lawyer who lived in our neighborhood during the
nineteenth century and who amassed the largest collection of Shakespeare
volumes in the state. His collection--746 volumes--was
donated to the University of Michigan main campus in Ann Arbor at his death in 1886, and the Avon
name is about the last trace of his presence in Flint. The summer before I started teaching at
UM-Flint, I stayed in the Bed and Breakfast at the other end of Avon. It was a June of humid air, cloudy days, and
fireflies. I walked up and down the
quiet street, imagining myself holed up reading, wondering whether that
activity alone could make a satisfying life on Avon Street. Twenty years later, I can say that this has
been a great place to disappear into books, but I am more and more thankful for
the people—my neighbors—who are pulling me out of my hole and into the river of
life.
 |
| Edward Thomson's library in Flint, circa 1876 |
 |
| Avon Street Bed and Breakfast |
 |
| My porch at 710 Avon St. becomes a sort of library in the summer |
Late last winter I went to an educational session on
baroque music before a performance of Monteverdi’s “L’Orfeo” that was to be
performed on original instruments at Hill Auditorium in Ann Arbor. I sat in a circle with other adults. The Asian women to my left said her idea of a
good way to die was listening to classical music in a bathtub, and a handsome
professorial type on my right, wearing a purple shirt and corduroy jacket,
started chatting me up. What did I
teach? Where did I live? FLINT?
REALLY? Is there anything to do
there? Do you meet people like
yourself? That question was
provocative. What did he mean … “like
myself”? I assumed he meant people like
him, people with the same level of education and the same basic cultural
interests? “No. Definitely not.” What I didn’t tell him is that I am deeply
grateful to be surrounded by true Others.
Things have changed on Avon Street since Edward Thomson’s
day. The mansions of General Motors big-wigs
that once lined Kearsley Street are gone, and those who live on our street are
a mix of home-owners (factory workers, a pair of professors, and a retired
nurse), down-and-out renters, single-mothers, group-home inmates, students,
and, until recently, one very public alcoholic.
My husband often brags that we live within our means and aren’t in an
all-white suburb, but I’ve been more self-critical: “Get real, honey, how much
do we interact with the neighbors?” Ay,
there’s the rub. Fran, who rents rooms
across the street, remarked once, “You guys keep to yourselves.” This is and is not true. I’ve always opened the door to people like
Mary, a squatter in a nearby abandoned house who used to come around a few years
ago, asking for change to do laundry or ride the bus, and once she just needed
menstrual pads. Moreover, my reading is not
self-isolating or self-comforting (not completely) but an act of love, a going
out of my own nature, a sympathetic identification with the mystery of the
other, whether the other is a neighbor, a stranger, or God? But it is true: books are not enough and have only whetted my
appetite for real interactions. In my
own way, I am just as hungry as my neighbors.
Maybe that’s why I have become such an avid walker. I walk to shed the “tiny, tiny myness,” and
to be swept up in the life of nature or the street, to feel myself a part of what
Virginia Woolf describes as, “that vast republican army of anonymous trampers,
whose society is so agreeable after the solitude of one’s room.” But I credit the group-home guys—men with an
array of psychological disorders, living lives of radical dependency—for
pulling me out into the stream of life.
 |
| Eric with Panda on the porch of Harmony House |
Even in the cold of the winter months, they are out on
the porches of the two houses nearest Court Street. “I like your dog,” yells a newcomer, sitting
alert and smoking. I thank him. The next night, he shouts the same thing, “I
like your dog.” “That’s a cool dog.” “He keeps you company, doesn’t he?” Another night he asked me if I read the Bible
and warned me that “Jesus was coming,” but mostly he stuck to talking about Panda. Eventually, I asked his name, and over time
we talked more and more. He introduced
me to an older black man, John—quiet and unassuming. But through Eric, I gradually warmed up to
another, more pesty guy who shuffles around in a down vest and army hat and
doesn’t hesitate to ask for empties and spare change. At first, I didn’t like him because he
commented unselfconsciously about my January-May marriage: “Hey, that your
husband? He’s kind of old, huh? Ha, ha.”
Paul says “Bottles’-guy” (our name for him before I learned his real name)
is “way out of it,” but I disagree.
“Captain Frank—U.S. Army” is perceptive and enterprising, just trying
his best to keep some dignity in a lousy situation. He told me that he’d tried to join the Army,
but they “kicked [him] out.” Undeterred
by rejection, he simply pretends. When
hot weather hit in late May, Frank started asking me for pop. I’d open to the knock at my door and see him
standing there, begging for “a can of Coke or something.” Coke?
Sure, no problem. What’s a can of
pop? I got in the habit of picking up liter
bottles of Fanta at Kroger for him and the occasional box of cookies. I’d leave them with whoever was sitting on
the porch. When we had a bumper crop of
strawberries, the group-home guys passed around the brown paper bag filled with
red berries right off the bush. I don’t
mean to make myself sound like a do-gooder because I’m the one who benefits
from the exchange. I may nourish them
with food gifts, but they nourish me with their greetings and the opportunity
to be a provider.
They call out to us from their porches. They shout requests, greetings,
blessings. How many neighbors in “good”
neighborhoods do that. No one comes
around asking for an egg or a cup of sugar anymore or to borrow a rake or screw
driver, but these guys have needs and aren’t shy about making them known. Because they do, they draw us close, invite
us to share something of their lives. The
philosopher Emmanuel Levinas writes, “Happiness is made up not of an absence of
needs, whose tyranny and imposed character one denounces, but of the
satisfaction of all needs.” What I take
him to mean is that happiness is accomplishment: it exists in a soul satisfied and not in a
soul that has extirpated its needs, a castrated soul. Frank needs pop, Gregory (a wiry black man
with a broad toothless smile) needs an onion a cup of ice a hug, Eric needs a
friend, and I know that I need to feel part of a community. “Life is love of life, a relation with
contents that are not my being but more dear than my being: thinking, eating, sleeping, reading, working,
warming oneself in the sun,” and, I would add, sitting under a tree or on a
step and talking to my neighbor.
“Distinct from my substance but constituting it, these contents make up
the worth of my life.” Levinas’
philosophical musings are spot on. The
human being thrives on her needs; she is happy for her needs.
But the truth is—meeting my neighbors’ needs has not
come easily. The relentlessness calls of
the group-home guys may be teaching me kindness, but I have at other times
struggled with being the only affluent open-hand around. How much can I give? Are they going to hit me up for money every
time we meet on the street? Every time I
express my curiosity about their lives?
My dealings with Cathy made me acutely aware of my own needs for
friendship. Cathy is black, poor, lives
with a younger black man, Jamie, who is, as she says, “slow” but nice and
“learning to cook.” She tries to work—collecting
signatures on petitions and sometimes cleaning houses—but she’s also addicted
to pain meds and sells half her monthly prescription on the streets. I’d given Cathy rides downtown when she
regaled me with stories from past lives when she went to UM-Flint, did theater,
had a career as a singer, made $50,000 a year, had teeth and lots of
friends. When I bumped into her last
summer around the Cultural Center, she said her brother was dying of brain
cancer and wondered if I had any cleaning work for her to do. I didn’t.
I like Cathy, but it bothered me that she could never remember my
name. I knew hers. I knew her story. The fact that she kept calling me “Mary Ann”
or “Mary Jane” or “Mary Lou” made me feel funny, like she was just talking to
me to get something.
One day in early December, it was cold. I’d come in from walking the dog and had a
small bit of time before picking up my daughter from school. There was a knock at the door which I had not
closed. “Mary Ann! Mary Ann!”
It was Cathy. “You got any pain
pills?!” This was before I knew of her
addiction. “Well, I have some
Tylenol. That’s all I got.” “Really?
I figured you must have something stronger. I mean, we ain’t getting any younger.” I was annoyed. I stomped upstairs to the medicine cabinet,
picked up the mostly empty bottle of Tylenol, stomped down and handed it to
her. “And MY NAME is MARY JO.” I know she heard the annoyance in my voice,
and hers came back lilting and laughing, “honey, you know most days I can’t
remember my children’s names. Not since
I had that stroke.” And somehow in that
conversation, she tucked in a very clear statement of her needs and values for
“food, sex, and travel” in that order. I
remember admiring her clarity and thinking that that wasn’t a bad short list of
necessities. I closed the door and
locked myself into my own trap. I knew
what was bugging me: maybe Cathy was in
pain, but she had enough gumption to walk across the street on a cold, cold day
and ask for help. She had enough spirit
to find a man to sleep with. She could
say what she needed. Could I? I felt shitty for taking out my frustration
on her. And after picking up Katya from school,
I stopped at Rite Aid, bought her Motrin, a couple of small bottles of whiskey,
and a chocolate bar. Christmas was
coming. Settling my daughter in the
house, I carried my purchases across the street. Cathy and Jamie lived upstairs in the same house
where I used to have an apartment (701 Avon).
The doorbells are broken now—out of state landlord—and to get their
attention, I had to shout up toward the window which is usually open. “Cathy!
Cathy! Hey, I’ve got something
for you.” She came down, opened the
door, and invited me upstairs, but I said I couldn’t stay. I apologized, gave her what I’d put together,
and we hugged. I was grateful that she
was so forgiving, that she was willing to give me a second chance.
 |
| Cathy with boyfriend, Jamie in front of 701 Avon Street |
Even before I began talking to Cathy, I’d connected
with her boyfriend, Jamie, because Jamie loves my corgi, Panda. One day, when he was still just a puppy,
Panda squeezed through the fence and ran straight over to Jamie, who often sits
in a white plastic chair along the sidewalk.
“Hey Panda, Panda, Panda,” he says, putting his face close to my dog’s,
brown eyes staring into brown eyes. For
a long time I’ve known that Jamie needs an animal to care for. He’s familiar enough with us now that if he
sees me in the porch or in the backyard, he’ll come over and come right on in. The first time he lifted the latch and let
himself in the fence, I was troubled.
This is MY YARD. I didn’t say you
could come in. I felt the annoyance of
having an interloper on MY property. I
hated myself for having these feelings, and, thankfully, I was able to put them
aside and enjoy watching Jamie play with Panda.
And we talked. I asked him if he
was born in Flint. “No. Thailand.
I’m adopted.” Thailand? I was really surprised. He explained very clearly—not “slow” at
all—that he was born in 1968—“a Vietnam baby”—in Bangkok to a Thai woman and an
American father, who was a soldier. He
loves Chinese food and isn’t angry about having been abandoned. “Things were unstable. There was the war.” He grew up in Hurley Children’s Center and
was adopted by a white family in Flint.
“That’s why I get along with white people better than most blacks.” Eventually, after we’ve compared notes on
adoption, talked about Flint, and Panda is dead tired from the tug of war game,
I tell Jamie that I need to start cooking dinner. I tell him that because I am used to my own
quiet and my own space, and I am ashamed that I have such a low tolerance for human
company. Something I want to
change. “Okay. Hey,” he asks with a big tonal question mark,
“can you spare a few bucks?” “What d’ya
need?” I ask, feeling friendship corrupted by obligation. “Oh, I don’t want to be greedy, but maybe
like ten dollars.” I go inside and pull
a ten out of my wallet and hand it over, once again feeling that ugly feeling
that everything with them comes down to money.
We just had a nice conversation, I’m thinking. Why does money have to enter in? Of course, the answer is that he and Cathy
are poor. She, as I’ll find out later,
needs pain medicine and she had already spent her monthly check. Jamie was trying to meet her need. What’s wrong about having needs and asking
for help? Nothing. And I pray the day will come that I will,
with genuine gladness, meet such needs because, in the scheme of things, I can
… without suffering any loss. And
because, Cathy does pay me back. Several
days later, she comes trundling over, heavy purse on her arm, waving dollar
bills in the air like a fan, “Mary Ann!
Mary Ann! I got some money for
you.”
A week or two later, I’m pull my car in the driveway
and Jamie runs over. “Hey, you know that
white guy …” , and, weirdly, I do know the man he’s talking about—the drunk
who, for many years, has sat on his porch downing box after box of Rose wine
and smoking … for hours everyday … winter, spring, summer, fall. He was the neighborhood watchman. “He died.”
I was genuinely shocked. Jamie
knew his name was “Brad,” and I knew there was a lot of traffic between the two
porches—Brad’s and Jamie’s—and that Brad had had some kind of relationship with
the rail-thin black woman, “Vivien,” who I somehow imagined to be a
crackhead. I’d stayed away from Brad
when he started giving flowers to my toddler daughter and later when he got in
my face and told me I needed to call Child Protective Services about Sam and
Jasmine’s mother. I wrote him off as a
judgmental jerk. Did I think … that I
was the only neighbor who had the right to form judgments? Just as Brad was a constant presence on his
porch, watching the street, so he was a touchstone in my mind. Some winters he’d drink outside, wearing a
hard hat and a beige Carhart jumpsuit, and I envied him his freedom from
responsibility. More recently, he’d
hibernate during the winter and I’d worry when he hadn’t come out even once the
weather got fine. I hoped quietly that
he’d survived. During my own deep
depression two years ago, when I was smoking and drinking during the day
(little sips of wine from a demitasse cup), Brad’s presence two houses away
made me feel less alone and less messed up.
“He died. … How?” I gasped. “I
don’t know, but when they found him, he’d been dead in the house for three or
four days.” “Oh, God. That’s awful.” There would be no second chance this
time. No hugs. No liquor exchanged. No nothing.
That night, all the neighborhood blacks hung out in
the yard across from Brad’s apartment in those white plastic chairs. It seemed to me they were waking him. By the time I picked and washed a mess of
strawberries to take over, they were gone.
Not quite: there was Jamie coming
up a side street. He must have seen me
standing in his yard, looking … for someone.
I gave him the bag of fruit. He
thanked me. He didn’t seem to feel
threatened by my presence in his yard, but, then, his has no fence.
Just the other day, late afternoon, I’d walked Panda
around a block and came up to Cathy sitting under the maple tree eating a plate
of something she’d cooked. She gave the
dog her last piece of food and asked me to sit down and talk. She filled me in on Brad—how he lived and how
he died: “He was in the Navy … cook on a
submarine,” “a hoarder,” “hundreds of
wine boxes,” “spoiled meat crawling with maggots,” “Vivien was goin with
him.” She asked me about my life. “What’s it like—Boston?” When I told her about my recent troubles with
my daughter, she said, “she’s not a lesbian, not screwing black guys or
Mexicans—don’t let her go with any Mexicans,” and “she’s not having twins and
needing an abortion … honey, your problems small compared to real-world
ones.” I laughed and agreed. “Make yourself some banana splits. Get yourself a journal. You growing up with her. Plus, I can tell she’s a good girl. She’s beautiful. Remember that day I was over at your
place? She came out of the house, looked
me dead in the eye, and handed me a quarter.
She’s alright.” I stand up to go,
and this time, she doesn’t ask for anything.
“See ya later, Mary Ann.” It no
longer matters that she doesn’t know my name.
“Okay. Enjoy the evening,
Cathy.” In the pale night light of
summer around 9:00 I see her racing down Avon Street on a bike.
My Avon may be a street in a rust-belt city and not a
river in Warwickshire, but it, too, has a current. Lately, I feel glad when I hear someone shout
out, “Maree-Ann!” or “Hey, Jo-Jo.” When
I answer to these new names, I step into the current, let go my hold on all the
tiny mynesses I’ve clung to—my name, my yard, my money, my free time, my work. And free at last, liberated by my neighbors’
needs, I have to wonder where, oh where, does this Avon go?
 |
| There were still horses on Avon St. in 1996 when I moved here. |
