BARBARA HENNING

SEVENTH STREET

It’s 8 pm and dark outside as I walk along Avenue A to the drug store for tooth-
paste. The man in front of me has two little dogs on leashes. One of them looks at
me and I look back until she looks the other way. The man is buying cleaning
fluid, sandwich wrap and shampoo. His head is shaved, and covered with a black
scarf and he’s sweating a lot. I follow him out of the store toward 7th Street as his
dogs pee on every piece of trash left on the street. Just as the man stationed in front
of the Korean bodega is preparing to ask for some change, I look the other way.
In front of my apartment two guys are going through the trash, and someone has
written the word troubleover my door. I never unlock the door when I feel unsafe.
Nevertheless, tonight I unlock the door and one guy looks me in the eye.
Recognizing my hesitation, he says hello with a sinister smile. I nod and lock the
door behind me.
_
Harryette and I have dinner at Mogador, a place where I have eaten hundreds of
times. Walking east on St. Marks toward the park, we pass a tall well-dressed black
man who nods. I don’t remember who he is, but suddenly I think Pennsylvania.
Then I remember he used to sit in the park for most of the day, and he’s from
Pennsylvania. We once rescued an abandoned cat together. Someone tied her to a
park bench and left her with a bowl of water. We used to talk when I was walking
my dog. Pitt, that’s it and he’s a poet. I’m from Pittsburgh, he said, and people call
me Pitt. Later, I’m passing through the park again and someone yells, hey, yoga
girl. It’s Sammy. There’s a kirtan with the Krishnas tonight. For a long time, we
practiced yoga together and we both had old dogs and often we’d cross paths in
the park.
_
Brenda has a cute new haircut, bangs and a ponytail. Lee Ann’s little toddler clunks
past me wearing a pair of her mother’s shoes. I’m sitting along the sidewall, talking
to a young student from LIU. She’s nervous being here. Cliff is on my right. I’ve
never sat along the wall in this direction, he says. Harryette’s in the front row,
listening attentively as Lorenzo reads, an oxygen tank beside him, a tube in his
throat and still cracking jokes. Eleni’s in from Colorado. She tells me that I’m
looking good. John Godfrey kisses me on the cheek. Hello Barbara, he says as
I walk out the door on my way home at 10 pm, past the graveyard—today it’s
not raining—and I swallow. I will miss the Poetry Project even though I told
Lewis last week that I didn’t think it would bother me at all.
_
Birthday dinner at John’s house, with Andrea, Sasha, Lewis, and Katt. Lots of
talk and eating and presents. Good friends. Then I drop Lewis and Katt off at
their apartment on 16th Street and I drive around one block after another for an
hour and a half until miraculously an empty place appears on 11th street just east
of Avenue A. This guy pulls up in an old blue Chevy, rolls down his window and
yells, “Hey, Lady, that’s not a parking place.” I look around, “It is too,” I say and
he laughs and turns the corner, continuing his search while I back in and out four
or five times and then finally slide in without touching the curb.
_
In Tompkins Square, a mother with a baby. She’s talking on a cell phone, laughing
and the baby is pushing her stroller. Just walking along. There’s something about
New Yorkers that I love. Later sitting at a window table in Madras, I see Miranda
coming down Second Avenue. Her hair isn’t red anymore! I like it red. Then I’m
in a store and I see a cup I like. I’ll never find this in New Mexico and so I buy it
and put it in a box. When I am cutting through the park, the wind picks up some
of the white buds and blows them through the park. I should get my camera. Then
I think, I already did that. Come home take down the photos off the wall, put
them in a box and before going out for the night, I spackle fifty little holes.
_
I’m listening to the refrigerator, typing, and looking out the window at the
crisscrossing branches. Later that night, driving home from Brooklyn listening to
Phillip Glass’s Façade, a repeating noir melody floating over the top of a few cars,
rain pouring out of the sky and puddles forming in the street. Something is going
to happen. Something is going to happen. Nothing ever happens. Nothing ever
happens. Something. Nothing ever happens. Just this. Alone in the car with so
many rain drops and the windshield wipers going back and forth, and yes, I am
leaving New York. But tonight I’m here in this car and the wheels are rolling over
the bridge. I turn left on Allen Street. And the rain and the lights in the windows
and Phillip Glass’s relentless. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Something. Maybe
Nothing. Maybe something.
_
Cliff and I take a slow walk to the East River. On the bridge over FDR, we run
into Richard Hell, and then we three talk for a few minutes, speculating whether
the big investors will figure out a way to take over the projects, too. Sometimes
when I’m walking around the East Village alone lately I feel utterly unhappy.
What am I doing to myself? I like living here. I like the hip everyone’s different
and that’s ok. I like sitting with John, Andrea, Lewis, Tod and others at John’s
place, drinking and arguing about politics, writing and art. Soon though I’m going
to pack up and go. There’s a rock band playing in the park right now and people
walking by the window. Typing away on my computer, I notice some guy chaining
his bike to the bars. I’m about ready to knock and yell to let him know someone
lives behind this window when I realize that it’s Mook. He rode over the bridge
from Brooklyn and now he wants his mother to hurry up so we can eat noodles
together at the Ramen shop on 10th Street.
_
On the subway, the green florescent lights—sitting here passing time and space
with a group of people from various places, speaking many different languages,
many silent, waiting together. I cut through Tompkins Square and now it’s spring
and the trees are lush and green. At Mogador, I chat with the owner. Local in
New York City, a place where it’s not so easy to be local. The hardware store on
the corner where you can find anything you want and we know each other. Driving
back from Brooklyn at ten pm—a teenage girl with long black hair stands on the
back axle of a bicycle, holding the shoulders of the young man who is peddling.
Then they coast down Allen Street. It’s dark and the buildings are mostly closed
up. In the months to come I’ll be driving in and out of shopping centers. Maybe
I am a fool to go traipsing off like this, alone, in an old car with a few dollars in
the bank.
_
Tomorrow is Memorial Day. Will in the health food store says everyone is celebrat-
ing murder when we should be fasting instead. Outside the sun is bright and we
are like drooping flowers coming back to life. I walk on the sunny side of the street
with my arms bare. Musicians are playing drums in the park. See something.
Think something. Want to write it down but get caught up and start making
mistakes, like dropping a bucket on my toe and the nail is now blue. Like taking
out the garbage and letting the door slam, the lock clicks and I am locked outside
without a jacket on a cold day. Like walking with Lisa to a yoga class on Wooster
Street. Just as we arrive I realize I’m parked on the wrong side. I’ll get a ticket.
I run home, park it at a broken meter and then I am given two tickets, one for the
meter and another because I forgot to get my car inspected. I’m never this spacey.
Go to meet Lewis for a movie. Afterwards, in Souen, I order a seaweed salad and
we begin to talk about our coughs. Suddenly I remember that I left something on
the stove simmering. I leap out of my chair and run out of the restaurant, jump
into a cab and nervously urge the driver to try to move. Half a block later, I get out
and run all the way home, coughing and panting. The tea is still simmering. All is
well. I step around the boxes in the living room, open the door and sit down on the
stoop. My neighbor Tim stops by and says thanks. And I say, oh that was nothing.
Last week he knocked on my door. Barbara, he said, we took our pig Sofia to the
vet and now we can’t get her to climb the stairs. Can we cut through your apart-
ment to the elevator? Sure, I said and then a ramp and a big fat pig was pushed
down into my apartment, honking and squealing. Her nose was squashed into her
face and she had scaly pink skin. They pushed her through my living room and
kitchen out into the hallway. A group of people gathered around my door. She’s
not mine, I said, trying to discourage them from coming back later.
I sigh. Tim, guess what—I almost burned down the building today. I’m
crazy, I say and he just smiles.
_
It’s extremely gratifying, says the TV newscaster, that someone who was using
New York City as a base for a terrorist group is now in custody. On another station,
the father tells his son who begs for understanding that he is different from other
teenagers because he has Christ in his life. Tomorrow I’ll call the cable company
and tell them to take the box away. Talk to a friend today who is drunk and repeat-
ing herself, talking emphatically about how profound B’s grief is. Over and over
again. B is grieving. Did you ever go to AA? No, but B did. Lunch today at
Angelica’s with Bill, Cliff and Merry who is upset about something. Cliff seems on
edge, too. I walk through the park and the trees are big and shady. The homeless
sit along the outside fence or cluster around the chess tables. The clean and healthy
folks are sunbathing in the middle of the park on a patch of green that seems to
now be reserved for the well to do.
_
The weather is hot but I resist turning on the air. Ran off all the copies of the
covers for a new pamphlet. Stapled and cut. All done and then I notice the title
isn’t quite centered. Well, it is what it is. I sit here at the computer and watch the
passersby. Here comes someone on a cell phone, with hairy legs, wearing sandals.
We want to get an air conditioner. Hey man. It’s so hot. How much is an AC cost? I think
fifty sixty bucks at Kmart’s. A man and a woman, young, white skin, high heels.
A guy with a limp, wearing black sneakers and levis, dragging something on the
ground. I think it’s a bag of cans. Someone’s going through the garbage. I did not. . I never
say that…Two girls in skirts and a very fast paced man dressed all in black.
A bicycle rolls by. Six sets of legs, three going one way and three the other, bare
legs, sneakers, someone mumbling too fast to catch. Now just the sound of birds
and the rustle of leaves.
_
My printer is tinting everything blue. This morning I eat two French croissants,
sitting in Tompkins Square, feeding scraps to the pigeons. They cluster around me
and I watch the punk couple across from me talking to each other, softer and less
on the edge than the punks used to be. Then I go to school in Brooklyn, standing
under an umbrella talking to a psychology professor who is surprised I don’t want
to stay at LIU for my entire life. Why isn’t the computer working? Overloaded.
It’s thundering now. I like this. When the sun comes out, I ride my bike over to
Organic Avenue to buy some chia seeds, down Avenue A across Houston and then,
coasting toward Canal. I feel exuberant and happy inside my body, peddling in the
sun, 90 degrees with just a tee shirt and no bra. The computer may be on a perma-
nent vacation.
_
Helicopter sound overhead. That started with 9/11. Sunday is a good day to sit
here by the window. A quiet step, front foot toe first, pink pedal pushers, clean
white dainty sneakers. I want to eat some strawberries. I wish you had a stroller for
me, the dog has a stroller. A family in colorful sundresses. I see the edge of the dresses
and a man in white pants. A little girl is crying but I can’t see her. A car, a taxi,
another taxi, whoosh, some leaves and seeds spray up in the air. A little sparrow
hops around the tree pecking seeds. She stops and then springs into the air again.
Gone. A bicycle. Through the slats of the blinds, a little bit of green from the trees
across the street. The blinds are at an angle to get light and see out a little but no
one sees in. One blind is up so the basil plants receive sunlight. I’m going to eat
them soon and stop thinking about their sunlight. Just enough for one little salad.
_
Clickity click two pairs of levis go by, one wearing heels. Some leaves blow down
the street, soft from a breeze, not a wind. I hear a child screaming from the
playground across the street. A garbage can rattles. I can smell the garbage.
The weather is so hot and humid. A stroller goes by. Three giant red golden
retrievers on leashes with their owners following. She’s enormous, someone says.
So, one black clothed person says to another, and then he cracks his gum. A heli-
copter is hovering very close to the park. Hey, this is howie…A pink flowery floppy
skirt with a little bull dog on a leash stops at my tree. He sniffs and goes on. I peer
through the venetian blinds and I almost see the top of the tulips blooming in the
park. A pair of green pants and some bare legs with pink flip flops pulling a little
suitcase. No talk. It’s not the social hour. Oh, beautiful orange sneakers and levis.
He quickly stands on his toes and makes a right turn across the street, maybe into
the park. A little sparrow hops up on one of the rocks around the tree and sits
there for a minute and then hops away. Big baggy levis hanging around some old
sneakers. Noisy birds in the locust branches up above. This is their social hour.
A darker bird clings to the side of the tree trunk, looking for an insect I think and
then it disappears.
_
Cutting through the park at 8:30 pm, after the rain and things have cooled down,
the puddles reflect the trees. Inside I sit by the window and listen. Trousers brush
against each other. A siren. On, off, gone. Yea, yea, catholic spies … yea, of course.
A foreign language I don’t recognize. A horn honks. It’s only Thursday, not Friday
night. But naw I’ll, I mean even if I. People are much quieter on weeknights. I’m on
the east side . . .um not bad. Someone’s chaining up a bike to the rail outside my door.
Someone spits. Music from a car radio, rap and reverberation. Nothing, sorry about
that. Quiet step. She stands there for a while. Hi, it’s me, yea it’s a one bedroom, wood
floors, clean, new bathroom, $2400. I’ll have to buy some towels, blankets, baskets, some
kitchen things, dishpan, etcetera. It’s a good deal. Walk down Avenue A to pick up
some oranges from the bodega when suddenly I’m afraid. What if I’m in the
middle of Nebraska and the car stops working and I have to buy another car on the
road? I’ll just have to trust that things will go the way they go and I’ll be where
I’ll be. Very humid outside, almost impossible to breathe.
_
EZ movers take my things away, charging $1000 more than I was expecting and
then asking for a tip. I only have 15 dollars, crumpled up in the bottom of my bag.
Now I’m sitting on a box in my apartment with just an inflatable bed and a few
suitcases and bags. It’s morning and the birds are warbling outside. Usually at
night I need fans and air cleaners, white noise to sleep without noticing the people
talking and walking by. Even during deepest sleep, I think I am always aware that
I am almost never, except in the early morning, alone. I love the birds. Just outside
the window is the sidewalk, then a two foot space with a little square of dirt and a
skinny locust tree that leans to the right, toward the east river (three blocks away)
and then there are parked cars, the street and Tompkins square with the most
beautiful trees in the city, old, full right now, green and in the spring and summer
full of birds. Why do the birds come down here? I wonder. I would keep flying
over the city, straight into the country. Maybe they were born here and can’t
imagine living without the exhaust and limited resources. Maybe they like the
excitement. Maybe it’s the seeds the old people scatter in the morning. Isn’t that
odd about us, first we are playing with each other, then wildly chasing each other,
having babies, working, problems, goals, etcetera, and then we are scattering
birdseed in the park, the birds gathering at our feet. Here I sit on a box, looking
out the window. Today I like not having too many things.
_
Early evening on Avenue A under a big umbrella. Big spaced out drops are falling
and my cell phone rings. This is now my regular phone. It’s my friend Harriette
calling from Ann Arbor. How are you? I’m getting ready to leave. The odd thing,
I say, is that I suddenly feel as if I don’t belong, I don’t belong anymore in New
York City. Tomorrow morning I leave and I am conscious of the air and the noise
outside and the way my apartment was my apartment but now it isn’t anymore.
It belongs to the landlord. He’ll just put a coat of paint on it and turn it over to
someone else for a lot more money. Like that. Lots of things in life are like that.
_
July 1, 2005. Mook meets me in the morning and helps pack my car. Leave a fan
and a broom in the apartment, give Stephan the key, kiss Mook goodbye, we’ll see
each other soon, and then away I drive, taking 7th Street to A to Houston to
Westside Highway and up toward the bridge, through the mountains in
Pennsylvania, listening to Joan Armatrading. I’m not the sort of person who falls in
and quickly out of love. I’m overwhelmed with what I have done, leaving like this.
For twenty-two years I lived in New York, a city girl, with and without Allen,
raising Né and Mook, the immensity of it all, and now a very loud punctuation
mark. The children are going where they go and I’m heading out west. Suddenly,
I start to cry from loss, no it’s not loss—it’s relief. I was trapped in a conference
room with angry people and in an apartment with no light and now I’m out. I got
out. I’ve escaped. I’m weeping. How could I break such a heart?Oh Allen. Weeping
and rolling along I80 across Pennsylvania. They’re grown up and this is not about
me leaving you again. You’ve gone on to whatever and wherever we go. In 1983,
Anne Urban and I kissed my children and Allen goodbye, and we drove my father’s
old station wagon with all my things right up to Sally’s apartment on 6th Street
and B. It seems as if I only blinked my eyes and twenty-two years later here I am,
packed up and driving back toward Detroit on the same highway.