DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

Gentrification, Education, and Fairfield County;

AKA "I'm Ruining Your Neighborhood"

 

Revisiting 2013 Anna

 

Do you want to know a secret? I'm not supposed to be here.

 

I'm not. I moved to the city in August 2013. For the first few months of living in New York City I stuck out even when I didn't mean to. Here's something I wrote when I first got here:

 

Friday, August 30th, 2013

 

I feel so childish at this school. I don’t mean to, and I probably don’t look it, but I feel so much younger and sillier and stupider. Not in academic terms. I am nothing if not prepared to cut throats and be the academic my high school primed me to be. Can I tell you how college kids used to come back, when I was a sophomore, junior, senior? “You don’t understand how much better off we are. They taught us how to write in high school. They prepared us for the workload.” Our B’s are their A’s, I was told. Yale had easier English classes, I was promised.

 

Still, in terms of life, I am so far behind. I have to remind myself that this is a blue-collar school. I’m not used to this. Johnny Depp lives two towns over from me. Children I babysat would vacation in the most exotic places. While I was thrilled about living alone in my building, and I excitedly told one of the girls about it, she sort of shrank back into herself, before saying that it wasn’t an option for her, that kind of money. I know what “that kind of money” is, believe me.

 

In my defense, my high school taught me to be cutthroat. Everyone was on a much more level playing field there.

 

It taught me that along with other things that prepared me for school but not the real world - especially this city. I didn't speak two languages ("But don't you speak Italian, Anna?"), but I was excellent at code-switching to match my Connecticut peers and their parents. But I didn't speak New York. And it was obvious to everyone. (I'm still learning phrases. I remember the first time someone used the word "tight" to describe how they were feeling, and I thought, "Oh man, they must be so happy right now." I'd incorrectly identified the word with what I'd grown up with it meaning. Additionally, when someone talked about the "train", for months I pictured the big steaming monsters that slide in and out of Grand Central, not the subway. That's on you, New York. You didn't need to confuse me like that.)

 

I was embarrassed by my greenness and the fact that I needed such a large lesson in culture. I'd never seen what the world looked like before and these kids would sniff me out and know that. No one would like me if they knew where I'd come from; I was a spoiled, uptight, arrogant White bitch from out of state and I looked and acted the part. I told people I was from Long Island. Maybe they won't ask me too many questions if I tell them that. Maybe they won't deliberately exclude me from things if I lie. I wouldn't like me, either. (A popular phrase of mine that works its way through my mind often.)

 

It wasn't the best idea to immediately try to guess what the other kids would be thinking about me, but I was sure I'd know what they would think. (I know what you're thinking. This phrase used to get my counselor to smile at me indulgently. "What am I thinking?" He'd say to me, with just a sliver of condescension. "I know it's what you're thinking," I'd answer, ever-ready to punch the words out. "You're thinking this particular bad thing about me.")

 

But believe me when I say people knew. They knew something was different about me, even when I tried to wipe it off. My hands were stained with my New England prototype. Here's another thing I wrote in that first month of school:

 

Saturday, September 7th, 2013

 

For my first Choir rehearsal, I had a doctor’s appointment the next morning, at like eight in the morning. In Connecticut. Which meant that I needed to leave the city around ten, when rehearsal ended, get on a train, get back to CT, have my dad come get me in the middle of the night, and then be ready for my appointment. My father decides he’ll stay late in the city to drive me home because he has “work to do anyways."

 

Our director lets us out early. I call my dad, who tells me that he will be there to come get me in fifteen minutes. He tells me to go get something to eat. My new friend, my first friend my own age, brings me to a Starbucks and wishes me a good night.

 

So now it’s like nine-thirty and I’m in the Starbucks, and there is a man waiting. I say, “Are you in line?” He shakes his head and makes one of those gestures with his hands, one of the vague “No you go ahead” gestures, seen mostly in lines of fast food participants and traffic. I say “Thanks,” and place my order. He has his food handed to him - no, he wasn’t in line, he was waiting. Then he turns back to me. I feel a quick small tremor in my stomach. He’s a man: a taller man; a bigger man; a very dark man, and I have yet to have many conversations with big tall dark men.

 

“How come you were so nice to me right then?” He asks me. I look at him, and he continues. “Most people would have...you’re like the nicest person I’ve ever met.” I smiled. “I’ve only lived here for thirty-five hours or so,” I said, embarrassed by my novelty to the city. He’s clearly been here forever. He smiles with his entire face - have you ever met anyone like that, who brightens up everywhere when they smile? - and says to me, “Well, I think...don’t ever change. I think you’re really going to melt some hearts someday. Good luck with whatever you decide to do.” I stutter out a thank you, and he turns and walks away, to sit down.

 

He didn’t have to say any of that. But it made me wonder; how much maltreatment did this normal looking man have before I was just human to him? I wasn’t polite or cute or anything. I was just a person. What did he expect I would do? I shudder to think of how people are if he thought that my moment of being a regular person was the nicest thing he’d ever had happen to him.

 

That's a lot of things I revealed about myself in that journal excerpt. Let's break that down together.

 

1) I really didn't get the opportunity to have one on one conversations with grown men who weren't my teachers, relatives, or close family friends. That seems normal (I guess - as we've just read, I have a warped sense of normal). I didn't have many one-on-one conversations with grown men who were also men of color because my neighborhood was painfully White and the opportunities just didn't come about all that often. That is much, much less normal.

 

2) This was literally about two days into living in New York City by myself. I was a little bit jumpy and all too self-aware. I am much, much better now. Please don't judge me too harshly.

 

3) All I'd ever heard from peers, teachers, et cetera about New York were miserable things. I was terrified of Harlem for about a year after moving to the city because grown adults that I trusted told me to be. I'd never been north of 96th street. Now I live in up in the Heights. I got better with time and gained experiences that my childhood did not give to me. City babies have this confidence that I envy. It's because they've spent their whole lives talking to people from all walks of life. It's incredible.

 

Anyway

 

I digress. There's a lot that I missed out on that the rest of you got early and often. I had to learn it all. Every day I get better and every day I am grateful for the opportunity to interact with new people, real people, people who do not look and sound like me - I have been since the first day I got here.

 

Every day I'm terrified that someone will find a reason to drag me back to my hometown. It's a paralyzing fear. I'll lose so much if I go back. I lived with Stepford Wives before I met the rest of humanity. Please don't take me back there. I can't go back to that. Please don't take me away from real life. I just became a Person. There's still so much I don't know.

 

So far, I've been allowed to stay. When I'm asked about where I'm from I tell people that one morning I crawled out of a sewer and enrolled in college. People have been kind. Their brows don't furrow anymore when I open my mouth. I'm New York-passing. (Mostly. There is always slang I will not know.)

 

I stay. And I ruin it for people who grew like roses from concrete. I'm the Educated White Woman they taught you to fear.

 

I am a villain in your story. You see why I can't go back to the life I had. I'm unwelcome now. They smell New York on me. It's too unlike the warm vanilla that Connecticut caked me in.

 

So here I'll stay for as long as I can. And that means driving your rent up.

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.