Sophie Kerr Prize: Return to Flatbush

By Claire Tomkin '05

The tough neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York, where this year's Sophie Kerr winner grew up, is a long way from Chestertown. Yet this young writer mines the memories of her hometown for the characters, dialogue and the haunting cityscapes that color her short stories and creative nonfiction.

I walk through the turnstile at Church Avenue, and it is as if a portal has opened and I am in a community of ghosts, a world in which no one can see me until I see them. There is an old Chinese man sitting on a wooden crate peddling batteries, cassette tapes and hair scrunchies. "Bata-ries! Tapes! One Dollah!" he calls out with few bothering to glance at him as they walk in and out of the station doors. Suddenly our eyes connect between the thick mass of passing bodies; I am the only one who is seeing him. "Bata-ries?" he offers, hoping for a sale. But I shake my head and hurry away, worried of being singled out and exposed for what I really was—a traitor, one who made it out of this prison and left her cellmates behind. I lived here for seventeen years of my life before leaving for college. But I never felt I belonged then, and I don't belong now. I am the only true ghost here. Flatbush is not haunting me. I am haunting Flatbush.

The sky is gray, and the faint stench of either beer or piss swirls toward my nostrils as I approach the end of the block. When I spot a homeless man crouched on the corner, warming his open palms in the sun, I realize it is both. We exchange a single glance and immediately I know that he knows I am not from here. I am an observer and not a participant. "Spare change, Sistah?" he asks. I snap out of my trance, impulsively digging into my pocket and dropping a few coins into his hand. His eyes are a dull yellow, but they shine brightly when he smiles up at me with gratitude. They remind me of the melancholy that hangs about the heads of all Flatbush residents, only becoming more evident the harder they try to hide it. I've seen it in the soft round faces of children that cling to their mother's thighs begging for ice cream that she can't afford; I've felt it in the grateful smiles of Mexicans who sell me bottled water that I could have bought from any one of the dozens of other bodegas sprinkled within a three-block radius; I've even heard it in the tragic laughter of teenagers who sport the latest of Tommy Hilfiger and Polo and chat on their high-tech cell phones, knowing that at the end of the day they must go home to sleep in the congested rooms of their roach- and rat-infested apartments.

On my way toward the playground I find a group of women in brightly colored dresses and straw hats crowded about the vegetable stands of an outdoor food market. I can't understand what most of them are saying, even the ones who speak in English. I hear Spanish, Haitian Creole, Jamaican Patois and Trinidadian accents mingling in the bustle. East Flatbush is a popular settling place for people emigrating from various Caribbean countries. Even my mother and father are Barbados natives, and when I first entered school my own accent was so thick that I became used to being asked to repeat myself. The area was originally settled by the Dutch, and Erasmus Hall High School, named after the scholar Desiderus Erasmus, looms high and delightfully out of place on Flatbush Avenue. The former honors institution looks like a medieval castle from the outside, but it is ruled by Brooklyn's most unruly teenagers on the inside. Neil Diamond and Barbara Streisand attended Erasmus in the fifties, but I doubt they ever went through metal detectors or waited in line to be frisked by security guards before the start of the school day.

A petite elderly woman with two gray plaits on her hair and a large bag weighing down her shoulder hovers above the green limes, testing their firmness around her wrinkled brown fingers. She eyes the handwritten sign with suspicion. 10 for 1 dollar, it says. "Don't buy dem," another little old lady warns her. "Dey're tir-teen for a dollah ova on Linden Boulevard." The old woman responds by tossing the lime back in the pile, and continuing in the direction of the other market. That is a typical Flatbush shopper; you must get the best deal no matter how far the walk. I remember resenting my mother when she sent me back out for bleach when I accidentally bought the one that cost $1.29 instead of the cheaper one from the 99-cent store. "I don't have money to waste," was the annoying phrase she shot at me accusingly. But if anything, her shrewdness taught me to not let the fear of extra work keep me from getting the best deal in life. If I had learned to settle for what I was presented with, I would never have made it out of this neighborhood.

The Caton Avenue playground held some of my best and worst experiences. It was right across from my old apartment building, and in the warm spring and summer days it came alive with laughter, running and the yelps of excited children. I watched them through the chain link fence with envy, and listened to the crisp leaves rustling gently in the breeze. I could go back to play there if I wanted to. Just not during the daytime. When the sun was up, children reigned, but after dark the playground belonged to the world. The orange see-saw where I once squeezed my finger and where my older brother, Rene, purposely made me fall off had been taken down for obvious reasons. The jungle gym where my little brother once tried to do a back flip and split open his head was still there, and there were still children doing back flips. I could tell most of the kids were not accompanied by adults. Even when I was a child this park baby-sat me after school until whenever my mother came home from work.

I slowly stopped coming to the playground for a number of reasons. When I started puberty and began to mature physically, I became one of many girls who was closed in upon and fondled by large groups of older boys. Adults who witnessed this harassment as it happened in broad daylight stood by and did nothing. My younger brother and I tried to remedy the situation by coming to the playground early in the morning when it was less crowded. At first this seemed to be a smart move because we started to find ten- and twenty-dollar bills left under the park's largest bridge. Because they were always rolled up tight, we assumed they were left behind by drug addicts who frequented the playground late at night. For a while, we were happy spending the money on junk food, comic books and cheap toys. But one morning, as we searched for more forgotten treasure, the same drug dealers met us there. We were forced to empty our bags and pockets, and were robbed for everything of value we had, including the money we hadn't spent. To this day I have never told my mother the truth about what happened to my earrings or why Brian and I were afraid to return to the playground for such a long time.

I lived here for 17 years of my life before leaving for college. But I never felt I belonged then, and I don't belong now. I am the only true ghost here. Flatbush is not haunting me. I am haunting Flatbush.

At the opposite side of the playground was my old elementary school, and it stood out in my memory as the place where I met my first crush, a very goodlooking boy called Steven. He was in an elite circle of popular students who also did the poorest academically. My older brother was also a part of this group. I think what appealed to me most was the fact that he was the "bad boy." He had been in and out of juvenile hall and was a famous delinquent at our school. But I remember his kindness; he saved me from many potential bully encounters and stood up for me when I was being picked on. Once I was coming home late at night and I passed by the block he lived on; I saw him standing on a street corner as if he were waiting for someone.

"What are you doing out here by yourself?" he asked me.

"I was just hanging out with some of my friends," I answered. "But I'm going home now."

He looked beyond me and then down the block, making me feel even more uncomfortable.

"It's not safe wandering around out here at this time of night, Claire, you should know that."

"I do it all the time," I said indignantly. "And I'm not just wandering around."

He looked up at me as if he was about to react to my cheek. But then he smiled.

"Alright," he said. "I think something might be going down. I'll walk you to your house. Okay?"

"Look Steven, I don't need any favors," I said coldly.

"No, I'm asking you to do me a favor and let me make sure you get home safe. Can you do that for me? Please?"

When I saw that he was sincere, I reluctantly agreed. On the way home we talked about the people we've seen, and when I told him I was going away for college, he seemed excited and proud of me. The last I heard of Steven was that he had been expelled from Erasmus High School and started dealing drugs. Last year when driving around my neighborhood with my brother, we passed the apartment where he used to live.

"Hey, whatever happened to Steven?" I asked. "Does he still live in this building?"

"Nah." My brother frowned and slowly shook his head. "Steven's dead, Claire."

"Are you serious?"

"Yeah." He avoided my eyes and gripped the steering wheel with one hand. "He was murdered last October."

"How?"

"How the hell do you think? They shot him."

"Well." I nervously searched for words. "Did the police find out who did it?"

"Yeah right." My brother laughed coldly. "The cops don't give a shit."

I stared ahead and tried to remember Steven for a moment, his face, his smile, and how kind he was to me, even though everyone knew about the things he did.

"How old was he?" I inquired after a long silence.

"Nineteen," he answered and then he paused. "When ya'll were younger, he had a crush on you, ya know."

"Really?"

"Yeah, I knew he liked you and I asked him to not go there. And he didn't. He respected you. He was a good guy."

"I liked him a lot too," I said.

"I even tried to get him to join the Navy with me or the Army or something, but he wasn't feeling it. I don't understand. He needed to get out of here but it was like he just didn't want to."

"Sometimes people like to stick with what they know," I offered, feeling tears beginning to rise from my throat.

"Who the hell would want to stick here?" he snapped. "I hated this place. I still hate it. If Mommy didn't live here, I swear, I'd never come back."

As I wandered through the dark, drizzling streets, the words my brother uttered only a year ago weighed heavy on my mind. I felt the same way he did. I despised this neighborhood, and I never wanted to live here again. But somehow for some reason, I had found my way back. My mother finally bought a house in Jersey City, because my little brother Brian was quickly getting out of hand with his involvement in gangs and God knows what else. It was the right choice because he was headed for serious trouble, and moving before the tragedy happens is always better than moving after. My only ties here were my memories, most of which were negative. I had every right to leave and never look back.

Malcolm X once said that Harlem is not only a place, it is a state of mind. If he had been around to see Flatbush as it is now, I am sure he would have drawn the same conclusion. This neighborhood is more than the rundown buildings, the bodegas, and the filthy train stations. The community is the people and how they think. The residents of Flatbush are united in their fear, their misery and their frustration about being in a hole that they can't seem to get out of. Our eyes are scarred, and no matter how far I go or how long I stay away, I will see Flatbush every morning I wake up and look in the mirror. I will always see it in the eyes of my mother, my brothers and my friends. Growing up, I used to think that I didn't belong in this neighborhood. But now I realize that no one really believes they belong here. Even while some seem to accept their circumstances, we all want to escape and we all certainly try. Perhaps the real tragedy of the story is that not everyone can succeed. w

Claire Tomkin '05, who won the Sophie Kerr Prize for her portfolio of short stories, wrote this essay for Adam Goodheart's course in creative nonfiction. She intends to work as an elementary or middle school teacher while earning a master's degree in creative writing.