Central Nyack through a Child's Eyes

A couple of months ago I showed my mom an essay that I had written for class entitled The White Male Minority. In it I wrote about standing out as a white person in India. I then compared this to growing up in one of the few white families in a poor black neighborhood.
I sat slouched on a soft red reading chair in the back of the library while my mom read the essay on the nearest computer. I tried to seem unaware of what was going on around me, but the truth was that I was watching her closely for any signs of approval. Every tens seconds or so I would hear her give a faint "hmmm," which I took to mean that she read something interesting. Then, about once a minute she would make a "hmmmm" that was louder than the others. About ten minutes in she snapped around in her chair and said, "Nate, come here. What's this?"
I got hurriedly up and leaned over the computer. She had highlighted a small paragraph. My mom looked at me and said, "Nate, that's not true. I felt very isolated. And as a mother, I also felt scared."
I looked down at the screen. The highlighted part read, "I didn't realize that I was of a different color from all of my friends and neighbors until adolescence, the time of innocence lost. No one ever pointed out my difference, no one minded. Simply put, my family and I were fully accepted not only as members of the community but also, more importantly, as humans."
Later that day, once my mom was on the road back home, I read the essay over again. I immediately noticed that I had distorted the truth about not recognizing that I was white.
The greater realization, however, was that I still saw my old neighborhood through a child's eyes, even now, more than ten years later. The idyllic world that I had described in the essay did accurately sum up how I broadly felt about Central Nyack. Yet, as I talk with my siblings and parents, and honestly recollect, the more I find cracks appearring in the facade.
My family (my two brothers, sister, parents, and myself), lived in a humble two-bedroom house with a small, fenced in, tunnel-like backyard and a modest front yard that was edged on all sides by thick bushes. We had a rat infested garage, a trampled garden (I don’t know what my dad was thinking planting a garden in the end zone), a few grape vines, and morning glories running rampant along the back fence. Until my older brother Ian and I moved into the downstairs bedroom, formerly an office little larger than a closet, I lived in one room with my two brothers and sister.
Like those who lived around us, we were poor but hard working. Once a year on my birthday I was given money to buy school lunch; the rest of the year I made my own peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I did my own laundry, I helped clean dishes, and I sneaked in television shows when my mom was giving piano lessons.
The street I grew up on, Gillis Ave, was generally quiet except for when a car raced up it with music blaring from maxed-out speakers. It was lined on both sides with friends who were exactly my age. Nearly all of them shared my unquenchable passion for basketball, kill the carrier, football, biking, in-line skating, and wrestling.
Kyle Bell (no relation) lived one house up across the street in a crowded one story ranch with his perennially overworked mother, older and largely aloof father, and four siblings. His Bell family lived in 4 Gillis Ave; our house was 5 Gillis Ave. Needless to say, much wayward mail was swapped. Ever since he was a toddler, supposedly the age at which we first met, Kyle was obsessed with all things living. He filled all of the limited space in his house with mouse eating frogs, turtles, pet cockroaches and all manner of plants.
Living with his, I now realize, shockingly young mom, in the basement of the next house up the street was Lawren. Lawren was an exceptional artist, musician, in-line skater, and biker. Yet because his mother was so busy, none of these talents were ever honed. Soon after my family moved to a wealthier part of town, he moved with his mom in the other direction to Spring Valley, one of the few places in Rockland County that was cheaper than our neighborhood. A couple of years ago Kyle said he ran into him late at night in Spring Valley. Kyle sadly reported that Lawren was on the block, selling crack, and that Lawren's twenty year old face was sunken from drug use.
Every day after school I would play basketball in my driveway with Kyle, Lawren, and Shannon, a friend a year older who lived in a high ranch behind my yard with his mom and grandfather. The limited time I spent at his house has condensed in my memory to two images: one of his young, attractive mother screaming and waving her long, fake nails at Shannon after he knocked on her bedroom door; the other of his grandfather leaning out of the second floor window and berating Shannon while we played basketball in his driveway. Since my family didn't have the money to afford one of those ready-made basketball hoops that you get yelled at for shooting on at the Sports Authority, my father built a ten foot tall hoop with two by fours and a backboard-rim combo he found at the dump.
My driveway was the site of the basketball games on my street. It would usually start with just Shannon, Kyle, Lawren, and me, but before long, another six boys would be animatedly playing at my house. Although I could never win any of these games (to do so would have entailed arguing for hours), I enjoyed them nonetheless. I was always the only white kid, but I had no awareness of this fact until one day when Jeremy Curry came from around the corner wanting to play basketball. Although we usually let any and everyone play, teams were full and the last time he had played, he had caused trouble. When we didn't let him play, he stormed away from my driveway, before wheeling around in the middle of the road. "You're racist," he yelled at me. "You're fucking racist." Suddenly self-conscious, I turned to the friends with whom I was playing and asked, "I'm not racist right?" They assured me that I was not, but in the asking of the question I realized, for the first time, that I was the only white kid.
Jeremy's comment aside, I was largely ignorant of the fact that I looked different from everyone else. Or if I was aware, I didn’t feel excluded because of it. But as I get older, I realize that my older brother, Ian, did not feel as welcome. Unlike me, he was not into sports, and unlike me, most of his friends were from Valley Cottage, the conservative enclave on the other side of town. Although I didn't realize it at the time, Ian was made fun of by his peers, especially by the kids his age in our neighborhood. Because Ian had ears which stood out from his head, kids called him "Chucky" relentlessly. Ian must have been very hurt by their insults, because in our last year there, he had plastic surgery, fixing his ears back.
My mom too was more isolated than I, as a child, could have known. In my memory, I thought of her as an integral member of the neighborhood. She knew most of the adults and was always friendly to the kids. She never spoke ill of the neighborhood and went to community meetings. It was only later that I learned that while my family was somewhat incorporated into the workings of our area, it was with great effort on the part of my parents. When they first moved into our old house, an old, fat widow who lived two houses up named Mrs. Green had refused to talk to them. She only softened much later, after years had gone by during which my mom continually said "hi" without answer.
Although my parents did their best to prevent us kids from feeling isolated or scared, they were to some extent both isolated and scared, probably one causing the other. After asking my mom more about her experience living in Central Nyack, two specific instances stood out. She said that near the time when they first moved in, the dog of the other white family up the street was shot dead, ostensibly as a warming to her and my dad. She also said that the last time she went to the community meeting she had been cursed at and kicked out.
My mom grew up in a lily-white town outside of Syracuse, and when my parents first moved into the neighborhood, my mom was hopelessly naive. She had come the fateful meeting late, and when she stood up to address the group, she began by saying, "You people..." My mom claims to have never felt so humiliated before or after in her whole life.
Whenever I think back to my childhood as a whole, the general feeling is one of happiness, energy, acceptance, and fun. Yet whenever I look closer, almost all of my memories are tinged with, if not fear, then apprehension about my surroundings. Since I now have an adult relationship with my mom and dad and look to many parents as peers, I can come closer to seeing my old neighborhood through the eyes of my parents.
One summer, my dad placed two motion sensitive lights near the driveway. I had no idea why my father put the lights up; I figured that since they illuminated the driveway for basketball, he must have put them there for us. It was only years later, when I was in high school, that my parents told me the real reason they put up the lights. That Thanksgiving, as my dad was bringing the turkey out to the full table, he startled a kid who was trying to break in through the kitchen window. We were clearly home; cars of relatives overflowed from our driveway onto the street and every house light was on. My dad said he never saw the kid again, but he surmised that he was from the group home across the street.
This group home, an ugly box-like building with a brick front, would be a constant source of fear for my parents. The kids who lived there rotated often and, I don’t know whether it was a failing of the supervision or simply the unruliness of the kids, trouble was always close at hand.
In eighth grade health class, during our second round of D.A.R.E. indoctrination, I asked the police officer where the most dangerous place in Nyack was. Without hesitation he responded, “Gillis Ave.”
“Gillis Ave?” I asked, stunned, but suddenly feeling like a badass.
“Without a doubt in my mind,” he said.
There is no way it was dangerous, I thought. I mean, I had grown up there. Although there is no way that Gillis Ave was the most dangerous place in Nyack, I now see that the cop couldn’t have been too far off. And if danger is measured in police visits, then he was actually correct.
At six o’clock every day the firehouse on the corner tolled out the time in loud blasts, signaling the end of the day. But we on Gillis Ave had another way to gauge the passing of the days; the daily arrival of police at the group home. As an adventurous child, I grew up always excited by sirens and fire trucks, ambulances and police. And it was with this mentality that I would watch, from behind the living room window, the police roll up to the group home. These days, when I see police scream to a stop near my home or on the side of the road, I am first scared that I am in trouble, and then worried about the safety of others. This must have been how my parents felt, especially my mom who, whenever this took place, would find each one of us kids and hug us, assuring us, and her, that we were safe.
Although being the fiercely independent child that I was, I lashed out against their protection, they had good reason to worry. On a number of occasions my dad awoke to hear something rattling downstairs. When he investigated, each time he found miniscule things such as food, linens and toiletries missing. On another occasion in the late evening, as my father walked past the window, he saw a shadowy figure crouched down between our cars. My father shouted and the figure scurried away. When he checked the cars in the morning, he found that their tires had been slashed.
When I look honestly at my childhood and the neighborhood it was spent in, I now see that the rosy image that I have constructed was not true, at least not fully. I remember walking my dog at night and thinking what it would be like to get shot and the actions I would take to evade an attacker. I remember being scared of cars for an entire year because I was worried about kidnappers. Whenever a car would approach, I would dive behind bushes or run inside. I remember climbing over the back fence after balls and being chased after by the old, miserly, shotgun wielding Simon Rawl. He then added on another two feet to the fence and hammered in rusty nails to prevent me from clambering over after a ball ever again.
But there is one memory from when I was seven that sticks out from the others. I was in the front yard at dusk playing with a ball when my mom appeared at the front door and called me in for dinner. I gave the ball one last kick, which sent it flying into the base of the bushes next to the road. I ran over to the bush and bent down to pick up the ball. But when I looked up, a set of eyes were staring menacingly at me from the other side of the bushes, no more than ten inches away. One of the boys from the group home was kneeled over on the other side of the bushes grinning wickedly. I still have no idea what he could have been doing there. All I know is that I ran shrieking to my mom and had nightmares for months, perhaps explaining my later fear of kidnapping.
“All in all,” my mom said to me, looking up at me from the library computer chair “it was a good experience and I saw another side of the world that I wouldn’t have otherwise seen.” She halted, looked away as if recalling a memory, and continued, “But it was not a good place to raise children." She went on, "Yet, in some ways I felt more accepted there than in the larger community of Nyack because in spite of the real problems, the people of Central Nyack are more authentic and open-hearted, taking yet more ailing grandmothers or indigent family members into their home. I had huge respect for that aspect of the people of Central Nyack and so did they for me."
"On the other hand, there was a kid in your kindergarten or first grade class and you invited him over to play. They were Valley Cottage people; I think his dad was a doctor. When the mom drove up with her kid and walked him to the door I could see her through the window but she did not see me. There was a look of disgust on her face which made me feel ashamed."
Talking with her now in the library, I see the huge difference in the way she as the mother and I as the child saw Central Nyack. Walking together hand in hand past the Center, my eyes saw kids playing basketball; she saw thugs selling drugs. Continuing along Waldron towards home I saw dogs frolicking about, she saw used condoms and cracked vials littering the ground. And as we rounded the bend onto Gillis Ave, I saw home, friends, and adventure. She saw a minefield.

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