WALKING ON THIN ICE

Harlem

My first couple days back alternated between vicissitudes of dread and comfort. Much of the dread was due to cold and jet lag and an uncertainty about what this whole trip meant and what we’re going to do now.

First morning back we went to Jimbo’s Hamburger Palace in Harlem. It’s a kind of greasy spoon run by Hispanics. The customers were mostly African American; we were the only whites. It felt like home, like true America. Friendly gritty banter between customers and servers. We sat at the counter, watching the grill. The cook slid orders by us on the counter down to the servers, to the cash register, to customers. Shitloads of possible combinations and items available for breakfast, and still customers ordered things off-menu. And yes, the best American coffee, with cream or milk, unlimited refills, thank ya very much.

Taking Amtrak from NYC to Cleveland was like taking a time machine. The vocabulary of man-made structures was rivets, brown and olive bridge, black telephone wire. Edward Hopper. Long stretch by the Hudson, blue sky and possibility through dirty brown-tinted windows.

Quacks of Midwestern accents, overweight and happy or overweight and miserable Americans. The patois of the Midwest is a jarring juxtaposition with Europe. I think there’s an infantalization of adults here. We float in the amniotic water of a comfortable American existence, and the Midwestern dialect and our tendency to be overweight are emblematic of our isolation. But I have this dialect, too. And I was very overweight not so long ago. I should not be so elitist.

Dining car dinner across the table cloth from charming Mary and Ted, African Americans who are very concerned about our country. Ted’s convinced 9/11 was a setup. He laughed after everything anyone said. I couldn’t see his eyes behind his sunglasses. I peered into his glasses, tried to fasten onto something.

Midnight in the Amtrak journey, I woke up to a flashlight in my eyes and someone asked me authoritatively, “Are you a US citizen?”

“Uh huh,” I croaked. Then dozed off again as I heard the same inquiry repeated rapidly down the whole car. Smith told me that a lot more happened (bad stuff) when I was asleep.

Jimbo’s and dining with Mary and Ted was great. Most worrisome in coming back was the midnight border patrol.

Felt empty and unloaded when Amtrak let us off in Cleveland at 4 a.m. Ten dollar taxi ride to the guest house of a friend, who’d left the key for us in a hidden location. Next day we walked in lonely anonymity to a city convenience store, where there were no fresh fruits or vegetables, and all the food was junk. The clerk tried to charge us $3 for a $2 frozen budget meal, and I thought it a bad omen. That there was no fresh produce was also an omen. I read omens into everything. My omens serve the next ten minutes or the next ten months.

There had to be a way to turn this around. I’d found such happiness in this Cleveland neighborhood when Smith & I started our relationship. Actually, I’d always dreamed of living here, Tremont, Cleveland, artistic enclave. But in my funk I couldn’t see past the indifferent foliage of large American yards, the subconscious mutterings of faulty mufflers, the opaque aluminum siding.

I went to the West Side Market for therapy. It’s the largest food market I’ve seen. The interior has a hundred stalls for meat and dairy and bakery vendors, and the exterior has 85 stalls for produce. You can grab a coffee and pastry and sit above the stalls, watch the hubbub of the crowd below. Outside, homeless people hawk copies of the Homeless Grapevine for a dollar, a rag championed by Smith’s friend, the deceased Cuyahoga County poet laureate Daniel Thompson. On Saturdays, the Northeast Ohio Antiwar Coalition holds vigil to end the Iraq war.

We bought watermelon and raspberries and strawberries and grapes, spinach pies, fresh bread, hummus. The wealth of food and seeing friends all weekend worked. I am happy, happy to be back here, happy to have all this culture, happy to have so many friends who welcome us back.

West Side Market, Cleveland