by Danielle Bylund
On an autumn day that I imagine crisp and clean, while buskers play acoustic guitars, and tourists take snapshots in front of the Washington Arch (thrice rebuilt), Con Ed finds more corpses. Another group of bodies has been found in Washington Square, just beneath the surface, interrupting the progression of electrical wires that keep the lights on in the overpriced apartments of Greenwich Village.
***
There is a huge Ash tree that borders our Midwestern alley. It is a grandfather tree, the treasure of the neighborhood. My partner and I comment on this tree when we spend time in the backyard. He tries to take photos of it on his cell phone. The pictures never come out. The grandfather tree has to be seen clearly, with a human eye. It catches all of the best light; the sunrise catches in its leaves, gold, and the sunset turns its branches to licks of fire, red. When the weather turns tumultuous, we wonder about our grandfather tree, we hope for its safety during the radical midsummer thunderstorms. This place is my green space. The first space of its kind that I don’t need to share.
***
When I was a girl I spent a lot of time in Skinhead Park. I am not sure why it was informally called Skinhead Park because I only saw one skinhead in Santa Rosa, California. He did hang out in Skinhead Park, though, so maybe it was just named after him. The actual name was Fremont Park, and sometime, in the last 20 years, the City of Santa Rosa has seen fit to naming it Cancer Survivors Plaza.
We would take the bus downtown and hang out there after school, all the punk kids. We would drink cheap 40-ounce beers. We would share pot and tilt our hips at one another. We would curse and ask each other how old we looked.
Skinhead Park is idyllic if you catch it unoccupied. There is a walkway that separates the east end from the west end. The walkway is bordered by thick, tended privet. In the middle of the walkway is a fountain, green tinged and often full of tadpoles. There is a very large oak on the west end with strong branches that make a perfect Y. That Y is good for sitting with a friend and talking about Kai from Rincon Valley and Matt from Eureka while smoking Camel Lights.
I had my first kiss in Skinhead Park. His name was Sydney. He wore a kerchief on his head with small, repeating anarchy signs. He kissed me and I could feel his shabby moustache. I was 12 and he was 19. After he kissed me it made sense that I would not go home that night, so Sydney and I slept in an open stairwell in the mall downtown. In between furious kissing we nodded off until we were caught. When you see people sleeping in a park during the day it is not because of laziness or drugs but because, at night, it is easier to shoo the sleepers. My own self-imposed sleeplessness, this thrill with a grown man: this is how I started womanhood.
I returned again and again to Skinhead Park. The only skinhead in town shouted at me, “Boom, shoot the nigger,” as I walked past him. I didn’t really hear it; a friend had to repeat it to me. Because I hadn’t heard him yell the slur it lost something in translation. I was more shocked to hear her say the word. I felt betrayed by the matter-of-fact repetition, not the original slur. I remember saying something like, “He’s always been so nice to me.”
***
Washington Square Park was once a marsh. A stream ran through it, a good place for animals and the Indians of the Delaware tribe to slake their thirst and hunt the small things that crawled there. When a member of the tribe died the tribe buried his name with him. If he had a name of a common thing, an animal or a place, so too was that thing renamed and reborn into a bright new collection of sounds, the language of the tribe changing every time a member was lost.
***
Today, I live in Saint Paul, Minnesota. I feel safe here. My backyard has a small deck. I have my first garden. We call our home the tree house, because large trees surround us, their large limbs circle us from above, in protection. Ash and Oak, lilac and jasmine, iris and anise hyssop, live in my backyard. I am watching the leaves turn this autumn with wonder.
***
For a while I was a student in New York City. One summer I attended a classical music performance in Central Park. Chairs set up in neat, uniform rows faced the Naumberg Bandshell. Some of the audience brought in soft foreign cheeses and crusty bread, summer wines, tart and bright, a picnic blanket, a large sunhat. Some brought umbrellas because the weather threatened a turn. Triumphant trumpets sounded at 7:30 p.m. to indicate the beginning of the performance. A classical music DJ made a short introduction and joked about the impending rain. Umbrellas popped out and covered most of the crowd like a sea of mosaics. People looked at one another and smiled, willing to tough it out. My companion pointed out a man with a hopelessly broken umbrella, and we shared a laugh about his predicament with the man seated in front of us. I disclosed that I had been secretly hoping for rain. Large, fat raindrops came down as the plaintive introduction to the Mendelssohn began. It came, slowly at first, as if matching the introduction. The crowd sat silently, facing forward. I giggled and a woman next to me shot me a disapproving look. I giggled again. As the minor chords started to punctuate the Overture, the rain came down harder and faster. The musicians disappeared from view because of the number of umbrellas. The spotlights on stage made shadows of their instruments. Ghostly violin bows painted the dome of the bandshell in the golden light. The rain kept coming.
Below us in Central Park is where a free black settlement used to bury its dead. A 1755 map calls these graves the “Negros Burial Ground.” The living residents of Seneca Village were removed by eviction in 1855 when the city broke ground for the park. Eminent domain took homes and churches and schools. Because all of the cemeteries in New York were full, this black village had their own cemeteries, which were never relocated. We go to this park for respite and joy. We walk over the thin cobblestones that should be, but are not, grave markers.
As Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Overture quickens, so too do the defectors. Pieces of the mosaic start to break off, stepping on toes and dumping rainwater into laps. The flutes and violins imitate each other in a swooning tone as if asking the audience to stay. The sweet end comes with woodwinds, they seem to be whispering a plea. The notes lilt off into the storm and float away.
The conductor comes to the microphone and asks us if we are still willing to stay in the punishing rain. Grateful applause meets him and his orchestra and Schubert’s unfinished Symphony NO 8 begins. The orchestra is jumping around the program in hopes that they can bring out the solo cellist when the rain dissipates. The melody begins slowly as thunder rumbles in the distance. When an ominous chord punctuates the piece, a bright flash of lightning appears above us. The rain is so intense that my companion and I decide to sit under a tree to watch the rest of the performance as our feet are becoming drenched. The Schubert still surrounds this part of the park where regulars sit and drink beer. The swing between light and dark strings echoes the ambivalence of the remaining concertgoers. A man with no shirt and dreadlocks holding a Budweiser bottle approaches me, sees that I am taking notes and asks if he can recite a poem. I gamely say, sure. As Schubert plays in the background he recites, “If I could be introduced to what your heart is feeling, if they would only teach me the beat.” He seems to be trying to remember the rest of the poem and repeats the line another three times.
If I could be introduced to what your heart is feeling, if they would only teach me the beat.
If I could be introduced to what your heart is feeling, if they would only teach me the beat.
If I could be introduced to what your heart is feeling, if they would only teach me the beat.
I hold my pen and wait patiently. An older man walks past and shouts, “You better get her phone number!” They know each other and laugh. The two men are having a good time and, ultimately, the space is a public one. However, as the rain becomes unbearable and my friend and I decide to leave, we pass one of the concert organizers talking to a policeman. She is trying to persuade him to ticket the men who are drinking beer. The policeman is a tall young white man. His accent tells me that New York has always been his home and that this park was probably his childhood playground. This is where he is from. His voice tells me he is frustrated with her and says that if he tickets them he’ll have to ticket the wine-and-cheese set as well. As the policeman walks away from her he yells, “I am not going to ticket black people and not white people, don’t you think that’s fair?” I pipe up, “I think it’s fair.” He smiles and thanks me as he blends into the crowd.
I’ve always wondered: who are the “they” meant to teach that Central Park poet the beat?
***
Washington Square Park, like Central Park, was once a burial ground for free blacks and indentured servants. Set apart, this graveyard would have been far from the civilized buildings of New Amsterdam. Excised from the churchyard and the family plot. Huddled underground, in the margins between progress and wealth. Othered in death.
It was then, from 1797-1826, a potter’s field, where 20,000 of the poor were interred. You haven’t a name or place; you’ll go to the potter’s field. A useless place, where the potter mines his clay, digging into the earth to leave behind nothing but scars and mud. A marsh not fit to build upon, the land rejects cultivation, agriculture, and solidity. And young men will dig you up to take you to the medical school to learn about your body. And caretakers with violently trained dogs will attempt to protect you.
It was then, until 1820, a hangman’s square where you could be put to death and buried within a few square feet. When you walked in to the fecund grounds you would know that no part of you would leave. Your soul may travel but your body, your only constant companion though life, stays here, in this unusable soil.
***
Today, the grandfather Ash in our alley has turned completely gold without notice. That is sometimes how things change, through a mechanism that is unseen by the observer. All of the green leaves you see are made that cheery color by chlorophyll, and chlorophyll is only present when a tree is growing, eating, awake. In the autumn chlorophyll is no longer produced and the green that accompanies it recedes and the change occurs in the leaf, an unmasking of a color that was already there, unveiled for the brief autumn. This change is a revelation.
I wonder how long I will feel safe here, and if we must leave, what will we leave behind. I wonder sometimes, how changeable is my little green space? What is in situ and what will be revealed?
Danielle Bylund is a writer, editor, and teacher. She has previously been the Assistant Managing Editor for Water~Stone Review and the Associate Fiction Editor for Runestone Literary Journal. Her creative work can be found in rock, paper, scissors, and Pointed Circle Literary Journal. She currently resides in the Twin Cities, MN, with her husband and her perfect dog who is far superior to your children.
SLAG GLASS CITY · Volume 4 · January 2018
Image Header by Andy Atzert.
Leave a Reply