According to The Commercial Appeal, Jan. 20, 2008, it looks like my childhood home has passed hands again. This is, I believe, the fourth owner? since it was built in 1968 in what was then called a subdivision of Memphis, TN. In the wake of Memphis' ongoing struggles with race, class and with a resounding assassination coming in a spring storm, my dad bought it to move his wife and two girls out of Midtown, away from the trouble. Midtown, to this day, still struggles with crime, yet artists and college students continue to populate with a shrug of the shoulders, keeping it possibly the most stable and safest of Memphis' historical streets.
Since dad sold our single family home in East Memphis after a good solid 30 years of livin' and dustin' and fightin' and growin' and leavin', there've been three names attached to it. I wonder if anyone can settle in there besides us Dowdas ...? Were we the only family able to eat off the dinner table balancing atop the foundation laid by some developer's turning a xenophobic buck off of my GI bill father? Were we the only ones that could make it last?
It remains to be seen, what family will survive 3172 Estes.
The following was written in 2004. I have nothing to lose any longer by holding on to it, so here it is:
In Search of Lisa Marie, Summer 2004
Two days after my dad's funeral in May of this year, I decided to go to 3172 Estes and ask kindly of the stranger now living there to oblige me a walk around the house one last time. It was Memorial Day in Memphis, TN. My sister and I had a huge falling out on the day before the funeral, involving a security guard and an official escort to my car from dad's efficiency apartment. When I say 'one last time,' I meant this to be the last time this family ever raked me over the coals. I wanted peace. I wanted to smile at the ugly paneling. I wanted to be willfully jarred by the different style of furniture of the second family giving it a shot in this brick home.
I wanted to see the pecan tree in the backyard that I scaled countless times, a refugee from the silent tension of my dad and mom ignoring the huge elephant of Sex and Cancer that was genetically seeded in the sediment of our family. I wanted to see Velvet's grave and doghouse. I wanted to smell the mustiness and mold that was always in my closet – that ruined my clothes and sent me to school consistently smelling like a forgotten dishrag. I wanted to remind myself that I wasn't living nor trying to survive in that house or that family any longer.
If obliged, I would walk into that house, and see another family loving and living, and the nightmares would stop, or at least relocate themselves in a different setting. Either way, there must be peace upon closing the door.
On the front door, a brass doorknocker read "DAVIS" in cursive type. The house holds no loyalty. So soon does it open its doors and subsume any sign of life. So soon. I googled my house previously and found that it had been sold to a "Carlos Davis." A Latino "Davis"? Italian? Spanish? These names didn't match. I had no idea what face of which angles and shadows would be on the other side.
I knock on the door, step back a little bit. Wait. Step back a little more. The white iron decorative piece hanging on the red brick wall beside me is a decorative effort leftover from my mother. The two oak trees in the front yard are blowing in an unusually cooling May breeze. They shade the entire house now. They are the work of my father. When I was 6 or 7, they were no taller than me but lovingly planted, nursed and watered vigilantly by my father. He worried over their growth, one different than the other – slower, shorter and thinner than the other. Yet, here they both stand tall and keeping the house's utility bill down. My father must've hated to leave that.
I continue to wait. A little embarrassed. I remind myself, "This is not your house anymore. This is not your house anymore…" But it's a lie because I remember Mama's smile every time someone complimented her on that ugly iron hanging. I know that house like I know the landscape of my own body. I know the reason behind every brick. I know the slant of the driveway. I know the dents in the front yard. I know why I'm knocking on a just 10 year old iron frame door that was hinged to "keep the blacks out" when a neighbor down the street was broken in on.
I stand there listening for my dad's moccasins slapping against the tile and wresting the door open to greet me. From the carport I hear the familiar, so familiar sound of the storm door opening. The sound of the unlocking and loosening of the aluminum door. I recognize it. That sound was my dad coming home, either to ignore me or to give me tasks to do.
I walk over and peek around. Sure enough. A black man in his early 30's stands there on the threshold holding on to the handle, trying to smile.
"Hi, Um, Hi." I don't venture too close, as he seems suspicious of my intent. It is clear I am expected to earn his trust. "My dad just sold this house. I was born and raised in it."
He's smiling curiously, politely. Confused.
"Hi, I'm Lisa," and I extend a hand, and begin moving toward him. He's not budging, but he is watching my feet move. I still. "I just wanted to stop by and see it one last time." He's not moving. His smile is beginning to hit its expiration date.
"Mr. Dowda? Did you know him? He just passed away."
"Naw, naw, I didn't know anybody like that."
His smile has frozen before it's faded altogether. Politeness has quite a grip on all us Memphians. A life raft.
"Ok." I keep putting my hand to my heart. I'm standing there in front of this black man, the only thing standing between me and MY HOME, and I am instinctively acting on my nice-girlness. It's the only negotiating technique my upbringing afforded me. Certainly I can summons the survival skills needed in this land. Any moment now, this man's going to see my need, relent and invite me in. Any moment, this moment will have passed, a new day will rise on the races coming together in ironic justice.
I keep clutching my heart – the Gone-With-the-Wind Melanie negotiation technique ain't working. It's never worked – not on bill collectors, car dealerships, landlords. I keep using it though. He's standing, shifting his weight on his flip-flopped feet, waiting for the white girl to get the hint. I'm blinking in the silence between us, knowing a black man in my own home is the only thing standing between me and it. The last black man that stood on that threshold was the man I was in love back in 1996, trying to get in. The black man that caused my father to disown me from the family. And now Carlos, a black man who could buy his way in, stands there in ownership and authority. Another black man in Memphis. Certainly, this Carlos is someone who'd been living at the hands of a Lazurusian prejudicial discontent and would at least give me a chance.
He exhaled loudly, scuffed a stray string off his foot with the other, adjusted his grip on the door handle, his eyes downcast.
"Um, ok, ok, ok. I'm sorry to bother you." Hand to my heart. He nods and closes the door, locks it. Then closes the wooden door and locks it. I walk down the driveway on which I taught my dog to fetch the morning newspaper. Down the driveway on which I played countless games of solitaire jacks. The driveway on which I crashed my bike, sustained a swollen and bruised blue chin of such a size that my mother forced me to wear gloppy pink makeup to conceal it. One more walk down the driveway, I get into my rental car, take a deep breath, crank up the MAGIC 101 R&B, and hit the road.
Maybe it's the house. Maybe it was never the family dynamic. Maybe it was the intent of the developers – to sell to people who needed to make a new life away from a more dangerous one. Maybe it's the architects, sketching out the human geography of this bluff city that keeps me at bay, keeps me moving on down the river. Maybe this black man is segregating himself from a community where he was not welcomed or where he was not succeeding or where he couldn't safely raise his children. Maybe it's just the house, built on fear.
But I'm still not welcome in it.
~~~
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