Shattered expectations

Writing home from the Bronx :

by Aditha Dissanayake in USA

The Bronx. Yes. Contrary to last week?s prophesy I might not return from the Bronx, I survived the flying bullets and the crime ridden streets, to write my story mainly because the Bronx I saw was quite the opposite of what I had seen in films like 'The Bronx 4.'

There were no bullets last Monday when I stepped out on to Fordham Street in the Bronx though there were many police cars screeching along the streets with their sirens switched on.

First, though, to get there I had to tackle the complex New York City Transit subway which undoubtedly is the least expensive and the most convenient way to get around once you master the intricacies of getting on an uptown or down town train with a particular letter of the alphabet written on it i.e the D train to up town Bronx.

The best thing about the subway is that however many mistakes you may make by getting into the wrong trains or getting off at the wrong stations, so far as you remain in the subway, you can ride on as many trains as you like with the initial two dollars you pay at the beginning of the journey.

Descending three levels down into the underground with the temperature somewhere round 90 degrees Fahrenheit (christened wicked weather in TV weather broadcasts), having bought a 7 Day MetroCard from a vending machine by paying $ 24, when my other half and I, finally locate the platform where my train will stop, I finally jump into a carriage on the B train heading towards the Bronx, scared that the doors will close at exactly the moment I cross the threshold of the train, for things move pretty fast here in New York, the first thing I come across is acute embarrassment.

The moment the train jerks forward I lose my balance and find myself gradually reaching a horizontal position on the ground when at the last moment I grab hold of a flannel clad thigh, the closest solid object which I automatically realize will prevent my fall.

When I look up, half kneeling and still holding tight to the flannel trousers, the owner, a ginger haired guy with fair skin and a briefcase in his hands, grins and helps me back onto my feet.

When I say sorry he says 'steady there' in a voice with a tinge of Spanish mixed in it. When we find seats next to each other we introduce ourselves and I feel as though I am a character in one of my own romance tinged short stories, when he says he too is going to the Bronx because he gives lectures in English Literature in a college in the Bronx.

His name is David, he is an immigrant from the Dominican Republic, he is thirty three and lives with his mother in Queens.

During the daytime he teaches English in a High School in the Bronx and says there is nothing he dislikes so much as standing in front of a bunch of fifteen year olds who pay scant respect towards their teacher. One girl in his class is expecting a baby.

Can you believe this? He asks me and adds, when he was fifteen he had not even heard about the birds and the bees.

I raise my eyebrows as high as they would go. Wasn't it only a few minutes ago that he had told me he and his partner had a ten year old daughter who was born when he was eighteen.

He sure must have been a fast learner. Seeing the smile on my face he throws his head back and laughs. Yes. OK. He admits and explains, he was eighteen when he met Helen, and vows when he was fifteen his head was filled only with football and Shakespeare.

With our fellow passengers either nodding off, listening to music on their iPods or engrossed in a newspaper or a novel, as the train passed one station after the other with names like Roosevelt, Woodhaven, Sutphin Boulevard, David and I discover there are similar sounding words in Spanish and Sinhala like Pan, for bread and sapaththu for shoes.

By the time we part at the Bronx he knows how to say Ayubowan and I know how to count up to three in Spanish uno, dos, tres.

Bidding farewell to my momentary sense of singledom while being with David, I join my partner at the exit of the subway feeling as though I have stepped on a street in a city in the West Indies.

Almost all the men I see have close resemblances to the members of the West Indies cricket team. Ebony coloured young men, the colour of kalu dodol, walk past me with their pants sliding down their thighs revealing red silky underwear.

Everyone has an iPod in their ears and one hand placed precariously on their trouser pocket. This is because their entire wealth is in there, I would learn later from a comedian called Anthony, who is yet another person who is proud to hail from the Bronx which I realize is like claiming with pride, I am from Galle, or I am a Southerner, back in Colombo.

Our first stop is at the Poe Cottage located on Kingsbridge Road where author Edgar Allan Poe spent the last years of his life in a small wooden farmhouse with his wife, Virginia. Inside the white painted building we come across the death-bed of Virginia and Poe's rocking chair and learn that he wrote three novels Annabel Lee, The Bells and Eureka while living there. Walking on E. 138 street in South Bronx we discover a farmer?s market selling locally grown produce like sweet scented red romaine lettuce, earth smelling carrots and luminescent onion bulbs.

After another hour of walking on pavements scattered with, what we see as the national symbol of the USA, stains of old chewing gum sticking to the sidewalks, keeping our eyes open for the omni present bullets or gangs at war, when we finally spot the green lights signifying the subway, we decide to call it a day and head towards home, Forest Hills, realizing the Bronx is not the crime ridden place we expected it to be.

The closest to violence that we come across is a slogan written on a t-shirt, 'don't make me mad, I don't have anymore space to hide the dead bodies.' No wonder Ogden Nash had only two words to write about this land whose first settler was a farmer called Jonas Bronc for whom the area was later named.

The Bronx, no Thonx.

Next week, watch out for an account of a night at the museum when we explore the halls of the American Museum of Natural History, after everyone has gone home.

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