3. Survivors

 There’ve never been any statues, plaques or other monuments on this block or any of the others around it.  None of the streets around here, including this one, has been named for anyone who lived or died on it.  Perhaps it’s just as well.  After all, building a statue or naming a street for someone who’s not here is just about the last thing a neighborhood with cemeteries on either end of it needs.

Some of the gravestones always seem to have flowers in front of them, or wreaths on them, even though nobody seems to visit them.  In fact, I can’t seem to recall anyone at either cemetery, which is the reason I went to one of them before going to mother’s wake.  I’d hoped to have, finally, the one thing I always wanted while on this block: a moment alone, one in which I wouldn’t have to suffer in the isolation of forced company.  Nobody’d demand anything of me, not in the form of a direct question or from silence.  There’d be only names, ignored or forgotten, on stones on which the dead were set, set by the dead.

Or so I thought.  I’d fallen, momentarily, into an old habit—looking downward at an oblique angle, but not quite at the ground—and saw, not a name, but a pair of dates:  August 5, 1967—June 18, 1992.   The date of my own birth, and the date on which—according to the state, at least—I died.

The body, supposedly, was found almost a year later.  So close to this block.  But on the other side of the tracks, where they curve away from this block, toward rows of subway cars waiting with their doors opened in the city railyard that separates this block and the neighborhood from endless rows of abandoned bungalows that splinter into the sea.

 

On one of those streets—which I never saw in all the time I lived on this block—actually, just underneath one of those streets, in a space that couldn’t even be called a cellar anymore because two floors of the house had collapsed into it—someone found strands of hair, a few more of rope and a six-inch long strip of duct tape.

I never found out who was walking and prodding through remains of the house that day, or what he was doing there.  For that matter, I really shouldn’t’ve assumed, just now, that the person was male.  I assumed so only because nobody was living in that house at the time and in the nearest habitations—this block and the ones around it—there are only women.  At any rate, you can depend only on the women to be on this block.  The men were off someplace doing the things you heard about, then forgot.

But I know one thing: the gender of the dead person.  I know: I saw the name on the tombstone.  Yes, that tombstone: the one with my date of birth.  And, as far as anybody knows, the last day I spent in this world.

 

I forgot to mention: There was an old leather wallet that broke apart like a cracker when the police examiner opened it.  Empty, except for a driver’s license: mine, supposedly.  Or so the police believed, and probably still believe, if any of them still think about it.  No Social Security card, no credit card: the person identified by the driver’s license never had them, or any military or criminal record, as far as the investigators could tell.  Current address unknown.  Last known address: this block.

It’s not so hard to fathom that the victim had my name: There was, I suppose, some bodily similarity between him and the young person I was when I lived on this block.  Only two other people had physical traits that bore any resemblance to mine.  One—the man who fathered me—hadn’t been seen by anybody on this block in years.  I never even knew him.  And mother.  The one thing that surprised me was that the police never spoke to her. 

At least, I don’t think they did.  She never mentioned it to me, and never asked what I may’ve known about it.  Then again, she might’ve known after all: For years after I left, she never asked my whereabouts, only that I had enough to eat and some place to stay. Whatever she knew, I don’t think she’d’ve told the cops, or anyone else.  In one of our phone conversations, she said, “You’ll come home again when the time is right.”

As for that body: I can’t tell you exactly how it came to have my proof of existence on it.  Since leaving this block, I’ve lost, sold, given away and thrown away more stuff than I can remember, or want to remember.  Especially—yes—around the time of that person’s death.

When you leave this block, the things you used to keep in your wallet, pocket or purse lose whatever meaning they had.  This is not the same, of course, as losing their usefulness: about the only way you can get a place to stay or something to eat without using the things you carry is to offer your body, if someone’s willing to take it.  Or, once you learn a few tricks, you use them: You offer, but you don’t give.  I may not’ve learned much, but I can say this with certainty: You are a free human being when you no longer have to tease, tempt or titillate anybody to get through another day.  Until that time, you’re just turning tricks for somebody.

That’s what I did for years—for ages, it seemed—after I left this block.  Mother never asked how I got enough to eat or a place to stay, and I don’t think I’d’ve told her unless I’d moved on to something else.

I’ve heard plenty of women call each other “whore” or “slut.”  But those words are mainly perjoratives, like “faggot” and “wuss” are when men use them in reference to each other.  No, that’s not quite right.  There is no parallel for one female accusing another—without proof—actually, no, imputing the world’s oldest—only—profession—onto another member of her part of humanity.  They’ll—We’ll—say it to tear at one another, in situations when “bitch” won’t do.  However, I still haven’t seen one woman condemn another for actually using what may have been the only means she had at some point in her life to feed, clothe and shelter herself, or anyone who may’ve depended on her.

One man may honor, or even revere, another man who’s killed.  Has killed—emphasis on the past tense.  Men who’ve killed may get citations, medals and sometimes even statues in parks with their names on them.  No woman has ever been exalted in quite those ways.  But, like the has-been killer, the woman who’s sold herself is not dishonored by her other women—as long as the deed’s been done, finished, out of sight, and out of mind, as they used to say. 

But while men can forget the killings they or their comrades have committed by pretending there was some purpose or honor to them, every woman knows the compromises, the accommodations other women—or they themselves—have made.  And—again, I have no way of proving what I’m about to say—they accept it or at least tolerate those collaborations with, or concessions to, the other side because, well, a survivor doesn’t condemn what another does to survive.  Sometimes the survivors don’t even ask.