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Lessons from the East Side

By Peter Nevland - Nov 24 , 2008

My paying job at Motorola forced me to drive through the other world of East Austin every day. The people hanging out at convenience store street corners and in weed-filled parking lots riveted my attention.“Who are these people that don’t look like me? How could I ever possibly enter their world?”

I thought about helping or healing, but I had no idea where to begin. I didn’t even know if anything was wrong. Soundproofing and tinted windows couldn’t keep their faces out. I just knew that I wanted an opportunity, an introduction.

“Excuse me, can I ask you a question?”

My lips broadened to a smile as I heard an old, gravelly voice over the noise of the car wash’s vacuum cleaner. “Yeah.” I said as I pulled my head out of the car to locate a shriveled man gazing intently at me.

“Can you gimme some money to buy me some alcohol?”

“Umm… no,” I stammered. “But I’ll buy you dinner.”

“Now, I don’t want me no dinner. I’m not hungry. I’m an alcoholic. I want me some money to buy me some alcohol,” he fired back. “I’m bein’ real wit’ you.”

“That’s great, man, but I won’t give you money to buy you some alcohol. I’ll buy you dinner, though.”

He paused for a moment. “Now, when you say you gonna buy me dinner?”

“Right now, you wanna go eat?”

“Where we gonna eat?” he asked, flinging out his hands.

“There’s Popeye’s right there. You wanna get somethin’ to eat at Popeye’s?”

“mmm… yeah, I like that chicken at Popeye’s. It’s spicy!”

If it had been any more cliché, I would have been looking for hidden cameras. We hobbled over to Popeye’s together, and I bought us both a meal. 70-year-old George started telling tales of jazz clubs and famous musicians he’d played with all over America. Grease covered our fingers as chicken and biscuits filled up warm stomachs. I could’ve stayed forever, listening to him.

“I wasted my life on drugs, on crime, on alcohol,” he concluded, lowering his eyes and shaking his head.

“You know, it’s never too late,” I offered.

He looked back up at me, and we kept talking in the late afternoon. I can’t tell you what else we said as the slow pace of conversation enveloped our fast food consumption. I prayed under my breath for God to give me the chance to hang out with George again.

“Petah, you think you can you give me a ride home?”

“No problem,” I beamed as we got up to leave. “You want to be free from alcohol?”

He never said “yes” as I pulled around the corner into a vegetation-consumed driveway laden with the rusting shell of a 70′s era Ford Thunderbird. I surveyed the ant mounds, peeling paint, and a front porch crumbling into rubble.

“Before you leave, can I pray for you?”

“Yeah, sure,” he said, and I started up.

Before very many words had escaped my mouth, two, big guys rumbled down the front steps and took up imposing positions on both sides of my car.

“Hey, what’re you doin’ in there?” one of them yelled.

I imagined powerful fists turning my skin the same color as my red hair.

“We’re prayin’!” George shouted, me motionless beside him.

“What?!” the bigger one shouted back menacingly.

“We’re prayin’!!!” George barked angrily, raising the volume and ire in his voice.

“Oh… okay,” he muttered, and they both went inside as quickly as they’d come out.

“Sorry about that. Those are my nephews. They all drug dealers and addicts and alcoholics.”

I resumed praying… for George… as opposed to my safety.

When I finished, George grabbed my hand, staring at me with bloodshot eyes. “Don’t forget me. Come back and visit me.”

“uhh… ok… I will,” I said.

George got out of my car, and I drove back home to the west side of the highway that separated our worlds. Two weeks later, I pulled my little sports car into the same overgrown driveway, wondering what would happen to me as I turned off the engine. When I knocked on the door, an older than ancient woman greeted me as the only one present at the house. She told me that George wasn’t home and then introduced herself to me as Rosalie, his mother.

—————————————————-

It was hotter inside than outside the stale, reeking house as I sat listening to her stories for the next hour or two. I didn’t see George or his two nephews again that day, but I promised to come back as I skipped off the porch to my car. A few days later, the bigger of the two nephews appeared in the door when I knocked.

“Is George here?” I asked, trying to appear calm.

“Naw, man. He out. You wanna come inside and wait for him to come back?”

“Sure,” I said, crossing the threshold into the living room. Roaches scurried around dirty plates and empty glasses on the coffee room table. The overpowering smell threatened to knock me down.

“How you know, George?” He asked, as I sunk into the dirty, sagging couch. I told him the story, leaving out the part about being threatened in the driveway.

“That is a funny story,” he mused, looking at me. “I’m Rashi.”

“I’m Peter.”

We started talking, and before long Rashi found out about my Spoken Groove.

“Let me hear somethin’,” he asked.

I obliged and performed one of my pieces in the living room.

“Ryan, you gotta hear this,” he shouted, pulling me out onto the porch. “Do that poetry again.”

I performed something else, with them smiling and laughing the whole time.

“Man, dog, that is some fuckin’ tight shit!” Rashi exclaimed. “Let me lay this on you…”

He busted out this rap, and I started hanging out with Rashi & Ryan a bunch, usually stopping by on my way home from work. Sometimes he’d be high. Sometimes they’d be gone. Occasionally, I’d see a huge rock of crack sitting out on the coffee table with a wad of bills next to it. Sometimes I bought them dinner. Sometimes they bought me dinner. They’d call me late at night, asking me to come over. Every time we talked, words inebriated our senses.

I got used to walking into the house, usually without knocking. With them being drug dealers, it probably wasn’t the best policy. Once I stumbled into some sort of gathering in the back room…

“Petah, Petah, uhh, it’s prob’ly not a good time. We havin’ a little meetin’ of our association. You know what I’m sayin’?”

The malicious stares told me all I needed to know as Rashi assured them that I was cool. It probably helped that I didn’t panic. I left, trying to solve the dilemma of whether I should turn in a meeting of drug traffickers or maintain friendship with Rashi.

They always acted like I was crazy whenever I would ask them straight up what they were dealin’ at the moment. Later on, I found out that they had supposed me to be a cop, or maybe “one of them white boys that had access to the good drugs. Cause there’s guys that look like you that can get their hands on valiums and ‘shrooms…”

“…then I found out that you was a Christian, actually livin’ out what you b’lieved. I ain’t never met anybody like that before,” Rashi confessed.

I told them all about Jesus, like I was supposed to, but they didn’t pray a prayer or fall on their knees in front of me, even though they generally agreed with what I was saying. My heart shudders at the remembrance of me questioning whether it was worth it to keep hanging out with them if I wasn’t seeing any results.

“I don’t usually like white people, but I actually like you,” one of Rashi’s friends told me in the middle of a bunch of us hanging out. They had been asking why I didn’t roll up my windows or lock my doors when I came over, especially with all my stuff sitting in plain view on the front seat. Pretty soon the conversation about my stuff turned to talking trash about someone they knew who hadn’t gone through the same struggles they had but still tried to act cool and hang out with them.

“Is that the way you talk about me when I’m not around? I haven’t gone through the same struggles y’all have either.”

“Aww, we don’t talk about you like that Petah,” Rashi answered. “We don’t talk ’bout you like that ’cause you come real.”

“What does that mean?” I asked, needing the translation.

“Man, you just come over here. Other people don’t come over here.”

Out of all the supposedly important things I tried to say, it was hard to believe that me wanting to be with them was the most important gift I had to give. I couldn’t help but write something about this new friend that I had. Words comparing the whitest, white bread, suburbian, nuclear family male with the ghetto gutter gamblin’ gangster from a long line of the criminal sort couldn’t help but find their way to the page.

“Rashi & Me” wasn’t just the story of two guys from opposite sides of town becoming friends. It proclaimed our journey into a new country that neither of us had ever experienced. I had no previous qualifications or experience to prepare me for this rambling, explosive ball of parental neglect, drug addiction and heartfelt connection. I didn’t care if it was right, wrong, or an effective strategy. We were brothers on the road together, wanting to help each other live out our dreams, whatever happened.