Wildlife

"Gravity works."

-- Robin Williams, as Batty in Fern Gully

--

A gargoyle sits atop Margaret Thatcher's head. Dosteovsky is here, too, along with Langston and Mendela, who is oddly staring straight out from the mural, cheeks puffed alongside his grin. No apartheid here: Even if computers 23-27, in a row, are all occupied by blacks, while whites check emails on the other side of the kiosks, no one really notices. There are plenty of others whom I can't recognize: an old black man in a blue baseball cap, waving; a chubby white man with a receding hairline, smiling down at the rows of books; a girl holding a stuffed cat; someone who looks like Alec Baldwin in a bishop's tunic; a lady who might be Rosa Parks.

--

I now have a membership at four separate library systems, in four adjacent counties: Hamilton (Cincinnati), Campbell, Boone, and now, Kenton.

That's a personal record for me. Never before have I had memberships at so many libraries at once.

I walked here today and secured my card. It's only about ten blocks north from where I live now. The walk gave me the impression that I live on the edge of racial tension.

Black teens, smoking in packs on the corner. White families ignoring them, biking in a retinue of tassels and helmets. A trio of old folks walking north, dragging suitcases on wheels. Me, in flip-flops and a Canadadian T-shirt, avoiding clumps of clipped grass that mixed with mud and laid out too long on a sun-scorched sidewalk to become sort of green, leafy tortillas. An Arabic shop to my right advertised soda and gyros, with a faded white sign that said, "We accept WIC and foodstamps."

--

As I passed a charming apartment home with a black iron gate whose spiky bars only rose to my waist, a Jack Russel terrier emerged from the backyard, charged a few steps, stopped, sat, and waved--waved--a paw. Panted for a spell, grew bored, and ran back.

At another house, a husband and wife churned mulch in the front yard. Amateur landscapers, with too-new gardening shears and work gloves, shoveling and hoeing in their sweatpants. They're sweating because it's seventy degrees out.

A sign on the front yard says there's one bedroom in the building for rent.

--

Across the street, a large yellow-brick building sits, crosslegged among old trees, its vacant windows gazing sadly outwards like little girls gazing sadly out of windows in a doll house. The building is for lease. It used to be a convention center, a gathering-place. Before that, it was a historic school, famous because of segregation laws whose enforcement began with its construction. Behind the old school/center are the ancient twisted slides and monkey bars of a ruined and neglected metal playground, the kind worn by sun and rust. The fences are locked; no children play.

I pass another corner shop and six black children, none older than ten, struggle with a stroller, trying to pry it out a side door. An infant lies in the middle of the rumpus, worried, searching the sky for its mother. No parent anywhere. The pusher of the stroller is a solemn girl with braids and bands. Her hands on the handles are at eye-level.

She smiles at me as I pass by, and the other children look my way. I wave. They resume the battle with the stroller.