Two Years in New York (Michael Mohr's "fictional memoir" chapter 14)

Photo by Jimmy Woo Man Tsing on Unsplash

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Chapter 14

I should have known better. Hadn’t I already learned enough about the rules of the game in Harlem? Apparently not.

            Twenty minutes after Sophia and I’d gotten off the phone, I stood outside of the grocery mart on Lenox and 116th, carrying a waxed carboard-box crate which held my groceries. I’d taken longer than I’d hoped. It was deep dusk now, the sky a purple shade, nearing early darkness. There was a loose gray haze. Nightlife, I could tell, was beginning. And I’d promised myself to never be outside here after dark during the pandemic. And yet here I was.

            I started walking north on Lenox, slowly towards my apartment. I fell into a meditative trance.

I was jarred back into the violent, uncertain present when I arrived at 123rd Street. The southernmost part of Marcus Garvey Park. Automatically, deep in my thoughts of the past, I’d wandered north on Lenox and then on 123rd I’d apparently headed east. To the park. Some sort of automaton. I liked to often walk along the park up to 125th and 5th and then head the five blocks back to 130th. But the problem was obvious: It was near dark. And I carried a waxed carboard crate of fresh groceries. But that wasn’t the biggest issue.

There, standing around on the sidewalk, in a circle, were half a dozen young men. They were young, ranging in age from maybe eighteen to twenty-five. They seemed to all look almost exactly alike: All appeared to be over six foot tall, were thin and lanky, and sported basketball shoes and either a white thin T-shirt or a white wife-beater. Their skin shined brightly from the light off a street lamp which had just then flickered awake. Several wore red or green or blue backwards baseball caps. I paused for a moment. I needed a make a decision. I wanted desperately to turn around and head back to Lenox. That was a much larger, much safer street.

But it was too late: Just as I started to turn around, I saw that one of the boys caught my shadowy movement. The guy lightly shoved his buddy’s arm. I did not hear anyone speak. Adrenaline pulsed through my body. I couldn’t turn around now; it’d be too obvious. They’d caught me. There was only one solution and I didn’t like it: I had to walk on by, pretending everything were normal.

Swallowing, trying to not look terrified, I carefully kept walking. I moved across the street to the park. I started heading north along the park on the sidewalk as I always did during the day. There was no one else around besides the teens now behind me. The park was desolate. I heard only some light honking over on Lenox and then a stream of several sirens cutting briefly through the early night. Darkness was so close it was like a hand closing around my mouth, a jagged knife pressed against my throat. Don’t look back, I told myself. Memories of the massive man in the torn red dress and the other large man chasing me that night on 130th flashed through my brain. The running. The fear. The night. The shadows. Like a hunted rabbit.

I didn’t hear anyone coming up behind me. But I increased my pace. I was walking fairly fast now. Again all was silent. My arms ached from carrying the heavy load of groceries in the crate but I didn’t dare slow or set the crate down. It was clearly too risky.

And then, about halfway up the park, I heard some male voices. I couldn’t help it. I sped up my pace and finally glanced back over my shoulder. Motherfucker, I mumbled. There they were, the six tall men, thirty yards or so behind me on the sidewalk and walking fast, gaining.

At first I tried to tell myself they were just simply walking in the same direction. But that idea was quickly shattered when I glanced again just as they passed as a group under a street lamp and the light showed their mean, sinister eyes. I knew then. I remembered the wild, drunken group of teens that night on 5th Ave, throwing bottles, punching each other, searching for carnage. And the middle school kids, fifty or sixty of them in a circle watching a nasty, wretched fist fight. All of this during a global pandemic.

I picked up the pace yet again. I was slowly approaching 124th, the northernmost part of the park. I was on one of those goddamned long, never-ending New York City streets. In Harlem some streets were short, some were impossibly long. I was unfortunately on a long one. Right before I reached 124th, I heard male voices again and then a scuffle of shoes on pavement. The wail of a fire truck suddenly sliced through the air just as I glanced back again. Sure enough, the clan was running after me. Just like with the men that night before, it did not feel like they wanted my food.

I ran. Because I still held the crate—mostly out of nerves and terror—I stumbled a few times and nearly collapsed. That would have been it. I’d never been jumped before and I didn’t want to experience it now. And jumped might be the least of my worries.

I ran west on 124th, towards Lenox. Again the block was long, so long. Glancing back they looked so close and so vitriolic and determined that my arms just automatically dropped the crate. It fell with a crash onto the sidewalk, a ball of plastic-wrapped lettuce leaping out and rolling along the pavement like a green severed head. I kept going, running as fast as I could. I was an athlete, I told myself; a gold-medal Olympian. I truly worried that, if I were caught, I might be killed. And I might.

They gained and gained; they hadn’t stopped for a second; the crate of food had meant nothing to them. (Perhaps they returned for it later.) The city had been handing out free food and masks for weeks. I rounded the corner onto Lenox, the wide, two-direction, main street, on the wide, large sidewalk I’d trudged hundreds of times during the day. At 125th there was a red light for cars moving across town east and west. Cars pulsed south and north along Lenox. I sprinted north.

At the McDonald’s at 125th—right where the 2/3 train entrance is—a big group of men emerged carrying paper munch bags of burgers and fries. They were like saviors to me. I sprinted across 125th without even looking left to right or backwards behind me. It didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was running as hard and as fast as I could.

I kept going. Halfway past 128th I finally slowed a tiny bit and looked back. Magically—the teens were gone. Poof—they disappeared. It could have been the big, busy street. Maybe they didn’t want to beat me to death—even a white man—in front of too many observers. Maybe it was the crossing specifically of 125th. Maybe the light turned green for cars going east/west right as I crossed and they had to stop for cars to go. Maybe the gaggle of men who’d emerged from the McDonald’s warned them off or made them hesitate. Or maybe they just got lazy and had given up. Who knows. It was unimportant. The main thing was: I’d survived. Again. Yet again.

I jogged the rest of the few blocks home, half worried they’d somehow be there, at 130th and 5th, at my apartment, waiting. But of course they weren’t.

No groceries after all. But I was alive.