So they first spotted Rodrella walking past Epochs, one of the apartment-slash-retail buildings that used to be part of the rubber factory. The place with the YogurTastee and glassblowing workshop. They watched her walk past the French school and saw her kneeling in the park, doing a traditional meditation-type practice. (NB: she was actually looking for a lost contact lens.) My phone buzzed all afternoon with questions. Mostly the calls were positive. Some suggested mild discomfort at seeing Rodrella in the neighborhood, which means: success. For our monochromatic and dull neighborhood, she’s like one of those industrial-grade paint shakers they used to manufacture in the brick building now called Ascents, the one that has the Korean tapas place with typewriters and balding ironic taxidermy on the walls.
Rodrella walked down Twenty-Fourth, her hijab elegantly arranged and her loose clothes billowing and grazing the railing next to the Korean tapas place’s outdoor seating. All these bland and boring nondiverse, typical neighborhood heads turned. A head scarf in our neighborhood? Conversation lulled. Who is that? I was so proud of this confident strut she had. “Rodrella,” I said after she was gone, “our Neighborhood Authenticity Associate.”
Now the one thing I didn’t know is whether she had minded being stopped and very mildly questioned by a handful of neighbors. Were they rude? Rodrella said emphatically no. I said, “Are you sure?” And she said, “They were like the nicest people ever. Literally that I’ve ever talked to in my entire life.” So but I suggested next time she should just show her Neighborhood Authenticity Associate Identicard right away to resolve any doubt, especially if she runs into Nathan Braithwaite. He can be a real pill, Nathan. He’s the reason we printed and laminated an Identicard for Rodrella, and really, Braithwaite is even more than a pill. Sort of downright nasty. Our community is tight, so people are vigilant and pretty curious about “nontypical” folks’ presences. I used quotes there because Rodrella is fully normal and typical—who am I to say what socioeconomic background is normal and what isn’t? Just because she has lovely olive skin and darker hair than mine? That would be very uncool and prejudicial of me, seeing that I am white and privileged and have benefited from years and decades of societal oppression of her people etc. (NB: I don’t really know who her people are. Haven’t asked yet. Is she maybe Iranian? Doesn’t matter!)
One super-minor suggestion I offered is if she plays an instrument, she should consider doing so in the neighborhood. Something she could traditionally strum.
So Rodrella was playing a recorder today. I have to say, I was hoping for something a little edgier. I suggested she increase musical edginess as a personal performance improvement. I wonder if her people play one of those tanging type instruments, like a sitar —though again, not really sure what her racial (ethnic?) background is. Or one of those one-stringed Chinese instruments? Just imagine her slowly —plucking—those—strings.
I also noticed that, while playing the recorder—already a not-ideal outcome—she was back in her interview clothes. That’s a step away from the diverse and authentic neighborhood texture I hope she’ll develop. We’re trying to just confront head-on this perception that the neighborhood has lost its diversity, that somehow only certain types of people live here. We want our children to grow up to be competitive and empathetic in the mixed-salad type society the demographic trends predict. And God, I love those kids, Zinnia and Madison. I love how their scalps smell and how they play stupid little video games and how they pick their noses openly. I just want them to have everything in the whole world. Which is why, as our neighborhood council chair, I even hired Rodrella in the first place. Not to say that she didn’t look very pretty and smart in her interview clothes, very sharp features—her hair pulled back and her glasses recently spritzed and microfiberly wiped. She looked basically like an associate at a law firm. I’m an associate at a law firm, and I can tell you that that’s not what we need more of in our neighborhood, diversity-wise. That’s why I suggested the hijab for day one.
Rodrella’s reason for d’etre is to reverse some of our blandness via the presence of her authentic color and self. There used to be real, actual manufacturing of things here. I can just imagine all these brick facades back when they were the walls of shops with metal-on-metal clanging and there were smokestacks puffing away. I’m sure it was all very wonderful and authentic. And the people who worked in the various shops and factories probably lived here, right in the neighborhood. Those folks are long gone obviously, the old factories hollowed out now with these multiuse buildings growing out of their stumps like epiphytes.
The only diversity in the neighborhood, if you can even call it that, is this black-clad group of troubled youth. I call them (to myself) the Troubled Youth Contingent. They sit in big packs with open guitar cases, smoking cigarettes or worse, with signs about how they’re travelin’ from here to somewhere else or about how they need booze and at least i’m honest. They hang out in the park and sleep there sometimes. I saw one once with a crowbar peeking out from under his backpack.
After the minor debacle with the recorder, I encouraged Rodrella to really take a run at neighborhood diversity, like can she walk around speaking a nonmainstream accent loudly into a nonsmartphone type phone? Like one of those Nokias from years ago. While like, maybe, wearing some flashy and colorful garments? I asked her, “What if sometimes you wear a lot of bracelets or bangles and wave at passersby with both palms out so that the bracelets or bangles jingle? Or like, what if sometimes you wear a hoodie and carry one of those old boom boxes on your shoulder and kind of strut?”
And she said, “Yeah, I think I could probably do that. I don’t know about carrying a boom box though. Wouldn’t that disturb people?”
And so I was like, “Well, this is a you/artist neighborhood/canvas kind of situation. Just as long as you’re authentically diverse! We have a budget for a boom box and some new clothes.”
So . . . I’m surpremely sorry to report that the boom box was not a hit. Nathan Braithwaite called the police on Rodrella. I’m semihorrified. We’ve had trouble with him before, frankly, the pill. Prior to the boom-box incident, Braithwaite and his wife were trying to turn the northwest quadrant of the park into a sport court for their raucous boys. I think that would’ve disturbed the local squirrels and other possibly vulnerable fauna and flora and plus also would just be ugly. I don’t know why Braithwaite didn’t honor Rodrella’s laminated Identicard. I don’t know why he didn’t call me—he knows I’m in charge of promoting neighborhood diversity and texture. I don’t get why he bothered Rodrella at all.
Reports vary, but basically I hear he asked Rodrella to stop and talk to him. Which she did. Then he asked why she was in the neighborhood, and she was like, “I work here.” At which point he asked, “Where specifically?” And she said, “Just all around. I’m the NAA. I walk all around here for my work.” I guess he then jumped to the conclusion that that meant narcotics or prostitution or similar such. He then, I’m especially sorry to report, hollered loudly for Rodrella to leave the neighborhood, which she complied with, sort of shuffling away. It breaks my heart to acknowledge that she may have been crying a little by that point. He then also called the police.
At the firm I took a class on implicit bias taught by this beautiful and textured African-American woman with natural hair, if that’s a thing I can say and notice. Implicit bias is about our quick judgments, and everyone has it, like when you’re driving and you maybe don’t stop at crosswalks as much for some people as for others. I will acknowledge I have implicit bias based on a comfortable economic and racial (ethnic?) background, a life of privilege from which I have benefited and still benefit etc. And I don’t want to impugn a neighbor here, but his actions were maybe implicit bias. He is white, if I’m allowed to observe and notice that, like basically this whole neighborhood unless you count the Lee family, which has one Chinese adult and two half-Chinese children. He is clearly biased, Braithwaite. There, it’s out now. He is biased, and his sport-court idea is shitty—because of the squirrel-related impacts, but mostly it’d just be ugly and stupid.
But even though Rodrella had already left the neighborhood, the cops still came and found her, and I am most especially sorry that this resulted in a stop-and-frisk. Can I assume that’s happened to Rodrella before? Not that that means it’s OK—I’m just saying hopefully this wasn’t a traumatizing first-time event. We have money in the budget to replace Rodrella’s recorder, which I understand the police seized, along with the boom box.
So it’s hard after you know someone already to ask them something you should remember, e.g., it took a lot of psyching myself up to ask Rodrella how to pronounce her name. I wanted to know if it was Hispanic-sounding like Rodreya, with the two l’s together. Because lately she’s looked kind of Latina-ish to me, if I can just state that very nonjudgmentally. So I asked her, “My name is Irish in origin, so some people wonder if MacKenzie is how you say it, but it’s really more like MicKenzie. McKenzie.” I said, “What’s the proper way to pronounce your name?” And she hesitated, then said “Rodrella,” without the Spanish/Hispanic/Latino double-l sound, so I still don’t really know what she is, in terms of background and all. I think she’s upset about the stop-and-frisk still. She seemed kind of sheepish. I don’t blame her. I really don’t, and I’m glad the boom-box idea is officially scrapped.
She was wearing just regular clothes again. Understandable, but I so want to push her to be truly expressive, her truly diverse self, by wearing maybe some kind of traditional type garb. Just occasionally even, like to celebrate traditional religious holidays or to appear to be celebrating traditional holidays? Something with a lot of color and unusual fabrics. Maybe saris or sari-like garments? Something flowing would be fun—gold embroidery would make it even better. “Rodrella, what about a kaftan?” I asked. And she said, “MacKenzie, I don’t think I know what that is, a kaftan.” So we’ll see. I think she may have pronounced my name wrong on purpose. She seemed pretty grumpytown about the Braithwaite thing.
So I conferred with Braithwaite to see if he’s planning to eff with Rodrella again. He claimed not to know who I was talking about, even when I said “Rodrella, you know, the maybe–Syrianish-looking woman who walks around the neighborhood and who you called the cops on and caused to be wrongfully stop-and-frisked.”
He then claimed he thought she was part of the Troubled Youth Contingent, even though she dresses not at all like them and doesn’t have those big, ear-stretching earrings. And then he had the gall to try to extract concessions from me along the lines of building a certain squirrel-endangering sport court. I wouldn’t have it, so he proposed another compromise, which frankly I just accepted to get him off the sport court. He has a ne’er-do-well type cousin-in-law once removed or something, Tyler, who Braithwaite wants us to hire as a second Neighborhood Authenticity Associate.
I was not enthusiastic. I asked if he had any acting experience or authentic texture about him, like Rodrella.
It turns out Tyler is a blue-collar type worker. He was in construction until the Great Recession and then has been sort of bouncing around since then, ne’er doing well even now, in his midtwenties. So, OK, I hired Tyler with the stipulation that he’ll work as a blue-collar type NAA to complement Rodrella’s racial/ethnic diversity with some working-class exhibitions for the neighborhood. We’re going to call Tyler Earl though, which seems more diverse-sounding and textured than Tyler—more old-school labor. Earl starts next week.
So it turns out hiring Earl might have been a good decision. He comes from real and genuine blue-collar–looking stock, a thick neck and wide shoulders, and we have him set up in workman’s overalls at the corner of Spruce and the park with an authentic-seeming anvil replica and a sledge-hammer–looking mallet to hit it with. Re: the overalls, I could only find sort of skinny-legged hipsterish ones, so those will have to do for now. Anyway, he’ll be there from eight to five every day, banging the shit out of the anvil as if working a real and authentic blue-collar job. That pounding and ringing sound echoes off the buildings just like it used to before this neighborhood became gentrified into basically a bunch of YogurTastees and Starbuckses and glassblowing workshops (who is blowing all this glass?)—Rodrella strolling in her ethnic garb, Earl hammering away. This place is coming back to life.
So I asked Rodrella if she could try for the accent equivalent of these amazing ROYGBIV garments she’s been wearing. “Rodrella, we’d love for you really to immerse the neighbors in sonic diversity when you talk to them.” Rodrella was enthusiastic, saying, “I can do a Southern accent pretty all right. And I used to be sort of good at Arnold Schwarzenegger. I’ll be back!”
I’d just like to point out how incredibly far we’ve come in this country despite all the distance we still have to go and whatnot. Only a few decades ago, this neighborhood was redlined, as in no people who looked like Rodrella could even live here because of prejudice and how banks wouldn’t lend to them or something, and so all the Rodrella-looking folks had to live elsewhere. I’m not really sure how that worked. But now, we’re inviting her to intentionally degentrify the place. I mean, it’s not perfect since there was that stop-and-frisk, but it’s progress.
“Do you think you could also bring your kids to the neighborhood,” I asked Rodrella, “as in to be Junior Neighborhood Authenticity Associates?” It turns out though that Rodrella doesn’t have any kids.
So I feel really pretty bad about the whole assuming-Rodrella-has-kids thing. I think I have to go ahead and plead implicit bias. I just assumed that she might, demographically speaking, be likely to have a child or two because of stereotypes I hold that I have learned from the mass media. When I said, “Well, you know what they say about assuming.” She said she didn’t, so I said, “It makes an ass out of you and me.” And she didn’t respond, just kind of looked at me like, Nope, just you. Which, fair enough. Fair enough. I’m trying though—I hope she knows I am trying to fully understand and appreciate her complete, diverse self in a way that will give her people voice and be a model to Zinnia and Madison, whose school is really not as diverse as it could be.
I didn’t want to give up on the Junior Neighborhood Authenticity Associates idea though, so I asked if she has any nieces or nephews or even friends’ kids who could tag along for the youth-diversity bump. I mean, that’s the truest expression of MLK’s dream, right? An assorted jelly-bean bag of kids all mixed together, each bringing their own unique and special flavor. Imagine the playground! It could be kindergarten-mural–level diverse. Rodrella said, “I mean, I can ask my cousin.” Yes! I think this’d be really good for Zin and Madison, in terms of learning and interacting with some nonhomogeneous kiddos. I need to make sure the Braithwaite kids don’t get wind of this though. Even at eight and ten, they’re semihellions already and probably bullies.
So I can understand why Rodrella was upset after this latest incident. Braithwaite told her and Earl they aren’t allowed to interact. What? (America, anyone?) Here I am, apologizing for Braithwaite’s behavior again. He shouldn’t have stopped Rodrella and Earl from having a conversation in the park. He shouldn’t have told them they can’t talk to each other. That is their right, talking, as long as it’s not excessive and too much of an interruption to Earl’s “manufacturing” work. I understand Braithwaite also criticized Rodrella’s nonmainstream accent. He even called it “weird” and used other noncharitable and nonwelcoming and nonunbiased adjectives. When he reported all this to me, I said, “Braithwaite, I’m gunna be honest. I think you have some things you could deal with, unconscious-bias–wise.” He wasn’t even familiar with the term, so that tells you how far I got. I said he should stop assuming everyone speaks without an accent like us. Or like Rodrella when she isn’t performing Authenticity-Enhancing Activities. We didn’t ask to be born here, just as she didn’t ask to be born where she was born (Sri Lanka? the inner city?).
And then I had to give a minor feedback note to Rodrella and Earl that they aren’t technically supposed to be performing real, actual tasks for community members. I’ve now reminded all the neighbors to please refrain from asking our Neighborhood Authenticity Associates to perform physical chores and things for them, like what happened this Thursday. Our liability insurance will not cover it. My understanding is that Earl left his anvil replica for two hours—after the Braithwaite accosting incident—to fix a garage door at the Longstreths. Earl’s portfolio does not include repair of any kind, and especially not home repair involving an actual ladder and an actual nail gun. I can’t believe Mrs. Longstreth asked Rodrella to watch her children while she held the ladder for Earl and asked Rodrella to please speak Spanish to her kids so they could pick some up from her. What?
My sense of the ensuing events is tangled, based on the various and competing eyewitness accounts, but what we know is that Earl broke his mallet replica in the fall. If Mrs. Longstreth said she’d hold the ladder, she really should’ve held it. At least Rodrella and Earl are fine. I’ve reminded Rodrella and Earl that “you are tableaux! You are here to seem diverse.” And then Rodrella said something that kind of has stuck with me. She asked, “How can I be diverse? Isn’t a person just whoever the person is, and it’s the group that’s diverse or not?” Interesting. I hope my minor suggestion didn’t upset Rodrella. I really and truly am trying to foster her professional growth and the inclusion of all people. I hope she senses that.
And on a positive note, I’m thrilled that we have a playground date set up for Rodrella’s two young second cousins and Zinnia and Madison! I told Zin and Madison that no one person can be diverse, just like Rodrella said, to see how it sounded coming from me. They seemed to get it. The Braithwaites though—they’ve gotten wind of the outing and are planning to join with their little semihellions, Felsite and Fillmore.
So we’re a couple weeks before the playdate, and everything is coming apart—no telling if we’ll even make it that far. Well, but first, a major boon: we have a new family in the neighborhood who are “of color.” Certainly this ungentrification is due in no small part to Rodrella’s authentic and non–dominant-culture presence in the neighborhood. She was wearing an African head wrap last week, which was particularly well-timed as we suspected the new residents were from Africa. But we didn’t know this for sure or really anything other than their names (the Geh family). So I asked Rodrella, “Is there any chance you would possibly stop by their place to welcome them? I hope you say yes, because here’s the real thing: could you tell them you live here? In the neighborhood? We just don’t want them to feel alone and tokenized.” Rodrella said, “I guess I could do that. I guess so, yeah.”
That all went fine. And Rodrella even invited them to what we’re now calling the Festival of Inclusion at the park. The Gehs have two kids also.
But not two hours later, the Geh family called the cops on Earl. On Earl! And I am very troubled to report that Rodrella nearly got stop-and-frisked again. She happened to be talking to Earl at the time, which as we’ve covered is fully normal and fine. I sort of wonder if they have a blossoming interracial thing. Anyway, I feel awful about the near stop-and-frisk. Is it really this common? Admittedly, for the uninitiated, the anvil hammering comes across as somewhat noisy and possibly threatening or even dystopian-sounding, all that clanging rhythmically throughout the day. It can be a little much, frankly. I don’t know how people used to put up with that all the time. The Geh family thought Earl was part of the Troubled Youth Contingent, whom they had observed congregating and smoking various nontobacco type substances in the park, and so they thought the TYC was engaged in some kind of monotonous battle cry. The cops showed up and then questioned Earl and Rodrella before leaving without further incident.
Then, amplifying the bad awfulness of all this, I made another verbal faux pas. But only because I’m so jazzed about the Festival of Inclusion. I asked Rodrella if she could, you know, bring other friends of hers who are similarly situated. And she said, “MacKenzie, I don’t know what that means. My parents are one optometrist and one florist shop co-owner. They’re big Bruce Springsteen fans. I’m on summer break from Grinnell. I live in the suburbs.” I had the impression that Rodrella came from a somewhat more economically challenged and diverse background. I was wrong. Here again, my unconscious bias noses through.
So the Festival of Inclusion led to Rodrella’s resignation as our pioneering Neighborhood Authenticity Associate, I’m very sorry to report. Rodrella arrived with her cousin, Nina, and Nina’s daughters, whose names were very unique and elegant but which I cannot now remember. Cute little girls, and I’m happy to note that Zinnia and Madison and Nina’s girls played just like any regular set of little kids, and then even the Braithwaite semihellions arrived and also joined the regular little-kid playtime along with the Lee and Longstreth kids. There was sliding and running, some kind of tag type game wherein the mini rock-climbing wall was base and the wood chips were magma. Anyway. Just the Geh kids were missing. Rodrella and I unfurled a banner that I’d had printed. It said: festival of inclusion: all folks are welcome as they are!
We set up the snack table with various traditional type snacks that I’d asked Rodrella to bring, plus the köfte and rice pudding Xander and I made. I was also pleased to note that Earl arrived with Rodrella, so maybe there really was something happening there. She had on a Ramones shirt when she got out of her car and then threw on a sari for the party. I wondered if maybe that wasn’t necessary now, the event just looking so organically diverse without the sari and those bracelets or bangles. But, I thought, too late for today. Next week!
“Rodrella, this is a hit!” I said, and she said, “I know—fun!”
Then the Troubled Youth Contingent arrived. When I made the welcoming banner, I was not thinking of them. In my estimation they were not welcome, even at our public inclusion event. I see the irony. Yes, I get that. They started congregating around the snack table, all clad in black and/or camo with various chains running every thither way on their attire. They were talking pretty loudly and had tired dark circles under their eyes. There were four of them, the TYC. Which is when Braithwaite arrived and headed straight for the snack table. “Hey,” he said, “this is a thing for inclusion of kids and nonincluded folks.” And the TYC ignored Braithwaite. He persisted, “These snacks aren’t for you. Just grab a couple chocolate churros and please move along.” At which point there was some exchange of words, and ultimately Braithwaite attempted to grab one of them by the armpit and physically remove him from the magmatic–wood-chips area, a wiry individual who was the most vocal and who had a big anarchist A safety-pinned to his jacket.
This was all happening as the Geh family approached.
Then one of the other TYC-ers went and pushed Braithwaite in the back while he was attempting to remove the leader anarchist guy. And the girl in their group, half-buzzed purple hair with roots growing out, started kicking at Braithwaite’s shins, causing him to let go of the guy and to start hopping around. And I will admit that I then called the police. I did. I was very nervous by that point and felt a duty to act, seeing that I am neighborhood council chair. And but things continued to escalate, so that before I knew it, Rodrella and Earl were in there trying to separate the belligerents. Mr. Geh also intervened. There was this raucous, shouting scrum and the sari got ripped, Rodrella’s. Which, at that point, the flashing lights arrived, and the scuffle broke up because the troubled youth took off running, pulling down the inclusion banner and whooping as they fled.
And I am most supremely upset to report what transpired next. Rodrella got stop-and-frisked again.
Two cops hoofed it after the TYC. The other two started questioning Braithwaite and the group that was trying to break up the TYC debacle. Mr. Geh gave what turned out to be conflicting information, identifying each of the combatants but with two inaccuracies: Tyler was Earl and Rodrella was a neighborhood resident. Totally innocuous, you’d think. But Rodrella was very nervous about this misidentification, and at that point she interrupted Mr. Geh’s account to confess that she did not in fact live here, and that she only worked here. “Yes,” she said, “I was mildly involved in the scuffle, in that I was attempting to stop it.” I’m not sure why exactly, but that led the portly female cop to isolate Rodrella near this colorful, spinning, circular playground thing and question her. I asked Xander if we should approach and advise her to invoke her right to counsel etc. But before we’d even had to time to think it through, the cop had Rodrella place her hands on the blue footholds on the mini rock-climbing wall, and then she spread Rodrella’s legs like she, Rodrella, was a starfish. Then this portly female cop rubbed and patted Rodrella right in front of the whole group, swiping and prodding and gluttonously touching Rodrella through all the nooks of her already-torn sari. Everyone watched, but especially the men in the group seemed to gape and mouth-breathe as the cop gripped and pawed even Rodrella’s crotch and boob-area. It was repulsive. Shameful. Demeaning. Dehumanizing. It was like watching someone in the shower. Rodrella had this mature-seeming eyebrow crease drawn over her very young skin.
I creased my eyebrows too, and I couldn’t then help approaching the cop and saying, “Rodrella was helping to stop the fight. She didn’t do anything. Why are you frisking her?” I yelled, “I’m an attorney!” But the cop didn’t take me seriously, just said ma’am with a downward lilt that indicated I shouldn’t get any closer. So I said, “Well, stop-and-frisk me too then!” And I spread my arms and legs and stood there, right behind the cop. “I’m ready for it! Maybe I have drugs!” I had these bursts of adrenaline zings as I imagined those meaty hands hungrily scooping and goosing me in front of my neighbors as I stood in solidarity. But the cop ignored me again, only saying, “That’s not a good thing to joke about.” She lumbered past after she was done with Rodrella, me still stupidly standing there with arms and legs outstretched.
The Geh family went home, Mr. and Mrs. Geh and the kiddos, who didn’t even get to join the tag game.
I tried to convince Rodrella and Nina and even Braithwaite to stay and let the kids keep playing and eating snacks like before. But Nina was ready to go, so I said, “Rodrella, you should just stay. I think we should organize some kind of solidarity-and-inclusion demonstration. I would march with you.”
And Rodrella, I’m sad to report, just looked at me with that crease still drawn across her face and then walked to her car, her bangles clicking together as she crossed her arms in front of herself. Head down, I hate to say—a look of despondency and probably embarrassment. I don’t know what I was thinking at that moment, but I was so desperate to keep her in the neighborhood that I offered her a raise. “What about a 15 percent pay increase? Would you stay for that?” But she just kept walking.
I feel awful about all of this and also that I don’t even know if she and Earl are together or where she’s from. The whole thing. 
