July 18th, 2008
[Around the Way] Girl™
Last weekend when I was engaging in one of the many possible activities that make me stand out as a typical white person in my mostly-black neighborhood — in this instance, trudging the few extra blocks home from the express stop I had to pretend I meant to get off at (so as not to draw attention to the whiteness of not knowing when trains randomly decide to go from local to express with no warning) with a recycled plastic tote full of WholeFoods organic frozen fruit bars about to melt slung o’er my shoulder — a little girl who’d been zipping up and down the sidewalk on her scooter looked up at me and said, “Oh, hi.”
Now, keep in mind that by “little” here, we’re talking three, maybe four years old. Completely unsupervised, as far as I could tell — a little roly-poly thing with a pink pontail holder / barrette scheme, a pink-themed outfit, on a pink scooter — the littlest, cheeks-pinchable, squeezable chublet with the most attitude I’ve ever seen, out there on the sidewalk by herself, positively owning Bed-Stuy.
“Oh, hi,” she said, as though she’d been expecting me.
“Hi!” I replied, perhaps over-cheerfully, not because that’s what’s expected of white people in black neighborhoods, but because I was genuinely elated to be receiving a genuine greeting from someone, as opposed to a slow, frowning nod from an elderly man making his way scowlingly up his front stoop with a cane, pausing on step three for long enough to note the blonde jogger with headphones passing by without breaking stride to come sit down and chat for the rest of the afternoon, because that is how we do here in this ‘hood, and if you don’t comply, obviously you’re an evil harbinger of gentrification.
The little girl continued zipping back and forth as I made my way homeward along Jefferson Street. And then I thought I heard something over the music on my mp3 player:
“Girl!”
No, that must have been coming from someplace–
“Girl!”
I turned around, and the little roly-poly pink-clad tot was paused with her scooter, staring down the sidewalk at me.
“You live here, gir’?”
I don’t think I can accurately do justice to the amount of good-natured sassiness pouring out of this little girl, but I think I began to tear up at this point.
“Er, yes — I live right over there,” pointing west.
She looked at me for a moment, like she was trying to picture where, exactly, I meant, and then:
“Oh. Okay. Bye-bye.”
And with a smile she turned on her three year-old heel, literally to push off from the ground and start her scooter scooting in the opposite direction.
Too young and innocent to know that she’s supposed to hate me because I’m white; just thought she was making a friend.
And? She made one.
Plus, now I can sleep better at night, knowing the sassiest little pre-kindergartener in Brooklyn’s got my back.

