Neighborly(23)

On the pavement, I get her into the stroller, and we’re off. I’m full of an inexplicable joy at this most simple of excursions, perhaps because it’s so simple. It’s just a trip to the park a few blocks away with a new friend and her little one, the first of many.

The residential streets are built around an emerald quad. There’s a baseball diamond, a soccer field, and tennis courts. The playground is a marvel, with different fenced areas for kids of varying ages and equipment ranging from the classic S triumvirate (swings, seesaws, slides) to the high-tech (geometric shapes anchored by complicated ropes and pulleys, a cross between a playground and an art installation). Much of it is under brightly colored canopies to protect the kids from the sun, lending a circus feel to the proceedings, while the parents can sit beneath long stone gazebos with mosaic tile benches.

We head for the sandbox. Raquel removes her shoes and I do the same, wiggling my toes in sand that hasn’t yet been warmed by the sun. I dressed Sadie in layers, in true Bay Area fashion. I’m in just a T-shirt and shorts, and I shiver a little.

“Where did you move from?” Raquel asks.

“We were living in Oakland.”

“That’s where I grew up. Right off International Boulevard.”

I wouldn’t have imagined that she’d spent her childhood in one of the more dangerous neighborhoods in Oakland (a city that also has some insanely expensive ones, stratified and gentrified). If I’d grown up off International Boulevard, I might not volunteer it so readily, worrying that it would cause people to revise their opinion of me in some way I couldn’t predict or control. I envy her fearlessness, that she can just present the facts of her life so—well, matter-of-factly.

“Yeah, East Oakland’s as good as you’ve heard,” she deadpans. “But awesome Mexican food. And the pawn shops?” She mimes an expression of heavenly delight. We both laugh. “Bart grew up there, too. We looked after each other.”

Meadow is staring at Raquel, like she’s in a trance, while Sadie is ignoring me completely, dredging her arms through the sand in fascination.

“And no,” Raquel says, “Bart isn’t short for anything. He was actually named after the BART train—as in, Bay Area Rapid Transit—which tells you a little something about his parents.” I don’t know what it says when you name your kid after transportation, so she explains. “His mom was a drug addict. She was still on heroin when he was born, so she couldn’t think all that clearly. It was at Children’s Hospital in Oakland, and she looked outside her window and the BART tracks were right there to help her out.”

Not sure how to respond, I parrot, “Heroin?”

“She was a trailblazer. I mean, now heroin’s an epidemic but back then, in that neighborhood, crack was king.”

Raquel is not what I expected. Not at all. When I first met her, I thought she was sweet and childlike. And in her delivery, she is, but there’s steel behind it. She’s seen a lot, and apparently, so has Bart. But he looks like a guy who’s been around, whereas she has a quality that makes you want to protect her. Maybe that’s how Bart feels about her, or used to feel about her. It sure didn’t look that way at the party.

“What does Bart do?” I say.

“He has a construction business.”

Construction. Of course. He could bury all the bodies in the cement foundations. Does he have unusually neat handwriting?

I’m being ridiculous. I haven’t received a note in a couple of days. I need to focus on what’s ahead of me, not what’s behind.

“Did you grow up in Oakland?” Raquel asks.

“No.” I prefer not to say more.

“Where, then?”

“Haines.”

She furrows her brow, like she’s heard the name somewhere. “That sounds familiar.”

“It’s not far. Just along 880, near Newark and Union City.”

The furrow becomes a full ridge. “Haines is famous for something, right?”

“Not really.” I hope she doesn’t Google it later. “It’s a pretty ordinary, middle-class kind of a place.” I don’t need to mention that there’s a poor part of town, which is where my mother and I lived. “By now, though, who knows? The way gentrification’s going in the Bay Area, those could be million-dollar houses.”

“It’s crazy.” She shakes her head. “And sad. So many people being driven out.”

“Really sad.”

“Meadow, why don’t you go climb over there?” Raquel gestures toward a metal parabola that’s not more than three feet off the ground at its apex. We’re in the infant/toddler section. “She loves that.”

It’s hard to imagine Meadow loving anything, other than Raquel. There’s just something so careful about her. Raquel and Bart must have grown up having to watch their backs, and even though they moved to a place where you should never have to look over your shoulder, their only child retains some of that awareness. I’m hoping that won’t be true of Sadie. It doesn’t look like it so far. She’s already more of an explorer than Meadow, examining each grain of sand as it trickles through her fingers. Growing up, I had no real sense of home (unless you count Ellen’s), but I want that for Sadie, so much. And I suddenly realize: I want it for me, too, for the little kid I used to be. The one I could have been.