Dinaw Mengestu - The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears

“There are some beautiful old houses around here,” he says. He speaks with an assured, confident authority that I envy. I agree. I tell him that a president’s uncle or cousin used to live in one of them, along with some senators and congressmen from a different era.

“Did you know,” I ask him, “that this was once one of the most desirable neighborhoods in the city? You had to have connections to live here, money, power. It was that sort of place.”

He’s impressed, as if somehow this information confirmed something not only about the neighborhood, but himself as well. I ramble on and tell them what I know about General Logan.

“General John A. Logan,” I tell them, “was a Civil War hero. He fought at Bull Run and Vicksburg,” all information that can be found on Logan’s pedestal.

“Perhaps his greatest achievement in the war,” I add, “was that he saved Raleigh, North Carolina, from being burned to the ground.” This I have only recently learned. It has since become my favorite historical fact regarding General Logan.

“He was a great man,” I add, as if somehow it isn’t enough to merely recount Logan’s virtues, or to simply point toward the statue in the center of the circle. What I want is for him to be a hero to us all.

The man touches the brim of his hat as he leaves. His wife smiles and nods. I watch them as they walk out of the store into the bright, sunny spring morning still touched by an occasional cool breeze. The city is bursting. The old, wide, boulevard-like roads and L’Enfant’s once practical, now useless circles are growing heavy with the weight of spring and summer. Tree branches and bushes droop with fat white buds while hordes of weeds break through the dead grass. The couple cross the street and head toward the circle. They are not holding hands, but they are walking so close to each other that a part of their shoulders or arms is always touching. Their steps are perfectly in sync: after all their years together, they now have the same walk. I come out from behind the counter and stand in front of my store so I can watch them enter the circle and pause in front of General Logan’s statue. The man pulls a book out of his fanny pack and steps up to the short metal fence that was recently put up to protect the grass around the base. They both crane their heads up so they can stare into the raised hoof of Logan’s horse, suspended in midair, waiting to land triumphantly on whoever stands in its path.

A few moments later they unfold their map and look around at the street signs. The husband points west to P Street, which, along with Rhode Island Avenue, Vermont Avenue, and 13th Street, hits the circle like the spoke of a bicycle wheel. Of all the streets that meet the circle, P is by far my favorite. As it heads west toward Dupont and Georgetown, it only grows prettier and wider, with the houses increasingly grand and luxurious, as if each step forward were a step toward paradise. Men with matching dogs walk along P Street. Half a mile away are sidewalk cafés and restaurants, three used-book stores, wine shops, flower shops, and cheese shops. And the farther up P you move, the better life gets. From Dupont the street proceeds to Georgetown, where the road narrows and the sidewalks become a quaint uneven brick bordered by nineteenth-century colonial mansions bearing Ionic columns. The trees form a canopy over the cobblestone road, still lined with the metal tracks of the trolley cars that stopped running decades ago.

The wife nods her head, rubs her hand across her husband’s back, and they begin to walk away from General Logan and his horse. As soon as I see them leaving the circle, I cross the street and begin to follow from a safe distance. Soon, without thinking about it, I’m across the street and jogging lightly to keep up with the couple, who are now just a few steps away from P Street. I cut through the circle to catch up with them, and when I hit General Logan’s statue, I finally pause for a second and look back at my store. I can see it clearly from here, everything from the sagging right gutter to the streaks of blue paint along the side to the metal bars over the windows shining in the sun. How is it that in all these years, I’ve never seen my store look quite like this? I can imagine it wanting to be spared the burden of having to survive another year. The door is unlocked. The sign is flipped to “Open” and the cash register, with its contents totaling $3.28, is ajar. I wonder if this is what it feels like to walk out on your wife and children. If this is what it feels like to leave a car on the side of the highway and never come back for it. What is the proper equation, the perfect simile or metaphor? I’m an immigrant. I should know this. I’ve done it before.

I follow the couple to P Street, turning back toward my store one last time to give it a wave good-bye. I swing right onto P only half a block behind them. They have a slow, leisurely pace to their walk, perfect for the day, which is bright and growing warmer. With each new step we take, the world feels lighter and lighter.

The G2 bus grinds its way to a stop in front of us. A group of older black women get off and cross the street to catch the bus back in the opposite direction. They shake their heads, lost. I imagine them doing this all day and night, traveling back and forth to the edge of the known world only to return, in the end, to the broken neighborhood they had just left. At 14th Street the narrow seclusion of P intersects with the wide-open thoroughfare that runs almost the entire length of the city. Just a few months ago there was a liquor store and a Chinese carryout restaurant on the corner, Yum’s Chinese and Chicken. It was the first place I ate at alone in D.C. I walked in early in the evening and ordered a beef and broccoli that I ate while standing on the corner. I was nineteen, and had been in America for less than forty-eight hours. I remember being asked for spare change every few minutes by the same man, the red neon glare from the 7-Eleven across the street, and the roaming bands of kids who swaggered by. The food tasted like a sweet soy sauce that, whenever I’ve come across it again, instantly brings me back to that corner and night.

We cross 14th and watch as the neighborhood grows nicer. Skinny new trees have been planted along the sidewalk. Yum’s, or “Yu s,” as the sign now reads, is gone, and so is the liquor store. They have obediently made way for newer and better things, whatever they may eventually be. I can’t say that I particularly liked either of them, but that’s beside the point. Now that they are gone I can begin to miss them with a sentimental fondness I could have never mustered otherwise. Newspapers cover the windows of both storefronts, along with a sign that vaguely reads “Coming Soon.”

There are town homes being built on the left and a two-story organic grocery store being built on the right. Before all of this there was an abandoned lot with an eight-foot barbed-wire fence and a three-foot hole in the center, a grocery store that sold wilted vegetables and grade-D meat, an auto repair shop, and a black-owned bookstore called Madame X. On a warm night, you could buy a blowjob or any number of drugs there, depending on your mood. You could walk by and catch the disinterested stare of a woman leaning against the fence out of the corner of your eye and see men slumped on the ground, their heads lolling obliviously to the side. In the morning and after school, children scoured the weed-filled grounds looking for money that might have fallen out of someone’s pocket. What they found they used to buy candy and chips from my store. At Madame X, the black empowerment books gathered dust, the occasional scent of weed wafted out the door, and on Thursday nights you could sit in on an open-mike reading and share in the plate of yam patties passed around the room. The rotting meat at the grocery store next door was discounted further at the end of every week and sold with new expiration dates. Occasionally someone complained and threatened a boycott, and for a week or month the aisles were marginally but noticeably cleaner, the meat a little fresher. Stolen cars were driven into the auto repair shop at night and came out in the morning with new coats of paint and fresh license plates. Had you known this stretch of P Street back then, you would have agreed that it was a hell of a block.