Features
Manhattan, Here and There
Contributor’s note: Rebecca Cooper wrote this in the Year of Dairy Products from the American Heartland, give or take some subsidized time.
“No no no. So let me tell you. I did this quiz in the New York Post: ‘How Much of a New Yorker Are You?’ Or some shit. Man, I've lived here my whole life, so I was like, I got this shit. But shit man. The quiz was hard. It's like I don't know this stuff: ‘'What's the highest Subway station in New York?’'”
I shrugged.
“Smith-9 Street in Brooklyn. What!” the man continued, his flailing arms almost thwacking a girl in a fuchsia jumpsuit. She mashed her gum loudly. The man didn't notice. “Who knows that shit? That's not New York. Here's the one I got. What's the only borough that's connected to the mainland?”
I should know this. I'm walking down the length of Broadway to hand out blank maps of Manhattan to strangers. My roommate Ama Francis and I have 480 more maps and just over 12 more miles ahead of us.
“The Bronx?” I say.
“Yea! My friend liaves there ‘cause it's the only part of New York that's connected to the mainland, so if shit goes down, he can just keep running. You know. Cause elsewhere, it'd be like: Run—water! Ah!”
The stranger pretends the boundary of his concrete block is the edge of the island.
“Run!” He hits the crack in the pavement closest to me. “Water! Blah!” He spins 90 degrees and runs north on Broadway toward 214th Street—“Run!”-- until he hits the edge of the concrete tile, spins again over his right shoulder, runs away from me, his black high tops practically screeching on the hot July pavement—Water!—spins again, runs. He looks like a pinball or a frenetic toddler in a tiny playpen.
“But in the Bronx he could just keep running.” He breathes hard. “9 /11 did different things to people.”
The summer air hangs above the asphalt as if it’s thick enough to stir.
“Anyway, girl, I'll take your map. I'll do it for you. You want me to map the shit that means something to me? What Manhattan is for me? Okay. You got it, babe. Good luck.”
My blank maps are 3.5” x 7” postcards with a cartoon outline of Manhattan on the inside. The island looks like, as Truman Capote puts it, “a diamond iceberg” floating between the East and Hudson Rivers. Or as Pat Flanagan writes in his postcard to me, months after handing him a map, “an abdomen without the appendages necessary for life,”, “a halved steer,”, “a leg of lamb” one meat hook shy of a slaughter house. I think it looks more like a jalapeno pepper, with a vein down the middle for Broadway, a transverse line for Houston Street, a rectangular blemish for Central Park and a baby pepper, or maybe a stray leaf, by its side for Roosevelt Island.
It’'s nearing the end of the first hour, the noon sun is just about standing over us, and Ama and I are finally past Inwood Hill Park. We’'ve handed three maps to the Watchtower ladies sitting on the edge of the park, giving out the religious pamphlets. In return for their accepting our maps, we took our own reading material—two brochures, one on depression and the other on “Global Warming?”. I hand a map to a woman tending a churros stand at the corner of 198th and Broadway by trying to pass my Italian off for Spanish. Draw your mind is the phrase that finally got her to take it. A post office worker, dripping with sweat, palms one without listening to the explanation.
Ama spots a tall, burly man leaning against an M100 bus post on Dyckman Street, where Broadway meets with the final segment of Riverside Drive. A baseball bat and a duffel bag large enough for four basketballs drape from his sides. Ama approaches him. Even with the sun almost directly overhead, she stands in his shade.
“Hi! We're doing a mapping project of Manhattan and we were—--”
He pulls out an earbud from under his sweatband. “Huh?”
I realize it looks like he could eat her.
“We're doing a community art project, giving out blank maps of Manhattan, and asking people to represent Manhattan in a way that'’s meaningful to them. You can draw, write, label. And—--”
“Wait what?”
“We... we want you to record the stuff in Manhattan that makes it home. Whatever you like. ”
“I take this and draw anything I want on it?”
