Duality Within New York City Streets
The city is a vibrant place: restaurant tables filled with smiling people, cups filled to the brim with colorful drinks, sidewalks with fruit stands and elderly hagglers, music blasting from barbershops and futuristic cars. The summer heat brings people to grassy Central Park, dogs with wagging tails excited to play, and everyone you see is glistening in the sun, partly because of their tan but also because of the unavoidable sweat.
In these same moments, the place we love the most is equally as miserable and draining: customers treating themselves to happy hour because of a stressful work week, cups filled with cheap and artificially colored drinks, and street vendors politely declining low offers as they endure stabbing pains on their feet. Barbershops enhance their atmosphere to attract more customers and avoid closing down, while people get sunburned and their food spoils at the park. Dogs are dehydrated and their paws on fire, while everyone sweats profusely, risking heat strokes.
When I was younger and lived in the Dominican Republic, all I wanted to do was live with my father in New York. For most people in my country, coming to the city was the gateway to a better life. Whether it was for their children’s education or looking for a more stable life, the only answer was moving away. As much as we loved our country, it was normal for neighbors to boast about waiting for their visas and classmates to tell us about their families’ plans to move away. The end goal was to find stability in New York or a neighboring state like New Jersey or Pennsylvania, settle, and grow up to find a steady job or go to college. It was almost as if our culture were made of hope, a hope that we would find something better anywhere else. To impressionable kids like my sister and I, at the time being five and nine years old, the city was the distant land of paradise. There we could finally see our father more than one month a year, and we would finally touch snow. We would be able to learn English and see the buildings that never stopped reaching for the sky.
I finally moved here when I was seven years old and it was not what I had imagined. Despite this, it wasn’t disappointing because we only had a vague idea of what our lives would be like: Just better. The elementary school that was generous enough to accept me was monolingual. For the first few weeks of third grade, I anxiously sat in my chair waiting for my teacher to try and communicate the class activities. Ms. Marrisa’s patience and willingness to talk to me despite the enormous language barrier made all the difference in my attitude towards my new life. Kids that I’m still friends with today attempted to introduce themselves to me. I’ll never forget the smiles on their faces as they slowly said “Hola, me llamo…” and their excitement to welcome me as a new student. As the year went on, I had speech classes, small readings to practice, and my classmates even labeled everything in our homeroom so I could learn new words. That was the first time I ever felt a sense of belonging, of inclusivity and community in the city. Fortunately, within three months I finally learned the basics of English. With new friends and the ability to speak this foreign language under my belt, I felt invincible.
My time in middle school was even more eye-opening, especially since I had already adjusted and was fully immersed in city living. I was friends with people who were the complete opposite of me. The shy and academic side of me was confronted with very outspoken, loud, and extroverted friends. There was a major shift in what my New York looked like: No one looked out of the classroom window when it snowed, the entire school dressed in the same navy slacks with a white button-up, and I started to learn about the realities of a lot of my classmates and their families.
New York slowly became a city of struggle. The white button-ups I was obligated to wear constantly reeked of bleach in the heat of the classrooms. The embarrassment painted on my face each time it happened prompted me to put on my navy-blue zip up. My apartment, like many of my friends’, was extremely small. During the winter, my coat smelled of my mother’s overly seasoned dinners. I would try to cover it with cheap perfumes and mists that were always on sale. That self-consciousness transitioned into fear that I would smell like that again. I was convinced that my scent was the determining factor of who I was or how people recognized me. And a few times each year following middle school, I’d have a conversation with someone, and they would sidetrack, lightheartedly saying, “Hey, don’t take this the wrong way but you smell like a Hispanic household.” Every single time, my throat dried up, my eyes widened, and my face turned mildly pale. They tried to calm the fear on my face by assuring me that it wasn't a bad thing, it was just something they noticed. But to me, it was always horrible. I wondered why my mother had to cook so often, and with so much seasoning. Why couldn’t I escape that torment? These times always reminded me of my middle school self.
On the days where I had to stay at home alone or had to buy food at school, I had to make a meal out of three dollars. Every day was a new game of Tetris, trying to figure out how I could afford breakfast in the morning. “Should I buy fifty-cent chips and a fifty-cent juice so I could get eggs on my sandwich today?” Despite these daily dilemmas, I had it down to a science. It was either a bagel with cream cheese and a Hawaiian Punch, or a butter roll with a coffee. I would often complain about the lack of funds, but this was part of our life in New York.
And my story is only one of many: most of my friends had their own sources of embarrassment, whether their apartments were much smaller or their second-hand clothes didn’t fit right. While this was comforting, it was equally as striking to know that we were all subject to that shame, and it left me wondering how I could possibly be so naive as a kid.
My middle school had an evening program for parents to learn English, and my father attended every session. After his classes, he would come home and practice the new words he learned that day. He told us about his friends and all the other parents who came after their nine to five jobs just to take this class. Even parents, people who are meant to have their lives together, were still trying to pave their own path by attending.
This was also the time when my dad would make sure I was going home safely. To him, making sure I wasn’t walking home with my friends during the six o’clock sundown was crucial. What I saw as a fun and entertaining way to socialize, he saw as ultimate danger. His extreme parenting tactics throughout my life always seemed to me as unnecessary, but at the core, his intentions were completely valid.
As I continued onto high school, two sides of my life began to grow further apart. My home and the traditions my parents carried to New York despised my potential social life. As much as I wanted to have fun and stay out late with my friends, my parents undoubtedly rejected those plans and sheltered me. The city grew more dangerous every day, and the Hispanic news outlets made it their mission to turn its entire community against everyone else. Sitting in front of the television screen every night while eating their dinner, my parents internalized every single piece of information, no matter how biased or incorrect. This had an effect on who I could hang out with or the activities I did with friends. Because of the city and its natural chaos, I was essentially denied most of the experiences of other teenage kids here. What’s more interesting to me was the second justification for this. My parents not only believed that the city was dangerous, but that this place was never our true home and we should be careful. To them, our lives in this city were temporary.
Because when all is set and done, my parents will move back to our country, my sister will finally live on her own, and I will need to figure out my own life. Where would I go? Where do I belong?
This is a question that slips into my mind often. When I think about my home country, never would I consider its use of “home” to have a long-term meaning. Yet, I wouldn’t particularly consider New York City my “home” either. As I walk the now lonely streets of the city, I realize how dissatisfied I am with living here. I hate the small apartments that make you feel so closed in, like a mime who truly can’t get out of their imaginary box. And there’s always the fear of walking alone. You start to develop strategies to casually look behind you, whether day or night, without alerting others that you’re on edge or afraid. It’s the random catcalling and the fear that someone will follow you home or worse. While that happens everywhere, people here are relentless at getting a response from you. It’s the unreasonable price for the bare necessities; making some families live by paycheck and desperately scrape some money together. As much as the city is colorful on the gentrified street walks with outdoor dining, the majority of the time you just glance at the expressionless faces of those who pass you on the busy streets, bodies walking fast-paced with intention.
The city forces people to become casually ruthless, to justify our lack of sympathy, to grow cold on the outside. As I talked with a friend of mine over lunch, I realized how normal it was for us to walk past homeless people and feel no remorse. We are even taught to have unrealistic criteria when deciding which homeless person deserves to have our change. They can’t be too dirty, but not clean either. They can’t have destroyed shoes, but they can’t have brand new ones either. They can beg for our dollar, but they can’t be so desperate that they ask for food or flip-flops. That’s what the city does. Not only is the city physically constraining, but it forces you to close in on yourself and create your own impenetrable walls. And, as much as I have been influenced to accept and participate in all the things wrong here, I notice how misplaced I am. For the record, pointing out all these issues doesn’t take away from the problems in the Dominican Republic. Neither are ideal for the person I am or the person I wish to become.
But in the back of my mind, maybe New York is the place to be. It is the city where I learned to speak English and much more about the world than I would’ve if I stayed in the Dominican Republic. It’s the place where all my memories live, and where I constantly make new ones. I see my life on Central Park benches and riverside rocks that get brushed by the Hudson River’s tides. I relive all of my previous trips to the train station as I walk that same path. I watch my fifteen-year-old self laugh contagiously at a stupid joke as I walk past her, simply rendering a memory of what once was. I think back to all the mistakes and embarrassing moments that will never cut me loose from their torment. I feel the same feelings I felt as a third grader learning to play recorder, trying to answer my music teacher's question: “what do we call the words that come with a song?” only for me to mispronounce every single word in my response. All I had to say was, “lyrics.” My recollections of the past not only shape who I am now, but they rebuild the life I once knew years back. My comfort in these memories leads me to believe that, somehow, I am made of New York.
And I am made of the people I have encountered, from the stranger who asked me for directions to the Guggenheim Museum to my closest friends. I stole the expressions of those same people on the sidewalk, and I’ve tailored my taste to suit the different foods my friends are obsessed with. I think many of us forget that unavoidable connection we have with each other just as much as we have with our clothes or where we come from. Every part of the city is a source of influence, of possible growth. Whether for better or for worse, everyone has influenced me in ways they could never imagine.
Even Sylvia, who I’ve only known for a couple of months, has helped me mend some of the rough patches I was unwilling to fix between New York and me. One day over the summer I received a call from my father asking me to help him deliver groceries to this elderly woman. Upon entering the supermarket where he works, I see him scrambling to get her things together. I grab the list and let him continue to line up the milk jugs from the boxes that had come in the morning trucks. She asked for something in each line: oxtail from the meat section, pre-cooked rice from the grains, deli meat from the butchers, and things of the sort. After paying, my father and I walked over to her house with the grocery bags in our hands. My hands started to hurt halfway through, and my upper arms were on fire. I’d heard stories about Sylvia before and a vague idea of what she looked like, but that was the day I actually met her.
Upon her opening the door to her apartment, politely greeting us, I couldn’t help but notice how different her house was. Sylvia’s home is half a time machine and half a museum. All of her rooms are filled with artifacts she’s collected over the years. Her kitchen has pots hanging from the ceiling, more of an exhibit than an actual place to cook. Sylvia’s apartment is not only her home, but the home of all the decorations and artifacts she’s collected. Some of these pieces must’ve had different homes all throughout the city, before finding shelter under her roof.
After greeting her and handing her the groceries, we had a small conversation that quickly led to our friendship. We got along so well, in fact, that she took me to her favorite thrift store a few days after, the one where she got many of her decoration pieces.
It was a bright Saturday morning when we took a taxi to the thrift store. As we drove past post offices and closed down buildings, Sylvia told me countless stories of how different the city is now compared to her teenage years. She pointed out of my window telling me that one building used to be a theatre, and another used to be a bank. She would laugh at what has become of Harlem and let me into her world as she reminisced about these streets. Sylvia lived in Harlem all her life, and she wholeheartedly believes that, despite everything, this city is the best place on Earth. Everything that she needs is here, just a train ride away. Her narrative of New York and happiness here is highly inspirational to me.
It is memory and experience that creates our narrative and who we are. She is also New York, but she’s a more genuine version of it. She embraces her past and this city for what it is and is completely satisfied with what’s come of it. Clearly, she’s one of the reasons I love it here. Sylvia is a part of the reason I lean towards staying here forever. Maybe the city will be like that for me too.
There’s a duality here that can’t be ignored. Every part of the city, anywhere you go, is filled with opposing sides. On any given day, any situation can be bright or sour. Everything is always good, but things can be equally as bad just by looking at them differently. It might depend on the person viewing or experiencing it, but I think it’s the energy of New York itself. Deep under the electricity units that we walk on top of every day, and under all of the concrete that is constantly being replaced, that duality exists. It pours out of every manhole and each grain of sand that sits at the bottom of the Hudson River. I’ve felt it my entire life here: I’m the volleyball playfully getting tossed back and forth between happiness and struggle. Unfortunately, we’ve all experienced this, no matter how big or small our situations are in the grand scheme of things. Yet most of us come to accept the city’s personality, knowing it will never change. We settle with our circumstances and adapt to the demands of this city despite its unwillingness to sympathize with us.
This is also why I’m in a constant state of decision-making. One side never outweighs the other. No matter how hard I try to see the ultimate good here, I’m never convinced. Then, if I try to list everything wrong and all the things that I hate about the city, I go back to reciting the better side. It is a constant loop that tricks you into almost finding the answer, and it makes you infinitely chase.
The places I’ve lived in so far have gotten progressively better, but my dissatisfaction with these temporary homes leads me to believe that there is a place more fitting. While my childhood years in the Dominican Republic weren’t awful, there wasn’t real opportunity or stability. In the city, there is opportunity but there is also pressure and strain that haunts all of us.
Ultimately, New York is the bridge connecting my origin to my final destination. I walk the bridge back and forth, passing time as I wait for the gates holding off the other side to open. In the meantime, I kick rocks and read books and do anything to speed up this process. I stand beside the hand railings and I reflect on where I came from. I watch the sun rise and fall, talk to the moon, and stare at its craters, I feel it watching over me. I ponder over the horizon and try to guess where I’ll be going next. Is it a place I’ve visited before? Was I too young to know that it was the perfect place for me?
People also pass through the bridge and spend some time with me. We befriend each other and put locks on the railings to remember our time together. In the end, the gate opens for them, even if New York is where they’re supposed to live. Sooner or later, all I will have left is a memory of our time on this bridge, and that’s more valuable to me than most things. I know the time will come for me to finally step off and move on. And I know that the place where the gates lead me will be the paradise I hoped to find in New York as a child. That will be my place forever. I thank all the places I’ve been before, everything I have experienced, because it all led me to this bridge and this waiting time. Everything that has happened, whether amazing or stressful or anything in between, was the cost of finding the place I’ve only dreamed of.
There will always be a part of me that wants to stay here and experience another side of the city. Yet I understand the importance of finding a home that I hold no resentment towards. All the memories the city helped me build will never be forgotten, but rather honored. Hopefully I will continue to reminisce and appreciate my past. And I will certainly never forget what I’m made of, or the people who undeniably shaped me. Most importantly, I am excited to experience a new city, or maybe something completely different. New York City will be another distant memory I’ll render as I walk the streets of my new home.
By Michelle Hernandez
Photographs done in collaboration with the New Media Artspace at Baruch College. The New Media Artspace is a teaching exhibition space in the Department of Fine and Performing Arts at Baruch College, CUNY. Housed in the Newman Library, the New Media Artspace showcases curated experimental media and interdisciplinary artworks by international artists, students, alumni, and faculty. Special thanks to docent Kezia Velista for creating artwork for this piece.
Check the New Media Artspace out at http://www.newmediartspace.info/