When Gentrification Hits Home

By the time I could talk, I had decided not to.

I had a passport and blue Samsonite suitcase and we’d lived in more hotel rooms and hostels and basement than my parents could count, my father orbiting in a harmless but perpetual schizophrenic loop that had him muttering rhyming nonsense--mint, hint, squint, imprint---and my mother painting madly into the night until she'd crash, clutching her back in pain and crying out, a bit dramatically, I thought, "now the artist must die--"

By the time I’d decided not to talk and people started to notice I was a bit old for that kind of silene, my sister and my mom and I washed up on the shores of my grandmother’s soft-carpeted house and I wanted to stay there.

I didn’t mind that my bed was a shared pull-out couch. Bright pink bougainvillea vined and bloomed outside the window next to that couch, and my grandmother fried bacon in the mornings.

I broke my arm and bloodied my nose, whispered first words to my grandmother, a plea to let me stay: See? I was hurt? We had to stay.

Of course we couldn’t stay.

Apartments, communal houses, VW Vans, converted garages.

I loved the smell of the ocean outside our ever-shifting windows.

And tempeh bacon isn’t so bad.

A little rental cottage in a little hippie town called Palo Alto.

My mom wore a bandana and gold hoop earrings and the other mothers in our new neighborhood seethed that she was too beautiful and the other kids in our new neighborhood stuck their tongues out at us and called us gypsies.

And then.

Something like a miracle.

My sister and I were going to have a new father. Everyone at church called our new father “Father” but we weren’t allowed to call him father. Not yet. It was a secret. He was a priest. And he wasn’t allowed to have a wife.

I stayed quiet. I knew how to do that.

But my shoulders ached for this new father.

When he smiled at me at church his eyes looked like home.

I had never heard of Jesus before, but sitting in the wooden pews now I studied the little man who hung on the cross against the back wall and I prayed to him that this new father wouldn't only speak in rhymes.

This town belonged to my new father. He wasn't a gypsy here. His grandfathers had come from Sacramento and Oakland, the founding professors at Stanford. “It was to be the first free university,” my new father said, “Completely egalitarian.” And he laughed at that now, but we would move into the house his father built.

And the house was strong--stucco and mahogany. It would always be here, that’s what my new father said.

And this town. I belonged here because my new father said I belonged here. "If anyone asks you where you're from," my new father said, "you say 'who, me?' and you point to the tallest, closest mountain you can see and you say, 'I just hiked down from the top of that mountain this morning. Where are you from?'"

I unpacked my blue Samsonite suitcase in that house and I settled in.

The archbishop kicked my new father out of the church and he got a job at the Briar Patch co-op market and then later as a clerk at Printer’s Ink bookstore.

I grew up strong, tomato plants in the garden and pine-wood fires in the brick and tiled hearth.

I grew up thinking I was mostly OK even though my mom was still crazy, shrieks and scissors in the night. I grew up knowing I needed to get out. I grew up and I ran away. But I came home when I was hungry, came home when I was tired, came home when I had my first baby and didn’t know where else to go. Home was home, after all. It would always be there.

But of course it wouldn’t.

My mother mortgaged the place for a manic spending spree. French dishes from William Sonoma and floral sheets from Ralph Lauren.

Stanford was far from free now; gave rise to computer companies and software giants.

That town where they used to call us gypsies became a place where almost no one who was “from” there lived anymore.

My father had been keeping up with the property taxes on the house his father built, but now he couldn’t pay the mortgage on his minimum wages form the bookstore.

They lost the house.

And they left the town.

And they died the way people do, the one peaceful and the other crazy.

I was in New Mexico the night I got the call about our old house my father’s father built. Late January and the new owners had won their fight with the Palo Alto historical society: The bulldozers would arrive come morning.

My strong home. Stucco and mahogany. In my old town where all the people who used to call us “gypsies” had moved away.

I hardly knew anyone in that town anymore.

But I called someone who called someone and “do you remember that guy Mike Hartley? Yeah? He used to sing in that Van Halen cover band?”

And I said, “Oh, sure, I remember that guy. The girls used to shriek for Mike Hartley. My high school boyfriend played bass in that band."

“Yeah. Mike Hartley. He still lives down there.”

So now I’ve got Mike Hartley on the phone and now Mike’s up for the plan and now Mike’s up early, three shots of espresso, and he's pulling up in front of the house my father’s father built. It’s drizzling, just a little, and the bulldozers are already there, but Mike tosses his empty espresso cup in the passenger's seat and he's rushing in. The workers are yelling at him, "Hey." The new owners of the house my father’s father built are yelling, too. But Mike’s got a hammer and Mike’s got a chisel and now Mike’s got my front door, and it’s huge, and it’s heavy, this arched old-Mission door and Mike’s running with it. He’s running with my heavy door and he's maneuvering it into the back of his truck and the new owners are yelling after him, “we’re calling the police!” And Mike’s yelling back “This is Father Duryea’s house and I’m taking Father Duryea’s door to Father Duryea’s daughter.” And Mike is back in front of those bulldozers and the bulldozers aren’t moving, but they’ve got their engines on and revving and the workers are “Hey, man, you gotta get outta here,” but Mike’s got my wooden fireplace mantle now and it’s huge. It’s bigger than Mike remembered. He’s loading it into the back of his truck. He’s running.

And all the yelling reminds him of the girls who used to shriek his name when he sang in that old Van Halen cover band. He’s got my iron gate, Mike does, he’s got my old wooden pull-out telephone chair, he’s running, the new owner is still screaming, and Mike knows his time’s spinning out. The Palo Alto cops are quick on their feet; they’re bored. But Mike’s got an adrenalin rush going now, imagining all the girls reaching up for him. He wants more.

I promised him $100 to go and grab what he could, but it’s about more than that now. It’s about Father Duryea and the way he's the one who baptized Mike. It’s about me, too, about Father Duryea’s daughter. It’s about his youth, Mike’s. And about the town he thought was home before the software companies bubbled up, before people said his band was lame, before his parents died. And Mike wants my fireplace screen. He’s going to get me my fireplace screen. He can hear the sirens and he knows they’re coming for him because what else is going on in Palo Alto on a January morning?

The workers are shaking their heads now. The new owners are silent. Just watching. Waiting for the cops. And Mike's light on his feet. He’s got my fireplace screen. He’s running and he’s laughing. He’s still laughing when he calls me from his cell phone, laughing and crying, “you wouldn’t believe the look on those mother fucker’s faces! I got all the best stuff, Ariel. Just what would fit in the truck but it’s the best stuff. I’m heading up to the East Bay now. I’ll get you a storage unit in Oakland. Oh. My. God. Ariel, this stuff is gonna look great in your house no-matter-what-kind-of-house-you-got-now.” And what I don’t tell Mike is that I don’t have a house. That I don’t feel crazy like my parents but I’ve lived in more hotel rooms and hostels and basements than I can count. My children build altars in Samsonite suitcases. What I don’t tell Mike is that I can’t explain why I wanted my door so badly even when I've got no place to put it, can’t explain what I’m hanging on to, so I just say, “Thanks, Mike. It means a lot to me.”

And Mike says, “Yeah. I know what you mean.”