Lost In The Fifth Ward

When I was young girl, I remember heading home to Long Island from a family reunion in New Jersey. It was late at night and my father was driving. We had done this drive many times before, enough times for me to identify landmarks from the back seat. This night was different because at a certain point those landmarks were no longer there. This time, my father missed a turnoff and got lost.


Of course, he didn't admit he was lost, only that he was taking a detour. But I knew. I knew just by watching the boarded windows and dark, deserted alleys roll by. Why would he want to take us through this scary place? Aren't detours supposed to be pleasant? Pretty? Graffitti on crumpled fences grasped my attention and sinister beings lurking on the street corners seemed to follow our car like they knew we didn't belong in their neighborhood. Their gazes held me hostage. These were not landmarks I knew, nor did I ever want to become familiar with them.


I was unsure if even my father, my hero, could get us out of this one alive.


Although it felt like an eternity to me, the time we spent lost was probably only a few minutes. But, those few minutes have remained in my memory. I have never felt the same type of fear and sense of being alone.


Until today. But first, a little history.


The Fifth Ward is in Northeast Houston and is one of six wards originally established in Houston in 1837. The wards were simply a way of geographically dividing the city for political purposes. It is still used in many American cities. After the Civil War, the Fifth Ward was settled almost entirely by freed slaves. It became a 100% black working class neighborhood, its residents working in the nearby shipping channel and other industrial areas. It remained this way through much of the 20th century. Although it was viewed by its residents as a proud black community with over 40 black-owned businesses, it garnered a reputation as the "bloody fifth" because of rising crime and violence within its borders. After desegregation, its problems grew despite attempts to regentrify it from within. Today, any Houstonian will cringe at the mention of the Fifth Ward. It represents crime, poverty, violence, and drugs.


I have been to many undesirable places in Houston as a teacher for my company. While many times I am uncomfortable in the low-income areas I teach in, I have never felt unsafe. Not so in the Fifth Ward. And particularly not so getting lost there.


I made every turn GoogleMaps told me to. But, by the time I realized the directions had led me astray I was already perspiring, nervously looking around my car at stop signs, and wishing I had brought my Taurus .9mm like I should have. Drive by braille, my preferred method of navigation over the standard GPS unit, was wholly deficient because the fear factor kept me from keeping track of street names like I usually do. But, I wonder if even a GPS would have figured it out. In any case, I would have felt so much safer and less alone as a white woman in a bigass redneck pickup truck driving seemingly aimlessly, if not definitely lost, in this high-crime area, if I were accompanied by my piece.


I would have taken pictures of the area I was in, but somehow that didn't seem a safe choice at the time. The idea was accompanied by visions of some gang approaching my truck while I was otherwise occupied with the "take picture" button on my phone, and me pointing the camera out only to see in the viewfinder a bunch of thugs pointing a gun at me.


Instead, I drove slightly too fast through the residential neighborhood, on the phone with the receptionist at the school, who was neither friendly nor understanding of my plight, trying to figure out where I had remembered seeing the street name she had just told me. Where's my gun again? Damn, I know I should have taken it...


I made it there unscathed, with the exception of the close exchange with my past. Not many of the residents whom I passed noticed much about my presence, nor even seemed to care as they walked their streets and sat on their stoops. I'm pretty sure the presence of me and my truck won't make it to what passes as their dinner table conversation. I'm glad I blended in on the outside and that they didn't smell nor see my trepidation. I guess they just didn't see me as much of a threat, or even a worthy target. I wondered if it would have been different if it was at night, like the time we were lost in New York. I was glad I didn't have to get too much closer to that memory. At least, back then, I had my father to turn to for protection. This time it was just me.

The students at the school were polite and helpful; a pleasure to teach.
Each time I go there will be easier as they begin to recognize, or at least accept, the white woman on their turf. I will feel much better going there now that I know exactly which turns to take, at exactly which landmarks. No more convolutions, nor more aimless meandering. 

Hopefully I will continue to be ignored in the neighborhood, even as I plow through preceded by the roar of my V8. Who knows, maybe before I am done with the contract I will feel comfortable enough to stop and take a picture. I can see it now: one hand on the camera, the other on the .9mm. 

Now ain't that a fitting image?