Of Color by Jaswinder Bolina

Author:Jaswinder Bolina
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McSweeney's Publishing

FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC

On my knees in stone mulch at 1 a.m., my hands raised predictably above my head, my back to the three boys relieving me of my wallet and phone and laptop bag, and one of them has a taser to my neck and another maybe a gun, I can’t help but marvel at how nice this neighborhood is. The two-story, midcentury condos in front of which I’m being mugged for the first time in my life are nestled around a courtyard’s thicket of palms. They list for upward of $250K, though they’re short on square footage and ripe for renovation, and the newer-construction townhouses down the sidewalk run upward of $850K. A canopy of royal poinciana glows Crayola green in the white streetlight over the wide boulevard. A row of Mercedes E-Classes and Range Rovers glitter along the curb. Even the distant bass rhythm of a band playing blocks away only deepens the calm. Location being the meat of good realty, I’m almost proud to say I can see my condo building from here.

With nothing left but my clothes and keys, I’m told to get up and don’t turn around and run. “No mires y VETE!” they shout. I don’t run. It seems silly to bother. I just walk away quickly, back toward the Friday night bustle of Restaurant Row, no wobble in my legs, no tremor in my hands, no racing heart. To be mugged on such a quiet street in front of such rarified real estate after so many years walking home at far later hours in much lousier neighborhoods seems ironic, and vapidly so. It’s also that the boys looked so discombobulated when I approached them, waiting nervously between me and my half-another-block home. I nodded and offered a “Buenas,” so casually that when they lunged, grabbed my shoulders, and spun me almost gracefully around, they seemed more startled by their actions than I was. It felt dumb for all involved to let a simple robbery escalate into a crime measured in degrees, so I kept repeating, “Okay. Está bien. Okay. Take it easy.” They did.

Later, there will be a cascade of adrenaline, anxiously asking the police to check on my wife to make sure the boys haven’t followed the home address on my driver’s license. There will be shudders of the near miss, wondering if their taser actually worked, if that was an actual gun in the one kid’s hand or just a stub of pipe. I will second-guess myself for months, thinking I should have turned around instead of carrying brazenly onward and saying hello to some boys leaning awkwardly against a busted-up, out-of-place Hyundai at one in the morning. Later, the police will ask what they looked like, and I’ll have to answer: my height, skinny, black hair, brown skin, jeans and hoodies. Young, maybe eighteen or twenty. I’ll learn that they had driven all over town looking for easy marks and, in desperation, even robbed a couple of women strolling home from a dinner out.

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