U-Turn on H Street

Clink of glasses: "It was a beautiful night," Morales said to James. "People were happy. Women were flirting. 'Let's toast to life.' This was beautiful." Then they played their song: "Maybe Tomorrow, I'll Find My Way Home."

After the song ended, they closed up the pub. Morales started walking to his house at 18th and H Northeast. He waited for the light to change at the corner where H meets Benning and Maryland and 15th -- the crossroads of his life, he would call it later. It started to rain, a soft rain. A soft thought crossed his mind: his girlfriend lived just a block away on 14th. He said to himself: " 'Bree is waiting for me, I know.' I said, 'Why not?' I have clothes there and a warm body who can warm me." It was 5 in the morning. Morales turned and started walking to 14th. He passed James, who teased him, saying Morales must be missing his girl.

Morales remembers there was nobody in the street. He remembers putting the key in the door.

He woke up 10 days later in the hospital. A detective was telling him: "You got shot. Do you know why you got shot?" A doctor was telling him: "You lost your eye. Your skull was shattered. You don't have a skull."

James told the police he heard three shots. The police later told Morales the person who most likely shot him was killed four days later. Now Morales, wears a white helmet to protect his head. He is awaiting surgery to replace a section of his skull. He is awaiting a new, fake eye, which a doctor/artist is now painting a delicate brown to match his own. He is trying to gather enough money for the surgeries and the hospital bills and the other doctor bills: $65,000, which he says will take the rest of his life to pay off. And he still does not know why the person shot him. "When I heard he died, I was angry because I'll never know why he shot me." Morales sits on the porch of the pale yellow brick house he rents on H Street. His neighbors, black, wave at him from the sidewalk and ask how he is doing. Life on the street has continued, the rhythm of life is normal: Kids ride bicycles, old women in stockings cross the street with their bags heading home as the sun sinks. The mail lady brings the mail. Today, Morales got a hospital bill for $32,000.

He is trying not to be bitter, not to show anger. "I can't be a normal person until I get my plate. I lost part of my skull. They had to take it out because it broke in pieces."

"The chain of suffering is just too long," he says. "The injury is really bad. I'm not lucky. I'm blessed. The bullet went through my eye. . . . The doctor told me the bullet went through a bunch of nerves without touching what was essential." Still he can't bend without pressure, a pounding in his head. He thanks the people of the neighborhood and the customers of the Argonaut for raising money while he was in the hospital. With this money, he has been able to live.

He has not moved. "I'm not like a person who can just move because I want to. I'm not making plenty of money," Morales says. "Moving myself out of the neighborhood won't make the neighborhood safer for anybody. I don't want anybody to suffer like I did." Now, he has started a campaign against violence in the neighborhood. He calls it: "Music Is Bulletproof," and he plans to take the anti-violence tour to clubs along H to raise money for other crime victims. "I want to use this energy instead of thinking about revenge or being bitter," he says. "I want to give back to the neighborhood what the neighborhood gave to me. It was because of this neighborhood that I survived."

A Common Concern

In one paradigm, a world is familiar. When the paradigm shifts, a way of living changes:

Vanessa Ruffin has lived on Wylie since 1970, when she signed a lease with her grandmother, who at one time owned five houses on Wylie. "She was a simple hardworking woman who did day's work. And she was a smart woman. She made me sign a lease-purchase agreement. She wasn't like people today who give houses to their children. She made me earn it."

"H Street," she says, "went from being a viable black-business downtown district to being a ghost town to now being Speculator City. This has been the fastest-moving wave of development since the '70s.

"At one time, I was the only neighbor on the block who stood up to drugs and hanging out and loitering. I was assaulted. The house broken into."

Now things on Wiley have changed, a new mix of people have moved in.

At Holy Name Church, there is a statue of a black saint standing outside. Inside the neighbors are talking. The common denominator among those who have lived here for decades and those who just moved in last summer is the rat problem.

"The first issue is rat abatement in the alley," says Ruffin. "The city should come out and look for the rat city, the holes in the ground where they live."

White man in hat: "I saw seven, eight, nine on the dumpster behind the lounge. It's bad."

White schoolteacher: "I just moved in and I'm willing to help. I see the rats, they, like, drink out of puddles. I can't believe I have reached a point that I can gaze on them with a flashlight."

Ruffin: "There is too much liquid soup in the alley. My back steps are stained blue, blue with whatever they give them to kill them. They just run across my stoop."

White man in hat: "Oooh. Like, do you really want to grill in your back yard?"

He says he wants to put up a privacy fence.

Ruffin: "You put up a privacy fence and what you've done is provided a hiding place for a criminal."

White man: "But I don't want a chain-link fence."

Ruffin: "I'm giving you the pros and cons. The decision is up to the individual."

The Exchange

And a white man passes a tall black man on H Street. The tall black man, wearing a knit hat, asks the short white man for a smoke: "You got a cigarette?"

"No, I don't smoke."

"That's good. You are healthy. Smoking can stunt your growth."

The tall black man smiles.

And the short white man laughs.

And the tall black man walks east on H Street.

He stops.

He bends to pick up a dime on the sidewalk, and 13 pennies fall out of his pocket.