Gut and rebuild
In Baltimore, new people
are moving in, are paying top dollar to
remove the Formstone.
Men, almost always men, come in with
crowbars, pry the fake rock off the façade,
tuck and repoint the newly exposed brick,
repair tumbledown walls. Often the brick was
already turning to dust when the first
workers set up scaffolding, draped the famous
white marble steps that the fastidious Polish
ladies of Baltimore kept bright and clean.
Entire blocks were caged in chicken wire and
lathe as the men slathered cement mix on
chockablock rowhouses, transforming old world
brick into new world faux.
In San Francisco, they are propping houses up
on jacks, underpinning foundations,
retrofitting in case of earthquake. What do
they find beneath the slatted wood? The
houses rest on broad oak beams or heavy hips
of steel propped up on concrete columns,
strong, but not enough to take the shaking
that is inevitable. The workers come with
their heavy equipment and digging machines,
extend legs deep in the ground. They marry
house and foundation, bolt them together to
ensure that the two don’t separate in a
moment of crisis.
I dream that I am in a house, that I
am
the house, a
faded Victorian, gingerbread rotting on the
porch. My foundation is sunk and the
slightest shaking will slump me into the
street, or have me crying drunkenly into a
neighbor’s garden, letting shards of my
window glass dangle in the koi pond.
I am my mother’s house, an alley rowhouse no
more than 12 feet wide and 27 feet deep,
huddled with my compatriots on Finch’s Way, a
one-block dead-end Baltimore street. The
brick underneath my Formstone is solid and
plumb. I am bright with open windows that let
in Mexican music and the sounds of the crazy
woman across the street cursing the traffic
and the illegally parked cars. I am tolerance
smelling of English tea roses and home
cooking. But be careful climbing the winding
staircase at my core, where the stairs narrow
at the inside edge and you must climb in
darkness.
One misstep will send you tumbling.
(Image: Looking at Kevin's
old house on West Street, the one on the
left.)