Price Check (Hooking pt 3)

Years have passed since we moved here. The work we have done in this neighborhood has all but wiped out unkind sentiments. Now my neighbors tend to look at me with a confused sense of gratitude.

That is why the look from the drunk man catches me off guard. I can't describe it as hostile, but there's something unkind about it that I don't understand until he speaks.

Our apartment stands at the corner of the parking lot by the office. Karina and Vanessa's sits kitty-corner to ours.

Ruthie and I knock on their door on Sunday mornings to pick up Karina for church. But it is Saturday night, and we are speaking at another church tomorrow, so we are knocking to tell Karina that Jarrett will pick her up instead.

The man, stout, Latino, mustached, and obviously a bit drunk, sways slightly on the sidewalk as we pass him. We mount the steps to the kids' apartment, and he and his friend follow at a distance. We knock on the door and he hovers about ten feet from us in the hallway.

Vanessa answers. We tell her about the ride situation and she talks with us, but glances over our shoulders at him.

He gives me a wierd feeling. I look at him, making eye contact, not macho or aggressive so much as curious what he's doing. He chins the air in my direction. I turn and say goodbye to Vanessa abruptly, and she gets the cue, and says, OK, and closes the door.

-Hey, he says to me.

I turn to face him and respond, Yeah?

-How much?

Later, after it all plays out, it will seem strange to me how it takes a moment to interpret the question. But Ruthie has never been mistaken for a prostitute before, nor I a pimp. And beyond that, we have a great deal of love for these neighbors, which makes my mind spin a bit to find a better understanding than the obvious one, which is that this guy wants to pay me to have sex with my wife.

-No way, I tell him, She's my wife, I tell him.

I run a check to see if we did anything wrong aside from being here when we don't really naturally belong. Ruthie wears slacks and a modest, long-sleeved t-shirt. I wear jeans and a button-down cowboy shirt.Avoid the appearance of evil, the Bible says, but sometimes good things are so strange that evil gets assumed.

Several understandings roll through my head at once. The first is that I am not angry. Then, in the dream-time that thoughts travel, in the moment of contact between my eyes and his, I feel that a good thing has occurred, that a mystery has been offered between us and this man. That the strangeness of our presence here tells a story.

Here's a truth about our neighborhood that dawns on me as I turn from him and follow Ruthie out to our car: That we are in America, but that when a white person enters this neighborhood, it is usually to exploit or arrest or pimp out low-class hookers to these people.

But here is the final fact, and the reason I feel glad as Ruthie and I laugh together at what has just taken place: We are changing a dynamic. We are breaking an evil norm. The fact of the norm is dark, tragic, and unsettling. It is a division defined by fear and greed. But we are defying it in the name and Love of Jesus.

So the pimps will continue to move through the neighborhood. The police will have their roadblocks and arrest those who would risk all to feed and offer a hopeful future to their families. Churches and politicians with their pamphlets will canvas the neighborhood then leave.

Our own love is shallow. Our sacrifice is small. But God has taken our decision to live in his love seriously, and he uses it to speak to our neighborhood.