While C and Boo and I were headed to the Wortham to
see C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters, 17 year old Kelsin Flores was bleeding
to death on the patio of his apartment half a mile from our house. Police
responded to random gunshots in the Bel Lindo complex at W. Bellfort and Bob
White, shabby apartments that have been unfairly described as “Guatemala after an
earthquake."
When police arrived, things seemed calm but a search revealed
Kelsin alone on his porch, shot by no one for no reason.
This is the fourth murder at the entrance to our
neighborhood in less than two years.
Since we moved here, a woman’s body was
found in a dumpster, a man’s body was found in a car, a woman was killed by her
husband during what is euphemistically called “a dispute” and Kelsin’s life
ended on a Sunday afternoon. All of these happened within a block of each
other, on the same side of a busy street, half a mile from my house.
Kelsin was
my neighbor.
When we returned from the play, all that remained were a few
bored police officers, a small crowd of young people and some yellow tape.
Reading the comments under the news story, I read about how this
area is full of “trash,” “thugs,” and “ghetto.” I read one person’s evaluation
that “there was probably no victim here,” implying that Kelsin got what he
deserved, even though there was absolutely no information about him in the
article. Several joked about the photos of the crime scene, calling the complex
“a dump” and saying that no one with any pride would live there. One commenter
said, “Just hope they don’t start moving to other parts of town.”
All this
about a kid who will never be an adult.
I don’t know how to relate to my neighborhood. An online apartment finder ad describes it as “one of Houston’s most budget friendly
areas” (which is why we are here), that it has
“a diverse and sometimes challenging history,” and that it is a “melting
pot of ethnicity.”
It’s actually a pretty nice place to live. The trees are big
and spread their green canopies over those lucky enough to live under them.
Most of the noise is from kids playing (or partying) at the pool across the
street. Most days, I see parents and grandparents walking their little ones to
and from school. The moms stand around outside the entry to the school waiting
for the kids to get out, just like my friends and I did when our kids were in school in a
very different neighborhood. Sometimes, we pass groups of families and friends,
men barbecuing in the tiny green spaces outside their apartment doors,
surrounded by children playing and women chatting. They look relaxed and happy and if I spoke
Spanish, I might stop and talk, hoping someone would offer me a burger.
And . . . in the first five months that we lived here, I
witnessed five arrests. I know that my neighborhood confronts me every day but I
don’t know exactly how to respond. I know to get to know my neighbors—all of us
very different from each other so that every conversation in the front yard or
in our den is a cross-cultural experience. I know to pray for the kids at the
elementary school when I drive by at least twice a day, and for their families
and their teachers. I know to use the
local businesses when I can and to smile and to make conversation when it makes
sense.
But I don’t know exactly how to live in a community where a
teenaged boy is randomly killed on his own patio and it is literally no big deal.
