The first person I met when we bought our “fixer upper” brownstone in Harlem eight years ago was a manic crack addict named Salami. This menacing apparition bolted out of the abandoned house next door to inform me that he planned to take over our new abode.
“It ain’t your house, Mama,” he hollered about the property in which I had just sunk all our savings. “I used to squat there and I’m gonna get it back.”
Thus began my adventure in what is euphemistically called an “emerging neighborhood.” My husband and I bought our decayed Victorian townhouse because it was cheap. We didn’t have a lot of money and having lived in dodgy places abroad, we thought it was worth taking a risk on this sketchy neighborhood. What we learned along the way is that a house doesn’t stop at four walls and it’s worth negotiating with unfriendly neighbors. Even folks like Salami can be won over.
Not that he was our only problem. The street, we only learned right after taking possession of the house, lay in the epicenter of the narcotics trade of the northeastern seaboard. Funny—the real estate agent neglected to tell us this. On a given day, twenty vigorous Dominican youths leaned on our front gate and hawked cocaine to armed men in big cars. This drug Wall Street made it hard to find parking—clients took all the spaces—and the dealers used our front steps as a garbage can and toilet.
My cousin Greg, who had purchased a similarly abandoned house elsewhere in New York City, advised me to reason with the fellows. “Tell them that you won’t call the cops if they promise not to piss on your property,” he advised. Following his lead, I went up to the head of the gang, a suave fellow draped in gold chains, and used my fluent Spanish to strike a deal. Just as Greg said, these narcotics peddlers weren’t that bad—just young men trying to make a buck to send back home. The last thing they wanted was for us to interrupt business. The guys not only agreed to stay off our front steps, but after a while even held a parking spot for my elderly mother when she came to visit. They also chased away a stoned trespasser who threatened to stab my pregnant belly.
Despite his initial hostility, Salami was surprisingly easy to win over, too. It took me some time to gather up the nerve to approach him. Salami had muscles like a bodybuilder, which he pumped up by swinging on the traffic lights. He also had an unnerving tendency to shriek uncontrollably when high. I broke the ice with some questions about his gunshot wounds—he wore them proudly like tattoos—and further sealed cordiality by offering him odd jobs like sweeping up construction debris.
