Judith Matloff - Home Girl: Building a Dream House on a Lawless Block

CONTENTS

This ones for Mom, John, and Anton.

Si la pruebas, te quedas.

(If you try it, youll stay.)

Printed on restaurant flyers posted along Broadway.

AUTHORS NOTE

T he events depicted in this book are true, although I often wished they werent. I compressed a few incidents for narrative expediency, but otherwise they are faithful to life. Masked are the identities of various neighbors, law enforcers, and fugitives from justice, so as not to endanger anyones safety or privacy. For that reason, I will not openly thank these individuals for sharing their stories.

PROLOGUE

April 2000

I needed to get a second look. After all, I had just pledged our entire savings on a house in Harlem, without informing my husband, who was in Moscow, 5, 620 miles away. The decent thing would be to see it again one more time to make sure I had done the right thing.

Leaving the subway platform, I ran up the stairs to the street, where the Mexican vendor cried, Tamales, tama-ales, like a siren. Wow, that smelled good. Like a linebacker, I pushed my way up Broadway through what seemed like hundreds of men leaning into SUVs and shouting into cell phones in Spanish. What terrific street life! If I closed my eyes and ignored the police sirensfor some reason there were so manyI could imagine myself on a commercial drag in Santo Domingo. I almost bumped into a group playing sidewalk baseball with a broomstick. They shot me curious looks. No wondermy battered Russian sheepskin coat stood out here amid the sea of black North Face jackets. This was the realm of luscious dominicanas with straightened ponytails; there werent too many scrawny gringas with unkempt reddish frizz around here.

I swiftly strode the four blocks to the house. It felt like four hundred blocksI couldnt get there soon enough. Turning the corner of what would soon be mymy!street, I passed a cluster of men who regarded me gravely. Buenas tardes! I called out cheerily. No one replied. Well, who could blame them for being standoffish to an outsider? I fit in as subtly as a Wal-Mart next to a bodega. Whatever. There would be plenty of time to get acquainted.

When I reached the brick townhouse, I quietly asked a couple of men leaning on the metal gate to please move aside so that I could get past. Heart thumping with anticipation, I trod up the crumbled front steps to the once stately, splintering oak door. This was amazing! Inside, the real estate broker who had sold me the house stood in the empty living room gathering up spare leaflets. He eyed me warily, but I reassured him that I merely wanted another viewing. Cant wait until we sign the contract! I told him.

I climbed the central staircase that creaked so romantically, tripping on a loose step. Touring the four floors, I took in all of the space and Victorian woodwork, and counted the various ceilings that were caving in. I tried to call my husband, John, on the cell phone but no one answered. No matter. He would surely love this. He said he was handy. Hed fix everything.

Downstairs, I viewed the ivy-choked garden through the cracked back windows. Ah, I sighed rapturously. This will soon be mine!

Chapter 1

SOMEWHERE UNCIVILIZED

T he first time I spoke to the man who would become my husband, we talked about another house. It was in 1995, exactly five years earlier, in Johannesburg, and we found ourselves sitting together at a Russian restaurant. We dozen or so members of South Africas foreign press corps had been convened by Joe, a mutual friend from Newsweek, to mark the unusual fact that we were all in town at the same time, in between reporting trips. The mood at the table was variously morose or nonsensical, depending on the state of inebriation.

I was on the lower rungs of glum, having just returned from a trip to Rwanda. I had been covering the first anniversary of the genocide and I was pretty shaken, having witnessed the exhumation of fifteen thousand bodies. It was the most horrendous thing Id ever seen during fifteen years as a journalist. I had returned to Joburg looking forward to some TLC from my photographer boyfriend, only to discover that he had been cheating on me during this absence as well as others. The dinner invitation came just as I broke up with him, and as I drove over to the restaurant I vowed to avoid romance for a long, long while.

Now at the table, though, I couldnt help noticing the handsome Dutchman on my right. The words newly single drifted into my ears as he chatted with others. I learned that this manly specimens name was John, he was my age, and he was a business writer. Joe suggested that we speak; John had recently exposed a diamond-smuggling ring in Angola, a country about which I was writing a book. However, I was more interested in Johns tall, athletic body. The debonair way this man with the rugged looks rolled his cigarette was particularly fetching, and I resolved to get his number at the end of the meal.

There was something I wanted from him immediately, though. I was in the process of buying my first piece of real estate ever and needed mortgage advice. Surely John, as a finance maven, had expertise to share.

I introduced myself and prattled on about the airy charms of the house, which had a little pond in front that I could gaze upon while writing. An empty lot in the back provided ample space for my big dog to roam. Two cottages on the property could be rented out to cover the mortgage. All this for $65,000!

John listened intently. His sea-green eyes grew serious. Interest rates are twenty percent. The rand is collapsing.

I shrugged.

He persisted. Judith, only an idiot would buy now.

N ever one to mull over inconvenient wisdom, I bought the house the next week. I continually faced danger in my work and was accustomed to weighing consequences when taking risks. This one seemed worth it. Besides, I desired the property with, well, lust.

Lots of people buy real estate at age thirty-seven, but this purchase marked a momentous shift for me. The prosaic phrase time to settle down didnt quite convey the violent compulsion I felt to acquire a property deed. While my (mainly) male contemporaries were ditching their first wives or buying vintage Jaguars, my version of a midlife crisis was to obtain a fixed address. For fifteen years I had roamed overseas with an almost adolescent lack of commitment, faithful only to the misguided idealism that my reportage could change the world. From the moment I left college to write about Latin American rebellions I had forfeited most peoples notions of safety and comfort. Possessions, lovers, soul mates, relativesall were sacrificed when I received marching orders for the next assignment, be it in Africa or in Europe. Marriage was a luxury for others. Of course I would have liked a partner to come along, but none was willing to follow me anywhere.

The pull to the front lines of history led me to witness the fall of the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko in what was then Zaire, and become an expert at talking my way onto African gun-smuggling planes. I remembered the first time I was shot at, in Guatemala, the way others recalled first kisses.

It was heady stuff. What a privilege! I had visited more than fifty countries, and was soon to be a published author! A rich montage of images flashed when I thought about my years abroad. Nelson Mandela had smiled in recognition when he saw me. UNITA rebels had threatened me with death in Angola. Scorpions had hidden in my boots in Sudan. I had seen the Berlin Wall before it fell and met various presidents. A gorilla had touched my shoulder in the rain forest!