The Deckchair Detective
Nurture that curiosity. It might grow into something special.
By Zora O'Neill; photographs by Amy Eckert
Where are the neighbors from? It’s a little guessing game that’s always fascinating in Astoria,
a small corner of Queens. The rest of New York City’s most diverse borough is a patchwork
of enclaves—three square blocks of Colombians adjacent to five square blocks of Indians,
like that all the way east to the border. But in Astoria, Greeks rub shoulders with Italians,
Czechs, Egyptians, Tunisians, Croats, Brazilians, Albanians, Mexicans.
So, prizes to the keen eyes that pick out small clues in the backyard across from me. My
roommate points: fig trees. And grape leaves are just starting to leaf out on gnarled vines
sunk in half-barrels at the bottoms of posts. That means somewhere Mediterranean. A few
weeks later, the other barrels full of plants begin to yield long, pointy, hot-looking chili
peppers—that rules out Greek, probably.
Italian? I listen close for the intermittent syllables that well up to my deck. (Haphazardly strung
fairy lights, droopy houseplants, Astroturf—these are the clues that would identify me as a
post-hippie from New Mexico, spooked by the desert into skimping on water.) But I never hear
enough to identify the language clearly. Compared with the man down the block who sells me
salt-packed anchovies and tells me my total is “tre cinquanta,” the cadence doesn’t sound
Italian.
Croatian, then? But most Croatians started coming to Astoria only recently, and these
people, whose summer landscaping routine runs like clockwork and whose grape vines are
as thick as my wrists, look like they’ve been here for decades.
As the summer passes, the vines wind up the poles and leaf out full, each further obscuring
my neighbors from view, muffling their voices, enclosing them in their own particular Eden. A
ripe chili flashes red through a gap in the grape leaves. The figs pull down their rubbery
boughs. Guests chatter, and the smell of grilled meat fills the air. The deckchair detective is
stymied.
But I do glimpse one last detail before the greenery seals them in. We’re using the same
charcoal in our barbecue grills: Royal Oak, the brand available everywhere in Astoria, the
red bag with the label that reads, “This is the charcoal our ancestors used.”
Wherever they’re from, I’m from there, too.
|
|
