The story he tells me is that Blade has killed a man in his tunnel, a “crackhead” who was harassing a woman passing through. It happened on the Saturday I was out of the city, but Blade thought he saw me witness the killing, and that I ran away. He chased me but I escaped, and then he saw me speaking to a policeman. When he was unable to reach me by phone on the weekend, he became convinced that I had gone to the police. Because I am not a tunnel person and don’t live by tunnel rules—the chief one of which is never to inform to the police on another tunnel person—I am dangerous to Blade and will be dangerous to him for years.
This is what Blade believes, according to Tyrone. I believe Tyrone.
Tyrone shakes as he tells me. “You gotta understand how dangerous he is,” says Tyrone. “You gotta leave the city, go home.” My rapport with tunnel people has ended. Some will refuse to talk to me, and others will hide from me, he says.
“It’s not you, baby,” explains a homeless woman I particularly like. “It’s that people could get killed just talking to you. We want you to be OK. We love you, but we want you to leave. I don’t want to see you die, and if you keep coming into these tunnels like this, someone’s gonna go fetch Blade to get on his good side. There’s eyes all over this place, you know that. So go home, baby, please go home.”
Blade’s phone calls by now are even more terrifying. He tells me he will come to my apartment.
“I’m gonna come over with my blade. It’s better than some piece gun. It got ya name on it and it thirsty. Ready to talk?” His words are blurred by street sounds from a booth, but his voice is steady and hard in a quick cold environment.
That night, going down to do laundry in the basement of my apartment building, his scribbled tag is painted on the green wall of my elevator. I am hardly able to think, seeing strange colors. His signature had once been so reassuring to me, comforting; if I feared trouble, I could drop his name and I’d be left alone. Now his tag means he is close to me. I am afraid even to go outside, even for groceries.
An officer tells me I should get a gun. No matter what happens, if I kill a man in my apartment, the case would never go to trial. I wonder if I could kill Blade. Within a few days of sleepless terror, I know I can if he comes into my apartment. I wish he would stand in my doorway so I could kill him—a man whose face I still remember only with a smile.
A week later, I leave New York.
IT WAS EXHILARATING, WALKING A TIGHTROPE, EXPLORING THE underground while living aboveground. I had been part of two worlds, but I came to know the tunnel world too well, enough to be caught up in its irrational behavior and volatile emotions. I was no longer privy and at the same time immune to tunnel life with the guise of an outsider. I had already been slapped around when I tried to stop a man from battering his woman. Now I might be killed, and now I know that I could also kill.
As many tunnel people have told me, the line between them and people who live on the surface is very thin, much thinner than people on the “topside world” like to realize. I felt I could step over that line. I could also escape, and I did. I hope some of them will escape, too.
Epilogue
MONTHS HAVE PASSED SINCE I WAS LAST IN THE TUNNELS. Every time I hear about New York, I see a picture in my mind of the city in lights, sparkling with promise and excitement, and I think of the people I left behind in its shadow. Willie, Frederick, and Sane (David Smith) died before this book was published. Brenda is missing. Mac is still roaming the tunnels in search of track rabbits, and whistling. Seville’s hobble healed into a steady limp. He is still smiling, using his humor to help him and others cope while looking for the welding job to free him from tunnel life. Bernard continues to meet at his campfire with Bob, Tony, and the other members of his vibrant community. They talk about trying to retrieve Sheila, who is lost to alcohol and the streets. Sheila keeps true to her promise to Willie, and says that no matter how bad things get on the streets, she won’t live in the tunnels again. She misses the people down there, she says. She misses caring for them and being cared for. John moved out of the tunnel to live with a girlfriend on West 72nd Street. He met her with the help of John Tierney’s article in The New York Times in which he spoke openly about his quest for love. He left Mama in the tunnel with Joe. Chris is spending months’ worth of pay on paint for tunnel murals, he tells me, shaking his head. The one he’s currently working on, his most ambitious yet, will cost about $1,000. He’s planning to spread Sane’s ashes at the foot of the mural on the tunnel ground. Smith sprinkled the other half of his brother’s ashes along the No. 1 subway line, Sane’s favorite. Roger is slowly recovering from his brother’s death. Dolly is living with a man three times her age “for security until my rich man finds me,” she says, her eyes blackened by drugs. She heard on the streets that Frank is in jail, but she doesn’t know where the other members of the runaway community are now. Many more of those interviewed for this book may now be lost or dead.
When I began this book, I did my best not to interfere with the lives of the people in the tunnels. I never gave them money, but sometimes brought them food or warm clothes I bought from street vendors and thrift shops. I tried to avoid handing out cigarettes, but sometimes I did. I gave advice on which shelters to go to and what programs to join and sometimes helped them get there. I tried to limit such advice only to the times I was asked. I never reported children to authorities, mostly because I wanted to establish trust within the communities. I’ll always wonder if I made the wrong decision.
Nightmares from the tunnels have followed me. One in particular still haunts me. It’s of a girl in the tunnels living with her parents and two brothers. In my nightmare she wakes itching from the bugs and disease in the tunnels. She scratches, which only makes the itch rise into sores. She wakes her brother, who is just a year older, and they whisper so as not to wake their parents or younger brother.
“I’m sorry I woke you,” she tells her brother. She shows him the sores, which have spread over her arms and soft face. He’s surprised but also tired and tells her not to worry about it until the morning. The girl turns in her sleep until she can’t stand the itch and pain any longer. She finds a crack razor on the tunnel floor and uses it to carve out each of her sores. It relieves the itch, but then she sees the blood running over her body and she touches her face, slippery with warm blood. She wakes her brother again. He looks shocked and frightened.
“Don’t worry,” he says soothingly. “Maybe you’ll die by morning.” And he turns over to go back to sleep. She lies on her back, thinking of the people walking above her, and accepts this as she accepts the rest of her life. She thinks that she will never be able to join their lives aboveground now that her scars from the tunnel are so obvious. She worries about her family. She closes her eyes, hoping that she’ll die by morning. And then I wake up in a sweat.
AS MY YEAR OF RESEARCH IN THE TUNNELS CONTINUED, I GATHERED more nightmares and concerns for the people I met there. I found it increasingly difficult to stay on the periphery of their lives. Several people became more than subjects; they became my friends. They’d give me advice on everything from office politics to how to handle my boyfriend. They taught me more than I thought I could learn. They opened avenues of thought I had no idea existed.
Their lives became very much a part of my own life. In exploring their world, I sometimes lost my own. They could understand and even help explain some of the changes going on inside of me better than my topside friends. Very early on, I recognized that they gave me more than I could give them. They showed me warmth in their cold, often mean world, which gave me hope, not only for them, but for all things. They even showed me happiness in what first seemed to me a void of darkness. They showed me a beauty to their world that saved me from a deep unhappiness. Most of all, they showed me that, even in the worst conditions, people can care for each other over themselves.