Automobiles play an important background role in many stories of Lost in the City. Cars infiltrate the lives of suburbanites, drug dealers, and the lonely working class. So, what do cars and cabs mean to these stories, and what do they tell us about Edward P. Jones’ characters?
Cars serve as a barrier for Black people in these stories. The separation of residents by race in Washington, D.C. is a well-documented phenomenon. Tonya Price describes how, historically, D.C. has created barriers for People of Color via urban planning related to transportation. Opened in 1976, the city’s Metro did not reach the suburbs in its early constructions, thereby necessitating a car for people to access the wealthier areas of the metro area. In later stages, the Metro system came to reach those areas and provide special amenities and better maintenance to suburban metro lines. The Red Line to wealthier outlying areas was completed before lines serving predominantly Black communities (Price 314). Price contends that many choices made through D.C. urban planning have had an alienating effect on non-white residents.
Jones’ short stories seemingly parallel and animate Price’s position on white spaces. The Black characters of Lost in the City rarely have access to certain areas of the city, and cars act as a conduit to these spaces for the powerful. Furthermore, in one story, “His Mother’s House,” cars are a clear status symbol as well as a major driver, so to speak, of the plot. The story centers on Joyce Moses, though much of it involves Rickey Madison—Joyce’s common-law husband—and Santiago Moses, her son. Rickey drives Santiago around to suburbs and drug deals, providing Santiago access to wealthier areas of D.C. than those familiar to his mother. Rickey describes money and power in terms of car travel. When telling how he met one of the most notorious gangsters in town, Smokey Peebles, he notes that “Sandy had me drive him to this place off Florida Avenue, to some kinda old-fashioned drug store” (Jones 163). Moreover, Rickey describes the location as “just like in those old black-and-white movies,” as if the store is some ethereal setting, untouched by the mundanities of Rickey’s world (163).
Rickey is often in awe of cars and how their ownership projects power. Later in his story about Smokey Peebles, Rickey links the man’s car to his wealth. Rickey notes that Smokey’s car is a Mercedes and illustrates the power grab of him driving the car on his own with his bodyguard assisting him. Finally, the scene ends with Smokey throwing money in the air as he departs. The gesture is dramatic, to say the least, but it does get the point across: successful people have the luxury of automobiles. Smokey and Santiago are the wealthiest characters in the story as well as the only ones in the story that have automobiles.
Two more moments of “His Mother’s House” address the way that cars function as a conduit to a different life. The first pertains to a secondary character, Adam. Essentially abandoned by his mother after she breaks things off with Santiago, Adam is characterized as transient and disillusioned by his life. After his abandonment, Adam lives with Joyce before seeming to go into foster care or adoption. However, the object repeatedly associated with Adam is a small toy car. He seems attached to it; Joyce distills his weeks living with her by saying that “he mostly sat out of the way in a corner of the room, rolling the car back and forth” (Jones 160).
It appears that Adam utilizes the toy as a form of escapism. Maybe he does this simply because it is a toy, but the car may also symbolize a form of escape to a freer life. According to urban policy scholar Paul Ong, car ownership provides socioeconomic mobility (240). Adam may see the car as a symbol for this kind of mobility, allowing him to move away from his current life. The second moment pertains to the suburbs that Santiago inhabits during the short story. It is worth noting that these areas are still difficult to access using the current train and bus systems, let alone those of 1980s D.C. The fact that Santiago can afford to live in Fort Washington is made convenient only by his car. In effect, Santiago’s car ownership is tearing down housing barriers.
In “An Orange Line Train to Ballston”, a car is featured again as a mode of escapism, but in this case, the escape is unsuccessful. In the story, the main character, Marvella, borrows a car so that she can try to find a man she encounters on the train. She takes her children on an outing to explore the city looking for him. This outing serves as an escape, as Marvella hopes to find a man she romanticizes. Similarly, the children see this event as a departure from normal life. Marvella comments that for the kids “there was nothing said, except for Marvin’s comment that being so far away from home, they might miss their father when he arrived” (113). For all the characters, the usage of a car disrupts their daily life.
Taxis also mirror the theme of escape in Jones’ stories and provide similar affordances to Black characters, but as vehicles that are hired temporarily rather than owned, they produce an alienation beyond that of private cars. In the short story “Lost in the City,” Lydia attempts to throw off the shackles of her ego by taking a cab. She tells the cab driver, “Just keep on driving and get us lost in the city. I’ll pay you. I have the money” (148). This moment tells us two things: Lydia wants the taxi ride to permit a respite in her life, and she has enough money to buy that respite without considering cost. By contrast, in “His Mother’s House”, when Rickey’s car breaks down before he joins Santiago in business, Sandy has to give him money to take a cab to work, alleviating Rickey’s stress about getting his car fixed (159).
Therefore, to answer the inciting question of this page, cars and cabs mean a lot to the characters of Lost in the City. They are status symbols as demonstrated in “His Mother’s House.” However, they also permit a kind of freedom to characters, allowing them to escape from normal life, or at least to fantasize about doing so. Characters such as Marvella, with her unsuccessful attempts at seeing the dreadlock man, show how fleeting the fantasies derived from cars can be. Even Santiago and Rickey’s prosperity disintegrates by the end of “His Mother’s House.” Jones is conscious of how cars constructed a level of privilege and afforded access to historically inaccessible places, while still complicating the car’s relationship to his characters.
Works Cited:
Ong, Paul M. “Car Ownership and Welfare-to-Work.” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, vol. 21, no. 2, 2002, pp. 239–252. JSTOR, JSTOR.
Price, Tanya Y. “White Public Spaces In Black Places: The Social Reconstruction Of Whiteness In Washington, D.C.” Urban Anthropology and Studies of Cultural Systems and World Economic Development, vol. 27, no. 3/4, 1998, pp. 301–344. JSTOR.
