{"id":238,"date":"2018-03-13T14:47:40","date_gmt":"2018-03-13T14:47:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eriksimpson.sites.grinnell.edu\/lightingthepage\/?page_id=238"},"modified":"2018-12-12T03:05:55","modified_gmt":"2018-12-12T03:05:55","slug":"displacement-the-girl-who-raised-pigeons","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/eriksimpson.sites.grinnell.edu\/lightingthepage\/home-2\/displacement-the-girl-who-raised-pigeons\/","title":{"rendered":"Homing: “The Girl Who Raised Pigeons”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cIn those days, before the community was obliterated, a warm Myrtle Street Saturday morning filled both sidewalks and the narrow street itself with playing children oblivious to everything but their own merriment\u201d (8).<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
A row of houses located a few blocks north in the Shaw neighborhood. Image at https:\/\/flic.kr\/p\/qp3PxE by Ted Eytan, used by Creative Commons license.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/blockquote>\n

In\u00a0\u201cThe\u00a0Girl Who Raised\u00a0Pigeons,\u201d\u00a0a girl and her father deal with the changing face of their neighborhood and the home they share. The story starts in the late 1950s with\u00a0Robert, a young man, raising his young daughter Betsy Ann after the death of his wife during childbirth. At age 8, Betsy Ann persuades him to let her raise homing pigeons in their backyard. Unfortunately, after several years, all of the pigeons get killed by rats except for two. The remaining two fly away as well, leaving the girl devastated. The lives and deaths of the pigeons give the story a stark, life-and-death narrative of home and homing that allow the subtler disruptions of human homes to emerge alongside them.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor several weeks,\u201d the narrator relates, \u201cthe pigeons took to the air and returned to Miles\u201d (9). Just as the pigeons took a few weeks to adjust to life with Betsy Ann, it has taken Robert a while to establish a \u201cnest\u201d for him and his daughter. He was nineteen and freshly widowed, and raising a child seemed to him to be a responsibility he could not take on. But unlike the pigeons who could always find their way home, Robert realized that \u201cif he decided to walk away forever [\u2026] there was not a damn thing in the world she could do about it\u201d (8). As he pushes her baby carriage around the neighborhood for the first\u00a0time, he\u00a0realizes that his\u00a0new\u00a0neighbors are helping him\u00a0take\u00a0care of her. He makes his nest: \u201cThe nest was the first solid indication that the pigeons would stay forever, would go but would always return\u201d (12).<\/p>\n

In time, the pigeons join Robert in making Myrtle Street their permanent home. Robert grows to become a good father to his daughter, who \u201cnever stopped rising each morning before Betsy Ann and going out to the coop to see what pigeons might have died in the night\u201d as an attempt to try to save her the pain of watching them die (21). As Betsy Ann grows up, she joins her pigeons in \u201choming\u201d: she gains more independence and is able to go out into the world, with the implicit assumption that she will always return.\u00a0After she tries to shoplift, however, her father takes that privilege away from her. Instead, she is forced to join her father\u2019s version of \u201choming\u201d: driving around the city in his cab, which he\u00a0tries to make \u201cseem as if it were a good way to see the city\u201d (20).\u00a0Despite her protestations, he is right: \u201cshe came to know the city so well that had she been blindfolded and taken to practically any place in Washington, [\u2026] she could have taken off the blindfold and walked home without a moment\u2019s trouble\u201d (24). In time, she also regains her father\u2019s (tentative) trust, and thus her independence, and now truly embodies the homing instinct of the pigeons she had loved so much.<\/p>\n

But most of the pigeons are killed, and the story presents their death as symbolic: \u201cThe scattered feathers, more than the wrecked bodies, spoke to him of helplessness\u201d (22). After those pigeons die, the two remaining fly off, never to be seen again. This broken homing instinct is not limited to her pigeons, as \u201clittle by little [\u2026] Myrtle Street emptied of people, of families who had known no other place in their lives\u201d\u00a0(21). These losses hurt both Betsy Ann and her father, and there is a looming sense that their home is probably next: their landlord Miss Jenny \u201cdid not plant her garden that year, and that small patch of ground, with alien growth tall as a man, reverted to the wild\u201d (12). This neighborhood is no longer theirs: \u201cWhen the colored people and their homes were gone, the wall and the tracks remained, and so did the high school, with the same boys being taught by the same priests\u201d (12).<\/p>\n

As the story of Robert and Betsy Ann unfolds, their\u00a0neighborhood begins to deteriorate, with more and more families moving out every day.\u00a0Their home is located on Myrtle Street (which no longer exists), with K Street to the north, I street to the south, North Capitol Street NW to the west, and First Street NE to the east. Past First Street are the railroad tracks, coming north from Union Station. To the west is Gonzaga High School, a wealthy Catholic prep school for boys, which was segregated at the time of the story.<\/p>\n

\"Map<\/a>
A 1965 map edited to show Betsy Ann and Robert’s home in the story.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Through all of these disruptions, Robert tries to give his daughter as stable a life as possible and to spare her the pain of seeing any of her pigeons get killed; his efforts are his own attempt at \u201choming\u201d for himself and Betsy Ann. He checks up on the birds every morning so that he can remove any dead ones before his daughter can see. The latter attempt turns out futile, however, as the climax of the story shows Betsy Ann walking outside to see her father crying as he tries to put his daughter\u2019s half-dead pigeons out of their misery. However, his larger goal succeeds, to a point: Betsy Ann does learn to return home, like her pigeons, making the ultimate destruction of her home\u2014and the later gentrification of her neighborhood\u2014all the more personal and devastating.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\u201cWhen the colored people and their homes were gone, the wall and the tracks remained, and so did the high school, with the same boys being taught by the same priests\u201d (12).<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The everlasting wall between the neighborhood and the railroad (Google Street View)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
The locked gates to Gonzaga High School (Google Street View)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The neighborhood where these characters live has since been branded as NoMa, or North of Massachusetts Avenue. The once-vibrant Black neighborhood continued to empty through the mid-60s, and tensions continued to build. Only a mile and a half away from the National Mall, the neighborhood endured damaging riots after the 1968 assassination of\u00a0Martin Luther King.\u00a0 The neighborhood became more industrial and lower class, and the Myrtle Street block was turned into a mostly non-residential area. It stayed that way until a new metro station brought new businesses and residents at the turn of the century. Since then, the neighborhood has been in a different state of decline: gentrification, and the (continued) death of a community that comes with it. The area has become increasingly white, and housing prices have skyrocketed: between 2000 and 2013, the average cost to buy a home nearly doubled.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is what the block looks like now:<\/span><\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
A modern birds-eye view, so to speak!, of the block where Myrtle Street once stood (Google Maps)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The block is now \u201chome\u201d to\u00a0IRS Taxpayer Assistance Centers, the Federal Energy Regulatory\u00a0Commission Headquarters, and a nice big parking lot. Within a three-block radius, one can also find Google\u2019s DC office, NPR\u2019s national headquarters, and three different Starbucks. Nearby, one can also find a U-Haul center and the Union Station \u2014 sad and ironic conveniences for the families who can\u2019t afford to live there anymore. The U-Haul center and train station evoke departures, temporary and permanent: the flying away and broken homing that Jones\u2019s story brings to life.<\/p>\n

\n
\n

\u201cHe caught an upwind that took him nearly as high as the tops of the empty K Street houses He flew farther into the Northeast, into the colors and sounds of the city\u2019s morning.\u00a0She did nothing, aside from following him, with her eyes, with her heart, as far as she could\u201d (25).<\/p>\n

\"an<\/a>
Union Station Train Yard (Washington, DC) Image at https:\/\/flic.kr\/p\/5YKq8x by takomabibelot, used by Creative Commons license.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/blockquote>\n
\n

Works Cited<\/p>\n

Geological Survey (U.S.). \u201cWashington and Vicinity, District of <\/span>Columbia-Maryland-Virginia.\u201d U.S. Library of Congress, digdc.dclibrary.org\/cdm\/singleitem\/collection\/p16808coll15\/id\/282.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Girl Who Raised Pigeons.\u201d <\/span>Lost in the City: Stories<\/span><\/i>, by Edward P. Jones, Amistad, <\/span>2012.<\/span><\/p>\n

Google Maps<\/span><\/i>, Google, maps.google.com\/<\/span><\/p>\n

Iweala, Uzodinma. \u201cThe Gentrification of Washington DC: How My City Changed Its <\/span>Colours.\u201d <\/span>The Guardian<\/span><\/i>, Guardian News and Media, 12 Sept. 2016.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jan, Tracy. \u201cHow Foreign Investors Are Transforming a Long-Forgotten D.C. <\/span><\/p>\n

Neighborhood.\u201d <\/span>The Washington Post<\/span><\/i>, WP Company, 22 Nov. 2017.<\/span><\/p>\n

McCartney, Robert. \u201cPerspective | ‘Black Branding’ – How a D.C. Neighborhood Was\u00a0<\/span>Marketed to White Millennials.\u201d <\/span>The Washington Post<\/span><\/i>, WP Company, 3 May <\/span>2017.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWashington DC: Our Changing City.\u201d <\/span>Urban Institute<\/span><\/i>,\u00a0<\/span>https:\/\/www.urban.org\/features\/our-changing-city-collection.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIn those days, before the community was obliterated, a warm Myrtle Street Saturday morning filled both sidewalks and the narrow street itself with playing children oblivious to everything but their own merriment\u201d (8). In\u00a0\u201cThe\u00a0Girl Who… <\/p>\n

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