My new #FFFFFF neighbors are worse than the rats I can't get rid of

I wanted to put aside my bias, but I can't.

Peering out the front window of my apartment, I see one. It scurries up the wall, does a front flip into a claw hang, and enters the can. My garbage can. Right inside the front gate. Crossing key battle lines.

I have seen rats on my block and around the corner on St. John's Place. Even the border on Sterling breaks the safe zone, brown and gray slop soldiers patrolling.

Then, there are the invaders. The generals of gentrification. The corporals of colonialism. Swooshy pants and nose rings, carpenter pants, orange beanies. Big leather Doc Martens. Stringy hair with the bleached brows.

When I moved back to Crown Heights, I was a kind of gentrifier but not like them. I grew up here so I know the terrain. I could show you Ali's or the netball courts at Lincoln Terrace Park. I rode the B17 as a kid to Utica for the 3 train to the city. The same McDonald's is open there, but instead of crime, digital kiosks hover.

I don't like my new neighbors.

Before, there were some single older Black men upstairs, all with locked hair, from the islands. One of them would complain on phone calls I overheard echo in the hall. My first week in, he pulled me aside tell me what the landlord was up to. He was suspicious this new guy wanted to sell the building. My neighbor Isaiah wasn't making much money in the pandemic as a contractor. The construction had stopped. He had a grown daughter.

Once the sheriff taped the orange eviction notice, I knew they weren't long for that place. I said, 'You know some white people bout to move in' when they'd cleared the last of their furniture five weeks later.

He had a gold earring, a knit hat to buttress his locks in their halo. The hallway smelled like burnt dirt weed and nag champa. I could see the Lion of Judah flag taped to the inside of their window. They didn't say much but they helped all the time, at first telling us garbage days. Three older men in a shared duplex. One drove Uber and when his shift ended, around 2 a.m., he'd sit in the driveway outside talking to a woman in a sweet voice. He had a glass eye (or a dead eye he didn't patch). Another rode a fixie bike to work around 8 a.m., was quiet and slim, and threw me a nod when he'd see me riding mine too.

Once the sheriff taped the orange eviction notice, I knew they weren't long for that place. I said, 'You know some [redacted] people bout to move in' when they'd cleared the last of their furniture five weeks later.

And they did move in. The first week of the invaders brought familiar discomfort. Hurried introductions with heads down. A lot of coordinating to make sure we knew which mailbox was theirs. Nervous eye contact.

I've been taking out the garbage, but they've never asked about pickup days. It piles up a lot more now. That started the rodent insurrection. Some rats have chewed a hole into the back hinge of the can and slipped in one fat, wriggling body at a time. On garbage days, I stare out the window, disgusted and terrified. The first time two jumped out, I copied them and ran back in the house.

A rat sticks its head out of a garbage can as it hunts for food in Bogardus Plaza in Tribeca on August 17, 2022, in New York City. (Photo by Gary Hershorn)

Nope. House was theirs now. Front yard, car, keys. Everything. Y'all got it. First, they invaded the garbage can, and I said nothing. Then, they'd come for the recycling, the compost. This is now a rat sanctuary and I only preside.

But what pissed me off later that month was the impassive gentrifiers upstairs. They sent me a text about mice.

Mice?! Motherfucker, there's literal rats jumping out of the garbage can that I take out every Wednesday. You must see them because every trip to the bin is like 2004 Baghdad. How many sieged the can today? How much shit's oozed out of the holes they clawed in the bag? Are they breeding? Is this a safe haven? Where are all the fucking howling stray cats now?!?

But the gentrifiers must not be bothered because the mice are in their kitchen or whatever.

"Last time, we had a mouse, I used this electric kill trap and this bait," I wrote back and copied some links to Amazon. Let Bezos handle it like the rest of civilization, you animals.

"Ronnie sent us his exterminator's number, so we're going to use that," the tall blonde one told me.

The last time I reached out to the landlord about extinguishing vermin, he told me we were on our own. He couldn't foot the bill for some mice. Not like we're paying him 38,000 a year or anything. Guess it's different when you're young and white and living five to a unit. They had numbers and the police on their side.

The next Wednesday, after hyping myself up in the dead of night, punching the air, I approached the garbage. I rolled it out to the curb. My upstairs neighbor exited a cab street-side. As I contemplated the move, he slinked past me toward our front door. I flipped the top of the garbage can screaming bloody murder at the triple-rat attack. Two leapt at me, one toward this young man scrambling for his key. He wouldn't lift his head for a second. Don't you see we're in the trenches here, brother?! Must I fight alone?!

My heart sunk and then hardened.

Yes, we each go to our separate boxes with meal slabs and pee places and shit holes. Yes, we agree, per the cold etiquette of city life, to not trouble each other. To stay nameless. The guy with the Knicks hat walking his kid to school. The junkie with the shopping cart arguing with herself and god. The interracial couple with the toddler girls. Yes, I endorse this social contract until death whispers, nymph-like, in my ticklish ear. But no.

No, you cannot see a rat jump out of our shared garbage can and not scream. Not move. Not let out a yelp of disgust, disbelief. We are a society!

When I started writing this screed, the scratchy gate in the driveway cranked open. Plastic wheels bouldered on the cement. The replacement garbage cans from the city had arrived. I spied out of the upstairs window this time. The men in coveralls, one with locks in his hair, marked up a clipboard. Delivery final.

I opened my phone to a headline, now going viral, that made me smile and choke up. The mayor-approved bins, the ones with the disposable lids, can be chewed through just like the old ones.

Somehow, this is my new [blank] neighbors' fault.