I catch my foot at the last minute as it is about to descend onto the white and black asphalt. The winking green man is now red, so no jay-walking for me, unless I feel like taking my chances with the traffic. I glance to my left at the grumbling blue truck jolting forward and decide that maybe I should just wait for the light to change like a good citizen. I perch on the curb, next to a blue-green front-end loader that is surrounded by neon orange tape. It stands frozen, a rusted maw gaping at the soil below as if waiting to take another chomp. A greasy orange vest hangs from one of its teeth. Maybe you should floss, buddy. When the green man appears again, I cross and leave the loader to its daydreams.
Across the street, catty-corner to be exact, a riot of green beckons. Really, one of the curling fronds reaches out to me like a gesticulating finger. Come. I slowly walk towards the green, an anomaly in this city long conquered by concrete. I have found it. One last bastion of the fragrant jungle. A survivor of the raze. Walls of gray buildings shoot skyward to imprison the green on all sides. Not a seedling can escape. The plants stretch up toward the blue sky and shifting clouds but are twenty-eight stories too short. Never mind that, they rustle, reach the blue or wither trying.
The green pulls me. Past the cars--don’t get hit. Ignore the Java Maid shop. Try to disregard the 15-min haircut place but can’t help marveling at its efficiency claim. Just a few steps further and I’m in the wild patch itself. My eyes are pulled to a hibiscus blossom, bravely showing off its red petals in a world of green. I blink and am six again, leaning out our front door to gaze at the pretty flower faces nodding down at me. I shuffle around, scuffing my bare, brown feet in dirt, examining each blossom to find the queen. Finally satisfied, I pluck a bloom and tuck it into my hair. I am a jungle princess, a wanderer, a tamer of lizards.
I blink again. Instead of sea of hibiscus sisters crowding out from the leaves, in front of me only hangs a trio. One bold, one nagging, one demure. All doing their best to fill the tree and trying to ignore their failure. I sigh. To pluck one here would be a crime.
My gaze travels down. Gone are the the dust-coated feet of the Laura-child. In their place, red sneakers. At least the white rubber is somewhat scuffed, I console myself.
Head up, I walk further, hesitantly, as if my presence would break the fragile silence of this place. To my left, an old man is stretched out on a pebble-lined bench. One of his tan arms is thrown carelessly over his face. The bottom buttons of his gray shirt have resigned. Further on, I come across a color-patch purse relaxing on a stoop. Oh wait, there is a human there as well, swaying in the breeze and texting on a ruby phone.
A waterfall sound draws me around a corner, but when I burst around the bend, no glorious cascade or swirling rapid. Just a brown fountain, gurgling dismally. A giant brass dolphin, or maybe a fish, tries to leap out of the murky deep. Not a good sign, methinks.
And when I look around with a less romantic eye, my visions of jungle fades. Trees are imprisoned in boxes of cement and metal cages hold up the boisterous creeping branches. The plants here are no more free than the potted plants on the Central walkways. Wilderness is an illusion. But as I turn to go, shoes dragging on the pebbled path, I see a crack. A break in the structure, a chip in the cement. One unrepentant weed is breaking through the path to forge its own trail to the sun. I smile at its shining leaves. Resistance is never truly dead.
