Richard Pryor, Ed McCarthy, and Tookie Williams formed an unlikely trifecta of death the weekend I caught a mild case of the bird flu. I didn’t see a doctor or anything, I just ate a lot of seeds and curled up in a pile of sawdust and it worked itself out. The night Tookie died I heard gunshots from all four corners of my neighborhood and shadowy hooded figures ran through the streets in packs like wolves.

A black teen in a red sweatshirt rang my doorbell around seven pm while I was waiting for my fiance to get home.

“You gotta call somebody,” he said. He looked scared. “They gonna start shooting.”

I let him into the hallway that connected our apartment with the one upstairs and asked him if he was okay.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Are you really afraid,” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Come on inside, then, there’s the phone.” I opened the door all the way and gestured to the desk.

“Okay, hold up.” He put his hands on his knees and caught his breath.

“Okay,” he said again. “Thanks.”

And then he ran out the front door, back into the crowd of raised voices in front of the library.

The newspaper lay on my couch. The top story told of a seventeen year old Hmong boy who had woken from a two-month long coma the day before. He was bludgeoned to the brink of death by a gang member with a baseball bat for committing the unspeakable crime of borrowing the wrong-colored sweatshirt, red, from his cousin.

I think about the French race riots in the fall of 2005 and feel a chill deeper than the winter winds. I get nervous when my neighbors walk past my car.

We live next to each other, but in completely different planes of existence.

Later that night, while I’m trying to sleep so I can make it to work on time, the crank fiend in the duplex next door is hiding in the shadows of our alleyway. The police storm across our backyard in their squad car to reach the alley as she dives behind a garage. They scan the area with a spotlight while the Mexican family across the street is furiously remodeling their latest home purchase. They own half the block, and I have a negative net worth.

Tell that to the folks claiming the American dream is dead.

These immigrant’s children, born here, with no memory of Mexico, are calling for closed borders, and they give their money back to the system one Big Mac and South Pole sweatshirt at a time.

When he checks the mailbox twenty years from now, his stingy adult kids won’t help cover the cost of his groceries, and he may regret the trip across the wide river and high fence.

And that’s how he will know they’re American.

The cops give up and drive off in search of less wily prey, and the junkie scuttles through the night back to her own house.

I go back to my couch and put on something vapid to dissociate.