I had no business being in Cincinnati on the night of May 29th, 2020. The world is coping with a global, deadly pandemic; anger is rising in waves as a response to George Floyd’s murder; life looks nothing like it did four months ago. That didn’t stop me, my mom, sister, and her friend from traveling to Cincinnati for a “girls weekend” as a post-graduation trip for my sister. We were supposed to go to Mexico – Cincinnati seemed like a reasonable alternative in COVID times.
The trip started off with a strange trek downtown to 4th street. My sister wanted to go to a specific store, and we braved the heat in impractical shoes to check it out and do some shopping. Something that seems frivolous, but could help give us back a sense of normalcy that we’d lost. Walking past closed restaurants, “for lease” signs, boarded -up windows, and fewer people than I’d ever seen downtown, we finally made it to the store.
We strapped on our masks – something we kept having to remind each other to bring when we’d venture out – and walked in. Flipped through minimal racks of over-priced street clothes and wandered around the store. A few other people in masks were there, too, tentatively trying on shoes or holding up a jacket. We chose a few items, paid, and left, deciding to get a ride back to our Airbnb.
The ride was far enough away that we decided to walk back instead – despite the blisters already forming. Again, we walked side-by-side up quiet streets, the buildings, and asphalt radiating heat on our now-bare faces. I’d forgotten how black Cincinnati is. Having spent the last two years secluded in a decidedly white, upper-middle-class bubble, the blackness surrounding me feels foreign; it makes me uncomfortable in my own white skin.
I carefully avoid contact and don’t respond to catcalls. Just keep walking, just keep looking forward. I feel I need to set the example for the rest of the group since I lived in this area for about 6 years during “seedier” times in the late 2000s.
Since then, Over-the-Rhine has become nearly unrecognizable. Once-worn Italianate buildings are freshly painted with creative signage declaring restaurants with sophisticated names like, “The Sacred Beast”, “1215”, and “Longfellow”. I remember when these buildings were closed up with plywood decorated to look like window boxes. But my memory is cloudy. And untrustworthy. Now, most storefronts seem to be occupied with some trendy concept or other – almost as if it were inevitable that this neighborhood would “turn around”.
As we walk, we feel a tension in the air. It’s more than the humidity. You can see it in people’s body language, laying like the haze of pot smoke between us and them.
We make it to our reservation for a disappointing first dinner. COVID precautions have turned a fun experience into one that we judge and critique. The first restaurant doesn’t pass our harsh opinions. Oh well, there’s always tomorrow.
We continue our walk back to the apartment and cheerfully recap the evening, discussing what movie we’ll watch. As a side note – I just remembered – we stopped by the new Kroger store in Central Parkway to admire all the progress in the grocery scene of OTR (it’s a far cry from “Kroghetto”) and a man in front stops us.
He’s wearing a dirty yellow vest and pumping a bottle of what looks to be hand sanitizer. He almost looks like he’s a greeter at Kroger except – he looks rough. He’s black and his hair looks disheveled, his eyes unfocused. When he speaks, he says, “Ladies, I need some help. I’ve got a salt and pepper situation...” It’s becoming very clear that he has no affiliation with Kroger. “...you see, I’ve got these eggs...” At this point, we move quickly past him and breeze into the air-conditioned space.
We share a look as we put on our masks (a new ritual) and joke about whether his “salt and pepper” situation is that he’s black and we’re a bunch of white women. Almost like lines from a movie, his words have become a catchphrase for us to laugh about. I don’t think about how he got there. I don’t worry about his mental health. I don’t remember his face. I joke, I ignore, I don’t care.
Our movie is 40 minutes from ending, but we’ve decided to go to bed. The day has been long and hot, and we feel exhausted. We make plans to go for a walk in Eden Park in the morning. The weather should be beautiful, and I love to show off the city from the view at the overlook.
After our walk in the morning, we head to the west end to check out a huge vintage clothing warehouse. As we pull in, my sister points to someone I would term “a character” and says, “That’s the guy!”. The man who owns the warehouse meets us at the unassuming front door and introduces himself. His name is Stu, and people call him the “Vintage King”. My mind immediately goes to another recently popular self-proclaimed “King”.
He has the same near-mythical presence. Stu hauls open warehouse doors (how authentic! how eccentric!) and goes over the shop rules. I immediately forget them. That’s normal, but this time I have a good excuse – the space is overwhelming. It’s absolutely stuffed with vintage clothing. We have a good time hunting for treasures and leave with a few gems. I proudly show off my 80s, black, leather-trimmed “power blazer” and point my shoulders at people with my chin raised. It makes me feel invincible. I can tell it’s getting annoying, but can’t help myself. They humor me, and I love them for it.
We continue our day of shopping, eating, and drinking. It almost feels like old times, despite the ever-present masks. Hyde Park is pretty much the same as I remember it. Entitled white ladies in SUVs. (That’s what I think to myself, I may have even said it. The funny thing is, I’m an entitled white lady in an SUV. Why do I think I’m better than them?)
The time draws near for our first dinner reservation of the night. Yes, first. We have a second one planned at 9:00. How ridiculous is that? I think, as I often do in this kind of situation, of the scene in The Hunger Games when Katniss and Peeta go to a party in the Capital and people take pills to make themselves vomit so they can eat more food. I am definitely a Capital resident, as much as I want to be a Katniss.
We make a fuss about wanting to sit outside. They accommodate us. We complain to each other about not getting service yet. We make awkward eye contact with the wait staff and our server realizes we’re her table. She takes good care of us for the rest of the meal.
At one point, a homeless (black) man comes up next to us. He stands behind my mom and sister. Our body language stiffens and we try to continue our conversation as though there isn’t an unwashed man standing next to us, mumbling to himself. The manager comes out and asks him to leave, which he does without complaint. Again, I forget him. I don’t think about him at all and immediately forget his face.
Our meal finished, we get up and I urge the others to walk with me toward Washington Park. They’re tired of walking, but again, they humor me. I’m bossy to a fault, but they don’t seem to mind. The Park is strangely quiet – I remark on how few people are out enjoying this beautiful evening at 6:30 on a Friday night. They agree, but we think no more on it.
We continue to walk back to the apartment and as we walk there’s that tension again. Black folks standing around, talking, smoking, looking at us. We pass, giving everyone a wide berth. Maybe I think to myself that we’re “social distancing”, but we would have done that without COVID. Again, I feel uncomfortable in my skin. I feel vulnerable.
After a card game on the rooftop deck, I read the menu for our second dinner out loud. The dishes are so ridiculously Italian, I put on a stupid accent and we laugh (my audience is buzzed at this point) until I have tears in my eyes. I think about what a perfect day it’s been; what a perfect evening.
It’s time for our 9:00 reservation so again, we walk. We get to the restaurant right on time but aren’t seated until 9:30. Everything seems so much harder with the new pandemic precautions for restaurants. I know I shouldn’t be, but I can’t help but feel annoyed. We make our choices and order food and drinks. We start to relax and loosen up with wine, whiskey, and carbs. I am beyond full but still manage a few more bites of “Lumache alla Vodka” (you’ve gotta say that in a stereotypical singsongy Italian accent).
Cars pass with people hanging out of windows, people honking. I’m used to this in OTR and we assume some of them are high school graduates, too. Two black teenagers hang out of the back windows of a limo. We laugh. They’ve passed at least two times.
We pay the bill and make our last trek of the day back to the Airbnb. My feet are sore, and I’m looking forward to a restful sleep. We finish our movie, chat for a while, and all split off to go to bed. My sister’s friend decides she’s going to sleep on the rooftop deck. I roll my eyes and smile at her naïveté (she’ll be back in a real bed before morning).
It’s 12:00 am. I read for an hour because I’m SO CLOSE to the end of my book. I finish the book, slightly deflated by the ending. Oh well, there’s three more in the series. Maybe the plot gets better. Maybe the main character gets more sympathetic.
It’s at this point that I realize it’s louder outside than it was last night. There’s the familiar sound of honking and motorcycles, but there’s also another sound droning as a backdrop. When it gets close I realize - it’s a helicopter. That’s strange. I’ve been hearing that sound for the last hour.
I try to sleep. The pillows are kind of hard and I can’t get comfortable. My toes are cold. I’m almost asleep when I hear the would-be rooftop sleeper walk down the stairs. Again, I roll my eyes. I knew she’d be back down soon! The footsteps go back up. Back down. Back up. I feel like Jamie Lee Curtis’s character in Knives Out trying to sleep with the stairs constantly creaking.
Then, I hear voices upstairs. Finally, I walk up (no glasses) to see what’s going on. Our friend is panicky, recounting her version of events that occurred about half an hour ago. She says she was up on the rooftop chatting with a friend when she heard a man screaming for help. She described him as “looking like a crack head” but that several police cars were on the corner, and officers were surrounding him. She shows us a blurry photo of blue and red lights. She says she heard five gunshots in rapid succession. Confirms that her friend heard them, too. I think she thinks she’s just witnessed a murder.
She says she ran down the stairs to get my sister and by the time they got back outside, the cop cars were gone. No sign of a grisly murder scene; just an empty corner. She’s shaken. I still don’t have glasses on, but squint to see out over the downtown skyline. The same helicopter is still circling, a bright spotlight swinging out and shining on buildings. That’s weird, why wouldn’t it be focused on the ground?
By this point, we’ve realized that there have been protests happening all night in downtown and OTR. They shut down a highway. They are marching on the streets we left mere hours ago. They are smashing windows. It’s becoming a riot.
We look at each other with wide eyes. We were just there! What a close call. How lucky are we that we weren’t caught up in all of that! We can hear bangs going off in the background. We can hear echoes of chants.
After a few minutes on the rooftop remarking on an exceptionally large white cat and the low-hanging deep orange half-moon (both of which seem like omens of a sort to me, though I have no idea what) we head back down. We gravely share videos discovered on Instagram and Twitter. We can’t sleep.
It’s at this point that my sister and her friend try to educate me about why this is happening. They pull up the video of George Floyd’s murder. I look away and ask them to turn it off.
I’m ashamed to admit that I had been diligently ignoring George. I had seen a few posts on my Instagram feed only to dismiss them. Another black man dead. Another thing to be upset about. I can’t bring myself to be upset. I’m too far removed; too self-involved. I like my bubble. It has plants and space and dogs and my husband and family. My pandemic bubble doesn’t look much different from my normal bubble. I don’t go out much. I like to stay home and read and cook. George Floyd’s (or any other stranger’s) death doesn’t have much impact on me.
We continue to discover new photos, other cities are burning; luckily Cincinnati only has a few dumpster fires. Windows are shattered, stores are looted, protesters are being maced. A CNN reporter was arrested for no reason at all. There’s too much to rage at. It’s late and I can’t do anything anyway. Yet I can’t look away.
I scroll and scroll, simultaneously sickened and curious about what’s going on. I’m starting to wake up even as I fall asleep. We wake again at 4:00 am to the sound of more pops (flash-bangs or gunshots, not sure which. I tell my sister’s friend about a “game” we used to play when I lived in OTR: fireworks or gunshots? My attempt at humor seems to work. She laughs.)
We watch more news, this time all together. At about 5:00 am we try to get some rest. Finally, we sleep. After a few short hours, we’re up and ready to get coffee. I ask my mom to avoid driving on the streets we know have been hit hardest. I don’t want to see my old city damaged like this.
As we walk up to the coffee shop I notice a restaurant’s boarded-up door. It’s been smashed. We get our coffee and pastries and sit outside, soaking in the sunshine and the new atmosphere. The tension of last night isn’t gone, but it’s overlaid with a sense of loss. A world that seemed to be re-emerging has been buried again, but not by sickness - this time by hate and anger.
I imagine Cincinnati regressing. I imagine all these new shops and restaurants sitting empty and dark. It seems inevitable that after so much rebuilding, so much progress, there would be setbacks.
After having some time to process, though, these protests don’t seem like setbacks at all; they seem like a wake-up call. My privilege has allowed me to be complacent. Many other people aren’t given that same opportunity. The deck is stacked against people of color. Our systems were made by white men to be stacked against them.
I don’t know what my voice can do or if there’s much I can add to these complicated conversations. All I can do is reflect on these experiences and realize that I have so much privilege I don’t even realize it. I’ve rarely had to struggle for anything in my life. When I did, I had a support system.
So many have no support. Or the systems meant to support do harm instead. My heart breaks for our country. It doesn’t look like the country I thought it was. I don’t recognize this world. But maybe, maybe with these protests and riots, change will come. I surely hope so. But I’m not going to send thoughts and prayers. I going to have conversations with anyone who wants to have them. I’m going to try to understand.
I say “I” a lot.
This has gotten longer than I intended it to, but I’ve found if I don’t write things down –
I forget.