By Kenton Rambsy
Edward P. Jones shows how older residents of DC use knowledge of their neighborhoods and relationships with neighbors to keep getting around the city on their own.
In “Marie,” an 86 year old widow makes her own way across DC, from Claridge Towers to a Social Security office a mile away. She plans the trip hours ahead, rising in the dark and laying out money for the bus. She walks ten minutes from 12th and M to the stop at 14th and K and takes an earlier bus, “lest there be trouble.”
After a young man grabs at her coat on 13th Street, Marie carries her knife even to the trash. She has learned where trouble can come from and leaves home ready for it. Marie could make the walk alone, but she lets her friend Wilamena come along to the bus stop, “but no farther.” Their walks show the support neighbors at Claridge Towers give one another.
The trip crosses very different parts of DC, and Marie knows them. In 1980 the area around Claridge Towers was 73 percent Black, her bus stop 37 percent and the office 8 percent. She moves from blocks where neighbors know her to an office where she waits alone for hours.
Following Marie across town, Jones shows that getting around DC takes knowledge of the city and the support of neighbors.
Jones shows how knowing her blocks and a neighbor’s help keep an older woman moving through DC on her own.
In Edward P. Jones’s “Marie,” an 86 year old woman travels about a mile from Claridge Towers to a Social Security office in Northwest DC. In 1980 the census areas around her home, her bus stop and the office were 73, 37 and 8 percent Black. Near home she has neighbors who know her. At the office she waits alone.
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