Neighborhood Battle Ground

One afternoon last week my normally banal journey to class was interrupted with some not-so-welcome excitement.

Behind my house is a paved path, which parallels the metro line and leads to the nearby station that I use to pick up DC-bound trains. It is a path tucked away, hidden from the general neighborhood and house lined street grid. This quality helps attract people to venture it who do not use it for reasons of convenient transportation to and from the metro. For those of us that use it regularly, it's hard to ignore the dubious characters that tend to congregate on and around it.

And on this particular day, events had apparently transpired there which not even the Police could ignore. Upon making the right hand turn around the corner of my place and setting foot on to the path, I witnessed no less than 5 cop cars, lights twirling but thankfully sirens silent, grouped in bunches at different points on the path. There were officers speaking with small groups of young women, also spaced out around the area. While at certain points the whole path was blocked, I still managed to make my way through the crowd without being questioned. Clearly something had just gone down.

The women had looks of impatience on their faces, as if the police were questioning them for no good reason, or they wouldn't give the officers the information they wanted even if they knew what it was that was being asked of them. Walking by one of these impromptu interrogations, something ratty looking caught my eye. What first appeared as a piece of garbage focused into the unmistakable black wiry bunch of a hair weave. Why would one of these be on the ground? Thinking through its possible source while walking, I noticed another clump of this dark hair mass sitting violently a few dozen yards down the path.

The message was clear: there had just been a furious cat fight. And judging from the number of women and police present on the path and street (not to mention the coiffured casualties), this had been no small affair.

But this story does not end here. Apparently the Police didn't consider the ripped out hair weaves as useful evidence, because they continued to lie there, like fallen soldiers, for days following the event. We have seen more police presence on the path, but those weaves just did not disappear.

Then this week, I was startled to see the largest, most impressive clump of fake hair, hanging proudly from the limb of a leafless tree next to the path. I'd like to think that it was placed there intentionally by one of the victorious Amazons. Like a decapitated head stuck on a pole placed firmly in the ground, warning savage tribes of yore to steer clear of a given area, this wind-swinging weave is an atavistic reminder to those unwelcome females who come by our parts that they ought to think twice about this decision, if they wish to continue enjoying their fraudulent hair.