Just South of Heaven

We drove toward the development at nine in the morning on a beautiful spring day in Wilmington, North Carolina. My family had arrived earlier that week to tour houses and to investigate different communities in the city, so we could better choose a location once we moved there. We approached the development cautiously, hesitating at the tall black fence with barbed wire that stood before layers of dense trees. Two gates marked the entrance where security guards waved Mercedes SUVs and BMWs into the gated community. My brother balked at the community’s security: “It looks like they have prepared for the zombie apocalypse”. The real estate agent, who sat with us in the car, laughed as the security guards waved her through the gates and she welcomed us to the community just south of Heaven—Landfall. As she drove down the well-manicured lane to the welcome center, she reminded us of Landfall’s heavenly facilities: two golf courses, a country club, personal docks, and an Olympic size swimming pool. Feigning enthusiasm, my family left the car and hopped onto a golf cart to begin the tour.  The real estate agent drove incredibly slowly, probably to encourage us to relish this sheltered utopia. Brick houses seemingly smiled at us and the multiple landscapers waved as we continued down the street.  Women who had already showered and applied their makeup wearing designer clothes walked out to retrieve the morning paper while waving away. My mother scoffed in hushed tones: “These women have definitely had work done. Why do these people keep waving?” I shrugged as I too felt confused, but I waved back to a gaggle of women strutting down the street while calling to their neighbors to join them for brunch at the Country Club. As I sat in the golf cart, waving uncharacteristically, I could not help but wonder if when I had entered Landfall, I had left the real world.  Looking back on my encounter with this rare community, I cannot help but compare it to the two Eggs in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Like the islands, Landfall does not sit atop perfect land as lakes and forests wind through it; nature misshapes the land which the community attempts to perfect (5). The people themselves live fantastically in their palaces with their BMW cars and other material possessions. But, more so than anything, I find myself “perpetually confused” when observing Landfall (5).  Do the residents truly care when they wave incessantly? Does knowing the business of every neighbor truly make them happy? How much does the plastic surgeon of Landfall make? Have the people in the community ever actually ventured past the ten-foot-tall gates to realize true reality? I suppose, to them, they live in the real world, in their own strange slice of Heaven, or at least, just south of it.  As for the answers to rest the questions, I will let you know, as we may move there this summer. 

Love Thy Fence

Police cars zoomed in the distance, their sirens piercing the crisp summer air. Birds flew from the trees, their wings fluttering as they soured into the sky, overlooking nosy neighbors peering from behind their fences. A short, stout police man parked abruptly in front of my neighbor’s house and quickly stepped out of the car. He then signaled to his partner, a slimmer man, who stepped out of the passenger side nonchalantly. They strutted over to my neighbor’s door, rapped on it several times, and peered into her small living room, yelling, “Police!” As silence met their call, one man walked to the back door. Suddenly, my neighbor, her hair flying behind her, dashed from her front door as the other officer cantered forward, wrestled her to the ground, and slapped handcuffs on her. The next morning, my parents built a fence. My father hammered wood polls into the ground while my mother rolled evergreen wire around the property. They planted trees that have since grown to ten feet along the border of our property. Then, they clipped the police blotter description of our neighbor’s crime (holding her boyfriend-of-the-week and his children “hostage” by locking them in a room) and hung it with a plaque of their favorite proverb: “Love your neighbor, but do not pull down your fence”. This fence and my parents’ obsession, both a blessing and a curse, overwhelm and restrict me, like Barthelme’s balloon, always protecting me from harm--and from the neighbors. Even though some days, like the day of my neighbor’s second arrest for theft of credit card numbers, I feel a “sheltered, warmed” feeling, most days, I feel “constrained” (3). Most days, I find myself dreaming of taking risks, scaling the fence and escaping my parents’ secure little world. Yet, I still find myself building internal fences, never letting down my own guard, rarely leaving my comfort zone. One day, I suppose, I may scale the fence; but I know that inevitably I will reconstruct that barrier, forgetting the constraint, only remembering the warm brown and evergreen hues of the fence my parents simply loved.