Unlocking the Map

WASHINGTON—“In the summer because of the heat and high humidity,” Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid once said, “you could literally smell the tourists.”

But I’m no tourist. I’m a bona fide native, and I want the world to know.

I’m not the type to drop the H-bomb. D.C.-bombs, on the other hand, rain down from my lips almost daily.

My proclivity for parading my pedigree probably stems from years of interactions Maryland and Virginia posers. Compared to them, I feel genuine.

It was only this month that I figured out I was the faker all along.

***

“We could take the M-80, or we could—no, I always avoid the X-2.”

These letters and numbers mean nothing to me. I took a bus to the zoo once in seventh grade when my parents wouldn’t drive me, but that’s about it.

“We could take the Red Line,” I suggest confidently. I’m very good at the Red Line. I am also good at my dad’s car. “We could take the Red Line and—”

“That doesn’t make any sense.” Okay then.

***

When this summer began, I looked forward to sharing my knowledge about the dos and don’ts of District dwelling. As it turned out, I didn’t have much of it.

My co-interns, hailing from California to Arkansas, could navigate more than the small sliver of upper-Northwest D.C. in which I spent my youth. Perhaps, before they came here, my hometown in their minds was pristine, dotted with marble monuments and manicured men in suits. Perhaps, before, I knew more than they did.

But now their D.C. is grittier.

We work in NoMa. The name (North of Massachusetts Avenue, for curious non-natives) didn’t exist two years ago, and the area still remains uncharted territory to many D.C. denizens. It’s “up-and-coming,” which means a lot of other things no one wants to say. And a lot of other things I never had any interest in seeing.

I’m trying, though.

I’m staying out late at night, and on weekend mornings I’m waking up early. I’m leaving my house and my block and my neighborhood and my quadrant. When I come home, I walk.

***

“It’s like we’re unlocking a new part of the map,” Jack tells me as I back into a Capitol Hill parking spot.

He’s right—all of this existed just beyond the boundaries of my limited universe. Now I’ve pushed the horizon.

***

I didn’t see it as my D.C., but it is.

The H Street Bridge passes over the Union Station tracks. On the walls that line it, mosaic children play hopscotch. I spot the artwork on an after-midnight trek toward the train that will take me home, and I realize it’s not the first time.

I watch the kids—much bigger back then—again through the eyes of my four-year-old self as I gaze out the backseat car window, traveling with my mother to the Capitol Children’s Museum.

The place had often flitted through my mind in later years as I drifted off to sleep. A childhood relic, it inhabited a realm somewhere between memory and dream.

I had never known where it was before.

Molly L. Roberts ’16, a Crimson editorial executive, is an English concentrator in Cabot House.