ENGL 399 Place

write about a place that I know well, and about which I have a decided opinion

The first things you notice in the city are the bars, and this house is no different. Every window and door is covered with iron grids. The sliding garage doors, leaving criss-cross shadows on the cool twelve-inch floor tiles, have to be opened with a key and a remote control (as the owner jokingly refers to his teenage son when they pull up in front of their house). There are bars outside of the sliding door that leads from the dining room to the narrow walkway around the house (even though the walkway is already protected by a solid wall interrupted only by more bars). The upstairs veranda houses a little row of green pepper plants, reaching their little heads towards the sun, and prevented from escape by curved iron bars.

If you visited, you might ask if Dominican architecture was influenced by the Spanish or if it was all its own, and you would be told it is unique. The bars, flanked by bright pastels and staunch white columns, are probably meant to protect against petty theft. That makes sense, in a city riddled by poverty and an influx of immigrants from the Dominican Republic's neighbor on the island of Hispaniola. So the bars are utilitarian. But they're not unattractive—when you stand near the pepper plants, you can look across the street and see delicate knots and hard-earned curlicues on the armor of other homes. When you lie in bed, the breeze whisks through the open windows, complementing the slightly annoying white fan noise. The bars don't block out the mosquitoes, but at least it's cool.

The house is particularly pretty and proportionally perplexing. When you walk in, the entryway is a large sitting room, with metal-and-beam rustic furniture that might weigh one ton per piece. The front door is propped open, when needed, by a dry coconut nestled on the smooth floor. Tile, the flooring avoided in the north for its icy coldness in the winter months, cascades from room to room. Peacock feathers fly their colors from a knee-high urn in the TV room, gently brushing you as you walk by. The peacock feathers aren't the only bold accents, either; a chartreuse wall drops behind the stairs and cobalt maps the kitchen floor.

But after you walk past the coconut, be careful not to trip on the double step leading down into the eating room, or the single step leading up to the kitchen, or the staircase with two turns but no landings. Or the little step to the upstairs bathroom or the broad flat step you have to cross if you're done watching TV and want to sit down for dinner. And make sure you duck your head when you go into the little bathroom hidden behind the angled door under the stairs. If you're lucky, you'll go in when the circuit for the front of the house is on, and the pink light bulb will glow when you flip the switch. If not, enough light to see should come in through the bars of the miniscule window in the top corner. Hopefully a gecko won't skitter in.

When you sit on the veranda at night, you can hear stray dogs spatting with each other and shop owners playing American rap music. The construction down the street is quiet. The crumbling buildings and piles of dirt, which highlight by day the elegance of the house, are covered with a felt blanket of city darkness. The air sighs and house breathes out through the bars, the ever-present bars. They beckon you to stay. But they do not beckon you in.