Westbury Court

Westbury Court Hugh Rigby Devry University

Hugh Rigby English 108 Professor Monaghan

Essay on Westbury Court

The communities in which people live have a great effect on the people they become. Some people live in communities and have no sense of awareness; they dont even know their next door neighbors. Edwidge Danticat, in her essay, Westbury Court, talks about the neighborhood in which she grew up, and the experience that ruined her image of the idyllic palace in which she lived, to the more mature view we all develop. Danticat speaks about her neighborhood in great detail. Westbury Court, a six-story brick building in a cul-de-sac off of Flatbush Avenue, in Brooklyn. The Q, D and M trains rattled the building as it passed under it, as she walked through the streets she could see hills of trash piled up outside; and graffiti scribbled on the walls of most buildings. Although, the elevator wasn't always there when we opened the door to step inside and the heat and hot water weren't always on, it was the only place that she and her family knew as home. Daily, she would dash out of her last class, pick up her youngest brother Karl from daycare, and go home to watch General Hospital and do homework. Andre and Kelly, her two other brothers would later join them and watch cartoons in the backroom. She was so into her soaps that she didnt even smell the smoke, she had no idea that there was a fire until two firemen knocked on the door. The hallway was already filled with smoke as Danticat and her brothers rushed out of the apartment and were quickly escorted down to the first floor. As they ran past apartment 6E the door was knocked down and they could see the room filled with bright flames and murky smoke. All of the tenants of the building who were home at that time were crowded on the sidewalk outside. The ambulance arrived as soon as they got outside, the two firemen who had knocked on our door came out carrying the

pliant and lifeless bodies of the two children from across the hall. Their mother was totally devastated. The fire was started by the two boys, after their mother had stepped out to pick up some groceries at the supermarket down the street. They had been playing with matches. Danticat was haunted by the experience, every time she would pass the apartment after the fire, a piece of its inner skeleton would squeak, and occasionally burnt wood that might have been hanging by a fragile singed thread would crash down and cause a domino effect of further ruptures, unleashed like those children's last cries, which I had not heard because I had been so wrapped up in the made-up drama. A year later after the apartment was repaired, two blind Haitian brothers and their sister moved in. They were musicians in a band called les Frres Parent, the Parent Brothers. The year after the fire she started to notice everything that was going on in the neighborhood. A cabdriver who lived down the hall in 6J was killed on a night shift in Manhattan, a friend of her fathers, a man who gave great Sunday afternoon parties in 6F, died of cirrhosis of the liver. One day while she and her brothers were in school and her parents were at work someone broke into their apartment and stole her father's expensive camera. The same year, a Nigerian immigrant was shot and killed in front of the building across the street. The same year after the fire, Danticats family moved out of Westbury Court. Danticat would sometimes question herself about the two children who died in the fire, and what became of their mother. She was basically still struggling to come to terms with everything that happened at Westbury Court with the fire, and how it couldve been her and her brothers who perished. In Conclusion, some people need to be more aware of the things that occur around the place in which they live. The place in which one lives aids in the development of the person they become. Because of the fire, Danticat became more aware of her surroundings and as result started looking at the world more realistic and not as she saw it on television.