But what is really under that carpet?
About four blocks away from these typing brown fingers, there is a townhouse with swastikas inlaid into a custom hardwood floor border. I was not invited in, but I was in that house and I walked over the glossy unmistakable emblem that marked each corner of the empty living room with my own feet. The functional fireplace sagged between a Nazi parenthetical. It frightened me. Aside from the obvious fear of being a minority in a space intended to exert racial superiority over me and so many others, I unexpectedly found a fear of my own biases. What it means to be home and at home with ideas and beliefs that are unpopular, unacceptable, ugly.
The Nazi house was in only one sense an open house. In that moment, it was on the market for about $700,000 less than any nearby home comparable in space and vintage. There were no inviting balloons out front, and the realtor in the renovated kitchen did not get up to greet my husband and me. We did not sign in, nor small talk about the neighborhood and the natural light. We were free to look about, but this house was closed to us in every other way. We did not make it past the third swastika, though we later learned by way of the online listing that the motif carried through the master bedroom.
It had been, would be, and is right now someone’s home, a place where his/her/their bigotry could be aired out or fastened into the floor, and in this instance both. Had I ever held the library door open for a Nazi? Had I parked my car in front of this very door while the fire glowed a devil red? Is there any one thing in my house that would offend someone so as to plant them in place before fleeing, fleeing? I abruptly discovered in the Nazi house, this nasty house, that “yes” is a possible, if not probable, answer to each of these questions.
Through many years of steadfast open house-ing, I’ve learned that my neighbors are generally resourceful and quirky. Décor is funky, boring, or dazzling with equal odds, just like people. Some floor plans are a puzzle to crack, others are not a plan at all. Two blocks away, there is an apartment with dollhouse-sized doors lining the entirety of the high ceiling. Six blocks away there is a bachelor pad, apportioning greater than 75% of its square footage to the master bedroom. Ten blocks away there is a condo of rooms that are train cars, where you and I and whoever lives there now must pass through one room to get to the next.
But all the framed wedding portraits and sonograms, save the date magnets, spilled rice, still-wet clothes in the dryer fooled me. I thought I was seeing strangers’ unfiltered lives on regular days. It wasn’t until the Nazi house that I realized I was not. In every house I have ever been in—including my own—there is a bias, an intolerance, a preconception, some viewpoint or proclivity that is distasteful, disrespectful, or objectionable. The only difference is that in all the other houses, in my house, there is some effort in hiding the shameful rather than flanking one’s feet in it. In the Nazi house, I knew what I was getting. In any other, I could not.
In drafting this post and trying to articulate why this experience was so jolting, I examined my own grossness. In an earlier draft I cutely wrote, “I am hard on men.” But what I mean and for the first time admit is not cute: I am biased against men. I find men generally rude and difficult to trust. I doubt their credibility despite praiseworthy credentials because I assume they had an easier way of locking down opportunities, recognition, awards, diplomas, experience than I did. I feel the spray of waves that carry men through their careers with presumed competency like spit on my face. Whenever possible, I find female doctors, teachers, therapists, financial advisors, even a women-owned bookstore.
Gender matters to me, although what I outwardly want is for it to not matter to any one. The fact that gender matters to me—and so deeply matters—necessarily means that I can never contribute to a world where gender does not matter and I am lying when I say otherwise. I know that flipping a bias does not eradicate it. I’m aware that it is the imbalance of injustice from another angle. But I can’t help it. I default to female authors, musicians, actresses, and with a little too much wine to restrain myself, I have too-loudly applauded an executive chef named Nicolle for doing nothing more than her job with an all-male sous-chef team.
In another draft of this post, I wrote an apologetic paragraph, which pointed out that my gender-based bias wasn’t absolute or determinative. After all, I am married to a lovely man, I greatly value many wonderful male friends and mentors, and I’d never intend or even hope harm on a person just because he is XY-chromosomed. These remnants of that paragraph survive editing because I must also admit, of course, that I soothe myself with these half-baked pardons like all other narrow-minded idiots.
What I can’t get around is a tally of the books in my bookcase. Toni Morrison, Mona Eltahawy, Jhumpa Lahiri, Meghan Daum, Emily St. John Mandel, Maya Angelou, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Elizabeth Strout, versus the lopsided weight of my calculated affinity for Salman Rushdie, James Salter, and a few others I’d have to walk downstairs to remember. My playlists, my membership to a women-only gym, my closet full of female-designer pieces, are also tells.
If I opened my house, my bias would not push you backwards, you would not run from what you’ve seen. But it is there. Like a rodent behind the walls, waiting for the lights to go off before skittering across this place that is its home too.
I was (and am) appalled by the swastika woodwork in that townhouse. And while there is no room in this neighborhood, city, or world for the hatred and violence that symbol represents, I cannot expect someone who subscribes to that disgusting philosophy to refrain from exhibiting it in his/her own home, to whatever degree they’d like. I don’t. Why should they? To the contrary, I wonder if the only thing worse than being in a Nazi’s house is being in a Nazi’s house without knowing it.
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In case there is any doubt that I saw what I saw in that townhouse, here are pictures still available on Zillow and other real estate websites:
This is the clearest photo of the floor design; this photo was only uploaded to one online listing.
The following photos are less obvious, but a close look shows the same pattern.
