The Streets

The streets know. They can tell where a person has been and where they’re going.

Jon Gonzalez from 183rd Street is going to school. He rides the 1 train and transfers to the 2 downtown. It feels like a million miles from Washington Heights.

“My mom says it’s a good school,” he explains. “I’m going this summer to get ahead.”

The train rattles through Times Square and Penn Station and past 14th Street and Christopher, Houston, Canal and Franklin.

“It ain’t so bad,” Gonzalez shrugs. “A-Rod went to a good high school (Westminster Christian High in Miami) and that’s what I want to do: be a ballplayer.”

He slings his backpack around. It’s blue and “A-Rod 13” is stitched in white.

“Where’d you buy it?” someone asks.

“My mom made it,” Gonzales says. “The school said I needed a bag like this for my books so she just sewed it up.”

He opens the bag and slips a ticket from inside a book cover. “April 19,” he says. “I didn’t go to school that day. It was Thursday. A-Rod hit a home run and we won. I got home late and my mom was mad.

“I said, ‘Someday I’ll hit a home run and bring you the ball.’ She was still mad. ‘You coulda been lost or dead in the street,’ she said.

“I told her, ‘I know where home is.’”