“Who really looks at that statue and thinks about that man owning slaves?” Debbie asked, in the comments section of a post on our neighborhood’s social media page. The post was about a statue being removed from the neighborhood square. There were a few posts, including a video of the removal, the statue lassoed with a yellow belt around the torso, a crane perched above it, jiggling the figure from side to side. It/he seemed stuck. I wondered, while watching, if they would have to abandon the effort, its feet holding firm, planted, rooted.

I didn’t know Debbie. Debbie didn’t know the man who posted the video. But I did. His name was Torbin.

I had met him in Hawaii; and there, almost five thousand miles from our homes, we discovered we were neighbors. We had both flown to Oahu from Baltimore for a friend’s wedding; perhaps we were even on the same flight. He and his wife lived on Potomac Street, my husband and I on Elliott Street. O’Donnell Square was smack dab between our houses. The year before I was born, that statue of John O’Donnell had been erected in the center of the square.

Who had looked at that statue and thought about that man owning slaves?

Let’s be honest: I had not. I am white. I had never wondered who John O’Donnell was, never thought about whose backs had been broken in his quest for wealth and fame. I had that privilege, to walk by his likeness and never bat an eyelash. 

And I walked by that statue plenty, had my first date with my husband in the Irish pub that overlooks the square. We sat at the bar and from there, you could see the statue out the window. But we didn’t talk about the statue, didn’t notice it probably, focused on sparks and chemistry and flirtatious quips. I had not thought about that man owning slaves, but I was certain someone out there had.

We bought a brick for the square to commemorate our daughter’s birth; it sits nestled into the path that leads to the statue along with other neighbors’ bricks, under a brick that reads “in memory of Scunny,” and another that reads “The Hall Family/ where we began.” Torbin had told us about the brick donation program, how the funds were used to buy supplies to maintain the square, to purchase the mulch and plants that were replenished each spring. He had said they bought trash bags and brooms to clean up after the “First Friday” concerts where we sipped on Natty Bohs and bopped our heads to local bands. I was perplexed; I had always thought that the city cleaned up after us, emptying the trash bins and picking up carelessly discarded cans. I had assumed that some landscaping company planted the flowers, trimmed the tree branches so they didn’t block the walking paths. Perhaps someone even shined the statue.

“Who does the landscaping and clean-up?” I asked. He smiled, shrugged, said, “mostly I do. I try and rally some volunteers every spring. But, it just depends on whether anybody shows up.”

I wondered how many times I had walked by him tending to that square, on my way to grab a morning coffee, or to meet a friend for Sunday brunch, before I met him.

That spring, I saw him post on the neighborhood page asking for volunteers for the upcoming planting day. I said to my husband, “we should help.” But we forgot, and then we happened to be taking our daughter for a walk in her stroller on planting day and there, behind a mountain of mulch, was Torbin. He was alone.

It was one of those hellishly hot Baltimore days, relentless sun and suffocating humidity. It seemed the sweat was dripping from his forehead straight down to his sneakers. Most of the mulch had been spread, beds of flowers replanted all around the square. It was beautiful, now that I was stopping to notice it and not just zip by on my way to the dentist. There was only one tree that provided any shade. John O’Donnell’s statue provided no reprieve from the heat, his long outstretched arm casting no shadow to hide under.

We asked if we could help, apologized for forgetting the date, but he told us between labored breaths that he was wrapping up for the day, had been at it since sunrise. He said there were volunteers helping earlier but, you know, people had things to do, especially on such a sunny Saturday. I felt in that moment that Torbin was single-handedly responsible for the hundreds of us in our Canton neighborhood who enjoyed our day just a little bit more by walking through that square and not having to notice trash on the path, not having to notice whether the tree branches had been pruned, not having to notice the man hunched over the pile of mulch on his day off.

He groaned as he stood up, hours of squatting and kneeling having taken their toll on his knees, his back. But then he smiled, wiped the sweat off his face with the bottom of his t-shirt, and gave our daughter a quick, playful tickle. He squinted, shaded his eyes with one hand, looking in the direction of John O’Donnell. “I better get home to Christi,” he had said.

And now, Debbie asks, who had looked at that statue and thought about that man owning slaves?

As I scrolled through the litany of semi-racist and blatantly racist comments piling up below the video of the statue removal, I thought, if only Debbie knew him, knew how he had cared for that square all these years for us, would she have thought twice about asking that question? If only Debbie knew that this same man who maintained our square in his spare time, also had a day job where he spent his time providing food and resources to underprivileged city youth, hoping to make just a dent in ending generational poverty, would that have stopped her from hammering away at her keyboard? If she knew that he was on the board of the Canton Neighborhood Association, that he had started our neighborhood security information group in order to help police trace crimes through residential security cameras, that he had helped to found the Canton Anti-Racism Alliance? Would that have helped her understand that just because she didn’t see a slave owner in that statue, that didn’t mean no one else did?

I thought of all the hours Torbin had labored under that statue, pulling weeds from below John O’Donnell’s feet, and wondered how many of those seconds, and minutes, and hours, he had thought about who John O’Donnell was, what human lives he had owned. I cannot imagine the burden lifted from his weathered shoulders when those heavy feet were finally pried from their pedestal, when his likeness was finally pulled free of its roots in the center of Torbin’s Square.