Bed-Stuy Is Burning

by Brian Platzer

  “But as you say, religion has a lot going for it, and being a religious leader is fucking fantastic. You get treated like you know everything. You get respected. You get a decent salary at some places. Everyone is proud of you. And most of all, you’re connected to so many people. Sincerely connected to their lives. They want you there. You matter to them in a way you’d never imagine. Belief is an afterthought. Worse than an afterthought. My bet is ninety-five percent of rabbis—of religious leaders in America—are rabbis in spite of the religious parts. They want to be leaders, and politics is fucked. No self-respecting man or woman would be a politician. They want to help people, and cops are assholes, and teaching is too limited. You only have your students for nine months. It’s the same thing year after year and no one treats you with any respect. You know how all Jewish boys used to be raised being told they had to become lawyers. Do you think they believed in the law? Come on!”

  Now Amelia was laughing. Spinning around and looking at what they’d bought. They kissed. They stripped out of their clothing. They listened to Janet Jackson really loud. They danced around their parlor floor and couldn’t believe that all the stained glass and wood was theirs.

  “Look at this little gremlin guy,” Amelia said. “He’s ours!” She examined the foot-tall griffins below the grand mirror in the entranceway. He had wings, and each wing was carved into feathers, and each feather was carved with little striations. And there were three of these griffins beneath each of the two grand mirrors. Six little griffin guys! And Aaron and Amelia owned all four floors! “My God!” Amelia said.

  “Stop saying ‘God’! It isn’t God!” Aaron said. He was drunk off the house closing and his nearly naked girlfriend and champagne. “I’m the one who worked eighty-hour weeks. Your grandmother’s the one who passed all the money down to us. We made this happen. Not God. Why would there be a God? It doesn’t make any sense!”

  “I’m grateful for you,” Amelia said. “For my father’s mother.”

  “And I’m grateful for you,” Aaron said. They kissed and danced. They danced and kissed. “I’m sorry,” Aaron said. “I just feel like that part of my life is over. Like it has to be over. Like this house, and you, and if we are able to have a son or daughter and get married and make a life together—like all this is more important than pretending a higher power exists anymore. I just want to live from now on in a life where I don’t need to pretend anymore.”

  “I’m sorry,” Amelia said. “I’ll stop pretending if you want me to.”

  “That’s not what I’m saying,” Aaron said. “Don’t use your wounded child voice. You’re too smart for that.”

  “Then let me believe what I fucking want, too,” Amelia said, slow dancing to hip-hop. “Or I’ll rephrase. I’m going to keep on believing what I believe, okay? I really do believe that humans have tapped into this thing that is extrabiological. And if the word that best approximates that is ‘God’, than sometimes I’ll say ‘My God!’ Or maybe it’s just an expression. But there’s a chance that you and I differ a bit on this one, and I think that there might be a power out there that’s not just quarks and Darwin, okay?”

  “Okay,” Aaron said. But it was all fucked up, because although she was being reasonable, it wasn’t okay. Aaron really did think that no one believed in God. Or maybe it was okay that some people did but not his life partner—not his future wife and the mother of his eventual children. But he was distracted because they were already kissing now and making Simon.

  Chapter 22

  “What can I do for you?” Amelia said, standing at the open front metal door.

  She’d almost said, “What can I do for you kids,” but refrained at the very last moment seeing something in the eye of the kid in front that suggested he wouldn’t want to be called a kid. He was a she. A girl leading a pack of boys. Thinking of Simon or, at the very least, feeling Simon in the room in Antoinette’s arms now that Antoinette, curious, had approached, made Amelia sense her own vulnerability. She shouldn’t have opened the door. She saw that now. Jupiter had been right. But at least she hadn’t said “kid” or “girl” or “little girl.”

  The kid was getting excited. Rolling up and down onto the balls of her feet. She had a torn piece of fabric wrapped around the cut sleeve of her hoodie and metal at her wrists. They were handcuffs. Handcuffs were showing at her wrists out from under the sleeves. Maybe it was a fashion thing, but they looked real. They looked like real handcuffs, though the chain was broken. And though her clothes were black and gray so it was hard to tell, they looked stained by blood. It might have been dirt or mud. She was wild-eyed, but the Nets cap pulled down with its wide low brim made that hard to tell, too.

  Behind her, one of the boys shouted, “Three eighty three Stuyvesant, motherfucker!”

  The girl blinked, then blinked again. Amelia wanted to ask if she was okay—to shoo away the other kids, the three boys, to invite the girl in and give her a piece of cake and a warm bath. To rewrap her bruised arm. To help her. The girl so clearly needed help.

  Jupiter told Amelia, “Come back in.”

  Amelia was looking at the girl’s wild eyes, which reminded her of the only thing anyone would have thought of, which was a wounded wild animal, when, like a bull who’d been let loose from a trance by a bull fighter, a big-eared boy who was carrying a broken-off piece of a street sign ran past the girl, past the metal front door, through the foyer, past the decorative wooden door, and, pushing her into the mirror, past Amelia and into the house.

  Jupiter stood past Amelia, between the boy and the rest of the house.

  Street, stoop, outer metal door, foyer, inner wooden door, Amelia, Jupiter, and then the rest of the house, with Antoinette, Simon, and the yellow warmth of their interior world.

  The boy ran at Jupiter.

  Jupiter roared and got low like an offensive lineman being charged by a bull. The pole glanced against Jupiter’s forehead. He was like a football player tackling a bull that was equipped with a jousting lance. Amelia had done a story on bullfighting once, and she had also done one on the grinning sadist Michael Strahan. Jupiter was an offensive lineman protecting the house, blocking the kid with the lance.

  Jupiter must have outweighed the kid by a hundred pounds. He lifted the kid, still holding the metal pole, up in the air and took three powerful lunges forward past Amelia—who flung herself back against the wall—through both doors, then outside the house entirely and drove him into his friend with the brick, and all three fell backward down the stoop.

  Simon shrieked. Amelia didn’t know Simon could shriek like that, and Antoinette must not have known, either, because Antoinette gasped and mimicked the noise Simon had made. To Amelia, the screams were drops off a roller coaster, a knife into her lungs.

  The boy and Jupiter were outside the house, the boy swatting at Jupiter and trying to stand, but Amelia couldn’t close the door, because she was scared to get too close to the girl and to the boy with the brick in his hand, and because Jupiter was still outside and she didn’t want to leave him there alone.

  “I’ve got a baby in here!” Amelia screamed, but no one was listening to her. The sound of her own voice was impossibly feeble. “I’ve got a baby in here,” she repeated.

  Jupiter turned and staggered back toward the house, blood on his forehead from where he’d been struck with the piece of metal. Amelia had been right not to leave him out there alone. There were suddenly five kids out on the stoop, including the one who had fallen down the stairs—who was now staggering to his feet. But a firmer barrier between inside and out seemed to have been established. Both the exterior metal-and-thick-glass door and interior decorative door were open, but none of the other kids tried to enter.

  “Old man knocked Damien out!”

  Jupiter, still outside, reached for the outer door but was blocked by the boy with the brick. Jupiter stumbled back up into the foyer area, and though he was holding his head, there didn’t seem to be much blood. Antoinette ran to him to tend to
his cut, but Amelia said, “Stay back with him,” meaning Simon.

  Jupiter stood alone by the interior door holding his head. The outer door with the thick glass was still open wide, and a few of the other groups of kids were coming over because of the commotion. One boy was pounding his fist against the heavy concrete plant box. Antoinette seemed to be effectively keeping Simon safe in the dining room. Amelia didn’t think to take Simon herself, perhaps because she was closer to the danger. Simon had only screamed once, but there was something unnatural about his face Amelia was seeing or imagining. It was red or frozen. Simon was different from what he had been before that kid had rushed into Jupiter.

  Now Jupiter, one hand to his head, started to close the inside door.

  His chest heaved. He managed to get the inside door closed, but the outside door was still wide open, and the inside door was primarily decorative. The kids didn’t know what to do. They just stood there, looking at Jupiter. (Thinking back, this is the moment Amelia can’t figure out. This is what she obsesses over, dwells on, and tries to remember over and over again. She understands or can guess why the kids came to her home. She blames herself for opening the door. The initial moment of violence makes sense with the kids all pumped full of adrenaline seeing the inside of her home with all the stained glass and gargoyles, the champagne and Prada that had to be just around the corner. They were angry at whoever was in front of them, and their momentum carried them forward. And she understands why they, after one of them was hurt, wanted some kind of revenge, but why would Jupiter stand there and start talking to them in that strange avuncular voice? Why did he go on lecturing the kids he’d just been fighting with? And why did they just stand there at first?) He told the kids to go back home. How he was sure they were good kids. With all the blood and adrenaline coursing through Jupiter’s body, and with noise from down the block, and with the shouting from the kids, and the crying baby, and disbelief about what they’d all just seen—no one, not even Jupiter, it seemed, was focusing on his words.

  The kids were trying to listen at first, but their faces became blurred canvases of confusion. The girl in front rolled up and down on the balls of her feet. Maybe Jupiter was trying to calm them down? Turn them back into children? Maybe they reminded him of his son? But they didn’t seem able to listen. The kid with big ears who’d been pushed down the stairs was getting up, and Amelia saw that his hand was mangled from where he’d landed.

  Through the thin glass in the decorative inner door, Amelia watched him stuffing his fingers into his left pocket, and they looked as though they were bending in the wrong direction, some of them. It was revolting. But still, he was climbing the steps to join his friends. Which meant Amelia was further away from closing that front door. He was lighter skinned than the others and lanky. He was wearing gray sweatpants and white sneakers. And full of shame for how he’d been thrown down by the old man who was now lecturing them.

  Jupiter was saying, “Go on home. You don’t want to let this crazy day define the rest of your lives. These are decent people here, and Antoinette here and I were just eating a chocolate cake I made.”

  The kids on the stoop snickered, but more it seemed because they felt they had to than because they wanted to. Jupiter was no longer holding his head and Amelia could see some blood starting to trickle down. The kid in back with the busted hand and big ears was clearly in pain—he was yelling, “Fuck, my hand, fuck,” whimpering—and the girl in front rolling up and down on the balls of her feet was listening to Jupiter, and there were two more kids who looked at Jupiter and at the girl in front and didn’t seem to want to be there anymore.

  “There’s a baby inside,” Jupiter continued, “a baby named Simon, and I was just taking a bite of it—the cake—with Antoinette with some coffee.”

  Amelia didn’t understand why, but she saw Antoinette and Jupiter both react as though the situation at this moment, just after Jupiter mentioned the coffee, was about to take a turn for the worse. Simon screamed in Antoinette’s arms, which made Amelia doubly clench already-clenched muscles. Jupiter clenched his fist as though the cut on his head hurt more, and Antoinette was slowly retreating as though she’d wanted to go to Jupiter but now knew it was the wrong thing to do.

  Antoinette stepped back to where she could still see what was going on, but she and the baby were protected by a column in the unfurnished small room between the parlor and the dining room. Antoinette’s fear was clouding up the room. Jupiter was still talking, but he was talking in a way that made less sense. He was sounding desperate, as though he wanted to say as many facts about himself in as short a time as possible: “My boy, my son, he’s your age, maybe you know him? Do you know him from the neighborhood? He used to love my cooking but now he doesn’t dare to admit it anymore. Ha! Fuck me up the goat ass, right? I know he still does because I cook for myself now and I make extra. Late at night, he comes home. I don’t dare call him on it, I just clean the bowls in the morning. You know what I’m saying, right? I don’t see him, but the next morning, two whole lamb shanks have disappeared! Do you know him? Any of you boys know Derek? Derek Jupiter?”

  “You’re Derek’s father? You’re Mr. Jupiter?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I am!”

  Amelia exhaled, realizing she’d been holding her breath all this time. Her shoulder relaxed. She looked to Antoinette, whose eyes were on the kid in back.

  That kid, lanky with big ears, with the mangled hand in his left hip pocket, put his right, healthy hand in the front of his heavy sweatpants and took out a pistol. He waved it around in the air and, Amelia thought, accidentally tapped a friend’s back; the friend felt the tap and looked back and saw the gun and said, “Damien’s got a gun out,” which made the others look and get out of Damien’s way. Damien stepped up through the space made by his friends.

  The girl said, “This is Derek’s father,” but the boy with the gun said, “I don’t know no Derek,” and a different boy said, “But Sara does,” but the boy with the gun steadied it with his busted left hand and closed his eyes and shot Jupiter through the glass of the decorative inner door. Amelia was watching Damien, so she didn’t see what Jupiter looked like then. She didn’t see Jupiter’s face or whether he saw the gun when it was fired. Damien shot Jupiter twice in the chest and then stepped up toward the interior door where the glass had all been shattered, and he shot Jupiter again twice in the head as though he—Damien—was a killer from a gangster movie. The group of kids—Damien and the girl included—scattered down the steps to run away.

  Chapter 23

  Antoinette screamed. She’d lost him. Like that. She’d lost him to some no one. Some nothing. A child. Some no one from the street who didn’t know her or him took him away from her. Some child from the street she’d never met before, who’d never met her before or Jupiter before took Jupiter from her. Took Jupiter. Took him. He was gone. Just like that. Oh, Jesus. For trying to do what was right. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t be. But it had just happened there; there, it was still happening. Her future with him was gone, just like he was. He was there, but he wasn’t. He was gone. He was there, but . . . she wailed. She wailed for a moment, and the baby wailed. And she stopped. And the baby kept wailing, which made her wail again. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t right. Why him? He was the good one. Why him?

  She hurried Simon to Amelia to free her own hands for Jupiter. She ran to him, his body, to at least be with him for a little while.

  The front door was still open. She didn’t want to waste any time going to the door when she could tend to him.

  Chapter 24

  Amelia fumbled for her cell phone in her back pocket. She held tightly on to Simon, who was silent in a way that made Amelia want him to be shrieking again. No murmurs or gurgles. He was breathing shallow breaths.

  “Who-oo’s my ba-by,” Amelia sang. “You’re my ba-by—you’re my baby, baby.” But Simon breathed shallow and quickly. He breathed fierce, scared breaths. He didn’t even screw up his face. His face re
mained his face at rest. His whole body looked at rest, but his heart was beating wildly. Amelia told herself to calm down. She was projecting her own emotions onto her baby. Objectively he didn’t have much color. He was white. He was breathing quickly. He was silent. And that scared her. It didn’t mean he understood what had happened. He was reacting to her fear. She had to calm herself down for his sake.

  Antoinette seemed to be praying over the corpse.

  “You’re my ba-by—you’re my baby, baby.”

  Antoinette’s eyes were asking for a few more moments to be with Jupiter before she would come back to comfort the baby. With her hands covered by death.

  “Who-oo’s my ba-by,” Amelia sang. “You’re my baby, baby.”

  Now Simon coughed, and the coughs became choking coughs, and Simon started hyperventilating and crying. He cried for a moment like normal, but then his eyes glassed over and he became not-himself. He cried, glassy eyed and blind to what was happening around him. He cried and cried. Amelia held Simon closer to her body, soothing him, pressing him harder into her chest until the chokes became deeper coughs, and the cries loud, and Amelia wanted to cry because of the dead body and because she couldn’t do anything to help Jupiter or Simon. She shouldn’t have let those boys in. What had she done? She hadn’t understood anything. Anything. A half hour went by in this way, but it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes. She gathered herself for Simon. Awful, awful. Simon was crying louder and louder, and Amelia couldn’t do anything to help him. She soothed him and whispered. She sang to him, but the baby thrashed with his hands at his mother’s face. It was the combination of the frustration of not being able to solve the problem—a problem she felt uniquely qualified to solve—and heartbreaking empathy for the little creature in pain that wouldn’t end and that she couldn’t ease. And her headache from the screaming baby and the dead man, a dead man, a body, Jupiter in the front room and her, paralyzed here, soothing her baby. It was the frustration plus the heartache plus the headache and paralysis that built and built until Simon spat up once, twice—Amelia relieved the pressure holding him against her chest—and Simon vomited, paused, and vomited again. Amelia was covered in a white frothy sour milkshake of regurgitated formula. The vomit was warm, but the air-conditioning was cold, and there was a dead man in her house as Antoinette stood over a corpse whispering who knew what voodoo.