Bed-Stuy Is Burning

by Brian Platzer

  Antoinette sneezed, which scattered some papers. One softly landed on Simon’s nose.

  It tickled his face and he batted it away.

  “You,” Antoinette commanded, “will be trampled underfoot by the devils. Prepare yourself, my son, the Demon at my orders will be the one that will add the last touch to my plan that I will accomplish in you, that is, your sanctification.”

  She had loved Jupiter as much as she had loved any man her entire life since Billy. She couldn’t have Billy. She couldn’t have Jupiter.

  But she could have the Lord. She’d make sure Teddy was protected. Because the alternative was to wallow in self-pity, and that would hurt Teddy as much as it would hurt her.

  “So fight!” Antoinette told Simon. “Fight with the Lord!”

  Again, Simon batted at his nose.

  “You like that, do you?” Antoinette said. “Fight alongside me, baby Simon! We can’t let anyone come in and tell us what our lives are. We decide! Simon says! We decide!”

  The baby perked up some, claiming his muscles for himself.

  This was something.

  Antoinette liked taking care of Simon. She had the touch. She was too humble to say she had God’s touch, but others had said it to her. Pastor V had said it. Her aunt had said it. Teddy’s father had said it long ago. She could beat the Devil back, sometimes.

  “Devil be gone!” she whispered into Simon.

  She could beat him back. Maybe not all the time. And maybe not in her own life. But in other people’s life. For other people. For baby Simon. And for her son. Teddy would become something. He was smart. He was conservative. Other kids looked up to him. The right ones at least. He studied hard. He would be a lawyer, probably. Or a dentist. A judge.

  “We decide!” she whispered. “Simon says! We decide!”

  Teddy would make money. He would buy a house like this one. He would be Muslim. In a community that looked after one another even if the whole world was against them. He would make money and be safe. He would have a mother who loved him and be safe with his God. She would take care of him. That was her strength.

  “We decide our own lives, Simon,” Antoinette whispered into Simon’s ear, perking Simon into himself. Slowly his gray skin pinkened.

  “There you go, baby boy. There you go. It’s just you and me right now, baby boy. Simon says. Simon Simon says. We’re in charge! We give our lives to God!”

  Simon revved up like a car and barked a laugh. Antoinette dug the boy out of his grave of books and ran him into the kitchen where a bottle was waiting. “We’re in charge!”

  Simon guffawed and waved his arms.

  “We’re in charge!”

  Simon was laughing now in anticipation of laughing more.

  “In charge! In charge! In charge!”

  Simon leaped at the bottle and sucked it down.

  Chapter 45

  On the subway, Aaron had been thinking of bartering with God. Now he wanted to tell the story of Abraham. He had wanted to be Abraham. But that was impossible. Abraham had been the truest believer. Abraham had had such unquestioning faith in God he’d been willing to kill his son. Aaron couldn’t cast himself as Abraham. But he was stuck in that story of Sodom. He looked around and saw the angry mob, smelled his neighborhood burning. Sodom was the story for this moment.

  “I’ve been thinking about the story of Sodom and Gomorrah,” Aaron began. He spoke from within his chest, but quietly at first, and he commanded a deeper attention than when he had been out on the street as part of the crowd. “In order to understand the story of Sodom, you have to understand that there are two equally important halves of this story: that of Abraham and that of Lot. In the Abraham half, Abraham tries to save Lot’s life.” Aaron raised his voice slightly here. It was a technique he’d developed as a first-year rabbi. Start quiet and then increase volume. Now he did it without thinking: “And in the Lot half, Lot’s family is overrun by an angry mob.” Aaron let that phrase linger. He let the crowd hear itself be compared to the mob of Sodomites.

  But then Aaron said, “You, my friends, are like Abraham.”

  This hooked them. Enough of them knew their Bible. Aaron would save his own life, and the lives of Simon and Amelia. If they were okay inside. They had to be okay. For anything to ever make sense again.

  Aaron looked out at the lake of bobbing faces spilling over the sidewalk, into the street, onto the far sidewalk and up on the steps of the mansion across the way. The sun was raw. The sun was yellow. The yellow sun lit the street, empty of passing traffic. Some kids climbed up and listened to him from on top of parked cars. Aaron’s gut seized up on him, as if he’d been starved and the food was just uncovered. He spoke louder. He’d define this moment for them, define their role in it.

  “Lot’s half of the story starts with angels. A group of them. They show up at Sodom, which is the kind of city where, when strangers show up at your door, you get nervous. And it’s late at night. Lot has no idea they’re angels because they’re all dressed as men, but he welcomes them into his home, welcomes them inside, with his wife and daughters. This is a gamble. The calculation Lot is making here is that though these men could be criminals who might hurt his family, they could also be good men, innocent travelers, who might fall victim to the Sodomites if Lot doesn’t let them in. So Lot, a good man, does the noble thing and takes a risk that these travelers are also good. He takes the gamble of hurting his family over letting these strangers get hurt.”

  “Fuck you, you a preacher or something?” someone yelled from the crowd, to laughter among the teenagers. No laughter from the kid with the gun, Aaron checked, but from others. The kid with the gun wore a bright yellow shirt, but because of the gun Aaron hadn’t noticed it before.

  “Shoot the preacher,” someone said.

  “He ain’t no preacher, he’s a Jew!”

  “Cap the Jew!” another said, seriously, Aaron thought, but many others laughed.

  “The Jew cap! That little hat they wear!”

  “Let him talk,” a female voice called out.

  “It’s his house,” a man said firmly, and Aaron continued. “And after these angels—who Lot thinks are regular visitors in his city—after these angels are bathed and fed in Lot’s home and in bed for the night—after these angels settle in and Lot thinks he and they are safe, suddenly every single man in Sodom shows up at Lot’s house and starts banging at his door. That’s what the Bible says: ‘Every single man in Sodom.’ It doesn’t say how many. But I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a few hundred. If it’s a crowd about your size. And they demand the angels’ heads.”

  “That’s right!” someone shouted from the crowd. A woman. An older woman. “That’s right!” a few of her friends join her.

  This was good.

  “The crowd,” Aaron said, “had heard that Lot was housing fresh meat, fresh money, and flesh, and so they called out to Lot, ‘Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, that we may know them.’ ”

  A siren a few blocks away alerted everyone there to how long it had been without sirens, without gunfire. The part of Aaron that spoke was separate from and yet the same as the part that thought into the future of what he was going to say next, and he savored this duality of self. He had his audience listening. That was what mattered.

  “Lot has put his whole family at risk, and he has put the angels at risk. Lot makes his family vulnerable. But then Lot does something courageous. He goes outside to the mob and locks the door and says, ‘I’m here. Take me. Don’t take those men. Take me.’ And right when the mob is about to storm Lot’s house, the angels punish the crowd with blindness and lead Lot and his family to safety.”

  Aaron took a deep breath. They were listening to him. They wanted to know how Abraham fit in. How the city burned. And how it related to them and their city. Or maybe they just liked the show Aaron was putting on. But either way, they were leaning toward Aaron, eager to hear what would happen next.

  Chapter 46<
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  And so were Sara and Amelia, on the other side of the bulletproof door. Amelia had never heard Aaron like this. She’d imagined it, but she’d never been present for it. His voice was confident but gentle. It confirmed what Amelia had hoped. That Aaron had a gift. That he was meant to lead. That she loved him fully and not just in comparison to someone else.

  Amelia held the gun to Sara’s waist, but their affairs with each other were over. The gun was unnecessary, and they both knew it. It was embarrassing in comparison to Jupiter’s body on the floor. Amelia had shrieked when she’d seen the body again as she came down the stairs. Now they tried to ignore it and listen to Aaron.

  So did Daniel, begrudgingly. Daniel hated how assured he was.

  Only Antoinette didn’t listen. She heard the sound of the voice. She heard the cadence, and she let it buoy her up. Simon was smiling in her care, under the balm of her strength and his father’s voice.

  Chapter 47

  “So that’s the Lot half. Lot takes in the angels and is saved from the flesh-hungry crowd. But what about the Abraham half?”

  Silence before him as they waited.

  “If you remember, before God sends his angels to Sodom, Abraham approaches God for a conversation. People remember this conversation as a debate or negotiation. Actually, I was just remembering it like that on the way over here. But it couldn’t have been like that. God wasn’t arguing with Abraham. God is God. God knows everything. But that doesn’t mean he is thinking about everything all the time. Men have to show God, direct God, be a model for God as he was their model on creation.”

  “Amen!”

  Aaron felt this woman’s energy. He started speaking faster and breaking between sentences to let the crowd react.

  “Just by talking to God,” Aaron said, “Abraham made God see that there were in fact good people in Sodom.”

  “That’s right!”

  “In the beginning, God was going to kill the entire town,” Aaron said. “He saw Sodom as a single mass of people. But then Abraham initiated the conversation. He acted. Just as you are acting today. He broke up the mass into individuals. Abraham got God to focus on his people. On the individuals. First fifty, then twenty, then ten. Which made God realize there was a good man. There was Lot and his family.” Aaron paused. Looked as many of these people in the eye as he was able to from up on his stoop. “You are doing the right thing here,” he said. “You are drawing attention to yourself. You are making people see you as individuals.”

  “That’s right!”

  “Making people see your families. Because when Abraham acted, God saw Abraham’s family. God saw Lot. And Lot was saved. Being seen is enough sometimes. And you’re making sure you’ve been seen here today.”

  Aaron had been building up to this. He wasn’t sure he would get here, but:

  “The thing is, that’s only one part of the lesson. The other part is that you must not become the mob. Thus far, you’ve been Abraham, saying, ‘Look at me. Look at my cousins.’ You’ve brought attention to the right grievances, and New York—the United States and the world—will take notice. Things will change now. Police will think twice before shooting. But don’t become the mob. Don’t become the Sodomites when you’ve done such a wonderful job being Abraham. Stop now. You’ve done your job. Don’t hurt the women and the children. Don’t go too far and go from the hero of this story to its villain.”

  “Amen!” shouted one woman from the crowd.

  “Because Abraham’s love for Lot,” Aaron said. “It was real love.”

  Here Aaron was accomplishing something real.

  “God’s love!” someone shouted

  “Love of family,” Aaron said.

  Aaron was using his training for good. To reach his family.

  “I understand the desire to burn this city down,” Aaron said. “I understand the desire to riot. To show the Godless, ruleless, compassionless murderers that the cop cars and mayor’s offices and high-rises and brownstones deserve to go up in flames. But be Abraham—be those who remind the mayor and God that you exist, that your mothers and fathers and children and cousins exist and are individuals—as opposed to a mob. Don’t be the Sodomites who reach out to punish the children and wives.”

  A kid yelled out, “Don’t you tell us how to—”

  The bulletproof outer door crashed opened behind Aaron.

  Aaron saw Amelia and grabbed her and held her tight in his arms. They hugged out there in front of the crowd.

  Aaron didn’t want to cry, but he cried, which was as fitting an end to all of this as he could have invented with words or violence or planning ahead.

  The mob applauded. It broke out in cheers.

  Some shushed or cursed the applauders, but most, carried away with the real live moment or maybe with the story of Abraham and Lot—the love between them—yelped and clapped.

  And they were doubly happy for the black girl to walk out behind the couple. They whooped and cheered.

  “You all right?” they called to Sara.

  “They treat you all right?”

  “Her arm! They busted her arm!”

  “They mistreat her in there? Are those handcuffs?”

  But Amelia was inside again, closing the door behind her, pushing Sara out, grabbing Aaron and dragging him in, too. He wanted to be there for the end of it—to see the end of the story out there—but Amelia had pulled him into safety.

  “No,” he heard Sara saying. “It’s all right. They’re good enough for me, at least.”

  “Then who killed this boy.”

  “Another one.”

  “In there.”

  “Yeah, in—”

  • • •

  But something had already passed among them. They’d found their faith. So many of them, that those who hadn’t couldn’t fight the crowd. Some prayed over Damien’s corpse, while others went home to be with family. Soon the cops would come, and ambulances, and garbage men, and newscasters; and the members of what had constituted the crowd, having murdered a man, lost one of their own, vented their anger, and had their release, turned into individuals again.

  Chapter 48

  Of the forty-five hundred inhabitants of the Marcy houses, Police Commissioner Bill Bratton was looking at a thousand or so out front in tents that had been set up by black cops. Black cops from the city, from neighboring cities, from Jersey. The mayor must have called everyone he and his wife knew. Crown Heights had been calm. There’d been no policing to be done. But he was here now, and that was important.

  What he’d liked as a child was staying in the back room at home, where it didn’t smell as much like coal or kerosene, and toying with clay. Now the Marcy Projects smelled like a fire that had recently been put out. Bratton stood on top of the black police car. People were starting to gather. Cops, mostly. The buildings looked like they were rising up from underground. Giant gray behemoths, rising, rising. Like space buildings for black people who’d never be educated out of them. He’d been walking the tightrope, the tightrope snapped, and he’d still been walking for years. The police commissioner? He needed an education department, a parks department, teachers’ salaries doubled, cops’ salaries tripled, triple the number of cops. Especially black cops. Look at all these black men wearing blue. Here was a start. Right this moment.

  He’d built figurines as a child. It began with Dr. Seuss. He’d loved those books, the characters, and he re-created in clay what was in the books. He’d built whole worlds. It’d started with the fish. The red fish and blue fish, even though he’d only had one color of clay. Gray-green clay. He could do one fish and two fish. Then Cat in the Hat. Then the one about the boy who lived among all those roads. And when he’d gotten older, Hopalong Cassidy, Wild Bill Hickok, Zorro, Davy Crockett. Whomever kids were talking about.

  People were hugging one another, and black cops were hugging the people. The only white people Bratton could see were members of the press. Giant cameras and trucks and lights, so Bratton told a deputy to
get their attention. The Marcy Project buildings looked like giant plus signs made of bricks and concrete rising up out of concrete. What a backdrop.

  And when he’d brought his clay figures into school, his teacher was so impressed she sent him to the principal, who assigned him to be the King Keeper of Flag Day celebrations.

  He’d stood on the field—just like he was standing now up on his car—in front of the whole school in his Boy Scout uniform, and he’d sung the school anthem in front of the big brass band.

  His father, only five foot six, slapped him on the back.

  The end of those celebrations felt something like this. People were tired after a long day.

  He graduated with honors and passed the exams to get into the most prestigious public school in all of Boston.

  Now Bratton started calling over cops and reporters. Cops called over more cops. Bratton straightened his tie. Smoke rose up off the building behind him, and though it was only the afternoon, the sky was dark.

  A radio played somewhere. WFAN—Mike Francesa—a guilty pleasure. “New Yorkers hurting New Yorkers? New Yorkers hurting New Yorkers! This is not my New York. Not the New Yorkers I know. Not even Mets fans hurting Yankees fans. I’ve worked here every day for thirty years, and now you’re telling me New Yorkers are hurting cops? This isn’t Rodney King. It’s worse. This isn’t Crown Heights. This isn’t Attica or Selma or the march on Washington. This is—”

  He didn’t know where it was coming from. Most residents were crying and hugging, as though they weren’t the ones who had just been fighting the police. Bratton’s father would have called the inhabitants street monkeys, but Bratton’s father was dead, and Bratton made sure never to judge a Jew or an African American by anything other than his actions. Bratton judged a man by what that man could control, and a man could not control his thoughts, and a man could not control the color of his skin or the religion he was born into. His last day at Sunday school, Bratton had taken one look at that priest, humored him, and said, “Yes, sir,” and he had never gone back to that church again.