Bed-Stuy Is Burning

by Brian Platzer

  Bratton thought about what he wanted to say. He thought about the best medicine. The medical perspective. Tests. Stabilize the situation. A medical approach to dealing with crime. Cops on the dots. Used to gather stats twice a year to send them off to the federal government. Now it’s every day. Used to be a million times a year you’d dial 911, like a doctor giving you placebos. Now it’s real medicine.

  Cops were everywhere, mostly black, but a few white ones and Asian ones, too. He was their leader. He would lead them into the future. Fires were mostly out. People were hugging. TV cameras panned, pointed at him, and waited. The afternoon grew even darker.

  When Bratton had been a boy, he had been protective of his sister. She got in a fight with Gene Stanley, a neighborhood tough. Gene pushed Bratton’s sister into a puddle of mud. It was a cold day in March, and Bratton’s sister came running into the house with a torn skirt and her shirt pressed wet and cold against her slick white skin. Well, Gene was out in the street, not hiding or anything, and Bratton grabbed him by his collar, the front of his collar, and he punched him in the face and blood poured out of Gene’s mouth and was all over Bratton’s shirt, and all over Gene, and Bratton punched Gene again, and Bratton’s father ran out of the house, and Bratton’s sister was crying, and Bratton was crying and yelling at Gene and ordering him to make things right, saying, “apologize, apologize, apologize.”

  “It’s all over,” Bratton began. “The streets are once again calm. And I won’t apologize for keeping New York safe.”

  Part 2: Days of Awe

  Chapter 49

  “What?” Amelia said.

  “What?”

  “Gentle,” Amelia said.

  “I’ll let go in a minute.”

  “Okay,” Amelia said.

  Amelia was on her back at 2 a.m., her arm draped over his body, Aaron’s body wrapped around hers.

  Simon whimpered in the next room. Aaron rolled away from her for his iPhone, opened the baby app. Light pooled out of the phone into the room. On the illuminated screen, Simon banged his little first on his mattress. But weakly. He feebly banged and banged. Aaron showed Amelia, who started to tear up.

  “It’s okay, Ames. He’s just a baby. I’ve read that babies’ memories recycle every two weeks. What he saw is the same as burning his finger. The circumcision. Don’t read your fear into him. We’ve been over this.”

  “It was horrible, before you came home.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “I already have.”

  “Then tell me again. What about it was horrible?”

  “Thinking I’d lose him, lose you. Not knowing what to do.”

  “You’ll never lose me,” he said.

  She started to cry, he asked her why, she cried harder, but the baby wasn’t crying anymore.

  He held her gently, then hard, then harder to the point where he wondered if he was hurting her, but she seemed to like being held like that. He could tell by the way she was tightening her muscles in the same pattern he was squeezing his.

  They were two people in a big house in a never-ending city, and he was holding her as tightly as he could. The streets were calm. Politicians had apologized, but four more cops had been shot. The police had taken her statement, their fingerprints. Daniel downstairs was out on bail. Aaron wanted to kick the murderer out of his house. If Daniel hadn’t shot the kid, his friends would have moved on. There wouldn’t have been a mob. Unless Daniel had saved Amelia’s life by shooting that boy.

  Aaron’s grip had loosened, so he tightened it. Aaron feared it was all over and lost. That he had lost Amelia. He feared something had happened to her, to them, and the possibility of this exact emotion was why she hadn’t wanted to marry. His grip had loosened again, so again he tightened it. He felt her strain to breathe. But what, then, about Simon? Simon was more important than marriage. And what she’d said was that her fear was that she’d lose him. Lose Aaron. And she hadn’t lost him.

  They should spend the rest of their life rejoicing.

  “We should spend every day for the rest of our lives celebrating what we have. That we almost lost each other but we didn’t. That we made it through.”

  She kissed his forehead. He was the vine. She was the tree. Their bodies.

  “That sense of what could have been taken away,” he began in a whisper, his voice filling out as he spoke. “I’m not saying always think about it, but maybe it’s not the worst thing to hang on to it and remind yourself that you could have lost us. But that you made the right decisions and we’re still here. Because you were able to protect Simon. And now for the rest of your life you are able to live with the rewards of your good actions.”

  “With Simon,” she said.

  “And me,” he said.

  Perhaps hearing his parents’ voices, Simon yelped.

  Aaron and Amelia were silent.

  “I love you,” she said.

  “You, too,” he said.

  Chapter 50

  “Soy milk?” she said the next morning at breakfast.

  “I’m good,” he said.

  “For me,” she said.

  He had taken half or full days off that week. This was the first day Antoinette was going to come back to work after her week off, and they were all three downstairs eating. Simon was drinking formula in Aaron’s lap. Neither of them had fasted the day before. Amelia had never fasted. Aaron hadn’t for years.

  “Berries? FreshDirect, I ordered them for you.”

  “Please!” Amelia said.

  Antoinette rang the bell. Amelia was excited. This was the first step back to normalcy. Antoinette would come back. Amelia could write, figure out what it meant that as soon as Sara cashed the check Amelia would be poor. Figure out how to tell Aaron. Or call the bank and cancel the check. Sara Hall—Amelia had asked if it was “all” or “ahl” to write the check—still hadn’t cashed it. When Amelia wrote that check, she’d wanted to be good. She could still picture her hand quivering over the checkbook. She’d steadied it. She’d done the right thing. The right thing to protect her son, and the good thing to give Sara Hall the money for her brother.

  “Bring the boy!” Amelia said. “Let’s all greet Antoinette together.”

  Aaron carried Simon to the interior decorative door, which had already been fixed by the construction guys. But the intricate carvings had needed to be replaced by a blank board. They had fixed that first, and were now working on the office. There had been more damage than Amelia had thought. The office’s entire back exterior wall had to be redone, the window replaced. Then they’d deal with the front of the house. The damage done by all the thrown concrete.

  “Good morning!” Amelia said, opening the door. The air was cold. The temperature had dropped in a week to feel like autumn. Antoinette was wearing jeans, a white blouse, and a gray hijab. Even so, seeing her would be good for Simon. Amelia could admit now that Simon was never as happy as when he was in Antoinette’s arms.

  “Now I don’t want to come in, but I’m just happy you brought my Simon Simon to the door. How’s he doing, Simon? Simon says? My big boy eating okay? Is he drinking okay? Simon, Simon? Simon says. Look how big he is!” Antoinette collected herself. “I can’t work here anymore. I see you’ve got it all cleaned up. But I can’t work here anymore. I just wanted to say goodbye to Simon says if that’s okay.”

  “Come in. Please come in,” Amelia said. “It’s all cleaned up. Of course. Of course it is.” The idea of Mr. Jupiter’s body still in the foyer horrified Amelia.

  Behind Antoinette, men and women walked to work. Mostly black people, but white people, too. The two mansions and the church behind Antoinette looked brown and tall behind the trees that were still clinging to the last of their leaves.

  “I can’t enter this house again,” Antoinette said. “I’ve made my decision.”

  Antoinette, in her gray hijab, was trying to deliver rehearsed lines. Amelia stood where Jupiter had been, Antoinette where they’d banged on the door.
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  “Are you sure?” Amelia said.

  “I’m sure.”

  “We can try to give you a raise.”

  “It’s not about that,” Antoinette said. “It’s not a healthy place. That’s all.”

  Amelia was offended—even if she understood—but she was desperate. “Take another week to think it over? For Simon?” Amelia said, while Aaron stood by dumbly with the baby.

  “Goodbye Simon Simon. I love you. I love you,” Antoinette said. “I’ll never forget you, Simon says. Remember who’s in charge! Simon says! Antoinette loves you. You grow up healthy and strong.”

  Simon cried. He reached out to Antoinette. His mouth opened up and twisted, and tears poured down his eyes.

  “Goodbye, Simon Simon. Don’t you ever forget me.”

  And then they were alone.

  Amelia was crying.

  “They were close, I guess, Antoinette and Jupiter. And he died here,” Aaron said. “It makes sense.”

  Amelia was crying, harder now.

  “For her, she can get another job that pays the same amount, and she doesn’t need to work here every day. It makes sense for her.”

  “What about for us?” Amelia said.

  “You were complaining about her before all this happened. We can find another nanny. Or you can take some time off from work to spend with Simon. This could be a blessing.”

  “You think I should?”

  “I think we shouldn’t make any decisions today. This morning. I think we should both take some time off and spend it as a family.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  Chapter 51

  Sara went first to the Chase on Fulton near Nostrand. There was a Citibank close by in case she didn’t like the feeling of the Chase, but the Chase was nice inside. It had a hand-sanitizer machine up front and a little table with coffee and a tissue box and a water machine that anyone could use even before you checked in or whatever, so they weren’t pressuring you not to use it if you didn’t have business there.

  Sara had never been in a bank before, but she wasn’t an idiot, so she knew that she couldn’t just put the check in one of the machines and take money out. Her brother had a credit card and a bank account, and her mother got food stamps and had a card for that but Sara had never had any of that. Still, watching her brother, she figured out that a credit card and a check were entirely different.

  When her brother had given her cash recently, and when her mother had given her cash growing up, or when she’d been paid cash doing some of the jobs she sometimes did like when she waitressed at the restaurant two summers ago, she’d had money. It wasn’t like she’d never had money. It was just she’d never dealt with checks or banks before. But she made sure when it was her turn next in line to tuck the handcuff bracelets under her sweatshirt sleeves and to be quiet and respectful.

  At her mother’s place the night before, Sara had tried to pry and then smash her left handcuff bracelet off with her mother’s big hammer, but she couldn’t even dent it. She’d really wanted to get these fuckers off. Her wrists were chafed and starting to bleed.

  She’d imagined that with the right tools she could get them off, but she didn’t know what the right tools were. A power drill? A pocketknife? She’d edged one cuff into the drawer of the kitchen table and tried again to pry the back of the hammer into it between her wrist and the cuff, but the stronger she’d twisted the hammer the more her wrist had hurt, and the cuff hadn’t even bent. She couldn’t twist any harder without snapping her wrist. She’d twisted a little bit harder—as hard as she could endure the pain—and the drawer had snapped off the kitchen table. A shard of cheap wood had splintered out and cut her arm. She’d howled. With pain and misery. Her mother was going to kill her. If her mother ever got out of jail. And the cuffs were still on.

  “Can I help you, miss?” the man asked. The man was Indian. Dot not feather. He was respectful. Used to working with blacks.

  “I’d like cash from a check,” Sara said through the bulletproof glass.

  “Swipe your card, please,” the man said.

  “I don’t have a credit card.”

  “You’re not a Chase cardholder?”

  “No.”

  “Then, I’m sorry, miss, I can’t help you.”

  “Oh,” Sara said, disappointed but happy she wasn’t in trouble.

  She hadn’t shown anyone the check. No one knew how big it was, or where she’d gotten it. No one had taken it away from her. She knew this was going to be hard, and though she didn’t get her money, she didn’t get the check taken away, which meant she still had a chance of giving the money to her mother.

  Next Sara went to the Pay-O-Matic on Fulton off Marcus Garvey. There was a Pay-O-Matic just half a block from the Chase and Citibank, but she wanted to walk the three extra blocks to clear her head. She knew these places better. They were everywhere. She’d been in them with her brother and uncle before and you didn’t need to have any account with them. They just took their cut and gave you the cash. Though she didn’t want to give up the 10 percent or whatever it was to Mr. Pay-O-Matic that could have gone to her brother’s bills, she’d be happy to have forty-five thousand dollars.

  She hadn’t eaten since wings the night before for dinner. Her mom had called from jail while she was eating and yelled at her for not being there with Andy that whole week. Sara so badly had wanted to tell her about the check, but couldn’t until she was sure the money was real. Sara so badly wanted to have the money for bail, for the hospital bills. Then she could visit her brother. Sara had just kept saying, “It will be okay,” and her mom kept saying, harping on the money along with the loss, “How will it be okay? Andy’s all messed up, I can’t be there for him, you refuse to, they don’t know how bad he is, they don’t know when he’ll wake up, and he’s still under arrest for attacking cops. If, if he gets out, Medicaid or the government or whatever will pay for the hospital, but not the therapy, the physical therapy. The occupational therapy his doc told Janet he’ll need. We can’t afford that. He’s all messed up, Sara. Everything that was supposed to be his can’t be now. You get that, right? He was supposed to take care of all of us, and now we’ve got to take care of him. It’s all messed up. We are dead now. All the talk about books and futures that went on in our apartment. It’s all dead now.”

  When it was Sara’s turn at the Pay-O-Matic windows, the lady asked: “Can I help you?” She was black.

  “I’d like to get cash for a check,” Sara said through bulletproof glass. But everything was smaller than the bank, so Sara minded the glass now. The ceilings were lower and the lights were brighter. The place was like the combination of a car repair shop and a bank. It had bricks up and down the side with big glass windows and giant blue and yellow signs.

  “Check and ID, please.”

  Sara, trying to breathe deeply, removed the check, smoothed it on her sweatpants, and handed it over along with her old school ID.

  The teller didn’t even look at the check. “This ID won’t do. Unless—this check from your school?”

  “No.”

  “No—” The woman barely heard Sara. She was forty, overweight and overconfident. Clearly good at her job, rude, glancing at the line behind Sara. “I can see that. This ID doesn’t even have the right sticker. And this is a personal check. No personal checks no matter what. Following customer.”

  Sara was scared now. But she walked the block and a half down to Atlantic to Checks & More. The place was on the corner of a strip mall between a mom-and-pop drugstore and a Golden Krust. Sara knew about Checks & More because in eighth grade she used to come to the Golden Krust on Fridays after school with friends and eat the jerk chicken patties. Now, there was no one inside Checks & More. It was dark. There was no bulletproof glass, just a middle-aged white man behind a waist-high counter.

  “Can I help you, young lady?” he said. He smiled. He had just opened a Snapple.

 
Sara hated him. She hated him because he called her young lady and because he wasn’t going to give her the money. It was her money. She wasn’t trying to trick anyone.

  “I’d like to cash a check,” Sara said.

  “Sure thing! Nice day, isn’t it? Things quieted down around here. Strange how the riots were here but the cops are being shot in nicer neighborhoods. Nice to have things back to normal around here at least, though I feel awful for those cops. Even though cops have never done me any favors. They don’t deserve to be shot. And their families. Jesus fuck, am I right? How scared must their wives and kids be right now? But right. Sorry. It’s nice to get back to business. Chaos around here means no business for me. No business means no money,” he said, rubbing two fingers together. “Check and ID, please.”

  Sara, steadying her breath, removed the check, smoothed it on her sweatpants, and handed it over along with her old school ID.

  The man looked at the check, whistled. “Well looks like you had a good day the day everyone else’s life went to shit. Good for you! It’s nice to know someone did. And I’ll be thrilled to take my three percent of that. But I’ll need a driver’s license or nondriver’s state ID, and a social security card. Two pieces of state ID, honey, okay?”

  “My mom has the New York State Benefit card. And my brother has a credit card, checkbook, and all that.”

  “I’m sorry. The check is made out to you. It’s under your name. And a check that big you can’t sign over, either. Looks too suspicious. I’ll get audited for it.”

  “But I’m not doing anything wrong. This check was made out to me. This is my money. It was a gift to me.”

  “Do you have a social security card?”