Bed-Stuy Is Burning

by Brian Platzer

  Aaron opened his eyes and smiled, which made her smile.

  “What happened?” she said.

  “It’s taken care of,” he whispered.

  “What happened?” she whispered.

  Simon was between them nearly asleep again. He’d need a bottle soon, but he seemed happy for the warmth of his parents.

  “Do you think he’ll be okay?” he whispered. “Do you think he’s going to get over this?” The room was big, but so was the bed, and the shutters were closed. Amelia felt close to Aaron and the baby.

  “He was laughing earlier,” she whispered, smiling. “Before we fell asleep. It was the most wonderful thing. He looked just like you. And then he was laughing.”

  “He was laughing?” Aaron whispered, smiling himself.

  “What happened?” Amelia whispered.

  “We went to a bank,” Aaron whispered, “and I tore up the check and paid her cash. Fifty grand in cash from my account. More than that, actually. She told me about her brother. Told me about working for you. I think that’s great. Great that you’re doing serious work. But we have to talk. I have to talk to you. I came home as fast as I could. It’s awful what happened to her brother. I wanted to give it to her so she could take care of him. But we need to talk. About me first.”

  Amelia sat up under the sheet and turned on her bedside lamp. Simon was fully awake now. He looked at his mother. Suddenly Simon was able to look at her like he knew who she was.

  “About you? Are you okay? That wasn’t yours to do,” she said, no longer whispering.

  “She told me what happened here, too, that day,” he said.

  “And you believed her?”

  “I want to live better from now on,” he said. “I want to live right. I didn’t want that money I made. I wanted to give it all to her. I gave it all to her. I don’t want it anym—”

  “You believed her.” Amelia was scared. She’d been caught. She should have told him about the check. “What did she say happened here?”

  “She showed me the check. It was your handwriting. And it was something you would do. I think it was wonderful that you did it. I love you. But she can’t cash a check like that.”

  “I know.”

  “Did you know it at the time?” Aaron said.

  “No,” Amelia said.

  “You made her a promise. It ends it this way. It ends it morally. I love you so much. I think you did wonderfully to pay her to leave,” Aaron said. “To protect Simon. It’s just money. I wouldn’t have thought of that. I would have done something self-defeating or rash. But you did the good thing.”

  Aaron seemed to understand. Not just to pretend to. But still:

  “She blackmailed us.” Amelia said. “You shouldn’t have paid her.”

  “It’s my money I gave her. You still have the last of your family’s money this way. My money was dishonest money. Gambling money. I don’t want it anymore. It’s money I would have spent at the track.”

  She deflated. There was more to this, but she didn’t know what yet. “Aaron?” she said. He had done something far worse, and he would have forgiven her for anything.

  “I gave her the rest of it,” he said. “More than just the fifty. I gave her everything. A hundred thirty thousand dollars. I gave her all of it. It was the—”

  Far, far worse.

  Her intellectual comprehension of what she’d been told didn’t match up to her emotional understanding of the man.

  She rushed to put on her shirt.

  This might be it. This might be the end of everything. She’d thought she was the one who’d done wrong, but it had been him the whole time. Everything she’d known had been going on had actually been going on. Everything she’d feared.

  “It was the best feeling,” he said. “It was terrific. It felt great. I feel great. I love you so much. But wait. I have to tell you everything. You already know. I know you know. But I have to tell you.”

  “There’s no way you gave away one hundred thirty thousand dollars! And to Sara!” she said. But she wanted to hear the truth, at least. If it was true, she wanted to hear the nonhysterical truth. She didn’t want to cry. If her life was over, she wanted to understand why.

  The baby. She held the baby. She and Simon were alone now. In the woods, in the city. In Bed-Stuy, New York. She was a pioneer woman crossing the plains in a covered wagon and she was dying. Could she hunt? Would she remember where she’d set the traps? Simon, Simon, Simon, Simon . . .

  “That’s where I was during the riots,” he said. “Not at work. I was at the track. I couldn’t help myself. I am sick. It’s an addiction. Gambling. Not the risk stuff. Maybe that, too. I don’t know.”

  Aaron reached for her, but she wouldn’t go to him. He’d been lying to her forever. For the entire time. She could leave him still. If she wanted to. What if she had never gotten together with him in the first place? If she was still with Kevin. If Simon was Kevin’s. Kevin as a father. He would have never gone for the name Simon. He would have demanded Kevin Jr. On weekends, in the park, the three of them. Kevin cooked eggs for the three of them. Rosé for the two of them. The park full of children. Water in Junior’s shoes. Kevin wasn’t there. Kevin was off having fun. At Balthazar. In Europe. Telling stories just to hear himself laugh. Stories that didn’t include her, that didn’t include their son.

  “But the gambling,” he said. “That’s real. Lying to you was the worst part. Every day it made me sick. But it’s over now. I’ve already started a program. In Cobble Hill. That’s where I’ve been over the last week, when you’ve been with Sara. They let me bring Simon. I’ve started Gamblers Anonymous. I’m going to get better. I want to get married. To combine our money. To combine our lives. I’m going to beat this thing. Because of you. With your help. And the program. A real program. Because you love me. I can do it. My life is mine, my responsibility. That’s what I’ve learned. But I can’t do it alone.”

  Aaron, standing now, turned away toward the stairwell, not to ignore her but to prove that he was speaking to a higher power.

  “Stop it,” she said.

  “And I’m going to be a rabbi again,” he said. “Work is just another manifestation of it. My job, I mean. Of gambling. I have to quit. Today. I gave away the money because it was unhealthy money. We’re going to start over. Here. In Bed-Stuy.”

  “Stop! Aaron. Stop talking,” she said. “I watched our neighbor die.”

  Simon, startled, started to cry, but not loudly. Amelia held him with one hand and put the other one over her face.

  “I, I—” Aaron said.

  “You’ve gambled,” Amelia interrupted. “Okay. You gambled. I saw our neighbor killed. You still think this is all about you. That you can come in here and tell me that your life has been so hard. I know that. It’s made my life impossible! You think every day I haven’t feared you’d come home and tell me we’re penniless? At a certain point, this stops being about you!”

  “I gave her the money for us to get married,” he said. “For me to get healthy.”

  “Married?” she said. “Married! We’re not getting married. I had Simon. I was in labor. He lived inside me for forty weeks. His body was inside my fucking body. I’m the one who fed him from my body. I’m the one who shot at that fucking girl. I . . . I paid her to leave. I’m taking the chances. I’ve been paying her to be my source. I’ve been building up to something. I’m getting closer. Now you want to tell me how you’ve been thinking, and you have a plan, and it’s all going to be different now? This isn’t about you. It was never about you. Get over yourself. My life isn’t about you. Be there for it, if you can. But my life isn’t about you.”

  Aaron had that look again. Like this was too much for him—like he’d been prepared for anything but this.

  “I’m on the cusp of something,” Amelia continued. “But Jesus fucking Christ don’t tell me you’ve figured out how I am supposed to be happy. How I’m going to be happy is with Simon. He’s safe. And I’m getting my name out
there. I’m doing real work now. And,” she looked at him.

  “You saved us,” Aaron said. “I couldn’t, and you did. But I don’t want you to do it alone anymore. That’s what I realized. I can help myself. That will take a burden off you. The important thing is that we survived.” He looked at her. They were so close to each other. “Maybe divine providence . . . I can let it exist. Lying to you has been hell. That part of my life is over. I’ve never felt as good as I felt today after giving away that money. And now, telling you the truth. I feel like I’m floating. Because of you. You’ve saved me.”

  She comforted the baby. Their son. Aaron was an asshole. They were the only ones who understood each other.

  “I’m going to be a rabbi again. And the program will get me healthy. With you and Simon, and honesty, I can do it.”

  “Then you shouldn’t have given away all your money,” she said.

  “I can make it work,” he said.

  “You shouldn’t have given away all your money,” she said, laughing despite herself. It took all her power not to stroke Aaron’s head in the same way they were both stroking Simon’s.

  “Yes, I should. I did. I am going to be a rabbi again. We’re going to get married. I’ve already joined a program. I’m going to get better. We are going to be so happy.”

  “You don’t even believe in God. Fuck! How did you join a program? How are you going to be a rabbi!” Amelia said, but she was smiling. She thought about her experience in the stairwell on the way up to Sara, and that maybe Aaron was turning toward a truth. Maybe it was the right thing for Aaron to do. Maybe Aaron could feel that truth. Maybe she could, too.

  Their life could be about truth. Honesty with each other, and a greater honesty where she could try to begin to better understand the trajectory of her own life. A new life of repentance after shooting at Sara, refusing to cash her check, and paying her to be a source. Amelia could start over just as Aaron could. “Who’s going to hire you?” she said.

  “Someone will.”

  “And you’ll stick with it? How much does a rabbi make?”

  “Enough,” Aaron said. “I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” Amelia said. “But all that money you gave away?”

  “Does that mean yes?”

  “Simon is hungry,” Amelia said, smiling.

  “Marry me.”

  “Aaron,” she said.

  “Marry me,” he said.

  They were looking at each other now, and instead of always before having seen Aaron in Simon’s face, Amelia now saw Simon in Aaron’s.

  “Amelia, will you marry me?” he said. “Please.”

  “I don’t know. No. No!”

  “You don’t know? You don’t know! Does that mean yes!” Aaron was shaking with joy, which made her shake, too.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “Will you marry me?” he said, shaking.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “You will?”

  Chapter 60

  Derek’s aunt greeted him at his front door. She was a short woman who’d looked even shorter since the funeral. The gun at the back of his jeans made them too tight.

  “Where’d you go?” she said.

  He walked past her up to his room. The lights in the house were all off except in the kitchen at the back of the parlor floor. Derek wouldn’t go down south to live with her and her fat-man husband in their dark house.

  She’d been sleeping in his father’s bed.

  After ten, fifteen minutes she called up to him, “What do you want for dinner?” He’d hidden the gun, paced around his room, wished he’d gone to the bodega for Heineken instead of coming straight home.

  “I’ll get it for myself,” he called down. He didn’t want her touching his food.

  He took out books and tried to read but couldn’t focus. Autobiography of Malcolm X and even Watchmen took too much focus. If he did go down south, he would take the gun with him.

  “I’ll heat up anything!” his aunt shouted from the base of the stairs. “Casserole! Ribs! Chinese! We need to make room in the fridge!”

  He could start the grill himself. His father wasn’t the only one who could light a grill.

  “We need to talk, Derek!” she called. “Over dinner? Chinese food? You like that, right?”

  “I’m tired,” he said, probably too quietly for her to hear.

  Then there she was, at his door. He had put the gun away, thankfully. If she’d seen it she wouldn’t even let him live with her.

  “Uncle Rick and I talked,” she said. One Christmas when Derek was ten, Rick gave him fireworks for New Year’s but he wasn’t allowed to keep them. “Your dad put you in a good position. We’re going to try to rent the house. Maybe even earn money off it. For you. This neighborhood is hot now with all the whites moving in. We were impressed by the funeral. The deputy mayor, the neighbors. That was nice. The house will be here when you come back after you graduate. High school or college. It will be yours.”

  “Let’s talk at dinner,” Derek managed.

  His aunt went back downstairs. When he heard her back in the kitchen, Derek covered his mouth with his orange pillow, lay facedown in his bed, and screamed. He screamed like a little boy. He screamed like he was vomiting. He screamed so hard into the pillow that his old aunt ran upstairs and found him still screaming and got down over him and hugged his back and stroked his hair.

  Derek stopped screaming when he felt her body on his back. He’d hold on to this feeling and use it.

  “It’s all right, sweet boy. We’ll make it through together.”

  Chapter 61

  There’s a brown girl in the ring

  Tra la la la la

  There’s a brown girl in the ring

  Tra la la la la la

  Brown girl in the ring

  Tra la la la la

  She looks like a sugar in a plum

  Plum plum

  Show me your motion

  Tra la la la la

  Come on show me your motion

  Tra la la la la la

  Show me your motion

  Tra la la la la

  She looks like a sugar in a plum

  Plum plum

  Skip across the ocean

  Tra la la la la

  Skip across the ocean

  Tra la la la la la

  Skip across the ocean

  Tra la la la la

  She looks like a sugar in a plum

  Plum plum.

  I’m too old for those old songs, Mom,” Teddy said.

  “You don’t even like it a little bit? Not even a little bit when I sing those old songs around the house?” Antoinette said. “You can’t fool me. I don’t believe you. You’ve been doing your homework and smiling.”

  Teddy made a show of burying his head deeper into his math textbook, and he put on a serious face. He was sitting at the kitchen fold-up table while Antoinette made chicken Parmesan for their dinner.

  “I know you’re getting tired of me here in the afternoons,” she said, “while you’re doing your homework. I’ll get another job soon. But I like being home. And the last family I worked with were nice people. It’s not right what happened to them, and they deserved better. They are going to suffer for what happened there. And I don’t want to bring that suffering into this house. But they were good people, which is why I’ve told you to pray for them. They sent me a couple weeks’ pay even though I was the one who quit them.”

  “I like when you’re home. I’m just saying that I’m too old for those songs you sing to the babies at work.”

  When Teddy was finished with the problem set, he took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He put his glasses back on and closed the textbook, then the notebook, and he made a neat pile and deposited both books into his backpack.

  Dinner wasn’t for another couple of hours.

  He went to the refrigerator, took an apple from the crisper drawer, and placed the apple on the counter. He wiped down a cutting board, set
it beside the apple, removed a knife from the knife block, and wiped the knife down with the same dish towel he’d used to wipe the cutting board, but he’d forgotten to clean the apple, so he laid the knife down on the cutting board, turned the tap on cold, rinsed the apple, wiped it down with a paper towel, held it stem-up on the cutting board, cut it in half, retrieved plastic wrap from the cabinet, wrapped half the apple and returned it to the crisper drawer in the refrigerator, got a small blue plate from the cabinet, and placed the apple skin-side down on the plate. He cored the apple and adjusted the glasses on his face. He returned to the cabinet—the same one with the plastic wrap—reached for a jar of peanut butter, used the same knife he’d cut the apple with to scoop out a chunk of peanut butter and smear it onto the apple on the plate, at which point he used the same paper towel he dried the apple with to scrape the knife clean of excess peanut butter. Teddy threw out the dirty paper towel, rinsed the knife with soap and water, put it in the rack to dry, tore off a second piece of paper towel, which he placed under his plate, and he took the apple on the plate with the paper towel to the kitchen fold-up table and began to eat.

  “I’m standing right here in this kitchen,” Antoinette said. “I could have made you a snack.”

  “I’m twelve years old, Mom,” Teddy said. “I can do things like that for myself.”

  Antoinette couldn’t help herself. She went to her son and kissed him and hugged him tightly in her arms.

  Chapter 62

  Everyone sat in a cramped Bronx gymnasium with high school kids sweating in the bleachers. A few beat reporters asked for information relating to the recently murdered police, and then Bratton’s press guy called on a few faces he didn’t recognize to round off the conference:

  “Ta-Nehisi Coates, with The Atlantic. A question about how to make police more approachable. There are young black people whom folks on TV are dismissing as thugs and all sorts of other words. These young people live lives of incomprehensible violence. They are regularly jumped by older kids in the neighborhood and beaten by adults. I know this. This is not theory here. I’m telling you about what my daily routine was like when I was growing up in Baltimore. And no one dreams of calling the cops. Because they’re scared of police, too. Violence is a product of violence. But people won’t tell authorities anything because they think it will lead to more violence. So my question for you, Commissioner Bratton, is how you plan on changing things so kids aren’t scared to call adults—in your case, the police—who have the ability to stem the tide of the violence in their lives.”