Frowning slightly when she began, Aisha’s face was in a full grimace by the time she got to the end of the page. “The Mayor’s Zero Tolerance Program has succeeded in reducing crime throughout the City. Offender profiles show that crime can start with a minor infraction. A mugger doesn’t buy a token—he jumps the turnstile. A pickpocket shadowing a victim doesn’t bother to find a trash can for her gum wrapper—she litters. Rowdy sports fans don’t drink in taverns or at home as the law requires—they toast in public. These are situations where courageous Depart ment of Public Assistance volunteers step in. Subway Youth Patrol volunteers stop in their tracks the token cheat, the litterer, and the public drinker. Serious infractions are signaled to a supervisor who radios on-duty police officers. SYP stops the rulebreaker, NYPD catches the lawbreaker—New York teamwork at its best! MTA Executive Director S. K. Marks joins Transit Authority President Lana Retenza in saluting these New Yorkers.”
Though no one was around to see, she rolled her eyes and even made them flutter in disgust. That was the dumbest thing she ever heard. What if you wasn’t a mugger, pickpocket, or rowdy? Busting people for dropping a wrapper or drinking a beer was stupid when the city was full of gangsters and killers. They could f’git it if they thought she was gonna drop a dime on people for stuff that wasn’t even bad. No way. She collected her papers, stuck them back in the envelope, curled around Starlett, and fell asleep.
Fourteen
Aisha hurried along the subway platform toward the group gathered outside the office next to the Grand Central Station token booth. In her head she heard Poncie’s voice: “Be late—by even one minute—and your case is closed.” It couldn’t be after eight already! She’d given herself plenty of time. But everybody else was already there. She noticed a wall clock inside the token booth. It was only seven-fifty! Those welfare people must’ve scared the mess out of all of them. Ten “courageous volunteers” were milling around, yawning and checking each other out. Fifty percent of them were girls and fifty percent boys, and they all seemed a hundred percent pissed.
“Nobody best not call me no damn ‘volunteer,’ because I was forced into this mess! With their two-cent stipend I gotta pay somebody to watch my kids. So what we s’pose to live on?”
“I hear that, sister. Look at me, I been on lockdown myself, with damn near my whole hood, all of us political prisoners. And they want me to throw a few more brothers in the jaws of the system? Homey don’t think so.” The one who said that, Aisha noted, had a shaved head, deep-set dark brown eyes, and a nice physique.
“Hey, it’s betta than being the clean-up woman. We ain’t really gotta do nothin’,” said a skinny girl with bad skin, picking at a scab on her shoulder. “They just betta have some food for us in that office—shoot, I’m hungry.”
“First punk homey so much as look at me funny, I’m gon’ make him my son, and that’s word. Don’t need no cop, supervisor, nobody to do what I’m out here to do, boyee. I was in Nam, know what I’m sayin’?”
Aisha felt like she knew these strangers, from school, from home, from life. They were dropouts and young mothers and guys with criminal records, all poor and at the mercy of men with squarish heads and women in bow ties.
“Eight o’clock! Roll call!” The voice came from inside the office. There was mumbling and grumbling as the supervisor appeared with a pad and pen. Aisha was so stunned, she barely heard her name called.
“Ingram, Aisha,” repeated Mrs. Vinker, inspecting the faces of the group as if she didn’t know what her son’s ex-girlfriend and the mother of his two children looked like.
“I’m right here! You know you recogni—” She stopped. Kevin’s mail-stealing mother was the supervisor of her Subway Youth Patrol section?! God was surely trying to punish her.
Mrs. Vinker made no response and continued down her list. “Iola, Cousine!” “Jackson, Rena!” “Johnson, Victor!” “Leeson, Catherine!” “Payne, Max!”
“Here!” shouted some. Others simply grunted, “Uh-huh.” A couple had more to say.
“Niecy Mercherson!”
“Damn right I’m Niecy Mercherson. I wanna know when we get off? I cannot afford to spend the whole damn day doing this undercover crap. Where you welfare people think we s’pose to come up with money for baby-sitters when you done took away every penny we got?!”
“Powell, Retha!”
“When breakfast? Don’t make me go off up in here, and my stomach burnin’ already!”
Once the last person had answered “Yeah, wassup,” the supervisor re-called Niecy Mercherson and Retha Powell.
“You two are free to leave. Go back to your caseworkers and choose another option, because Transit”—and here she looked each person in the eyes, lingering an extra second on Aisha—“tolerates no lip, whining, or attitude. Now the rest of you follow me.” Niecy and Retha shouted curses and threats at her back as Mrs. Vinker led the group inside the cramped office.
Her blue-tinted gray hair was in tight curls on top of her head and was held back on the sides by long bobby pins that could double as weapons if necessary. In her fifteen years selling tokens and MetroCards under the streets of New York City, she never had to stick the pins in anything other than her hair. But in the past few years, clerks were being followed to their work stations and held up or their booths set on fire to force them out. So she didn’t hesitate when Transit offered her a job outside the cage.
She glanced at Aisha, who was whispering to Max Payne, the good-looking bald guy.
“Do you have a question, Ingram, or can we get started?”
“No questions. I was just checking out the poster over the desk that say the subways is safe. But what about the B train that derailed at DeKalb Avenue last year and all them people got hurt. That’s all.”
“Word up! Why the trains in our hoods always crashing, derailing, and stalling? Y’all remember the Queens-bound A that bounced in Harlem? I was on that sucker, know what I’m sayin’? Man, folks was flipping like pancakes. A week later, I’m on the number 3 in Brooklyn, and that train run off the tracks at President Street. So wassup widdat? The city be saying they backed up on the repairs they gotta make, but it ain’t about backlog, it’s about blacklog, and that’s word.”
“Or maybe it’s just you, brother,” said Max.
They all laughed.
“People, you’ve just wasted six minutes of your orientation. And for your information, last April the number 5 derailed uptown at Fifty-ninth Street during rush hour. Thousands of people, including whites, were stuck in a tunnel for hours until we got a second train to them. So don’t get caught up in racial paranoia. Some things that happen to minorities in this city are troubling, but killer subway trains aren’t it. Now, did you all read the SYP info sheet?”
“Yeahs” echoed in the office.
Were there questions?
The “nahs” followed.
Mrs. Vinker handed each patroller a walkie-talkie, a SUBWAY YOUTH PATROL cap, and a list of “infractions” they could handle on their own and “misdemeanors and crimes” to be reported to her. “All right. Remember, you’re not cops or undercover detectives or even security guards. You’re the MTA’s Guardian Angels, no more and no less.” With her eyes, she demonstrated “subtle” versus “provocative” observation. She assigned pairs, and within minutes the new patrollers were fanning out along the subway platforms, connecting corridors, and open passageways of the world’s busiest subway station, Grand Central Terminal, for their first practice run. More training sessions followed and finally the SUBWAY YOUTH PATROL was ready to roll.
Fifteen
It was nine o‘clock. The mad morning rush was in full swing. Under the high vault of the station’s starry ceiling, the main concourse was a picture of chaos. Pushing and bumping past each other on the pink marble floor, train commuters snorted “Excuse me” in the same tone as they’d say “Drop dead.” In business suits and warm-up suits, wingtip shoes and tennis shoes, horn-rimmed glasses and sunglasses, they dashe
d and squeezed and elbowed their way in and out of the cars, shouting over the roar of steel wheels on rails, “I said ‘excuse me’!”
The team of Aisha Ingram and Max Payne slowly climbed the sweeping staircase at the west end of the concourse. Max leaned against the balustrade of the balcony, and Aisha plumped down on the top step.
“Why they gotta act like animals to get to they boring jobs? I swear, the first person foot that so much as touch me gon’ go flying down these steps.” She filled her mouth with potato chips. Breakfast.
Max swallowed orange juice from a small container. “A buck fifty for this? Man, that’s the crime. We should start our patrol career by arresting the owner of that store for robbery.”
“Hey, it’s all good. I got him back. Stole these chips.” She crammed another handful into her mouth and wiped her fingers on her jeans. “Check out them chandeliers! I wish I could steal one of them for my room. Remember that crazy movie Sleeping with the—no, that wasn’t it—it was War in the Roses or something like that. The husband and wife was battling, Max, I’m talking outright war, and she got stuck in the chandelier, and it crashed down on—”
“Didn’t see it, Aisha. I was on lockdown for six long ones.”
“Six years?! How old are you?”
“Twenty-seven.”
“Well, you sure look good for your age. Anyway, I was dying, that movie was mad wak!”
Max rubbed his hand over his smooth head. “So how you get tripped up in this patrol madness anyway?”
She liked his calm, low voice. “Like all of us, I guess. Hated school, had babies, collected checks, and chilled. Then all of a sudden the party was over. And since I ain’t no outdoor maid to be washin’ or sweepin’—here I am. How ’bout you?”
“Different road, same dead end. Had a kid, messed with drugs, grand larceny, got locked up, and the mother split. I’m clean now, but there wasn’t no ‘parolees wanted’ signs out here. Me and my son had to eat, so we went on assistance, and five years later here I am. Back in the days I wanted to be a cop. Guess this about as close to the police force as a brother like me gets.”
A knee bumped against Aisha’s shoulder. “Excuse me, miss, you are blocking the—”
Aisha was on her feet in a second. “Lady, you crazy?!” she shouted.
Max grabbed her hard by the arm. “Let it go, sister. We not out here for that, and you don’t want no beef with the police your first day out.”
Aisha tried to break from his grasp, but he held on. She yelled, “You betta run …”
Max couldn’t help laughing with Aisha as the blonde flew down the marble steps and fought through the crowd as if she had a pit bull at her heels.
“You young sisters are fierce! Y’all ready in a flash to go toe-to-toe, blow for blow. What happened to sugar. and spice and everything nice?”
“That don’t apply to us. Nobody respect project girls until we kick they butt. Then they still don’t. But at least we kicked they butt.”
Max said, “Come on, Iron Mike, we supposed to be on patrol. And we are blocking the stairs.”
They strolled the west balcony, then along the east balcony and down the broad staircase to the vast concourse. Through the dining concourse they wandered, past store windows, fast-food spots, and newsstands. Down in the subway, people called to each other, patrollers’ walkie-talkies crackled, and trains screeched and squealed. A. distinguished-looking gray-haired man in a designer business suit asked Aisha how to get to the Chrysler Building.
“By going up them steps to the middle of the terminal where they got that big clock with the four sides and asking the information lady. I ain’t from around here.”
“But I’ve asked you. You are, are you not, part of the terminal staff? I’m not from around here either. I’m English, and I need to get to the Chrysler Building right away. Now will you help me, or shall I have to speak to your supervisor?”
“Uh-oh,” said Max.
“Boy, I could care less if you English, Amish, Polish, or a goddamn knish. Do this cap say ‘Information Booth’? I’m a cop, Sherlock, so git out my face before I hafta spray you with Mace!”
The Englishman turned white, pink, then deep red. “Please pardon me, officer, I thought—” He dashed off in the direction of the stairs.
“Like whoa, Max, you saw that?! He gave me mad props, I’m talking R-E-S-P-E-C-T. I like this patrol thing. SYP got juice!”
“Threatening to bust out the Mace will definitely get you a kind of respect, Aisha. In the joint, the wakkest dude gets props too, the one who’ll stab a brother for a pack of smokes or beat down a guard to prove his manhood. But what goes around comes around. And I seen brothers come back from ten days in the hole completely broke down.”
“Well, that’s they problem. All I know is, today I got the power.”
They continued on their patrol, turning down a walkway leading to the lower level. A guy in sunglasses with a checkered doo-rag on his head was hanging out near the public restrooms, taking long draws on a cigarette. Max identified himself as a patroller and told the kid that smoking wasn’t allowed in the terminal.
“Step, sucka,” he sneered.
“Hey brother, I’m just—”
“I ain’tcha brother, sucka.” The teenager patted a bulge under his sweatshirt and lowered his voice. “I said step. You interfering in my business, ah-ight? Now step, or your freak”—he winked at Aisha—“gon’ be lookin’ through a donut in your chest.”
Max stepped back. “Cool, man. Just doing my job. But it’s cool, you the man.”
Within seconds, Aisha and Max were up the staircase and standing in a swirl of people in the middle of the concourse. Aisha’s chest heaved up and down, her breathing heavy. Max draped his arm around her shoulders.
“Max, I have two children at home, and that thug was ready to start shooting!” She flipped on her walkie-talkie.
“He’s just a punk,” said Max. “Don’t call it in. These cops out here will swarm that brother like an army and take him down on sight.”
“But he woulda shot you—and probably me too!”
“No, he wouldn’t have—he was frontin’, trust me. I wasted six years of my life with dudes like him. There’s too many of us behind bars. We can’t play into their system, Aisha.”
Aisha still wanted to call Mrs. Vinker. “Well, it ain’t like they didn’t do nothin’ to end up where they at.” She was pissed off.
Max sighed. “It’s deeper than that, sister.”
She gave him the “whatever” look and walked away. She went down the sloping passage leading to the subway trains. Sticking the SYP cap into a bag, she clicked off her walkie-talkie and waited for the Brooklyn-bound train, keeping a nervous eye out.
Louise was at one end of the sofa flipping through a newspaper with her grandchildren napping at the other.
“You home early, it ain’t even three. Did y’all already catch that Grand Central slasher?”
“I didn’t catch nothin’ but rude people’s attitude. And a wannabe gangsta flashing a gun.”
“Lord have mercy!”
“I ain’t cut out for this cop stuff, Ma, even if it’s fake—too many gangsta wannabes in New York. And guess who the supervisor is? Miss Vinker! She can’t stand me, so I know she gon’ be real happy to fire my behind.”
“Nothing’s worth getting yourself hurt. But look at them two sleeping beauties. How you gonna quit?”
Aisha leaned over and gave each one a kiss. She then did something that made Louise flinch, it was so unusual—she kissed her too. “Love you, Ma.”
Louise looked down. “Me too. Be careful.”
Almost three o’clock. School would be out soon, and Aisha really needed to talk to her girls.
“Keeba and Teesha here?”
Mrs. Washington handed Aisha a flyer. “Yes indeed, they came in the door a few minutes ago.” Her powerful voice boomed through the apartment. “Kee! Tee! Aisha’s here!” She pointed to the flyer. “This coming Fr
iday a group of us are going to the Newark Tabernacle of the Holy Gospel Pentecost for a weekend gospel fund-raiser. My two always seem to have some important test to study for every time a nice event like this is going on. But why don’t you come—and bring your little ones, get them started early in the way of the Lord.”
Aisha coughed, cleared her throat, and glanced down the hallway. What was taking them so long? “It sound good, Miss Washington, but I’ma be sort of busy with—”
Screams and shouts. “Aaarrrgh, it’s the po-lice!!! Shut the door, Mommy!” yelled Teesha.
“Hurry up!” hollered Keeba. “Officer Ai gon’ pistol-whip us for littering her subway.”
They bustled past their mother and started pushing against the door.
Aisha burst but laughing, pushing back from the other side. “You have the right to remain ghetto and wild like y’all is, and anything you say can and will make me smack you!”
Two against one, they shoved on the door, back and forth, it nearly closing, then swinging open, slamming shut, banging open.
“If you hellions break my door! Keeba! Teesha! Aisha!” Mrs. Washington tugged her daughters by their sweatshirts. “I’m not playing—you gonna break my damn door!”
“Oooooh, Mommy said the D word!” screamed Keeba, and raced to her room.
Teesha ran behind her sister, laughing, “You in big trouble now, Sister Washington!”
Aisha followed, knocking over a chair on her way.
All three leaped onto the bed and shrieked as it made a loud crack. Each blamed the other for breaking the bed with her “two-ton booty,” and the girls tried to kick one another onto the floor. Gasping, panting, and laughing, they slowly caught their breath and settled down.
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