Criminal That I Am

by Jennifer Ridha

  Like many reformed criminals, I rediscover religion. A series of spiritual writings leads me to the practice of meditation. For a half hour each day, I find a space where my failures are reduced to illusion, where I can see the part of myself that is still capable of virtue.

  I take to heart this passage in a book called The Art of Dreaming: “Most of our energy goes into upholding our importance. If we were capable of losing some of that importance, two extraordinary things would happen to us. One, we would free our energy from trying to maintain the illusory idea of our grandeur; and two, we would provide ourselves with enough energy to catch a glimpse of the actual grandeur of the universe.”

  I have shown that I am quite capable of losing my own importance. I am void of grandeur, illusory or otherwise. I am thus primed to take in all the magnificence the universe has to offer. I take long bike rides into the uppermost part of the island, surrounded by lush trees and quiet. But for a nearby parking lot that appears to be a hub for anonymous sex, I am in the world of Walden. I sit in the grass and spend hours watching birds fly and ducks swim. I savor the sunset. I watch a squirrel eat a candy bar.

  My days are of my own choosing; I answer only to myself. I take walks along the river. I sit in cafés consuming books. I scrounge together enough money to go to movies and sometimes even a play.

  In passing the time this way, the vestiges of my criminal case have no relevance. Stripped down to my essence, the only person I have to be is exactly who I am. I wake up every morning and go to sleep every evening feeling at peace. On some days, I think I might even feel joy.

  My sense of contentment is invariably interrupted by some well-meaning interloper, usually a family member, who will inquire as to when I will be getting up off my ass and start doing something with my life. When I politely dismiss these inquiries with promises of “soon” or “someday,” there is a part of me that feels sorry that others cannot see the pleasures there are to be had in simple things. Another part of me knows this is bullshit, that my inertia is not because I have discovered the bliss of doing nothing but because deep down I’m scared to try again. I am my broken toilet: I await someone or something to repair me, to make me right. Until then, I am only good for doing nothing.

  A repairman does not arrive. But something else does. There is something quickly approaching, something that demands my undivided attention, something that will bring unexpected change.

  Her name is Sandy. And she’s on her way.

  The imminent arrival of Hurricane Sandy has caused an unprecedented pause in the city’s normal course of business. Public transportation is shut down. Regular television programming is interrupted with City Hall press conferences about evacuation protocols and the importance of having a battery-operated flashlight. Supermarkets are mobbed with customers.

  The city distributes maps that designate different zones according to the possibility of flooding. The city issues a mandatory evacuation order for the most precarious neighborhoods, designated Zone A. The city suggests evacuation only for the next most precarious neighborhood, designated Zone B.

  I don’t want to evacuate my apartment. The problem with my desire to remain is that my building abuts the East River. I consider several different maps of Zones A and B. On one version of the map, my building is contained within the outermost perimeter of Zone A. On another, the line of demarcation is across the street, rendering my building just inside Zone B. I decide that it is safe to consider myself in Zone B, outside the purview of the city’s evacuation order.

  The day that Sandy is slated to arrive, the city is shut down. Businesses, schools, government buildings are all closed. When Sandy visits, it does not matter whether you have put your life back together. She’s coming either way.

  I am in bed the morning of October 29, 2012, fast asleep. I am jolted awake by the sound of an intercom that is so loud that I at first believe it to be coming from inside my bedroom.

  It is the sound of a police loudspeaker, presumably from a police car outside my building.

  “FOR YOUR OWN SAFETY YOU ARE REQUIRED TO EVACUATE!!!” the voice exclaims.

  I roll over and place my pillow over my head.

  “YOU MUST EVACUATE!!!”

  I close my eyes tighter, hoping that I can beckon sleep quicker by wanting it more.

  “YOUR EVACUATION IS MANDATORY!!!”

  I groan.

  “YOUR FAILURE TO EVACUATE IN COMPLIANCE WITH THIS DIRECTIVE COULD RESULT IN YOUR BEING CHARGED WITH A CLASS B MISDEMEANOR!!!”

  I jump out of bed. My next movements are foregone, as though programmed in advance. I first reach, of course, for proper clothing. Then I shove my bare feet into my running shoes and throw on a jacket. I have a printout of the evacuation map sitting on my dining room table. I grab it, and run to the elevator.

  The weather outside is wet and dreary. I fix my eyes on a police cruiser just outside the building. There are several officers milling about.

  “Excuse me,” I say to an officer. He is facing away from my building.

  He looks at me.

  I point to my building. “I live in that building there.”

  He does not look where I am pointing. “And?”

  I pull out the evacuation map. “Well, according to this map, I am in Zone B, but I can see you are asking people to evacuate—”

  “So?”

  “Well, I just don’t want to be—” I can’t bring myself to say the words “charged” or “misdemeanor,” so I say, “I don’t know if I am supposed to evacuate or not.”

  He points at the other officers, all of whom have their attention directed at a building on the other side of the street.

  “Does it look like we are evacuating your building?”

  “Well, no, but—”

  “Does it look like anyone else is evacuating your building?”

  “No, but I just wanted to be sure—”

  “Look, if you have to evacuate, you’ll know about it.”

  The lawyer in me wants to get this in writing. I want this man to certify that my decision to go back into my apartment and get under the covers will not have any legal implications. I look at him for a moment, searching for ways to make this official.

  “Okay, miss?” he says. He is visibly annoyed.

  “Uh, yes. Okay. So, you’re saying it’s fine if I go back upstairs.”

  “Yes. Please do me a favor and go back upstairs.”

  “Oh. Okay, yes. Sorry. I’m going.”

  As I turn toward my building I see that he is shaking his head, as though to say, I am on duty during a national disaster and this idiot is showing me a map.

  But he does not know. How could he? He could not know that I have struggled in the past with discerning the difference between what I want to do and what I am supposed to do. He could not know that I am trying so hard to be good.

  Back in my apartment pulling together storm supplies, I note that my desire to avoid exposure, criminal or otherwise, has developed to the point of reflex. This seems like proof of something, although I am not entirely sure of what.

  I charge my cell phone and iPad. I fill the tub with water. Using blue duct tape, I tape a big “X” on my living room window. When I step away to admire my handiwork, it looks as though I have checked off a gigantic box. I feel ready for whatever is coming my way.

  Sandy arrives later that day in the evening hours. I harbor myself from the storm in my living room. While the most prudent thing would be to distract myself, Sandy is too alluring for me to look away. I tuck myself into the windowsill and wait to see her worst.

  I look down onto the street. The elaborate law enforcement presence from earlier in the day has disbanded. The streets are empty other than a single police cruiser that sits at the intersection facing the East River. The colored lights seem lonely in the steadily pouring rain. Without anyone else around, the poli
ce car looks as though the NYPD is prepared to apprehend the storm itself.

  The pounding of Sandy’s rain becomes fast and heavy. It runs along the sides of the streets and pools in the gutters. Her wind has reached a level of speed that causes street signs to whip and then fall. I look down at the police car and wonder why it is still there.

  And then, the river rises.

  It happens almost in slow motion. The water from the river pours into the intersection. At first, the flooding is modest, a foot or so of water. But this moves quickly and soon there is much more. The sidewalks are no longer visible, and the water keeps coming.

  Sitting in my window, I watch the inevitable standoff between Sandy and the police vehicle. As water gushes into the street, the police vehicle initially stands its ground. But the car is so poorly matched against the thrust of Sandy that as I see the water collecting under its tires, I hold my breath.

  Suddenly, the police cruiser backs away from the intersection, far enough to turn in the other direction. I hear the tires screech as the vehicle flees the scene.

  This happens not a moment too soon. Within minutes, the streets are completely underwater. Entire cars are submerged. Sandy’s waters engulf the tops of street signs. The public pool across the street is overflowing. The river water gushes so quickly that its current sweeps up objects and carries them toward First Avenue. I watch as a garbage dumpster and a park bench float by together, as though on a date.

  The hurricane is an incredible sight to behold. I am in awe of Sandy, struck by her sheer power, terrified by her indiscriminate destruction. Her might is so staggering that everything else—everyone else—is rendered insignificant.

  I find myself opening my window, sticking my head out, inhaling her breath. Though it is almost November, her air is warm and sweet. I close my eyes. This is it, I think. This is the storm.

  Sandy departs, but not without first leaving us in darkness. Just as the rain starts to slow and the wind becomes tempered, the lights go out. Having ravaged much of the tri-state area, Sandy’s final act is to take our power away.

  When I wake the morning after Sandy, I run to the window. The water is gone, the streets are mostly dry, and the weather is surprisingly clear. But the electricity is still out. In an e-mail that I draft to my parents from my cell phone, I tell them that I hope it will be back later in the day.

  It is out for almost a week.

  At first I try to embrace the lack of electricity. I still have gas for the stove, and so I commit to trying a new recipe each day using a single pan. Having gone through an unfortunate scented-candle phase years earlier, I dig these out so that when darkness falls my apartment is decently lit and delightfully fragrant. I assemble a pile of books along with some crossword puzzles.

  This won’t be that bad, I think.

  But it does not take long for me to hate being alive. Every day is an inevitable countdown to darkness. My apartment reeks of a putrid mix of jasmine and freesia and musk. I have little appetite, and when I do, I alternatively eat oatmeal or fistfuls of popcorn from a king-sized bag purchased before the storm. I hold up the bag and speak to it out loud. “When I bought you,” I tell the shiny red packaging, “there was light.”

  Without hot water, in order to bathe I must pull out every pot I own and heat enough water to fill the tub. The process takes hours. In the abstract it seems an exotic proposition, something from Out of Africa, to bathe in a tub with water heated by the stove, surrounded by candles. In reality it is a cold, wet mess. I emerge from the tub shaking, somehow less clean than when I started.

  It turns out, too, that reading by candlelight is a myth. I can’t see the page well enough without creating a fire hazard. I spend evenings using up precious cell phone power complaining to Best Friend, or else sitting on the couch sulking.

  Because of damage caused by the storm, the residents of my building are advised not to leave the apartment unless absolutely necessary. A few days into the apocalypse, low on supplies and completely out of cell phone power, I decide to brave it. A single exit provides limited street access. I join the crowded sidewalks of unwashed masses heading to a neighborhood thirty blocks uptown that is rumored to have electricity.

  This proves to be an unpleasant experience. The natives are not welcoming. They are alternatively miffed at the foreign intrusion or looking to make a quick buck. An asshole on Fifty-fourth Street sells me a flashlight and batteries for fifty dollars. When I am sitting on the floor of a Duane Reade charging my cell phone, I watch in empathy as a young woman, filthy just like me, is accosted by an old crone in a fur coat for purchasing too many items.

  “Is there another storm coming?” she snipes. “Do you really need to buy all of that?”

  The young woman is embarrassed, looks down at her basket, seems to contemplate placing her feminine hygiene products back on the shelf.

  When the furry monstrosity makes her way to the next aisle—her presence in an aisle dedicated to menstruation is its own mystery—the defender in me emerges. I get up from the floor in solidarity with this young woman. “Don’t listen to her,” I insist. “You can buy as many tampons as you want.”

  She gives me an exhausted smile. “God, I hate it here,” she says.

  “Me, too,” I say. I offer her the other socket in the wall outlet.

  “This neighborhood is awful,” she says as she sits down.

  “I know,” I say. “I don’t understand why anyone would live here.”

  “Yeah, I’d rather be without electricity than live up here,” she declares.

  I don’t know if I would take it that far. That’s how badly I want the power to come back.

  Without electricity to spare, I have no idea of the true horrors caused by Sandy. When I access news websites on my iPad, it is strictly to see if there are any updates about the return of power. I don’t know that whole areas of New York and New Jersey have been flattened, that thousands of homes are destroyed, that people are found drowned in their own homes. I have not yet read the horrifying story of a Staten Island woman who lost her grip on her two small sons while trying to flee, the storm sweeping them out to sea. I don’t know that people have lost everything they owned.

  But I am embarrassed to admit that knowing any of this probably would not have provided much perspective. I have always had a peculiar relationship with electricity, one that makes it supreme to everything else. I first learned this in Iraq, where I somehow managed to inure myself to the constant sound of machine-gun fire but felt the lack of electricity in the sweltering heat warranted my emergency airlift elsewhere.

  I try to explain this to Best Friend, who lives outside of Sandy’s path. “I don’t think I can make it much longer. I feel as though I might be coming unhinged,” I tell her through tears.

  “It’ll be okay, Jen,” she says. “Everything will be back to normal soon.”

  “But what if it isn’t?” I say.

  “What do you mean?”

  As I say it, I hear my voice crack. “What if the lights never come back on?”

  She laughs, not realizing I am serious.

  “No, really,” I say. “How do we really know that the electricity will work again? What if they can never fix it?”

  Best Friend is unfazed by my meanderings. “Jen, it’s going to be fine. You know what they say. It’s always darkest before the dawn.”

  I am on Day Five of my post-Sandy hysteria. Feeling stir crazy, I decide to buck authority and go out for a run. This does not just contravene the directive of my landlord. Technically, all city parks are closed. Also, because I will need to bring a flashlight to navigate the unlit stairwell of my building, I will need to stow it away in my mailbox during my run. This is technically against the law.

  I weigh the costs and benefits and decide that for the sake of my sanity, I am willing to take the risk. Perhaps I am not as reformed as I thought.
/>   By the time I make it to the front door of my building, I can’t contain my excitement to get outside. But as I walk out of the building, I remember that all of the regular exits out onto the running path are closed. The exit facing the park is flooded. Another gated exit is locked. I feel myself begin to panic.

  I walk back to the lobby of my building. Because the lack of electricity has disabled the key card entry system, the landlord has hired a security guard to monitor the entrance. This specific security guard is an interesting choice. I would approximate her age to be late forties and her height to be around five feet. She seems happily ensconced in the magazine that is strewn across her stout legs.

  I am not quite sure how she is qualified to protect hundreds of residents from looting or robbery, but she seems pleasant enough.

  “Excuse me,” I say.

  She looks up distractedly from her magazine.

  “How do I get out of here?”

  “Whaddaya mean?” Her voice is low and boasts a heavy accent that is unmistakably Brooklyn.

  “I mean, how do I get to the park? I want to go to the running path.”

  “Ya know, you’re really not supposed to go outside.”

  “I do know that,” I say. My voice takes a pleading tone. “But please, I just want to go for a run, just for a little while.”

  She opens her mouth as though she is going to object, but then thinks better of it. “Whadda I care?” she asks rhetorically. “Just go behind the other building, there’s an exit over there.”

  “Thank you so much,” I say.

  “You’d better be careful. It’s a mess out there.”

  “I will, I promise.”

  She shrugs and then goes back to her magazine.

  On my way to the running path, I can see the full extent of Sandy’s aftermath. On the service road outside my building, three cars are smashed into one another. A tree trunk has been uprooted from the ground. Thick branches and debris are everywhere. The river, usually calmly emitting a fragrant blend of fish, weed, and garbage, now bears menacing eddies. The waterline is so high that it seems to warn that Mother Nature is willing to do this all over again.