The Sacrificial Circumcision of the Bronx

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The Sacrificial Circumcision of the Bronx Page 14

by Arthur Nersesian


  At dinner one evening in January 1949, Lucretia announced that she was pregnant.

  “Oh my God!” Paul exclaimed, then hugged her, gave her a long kiss, and said, “I just had the thought that in 2009 the baby you’re carrying will be the age I am now.”

  Beatrice Moses was born on September 3, 1949. Lucretia wanted her baptized, and her old friend Lori who lived in the house behind theirs agreed to be godmother.

  Paul had never thought he’d have a child, but as soon as he held the bundle that was his new daughter, he felt a swooning joy that seemed to pardon his many failures. He loved Lucretia and Bea more than he had ever loved anyone in his life.

  After a close call, Uli admitted to himself that it was just a matter of time before one of the miners deduced that he was part of Root’s team. They’d kill him immediately.

  He had finally lost faith that any of them would find a way to some miracle staircase out of there. The key reason he remained was the faint hope that Root might return.

  To protect himself, Uli started assembling supplies. He had already found a small hand truck, rope, even a box of medicine. Stashing the supplies behind the mountain of stock in the storage depot, he glanced at the narrow metal door near the sealed freight elevator. Lighting a match, Uli made out a small rectangular hole in the rear wall. Old cables dangling from the gap were attached to the large fuse box that had collapsed to the ground.

  Through the rectangle, Uli could see about five feet up the black hole. Then he felt a cool, soft breeze. He quickly located one of the discarded metal rods that the diggers had used to carve their tunnels. Using a large monkey wrench as a hammer, he began chipping down the sides of the small rectangular hole so he could look further inside, but the stone was difficult to break. After three hours, he was barely able to fit his forehead through the small slot.

  31

  Inasmuch as the price of comfort is the quick passage of time, the next two years of Paul’s life seemed to finally be moving happily along. Doing his utmost to raise little Bea well, he would get up with her early in the morning and look after her until he had to go off to work. Lucre-tia would take Bea during the days. Frequently she’d cut across the backyard and drop Bea off with Lori, whose daughter Charity was only two months older. The two would play nonstop. When Paul came home in the afternoons, he could hardly wait to hold and kiss his little girl. He’d watch her while Lucretia went out on afternoon business appointments. She’d usually come home around 6 or 7, then they’d have dinner together.

  Though Paul realized he would have no grand impact on civilization, nor marry the most dazzling society girl, life really couldn’t be any better.

  Some habits were a little difficult to break. Paul couldn’t stop scanning the newspapers to keep track of his fascist brother. One project in particular caught his attention, like a tiny blip on his radar: the Cross Bronx Expressway, which had broken ground at one end of the borough and was slowly moving across it. He figured it would probably pass near them, along the northern edge of Crotona Park.

  Little Bea was growing fast, and by her second birthday she was walking and talking more than all the other children in the playground. She was speaking in full sentences, grasping fairly abstract concepts. Even her sense of compassion—reflected in her treatment of little Toto—was exceptional. Paul told his wife that he wanted to get her IQ tested, believing that she might very well be a genius.

  “Maybe it’d be a good time for Bea to have a little brother,” Lucretia replied.

  Paul nodded silently, wondering how all this would end up.

  In the middle of his excavation of the elevator shaft, Uli heard loud scuttling. He figured the rats had finally gotten across the great divide and into the storage depot. He pushed a large crate aside and was startled to discover the upper half of a small child, who was holding a long dagger in his right palm; his lower half, however, seemed to be absorbed into the earth.

  “There’s no need for that,” he told the boy. “Put the knife down.”

  “Where’s Root?”

  “She was chased off,” he said. Then it struck him: This must be the missing leader’s handicapped son.

  “Is your father Plato?”

  “Yeah, he was the leader.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He disappeared awhile ago.”

  “I heard he was very smart.”

  “He used to collect papers and read all the time—read, read, read. Used to say stuff over and over.”

  “What kind of stuff?”

  “Used to talk about the projects.”

  “What projects?”

  “Don’t know. A bunch.”

  “Do you remember any?”

  “All began with M-K. Artichoke, Leviticus—a lot about M-K Leviticus.”

  “What’s M-K Leviticus?”

  “Don’t know. He used to say we’re all in Langley. Langley, Langley, Langley.”

  “Langley, Virginia?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “He would go farther and farther down in the Mkultra.”

  “Why?”

  “First he found all this paint you could see in the dark.”

  Uli remembered the glowing lines leading nowhere. “Then what?”

  “He was looking for some kind of chemical, either flammable or inflammable, I can’t remember. Then one day he just didn’t come back.” Changing the subject, the kid said, “The lady told me I can always get supplies here. We’re low.”

  “Sure, help yourself, just be careful of the miners.”

  “Do you know anything about helping sick people? Cause my ma and brother, they’re sick people.” The kid set down the short sword. Using his hands, he pulled himself forward into the light, where Uli finally got a chance to look him over. In place of legs was some kind of scorpion-like tail that curled under and peaked out of his long dirty shirt.

  “Exactly how sick is your family?”

  “They’re both really hot, and my brother won’t stop pooping. He’s covered with red spots.” It sounded like chicken pox. All things considered, it was astounding that anyone down there could stay alive.

  “They both have fevers?”

  “Don’t know. Can you come take a look at them?”

  “I’m no doctor, but I have some medicine.”

  Uli led him to the utility closet, where he had a pile of boxes filled with tins of pills. Some were identified as vitamins. Others were antibiotics, but didn’t state dosage.

  When Uli lit a candle, the kid saw the narrow rectangle that once held the fuse box and asked what it led to.

  “I don’t know. I’m too big to climb in, but I’ve been shaving down the sides.”

  “Want me to try?” It hadn’t even occured to Uli to ask.

  “That’d be great.”

  “I’ll do it if you come and look at my sick family.”

  “I wouldn’t know what to do. Like I said, I’m not a doctor.”

  “Please. I need help.”

  Uli realized that the child with his congenitally malformed body might be the only ticket out of this place—he couldn’t refuse the kid’s request. “You have my word that if you climb in there and tell me what you see, I’ll help you.”

  The kid stared at Uli for a moment, then said, “All right, but could I rest first? I haven’t eaten in a while and I’ve walked a long ways.”

  Uli gave him some crackers and water, led him to a small square of cardboard, and let him sleep.

  32

  At 1:38 on the afternoon of December 4, 1951, ten minutes before fifth period ended, some kid knocked on Paul Moses’s classroom door with a note saying that he should call home as soon as possible. His first panicked thought was that something had happened to Beatrice. Why else would he get this message in the middle of the school day? He asked Sal Berg in the adjacent class to keep an eye on his students and dashed off. When he reached Lucretia on the phone, she told him that she had just receive
d some kind of legal notice stating that all the residents on their block had to move.

  “Can this wait until I get home?” he asked patiently, imagining it was a mistake.

  “I suppose,” she replied, though she sounded frazzled.

  When he arrived home two hours later, he found that a number of neighbors had collected in the street, chatting with each other. Lucretia quickly showed him the notice that had been taped to their door. It stated that they were in the path of the new Cross Bronx Expressway. The proposed roadway cut a swath between 176th Street and Fair-mont Place, plowing through seven blocks of residential housing. Immediately he envisioned it: a man-made fault line opening from east to west—two hundred and twenty-five feet of concrete roadway coming right at them, tearing the earth in two.

  According to the letter, all residents on the street, for blocks in both directions, had nine months to vacate their premises and find new accommodations.

  “Hey, Paul!” he heard. His neighbor Robert Ward was crossing the street, holding up a road map. “Check out this freakin’ highway! It looks like the Bronx is getting circumcized.”

  “We’re supposed to sacrifice our homes so that commuters from New Jersey and Long Island can get to work faster?” Paul responded.

  “Paul!” he heard another voice shout over to him. “Your last name’s Moses. You’re not related to this clown, are you?”

  It was Karl Stein from half a block down. He came over with another copy of the same letter. Glancing at the bottom of the notice for the first time, Paul saw that it was signed by his brother: Robert Moses, City Construction Coordinator.

  “No relation,” Paul replied swiftly.

  “Too bad,” Stein said.

  Lucretia peered down nervously. She’d never had any reason to lie to her neighbors and friends before. Paul excused himself and went into their house, then dashed to the upstairs bathroom and locked the door.

  I knew it! he thought furiously. That cocksucker has tracked me down and now he’s coming after my family! I should’ve killed him when I had the chance! He muttered aloud, “Teresa and that shrink said I was nuts! Well, he’s coming after me! Now who’s paranoid?”

  When he heard Lucretia knocking around nervously in the bedroom, he splashed cold water on his face, took a deep breath, flushed the toilet, and came out to comfort her.

  Over the next hour or so, as more neighbors gathered along the sidewalk, they started pooling their resources. One fellow across the street had a cousin in the mayor’s office; he worked for the Department of Transportation. Another woman’s brother was a lawyer, but he lived in Des Moines.

  “We should organize right away,” Paul announced for all to hear. After watching so many other neighborhoods being ripped in half by his brother’s highways, he realized immediately what they should do to prevent this.

  “What’s the point?” one of the more knowledgeable neighbors retorted. “No one’s ever been able to reverse eminent-domain law.”

  “Politicians are motivated by public opinion. But we have to work quickly. We’ve got to make as loud a stink as we can.”

  “What are we going to say?” Ms. Rice asked. “That the city can’t have a freeway cause we like our homes?”

  “We have to tell people that if this can happen to us, it can happen to anyone in this city,” Paul replied. “And we have to show them an alternative route for the expressway that displaces fewer families.”

  “What do you mean, like a tunnel?”

  “No, they can just as easily run the highway north of the park,” Robert Ward speculated.

  Although their street was filled with single-family homes, the next block over had a number of large apartment buildings. Paul pointed out that they must’ve gotten notices too. “We should go over there and start organizing people,” he suggested.

  Ward, Stein, Rice, and some of the others agreed to head over on Saturday to garner support. Within a matter of days, three hundred people had joined an ad hoc neighborhood organization calling itself MCBE—Move the Cross Bronx Expressway. They agreed to meet on a weekly basis in the multipurpose room at the YMHA.

  Two weeks later, everyone got a second letter stating that the Tenant Relocation Bureau was going to help everyone find new accommodations; indeed, they had already helped those in the “Section One” portion of the planned roadway.

  Though he fervently wished to take a leading role in the committee, Paul remained in the background, fearful that he would be revealed as Robert Moses’s brother.

  He met up with three neighbors that Saturday to check on the progress that had been made thus far on the first part of the expressway. As they drove eastward toward Section One, they could hear jackhammers and see clouds of dust rising in the air. Just before they spotted the hills of rubble and the earth-moving machines, they came upon rows of barren tenements and empty single-family homes. They parked in front of a condemned apartment building. Broken furniture and garbage, including long shards from a shattered mirror that once lined the hallway, covered the floor of the defunct lobby. The stink of human excrement filled the large room. Several of the men stepped inside.

  “Hey, get out of there!” yelled Karen Farkis, one of the older members of the committee, pinching her nose. “You’re gonna get mugged.”

  As they exited the wrecked building, they passed a hard-worn blonde in her twenties pushing a stroller inside. Two toddlers followed slowly.

  “Where are you’re going, young lady?” Mrs. Farkis asked, fearful for the petite woman’s safety.

  “Mind yer damn business!”

  “Pardon?”

  “Who the hells are ya anyways?” said the young woman with a thick local accent.

  “Allow me to introduce us,” Mrs. Farkis replied. “We’re from East Tremont. We all live in houses that are in the path of the Cross Bronx and we wanted to find out how the planners dealt with homeowners further down the line.”

  “Oh, you’re in for a real treat, sis,” the blonde said, chuckling snidely.

  “Were you evicted?” Paul asked.

  “More like evicted to here. We were kicked out about six months ago from our home further east of here, but the Relocation Bureau couldn’t find us no place so they stuck us in this dump. The owners had already gotten kicked out of here.”

  “They’re actually letting you live here?” Paul asked in dismay.

  “Not for nothing. We have to pay rent. And we have to be able to leave within seventy-two hours.”

  “You’re actually paying rent?” gasped another East Tremonter, Pauline Kennedy.

  “Oh yeah, we’re paying more than we were in our old apartment. In fact, there’s another family living up—”

  “You mean the city evicted the original residents from this building and now they’re housing other evictees here?” Paul couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

  “Yeah, there are about a hundred families who were moved here. Hell, some of them have been moved two or three times. They just kick them like old cans up the eviction route,” the young mother explained, then barked at her two children who were playing among shiny shards of broken glass.

  “Have you at least asked to get into one of the new public houses the city is building?” Paul asked.

  “We were told to get in line. There’s a six-year waiting list.”

  “What kind of apartments did the Tenant Relocation Bureau offer you?” asked Bill Lawrence from the committee.

  She let out a sharp breath in order to keep from crying and said, “You wouldn’t put a dog in those places. I ain’t fooling. And you can see my family is living in this hell hole. I mean, I’ve come down in the morning with my kids and found a bum taking a shit in the corner, so believe me, we’d take damn near anything.”

  “It’s criminal!”

  “Of all the families they evicted,” she went on, “I don’t know a single one that got housed permanently through that bullshit Re-Eviction Bureau. They just want to get you the hell out.”

&n
bsp; The group was aghast. The fact that a government agency in a democratic country could treat it’s citizens this way was unthinkable.

  Paul took five dollars from his wallet. Others pitched in, and without saying a word, they offered the money to the young mother, who quickly snatched it and moved along. They walked around the vicinity and spotted at least a dozen other empty apartment buildings. Windows had been broken, doors were hanging off their hinges, piping had been vandalized, yet people were still living in some of the apartments. As the group drove back to East Tremont, terrified of what lay ahead, not one of them spoke.

  Soon, another flurry of mimeographed letters arrived offering all owners and renters the generous incentive of two hundred dollars if they moved within the next six months. The letter reminded everyone that they would all be evicted anyway, so resisting it would only cost them unnecessary legal expenses.

  The committee countered with fliers posted on street corners:

  We Have to Hang Together

  or We’ll Hang Alone.

  Don’t Move an Inch,

  MCBE’s Fighting for Your Home!

  Yet within a month, as word spread about how the city had treated the people of Section One, a third of all residents along the projected route had grabbed the offer and moved out.

  “The wires are dead,” Uli said to the scorpion-spined boy, referring to the electrical cables dangling precariously from the rectangular hole, still connected to the fallen fuse box. “You don’t need to worry about getting shocked.”

  Uli hoisted the kid’s malformed body into the chiseled rectangular space. The boy was able slip his head inside, but his shoulders were slightly too broad. After pushing painfully for a minute, the kid climbed down.

  “I got an idea,” Uli said. He went out to the stock area and located a small can of machine grease. “Take off your clothes and rub this on.”

  The kid removed his filthy button-down shirt that hung over his midsection like a dress. Uli was distressed to see the severity of his deformity as the kid slathered his shoulders and midsection with grease.

 

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