Chapter 3 Lina
LINA
Peering from her window at the courtyard below, watching the pigeons fine-dine on oxtail bones, Lina Rodriguez Armstrong knew what day it was.
She knew by the quantity of glittery, windblown trash on the sidewalk, by the reshuffle of the parallel-parked cars, and by the appearance of the social worker with the Beyoncé waves who came weekly to see Debra on floor five.
It was the day after the West Indian Labor Day parade, a Tuesday—and this particular Tuesday, her last chance.
Yet what she had now at Brownsville Houses—the sixth floor—was her favorite.
Not a city view or a street view: it was a community view.
Every day she lingered by the window to see who was coming in and out, who was chasing after the ice cream truck, and who’d forgotten to pick up after their dog for the twentieth time.
Grandma, the kids called her now, like they’d once called the lady on Livonia.
Tita.
The meeting wasn’t until noon, but Lina had woken with the garbage truckers at four a.m. so she’d have time to prepare.
The pain was worst in the morning, and she had a regimen: ice pack to her knees for thirty minutes, a warm shower, then gentle stretches with one hand on the dresser.
She’d invited the bureaucrats from the Department of Housing Preservation and Development to meet in her apartment, but they’d insisted on the Stone Avenue library.
Maybe they thought if they came up to the apartment, she’d rant about repair problems that were not in their jurisdiction, that were NYCHA’s responsibility—like she wasn’t well familiar with the way city agencies split themselves and pointed fingers.
She’d invited the HPD officials into her home because she wanted them to see the mural in her living room, to meet eyes with the heroines on her walls.
She’d wanted them to look out the window the way she looked out the window.
Maybe they’d stop gaping at Brownsville like missionaries come to save heathens.
Not to mention the arthritis. Now that she was seventy years old, walking anywhere took Lina twice as long as it once had.
Lina opened the fridge—once a teacher, never skip breakfast. She would have liked a blueberry muffin or a strawberry Danish, but she was not a nina delgada like she’d once been.
Sit too much and those muffins start growing on your hips.
She slurped down a bowl of Quaker Oats at the kitchen table, pulled out the leak bucket under the kitchen sink and dumped the water in the toilet, then lowered herself into her favorite chair, her mother’s crocheted blanket over her shoulders.
She looked over the proposal one more time.
Starting with Mayor Dinkins, every administration had received a copy of her proposal.
Dinkins had sent staff out, though after the meeting, she’d never heard from them again.
But that was the summer of the Crown Heights riots and the whole administration had been going up in flames, all the whites talking about how New York’s first Black mayor couldn’t “control” his own people.
She’d sent the proposal to Mayor Giuliani, but heard not a word. Bloomberg: she’d received a letter thanking her for her input, explaining all the administration’s innovative plans, and inviting her to participate in the Livonia Commons visioning sessions in East New York.
She wasn’t talking about East New York. She was talking about Brownsville.
Her sister Sofia, calling the prior day, had been all excited to hear about the meeting.
“Oh, this new mayor is going to get things done for you, girl. This man is on the same page as you! He got a Black wife!”
Easy for her to say, living in Long Island on her late husband’s Wells Fargo pension plan.
Marrying a Black woman and talking the big talk about the inequality in this city didn’t necessarily mean you had the courage to dig for the roots, or the strength to tear them up.
She was certainly glad to be done with twenty years of Republicans—and that included the elephant that pretended to be an Independent.
But there was also a difference between pity and love.
Some Democrats behaved like they thought Brownsville had been dozing all that time and all they needed to do was kiss the Sleeping Beauty.
By eleven o’clock she was getting restless. It was still early, but she wanted time for errands, and this wasn’t the day to be late. She grabbed her black-purple beret, her cane, her purse, and was on her way.
First, Lina knocked on the door opposite hers to say good morning to her thirty-year-old mentee, Tyrell Scott. He lived in 6D with his great-aunt Kara and his teenage cousin Tima. Tyrell let Lina inside; he was helping Kara with her dialysis.
“Good morning, Ms. Kara,” Lina called loudly. Kara was going deaf and senile, but she was the only person in the building old enough to remember the Freedom School.
While Tyrell pressed buttons on the filtering machine, Lina examined the library book sitting on the kitchen counter: Stephen R.
Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
She’d jump-started Tyrell’s reading habit with Angela Davis and Toni Cade Bambara, but now he was on a self-help kick, reading leadership books by random white men.
And he was making it cool. The members of the Woo gang, who used to tease him for reading on the 3 train, now downloaded his recommended titles to their phones.
“Ty, I’m on my way to meet HPD. I’ll see you at six for the Family Day meeting.”
“Word. You tell them what to do, Ms. Lina.”
“Papi! Don’t look at me so hopeful.”
“Nah,” he said, shaking his head as he adjusted Ms. Kara’s needle. “You’re gonna win this time.”
Lina hmphed in mock disapproval. “Don’t forget that yogurt I bought you.”
She was still trying to get him to eat breakfast. She’d recently realized that, though she’d taught him how to love his community, she’d neglected to show him how to take care of himself, and he was even worse than she’d been—he’d run for weeks on Chinese takeout and Tropical Fantasy and three hours of sleep a night before he’d suddenly crash and skirt the edge of death.
The doctor at Brookdale didn’t understand how the kid was still walking and talking.
But that was Tyrell, a cat with nine lives.
Lina climbed down to floor five to check on Debra’s baby.
Descended to floor four, but Ms. Dorothy was in Alabama.
Hobbled to floor three, only she and Mrs. Jameson hadn’t been on speaking terms for several months.
Trudged down to floor two and asked José if he’d heard back from the Gateway Center.
Two years earlier, José had dropped out of high school and started roaming the streets, getting in all kinds of trouble.
Somehow, she made it, breathless, to the first-floor landing.
“They still ain’t fixed that elevator,” Ricky Diaz said when she’d reached the ramp. He took a drag on his cigarette and shook his head with a laugh.
“One of these days they gonna find me at the bottom of the stairs with my ankle broken. Yeah, Papi, like they found my mother at the Rockaway Avenue station in ’66.”
She told him, as she always did, that he had to stop with the cigarettes or he’d beat her to heaven.
Then she set off for Mother Gaston Boulevard.
Old-timers had lined up their beach chairs on the sidewalk, ready to spend the day lost in memories of times past. Delicious smells curled into her nostrils, floating over from the West Indian grills.
Children darted through the playgrounds, crowded around fountains to fill their water balloons, or spun in circles below the fire hydrant water—as a member of the community board, she’d helped get sprinkler caps to limit the overflow.
After she bought Ajax at a 99 Cents store, Lina’s knees began to bother her, and she parked her butt on a bench next to two teenage girls.
They’d been chilling by that bench all summer, and sometimes a bigger group of friends would gather with a set of speakers and blare Rihanna at the highest volume.
“I ain’t crashing that airplane,” the permed one said as Lina sat down, and then the two girls glanced at Lina and zipped their lips.
Lina did her best to keep up with the local gang codes, but “crashing that airplane” was something new.
All these kids were so young, practically babies.
It wasn’t like the days when gangs were after money or drugs.
These children warred for territory like they thought they owned the land on this side of Rockaway Avenue—and yes, there was a war for land to be fought, but it wasn’t with each other.
“What y’all doing with yourselves?” Lina asked, holding her cane with one hand and rubbing her thighs with the other. “You girls gonna pass the whole summer on this bench talking about crashing airplanes?”
The one with the perm raised her eyebrows, and she looked at her friend, who suppressed a giggle and sucked the straw in her Fanta.
“Why don’t you go down to the Recreation Center and join a club. They got basketball, dance, swimming, step team. Air-conditioning, free lunch.”
“Them kids jump us every time we go.” Quickly, the permed girl grabbed her friend’s arm and pulled her down the street, out of Lina’s orbit.
The friend with the Fanta couldn’t contain her nervous giggle and released a dribble of juice on the other’s sneakers, who playfully slapped at her as they walked.