On the first of the month they turned off the power, which was a huge victory.
As the building was now reclassified, the apartment could not be billed separately; as we were never delinquent with payments they had backed themselves into a corner. To celebrate our success we lit the emergency lanterns and roasted marshmallows on the hearth, then retired to our tents. My son’s cough is worsening, so it was bittersweet. How could these bastards do this to him?
In the morning there is the usual hubbub in the street, supporters and detractors, signs to save the yards, the extremes of both sides, the ones who skip work. You’d think they’re the only ones involved, where are the people? It’s a long walk to the Co-op. I used to just go to Pathmark but I can’t be seen there anymore. Better not to be blinded by convenience, comfort-addiction. To pass that on. And I can’t pour fuel on the fire, when you’re in my position you have to make all the perfect moves, be a saint. You have to carry the sling bag for the groceries and double the monthly work-shift, you have to be a shining example.
My wife is home with the boy, feeding him miso. My daughter is at school until we have the time to bring her home. Have to support the area schools too, they are the community we have, even if it’s not the one we aspire to. The Roses downstairs used to send both their children to the same school before they left, they could walk together; now their children are displaced to some new community to restart. You don’t just restart community. You can’t restart what we had. Our community that’s left is only us.
When I get to the Co-op I get some encouragement. A few people clap. They donate us some extra cardboard, now that the heat is gone I’m covering the walls with it to insulate. I buy mostly fresh produce and some noodles we can boil in the pot over the fire. I stop over at Neergard for a prescription, then the Tea Lounge. I have to put in my update and without power at home I’ll have to plug in. Looking online I see that the news is out already: “Last Family Standing.” We made one of the majors, the Times picked it up on a discussion thread. I go through the comments section seeing the same squabbles. I stick to chronicling, the analysis I leave to the people who aren’t doing anything. I don’t have to do or say anything beyond my action. I am resisting. I am staying. I am not leaving. We are not going. Resistance is victory. Whatever anybody says about that makes no difference. What I think about my reasons makes no difference. One family, one building, like an objet d’art, a performance piece. One windowlight on in a whole street of dark houses. One finger in the dam of their future, a new Brooklyn to wash away the old. Throw out everything old. Start new with more metal, more glass. Splinter those people, their community, their world, scatter them like some new diaspora. Bring in the Brooklyn Nets.
One comment catches my eye. “Their children are being raised in an uninhabited, unheated, unsafe building,” and it is true. I walk back home, the cardboard boxes on my back feel like a stiff cape, like I could lift off the ground. I walk up Seventh past the new shops and Flatbush and the new restaurants. This neighborhood used to be legendary for drugs and crime back in the early seventies. Hal Ashby made a movie set here, you’d never recognize it today, but it’s the same Brownstones. They didn’t have to tear them down to make this what it is, but they tore that community apart, too. I wonder how many of those people could afford to live here now. Do they come back on weekends and walk the streets they used to live on? What about the ones that left us? They took the money.
I charged our cell phones at the Tea Lounge and I get a call from my lawyer as I reach home.
“They finally did it, eh?” he says, “Well, now we’ve got the bastards, they aren’t gonna live this one down!”
The lock on the front door is broken and I push through into the foyer.
“Now we have them, eh? Now they’re playing our game!”