Bed-Stuy Is Burning by Brian Platzer

Author:Brian Platzer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books

Chapter 34

From the one time he’d been locked out a few weeks after moving in, Aaron knew his house was impenetrable. Maybe he could jump the side fence from Bainbridge into Jupiter’s yard, and Jupiter could let him in through the back, then he could cross over from Jupiter’s roof to his neighbors’ then his own? Or he could just jump the fence in the first yard off Stuyvesant and keep jumping fences and take the back stairs up into the TV room? Unless kids had found that way in, in which case he hoped it would be locked. If Amelia hadn’t thought of it, Antoinette would.

Running to the train, he discovered his phone didn’t work and email wouldn’t load, but Twitter did refresh once, which was enough for him to learn that the riots had started at the Boys and Girls School two blocks from his house. He still couldn’t do anything for another twenty minutes until his stop, and since he hadn’t had a chance to use his one prayer at the racetrack, he prayed.

And it felt different. Immediately. He didn’t feel the usual blockage. He didn’t feel the futility and the anger. The plaque. The tension and worthlessness that had to be gambled away. He closed his eyes. His body was empty. Thoughts were water filling him up from inside. His fingertips seemed accessible from his lungs. For the first time since . . . for the first time in his adult life. He didn’t remember being a child. Simon was the child now. Something could be accomplished now. He could go home. He could help. Maybe as a rabbi he hadn’t been able to help a woman who’d lost her son. The son had already been taken. But his son! Aaron’s son! He was on his way!

The problem hadn’t been the lack of God—whether God existed or not. It had been God’s—and Aaron’s—failure to act. To sit there and watch suffering. But now—soon—Aaron could act.

And the thought of having prayed for money—for sports—it sickened him. The thought of gambling sickened him. Lying to Amelia sickened him. He sickened himself. How happy he’d permitted himself to be, alone without his family, repulsed him. It was a sickness. Having stayed even those extra moments at the track—he did need help. Actual help.

He begged for forgiveness. He begged himself for forgiveness, but that wasn’t enough.

He started to cry. He was in a middle seat of a three-seat bench squeezed between two women—one white, one Hispanic—who ignored him. He was on the local C train, three stops away from his Utica stop.

He was thankful for the second chance at life that Amelia had given him. He was thankful for Amelia’s willingness not only to see the best in people but to help them. She was there for Simon. She was there for him. She knew he was weak. And she was there for him in spite of his weakness. Sometimes, he thought, because of it.

He was proud of her lately. Proud that she wrote the article about the neighborhood.

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