Mama was dark liquor brown but only drank Bacardi Light. She wore natural three-inch long nails silk-wrapped and well-manicured. Whether in a business or bathing suit, matching heels were a favorite accessory, second only to her nails. Foam-roller curly hair bounced on her shoulders. Dainty gold earrings looped from her lobes. A stack of intricately etched gold bangles rounded her wrists. A gold link bracelet wrapped around her ankle. Depending on the weather and the occasion, a tailored blazer, butter soft leather trench or full-length beaver curtained her back. On weekday mornings, when she headed to the law firm where she worked as a legal secretary, a faux alligator skin purse dangled from her shoulder.
It didn’t matter if it was a weekday or weekend, professional event or house party, Mama stayed fly.
After work, Mama picked me up from Grandma Mabel’s Bushwick house. Even though we moved out of Grandma’s grand italianette earlier in 1984, Grandma Mabel still took care of me when Mama was at work. Finally in our new Fort Greene neighborhood, Mama pulled her purse’s thin strap back onto her shoulder and gripped my palm as we walked down Ashland Place. We swung hands while Mama sang to me, “I love you. I love you. Honey I, love you. I do. More than you ever know. It’s for sure…” Mama’s mezzo-soprano was butter smooth, while her alto smoked like brimstone. Sarah, Billie and Etta were among Mama’s favorites. Patti, Stephanie and Anita, too. When Mama pushed their songs from her mouth, as she often did, I’d look up at her with stretched cheeks.
Mama could sang.
On our side of the street, dogs scavenged a gravel graveyard. Further down, fire escapes and ivy vines scaled the only residential building on the block. That apartment building, the one on the corner of Ashland Place and Lafayette Avenue, was our new home. Across the street from where we walked, drunks fisted cans in crumpled brown bags while standing in front of a rundown corner liquor store. Up the block from them and across the street from our new building, packs of folks stalked in and out of The Granada’s doors.
The Spanish-influenced Granada Hotel’s tiled roof and adobe brick exterior once welcomed esteemed guests. Brooklyn Dodgers’ rookies, ball players playing against the Dodgers at home games, Brooklyn Academy of Music performers, judges, elected officials, and more of society’s high browed slept in its luxury guest or residential quarters. In its Forsythia Room, trombones droned, trumpets whirred and saxophones shivered alongside strings and percussions. Jazz singers blessed its mic. Like crystal chandeliers, luminous socialites swung in its swanky ballroom. Even during the day, the hotel teemed with guests.
Long before Breakfast at Tiffany’s, white-gloved and -skinned women waltzed into the hotel’s restaurant for afternoon tea. Politicians passed the brick exterior, treaded the welcome mat and entered the polished glass doors to meet for lunch inside the posh lobby. But in 1984, as Mama and I walked along Ashland towards our home, instead of being polished, The Granada’s glass doors were dusty and cracked. Instead of society’s upper echelon, shifty-eyed men who wore mean mugs like Lees crowded its entrance. Instead of a thick weatherproof welcome mat, discarded beer cans and Kool butts sprawled in front of the foyer.
Across the street from The Granada’s remains, we rented a boxy apartment. Like in Bushwick, Mama and Daddy often hosted guests. It wasn’t unusual to see Daddy’s best friend Ricky and his wife Diane come by with their sons Anwah and Terrance. Anwah, Terrance and I would play in my bedroom as our parents listened to music in the living room. Sometimes, when us kids would get curious and creep past my door’s threshold, we’d spot creased dollar bills with white powder in them.
“Go back into the room!” One of the adults would shout and we’d scurry off.
“Precious, whatchu think about getting some McDonald’s?” Mama asked as we approached our apartment building. It was a summer Friday and Mama just got paid. Payday always meant dinner at tried and true restaurants like Juniors in downtown Brooklyn, Sylvia’s in Harlem, Sammy’s on City Island, or good old McDonald’s. “Yay!” I squealed. “Mickey Deez!”
Instead of heading up the short stack of stairs and into the ivy-covered brick box, Mama and I made a left off Ashland and onto Lafayette. We passed the Brooklyn Academy of Music, which cater-cornered The Granada, and made our way towards Atlantic Avenue, a barren strip of railroad tracks and abandoned lots. Her hand locked around mine, Mama looked down at me, singing, “I love and need and want you babe. I love and need and want you, baby I…” The anticipation of McDonald’s adding an extra pep to our steps.
As Mama sang and I skipped, a group of men jetted past us on Mama’s other side. Their feet smoked the sidewalk. All I saw was brown skin over sinewy backs. Suddenly, my elbow jerked and shoulder plowed forward. Mama shot ahead, her nails digging into my hand as she pulled me behind her.
“My purse. My purse. Give me my fucking purse!” Mama charged.
“Mommy,” I screamed. Unsure of what was happening and feeling like my legs were going to give out.
“Keep running, Precious!” Mama urged, slowing down just a rub. “Give me my purse!” Mama’s voice hit a feverish pitch as it sounded at the men’s backs. One of the guys turned around to see us chasing behind them. I hoped that he’d take pity on us and stop. He didn’t. Instead, he ran faster and his crew followed suit. They made a right turn at the corner and Mama and I, too far behind, lost them.
Mama slowed to a light jog so I could keep up with her. Back on Ashland Place, she marched up the short-stacked stoop and into the fire escape- and ivy-wrapped beige box with me behind her. Inside our apartment, she picked up the rotary phone’s handle, placed her finger on a number and rotated the dial clockwise, three times.
“Yes, hello?” Mama’s words rushed through heavy breaths, “my purse was just snatched. Just now. We were on Atlantic. Me and my daughter. Four guys. Black and Puerto Rican. I don’t know, tee shirts and dungarees! Yes, ma’am! It just happened. On Atlantic. Near Oxford. I had my daughter with me. We chased them. No, I didn’t see where they went! But, I know one. He stays at the hotel on Ashland. I live right across the street. See him out there all the time. Twenty-five Lafayette Avenue, but the entrance is on Ashland Place. Apartment 4A. Are they coming now? We’ll be outside!”
Mama kicked off her heels, kept on her tailored suit and slipped Keds onto her feet. “Come on, Precious. Let’s go!” Mama ordered. My hand in hers, we ran all four flights down the stairwell until we pushed out onto Ashland. “Sit here,” Mama commanded. From the stoop, I watched her leave the iron fence, cross the street and walk halfway down the block, searching for the offenders amongst The Granada’s curbside congregation.
“Where’s your mother?” Ms. Gibbons, a woman with a short fro and sculpted arms, asked with a quizzical look while pushing open the gate and wheeling her laundry cart into our entryway.
“Right there,” I said, pointing towards The Granada as Mama made her way back. “What’s the matter, Pam?” Ms. Gibbons called out, parking her cart at the stoop’s foot.
“Someone just snatched my purse!”
“What?” Mrs. Gibbons asked, looking towards The Granada. “Across the street?” “No, on Atlantic. Me and Niki were headed to McDonald’s.”
“Did you call the police?”
“That’s who we’re waiting for. I can’t believe this shit!” Mama said more to herself than anyone else, her hands fisting the fence and gaze locked on The Granada. Mama reached into her pocket and pulled out a pack of Salem Lights. After pinching a slender white stick from the paper container, Mama peeled a matchbook from the pack’s back and tugged the ash black stick across its striker. Shaking her head and tapping a foot, Mama lit her cigarette and took a long drag as Mrs. Gibbons fussed.
“Been nothing but trouble since they made that building a damn welfare hotel!” Mrs. Gibbons pointed to the square cement box on the ground in front of our gate, “Jose got robbed right here the other night. Right here! Two guys. Put a gun in his face.”
Mama squished the Salem Light between her lips again.
“We didn’t have any of these problems before Koch put them here. Now, can’t walk a block without fearing for your life.” As she grabbed her cart and began pulling it up the stoop steps, she complained, “Can’t live in peace in your own home anymore.”
But Fort Greene wasn’t the only New York City neighborhood wherein welfare hotels bloomed. In 1981, during his first year in office, President Ronald Reagan delivered a speech at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. He announced his plan to cook up economic growth by slashing government spending.
Despite a recession that produced the highest level of unemployment since the 1940s, Reagan cut spending for subsidized housing construction, job training, and food stamps, among other things. By 1984, the number of Americans living below the poverty line increased by almost three million. Black Americans suffered the most. Almost thirty-five percent of African Americans—as opposed to fourteen percent of all U.S. citizens—lived in poverty. The Granada was only one of the approximately sixty hotels New York City Mayor Ed Koch used to shelter families devastated by Ronald Reagan’s ruinous policies.
A white-topped and blue-doored Plymouth Fury pulled in front of The Granada. It had a white stripe that stretched from the hood to the trunk. In the stripe’s center, on the driver’s door, was a painted cop’s badge. Red lights spiraled from its roof. Two white men stepped out of its doors.
“Come on, Niki,” was all Mama said as she opened our front gate, my hand in hers.
“Hello officers, I think you’re here for us,” Mama said as we crossed the street, rushing towards The Granada.
“You called in a robbery?” one of the cops asked.
“Yes, my daughter and I were going to McDonald’s when a group of guys snatched my purse.”
“You saw them come in here?” the other officer asked, disbelieving.
“No,” Mama replied. “But, I recognized one of them. He lives here. With his brother.”
“Well, let’s take a look around.”
The officers led the way as Mama and I entered The Granada’s cracked glass doors. In the lobby, chandeliers hung high over soiled mattresses and shredded couches. Sweat-browed men wearing bare chests with thin chains dashed in all directions once they spotted us. Women rocking tank tops baring emaciated shells rolled their eyes beneath hair wild like fire, flaming directionless. Stick thin and shoeless children raced around the ruins. Babies with bloated stomachs sat in lumpy diapers. Urine and pungent body funk smacked me so hard I felt faint. I pulled my floral shirt over my nose and held it there. The place was chaos with gas and torch, flaming. Smokeless, but burning.
“Do you see the guy?” asked one of the officers.
Mama’s wild eyes scoped the scene. Sympathy and determination etched across her brow. She peered around the place that was fresh Salem Lights box-packed. “You kiddin me?”
“Alright, well let’s just take a walk through and see what comes up.” The officer said.
Although The Granada was sixteen stories high, none of the elevators worked. We opened the stairwell door and the heat strangled us. The only window in the stairwell was painted shut. The acrid stench followed us in from the lobby. A rat jumped down a few steps, slinked against a wall and squeezed into hole. I tightened my squeeze around Mama’s hand.
“Don’t worry, Precious,” she said. But her own worry slipped past her lips.
Sandwiched between the officers, Mama and I scuttled up the stairs to the second floor.
Outside of the stairwell, the hallway seemed to go on for miles. Trash and broken furniture were discarded within walls of chipping paint and ragged carpet. Most of the room doors were kept wide open. In each room, clothes, garbage and toys were strewn throughout. There was no clear delineation between sleeping spaces and trash receptacles. Some of the residents we passed stared at us. But most paid us no mind.
“Whatchu looking for,” a woman holding a baby and flanked by three older, yet small children, asked.
“You wouldn’t know anything about a robbery, would you?” one of the officers asked. “A group of guys snatched my purse,” Mama said. “It was brown. Alligator skin.”
The woman shook her head and sucked her teeth. “Just happened?”
“Yea, I was with my daughter,” Mama gestured at me. I hid behind her leg. “Over on Atlantic. I live across the street. One of the guys lives here.”
“They snatched it with your daughter there?” The woman’s brows crushed together as she pursed her lips. “I’m so sorry that happened to you. I ain’t seen nothin, but I’ll keep an eye out.”
“Thank you,” Mama replied as the police ushered us forward.
It seemed as though we searched The Granada for hours. But it was probably only twenty minutes or so. When we finally arrived back at the lobby, I wanted to run out of the doors, away from the rats and stick thin kids. Away from the broken glass and the sad chandeliers. I wanted to go home to our clean apartment, to our television, to my toys. And I felt guilty for these feelings. Guilty for knowing that this was a place I could leave while the families who walked within the lobby’s walls had to stay.
Mayor Koch’s hands were as dirty as President Reagan’s. Despite federal cutbacks, New York City still boasted a 21.5 billion dollar budget. Yet almost forty percent of its children, disproportionately black and brown, existed in impoverished families. And Koch relegated over three thousand of those families and ten thousand of those children to live in places like The Granada – deteriorating privately owned hotels where crime sprawled, health declined and people diminished.
“I just got paid. I haven’t gotten groceries yet. Haven’t even paid the rent,” Mama whispered while choking back a sob.
An officer glanced down at me, still clutching Mama’s hand.
“Ma’am, the most we can do is take a report. Have you come to the station to look through the mugshots. Maybe you’ll see the guy you recognized,” the officer said.
Mama’s shoulders sagged as she shook her head. The hopelessness of being victimized without the slightest prospect of justice came crashing down. The reality that her entire check was gone within hours of her receiving and cashing it punched all the air from her gut and threatened to cause tears to tumble from her eyes.
“Okay,” was all Mama said.
“Excuse me,” said a small voice. Mama, the cops and I turned in its direction.
“Excuse me, miss. This yours?” said a girl who was with the woman and her baby on the second floor. Approaching us from the stairwell, her arm was outstretched. In her hand was a chestnut colored, faux alligator skin pocketbook.
Mama ran to the girl and the police followed suit.
“Thank you!” Mama said as she pulled her purse open and took a glance inside. “Shit, they took my wallet.” Mama whispered, “My wallet’s gone,” she said while feverishly trying to open a zipper inside the purse’s inner fabric. Once Mama got the zipper opened, she gasped, “Thank God! Thank you, Jesus!”
Inside the alligator purse’s zippered inner pocket remained two petty-cash-narrow manila envelopes. In flowery black-inked cursive, one thickly packed envelope read, “Rent.” The other, “Bills.”
Mama pulled a twenty-dollar bill from one of the stashes and handed it to the girl. “Give that to your mother, you hear?” Mama commanded.
“Yes ma’am,” she said before darting back into the stairwell.
We headed out of The Granada’s doors with the cops at our backs. Mama declined pressing charges. Patti Labelle was the only singing she was going to do that night. Instead of going to the police precinct, Mama took my hand in hers, sang about how she loved and needed me, and led us back down Ashland Place… towards Mickey Deez.
Contributor Notes
Nicole Shawan Junior (Smith College BA | Pace University MST | Temple University JD) is a multi-genre counter-storyteller who was born & bred in the bass-heavy beat & scratch of Brooklyn, where the Bed-Stuy cool of beautiful inner-city life barely survived cripplings caused by crack cocaine.
