Photograph by Marissa Lewis

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Summer dawns, dark and dirty. The sky is heavy, but the rain will not come. Heat rises from the dead rivers, the manhole covers, the stinking city streets. You can fry an egg on the sidewalk. Your brother told you this, so it must be true. You close your eyes and can almost hear the sizzle of bleeding egg white on the pavement. You close your eyes and see a yoke burning brighter than the sun.

Your grandparents have not ventured outside for days. Grandma sips pinot grigio, a damp washcloth around her neck. The apartment is sealed tight, blinds locked. Spluttering fans circulate dead air. Pops is stuck to the TV, there is baseball to watch. Grandma tells you about the old days, how they slept on the fire escapes of the tenements on sultry summer nights. She tells you about glorious lazy days on the beach at Coney Island. Pops tells you about the time he snuck into Yankee Stadium with grandma after dark, how they sat in the sweet grass of centre field and watched the moon rise over the Bronx. You love their stories. They are your best friends. You don’t have many friends. Yours is a lonely world.

You squint through the slats of the blinds. The Manhattan skyline dissolves and reappears in the blink of an eye. You will brave the blazing city. You need to escape. Pops tells you not to stray too far. Grandma reminds you about poor Mrs. Rizzo. Mugged twice in one week and with a black eye to prove it. The city is a cesspool, Pops says, and you flee the apartment. You find your brother in the laundry room of your building. An unlit cigarette hangs from the corner of his mouth. You want to go downtown and see the new movie everyone is talking about. It is called Star Wars. He laughs and punches you in the arm. He would rather shoot craps and play cards with his crew. He peels dollar bills from a dripping wad of cash and presses them into your eager hand. Don’t forget the cannoli for Pops, he says.

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You will ride the rails. You would ride the subway to the hinterlands of the city if you could, to the far ends of the earth. This is a forbidden adventure. You are not allowed on the subway alone. You are not allowed past Queens Boulevard on your own either, but you have crossed one Rubicon for another. You are giddy and free, ready to journey into the unknown. You stand on the elevated platform at 61st and Roosevelt Avenue under the glare of a wicked sun. You are hiding under your beloved Yankees cap, faded blue and slick with sweat. You peer over the platform and see the No. 7 train shimmer like a mirage before it limps into the station. You dash to the front of the graffiti-tarnished train. You want to stand in the first car, lean into the front window and watch the twisting tracks. The doors open. The car is full of angry and sad faces. The stink of burning garbage. You cannot breathe. A man stands in your prized spot near the window. His face is hidden behind a copy of the Daily News held with grizzly bear hands. You wrap your arm around a greasy pole and stare at dried-out clumps of chewing gum on the floor. Graffiti bleeds from the walls of the subway car. You stand among thieves and swindlers, drunkards and drug addicts, murderers of young boys. There is a killer on the loose. He is called the Son of Sam. You wonder if he is on the train. You feel sick as the train pulls out of the station.

You cannot take your eyes off the man reading the paper. You catch a glimpse of his face and you are convinced he is Reggie Jackson. Reggie is your hero. You have no doubt he will take the Yankees to the Series. You ache for October.

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You sit in the front row of the movie house. You have it all to yourself, that is why you sit there. You care nothing about the world outside. The lights go dark. It is a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...

After the final credits roll you stand outside on the darkening street, and you know your life will never be the same again.

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The train is delayed pulling out of Times Square. There is a body on the tracks. You don’t know if the man was pushed or if he jumped. In this heat, you can never know. It is the second dead body you have seen. The first was your grandfather’s brother. Laid out in his old army uniform in a coffin lined with ruffled silk. He stormed a bloody beach in Normandy but never talked about the war. He never talked much anyway but he used to give you money for Reeses’s Peanut Butter Cups. He died in the bedroom you sleep in now. Sometimes, you cannot fall asleep. Sometimes you hear things in the night. You hope you never see a dead body again. Greasy streaks of night appear in the sky as you step back on to the platform at 61st and Roosevelt Avenue. You hear a distant drum of thunder, but the heat is relentless, messes with your head. Still, you are glad to breathe again. You’re gonna catch hell for being so late but at least you didn’t forget the cannoli. You hope your brother will cover for you. Night descends and streetlights flicker as you cross Queens Boulevard. You loiter in the playground outside your building, afraid of the fury that awaits. You sit on a creaking swing, the box of cannoli on your lap. Your feet do not touch the ground. You open the box and stare at the soggy pastry shells, the sorry ricotta cream turned rancid. You step off the swing. The tarmac is sticky, melting in the killer heat. You toss the cannoli into the nearest bin. You pause outside the door of the apartment. You turn the trembling key, and the lights go out.

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The city disappears in the blackout. There is no anger. Your grandparents hug you. Grandma’s kisses are sweet and stale with wine. Your brother steps from the shadows and hugs you. He has never hugged you. Pops turns the dial of his transistor radio. It crackles into life. The city is ablaze. Brooklyn is burning. The Bronx is burning. A city under siege. Thousands of people are being evacuated from rancid subway cars, there are looters on the prowl. Fear burns through the night. A city gone mad.

You are standing on the roof of your building. Your grandparents are holding hands. You have never seen them do that before. Your brother takes a cigarette from behind his ear and gives it to the beautiful girl in apartment 5F. Her parents stand nearby chatting to the wife of the building super. Mrs. Rizzo holds a flashlight and sits in an old lawn chair. She wears sunglasses even though light is a dead memory. The old man in 10C is checking the tomatoes hanging from the vines in the community garden. The vines cling to the chain-linked fence that rings the ledge of the roof. He whispers to the plants in a language you do not know. The super turns on an electric floor lantern but the light is weak, no match for this deepest of nights. The blackout reveals something you have never seen before. The blackout brings an
eternity of stars. The Milky Way unfurls its wonder over the burning city.

You go to bed just before the sweltering dawn. You pray for your grandparents. You want them to live forever. You pray for school to return. You pray for Reggie Jackson and the Yankees. You pray for autumn. You pray for summer to end.

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