The Sunshine Crust Baking Factory. Stacy Wakefield
in front of 9th Street Squat waiting for what felt like forever, too cheap to waste another quarter. I wasn’t going to yell up to the fourth floor either; this building intimidated me too much. I just stood there sweating until Veronica leaned out her window.
“I couldn’t get off the phone!” She tossed down the key in a sock with an easy shrug.
I let myself in and climbed the wide stairs. I had been here to a workday earlier in the summer, naive enough to think I could ease into a space that way. It was totally out of my league. Over the years the squatters had rebuilt this whole building—floors, walls, plumbing, electricity—all to code. It looked like a real apartment building inside, every space had a locked door and its own bathroom. The condescending guy who “orientated” all of us for the workday said the building was looking for a family of color with young children for the next open apartment, to improve diversity. But we could put in some hours anyway. It would be noted. It would have been a total waste of time if I hadn’t met Veronica. She was all into it that I was a single woman who was tough and wanted to squat. She was so cool, with her huge necklaces and hair wrapped in a big scarf and cordless drill on a holster on her hip. Instead of acting like a guy, she made working with power tools look femme.
I sipped herbal iced tea at her table while Veronica worked in her kitchen. “Brooklyn!” She waved her whisk in the air, “Of course! I knew that was the place for you.”
“Yeah?”
“I mean, forget the city unless you were here years ago. Seriously. You’re going to love Brooklyn.”
I looked at her skeptically while she poured batter into a pan. Brooklyn wasn’t a prize. We both knew that. She was surprised I’d found anything at all.
She slammed the oven door and settled across from me at the table, fanning her face. “It’s too hot to be baking, I don’t know why I said I’d make a cobbler. It’s Jessie’s birthday. You know Jessie? No? Anyways, that happened fast, huh? What’s their process, are you a full house member?”
“Oh, well . . .” I thought of my long silent walk down two flights of stairs with Mitch and wondered how I’d even dare go back there again.
“Find out. Seriously. It’d suck if you put a lot of work in and then you find out you’ve been on trial or something.”
“I don’t think it’s like . . . that formal . . .”
“What are they, consensus? Majority?” She leaned forward on her arms, looking at me through her little cat-eye glasses. “Will you have say in adding new house members or are they, like, going to offer a room to any Joe who wanders in?”
I bit my lip. “That’s a good question.”
She lifted her dreads off the back of her neck, twisting them into a tighter knot on top of her head. Her armpits were unshaven. “The city must own the building, right? Since it’s been squatted a few months already? I mean, it’s got to be like on the Lower East Side, right, or is it different out there, can you squat privately owned stuff?”
“Oh, I don’t—”
When Veronica’s timer dinged I felt like a relieved kid at the final bell. She put her cake pan in a basket and we walked down the well-lit stairs together. She was heading east to Avenue D, and assuming I was going to the L train, she asked me to post a letter on 14th Street. I wasn’t headed that way but I didn’t tell her. It was easier just to do it.
When I got back to ABC No Rio and climbed up to the roof, I was exhausted and it wasn’t even dark yet. I flopped down on top of my sleeping bag. Looking south I could see the Williamsburg Bridge, steel and lights, rising up above the buildings. I had to go for it. This was the only chance that had come my way after three months in the city. I had to make it work, no matter how awkward or hard it might be. With Lorenzo or without. What was the alternative? Staying here on the roof, sweating my ass off, waking up at dawn with the sun, waiting for winter to come? I rolled up my sleeping bag and walked to the J train.
* * *
On Rodney Street I heard my name. Skip waved from the basketball court next to the highway, still in his dress shoes, with a sweatband around his stringy hair. Mitch dribbled a ball. He was wearing green nylon shorts with his Air Jordans. He jumped to make a shot, his knees together.
“You play horse?” Skip cupped his hands around his mouth so I could hear him over the traffic.
I dropped my backpack by the edge of the chain-link fence and pushed my armbands and bracelets up my wrists. Mitch tossed the ball and it landed in my hands with a satisfying thump. I bounced it a few times to get the feel. Mitch was so tall, of course basketball was his game. I liked volleyball better. In junior high I’d been on my school’s team. But since I always hung out with guys, I could shoot hoops and play pool and I wasn’t half bad at hacky sack. I lined up the shot, squinting to see the hoop in the dusk. I threw from deep in my shoulder. The ball hit the backboard, bounced on the rim, and dropped through the net. I raised my arms over my head in victory and felt the first cool breeze of the evening drifting over the BQE.
III
“Lorenzo came by earlier,” Skip whispered. It was trash night and we were sneaking the bags I’d filled out of the Bakery.
“He did?” I asked, startled to hear the name in my thoughts spoken aloud.
“I told him you were sleeping up on the second floor for now. He put his stuff up there too.”
“I guess that means he’ll be back sometime.” I was totally disappointed. I’d barely left the house in three days. If I hadn’t gone out for food earlier, I could have seen him, asked what was going on.
Skip glanced at me. “You guys aren’t a couple, are you?”
“No.”
“That’s good.”
“Good?”
Skip heaved his bag on top of a neighbor’s broken dresser. He had said that if we added a couple of bags to the piles in front of each building, no one would notice. I shoved mine into the same pile and put a bundle of magazines on top of it and looked up at the building. No movement. We headed back to the house for more.
“Oh yeah, couples are really bad for a group house,” Skip said. “Everyone is equal and friends until there’s a couple. They just agree on everything together.”
“And everyone else is left out.” I thought of my Dad and Angela, how I’d suddenly become a third wheel when they met.
“Exactly. They just want to spend all their time together!”
He sounded perplexed by the thought. I had wondered if he was gay, but now I reconsidered. “You into straight edge?” I asked. I heaved a bag over my shoulder so it rested on my back and we headed up Rodney to Hope Street, where Skip said he’d seen a dumpster.
“Straight what?” He held his own bag awkwardly in front of him so it hit his shins.
“Straight edge? Youth of Today? Minor Threat?”
“I don’t . . . What’s that?”
“Bands, hardcore, you know . . .”
The dumpster was in front of a building under construction. I swung my bag over the edge and we both flinched when it landed, but no lights came on in the dark block. Skip had trouble heaving his in. I got my hands under it and helped push it over. I had at least fifty pounds on wiry little Skip.
“You never heard of Black Flag?” A squatter who didn’t know anything about punk was a surprise to me. “Agnostic Front?”
“Sorry, I’m not hip, I guess. Why did you think I was into that?”
“Oh . . . well . . .” Good question. How had we gotten into this? “What you said about couples, I guess . . . I thought of straight edge. Some straight edge kids