The Bronx is Burning: A Remembrance of Auntie Esther
Another wind of memory carried me to the steps of my aunt’s Bronx tenement building on University Avenue and Kingsbridge Road.
“Those bastards!”
Auntie Esther shouted through the apartment door as I fumbled with her keys in the old lock. She wasn’t really my aunt but my grandmother’s sister so this made her my great-aunt. I squinted both eyes in the dim hall light and felt around for the lock. The sounds of Hawaii 5-0 reruns reverberated into the hallway of her old six story high dirt brown brick building. It was so loud I thought Jack Lord was standing next to me.
Two Puerto Rican teenagers clumped down the hallway stairs in their heavy boots and thumped basketballs against the steps and walls. There were no elevators in her building, just two large stairwells at either side of the building that neighbors had climbed up and down for decades. I winced as bounces echoed off the walls but the boys ignored me in the shadows, another home attendant, they figured, coming to call on the building’s elderly.
I shoved the heavy door open and almost bounced back into the dark and musty hallway from its weight. A heavy police lock held the door, a brass bar stuck a hole drilled into the floor and inserted into an oval brace on the back. After wedging myself through the opening, I held my stomach and my breath and pushed myself in. I yanked my pocketbook in after me with a few sharp tugs. I dusted myself off and slammed the door shut. This painful routine would be played out in reverse when I left.
“Hello, Auntie Esther,” I called out. “Hello. HELLO. AUNTIE ESTHER, I’M HERE!”
She stared intently at the TV screen. She didn’t notice me until I stood in front of the blaring television, waving my arms like a fan at a Giants football game.
“HELLO, AUNTIE ESTHER!”
Read more on my Substack, Pastrami a go-go and other wry tales of the city, by clicking here.
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