3 Excerpts from Mr. Jefferson's Piano & Other Central Harlem Stories Read online

  Most of us who worked in the Central Harlem housing office were in our late twenties to early thirties. We were all new hires—just beginning our careers with the City of New York. Mavis Washington and several other experienced managers were at the opposite end of the spectrum. She’d been a licensed broker working in a small Black real estate company before she came to work for the city. By the time I met her, she’d been with city housing for eleven years.

  I came into city housing when female managers were a rarity in the field. Most of the women in the agency were either secretaries or file clerks who never went in the field to inspect buildings. I met two women who worked in city-owned territories in Central Harlem. Esther Kempler was one of them. Mavis Washington was the other woman. Esther was Jewish. Mavis was Black. Esther went into the field, wrists dripping with diamonds and a mink around her narrow shoulders. She traveled with an escort of loyal supers who would do anything for her. Mavis went into the field alone, driving her little Ford Escort. She came equipped with a writing pad for notes, extra pens, a tenant roster, or a 610, and her field sheet to record official information. She was ready to work. I’m not sure what Esther was ready to do, but I think it had little to do with actively managing city-owned property.

  Like Mavis and Esther, Charlie Hunter was a senior manager working at 2 Lafayette Street when I first started. He and Mavis knew each other from their early years in real estate as licensed brokers. They were good friends. He came to work for the city first and then encouraged Mavis to take a job with the city for the pension plan and health benefits that the smaller real estate firms weren’t able to offer. After work, Charlie was also my next-door neighbor. Everybody loved Charlie. He made you see the absurdity of the job with his thoughtful probing questions, his gentle sense of humor, and the concern he showed you.

  Charlie told me how he watched my new colleagues and me sit in the office all day, listening to angry lectures from more experienced managers who resented us newcomers for our better educations and the slightly higher salary we earned. He said he saw how his co-workers kept us busy running personal errands for them, completing their paperwork, and filing their records when we weren’t busy making copies for them. As the “new guys,” my coworkers and I never complained about the deliberately belittling tasks the senior managers assigned us to do—at least not where they could hear us and recommend our dismissal. Instead of griping, we counted to ten, bit our tongues, took walks around the office, and went outside to get some air. We did whatever was necessary to avoid nasty confrontations with our senior mentors. We waited until lunchtime to let loose, but I began to wonder if I’d ever learn anything useful about managing property. One night on the way home, I complained to Charlie that I didn’t take a property management job just to run errands. I took the job so I could help people, which I wasn’t doing right now. I warned him how I was ready to check out job postings in my old agency, the Housing Authority, if things didn’t improve. I let him know that if I left, I thought other new managers might follow suit since they were growing tired of the situation too.

  I don’t know how Charlie did it, but two days later, he had a surprise for my colleagues and me. He’d arranged to take us into the field with him on his regular route. Charlie drove an old, battered brown and beige nine-passenger station wagon with plenty of room. When I saw the thing parked around the neighborhood, I used to tease him how the wagon looked ready for the salvage yard. He argued it was the perfect car for New York City. It never broke down. It always took him where he wanted to go. And it was so ugly, nobody tried to steal it.

  Charlie gathered us around his desk to tell us how he wanted us to experience city-owned property in Harlem at its best and worst. Ten of us listened to him, but only Robbie Silva and I volunteered to go with him. For once, Robbie and I dressed casually in slacks and flats instead of the business suits and dresses we usually wore to work. It was the perfect attire for our first venture into the field. Charlie wore what he always wore—brightly colored Hawaiian shirts over khakis or jeans in the summer and long-sleeved polo shirts over the same pants in the winter. He wore cowboy boots and a matching leather vest whether it was summer or winter.

  Anyway, Charlie took us to Eighth Avenue and 110th Street to see one of his buildings. As we drove up, I stared out the window at the block the building sat on. It was a bit scary. I was hesitant to leave the car, but I wanted to put on a brave front. The building was a dull, gray-beige affair—not too large and not too small, sitting on a corner that had seen grander days. It was a stone’s throw from Central Park but located in the bad section of the park before the skating rink’s renovation. I could imagine elegant men in top black hats, gray morning coats, and darker gray slacks escorting women wearing early 19th Century ankle-length dresses, their gloved hands twirling parasols, across the street to a band shell in Central Park to watch a parade or hear a full orchestra play on a Saturday afternoon.

  Now the corner contained heroin addicts with knees bent so low I thought the sidewalk would rub holes in the knees of their pants as they enjoyed their oblivion. A wino standing on the sidewalk in front of the car offered Charlie a sip from a brown bag he shielded with a broad dirty hand. Two young women—I think they were young, but it was hard to tell ages with thick pancake makeup covering their faces—paraded around the corner in five-inch platform heels and bright pink, skin-tight hot pants. They were trolling the intersection for their next customers. When they spotted Charlie, they called to him and blew him kisses from across the street. Charlie acknowledged them with a slight nod and a heavy sigh. “They should be in school—college or something—instead of working a goddamned street corner!” he muttered.

  Before we stepped inside, Charlie described six studio or one-bedroom units on each of five floors. He explained that we were inspecting vacant apartments to make sure squatters hadn’t broken in and established residency. The job sounded like a simple assignment. As a new manager, I thought, What could happen in a vacant apartment? It’s vacant and nobody lives there, right?

  Wrong.

  Wrong.

  The first vacant apartment Charlie opened disproved my “nothing could happen in a vacant apartment” theory. It was a studio apartment. I could see the entire place, except for the inside of the tiny bathroom, once we stepped inside the door. Con-Edison had shut off the electricity recently, so it was dark inside. When I looked around, I didn’t see anything but a bunch of old blankets piled up in the corner of an otherwise empty place until Charlie saw the blankets move. He motioned to Robbie and me. We went over to investigate.

  The blanket sat up, stretched, and scratched a matted beard. I was closest, but I didn’t know what to do. I froze where I stood. The guy scared me coming out of the pile of dirty rags like that. His smelly, rusty, unkempt appearance didn’t faze Charlie one bit. Nope, Charlie strode over and planted his feet between the guy and me. When Charlie confronted the guy and demanded he leave, I noticed the difference in their heights. Charlie was a chunky five-nine in cowboy boots, while the skinny guy towered over him at six feet and change. I wondered where Charlie’s bravery came from until he flipped his vest to the side to let the man see the gun on his hip.

  The guy raised a hand in surrender. “Okay, Five-O, I’m going.” He thought Charlie was a cop, so he left quickly without taking his bed linen. I let out the breath I was holding, then patted my chest. Robbie and I exchanged looks. We’d have a real story to tell our co-workers if we survived this field day with Charlie.

  After we finished checking the remaining apartments for illegal occupants and not finding anyone, we drove to the next building on Charlie’s route—a building on 112th Street and Manhattan Avenue. Along the way, Charlie recognized Mavis Washington’s little blue Escort and stopped to chat with her. It was a nice day, so Charlie drove with the windows open. We heard Mavis hollering long before we saw her. Charlie stopped because he thought she might need help. She didn’t. I don’t know how a tiny, frail-looking
, light-skinned Black woman who looked like somebody’s mother could cause a strapping six-footer to cower, but she did. The muscular man she was bellowing at looked as though he could easily lift her three feet off the ground with his little finger.

  Charlie listened to her cuss the big man for a few moments before he pulled up and parked, deciding the situation called for mediation. He told us to wait in the car while he spoke with Mavis and the big guy. He spoke to the man first while Mavis stood to the side, patting an impatient beat with her foot against the sidewalk. The angry looks the big man gave Mavis over Charlie’s shoulder said he’d considered doing something to her.

  I wanted to know what was going on, so I reached for the door handle to let myself out when Robbie’s words stopped me.

  “Don’t be so nosy, Melba. If Charlie wanted us to know something, he’d invite us over.”

  “But I wanna know what he’s saying to the guy.”

  “He told us to wait in the car, so just wait.” Robbie sighed, then looked at me as though she was dealing with one of her teenage children. “Aren’t you scared yet? If I’d been as close to that crazy-looking bum as you were, I wouldn’t be so anxious to see anything for the rest of the day!”

  “I guess you’re right.” I sank back in the seat, thinking about what she’d said. I still wanted know what was going on with Charlie and Mavis, but I could wait.

  When Charlie returned to the car, he explained Mavis was upset because the big guy throwing invisible darts at Mavis with his eyes was a super in deep shit. He didn’t report a dangerous situation to Mavis as he should have. Several of the wooden treads leading from the basement to the sub-basement were rotten. Mavis found out about the damaged treads in the worst possible way—after a plumber’s helper fell through the stairs carrying a load of pipes to the basement. The city hired his company to replace several hundred feet of rotting steam and hot water lines in the basement and throughout the building before the winter season. The company was ready to sue the city for the injury to his worker and pulled all his workers off the job. The tenants had been without hot water for several weeks before Mavis learned what happened.

  The super told Charlie he didn’t think what happened was important enough to tell Mavis. He figured the plumber was bluffing about the lawsuit. Since it wasn’t cold, he wasn’t worried about providing heat to the tenants. As for hot water, he dismissed the problem by saying the tenants could heat water on the stove if they needed it hot. He said he was used to reporting worse things, like the fire that ruined all the apartments on the second floor or the tenant who killed his wife and left her dead body in the apartment for several days, stinking up the entire building.

  Charlie said Mavis wanted to fire the big guy but finding somebody else to take over his job was difficult since it didn’t pay that much and most of the supers weren’t in the union yet. He suspected Mavis would have to keep the guy around for a while longer and pray nothing else went wrong in the building. We sat in the car and watched Mavis talk with the super again, but this time, she wasn’t yelling. She pointed to something on her clipboard and he nodded.

  Before we drove off, the super came over to the car to thank Charlie. Mavis stood on the sidewalk, waiting for him to finish with Charlie as she blew several smoke rings and tapped the pavement with an annoyed foot. She didn’t look happy. I was impressed with Mavis’ handling of the situation, although my ears were still ringing from the curses she had flung at the super. I was glad to see she wasn’t a prima donna as Esther was.

  Two weeks later, Charlie told us Mavis pressured the super into resigning before he could do more damage. I wondered if the plumber returned to the job to give the building water, but I forgot to ask. My focus was elsewhere. I’d been worried female managers had to be ultra-feminine like Esther to survive in property management. After watching Mavis in action, I was glad to see that wasn’t true. Everybody has her own management style and I needed to find one that suited me.

 

  THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT