“You are a favorite with Azis. I have seen him have a man killed for less than what you have done. I would be happy to oblige my imam should he change his mind. You are expected at the mosque tomorrow at 4:00 p.m. Fail to come and I will be given my chance.” He took two more steps toward Ramzi, meeting him head on, then sidestepped and walked past.
When Ramzi was sure Mohammed had gone, he headed up the stairs to his apartment. As he put keys to the lock, he caught the end of a message being recorded on his answering machine. “I know you’re probably tired but I’ve got to run a bunch of chairs and plates and flatware over to my mother’s. You wouldn’t help, would you? I could really use you.”
Ramzi dashed into the apartment and grabbed the phone. Life was mysterious, and he, merely a fallen leaf tossed and blown on the wind. “Beryl, my love, of course I will. And why don’t we visit awhile?”
Had it really been six months since his meeting with Mohammed? The first class of Kazakh orphans were about to graduate. As they fed the pet rabbits and turtles kept at the school behind the Chabad, he realized he’d grown quite fond of them, and was sad to think they’d soon be leaving for Israel. What a pleasure to teach children so hungry to learn.
He glanced up as Beryl entered the classroom. She leaned against the blackboard beside him and smiled at the children. He wanted to slide his arm around her but knew he couldn’t do that in front of the orphans. He stroked his beard. He’d been surprised by how quickly it had grown in. He’d dyed all of his hair silver, making him look at least fifteen years older than he was. This may be America, but he still equated age with wisdom, and was happy to think of himself as growing wise.
“Almost done?” Beryl asked.
He nodded.
“Good. Mom’s cooking up a storm. She loves you... almost as much as I do.”
Ramzi’s world had shrunk in the relocation. He felt safe here, and he kept to the neighborhood. He walked each day from Beryl’s mother’s house, which was now his home, to the Chabad and back, occasionally stopping at the local deli to pick something up for the evening meal. Except perhaps for the paan, he didn’t miss his old life at all. Beryl was due to move in with him when school ended in June, and he looked forward to that.
It was Hanukkah and the menorah would be lit tonight. As with many converts, the rituals of Judaism seemed to have more meaning for him than for those who’d practiced from birth. Most of all, he was looking forward to Gloria’s (he had begun calling Beryl’s mom by her first name) famous levivot and applesauce.
The last few orphans left the room and he took Beryl’s hand as they strolled home to Gloria’s, the chill air turning Beryl’s nose bright red.
The investigation
by Belinda Farley
Jamaica
So Edwin Stuckey had not believed in miracles. Couldn’t have. By the third hour of services at the Crusading Home of Deliverance in southeastern Queens — when the bellow of the preacher rang out like a toll that beckoned to repent and reform, and the congregation of twenty-eight had sprung to their feet in a fervor — I, who had so often scoffed at organized religion, was on my feet as well. All about me, the jiggle-jangle of tambourines being slapped on open palms reverberated. Shouted hallelujahs stung my eardrums. Tears were shed; wails directed heavenward. Was I praying?
I should’ve been taking notes.
Instead, I now found myself exercising total recall on the F train. It had been a week since the call had come in on the police scanner: a “1010” announcing a possible death at Guy R. Brewer Boulevard and 108th Avenue. I was a reporter, a novice in the newsroom of a weekly in Richmond Hill, where the Maple Grove Cemetery kept us a safe distance from Jamaica, the neighborhood of this particular call. Jamaica, Queens intimidated the other staff reporters — all four of whom were white — for no other reason than its inhabitants were largely black, and so we tended not to report there. The paper was a rag anyway, housed in bright yellow corner boxes and valued mainly for its classifieds. I worked there to prove to my folks that the money they’d shelled out for my J-school tuition hadn’t been a complete waste.
I still lived with my parents, and a great aunt, in a Brooklyn brownstone that had been in my family for three generations. I’d been happy there. We were privileged upper-middle class, or, rather, my parents were, being members of fraternal organizations, committees, and social clubs with established roots in the African-American community of Bedford-Stuyvesant. Despite my precarious employment, I was still considered a catch within my circle; I’d escorted no less than three females to their debutante balls. I supposed that sooner or later I’d have had enough of my journalism career and would join an uncle on Wall Street.
The call came in while I was alone in the office. Later — when things had run their course — I thought of a photograph that I had tacked to the wall in my college dorm.
The picture showed a house on a hill in Hollywood, California, circa 1962. It was taken by Diane Arbus, so, of course, it looked like no other house on a hill in Hollywood, or anywhere else. The hill was all tangled vine and bare tree limb, and the house was appropriately dark and stoic, and made of cardboard. It was a prop. But the sky above it was lovely. Who, what, when, where, why, and how: No photo — or story, for that matter — ever told the whole truth. The most important lesson I learned in J-school.
There was no ambulance nor squad car at the scene when I arrived. I didn’t feel too confident as I rapped on the door of the modest wood-frame house. You could feel on the street that the neighborhood was tight: Loungers on their front porches eyed my unfamiliar self with suspicion. But I needed to get a byline under my belt.
“Yes?” The door swung open immediately and a man who appeared to be in his late fifties eyed me over his glasses.
“Evening, uh, morning, sir,” I stammered, to no acknowledgment. I hoped I wasn’t too late. “I’m a reporter for the—”
“Who is it, Gershorn?” A thick, squat woman with a hairdo that looked as if it had been roller-set for two days appeared at the man’s side. With her elaborate coif, and skin the color of a gingersnap, she could’ve been an aged starlet. In reality, she was a housewife, as evidenced by the formality of an apron tied over her blue housecoat.
The man bristled. “We were expecting someone, but not you,” he said. “What is your business here, young man?”
Where the skin of the woman remained taut and unlined and shone with the assistance of petroleum jelly, every second thought and hardship that had ever befallen the man was noted in some wrinkle or frown line that caused his face to sag like a deflated mahogany balloon. His gray hair was coiled in tight, generous ringlets on his scalp. He was tall, standing nearly two heads above her.
“I’m Doug, Douglass Nichols, and I’m a reporter for the Weekly Item.” I extended my hand. “I’m responding to a call that came over our police scanner regarding a possible death...?”
The man stared at me blankly. He did not shake my hand. I glanced at my notepad to confirm the address.
“Sir, was there an incident here tonight? The police came?”
The man contemplated my question before opening the door to me. “A crime, young man, not an incident. Come in.”
I stepped inside. He closed the door behind me and clasped his hands behind his back.
“Claudette,” he called to the woman. “Tea. Tea for our guest.”
In no time at all the woman reappeared with a lone cup on a saucer, which she extended to me. I balanced it on my notepad. The man motioned for me to take a seat.