You've just signed a two-year lease for a two-room apartment. A tenement, your father says. You've sequestered the larger of the two small rooms for your bedroom. In the whole apartment, there is one closet. Sort of.
You open the door to the apartment and the hallway is only as wide as the front door, which you can triple lock, here in your fourth floor walkup, should anybody be desperate enough to hike up that many flights for the sole purpose of hurting you.
On your right is the room that will serve as a combo den/closet. It's the tiniest room, but the only one with a closet; you cannot reach to hang your clothes on the permanent rod. You will buy a new one, hang it five feet from the floor, and split the space on the rod.
You will hang a large, beautiful sheet across the closet so that, while entertaining, guests need not be exposed to your collection of unstylish garb. You will somehow cram a couch and entertainment center into the space.
The bathroom can scarcely hold the undersized tub, ancient sink and rickety toilet. The only storage space here is a medicine cabinet on the wall opposite the sink. You will hang up a shower curtain decorated with brightly colored dolphins splashing in a brilliant blue ocean, and the sticky vinyl curtain will encroach on the sink's personal space.
Nobody will ever take a bath in this tub. No adult could fit. You make a mental note to steal a brick from a construction site. The bathroom window does not stay open on its own, and in such a constricted space, it's possible that you may want to air out the bathroom, and you may want that air outside, rather than waft through your excuse for a hall and into the counter space-free "eat-in" kitchen. When you have fully furnished your kitchen, you will have to squeeze between the bistro and the sink to reach the fridge and stove, and when you do dishes, you will have to put the bistro chairs into the narrow hallway.
The heat index approaches 105 and you sit on the floor, because you still have no chairs, and wait for Con Edison to come and wait for your new, B-quality bookshelf to arrive. You bought it because it just might fit most of your books. You bought it because your book collection has outgrown your old bookshelf, even though a year ago when you moved to this city, you brought few books, on purpose, to save room.
You have frequented used bookstores and teacher supply stores; most of your "new" books are contemporary classics and texts on the benefits of whole language. You have a shelf of literature you've carried with you since college, a binder full of LGBT articles, another filled with pieces on race and racism, an overstuffed folder with articles titled things like Advocating for Israel.
You still need to move the vast majority of your rather large quantity of books to your new place, but you've already placed your mezuzah on your bedroom door.
You envision Shabbat at this, your very own apartment. No more group living for you! No more roommates who curiously eye your menorah, complain of the heat when you bake challah, ask questions about the box of matzo you bring back to the city on Pesach.
You will have your own space here, however pequena, in your building sandwiched between a laundry and a Dominican take-out place. You will learn to ignore the loiterers who populate your front stoop. Then you will climb the windy, treacherous, dust-ridden stairways, three of them, to 4R, your brand-new tenement walk-up, which is yours, and yours, and yours.
Bio: Rebecca Davidson graduated college in May '02 and has been teaching in the Bronx ever since. Originally from New Jersey, she has spent time hiking and backpacking in Virginia and New Hampshire. She recently signed her first lease.
Becky can be reached at Rebeccafdavidson@aol.com. |
