‘That’s our family. Always a proportionate response.’
Saturday served itself up cold, with a side order of gales. I hadn’t known quite how brutal the winds could be in New York. It was as if the tall buildings funnelled any breeze, polishing it hard and fast into something icy and fierce and solid. I frequently felt as if I were walking in some kind of sadistic wind tunnel. I kept my head down, my body at an angle of forty-five degrees and, occasionally reaching out to clutch at fire hydrants or lamp posts, I caught the subway to the Vintage Clothes Emporium, stayed for a coffee to thaw out and bought a zebra-print coat at the marked-down bargain price of twelve dollars. In truth, I lingered. I didn’t want to go back to my silent little room, with Ilaria’s news programme burbling down the corridor, its ghostly echoes of Sam and the temptation to check my email every fifteen minutes. I got home when it was already dark and I was cold and weary enough not to be restless or submerged in that persistent New York feeling – that staying in meant I was missing out on something.
I sat and watched TV in my room and thought about writing Sam an email but I was still angry enough not to feel conciliatory and wasn’t sure what I had to say was about to make anything better. I’d borrowed a novel by John Updike from Mr Gopnik’s shelves but it was all about the complexities of modern relationships, and everyone in it seemed unhappy or was lusting madly after someone else, so in the end I turned off the light and slept.
The next morning when I came down Meena was in the lobby. She was minus children this time, but accompanied by Ashok, who was not in his uniform. I startled a little at the sight of him in civvies, rootling under his desk. It occurred to me suddenly how much easier it was for the rich to refuse to know anything about us when we weren’t dressed as individuals.
‘Hey, Miss Louisa,’ he said. ‘Forgot my hat. Had to pop in before we head to the library.’
‘The one they want to close?’
‘Yup,’ Ashok said. ‘You want to come with us?’
‘Come help us save our library, Louisa!’ Meena clapped me on the back with a mitten-clad hand. ‘We need all the help we can get!’
I had been planning to go to the coffee shop, but I had nothing else to do and Sunday stretched ahead of me like a wasteland, so I agreed. They handed me a placard, saying ‘A LIBRARY IS MORE THAN BOOKS’, and checked that I had a hat and gloves. ‘You’re good for an hour or two, but you get really chilled by the third,’ Meena said, as we walked out. She was what my father would have called ballsy – a voluptuous, big-haired sexy New Yorker, who had a smart retort for everything her husband said, and loved to rib him about his hair, his handling of their children, his sexual prowess. She had a huge, throaty laugh and took no crap from anyone. He plainly adored her. They called each other ‘baby’ so often that I occasionally wondered if they had forgotten each other’s names.
We caught the subway north to Washington Heights and talked about how he had taken the job as a temporary measure when Meena first got pregnant, and how when the children were school age he was going to start looking around for something else, something with office hours, so that he could help out more. (‘But the health benefits are good. Makes it hard to leave.’) They had met at college – I was ashamed to admit I had assumed they were an arranged marriage.
When I’d told her, Meena had exploded into laughter. Girl? You think I wouldn’t have made my parents pick me better than him?
Ashok: You didn’t say that last night, baby.
Meena: That’s because I was focused on the TV.
When we finally laughed our way up the subway steps at 163rd Street I was suddenly in a very different New York.
The buildings in this part of Washington Heights looked exhausted: boarded-up shop fronts with sagging fire escapes, liquor shops, fried-chicken shops, and beauty salons with curled and faded pictures of outdated hairstyles in the windows. A softly cursing man walked past us, pushing a shopping trolley full of plastic bags. Groups of kids slouched on corners, catcalling to each other, and the kerb was punctuated by refuse bags that lay stacked in unruly heaps, or vomited their contents onto the road. There was none of the gloss of Lower Manhattan, none of the purposeful aspiration that was shot through the very air of Midtown. The atmosphere here was scented with fried food and disillusionment.
Meena and Ashok appeared not to notice. They strode along, their heads bent together, checking phones to make sure Meena’s mother wasn’t having problems with the kids. Meena turned to see if I was with them and smiled. I glanced behind me, tucked my wallet deeper inside my jacket, and hurried after them.
We heard the protest before we saw it, a vibration in the air that gradually became distinct, a distant chant. We rounded a corner and there, in front of a sooty red-brick building, stood around a hundred and fifty people, waving placards and chanting, their voices mostly aimed towards a small camera crew. As we approached, Meena thrust her sign into the air. ‘Education for all!’ she yelled. ‘Don’t take away our kids’ safe spaces!’ We pierced the crowd and were swiftly swallowed by it. I had thought New York was diverse, but now I realized all I had seen was the colour of people’s skin, the styles of their clothes. Here was a very different range of people. There were old women in knitted caps, hipsters with babies strapped to their backs, young black men with their hair neatly braided, and elderly Indian women in saris. People were animated, joined in a common purpose, and utterly, communally intent on getting their point across. I joined in with the chanting, seeing Meena’s beaming smile, the way she hugged fellow protesters as she moved through the crowd.
‘They said it’ll be on the evening news.’ An elderly woman turned to me, nodding with satisfaction. ‘That’s the only thing the city council takes any notice of. They all wanna be on the news.’
I smiled.
‘Every year it’s the same, right? Every year we have to fight a little harder to keep the community together. Every year we have to hold tighter to what’s ours.’
‘I – I’m sorry. I don’t really know. I’m just here with friends.’
‘But you came to help us. That’s what matters.’ She placed a hand on my arm. ‘You know my grandson does a mentoring programme here? They pay him to teach other young folk the computers. They actually pay him. He teaches adults too. He helps them apply for jobs.’ She clapped her gloved hands together, trying to keep warm. ‘If the council close it, all those people will have nowhere to go. And you can bet the city councillors will be the first people complaining about the young folk hanging around on street corners. You know it.’ She smiled at me as if I did.