Bronx Noir

The train pulled out into the air and became an el, and the light made me feel, as always, as if I had just discovered grace. The sun blossomed over the rooftops. A few people on the car took out cell phones, and began to shout over the din, din themselves. At Fordham Road, I stepped down again onto the street. I cupped my hand over my brow and got my bearings. Not that I needed to. But I wanted to survey the shifting landscape. The stores were different, but the sidewalk held the same hubbub, now less Irish, now more other, less pink, more beige. The views I had thought vivid faded as my memories met new banks, aging bodegas. There was that White Castle, still going, still open twenty-four hours. Mike’s Papaya, too, dusty and yellow. There the 99-cent store. And there the Mega 99. There the pawnbroker, now with debt solutions in seven languages. And new nail and hair palaces. China Nail. Beauty J. Fordham Nails Ltd., tatty and limited indeed. And the restaurants: Centenario V, Comidas Latinas y Mariscos, Excellents II. English must have been new for them once, but twice? I’d taught ESL upstate, part of my good works there, my rehabilitation. If good had meant anything. It got me here, then, partly, it helped my release. But here, I still didn’t know. I gazed again. There, on the corner, the little bakery, and across from Devoe Park a white van, El Rancho, selling frituras and chimichurri. There, tucked away just off Father Zeiser Place, Patsy’s Bar, the old reliable, and, oh, up ahead, my undoing.

Across University Avenue at the Fordham Road intersection stood those stately gray twin bell towers. Positioned between them above a stained-glass window, a cross, small and unnecessary, punctuated the hot blue sky, as if anyone needed reminding that this was a church. St. Nicholas of Tolentine. Unwelcoming below were the same wooden doors still blistering paint a shade of iron-rich dried blood. My church. My parish. My grammar school. My baptism, my communion, my confirmation. My bête noir. My childhood in a granite sanctuary. Here was my soul anointed in the baptismal, my brow moistened by the holy-water font, my fingers sulfured by matches snuffed at the foot of the saint, my conscience soothed by muttered pleadings at the altar rail, cosseted by lies in the confessional. Shadowed by scuffling in the sanctuary. Haunted by the shouting. Sickened by the blood. Hounded in the darkness. I shouldn’t be here.

I noticed on the sign outside that mass was beginning in ten minutes. I looked over to my right at Devoe Park, where a listless player was shooting hoops, his ball hitting the court in lazy thuds. I ascended the seven heavy marble steps. A Latino man was more sure than I and, coming up behind me quickly, held open the creaking door. I nodded gracias and followed him in, staying a moment in the dank narthex. The stone fonts were empty. Had they been filled, would I have dipped my finger in and touched the water to my blasphemous temple? Attempted my own atavistic ritual of ungranted forgiveness? I would have. I would have relished the blessed water fizzling to steam on my iniquitous fingers as I dared dishonor God. But I was spared that visible damnation for now. I ignored the dusty fonts and went in, standing at the back under the choir loft, letting my eyes adjust.

It was sticky here in the muffled light. A fan at the back whirred, faint against the humid afternoon. Two stained-glass windows on the right side near the choir loft were cracked open at the bottom, under a scene of Jesus speaking to the elders. His early years. When he was filled with promise. Millennia until they’d discovered speed and crack and all of that delightful nastiness.