Mr. Jefferson's Piano & Other Central Harlem Stories

By B.L Wilson

Mr. Jefferson’s Piano & Other Central Harlem Stories is the second edition of an anthology that weaves together a rich tapestry of 68 short stories, agency memos, and letters of events that take place during the late seventies, eighties, and nineties as seen through Melba Farris’ eyes. Melba writes notes about everything work-related, chronicling her journey into the field of property management as she tries to help her less fortunate brothers and sisters with their housing woes.
She meets the oldest woman in Harlem in the title story Mr. Jefferson’s Piano. 101-year-old Nora Jefferson and her kid sister, 96-year old Minnie, enchant her with the story of how their father acquired the baby grand that sits in the middle of their living room.
Melba becomes an exorcist when a routine call about a broken stove turns into removing an invisible devil from Ms. Johns’ oven in The Devil Made Me Do It.
In Neisha, Melba writes a series of memos to her boss asking for help to improve the hazardous living conditions of seventeen-year-old Neisha, an independent minor, her two young children and a teenage brother—all of whom Neisha is responsible for since her mother died of AIDS.
These three tales represent some of the delightfully funny, sometimes perplexing, but intriguing personalities the author encountered during twenty-five years as a property manager performing her job duties in city-owned buildings.

• Language: English
• Publisher: B.L Wilson
• Release date: Sep 30, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370426287

B.L Wilson

B.L. has always been in love with books and the words in them. She never thought she could create something with the words she knew. When she read ‘To Kill A Mocking Bird,’ she realized everyday experiences could be written about in a powerful, memorable way. She wasn’t quite sure what to do with that knowledge so she kept on reading.Walter Mosley’s short stories about Easy Rawlins and his friends encouraged BL to start writing in earnest. She felt she had a story to tell...maybe several of them. She’d always kept a diary of some sort, scraps of paper, pocketsize, notepads, blank backs of agency forms, or in the margins of books. It was her habit to make these little notes to herself. She thought someday she’d make them into a book.She wrote a workplace memoir based on the people she met during her 20 years as a property manager of city-owned buildings. Writing the memoir, led her to consider writing books that were not job-related. Once again, she did...producing romance novels with African American lesbians as main characters. She wrote the novels because she couldn’t find stories that matched who she wanted to read about ...over forty, African American and female.

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Mr. Jefferson’s Piano

& Other Central Harlem Stories

by

BL. Wilson

Mr. Jefferson’s Piano

Brought to you by

Patchwork Bluez Press

Mr. Jefferson’s Piano copyright 2016 by B. L. Wilson. All rights reserved. No part of this e-book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without permission in writing from the author.

Smashwords Edition

This book is a work of fiction. Any similarity in name, description, or history of characters in this book to actual individuals either living or dead is purely coincidental.

Please respect the rights of the author and do not file share

Second Edition

Edited by BZ Hercules

www.bzhercules.com

Acknowledgements

Completing and publishing a workplace memoir of this magnitude is not an easy task, and there are many people to thank. Without the following, this book would not be in your hands today.

I’d like to thank my dear friend Jannett, who always thought I could write this book when I didn’t think I could. I’d also like to thank my editor, Beth, whose perceptive comments and criticisms vastly improved this book. Although we agonized over what to keep and what to do away with, she helped me create a better book as a result.

Finally, and above all, I am indebted to my current and former coworkers, supers, and the tenants of Central Harlem for supporting me throughout the writing of this book. Their enduring kindness and patience did as much—if not more—to make this book complete than did the sweat of my own brow.

A hard worker has plenty of food,

but a person who chases fantasies ends up in poverty.

The trustworthy person will get a rich reward,

But a person who wants quick riches will get into trouble.

~Proverbs 28:19, 20 NLT~

In everything I did,

I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must

Help the weak,

Remembering the words, the Lord Jesus himself said:

It is more blessed

To give than to receive.

~ACTS 20:35~

The one who plants

And the one who waters

Work as a team with the same purpose.

Yet they will be rewarded individually,

According to their own hard work.

~1 Corinthians 3:8 NLT~

INTRODUCTION

A few weeks after one of my first role models, Mavis Washington, died, my friends and I reminisced about our HPD babies and the jobs we held back in the day. We were referring to children born during the seventies and eighties to Central Harlem staff. As we talked, I realized that our collection of memories of the agency were so different. How could that be? Didn’t we all join the agency around the same time and work at the same place for a good number of years? Listening to my friends tell stories associated with their memories of the housing agency we worked for, I realized someone should explore them on paper and describe what it meant to be a virgin real estate manager working for the City of New York in 1978.

I decided to write this book about my work in city-owned buildings since it’s where I spent most of my working life. I loved what I was doing. I felt a deep sense of satisfaction giving tenants options for living better. I also met so many intriguing characters in my job as a property manager that I felt if I didn’t put pen to paper, I thought they’d be lost in some forgotten memory.

CITY VIRGIN

May 1978

Warning bells go off in my head as I push my way through the crowd and try to enter the conference room. It’s hot. I’m thinking, What are all these people doing here? I peek through the open space that several bent elbows belonging to women taller than me provide. I get a slice of the conference room. Not enough to tell what is really going on.

A woman moves and I slip through, almost making it inside. With my body still partially in the hallway, I look around. Chairs, arranged in no particular order, are filled and, on the outskirts of the room, people lean up against any available wall space. Others stand in front of those, looking uncomfortable. Why am I always trying to look cute? I can feel my feet throbbing. These shoes hurt like hell. I need to sit. I shoulda worn sneakers.

The overflow from the conference room stretches all the way down the long corridor of the Municipal Building. Entering the room is out of the question, so I join the crowd of applicants and become part of the group just outside the door.

It rained several hours ago and the humidity makes breathing difficult. Sweat trickles down my back like raindrops. Either the air conditioner is broken or the old building never had one. Some nut closed all the old wooden windows. Several men tried to open them, but nobody could force the rusty window locks out of the way. People mill about. They make small talk with their neighbors in line. They sip on canned no-name sodas from street vendors or iced-coffee bought at the concession stand on the first floor. They fan themselves and try cool off with the newspapers intended for reading and wait, then wait some more.

I can hear unanswered questions swirling about the corridor like untended paper cups and plates at a picnic that get caught up in a windstorm just before it starts to rain.

What are we waiting for?

Why isn’t somebody telling us something?

Who’s in charge of this crap?

Don’t these people have any concept of time?

Is this job really worth the wait?

How much longer is this gonna take?

What time is it?

I see a guy glancing at his watch. It makes me look down. I notice my naked wrist and I frown. I forgot my watch. I should have got here earlier. Damn Gil! Why did he have to come home so late last night and then try to—oh, never mind! I don’t even want to think about what he tried. My feet hurt. I wish I could take my shoes off and wait in my bare feet.

Okay, so where’s the panel of interviewers?

Two hours into my morning’s sauna, a group of five agency people announce how we should all move into the conference room. We try, but we won’t all fit in the room. Someone decides to count heads. When enough people fill the room, one of the representatives sends the overflow back into the long hallway. We wait outside, wondering what’s going on inside the main room. Nobody tells us anything.

This is my first introduction to a job with the City of New York. My former job wasn’t like this. Things were more organized. If I’d had any sense, I would have stayed at my old Housing Authority job after listening to the unsolicited counsel of the older female workers.

I was never one to listen to advice that didn’t suit my purpose, but after two hours in a crowded hallway hot enough to make my new outfit stick to parts of my body that only my washcloth sees, I am starting to doubt what makes sense. Somewhere in the decision-making process, my stubborn side takes over when I don’t want to admit I’m wrong. I look around the corridor packed with applicants wanting the job just like I do and think how I should have left two hours ago. Then I think, But I want this job.

I’m wrestling with my inner mule when the five people from the agency call my group into the main room. There still aren’t enough seats, so I stand on seriously ballooning feet. It’s hard for me to concentrate on the agency’s speakers with my body at war with itself. Between my saturated clothes and my swollen feet, I’m a mess, so I only hear pieces of the job description. What I hear makes me think what a negative picture of the new jobs they’re offering. This doesn’t sound like the same job. My inner mule counters, Oh stop looking at the negative! It’s still a city job with good benefits, so would you just shut up and listen.

The agency’s representatives make the working conditions sound so dismal, I think they want us to quit before we even start. I watch as several bearded Orthodox Jews in long black coats and wide-brimmed hats leave the room. More people file out. White women and men wearing business suits and carrying briefcases and a few casually dressed but neat Blacks leave the room within the first fifteen minutes of the question and answer session. The representatives talk longer and more people leave. By the time the agency people finish their presentation, over half the people that filled the room are gone. I decide to stay and fill out the forms to take the job as a real estate manager for the Department of Real Estate.

MAVIS & CHARLIE

In 1999, when Mavis Washington died, I couldn’t face the fact that one of my icons was gone. I didn’t go to her funeral. My friends told me everyone who knew Mavis through her job with the city was there but me. I think they were trying to make me feel guilty. Hell, I couldn't help it if Mavis represented the end of what was a good time in my life. At first, I didn’t know what to do about Mavis' death, then I thought somebody ought to write about her and so I did.

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.

OFFICE SPACES

Our agency hadn’t opened a site office in Harlem yet, but they were working on it. The suits grew tired of Central and East Harlem tenants complaining about the long trip downtown to 2 Lafayette to report apartment repairs or to pay their rent. They fussed that somebody should open a field office in their area. The suits decided city tenants need some place closer—a field office where a tenant could pay rent and arrange for a real estate manager to make weekly inspections rather than the current quarterly inspection schedule, or maybe somebody downtown just got tired of hearing all the complaints.

Four months go by before the suits ask my coworkers and me if we want to work at a site office. I’m bored with the office routine of running errands and doing other people’s paperwork, so I leap at the chance to work at a site office and so does my friend Robbie. That’s right; we’re still doing busy work. After other senior managers heard about our field adventures with Charlie, they decided no more field for the new people. Interestingly, most of the senior managers like Charlie Hunter elect to stay downtown to work in commercial leasing rather than take field assignments in the new site office.

Toward the end of 1978, DRE relinquished its residential properties to a new agency creation: Housing Preservation and Development (HPD). It happened around the same time my field office opened. I found out later that not only did City Council help create new jobs for new managers like me with its local law that allowed the city to foreclose buildings that owe four or more quarters in taxes arrears, but the law also mentioned creating site offices in each borough to handle housing issues in city-owned buildings.

Senior managers Mavis Washington, Eduardo Diaz, and Reuben Markowitz come to the site office, lured by the promise of promotions and higher salaries. Ellen Lake, Mahalia Russell, Norman Shaw, Berlyn Watkins, and Miss Etta are experienced managers that were laid off during the budget crisis of 1975. Nobody promises them promotions or more money. They come to the site office because they need a job. The suits whisper if layoffs happen again, it’d be new managers like me who take the weight this time around.

Fifteen new managers, including Horace Reed, Lewis Pointer, Ellen Johnson, just to name a few besides me, say yes to the site office too. I wonder if they feel like me. After working three months at headquarters elbow-to-elbow with the suits and running errands for senior managers who think training us is a joke, I want a change. I think the field office is the perfect place for me because it won’t be a miniature version of headquarters.

I’m wrong once again. I discover site office hierarchy is a duplicate of headquarters. The difference is that field offices mimic the racial composition of the neighborhoods and the people they serve. In other words, field offices serve minority neighborhoods using minority staff. Each field office has an area director who runs the site. The area director has one or two deputy directors. The deputy director has five or six management units reporting to him. Each management unit consists of a supervisor, called a Senior Real Estate Manager, and four to six managers, who are responsible for managing city-owned occupied and vacant buildings and the commercial properties attached to them.

The number of maintenance men and mechanics assigned to each management unit is based on a formula I have yet to understand. The formula has to do with the units assigned to each manager. I think Maintenance pulls numbers out of a hat like a magician does his white rabbits and uses them to determine manpower for each unit. If they like the unit supervisor, the unit gets more rabbits; annoying Maintenance gets less—a lot less—rabbits. Maintenance has its own hierarchy too. There’s a director of Maintenance, a deputy director, and a cadre of maintenance men and mechanics. God only knows the difference between maintenance men and maintenance mechanics because I don’t. The important thing to remember here is everybody, including that obnoxious mutt Yardy, reports to the area director.

I used to think a field office would have all the amenities of an office, including cubicles, desks, chairs, and enough phones for everyone. At the main office, I shared a desk and phone with two other people. We played musical chairs every morning because the city, in its infinite wisdom, hadn’t anticipated the sudden influx of new workers. They didn’t have the space for us and didn’t know when they would. I thought that situation was crazy until I came to the field office. The city asked for more managers because city council passed a local foreclosure law that put four times the amount private property into city hands, so why didn’t they ask for office space and equipment for new staff? The city knew we were coming because they hired us. I guess the right hand of the city didn’t know what the left hand was doing.

When I arrive at Central Harlem’s office, the first thing I notice is the location. The office isn’t anywhere near Central Harlem. It’s in East Harlem! That should have been a tip off—a hint of problems to come—but I was too busy being excited to notice. I learn my new office territory covers tenants who live in Community Board (CB) 11 in East Harlem and parts of two other eastside CBs, but three-quarters of the tenants we service live in CB 10 in Central Harlem. I wonder which genius downtown decided to put a Central Harlem office in East Harlem. It means most managers like me need a car or public transportation to see their properties. We spend half our field visit getting to and from our properties. It also means Central Harlem tenants must pay two bus fares to see their managers because no West Side train stops at East 126th Street and Lexington.

The second thing I notice when I arrive is the lack of equipment. Working at 2 Lafayette primed me for sharing desk space and phones with two people. Nothing prepares me for sharing desk space and phones with nine other managers. We have three useable desks, ten folding chairs, and two phone lines for twenty managers. Senior managers like Mavis Washington and Eduardo Diaz get permission to bring their old desks and file cabinets with them, so that eases some of the overcrowding, but we need more office equipment. We work out signals like counting