by Meg Medina
I shake my head. “No, thanks. It’s not that much. Come tomorrow, the way we planned.”
He pulls me close and gives me a kiss. “I’ll be there.”
Our drive out to Breezy Point is gorgeous. We have the top down, and Orleans is blaring on the radio. Kathleen sings at the top of her voice as we cross the Marine Parkway Bridge.
All around, the blue water sparkles as if diamonds are just under the surface, waiting for us to grab them. Over the years, we’ve come to the beach hundreds of times, but not like today. I look over at her, missing her already, but feeling hopeful for the first time in a long while.
Finally she pulls us into the parking area near the bungalow and cuts off the engine. Then she hands me the house keys.
“Hey, put the lock on your repair list. The top lock is always a bitch,” she says.
“There’s a list?”
“Dad left it on the refrigerator. It’ll take you a million years. Welcome to your life project.”
I take the keys from her and smile.
It will be strange to live here. The beach is totally different in the winter after all the houses close and the families go home. But Mr. Mac has friends at the volunteer fire department who’ll check on me, and then — who knows?— maybe I’ll learn to like the quiet. Anyway, the bungalow has enough dings and little repairs needed that I’ll be more than busy, just the way Kathleen says. And on cold nights when I’m lonely, Pablo promised to drive over and join me. I already made an appointment at a women’s health center that I found in the phone book.
Anyway, I’ll be busy with school. The bus runs along Flatbush Avenue and it will leave me off at the Marine Parkway Bridge, but it takes a while. And then, because I’m crazy, I agreed to the Saturday gig with Mr. Melvin and his bruisers, too. I need some extra cash. I left him a note taped to his lathe, and he called me back right away. “Nora López,” he said. “You will make an excellent second-in-command.”
I pop open the trunk, and we start to cart out my stuff. I settle Gloria on the coffee table and throw open some windows to let in the breeze.
First thing, Kathleen pins up an old Freddie Prinze poster over my bed. “To keep you company,” she says.
“Very funny. But I have Pablo now, remember?”
She closes her eyes in longing. “God, you’re so lucky.”
When we’re done, we grab our picnic bag and head to the sand. Eddie and Pablo both wanted to come today, but I’m glad they’re not here. This is our afternoon, just ours, Kathleen’s and mine.
It’s been a summer from hell, just like she said, and now it’s time to breathe easy and say our good-byes.
We walk along the ocean up to our ankles. Little kids build sand castles all around us, just the way we used to. They dodge washed-up jellyfish and broken shells as they work on moats, drawbridges, and turrets. By tomorrow, maybe all their hard work will be gone, but they don’t seem to mind. They’ll do it all again if they have to.
Kathleen gives me a smile.
“Remember how we used to do that?”
“Why just used to?”
We sit in the wet sand and start digging to make our creations. This time, they’re not turtles.
Instead, we make enormous disco-queen mermaids with shell bras and sea-grass hair. It takes us so long that our shoulders burn and our hair gets briny.
BURN BABY BURN, we finally write with an old straw when we’re through.
And then, holding hands, we go charging into the deep.
No one who lived in New York in 1977 will ever forget it. This is a work of historical fiction, but it is set against a time that is legendary as one of New York City’s most difficult periods.
I was thirteen that year, just waking up to feminism with the help of my older sister. Ms. magazine celebrated its fifth year of publication, although everyone had predicted that a magazine about hard-core women’s issues would fail. But the feminists were up for a fight, and women continued to take to the streets to march for equality. Congresswoman Bella Abzug — legendary for her hats and her caustic zingers — launched a mayoral campaign on the heels of her failed Senate bid and presided over the first National Women’s Conference, which was held later that year in Houston. The early women’s movement provided the basis for so many of the rights and opportunities that girls and women enjoy today, However, it was by no means completely cohesive in its early days. As Stiller implies in this novel, many women of color wondered if the movement truly represented them at all, or if it was mostly a movement for white women of privilege. And of course, then and now, the nuances of reproductive rights created intense debate and divisions.
As this novel suggests, New York was in an enormous downward spiral at the time. The city was on the brink of bankruptcy, race relations were tense, and crime had ballooned. There were 1,919 murders in New York that year, compared to only 684 as recently as 2012. Arson became the signature crime.
The year also included a serial killer who took the name Son of Sam and prowled the streets, shooting young women and their dates. Women all over the city panicked about being his next victim. Even as disco and punk music pumped, and TV ads implored us to love New York, there was enormous fear for personal safety.
All these things converged in July when the city experienced a total blackout. On July 13, a lightning strike plunged the city and all its boroughs into total darkness. The looting and fires that followed are legendary. In those twenty-five hours, the whole city lay in complete darkness and a stifling heat that reached to 102 degrees in the daytime. With tensions, crime, and fear already high, the darkness and heat unleashed a massive crime wave that, forty years later, we are still struggling to understand. More than 1,000 fires were reported, 1,700 false alarms pulled, and hundreds of stores looted in every borough except Staten Island. More than 3,700 people were arrested during that night, causing the city to open jails that they had formerly closed. Entire neighborhoods were devastated, especially poor ones. The authorities later estimated that the total cost of the blackout exceeded $300 million.
Although it is featured in the book, I found no historical evidence of looting on 162nd Street in Flushing, Queens. Other neighborhoods in Queens, such as Jamaica and Corona, did see considerable damage. Limited looting also occurred in downtown Flushing. Accounts of the events on Main Street were taken from the Queens Tribune, whose editorial staff was witness to the events.
I took liberties with the names of establishments all over Flushing, mixing real ones, such as Gloria Pizza and the Prospect Theatre, with fabricated ones, such as the Satin Lady and Farina’s Drugstore. I did, however, try to maintain the feeling of those streets and the sense of community that existed at the time.
The most challenging part of writing Nora’s story was the need to include the historical facts as they related to the murder or injury of so many innocent young women and men. Son of Sam murdered six young people. Many family members undoubtedly still think about and miss their loved ones today. Some of the survivors of those shootings are still alive. Their injuries, both physical and emotional, continue to make an impact. Their suffering is not entertainment. There was no way to write this book, however, without including a mention of those who lost their lives or were injured. I hope I did justice to the horror that each of those deaths and injuries represented to all of us.
All the other details of the shootings were taken from newspaper accounts of the day. In the end, we would discover that Son of Sam was David Berkowitz, a twenty-four-year-old postal worker. He did, in fact, write letters to Jimmy Breslin at the New York Daily News, and these were published as the killings continued, adding to the public’s tabloid-fueled hysteria. The search for him — dubbed Operation Omega — was based at the 109th Precinct, in Flushing, and was the largest manhunt in the city’s history. For months, police struggled to keep up with the thousands of tips and calls from frantic people who were convinced that the killer was their uncle, brother, or boyfriend. David Berkowitz was finally arrest
ed in August, traced by a simple parking ticket that an observant witness remembered seeing on his car the night that Stacy Moskowitz was murdered. He is alive today and is serving six life sentences at the Sullivan Correctional Facility in Fallsburg, New York, where he is considered a model prisoner.
In so many ways, this is a novel about people at their worst. It is a story of family pain and of juvenile domestic violence, a chronically underreported issue. It’s the story of community pain — and all the ways that people try to cope in the face of fear.
But for me, this novel is a celebration of people who find their strength even in the worst circumstances. I wrote this story because young people everywhere sometimes find that they have to fuel their hope against a bleak backdrop and outpourings of rage.
When I think of New York in 1977, I think of the city imploding. But one thing is sure. It emerged and transformed. New York City and its amazing citizens have always known extremes. But somehow, even terrible events serve to strengthen it. It stubbornly thrives.
Living through an era is never enough research to write about it. I owe huge thanks to the following people who helped me gather the facts that would allow me to re-create New York City in 1977: Chris Dowdell, former detective with the 109th Precinct Detective Squad, who was assigned to the Son of Sam Task Force; Carmen Vivian Rivera for sharing her recollections of her participation in the Women’s Day March of 1977; the National Organization for Women for access to their archives held at the Tamiment Library at New York University; and John and Alice Fitzgerald for their friendship and their honest recollections of that awful summer of 1977.
For questions about mental health, juvenile delinquency, and arson, I turned to local friends and experts. Thank you to Susan Osofsky for input on mental disorders/ attachment disorders; attorney Mary Langer for general advice on legal issues and youthful offenders; Jonathan Perry, firefighter with Henrico County Fire and Rescue, for teaching me about fire behavior; Lt. Billy Gerritt, Supervisory Assistant Fire Marshal, Henrico County, Virginia; the members of Firehouse 9 of the Henrico County Fire Department; and Sheri Blume, communications officer for Henrico County Police, for emergency dispatch information.
Any novel needs trusted readers to weigh in as the author struggles with the tale. Thank you to Sharon Flake for our discussion about Stiller and feminism for black women in the mid-1970s, and to Gigi Amateau, Laura Curzi, Kat Spears, Margaret Payne, and A. B. Westrick, dear friends and fellow writers who made room in their lives to read and offer suggestions.
A big debt to my agent, Jen Rofé; to my Candlewick family: Pamela Consolazio for the beautiful book design; Alix Redmond and Hannah Mahoney for their meticulous copyedit; Emily Crehan and Emily Quill for proofreading; Melanie Cordova for double-checking my lousy Spanish; the entire publicity team for their tireless support of all my titles; and most especially to my editor, Kate Fletcher, whose wise comments, tough questions, and faith in me are always appreciated.
And finally, to my family. Without you, nothing.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2016 by Margaret Medina
Excerpts from “Cops to .44 Killer: Sons of Sam . . .
We Wish to Help You” (04/29/77) and
“Breslin to .44 Killer: Give Up Now!” (06/20/77)
© Daily News, L.P. (New York). Used with permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.
First U.S. electronic edition 2016
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 2015954454
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