Chapter 69
As if Emma and Sam weren’t going through enough, the New York City Department of Buildings came along and made things worse.
The letter was hand-delivered by a young, terrified-looking, pimply faced white man. After Sam signed for it, he carried it into the house and handed it to Emma.
“What’s this?”
“I dunno.”
Emma tore open the envelope and read the letter. Her lips moved silently with the words. When she was done, she crushed it into a ball and threw it angrily across the room. Sam followed the flight of the paper ball.
“What’s it say?”
Emma fell back into the sofa. “These motherfuckers wanna take our house for $13,000!”
Sam wasn’t a scholar, but he knew there was a difference between take and buy.
“What, why?”
“It don’t say why, all it say is that they have a legal right to do so.”
“Force us to sell? I don’t understand.”
Emma sighed. “Gimme the damn paper.”
Sam got up and retrieved the crumpled notice. He smoothed the paper as best he could and handed it to Emma.
After looking it over she said, “They call it eminent domain.”
“What’s that?”
“It means that white folk can do whatever they want, whenever they want, to colored folk!”
* * *
The next day, letter in hand, Emma went to the Department of Buildings and sat for three hours in a room crammed with angry Harlemites who had also received notices.
This is some bullshit!
Fair market value my ass! My house is worth more than what they’re offering.
Where are we supposed to go?
Emma was shown to a small office that stank of cigarettes and aftershave. The walls were lined with metal file cabinets. On the windowsill, next to a mountain of manila folders, was a ficus, dying a slow death.
Emma sat across the desk from an old, balding man with soupy green eyes and teeth so crooked and brown, she could barely stand to look him in the face.
“As the homeowner,” he said in his raspy voice, “you have the right to refuse the offer. But lemme tell you, the city wants what the city wants, and they will get it.” He fell into a coughing fit, opened his desk drawer, and removed a wilted pack of cigarettes. “If I were you,” he continued, lighting a smoke and inhaling deeply, “I would take the money while the offer is still on the table.”
“Still on the table?”
He nodded, “Yeah, the city can take your house without giving you one single dime.”
Emma stiffened. “How is that possible?”
“Not only is it possible, it’s also legal,” he coughed.
Emma glanced anxiously around the room. “You say the city’s going to build tenement housing, right? Well, why can’t they just build someplace else?”
“I can’t answer that, ma’am,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders. “That’s a question for someone above my pay grade.”
Emma perked up. “Well, I’d like to speak to him, then.”
The man released a long, weary sigh. “You and the hundreds of other people who’ve received this letter. But I’ll tell you right now, it’s never gonna happen.”
Emma chewed thoughtfully on her bottom lip. “Then I’ll get a lawyer,” she announced triumphantly.
“Again, Mrs. Elliott, that is your prerogative, but keep in mind that the city has a team of lawyers that are hell-bent on making sure you don’t win. And believe me, you won’t.”
* * *
On the train ride home, Emma was despondent and grim-faced. Her world was falling apart, piece by jagged, painful piece.
Emma sat lost in her misery for most of the journey, only vaguely aware of the other commuters around her. That is, until the train pulled out of the 23rd Street station when she suddenly realized that she was being watched. She turned her head toward the offending eyes of the white man seated next her.
“What? What is it?” she snapped.
The man’s face burned red. He aimed his rolled newspaper at her lap.
Emma looked down to see a roach scuttling across the green fabric of her dress.
He raised the newspaper to swat it, but Emma snagged it with her hand.
“Leave it be,” she snarled. “It’s my roach! You white people always tryin’ to take everything from colored folk!”