A missed call from a child left home alone was disturbing. Five was downright terrifying. Tonya froze atop the subway stairs as her cell flooded with notifications bearing Layla’s name. She clicked on the first voice mail, her heart beating in her throat.
“Mom. You have to come home!”
The panic in her daughter’s voice shook Tonya from her paralyzed position. She jogged up the remaining stairs, clearing two at a time until she could take off into a run.
“They’re moving everything to the street!”
Tonya whizzed past an older woman and then wove around another with a stroller, eliciting a sharp “watch it” as she brushed the bassinet. She was too focused to apologize. All she could hear was Layla’s frantic explanation. “Ms. Bosco says they’re allowed to be here. Where are you? Mom! Pick up your phone! Please!”
Tonya picked up speed, drawing upon some adrenaline source reserved for evading predators. She clicked on the subsequent message, holding the phone to her ear as she ran. “Mom.” Layla’s voice was suddenly, unnaturally flat. “Ms. Bosco says to tell you that I’m in her apartment and am welcome to stay here until you get back.”
In the background, Tonya could hear the landlady dictating her daughter’s speech. “Tell her you’re safe. Tell her to hire a moving truck.”
By the time Tonya rounded the corner of her street, she was panting hard, sucking her cloth mask into her mouth with every breath. She didn’t see the sidewalk crack. It snagged the toe of her right work loafer, stopping the nonslip shoe like a brick wall. Her body pitched forward. Though she wrenched her back to compensate, the effort only changed her fall’s direction. She hit the ground like a fouled basketball player, dramatically sliding back and skinning her thigh through her work pants.
Grit dug into her exposed palms. Tonya pressed them to the pavement regardless, forcing herself into a standing position. She could not confront the men before her while weeping on the ground.
“Hey!” Tonya limped toward the moving guys. “What are you doing?”
The question was solely to get their attention since its answer was pretty obvious. Two men dragged her queen mattress down the building’s front steps. They hadn’t bothered to remove the linens, which seemed to be complicating the job. Her fitted sheet caught on a cement stair, pulling the duvet into a heap in front of them.
A wall of a white guy grunted. He made brief eye contact with her as he kicked the comforter out of the way. “Should have paid your rent,” he grumbled through a neck gaiter.
“There was a mistake at the bank,” Tonya shouted, drawing closer. “I told Ms. Bosco.”
“And she told us to take your shit to the street.” The guy descended onto the sidewalk and then gestured with his chin to the curb, a signal for his moving partner to dump her bed on the side of the road beside the pile of wooden boards that Tonya recognized as her bed frame supports.
She tried stepping in front of the other guy. He was younger and thinner than the one who’d spoken, and he was avoiding looking at her, indicating he felt some remorse for helping remove her from her home in the middle of winter during a pandemic.
“Please, you can’t do this.”
The younger guy sidestepped her without lifting his gaze. Her mattress hit the pavement with a dull thud. A flop followed as the bed flipped onto the angled side of the street where the gray snowmelt ran into the gutter.
Tonya couldn’t let her blanket end up in the same position. She hurried to the stairs, scooped up the comforter, and headed to the entrance.
“Uh-uh,” the larger man shouted. “You’re not putting anything back.”
Tonya turned around, the duvet spilling from her arms. “This isn’t even legal. There’s a moratorium on evictions.”
The man’s gloved hand grabbed a dangling end of the comforter and yanked it forward, threatening to take Tonya down the stairs with it. She released the blanket and grasped the banister, saving herself from another fall.
“There’s a moratorium on taking advantage of old ladies too,” the guy quipped.
“Please. This is a misunderstanding, really.”
The guy dumped the blanket atop her mattress. Tonya noticed that her coffee table had also been brought outside. It teetered on the curb’s edge, piled high with the framed artwork apparently removed from her walls.
Tonya pulled out her phone and stared at the screen, too overwhelmed to make a call. The pieces of her life were simultaneously falling around her, and she didn’t know which ones to try and save. Should she grab the picture frames on the precariously balanced table, run in and calm her daughter, beg Ms. Bosco to give her more time to resolve the rent issue, or hire a moving truck with the little money left in her checking account?
“You can’t do this,” she shouted. “It’s not right.”
“Get a lawyer,” the man yelled back.
She had a lawyer! Tonya scrolled through her recent calls and dialed Glen Kelner’s office. The secretary put her through as soon as she uttered the word eviction.
“They can’t do this, right?” The desperation in her voice made her sound like Layla, Tonya realized. Kelner’s mistake wasn’t so outlandish after all.
“What are you talking about, Ms. Sayre?” Kelner said, evidently annoyed that she’d taken him up on the offer of representation so soon.
“You said New York City isn’t allowing landlords to throw out renters.”
Kelner grunted. “Well, the problem is that you have to file paperwork showing financial hardship, and I only started it for you yesterday. Sounds like your landlady is throwing you out at the moment.”
“Isn’t there a rule about eviction proceedings? Don’t I get time?”
“You do.” His voice had become soft and calm, which Tonya found infuriating. She wanted the guy to care about saving her apartment. She wanted him yelling. Fighting. “The landlord is supposed to provide a written fourteen-day notice and then file an eviction lawsuit,” Kelner continued. “And, even then, technically, only the county sheriff can actually evict a tenant.”
“She hasn’t done any of that!” Tonya shouted. “There’s no sheriff here.”
“Calm down, Ms. Sayre.”
Recalling how Kelner had hung up on her the prior day, Tonya held the phone to her chest and forced out a long exhale.
“You can call the police,” Kelner continued, his voice emanating from the cell’s speaker. “They can stop them and give me time to file the paperwork.”
“I’ll do that.” Tonya panted. The effort of keeping her emotions in check was greater than the exertion of her earlier sprint.
She hung up and started dialing 911, mentally rehearsing what she would say to the operator. She was being illegally evicted from her apartment. She needed the police to force the movers to cease and desist. They should slap Ms. Bosco with a summons.
The sight of Layla stopped her from completing the three-digit call. Her kid stood on the landing several steps above, her masked face red from crying. Tonya leaped up the two steps and pulled her daughter into a hug. “It’s okay.” She petted Layla’s reddish blond hair as she reassured them both. “I’m going to fix everything. They’re not allowed to throw us out.”
Ms. Bosco emerged from the building, boldly barefaced as usual. She shook her head at Tonya, a principal scolding a student. “I didn’t want to do this.”
“You’re not allowed to do this,” Tonya shot back. “I’m calling the cops. You can’t evict me. You have to give notice and file a grievance with the courts. There are rules.”
“Rules.” Ms. Bosco spat on her own stoop. “I know all about Cuomo’s unfunded mandates. Telling people like me and my husband who worked our way up to buy a building decades ago when this area was filled with crime and drugs, when it wasn’t safe to raise a family here, that we have to starve on our social security while supporting other people who get their real money from God-knows-where doing God-only-knows-what. You don’t want to call the police. I’ll tell them about you and your kid’s private school and paying for this apartment all on a waitress’s salary.”
The threat stifled the arguments on the tip of Tonya’s tongue, forcing them back into her throat where she could choke on them. The police would want names of the men responsible for each of those checks—names that she couldn’t provide lest she risk losing both sources of income.
“You can’t do this,” Tonya said for the umpteenth time, knowing that her tone no longer sounded convinced. “It’s against the—”
The sound of glass shattering overpowered her last word. Layla’s head turned toward the source of the sound, giving Tonya a preview of what was happening from her expression. The wall of a man had picked up one of the framed art pieces and smashed it on the pavement. He held another in his hand.
“Stop!” Layla shouted.
“You gonna leave my ma alone,” the man roared, “or do I have to make sure there’s nothing to move back in?”
“You can’t—”
Before Tonya could finish, another picture hit the pavement.
“Stop!” Layla screamed. “Stop it!”
Another crash.
“Stop!”
The man picked up the broken frame with his glove-protected hands and pulled out the art inside. It was Layla’s watercolor. “You gonna go?” He started to tear the paper.
“Why are you doing this?” Layla screamed.
The man ripped the painting in two and grabbed for another of the artworks. Layla turned into Tonya’s chest, her tears adding a slick to the waterproof coating of Tonya’s coat. The phone was in her hand, Tonya thought—91 was on the screen. One more digit and she’d be on with the police. The cops would arrive within five minutes, maybe less. Maybe she could give them a fake name to explain the child support payments?
The younger man appeared. He stood by the coffee table, his foot near one of the four legs. He wore workman’s boots, Tonya noticed, the industrial kind with reinforced heels and toes.
The police would stop them, she assured herself. But by the time they did, what would she and Layla have left to save?
Glass shattered. The young man’s foot recoiled.
“Okay,” Tonya shouted, directing every ounce of energy into her voice. “Okay. We’ll go.”
She raised her phone like a weapon. “I’ll call a moving truck.”
Behind her, Ms. Bosco cleared her throat. “Call one with a storage company. It’s cheaper.”