to have a backyard. It don’t need to have no pretty floor. It don’t even need to have a porch. It could be by dumpside city and it wouldn’t bother me. I don’t pay no mind if it had rats and broken windows just so long as it had heat. Do you know—I have filled out so many applications. Section Eight. Public housing. Subsidized housing. There’s a million of these things. They have us filling out these applications all our lives. Why don’t they fix those buildings?
“A home to me would be like this: You have your dinner at the same time all together. You go out together—yeah, you go out to play bingo. Go to the ice cream, to the movies. Then you all go home together. You sit down in peace together. You read together. You say your prayers together. You go to sleep together and you don’t have to be scared there’ll be a fire. Here in this building, I don’t sleep. What’s on my mind? I’m thinking: There’s so many people, trash piled around. What if there’s a fire on my floor? There’s no fire escape outside this window. I’m onthe fourteenth floor. To me it feels like prison. Only thing is I can walk out when I’m ready. But my children can’t. So I lie up awake at night. I read. I’ll read a book. I read my Bible mostly—start from front to back. Sometimes I read the psalms. When morning comes the radio goes off, it’s 6:00 a.m., I have to get them set for school. I get up. I get them up. I make them hot farina. A hot cup of tea. Doby puts his homework in his briefcase and I wrap his scarf around him, button up his coat. Once there’s something hot inside of him I know he’ll be okay until he gets to school.”
I ask about her asthma.
“What I got right now is not so bad. It’s just a little tightness in my chest. It weakens me but it’s not something that I fear. What I fear is when I cannot breathe at all.
“A month ago I had it bad. Started with me walking up the stairs. I got in my room and there was something smelling strong. It’s ammonia, I think, but very, very strong. They use it in the stairs. I’m lying here. That stuff is in the air. I use my pump”—she takes it out and shows me; it’s an inhalator—“but it doesn’t work. I use it three times and it makes me shaky, but it doesn’t always work. My husband’s here. He runs downstairs. The ambulance comes. They take my pulse. They go down to use the phone and call the doctor and he says to give me something—‘three cc.’s’—they give me an injection and they strap me in the chair. Then they have to wait to get an elevator. One of them is working. When it comes they wheel me in and put me in the ambulance downstairs. Soon as we get there, to the hospital, they put me in Emergency. The doctor came in. He gives me two injections. First he put a shot up in my back, then in my arm. He told me to sit up and gave me oxygen. He told me to inhale it. I inhaled it—from a mask he held. I’ve been through it before …
“When I left he gave me a prescription. My husband was back here with the children and I couldn’t get a cab. No cab would stop. The doctor said I wasn’t s’posed to walk. I had no choice. The walking starts me feeling tightened up and scared. When I get back, the same thing: There’s no elevator working. So I take it slow. I stop at every floor. By the time I’m in the room I feel almost the way I was before. I just made some hot tea and put on a heavy sweater and I took the medicine they gave me. And the next day I was feeling kind of weak when I got up. I rested and I used my pump. I took my medicine. That’s happened three times since I’m here. I ask them will they move me some day to a lower floor. I have the doctor’s letter. I’m still here.”
She said the asthma makes her scared. I ask her what she fears.
“I fear death. I feel like I’m falling in a wishing well, like falling in a deep dark place. All I see is darkness.”
Her daughter, she tells me, had a bad attack of
“A home to me would be like this: You have your dinner at the same time all together. You go out together—yeah, you go out to play bingo. Go to the ice cream, to the movies. Then you all go home together. You sit down in peace together. You read together. You say your prayers together. You go to sleep together and you don’t have to be scared there’ll be a fire. Here in this building, I don’t sleep. What’s on my mind? I’m thinking: There’s so many people, trash piled around. What if there’s a fire on my floor? There’s no fire escape outside this window. I’m onthe fourteenth floor. To me it feels like prison. Only thing is I can walk out when I’m ready. But my children can’t. So I lie up awake at night. I read. I’ll read a book. I read my Bible mostly—start from front to back. Sometimes I read the psalms. When morning comes the radio goes off, it’s 6:00 a.m., I have to get them set for school. I get up. I get them up. I make them hot farina. A hot cup of tea. Doby puts his homework in his briefcase and I wrap his scarf around him, button up his coat. Once there’s something hot inside of him I know he’ll be okay until he gets to school.”
I ask about her asthma.
“What I got right now is not so bad. It’s just a little tightness in my chest. It weakens me but it’s not something that I fear. What I fear is when I cannot breathe at all.
“A month ago I had it bad. Started with me walking up the stairs. I got in my room and there was something smelling strong. It’s ammonia, I think, but very, very strong. They use it in the stairs. I’m lying here. That stuff is in the air. I use my pump”—she takes it out and shows me; it’s an inhalator—“but it doesn’t work. I use it three times and it makes me shaky, but it doesn’t always work. My husband’s here. He runs downstairs. The ambulance comes. They take my pulse. They go down to use the phone and call the doctor and he says to give me something—‘three cc.’s’—they give me an injection and they strap me in the chair. Then they have to wait to get an elevator. One of them is working. When it comes they wheel me in and put me in the ambulance downstairs. Soon as we get there, to the hospital, they put me in Emergency. The doctor came in. He gives me two injections. First he put a shot up in my back, then in my arm. He told me to sit up and gave me oxygen. He told me to inhale it. I inhaled it—from a mask he held. I’ve been through it before …
“When I left he gave me a prescription. My husband was back here with the children and I couldn’t get a cab. No cab would stop. The doctor said I wasn’t s’posed to walk. I had no choice. The walking starts me feeling tightened up and scared. When I get back, the same thing: There’s no elevator working. So I take it slow. I stop at every floor. By the time I’m in the room I feel almost the way I was before. I just made some hot tea and put on a heavy sweater and I took the medicine they gave me. And the next day I was feeling kind of weak when I got up. I rested and I used my pump. I took my medicine. That’s happened three times since I’m here. I ask them will they move me some day to a lower floor. I have the doctor’s letter. I’m still here.”
She said the asthma makes her scared. I ask her what she fears.
“I fear death. I feel like I’m falling in a wishing well, like falling in a deep dark place. All I see is darkness.”
Her daughter, she tells me, had a bad attack of
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