“I felt safer living near water.” jamiattenberg reflects on the old apartment building, in Brooklyn, where she had Thanksgivings, Passovers, Halloweens, love affairs, and friendships.
attracted visitors from outside the area. But mostly the neighborhood was quiet, with functional, empty streets in comparison with bustling Union Square, where I had last lived.
One winter he got into a motorcycle accident. I didn’t see him for a while, maybe a month—I supposed he was hospitalized, or bedridden. I recall a leg brace. He didn’t stop to chat anymore in the hallway, so I didn’t ask to borrow cigarettes. I thought he wanted to be left alone. I messaged him every so often, but he was brief in his response. I knew he was there. I could hear him. I could see him online.
If bad things ever happened to me in South Williamsburg, though, it wasn’t the neighborhood’s fault. I liked it there, by the river. Living by a body of water felt like a luxury. I never knew what Manhattan looked like until I moved to Brooklyn and could look back at it. I felt like I could stay for a while, in this place where no one I knew wanted to live.
It was the thing we never imagined could happen, and for a while we believed it could happen again, and then that city ate itself, and ate itself again, and new people moved in, and there were new problems and a new mayor, and they erected a building we could all visit so we would never forget, and every year there was a light show to remind us, and posters and signs that said, and I have to tell you—there are plenty of people who have forgotten.