Chapter 1
Now and Later
As two hungry, growing boys in Brooklyn with time on our hands, my brother James and I had to find our own fun. I was eight and my brother was six when my mother moved us from our aunt and uncle’s home in Bedford-Stuyvesant to our own apartment on the north edge of Bushwick. There we spent most of the 70s talking on the fire escape, located on the front of our building. We’d watch the J trains fly by at eye level and the bustle of Broadway Avenue below.
This was not the famous Broadway of Manhattan. Yet, from our metal seats on the top floor, we heard yelling, arguing, and cursing that, as kids, we found entertaining. It was amazing how sound carried from the street up four stories. People on ground level sounded as if they were in our kitchen. When drivers stopped blasting their horns—impatient drivers would honk steadily for what seemed to us like hours—we could even overhear intimate conversations that would have otherwise remained private at ground level. Then there were the trains. When the J trains roared and rattled past, our whole building would shake, and our fire escape felt like it might fall apart.
As raucous as it could get out there, it was more comfortable for me and James out on the fire escape than being cooped up inside. We’d stay outside at our private getaway, even on cold days when the radiators clanked to warm the apartment. The fire escape was our balcony.
One of those old-fashioned steam radiators stood under the window that opened to the fire escape. Whenever I see a silver cast-iron radiator like that, I think of the fire escape ritual my brother and I practiced during cold weather. All it required was our favorite flavors of Now and Later candy and a radiator.
After removing the outside wrappers, we would reach inside the window to lay the individually wrapped Now and Later squares on the hot radiator. We’d watch the bright squares closely, letting them melt just enough. Then we’d strip away every bit of the colorful paper and stretch the gooey pieces into long, fruity strands. This was our own fire escape version of the fancy saltwater taffy we couldn’t afford.
My only memory of eating the real stuff was when my Aunt Lillie came to visit us one summer after she’d been to the beach. She gave each of us two pieces, saying, “Enjoy your taffy.”
The taffy was individually wrapped like the Now and Later candies, but the pieces were round and pale. We knew saltwater taffy had to be expensive because the satiny box pictured white children playing on the beach. We bit into what we thought would be the best-tasting candy in the world. As we continued to chew, we tried not to let our aunt see the disappointment on our faces. We hugged her and said, “Thank you, Auntie,” then slunk outside to talk truth about this famous candy.
“What’s so good about taffy?” James asked.
“Nothing, it’s just chewy candy.” I replied. “Guess it’s all you can buy at the beach.”
James and I were now completely convinced that our neighborhood candies were good enough for us. Now and Later candy was Brooklyn made, which made it extra special. As long as we had enough money, any candy would put fun into our day. And we loved that corner stores had so many choices: Boston Baked Beans, Lemonhead, Charleston Chew, Chick-O-Stick, and Oh Henry! And, of course, Now and Later. At the counter, we had fun looking over the selection and figuring out what we could buy with the change our mother had given us.
I’ll never forget the last time we walked to our favorite corner store to buy candy. It was eight o’clock on a cold November night. I was thirteen and James was eleven. We’d lived on Broadway Avenue for five years, so we were allowed to go out after dark if we went together and made it quick. Our mother warned us every time that dangerous criminals walked the streets of Bushwick at night. Under our breaths we’d respond, “yeah, yeah,” but we really didn’t want to stay out too late—we knew how dangerous Bushwick was.
On that November evening, James wanted some more Now and Later to melt.
“I have to have me a Chick-O-Stick,” I insisted. The salty peanut and coconut flavors seemed more substantial.
The store was a block away, and the trip was an adventure. All day and night the block stayed alive with cars, trucks, trains, and crowds of people. Since Bushwick was paved over and packed with buildings, I would have never imagined it as the heavy woods its name means. But it was woods in 1638 when the Dutch settlers bought it, fairly or not, from the Native American Canarsie tribe. In the 19th century, Bushwick became a mecca for German and Austrian brewers. Schaefer, Piels, and Rheingold made Bushwick the Beer Capital of the Northeast. Then in the early 20th century, Italians moved in, many buying their own homes. By the time we lived in Bushwick, it was a mostly Puerto Rican neighborhood with a growing number of blacks from the South like us.
It helped that we spent so much time on the fire escape watching our neighbors come and go. When we walked down the street, we could recognize almost everyone who lived on the block. Of course, because only eight families lived in our building, we knew them all by name.
On warmer evenings, we usually had to maneuver around salsa dancers, young and old, swaying back and forth on the sidewalk. Although I couldn’t speak much Spanish, I learned enough to understand the small talk, numbers, and, of course, some of the bad words they used if we bumped into them. On this cold evening, there were no dancers, but we could hear the Latin music through windows and R&B from passing cars. Most people on the sidewalk were huddled up in coats and hurrying to get back inside. James and I didn’t have any heavy coats, so we were wearing extra sweaters and knock-off Members Only jackets to keep us warm. We saw Ms. Rodriguez briskly walking back toward our building. She lived on the second floor.
We spoke in unison, “Hello, Ms. Rodriguez.”
She responded in a heavy Hispanic accent, “Aren’t you boys cold?” as she hurried past us.
We both turned around and said, “No.” We were so used to the cold that it didn’t bother us too much.
The store, or bodega, as we usually called it, was named Ruiz Deli. Picturing its classic look, I would bet it had opened way back in the 1930s. Like other Brooklyn bodegas, it had boxes and cans of food, toiletries, beer, wine, soft drinks, sandwiches, and a variety of candy.
I enjoyed going to Ruiz’s. I loved the smell of the freshly brewed coffee that greeted you at the door. I loved the welcoming scent of Mr. Ruiz’s Old Spice cologne. As soon as he saw me, he would say, “Hey, tall guy,” in his deep accented voice. He knew my name but never used it.
Mr. Ruiz was in his late fifties. He had immigrated from Puerto Rico with his family as a young man. Standing about five five, he looked like he weighed 250 pounds. His oval bald spot shined so I could see the ceiling lights reflected on it. He had chubby cheeks and loved to smile.
When James and I walked into the store that November night, Mr. Ruiz said to Mateo, the high school kid who made hero sandwiches, “Here comes the tall guy.” Mateo was also Hispanic, and often he and Mr. Ruiz would be speaking in Spanish when we walked into the store. Mateo was friendly but not like Mr. Ruiz. Mateo was usually quiet, and I think that was because his English wasn’t as strong as Mr. Ruiz’s.
“Hello, Mr. Ruiz,” I said, trying to sound like an adult. “Can I have two Chick-O-Sticks and a pack of grape Now and Later?”
“Anything for my tall friend,” he said.
The store had customers coming and going continuously, and it seemed as if Mr. Ruiz knew everyone. He addressed each customer amiably when they came in and again when they left. I can still hear his deep voice saying, “Hola, Mary. Hola, Hector; Gracias, mi amigo; Thank you, my friend;” and “Goodbye, my tall friend. Watch out for little brother. He’s catching up to you.”
Mr. Ruiz’s upbeat attitude and friendliness made me feel at home in his store. Of all the corner stores in the neighborhood, James and I enjoyed his the most. We felt lucky it was on our block.
After our goodbyes to Mr. Ruiz, James and I paused right outside under the light of the bodega sign and tore open our candy. We were already hungry when we left home, and the cold had made us even hungrier.
“Aren’t you going to save some to melt on the radiator?” I asked James.
“Nope,” he said with a purple mouth full of sticky Now and Later.
We joked about the ridiculous Now and Later tagline: “Eat some now, save some for later.” No one could resist eating it all at once.
We were still chewing and laughing when two loud bangs from inside jolted us. Immediately, two masked men ran out of Ruiz’s, one holding a gun, the other, a paper bag. They charged straight at us, and we tumbled out of their way.
Then someone staggered from the store.
It was Mateo. Blood covered his clothes. His mouth formed a scream, but his voice came out a whisper. His eyes begged us. Mateo needed us to hear him. We made out the words, “They shot us,” before he collapsed on the sidewalk.
James burst into tears. Someone shouted, “Call the police. Call the police!”
People showed up from all directions. A woman stooped to help Mateo, and a few men ran into the store. From inside, I heard someone cry out, “Mr. Ruiz is dead. He’s dead. He’s dead!”
My eyes teared up, and my heart pounded faster and faster. Because I couldn’t believe what was going on, my physical reaction scared me. It was as if my body grasped a frightening reality my mind couldn’t accept. I wanted to stay to help Mateo, but my shaking body ran. James and I ran all the way back home, crying like little kids. As the sounds of sirens blared down the street, we bolted up our building’s stairs and locked the door behind us. We were no longer the same boys who had run out for a treat.
After we sobbed out our story to our mother, she sat silent and motionless. She, too, had been fond of Mr. Ruiz. We gathered that the news of his death stunned her.
When our mother heard our voices in the middle of the night, she found us talking about the shooting and how we were hoping that Mateo would be OK.
My mother then said prayers for Mr. Ruiz’s wife, his sons, and daughters—and Mateo.
The next day from our fire escape, we heard neighbors talking, saw them gesturing about the shooting. We soon learned that both Mr. Ruiz and Mateo had died. Mr. Ruiz never left the store alive, and Mateo had died at the hospital.
The neighborhood wasn’t the same after the shooting and the closing down of Ruiz Deli. I couldn’t process the scene that played over and over in my mind. Why would someone kill another person, especially someone who was friendly and kind to everyone? I started thinking that life was cruel. How could God let this happen?
For a long time afterward, James and I had nightmares. We took turns. One night, he would wake up screaming. The next night, I’d rage in the dark. We dreamed the masked killers were coming up the steps to get us. We were too old to run to our mother’s bed for comfort, but the first week, our mother would come in to see if we were OK. She’d say, “How y’all doing in here?” as she entered the room. Our answer was always, “Fine,” even if we weren’t.
For years she had worked an exhausting job as a home attendant and had already gotten used to sleeping through loud trains. So, after weeks of hearing cries from the next room, she stopped coming in.
Word had gotten to our church about the bodega murders, and the pastor said a few kind words about Mr. Ruiz and Mateo during the following Sunday service. He mentioned how he, too, had gone to Ruiz Deli on several occasions. I don’t recall anyone from the church offering James and me counseling or even approaching us to talk about it. But I doubt anyone at New Foundation Baptist Cathedral would have been aware we had witnessed the crime. James and I didn’t tell anyone but our mother. We were too afraid because the killers were at large. They might be asking neighbors if they knew boys who looked like us. We talked about going to the police, but we didn’t see the point. What could we say about masked killers tearing by us under the dim light of the bodega sign?
As we pitched into December, I was still facing emotional turmoil that, at thirteen, I wasn’t equipped to handle. James and I both needed someone to tell how much pain we were in. But there was no one. Sure, our mother was right there, but she was as emotionally fragile as we were. Hell, we all needed help.
After Ruiz Deli closed, James and I went to other corner stores, but it wasn’t the same. Not only were the stores blocks away, but the owners and employees were unfriendly. They didn’t joke around with us. They didn’t know our names. They never even said hello or goodbye. They would just glare at us as if they thought we might steal something.
Arabic-speaking immigrants owned the other corner stores we tried. At first, I thought, they were new to America and couldn’t speak English. But no. We overheard them speaking English. What they lacked was the language of warmth and charm that Mr. Ruiz spoke.
James and I were nervous and more cautious about going out after the shooting, especially since the police seemed to have given up on finding the killers. Our conversations on the fire escape became more serious, and we often monitored comings and goings on the street in silence. When we did go out, we planned strategically how to look out for each other. It wasn’t normal. But two kindhearted neighbors had been shot just minutes after we’d said goodbye to them. How could things be normal after that?
Eating candy on the fire escape had lost its fun. We no longer did our Now and Later ritual as much. James would randomly cry, and his grief made me feel worse. All I could do was hug him and say something like, “It will be OK. Mr. Ruiz is in a better place.” I didn’t know if it was true, but every adult that I knew repeated that line every time someone died. It didn’t matter who it was or how they’d died. They all were somehow in a better place. If rotten men and mean women ended up in a better place, Mr. Ruiz and Mateo must be in a really special place. At least that’s what I hoped and what I said over and over to James.
You might think that after such a traumatic happening in the neighborhood, the community would come together to make things better. But, as far as I saw, that was not the case. If anybody had tried, then it wasn’t effective. Two months after the robbery and murder at Ruiz’s, there was another robbery. This time at a nearby drug store. Thank goodness, James and I weren’t there.
