From her window, set beneath an elegant, mansard roof, she could see the wrought iron fence below. It segmented the land into two worlds—on one side, there were manicured walkways and rows of daffodils. On the other lay 1970’s Brooklyn—the gritty streets of Flatbush Avenue,m more often than not patrolled by darkness, cops, and crime. One view looked out upon the lush green of military parade grounds. Through another, towering tenements loomed.
There is a small child standing on the roof of a Civil War era mansion. Across the yard, a terrified man screams, lapped by flames. He leans out of an apartment window, but has no place to go. The fire truck’s ladder is too short. He is in all likeliness, doomed.
The forty year-old woman remembers her twelve year-old self. In her mind, thousands gather. People stand frozen in fear and awe.
"There was a guy screaming that he was going to jump and there were flames coming out the window and you could hear him, I mean you could hear him and see these flames coming out of the windows and," she paused, thinking for a second, "and you know what, I can’t remember what happened. I don’t know if he jumped. I have no recollection of how that resolved itself."
J’s words echo through my mind at odd hours. I hear her as I walk down Flushing Avenue, camera in hand, or as I peer outside my living room window, investigating a sound. Sometimes, in late night darkness, I find myself at the computer staring at research databases, typing in Boolean phrases, searching for the end of her memory.
"You know," J wrote to me, months later. "I would be surprised if they even covered that fire. As I often find, even now…is that if it is related to minorities it might get a bottom corner paragraph on page 25. Brooklyn tenement fire sometime between 1973 and 1975 wouldn't necessarily merit much attention."
Still, I dig. There are archives of local papers, perhaps a byline that I have missed. There are key words to search by, articles to be read. Since March, I have read nearly every New York Times blurb containing "Brooklyn," "fire," or "ladder too short." There were many fires in Brooklyn during the 1970’s, but none recorded took place on the corner of Navy and Sands Street. The moment, it seems, is gone.
We all find ways to resolve pain. Sometimes, memory is blotted by grief. Often, fear twists our recount. Still, we cannot help but look for answers to smooth out the wrinkles of hurt, to find a resolution that might link fleeting memories into something linear. We search for closure, willingly or not.
The missing piece of J's story is part of more than one person’s history—it is his, hers, and now my own. It is a chain of memory that stretches across several different lives, unresolved in each. Somewhere out there, there is a scrap of paper, a news clipping, or police report, perhaps even a FDNY log or obituary.
There must be something—anything—that will bring to a close the story of the man of the navy yard tenement, the fire, the fear, and the memory of a little girl. There is an anecdote somewhere; I cannot and will not push past until I find it.
