Feature:
Bronx Noir:
The Story Behind The Story
By Steven Torres
I was born and raised in the Bronx. It’s a part of the city that, unlike Brooklyn or Manhattan, doesn’t get much attention even from crime writers. Surprising to me since for many people the Bronx, specifically the South Bronx, is synonymous with “high-crime ghetto.” The BRONX NOIR anthology of stories from Akashic Books remedies this oversight at least in part.
The story I wrote for the collection – it’s called “Early Fall” – is highly personal. I knew a lady, she was a member of my church, and this lady was probably about the nicest person you would ever want to know. Dangerously nice. Bring home drug addicts and prostitutes she didn’t know, feed them a hot meal at her dinning room table, give them a bed for the night nice.
I asked her once why she did it. This was, after all, the South Bronx. The people she was bringing into her home were, we all thought (and no New Yorker would gainsay us), the worst of the worst. And it’s not like they were blood relations even.
“Why do I do what, sweetie?” she asked.
We were standing outside of church. It was a Sunday afternoon.
“Why do you bring drug addicts and prostitutes into your home?” I asked.
“Oh, because I used to be like them,” she said.
I thought I knew what she meant. A lot of people in a lot of churches have repented of doing a lot of things, and there is much compassion – sympathy – with those who have not yet turned away from what harms them. “There but for the grace of God…”
This wasn’t what she meant. I had her explain.
“I was a drug addict and a prostitute,” she told me. Surprised me.
And she told me more.
In the sixties and early seventies, she had been as high as a kite. Heroin. She sold herself a little at a time to pay for the habit. Her lover fed his habit by breaking into apartments. That’s the strange thing to many. That she had a lover. A constant man. They moved from apartment to apartment to abandoned building to anywhere they could lay a mattress. You could tell from her voice and face that she loved him still. But…well, you can guess the story.
One night after having done what she needed – middle of the night – she got to bed, zonked out. It wasn’t long, however, when she heard something and opened her eyes. There was a man in the room, groping in the dark, moving toward her. She reached for the knife under her pillow slowly and when he made his move to climb on top of her, she stuck that knife dead center of his torso. She was screaming when the police arrived and found her bathed in blood, cradling the head of her beloved.
Seven years, courtesy of the state, but that was nothing. The pain. She cursed the strength of her body that wouldn’t let her die.
Repentance and church and helping people who were otherwise headed down a road she knew well. Then questions from a twenty year old geek – the ultimate indignity.
Yolanda has died since. Not her liver, not a drug addict coming down. Diabetes and high blood pressure and a carelessness about taking her meds.
I had to write about her. Not because her story was interesting though I think it is. But how often does a writer – a man of sedentary routines – get to share a pew with a bona fide hero? Yes, I know, probably more often than I realize. But Yolanda was one of them, deserving of the pages I’ve dedicated to her and more.
The Yolanda in “Early Fall” continues the work the Yolanda from my church started. She picks up strays from the meanest streets and tries to keep them living another day, get them living another way, tries to make the world a better place than it has been before. Does all of that rebound on my character? Of course. It always does. Not just because it’s a noir story. Real life can be that way too. The heroes know this and crash their foreheads against the reality time and again. It’s why they get the title.
Of course, the real Yolanda didn’t need the glory of being my story. Presumably she’s gone on to greater things. But I’m still in the world, and it’s a place that I think could use more Yolanda, so even if it’s only in the imagination’s eye, I bring her back. Hell, maybe it’s not even the world that needs her. Maybe it’s just me.
If you get a chance, read the story. Realize that it tries but falls short of revealing the real Yolanda.
About the Author:
Steven Torres was born and raised in the Bronx in New York City. He is the author of THE CONCRETE MAZE, a hardboiled and almost noir novel set in the city, and the Precinct Puerto Rico series of mysteries, which are hardboiled cozies. For more information about him, visit his website steventorres.com.