Olga Dies Dreaming(10)

When he first ran for public office—City Council nearly seventeen years ago—he did this every single morning from the day he announced until the election, working all the N and R stations along Fourth Avenue within his district. The party leaders would tease him: “Acevedo, you realize you’re a Democrat in Brooklyn running for an uncontested seat, right? Just keep breathing till election day and you’ll win.” But Prieto didn’t want to just win. He wanted people to feel good about voting for him. These were his neighbors, after all. People whom, if he didn’t know personally, he’d seen around the neighborhood his whole life. His whole friggin’ life. People his grandma used to know, who would come to their house so she could do alterations on their party dresses. He wanted them to know that he wasn’t just a guy collecting a paycheck; he was one of them. They could come to him with their problems. He wore the suit not because he wanted to look like a politician, but because he wanted them to see that he took them seriously.

Of course, running for office and being in office were very different things. After he got elected to City Council, he tried to work the stations once a month. Once he got elected to Congress (again uncontested, the seat virtually grandfathered to him by a mentor) his chances to do these meet-and-greets were even fewer and farther between. The stress of going back and forth to D.C., of maintaining two households. To say nothing of the sheer bullshit and internal politics of the job, of donors, of people who weren’t donors but tried, with great pressure, to wield influence. There were days when he felt so jaded and down. Pushed into a corner so tight he could hardly breathe. But today was not going to be one of those days. No, the days when he got to do this, to shake hands and hear about people’s lives and needs, these were the days when he remembered why he got into this game in the first place.

It was a hazy day as he made his way out of his house—his grandmother’s house, the home he’d grown up in—and over to the Thirty-sixth Street train station, his favorite to work. It had a local and an express, so it attracted more people, but mainly he liked it for sentimental reasons. This was the station his parents would post up at when they were selling Palante papers for the Young Lords. Unlike in the Latino enclaves of Manhattan, the Lords’ footprint in South Brooklyn was relatively small, so his parents stuck out. They were sort of local folk heroes. Or crazy Puerto Rican hippies, depending on who you asked. Either way, Prieto enjoyed imagining them out there, a generation before, connecting with the people of their community, and him, a generation later, carrying the mantle now. Or so he saw it on his good days.

The first forty-five minutes passed more or less as usual. Lots of handshakes. Some daps. A heated rap battle with one of his favorite younger voters. Prieto carrying several strollers down the staircase. (It’s really ridiculous, he thought, that we don’t have more accessible stations.) Then, an older lady with a grocery cart was struggling to get her things up the station steps, but when Prieto went to help her, she took one look at him and swatted him away.

“Thank you, pero, no thank you. With you helping me, I’m likely to end up with all my groceries in the street, starving to death.”

God bless the viejitas and their flair for the dramatic.

“Se?ora, let me just help you, and then you can tell me why I stink, okay?”

She acquiesced and allowed him to take the cart but did not wait for him to get to the top of the stairs before she began running through her litany of offenses.

“First of all, you let them build that … mall, pero where are the jobs? Why does my grandson still have no job? Next, mis vecinos. Nice people. From El Salvador. One day I see them, the next they are gone. I find out that the ICE came and took them away—”

“Yes, I’ve heard about this family and my office is—”

“Then! Then, I see they put a new, nice-looking grocery store on Third Avenue. I think, oh, good, no more taking this train to Atlantic with this pinche cart just to save a few dollars. Pero no. This place! No coupons. No nothing. The prices are sky-high! Three dollars. For a mango! How is a senior citizen supposed to survive here? This is a neighborhood for working people! I live off of retirement!”

“Se?ora,” he said, mildly out of breath, which disturbed him because it was only a flight of stairs, “I assure you; I understand. I was raised by my abuela, she was a retiree—”

“Save your story for the cameras, okay? I know you. You’ve been around forever. I even remember your grandma. Nice lady. Did the rosary society. But that doesn’t make you good at your job. You are no good at your job!”

But before Prieto could say anything, she took her cart and pushed off. He took out his handkerchief and wiped his brow. He called out to her.

“Tell your grandson to come by my offices and I’ll see what I can do about a job!”

But she just dismissed him with her hands and kept on walking.



* * *



“WHADDUP, TEAM! HAS my sister been on yet?” Prieto called out as he walked into his district office.

The TVs, normally tuned into CNN or NY1, were all showing Good Morning, Later, the show where, occasionally, his sister did segments on weddings and etiquette.

“Not yet,” Alex, his chief of staff, called out, “but I’m hoping it’s soon because I’m losing brain cells by the second watching this nonsense.”