Super (Book 2): Super Duper

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“Hey, hey, hey!” It wasn’t even nine AM and I was already in
a confrontation with middle school kids on the way to school. Which
would be one thing if I were a middle school kid myself. But at 30,
this was a problem.

I had been on my way to the corner bodega to get a breakfast
sandwich. Normally, I’m not even up this early. I’d been busy chasing
down vandals last night on my Super shift and I hadn’t gotten home
until late. I was exhausted. But I’d had a dream that I was eating the
best breakfast in the world—a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich on a
roll. I woke up with a rumbling stomach that got me out of bed early
and out into the cool autumn morning.

As I pushed the door open to the little corner store, the bells
attached to it jingled in my ear. Inside, it was a tiny convenience
store with a deli counter and grill along one side of the store. Next to
that was the counter, where a college kid with close cropped hair, an
NYU sweatshirt, and non-ironic glasses was ringing up someone’s
coffee. His dad owned the place but it was Rafi working the counter
most of the time. He called out to me. “Hey Audrey. What’s up?”

And this?” I held up a bottle of apple juice.
“That’ll be three fifty.” I paid him and he slid over to the
adjoining deli workspace to start putting the ingredients of my
sandwich on the grill. I browsed the shelves aimlessly while I waited
for my sandwich.
The bell jingled a few more times as more people trickled in on
their way to work or school. Rounding the corner of the candy aisle,
I was thinking maybe I should grab some Skittles for later. I stopped
short when I saw three kids in school uniforms congregating over
the candy. They whispered together for a split second and
finally, one of them put a couple of candy bars in his jacket
pocket and the kids made their way out of the store.
As a hungry woman waiting on her sandwich on a
Monday morning, I could look the other way from a minor
shoplifting incident. As a Super sworn to uphold justice and
order, I couldn’t ignore it. Unfortunately, I was both.
I followed them out of the store. “Hey!” I yelled to
them on the sidewalk. “Come back here!” The kids stopped
walking but none of them came back to the store. Maybe they
realized that I had no authority at all. Even though I was
thirty years old, I wasn’t exactly a grownup.
I have never been the most talented Super. My power
is nothing more than the ability to take a licking and keep
on ticking. I have been shot, stabbed, and set on fire. And I
survived it all with little more than a few gross memories and
some bad hair days. But kids? Kids scared the shit out me.
Finally, the one with the stolen candy in his pocket
spoke up. “What do you want, Lady?”
Since they wouldn’t come to me, I stalked over to
them. “I want you to take that candy back and pay for it. You
know stealing is wrong, right?” They still didn’t say anything.
Instead they looked at each other, at their shoes, anywhere
but me. I held up my apple juice and pointed at the one I saw
pocket the candy. “Take it back right now. If you don’t, I’ll
pour this on you and make it look like you wet your pants.”
“You can’t do that!”
“Oh yeah? It’s the right color and everything.” I shook
the juice up ominously. He scowled at the other two kids and
reluctantly walked back into the store.
Left alone with other two delinquents, I didn’t know
what to say. “Aren’t you supposed to be in school or on
the way there or something?” I tried to remember my own
school experience but maybe I blocked those memories out. I
couldn’t remember much.
Just then my right front pocket started buzzing. I held
up one finger to the kids and fished out my cell phone from
my pocket. “Hold on. I have to take this.”
“Hello?” I said into the phone. I was greeted by a stream
of Vietnamese with a few English swear words peppered in,
which were the only things I understood. “Hello?” I said
again. “Who is this? I can’t understand you.”
The person on the other end of the phone sighed
exasperatedly. Then in broken English she said “This Mrs.
Pham. Audrey come now. Toilet no work. Emergency.”
I hung up the phone and groaned. Mrs. Pham lived in
2B in the building I worked as the live-in building manager.
She had four rambunctious kids and things in her apartment
were broken a lot. It looked like I was gonna need the plunger
today.
I turned back to the kids. “Err, go to school. Be nice to
each other. No bullying. Drink water. Don’t talk to strangers.”
They stared at me. Maybe they were realizing how ironic it
was that I was telling them not to talk to strangers and I was
a stranger myself.
“Um, I gotta go.” I turned and started walking down
Lefferts Avenue toward my building. I’d have to go back for
my sandwich later.

Surprisingly, there are quite a few similarities between
a crime fighting Super and a superintendent of a building.
Both are called “super” for short. Both have people hoping
they’ll show up in the middle of the night when they are alone
and need help. Both are usually thankless jobs. Only one of
them gets paid, though.

I’ve always been a Super but recently I’d become the
super of a building in Crown Heights through a chance
meeting with the owner, Hy. At the time, I’d just been fired
from a coffee shop he was frequenting. I guess he liked the
way I poured his coffee. Or maybe me crying like a baby in
front of the store after getting fired got to him. Either way, he
gave me the job.

Three months later, I still hadn’t been fired. That could
be because I was doing a good job or because Hy lived in
Miami full-time and I rarely interacted with him. Still, I had
to take my successes where I could find them.

The super job had really changed my life. For the first
time in a long time, I had a few dollars in my pocket. Hy
didn’t pay me much but with free rent, I suddenly had been
able to pay back some of the money I owed to my family and
friends. The phone company wasn’t threatening to shut off
my service anymore. And I was even buying name brand
chips, again. Things were going better for me now than they
ever had.

Walking back to the building, I ran through the things
I needed to do that morning. Check the property for any
litter. Schedule the quarterly exterminator visit. Sweep up
the common areas. Make sure the hallways were clear. All in
all, it wasn’t much. I basically just had to keep the building
from falling down. On a good day, I hardly did anything.
Hopefully this toilet situation would end up being a false
alarm and I could go back to doing nothing.

As the building came into view, I saw Outside Bob
sitting in front of the front stoop. Technically, Outside Bob
was a homeless guy who hung around our building. He was
usually wearing a dirty shirt and ripped cargo pants topped
with a camo jacket. As I got closer, I could see that his jacket
was off and folded in a neat little square next him. And he
wasn’t just sitting. He was sitting Indian style with his palms
turned upward and his eyes closed.

I stood quietly and watched him for a moment. “What
are you doing, Bob?”
Without opening his eyes, he raised his hands above
his head as if he were pushing the air away. “Yoga. Gotta get
my zen on.”
“Why don’t you go do it in front of your own house
and do this?”
Bob kept his position. “The
world
is my house, Audrey.
I’m at home everywhere.”
As usual, I thought about calling the cops on Bob. He
was technically trespassing. And it was technically my job to
keep that from happening. But then I’d have to wait for them
to get there and explain the situation. And in the end, I didn’t
really want Bob arrested. He’d been around longer than I had
and he was harmless.
I used what I hoped was my authoritative voice. “OK,
fine. But keep the sidewalk clear for the tenants.”
Bob huffed and made a big show of moving over to the
grassy part of the front yard. “Happy?”
I thought about it for a moment. “Yes. I’m pretty
happy.”
“Well, I don’t know if you’ll still be happy when you
get upstairs. I saw the Pham kids leaving for school in a hurry.
Something about wanting to get in early so they could use the
bathroom. Sounds like that toilet is acting up again.”

Hy’s building was three stories tall. Each floor had
three units—a one-bedroom and two two-bedroom units.
Included in my meager pay was the rent on a one-bedroom
unit on the first floor. It was small but it was also more than
I’d ever had on my own. I was just grateful to be out of my
parents’ place. Here, no one would make me clean up my
room or ask me if I planned to get up and be productive any
time soon.

“Do you plan to get up and be productive any time
soon?” I was talking to my roommate, life partner, and pet
goldfish, Crash. I crossed the living room and stood in front
of his bowl. He was hovering near the pebbles on the bottom,
which I took to mean he was sleeping in. “Must be nice to eat
without ever working,” I said as I sprinkled off brand fish
flakes into the top of his bowl.

I looked around my little apartment and tried to
remember where I left my super tools. They weren’t actually
mine. I’d inherited them with the job and the apartment.
Although the toolbox was full of stuff, I only recognized the
hammer and a couple of other things. I figured I’d get to know
the other tools as the opportunity to use them came up. For
now, I grabbed the plunger.
Hopefully, this will be all that I need
today,
I thought before I headed upstairs to 2B.

In the time it took me to get back to the building, get the
plunger, and walk up the stairs to the Phams, my phone had
rung several more times. I didn’t even look at it. I assumed it
was Mrs. Pham calling me to ask me how long it would take
for me to get there. By the look on her face when I knocked on
the door, I’d assumed right. “Come. Come. Hurry,” she said,
waving me into the apartment.

The Phams’ apartment was one of the two bedroom
units and nearly twice as big as mine. It looked like a typical
family home—lot of toys and school books strewn around.
Even though it was mid-morning, Mrs. Pham was already
cooking. And there was some clean laundry piled in the living
room, waiting to be folded.

Mrs. Pham pointed to the bathroom and I went inside.
The smell hit me like a fist to the face. I turned back to Mrs.
Pham.
Um, you couldn’t have sprayed a little air freshener in here,
lady?
As if reading my mind, she handed me a can of air
freshener. “Here. You need this.” Then she closed the door,
leaving me in the bathroom alone.

I opened the toilet and gagged.
This is the best job I’ve
ever had. This is the best job I’ve ever had,
I chanted to myself
over and over again in my head. Even as I raised my plunger
to get to work, I knew that was true. In the past few years I’d
worked at every dead end job in the world. Being a Super was
a big commitment—even if you weren’t very good at it—and
keeping an alter ego is a necessary evil.

Today, my necessary evil involved a plunger and a
dirty job.
But it wasn’t working. I was putting all the elbow
grease I had into it but not making any progress. If I couldn’t
get it fixed, I’d have to call a plumber. Even with my little
experience I knew that plumbers were always expensive. I
hadn’t had any reason to call Hy for extra repairs yet and I
didn’t want to anytime soon.
I let the fear of possibly losing my job push me forward.
I leaned into it, pushing the plunger down and yanking it
with one triumphant pull that knocked me off of my feet
and onto my butt. The combination of a suction and swirling
sound made me scramble to my knees to peer into the bowl.
The filthy water was draining from the bowl.
“YES!” I shouted and fist pumped into the air. I opened
the bathroom door and called out to Mrs. Pham “OK, you
have your toilet back now.”
She appeared in the doorway with a smile. “Thank
you!”
We both heard the gurgling at the same time. It came
from deep under the floor and rumbled up through the toilet.
Still on my knees, I peered into the bowl again. Nothing. I
turned back to Mrs. Pham. “I think— “
I was interrupted by a geyser of gross smelling sewage
erupting the bowl, spraying on everything in the bathroom,
including me. Mrs. Pham, standing in the doorway safely out
of the splash zone, put her hands to her mouth in horror. I
couldn’t see myself but just looking at her face told me that it
was bad—really bad.
“I think. . .” I looked down at the muck all over myself
and struggled to finish my original sentence. “I think. . . I
think I need to call a plumber.”