This is the fourth of our five-part “What’s for Dinner?” feature series about Brooklyn meals.
By Miranda Lin
The gloves came off before the dinner lids.
“This is none of your business, Ms. Byrd, so you can just shut up.”
A collective gasp rippled through the audience. Ms. Byrd sent a stung, bitter look back at her attacker, Ms. Blondel, but said nothing. A long silence followed.
“Okay, well, we can discuss this more in committee,” stammered the New York City Housing Authority official, his hands raised in appeasement. “I think that’s all I have for this evening,” he said and receded back into this chair.
The rest of the room shifted uneasily. A group of roughly 20 people had gathered for the monthly Red Hook West Tenants’ Association meeting, this time to discuss the apparently controversial topic of the local association’s upcoming presidential elections. “You screwed me over last time and you’re trying to do it again,” cried Ms. Blondel, a husky woman with a pitbull stare. “I’m not gonna take this anymore.”
But before she could continue, Ms. Marshall, the incumbent association president, stood up, stone-faced, eyes laser-pointed at Ms. Blondel, and said, “That’s all for tonight. Thank you for coming. We have some food for you in the kitchen before you go.”
For a moment no one moved, but glanced nervously back-and-forth between the three LADIES. At last, one portly elderly woman in a maroon cotton tracksuit and dangling gold earrings stood up and shuffled over to the kitchen. Others followed silently behind her. The meeting was adjourned. Grudges were suspended. Dinner had begun.
Along the kitchen counter was a row of large aluminum pans filled with homemade soul food. As the lids were pulled off, the room filled with a buttery aroma. Fried chicken bathed in sizzling oil. Pork ribs that were almost falling of the bone. Steaming white rice mixed with black-eyed peas and bacon. As each person filed by, they added heaping scoops of collard greens, candied yams and macaroni and cheese on to their Styrofoam plates until the dishes began to sag. Before long, the tense silence was replaced by the sound of clinking utensils, vigorous chewing and even laughter.
“You know what’s great about living around here and coming to these meetings?” asked Mr. Franco, his mouth still full with salad and lips rimmed with creamy dressing. “These people really know how to cook.” At every tenants’ meeting, Ms. Marshall tries to prepare something to eat and her Southern-style soul food is usually a hit with the mostly African-American crowd. The only restaurant in the neighborhood that sells soul food is U.S. Fried Chicken, a takeout joint on Dwight Street where you place your orders through bulletproof glass. “The pizza over there is pretty good,” said Mr. Franco in his Brooklyn-Italian accent. “But nobody beats her chicken.”
After brooding in her seat a while longer and exchanging fierce glares with her rivals, Ms. Blondel rose and joined the back of the food line, too. She didn’t take much – a few spoonfuls of potato, a chicken drumstick, some turnip greens and a cornbread biscuit – and didn’t stay long, wrapping her meal to go in a takeout box. But as she headed to the door, she murmured a quick word of thanks to Ms. Marshall and left carrying her dinner in a smiley face plastic bag that read, “Have a nice day!”
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