By Hansel Figueroa

We all live on the same planet, we just live in different worlds. Take New York City for instance. It’s home to Times Square, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Empire State Building, and countless other icons. There are worlds such as Harlem, the mecca; the rough-and-tumble yet wonderful borough known as Brooklyn. There’s Queens with everything from South Americans to South Asians sharing a living space. Also, the land that produced the Wu-Tang Clan: Staten Island. Despite coming of age in this city and public transportation making everything accessible, the world I knew best were the projects.

New York City’s housing projects are owned and managed by the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA). There are projects in all five boroughs. They are staples of the Big Apple like the Statue of Liberty or the trains or pizza shops. As a great bard from the Queensbridge Housing Projects once wrote: “The Island is packed/ From what I hear in all the stories when my peoples come back/ Black, I’m livin’ where the nights is jet-black.” I can agree with some of those sentiments. However while my projects, or P.J.’s, were far from ideal, they were nothing like what the Queens native described.

Castle Hill Housing Projects were my home. They’re located in the only borough on the mainland: The Bronx. Hondurans, Puerto Ricans, Black Americans, Dominicans, and a small percentage of South Asians call Castle Hill home. It was here I learned how to ride a bike. It was here I spent time in the basketball court and playgrounds behind my brick-red building. It was here I ran through sprinklers during the summertime and played manhunt when it was dark out.

My building was 20 stories tall and I lived in apartment 12E. The neighbors who lived on my floor would often knock on the apartment door for a number of reasons: they wanted to borrow something, needed help, or they wanted to give my family some food. One Thanksgiving break when I was in middle school, my next-door neighbor Edwin gave my family some of the sweetest cheese cake I ever had at that point. On other occasions my father often helped him tie a tie. Whenever my mother needed sugar or Adobo or whatever ingredient she needed while cooking, she’d send me down the hall to our neighbor Susanna, who wouldn’t hesitate to do the same when she needed an ingredient. I’d sell chocolate bars to my neighbors when my school had fund-raisers going on.

Growing up, I was friends with various kids in my building. There was a boy down the hall from me who I’d hang out with. We’d play video games and talk about comics and shows. I remember we got into a debate once about how cool Robin from the Batman comics is. I argued he’s awesome, but my friend disagreed, saying the Boy Wonder was lame. He moved away with his family when we were still in elementary school. Even though I can’t remember my playmate’s name, his memory has stood with me.

There was a girl named Destiny, who was my first crush. She and her family lived on the 16th floor; they were Puerto Rican. There were times I’d awkwardly call her house number and wait what felt like an eternity for her to get to the phone after speaking with someone in her household. Destiny’s family invited me to various birthday parties, where I played musical chairs and hot potato with an actual hot potato. I remember I got to dance with her once too. I was a shy kid and I’m positive her family knew I liked her, so they set the stage for us to dance once. The DJ threw on a slow track, everyone made room for us in the living room, and I was pushed to make a move. We grabbed hands and twirled around slowly. I still smile because of that. She and her family eventually moved to Pennsylvania, and I lost contact with them.

Destiny’s family weren’t the only neighbors I got along with though. There was the Valentin family up on the 15th floor. They, like my family, were Honduran. I was friends with the second oldest child, Shirley. In addition to living in the same building, we attended elementary school together. Despite me not having one athletic bone in my body, we shot hoops together. Shirley would eventually go on to play basketball in college. The Valentin family also had many birthday parties that I attended. There was great food, good vibes, and I saw girls dancing, which, in hindsight, awoke something within me at an early age. 

Even though I never learned all of my neighbors’ names from the different floors— like a lot of people in my old building, we could have full-blown conversations and end it with, “See you around, neighbor”— I’d recognize them anywhere. There was this dark skinned woman with missing teeth and a gold tooth who smelled of cigarettes more often than not that lived in my building. She and her daughter lived on the ninth floor. This lady constantly wore a smile and had a good rapport with any and everybody in our building. It was rare to see her without a jolly expression. Her voice could be heard from blocks away. She even gave me a parting gift when I went away to college in September of 2019.

There was a heavyset, Black lady who always wore a hood. It could be hot enough to make the Devil sweat and she would still be wearing a hoodie. It covered her eyes and nose, exposing only her mouth. It was like Double D’s hat from the Cartoon Network show Ed, Edd, and Eddy. You never saw what was underneath. It was a true mystery.

Whenever someone passed away in the building, the lobby would have flyers about the departed’s birthday, date of death, and where a wake will occur. There would be pictures of those who passed on. In some cases, lit candles were left outside of the lobby to honor the deceased.

Life in Castle Hill wasn’t a horror movie.

However despite all the positive things my home had afforded me, some experiences were far from sublime. A few staples of life in the projects: no heat in the winter, no running water at times, and broken elevators. I used to trudge up 12 flights of stairs whenever both elevators in the building were out of service. I’d find urine and excrement on various steps. Or the lights in the stairwell would be broken. There were times I’d come across mattresses, broken bikes, and damaged television sets in the stairs. When the elevators were working sometimes there would be urine on the floor. At other points they’d be clean but no matter how many times I’d press 12 to head home, the elevator would stop on either the 11th or 13th floor.

I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention how NYCHA would be slow to resolve any of the tenants’ issues but never hesitated to slap an eviction notice on their doors. I remember being woken up many summer days to wait for a NYCHA worker so they could fix something in the apartment. Hours would pass and no one would ever show up. It didn’t matter if a window sill was broken, the toilet was flooding the bathroom, or if the kitchen’s stove was in disrepair— entire weeks could go by and nothing would be resolved. I’ll never forget my family once had to wait months for a stove replacement. The original had a gas leak. NYCHA assured us we would get a new stove in a little while. That was in January of 2021. A new stove didn’t arrive in our apartment until May 2021. Mold was also a major issue in Castle Hill, but that’s another story for another day.

Kids who live in the projects— or in certain areas of New York— are exposed to things at an early age. I was in middle school when I was leaving a party in the Valentin household. In the hallway I saw a small group of partygoers crowding around the door leading to one of the building’s stairwells. As I walked by, I spotted a kid who went to my middle school. I didn’t understand what all the fuss was until I looked down. There was a knife by his feet. I heard: “Yo, I can’t believe he brought a knife to the party.” “You not gonna stab nobody.” “Why’d you bring it?” He didn’t say anything. I remember the frightened expression he had, his light brown face almost turning red, but he tried masking it as a blank face.

There was the time I walked past a brawl in the basketball court when I was coming home from school one day. I can still hear the constant shouting and arguing my neighbors on the 13th floor did that often made me worry they could take a violent turn. There were a few fires that erupted in my building. I saw one of my neighbors handcuffed and led away by two police officers one night. I can still see the decaying cat on my building’s block that no one ever paid mind to. Its brown-orangish fur slowly eroded, and the fleas and maggots swarmed it each day until one day, the cat vanished.

I remember two guys whose names I can’t remember. One time they asked me if I remembered them because they knew me when I was a little kid being picked up by Iris, my babysitter at the time. Even though I never learned their names, I would always say hi and dap them up when I saw them. They were victims of a triple murder that happened in my neighborhood in June of 2018.

Weeks following the murders, I witnessed a teary-eyed woman on a Sunday morning nearing the same spot where those three people met their end. She had a bottle of Clorox and a small cleaning brush. Her lips quivered while scrubbing the blood out of the pavement. The harder she scrubbed, the more the bloody spot turned pinkish. I’ll never get that image out of my head.

I’ve been reflecting on my old home lately. The good times, the not-so good times, the changes, and the community. Growing up in Castle Hill, in part, taught me about community. I learned that I won’t always hang out with every single person in my vicinity. However, those who I do choose to spend time with, I’ll learn about them, their history, their goals, and their lives. My neighbors taught me things about myself and helped me grow just by virtue of human interaction. In special cases, they become as close as family. Other times, I’d only have a surface level relationship with those around me, and that’s fine as well. My projects taught me not everyone in my atmosphere will graduate into friendship. Sometimes a neighbor remains a neighbor. That’s fine. That’s life.

 The projects were not perfect, but they were home to me. I smile when I think about playing with the other kids, the parties I attended, flying through the sprinklers during the summertime, or taking my bike for a spin around the neighborhood. I look back and cringe at the things I did while trying to find myself as I was growing up. I feel somewhat hollow when I think of those who’ve passed on. However, at the core of these memories is community. My projects were home to a vibrant community. A community that’s diverse; a community that knows how to live life and celebrate; a community that’s human. If my family taught me how to survive, my mentors taught me how to live. If my friends taught me how to love, Castle Hill taught me how to be a community member. My neighbors taught me that.

Hansel Figueroa is an emerging writer from the Bronx. He graduated summa cum laude from Johnson & Wales University, where he also wrote for their student newspaper. He’s interested in art, culture, history, and graphic novels. He hopes to write stories he wish he had as a child.