mirror.
“Beverly Road. Near Metro and Lefferts?” Shoot. It sounded more like a question, not the statement I had memorized and rehearsed in the bathroom mirror in the days before graduating from the flight academy in an attempt to sound like a real New Yorker. The driver nodded. Half a second later our heads snapped back and off we went to Kew Gardens.
Thanks to my mother’s newfound knowledge of all things New York, I already knew that Kew Gardens, also known as Crew Gardens, is a residential area in Queens offering, for the most part, one-family homes in the million-dollar-plus range. There are also several apartment complexes and co-ops located in the area around Metropolitan Avenue and Lefferts Boulevard, a.k.a. Metro and Lefferts, two cross streets that run through the heart of the neighborhood. After World War II, a large population of Jewish refugees from Germany settled in the area, along with many Chinese and Russian immigrants. Dense and ethnically diverse, the neighborhood is popular with airline personnel because of its central location between LaGuardia Airport and John F. Kennedy International Airport. Because New York is considered a junior base for most airlines, there are a large number of flight attendants who commute to work. This is why so many crash pads are located in Kew Gardens, and why one can often see uniformed airline personnel at all hours of the day and night dragging luggage down cracked sidewalks past synagogues, nail salons, and Chinese food takeout joints on the way to and from the airport.
From the backseat of the car I stared out the window as neon signs whizzed by, a few of them in need of new lightbulbs. As we passed Jamaica Hospital, my heart sank. I didn’t want to be anywhere near Jamaica, Queens, thanks to the movie
I couldn’t hold it in any longer. “Ummm… excuse me, Mr. Driver, are we going the right way?”
I barely heard him say, “Yep.” U2’s “Sunday Bloody Sunday” blared from the speakers behind me.
When we stopped at a red light, a man bundled up in a ski jacket with a matching ski mask approached the driver’s side of the car holding a stack of magazines. He flashed the driver with whatever was hidden behind a lone copy of the
“Is this neighborhood safe?” I asked.
“Yep,” he said, and then he cranked up the stereo even louder.
The houses never did spread out, but eventually the trees grew taller and the restaurants began to look a little more inviting. When we stopped in front of a white wooden three-story house sitting behind a boarded-up fruit stand, the driver didn’t say a word. He just popped the trunk and helped us get our bags out. The front light flicked on and a girl I would never see again opened the front door, told us her name, and invited us to come in.
Once inside Georgia and I stood on an Oriental rug in the dimly lit foyer, taking things in. Only a few steps away, a dark wooden staircase led up to the second floor. At the very top of the stairs I could see a bathroom. From where I stood below, it looked like the bathroom light was the only light on upstairs. To our right an archway opened up to a living room. A woman sat on the sofa watching television. Fashion, travel, and beauty magazines fanned out across a glass coffee table that now acted as a footrest.
The girl who’d let us in whispered, “I’d introduce you to her but I can’t remember her name. I’ve only been here a few weeks myself and we just met today.” As she buttoned up her black peacoat, she nodded at the two French doors to our left. “That’s the room. Take the two beds by the window. Keys are on the dresser. Feel free to take two drawers each in the wooden dresser next to the closet.” Then she was out the door and gone, off to meet a few friends and roommates at the local pizzeria, leaving Georgia and me all alone. Well, almost all alone.
Georgia peeked back into the living room. “Hi! I’m Georgia and this is Heather! We’re moving in.”
Staring straight ahead she said, “Marge.” Georgia and I just looked at each other.
Not one to be easily deterred, Georgia sang, “Nice to meet you, Marge!”
“Likewise,” she mumbled. That was our cue to go check out our room.
Twin beds lined the walls, six of them, which meant there would be six of us sharing a closet, one teeny-tiny closet, without a door.
Georgia sighed. “You’ve got to be kidding me. This just is not going to work!”
We had no choice but to make it work.
“Maybe we can purchase some cardboard drawers to place beside our beds,” I suggested, after noting that’s exactly what the others who were not there had done. After further inspection, I added, “What doesn’t fit inside our two drawers we can keep packed away in our suitcases under the bed.”
After we unpacked as much as we could, which wasn’t much, we decided to take a look around the big, dark, creaky house. The first floor consisted of the large bedroom where Georgia and I now lived, a living room where Marge continued to camp out for the next twelve hours, and a pretty big kitchen. I peeked inside the fridge and noticed that everything had been labeled with different names. Same went for the pantry. Upstairs we found three other bedrooms. These were large rooms that looked more like army barracks than actual bedrooms. Two rows of unmade bunk beds stretched across the floor from one end of the room to the other. The occupants of these rooms were nowhere to be found, but a couple of suitcases were lying on the floor against the wall, unzipped, with clothes eager to escape.
The bathroom, located on the same floor, was shared by all of us. Each night from that night on I’d march upstairs and scribble my name on the piece of paper that allotted ten-minute shower times throughout the day. There were so many of us sharing that one bathroom that no one took responsibility for cleaning it. The black- and-white checkered floor had turned black and gray. A ring of dirt always surrounded the bottom of the tub. The drain was always clogged with hair, so showers consisted of standing ankle deep in water. At first the ten-minute shower rule seemed impossible, but the bathroom was so disgusting I did not dare linger any longer than necessary. Rubber shower shoes soon became my best friend.
Because so many of us slept in the same room, and because there was more time to shower if we skipped using the mirror in the bathroom, we all wound up using the living room downstairs as a kind of dressing room. Two dressing tables were pushed against the wall between the sofa and the giant TV. Flight attendants with early sign- ins would pack their bags the night before and leave them, along with makeup and curling irons, on the living room floor so as not to bother everyone else in the house while getting ready.
For all I know, there could have been sixty flight attendants living in that house. It was hard to tell because there was so much coming and going at all hours of the day and night. With so many people in one house, you’d think the place might feel crowded, but it was just the opposite. Many nights I found myself alone. And depressed. In the beginning I tried to introduce myself to each new face that walked through the front door, but then I eventually realized I rarely ever saw the same face twice. I’d just smile and say hello… until I finally just stopped smiling or saying hello, like Marge.
Now for a little Crash Pad 101.
A flight attendant’s “base” is the city where his or her trips are scheduled to begin and end. “Commute, commuter, commuting” is the process of getting to work, in other words, flying to one’s base city. Some New York–based commuters even live as far away as Europe and Hawaii. For the most part, commuters work “commutable trips,” which are trips that depart late enough or return early enough that the flight attendant can get to work and home again on a single workday instead of wasting a precious “day off” commuting.
Flight attendant schedules average eighty hours per month—and by that I mean strictly flying hours. Time on the ground does not count toward a flight attendant’s pay. And the clock doesn’t officially start ticking until the aircraft door is shut and the airplane backs away from the gate; the flight attendant saying hello to you while you’re boarding is not getting paid yet. Because of this, delays affect flight attendants just as much as they do passengers, maybe even more so. But this is also the reason that we can—and frequently do—trade, drop, and pick up trips from one another. This allows commuters to “back up” their trips (fly several trips in a row), which enables them to maximize time at work and get more days off at home. Commuters tend to work “high-time” trips. These are trips that are worth a lot of hours, enabling them to get their hours in as quickly as possible. For example, one four-hour trip takes less actual time than two two-hour trips, even though the paid flying time is exactly the same.
When it comes to finding a place to stay between trips, a commuter doesn’t need much, since we spend very
