S. Ozone Park, left high & dry

The stink from the black sludge oozing into my home sent me running to Home Depot for a pump. What was this filth? Nothing I tried worked. It was Thanksgiving 2019, and I was about to find out that a sewage pipe collapse had flooded raw sewage into not just my home, but the houses of more than 100

neighbors in South Ozone Park, Queens. Now, my family has been split apart by both the pandemic and the devastation of our home, which still needs many repairs more than a year later. The sewage backup forced my children and grandchildren out of my home, and one of my daughters and her children couldn’t return. I’m 74, and I’ve spent too much of the last year living alone and lonely.

When Mayor de Blasio visited my neighborhood after the sewage backup, he told us not to worry and said he’d make me whole. I remember him giving me a hug and warmly calling me “mama.”

I ask you now, Mr. Mayor, why am I still waiting on financial help from the city more than a year later?

At first, I stayed behind after the disaster, totally alone, because I did not want to leave my house and all my supplies for my job. I work from home for the Census Bureau as a supervisor, and the timing for counting our communities was critical. My work-issued printer and computer hooked up through a secure remote connection, and I was concerned about plugging the equipment in elsewhere to do my confidential, time-sensitive work.

Even though some of my family has moved back in, my home doesn’t feel like a place of comfort anymore. It’s a constant reminder of stress and irreplaceable items lost. Family heirlooms are gone forever: my mother’s mink coat, my brother’s Lionel model train set, 45s I bought as a girl of Smokey Robinson and the Miracles.

The disaster wrecked my washer and dryer in the basement, which means that in the midst of COVID-19 I can’t just run downstairs and do laundry like I used to. And I am too old to wash everything by hand. My laundry piles up, and my children help me, but we’re worried that laundromats are dangerous during the pandemic. It’s all stressful and upsetting.

My family worked hard for this home, which is why it means so much to us and why it is so hard to see part of it destroyed. My father, who grew up in Virginia where his father was born into slavery, was a WWII veteran and received a Purple Heart after being shot in Italy. My grandmother was Panamanian and migrated to the United States when she was pregnant with my mother, who was born in Harlem Hospital.

Daddy moved to New York City, and I was born in Brooklyn in 1946 and moved to this house in Queens with my parents and my big brother when I was 10. We had lived in the projects in downtown Brooklyn, and they wanted a place where we could spread out. South Ozone Park was perfect for us.

I’ve lived here since then. But after the Thanksgiving sewage disaster, I don’t have the money for the repairs I need. I can’t go out and say, “Here, let me go get all this done and think about the bill later.”

I’m worried about things getting worse, especially with mold growing from the sewage damage. I stay out of the basement. Sometimes I feel good, and sometimes I feel worse and get a cough. We’re an asthmatic family. My brother had asthma, and I’ve got bronchitis.

Since the New Year, it sometimes flares up. My daughters recently came back to live with me, and they are getting headaches. Maybe we’re in the house too much. I’m just so mad about it. I put in my claim to the city a few weeks after the sewage backup, and despite promises, I’m still waiting for fair payment for the damage from raw sewage flooding my house. The main thing for me is just to get the basement repaired and safe for us, so we can just live our lives. I’m grateful that a law firm has volunteered to help me, because it’s been so hard to get through the city’s process for compensation.

I’ve never asked the city for anything since we’ve lived here. We worked, paid our bills. I’m an old lady. Now I just want to be able to enjoy myself in my home.

Cleveland is a member of the 149th Street South Ozone Park Civic Association and is being assisted pro bono by the law firm of Beveridge & Diamond PC as part of New York Lawyers for the Public Interest’s South Ozone Park Sewage Legal Assistance Project.