Pride(8)

Four


IT’S THE FIRST Saturday morning of summer vacation, and the apartment is a delicate bubble—quiet, full, and round with me and all four of my sisters squeezed into one room. We’re all about the same size and height now, still sleeping in the beds we’ve had since we were little.

Two bunk beds are pushed against the walls in our bedroom, and Janae’s single bed is right beneath the front window.

I’m up before my sisters and in the middle of my book, a highlighter and pencil in hand, just like Papi taught me. I’m reading Between the World and Me and thinking about Ta-Nehisi Coates’s mecca, Howard University, and how it’ll be like a whole other country with no outsiders moving in to change things up and throw things away; where the faces of the people are the same now as they were back in 1867, when Howard was first founded; where even though people come from different parts of the country and the world, they speak the same language—and that’s black, and African, and Caribbean, and Afro-Latinx, all the things that make up me: Haitian, Dominican, and all black.

I finish the chapter I’m on and peek out the window—checking to see if anyone is setting up for the block party yet. But all I see are the Darcy boys in front of their house. Ainsley is jumping about, punching the air as if he’s ready to fight. Darius is stretching out his legs, and both of them have patches of sweat around the necklines of their T-shirts. Something about the way they’re dressed lets me know that they definitely weren’t playing ball at the park, nor were they doing pull-ups on the monkey bars like all the other guys in the hood.

On the corner, a white woman is scooping up her dog’s poop with her plastic bag-covered hand. She pulls off the bag, ties it up, and tosses it into a nearby bin, then pets her dog as if he’s done a good job. I spot Mr. Turner from down the block, standing outside Hernando’s with his cup of coffee. Soon he’ll pull out the plastic crates, turn them over on their sides, and wait for Se?or Feliciano, Stoney, Ascencio, Mr. Wright, and some of the other grandpas to join him in a daily game of dominos or cards while smack-talking about politics and the latest soccer match.

When the street lights come on, they’ll move out of the way for the younger guys—Colin and his crew, who just stand there checking out girls, drinking not-juice from bottles, and also smack-talking about politics and the latest basketball game. Then the block party and the music will move in, and everyone will eat and dance late into the night. It’s one of my favorite days of the year. And it’s like a smaller version of my other favorite days: going to the Dominican Day parade with Papi and the Puerto Rican Day parade with Madrina, and repping the Haitian flag at the West Indian Day parade with Mama. Our block parties bring everybody in our hood together, though—the Dominicans, Haitians, Jamaicans, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Panamanians, African Americans, and white couples too, who are buying up a lot of the brownstones down the block.

My neighborhood is made of love, but it’s money and buildings and food and jobs that keep it alive—and even I have to admit that the new people moving in, with their extra money and dreams, can sometimes make things better. We’ll have to figure out a way to make both sides of Bushwick work.

That gives me an idea. I grab my small laptop and type the first words of my college application essay to Howard.

Sometimes love is not enough to keep a community together. There needs to be something more tangible, like fair housing, opportunities, and access to resources.

My younger sister, who is a self-proclaimed finance whiz, says it best: Love is abstract. Money is not.

I type, delete, type, and delete over and over again. I inhale. Close my eyes. And let my fingers dance across the keyboard.

How to Save the Hood

If my name was Robin

I’d steal the tight corners

Where hope meets certainty

To form perfectly chiseled bricks

Stacked high to make walls

Surrounding my Bushwick

Sometimes I don’t go to the other side

Where Bed-Stuy or Fort Greene

Are guarded and armed with coffee mugs

And poodles on leashes

I don’t see any more homeless pets

Like the ones that used to gather

In the junkyard on Wyckoff Avenue

Beneath the overhead train tracks

Like marks on the arms of junkies

Who used to stumble down Knickerbocker

Boxing the air, fighting the wind

Suckerpunching a time

When those graffiti-covered walls Used to be background canvases

For old ladies in house slippers

Pushing squeaky shopping carts

Around those tight corners

Where hope meets certainty

Hope is wishing that corners will

Turn into long, unending streets

Where all the traffic lights turn green

Certainty is knowing that corners

Will always be home

Where ninety-degree angles

Are the constant shapes in our lives

Always a sharp turn

By late afternoon, our apartment is a smoky sauna of Mama’s cooking for the block party. I’ve gotten used to the smells by now, and so has our block, and maybe our whole neighborhood too.

All the windows are wide open to let out the smoke, and my sisters and I have stripped down to just shorts, tank tops, and aprons, along with hairnets and gloves when we’re handling the food.