“You really think that?” He shakes his head. “I’m out here trying to help. A lot of people don’t even know that they could earn more than they’ve ever had in their entire life, just by moving.”
“Moving where? Where are people supposed to go if even this neighborhood becomes too expensive?”
I suck at my cigarette, hard.
He sighs. “The struggle is real; I feel that. Why do you think I’m out here hustling? I have bills to pay, too, but I don’t have a house to sell for a huge profit. If I did, I could pay off school loans, medical bills.” He shrugs, like he couldn’t help but point out those two specific things.
“Well, there are plenty of vultures circling, so if I do give up on the neighborhood, I have lots of realtors to choose from.” My hand shakes as I lift the cigarette to my lips again, and I try not to fumble it.
He drops his affable shark mask.
“You act like I’m some scumbag, but you just proved my point. There are lots of realtors interested in this area, especially with the VerenTech deal as good as done. It’s the hottest emerging community in Brooklyn right now.”
“Emerging community?” I tilt my head. “Emerging from where? The primordial ooze?”
His brows lift a bit, and I know it’s not because he’s registered my question but because the motherfucker is surprised I can use primordial in a sentence.
“Look.” He runs a hand over his hair backward and then forward, not messing up his look. “I’m not some villain twirling my mustache and trying to push people out onto the street. I’m not even one of the buyers carrying around bags of cash and blank checks to tempt people into taking bad deals. I’m just a normal guy doing a normal job.”
Just doing my job. How many times have I heard that while arguing with people over my mother’s health, money, and future? Everyone is just doing their job, especially when that job is lucrative and screws people over.
“And I’m just a homeowner who’s told you repeatedly that I don’t want to sell,” I say.
“You don’t have to sell,” he says, walking off in search of someone more receptive to his bullshit. “But you can’t stop change, you know.”
I don’t think he’s even trying to be threatening, but I mash out the cigarette against the bottom of my flip-flop and stand, suddenly full of nervous energy. After stepping into the hallway to grab my gardening bag and slip on sneakers, I lock the door and make my way to Mommy’s community garden. I could never manage to keep even a Chia Pet alive, but I’m doing my best. I go every day; I put in work, even if I don’t have much to show for it.
It keeps me close to her, and that dulls away the sharp edges of the guilt that’s always poking at me. I sigh deeply, then pull out my phone and call her—it goes to voicemail. And when I hear her voice say, “You’ve reached Yolanda Green. I’m away from my cell phone or otherwise indisposed. Leave a message, unless you’re asking for money, because lord knows I don’t have any,” my throat goes rough as usual.
“Hi, Mommy,” I say after the beep, even though I usually don’t leave messages. “Things are hard, but I’m holding steady. Just wanted to hear your voice, but I’ll see you soon. Love you.”
Gifford Place OurHood post by Ashley Jones:
For anyone who hasn’t seen it, here’s an article about VerenTech Pharmaceuticals choosing the old medical center as the location for their U.S. headquarters and research center.
Asia Martin: *sigh* I’m sorry. I know you, Jamel, and Preston were out there protesting every week. The drug research center is nice, but I wish we could have had something like that instead of getting locked up and having our babies taken away.
Candace Tompkins: Speak on it.
Jamel Jones: Don’t get me started. Apart from that, mad shady shit went down at the community board meetings. One rep basically told us “fuck yo community.” The wildest part is the city is paying THEM to come here! To “revitalize” the area. Meanwhile, they been ignoring us for years.
Candace Tompkins: Revitalize their pockets more like . . . eminent domain soon come.
Kim DeVries: We should all be happy that this drug crisis is being responded to with kindness and compassion. It will be great for the neighborhood, too. Look at how much nicer downtown Brooklyn has become since the Ratner deal.
Drea Wilson:
Candace Tompkins:
(75 additional comments . . . see more)
Chapter 2
Theo
THERE’S AN EMPTY BEER CAN POKING INTO MY RIB CAGE when I wake up and a photo album laid flat open across my chest. A warm wet spot under my armpit reveals the beer can hadn’t been empty when I passed out last night. When I shift, there’s the crunch of chips breaking and a bag crumpling, and shards of Cool Ranch Doritos stab into my back.
Really living the dream here, bud.
My body hurts as I stretch, the ache of too much booze, too much salt, and the crushing stress of my life falling apart. The beer can tumbles to the floor, but I hold the photo album to my chest protectively. After a few seconds of letting the bleariness fade, I lean it back to see what page it’s open to—a picture of “the grandparents,” an elderly couple with dark skin. He’s bald, and her hair is silver-white and close-cropped. In this photo, developed on heavy stock paper and with a white frame around it, they’re dressed in their Sunday finest outside a big church that looks like the one a few streets over.
The pictures are mostly from this neighborhood. My neighborhood, I guess—mine and Kim’s—even though I mostly feel the way I do with this photo album: like a creep looking in at other people’s lives from the outside.
The pictures are old—most spanning the forties, fifties, sixties, seventies. The people are Black, like most of my neighbors, and they wear neatly hemmed dresses and stylish suits, with their hair flat and shiny in some photos and puffed out in Afros in the later pages. A wedding photo showing the grandparents before they were grandparents. Young grandpa going off to war. Laughing with young grandma upon his return. Babies upon babies. Friends and family. Beach trips.
It’s kind of weird, how often I flip through this album of other people’s memories I found atop a pile of trash while walking the streets in the middle of the night, but the people in these photos look perfect, happy, and full of love. It’s the closest I’ve gotten to any of those things in a long time, maybe ever, but it was so unremarkable to someone on this street that they left it out on garbage night.
The hammering that awakened me starts up again—absurdly relentless, as if a Looney Tunes character broke in and is banging a mallet against a wall for the chaotic joy of it. It’s a homing beacon giving the location of the person I once thought would bring me perfection, happiness, and love. I press my palms against my ears, trying to drown out what’s become my millennial version of “The Tell-Tale Heart”—“The Renovation-Crazed Girlfriend.”
Or ex-girlfriend?
It’s complicated.
The idea that Kim and I once thought we liked each other enough to buy a home together makes me cringe. The fact that I thought she’d never figure out I was the kind of item to be left out on garbage night, something no one should pick up, bands shame across my shoulder blades.