“Just because there are Black people doesn’t mean it’s dangerous.”
“Rob you, follow you on street all the time. Your great-grandpa, he come home from the restaurant, then the Black man chase him, make him fall on the step.”
“Was Great-Grandpa, like… hurt?”
“Very hurt! Don’t walk like before. That’s the Black people. Always try to rob the Chinese people.”
Sadie put her face in her hands and suppressed a moan. She wondered what she could say to challenge Ngen Ngen’s convictions. In college, she had learned truths—and each was as beautiful and untouchable as an artifact behind glass in a museum. She didn’t know how to communicate her newfound consciousness in terms her grandmother would appreciate.
“Let’s change the subject,” Sadie said. “What year did you move out of Brownsville?”
“How come so many question?”
“Well.” Sadie hesitated. “I got a job as a reporter forNew Gotham. It’s a newspaper. I cover Brownsville news.”
“You go to Brownsville?” Ngen Ngen’s eyebrows furrowed.
“Yeah. It’s much safer now. I actually saw where the restaurant used to be.” Sadie reached for her phone. “I’ll show you a photo.”
“You go to Brownsville? No good! Your father say you can go there?”
Sadie left the apartment soon after, but it was like one of those chain reaction games with dominoes to flatten, pitchers to tip, a marble swirling down a plastic spiral—the marble being the fact that she was reporting in Brownsville, which resulted not only in multiple messages to her parents’ landline, but also calls to Aunt Jackie in Jersey, who relayed the news by text to Aunt Jennifer in Massapequa, who sent an email to Aunt Julie in Patchogue, who forwarded the email to Uncle Johnny. Uncle Johnny happened to be somewhat high-ranking in the New York City Police Department. He called Sadie from a 718 number the same morning she was on her way to Brownsville for a mayoral press conference.
“Sadie.”
She recognized his voice right away: it had hints of her grandmother’s pitter-patter along with the slurry of consonant-dropping usually associated with Bensonhurst Italians.
“For real? Ngen Ngen told you too?”
Sadie was locking up her bike—strung first through the front wheel, then through the bike frame, as Uncle Johnny had once taught her.
“Am I being charged with a crime?” Sadie said, the phone pinched between her shoulder and her ear. “Otherwise, I really have to go.”
“Sadie, you gotta listen for a minute. Brownsville is one of our hardest precincts in Brooklyn. Last year: fifteen murders, forty-two rapes. I don’t want you getting hurt.”
He had joined the force around the time they’d eliminated the NYPD height requirement, meaning a five-foot-six Chinese boy could finally wear the badge. He was now the commanding officer of Patrol Borough Brooklyn South.
“Well, I’m not going to quit.”
“Don’t quit,” he said. “Just listen. Go home by eight o’clock. Don’t go into the projects or into people’s houses.”
A little boy with a Spider-Man backpack ran up to her and squinted at her press pass, then darted away, giggling. She believed her uncleJohnny had a hard job, but she was still annoyed that he had defended stop-and-frisk for the entire decade before it had been ruled unconstitutional. They had fought about it during Thanksgiving for years.
“I’m a reporter,” Sadie said as she hurried to the press conference. “I’m supposed to follow the story.”
“You have to promise to follow my rules.” He sighed.
She spotted what she was looking for: a group of residents gathered in one of Brownsville Houses’ courtyards. She had to get her uncle off her back, or she’d be late.
“Fine. I promise.”
“Be serious.”
“I promise. Really. I have to go.”
Shortly after she’d hung up, the mayor arrived, his head and shoulders above the rest. He shook hands with the tenant association leaders and the youth advocates, then took the mic to announce his plan for “ending the neglect of Brownsville Houses” and “reversing the racist legacy of Robert Moses.”
Sadie listened, took notes, and felt zero remorse for lying to Uncle Johnny. Her relatives didn’t understand what it was like to have no soil, to never fully belong anywhere. Chinese people looked Sadie in the eye and had no idea she was kin. On the high holidays, Hasidic men approached almost every white person on the streets of Brooklyn to ask, “Are you Jewish?” and she was always missed. When no one knows who you are, it becomes easy to cross borders.
