Paul meandered over with the check, his eyebrows raised jauntily like he’d been listening and still didn’t believe they were, in fact, just reporter and interviewee. Tyrell had only finished a third of his food, and so he had it packed to go, then paid and left with Sadie.
“I didn’t finish college, I had some personal stuff going on,” he said then, squinting up Pitkin Avenue. “But I never stop reading. That’s what I always tell these guys. You don’t need a degree to read.”
She picked up just the slightest hint of self-doubt in his voice.
“Thank you so much for your time, Tyrell. I learned a lot.” She turned off her recorder and slipped her notebook into her backpack.
“Which way you walking?” he asked.
“Down Rockaway to the train.”
He nodded, and then they were together, strolling down Rockaway.
“If you don’t mind me asking, where’s your family from, like your ancestry?”
“I’m half Chinese and half Jewish,” she volunteered, smiling when he raised his eyebrows. “My dad grew up here.”
“Chinese and Jewish.” He thought about this. “Oh yeah. Ms. Lina said this whole area used to be Jewish. When her family moved here.”
“It was actually my Chinese family that lived here. They ran a restaurant. And my dad grew up in a house on Amboy.”
“Oh yeah?” he laughed. “I guess you got roots in the ’Ville. And you? You grew up in Brooklyn?”
She nodded.
“Which part?”
“Park Slope. But it was not as gentrified back then.”
“I went to P.S. 321,” he said.
“Wait, really? Me too!”
“My grandpa drove me. Finished fifth grade in, I don’t know, ’94 maybe.”
“A couple of years before I started.” She glanced at him, wanting to know exactly how he felt about her neighborhood. “Did you like 321?”
“Are we still on the record, or…”
“Off the record! It was a super-homogenous school,” she rushed to say. “Like, super white.”
“You hit it on the nail.”
They stopped when they reached Brownsville Houses, but instead of going home, Tyrell turned to her.
“I’m glad I went. It gave me a perspective not every Brownsville kid gets. I saw what school could be. The teachers in Brownsville treated us like we were already in juvie. And I feel like one of the problems in Brownsville isisolation. We’re all the way out here at the end of the 3 train, concentrated poverty, no opportunities, no friends in high places. It’s important for us to be working with outside people—the ones we can trust. That’s why I appreciate this opportunity to connect with you.”
Disappointed to still be grouped among the “outside people,” she tried to smile.
Then he touched the elbow of her sweater.
“You good getting home?”
Even after it was gone, she felt the tingling warmth of his hand and struggled not to react.
Sadie was supposed to be off from work Halloween night, but instead she found herself reliving that interaction with Tyrell, as well as obsessing over the connection between Ms. Lina’s lot and her grandparents’ restaurant. Scrunched up on her desk chair, Sadie tried to remember a particular database she’d learned about during her internship atThe New York Times—a website with the deed records for each land plot in New York City.
“ACRIS,” she googled. She entered 78 Livonia Avenue and converted this to an official block and lot number.
