“Look,” Tyrell said. “If we ain’t working with Bernard, we need massive public support. So we get this out in the media, Ms. Lina. Big-time.”
“Ah, you want us talking to that reporter you crushing on.” She glanced at Tyrell to gauge his reaction, but he wasn’t in a mood to be teased.
Lina took a deep breath. “Okay. We do need press. Tell Miss Sadie I accept. But this interview—you got to let me do it my way.”
“Deal.” Tyrell nodded.
Soon they were home in the ’Ville again, the smell of fresh bread through the window, a bass beat vibrating Lina’s skull. It was three o’clock, just past dismissal time, and Lina watched the groups of kids play-fighting on the corners.
It wasn’t until she was behind her apartment door that the heaviness sank in. Icing her knees, listening to thedrip drip dripof the kitchen sink pipe, thinking about the beauty of Brownsville, Lina felt a familiar twist in her gut, her intestines tangled like Christmas lights in storage.
THE WONGS
Picture a summer day, 1956.
On Amboy Street, three little girls played in a yard: Jennifer, Julie, and Jackie Wong, seven and five and two, with matching blue overalls and red sun hats, black hair cropped to their chins. They and the hak gui were the only ones who ate their bread stuffed with pork. The only ones who went to school on Rosh Hashanah.
When no one asked to play with the Wong girls, the Wong girls played with one another. Jennifer acted the part of the mother and decided most of the plot. When her little sisters acted up, she distributed punishments: stand still for twenty minutes. No speaking for one hour. Timing them, on her imaginary watch.
Jennifer, charming like her father and industrious like her mother, won penny candy with her smile. At seven, she could recite her multiplication tables and link together the notes on a keyboard to play “Jingle Bells.” She would go on to be the Wong family’s first college graduate, its first with a desk job, its first to own a house with a trampoline and finished basement.
Julie was the one who loved to write her name with calligraphy pens, who waited all year for the stomp of lions on Mott Street, and who was brave enough to eat pig blood congealed in little pink squares. She’d become the most traditional of the three, and if anyone wantedto know the correct word in Toisanese for each aunt and uncle, she’d have it memorized.
The Wongs worried about Jackie’s tendency to touch things that weren’t meant to be touched—squirrels, and the hands and faces of beggars who waved at her. She’d be the one to spend every Sunday behind the counter of a Newark soup kitchen, to live a life of service.
On this particular Saturday, Jennifer had decided her daughter Julie deserved a pet, and they were at the shop adopting an over-eager dog named Jackie, who liked to lick Julie’s knees. Foon Wah watched them from the porch, taking pleasure in the perfection of their matching overalls. Some of the homeowners hung lights along the porch rails, and others decorated their doorways with stone animals and wind mobiles. Foon Wah had chopped up the brittle soil and planted violets; her yard now fit in perfectly among the others.
Richard still wanted a boy, but this was not China. In America, a girl could go to college. Work and support her parents. She could choose who she wished to marry. Foon Wah’s girls would study hard every night, attend good universities, and when they arrived in the working world, no one would doubt their worth.
The wife of the neighboring house emerged carrying a heavy cardboard box. She descended the porch steps and added it to the pile of things she had already left on the brick pathway.
“How are you?” Foon Wah ventured.
“Oh, I’m all right. Thank you, dear.”
“You… move?”
“Yes. Yes, thank God, we’re finally out of here.”
“Far away?”
“Oh, just Midwood.”
Something was afoot in Brownsville. The Jews whispered, pointing at the squiggles spray-painted on the synagogue door. Took new routes to avoid the projects. Mothers rummaged through the closets, yanked out suitcases, while fathers stopped in front of Kishke King to jab at the sports section:
“They’re gonna knock down Ebbets Field!”
“They picked a new site yet?”
“Downtown Brooklyn, I heard.”
“The city won’t agree to it. They don’t give a damn about our boys.”
Richard was at the handball court, diving in front of another player, picking it up—a killer. Knees bent, hands on thighs. Swipe the ball, arm arched backward: a roller. He won a shutout, and the other players shook their heads. His pockets bulged with their dollars, evidence to himself that he was one of the best handball players in Brownsville.
Six games in, the eight men removed their leather gloves and passed around a pack of Murads. They breathed in the wet oak leaves, listened to the tinny tune of a passing ice cream truck.
“We made a down payment on that house in Sheepshead Bay.”
