Sadie wasn’t sure what to say. It was true she didn’t know much about her ancestors. She’d always wanted to know more. And that’s why she’d come to Ms. Lina, but what if the truth was shameful?
“Does NYCHA want to bake us to death? Let me crack the window,” Ms. Lina said, rising to her feet. “Y’all want anything to drink?”
Rule number two: don’t accept gifts from sources, not even beverages. Tyrell, however, insisted that Lina pour them each a glass of “that Spanish drink.”
“Papi! Don’t say ‘that Spanish drink,’?” Ms. Lina replied as she shuffled away. “Horchata de ajonjolí!”
“Horchata! My bad.” He held his hands up in a gesture of surrender.
Tyrell and Sadie were alone then, the radiator gurgling, an old Smokey Robinson tape playing softly on the boom box. She could smell the mint gum in Tyrell’s cheek, his natural sweat, and a layering of cucumber-scented detergent.
“Everyone in the ’Ville loves Ms. Lina’s horchata,” Tyrell said, turning to face her with his elbow resting on the back of the couch.
“I guess I should try it.”
“I was at this leadership training last week and this white professor was trying to get me to sayLatinx,” he said, one eyebrow raised. “Said I was being disrespectful saying ‘Spanish people.’ That’s what you say, Latinx? That’s what they teach the kids at Yale?”
His voice sounded different from before—so fast and light on the consonants that she wanted to slip into the stream of it.
“Oh,” she stuttered. “I… I guess my professors would say Latino, Latina. I feel like it’s more recently that I hear Latinx. Like so we don’t have to gender everything and everyone, you know?”
“I was talking to Ricky—Ricky’s Dominican. And he was like, ‘Don’t come around me with those new fancy words, telling me I’m Latinx. Ain’t no ‘x’ sound in Español, and I ain’t never been Latinx until today.’?”
“What does Ms. Lina say?”
“I guess she likes me to be specific.Boricua. But the thing that gets me is when these academics make it sound like Ricky is stupid for preferring the thing he always used. I’ve thought about going back, but then I’m like, what can they teach me that I don’t already know about my people?”
She nodded. Was he telling her all this because he wanted her to see him as her equal? Mostly she agreed with him, but a part of her resisted this reduction of her hard work in school. She was embarrassed of this part.
Tyrell bent over and picked something up from the floor. Her hat, she realized. Placed it on her thigh. The soft crochet touched her like a hand.
Lina wondered if something was wrong with the radiator. Or maybe this was a hot flash—felt like she was going through menopause all over again. She removed her beret and wiped the sweat from her forehead.
Reaching the kitchen, she opened the window and looked down at the street. A quietness came over Brownsville when it rained. She thought of her mother Isabella, who always said it was good luck to get wet by the first May rain. Each spring, Mami would grab their hands and pull them out to the courtyard, where they’d laugh and catch droplets on their tongues, delighted by their mother’s sudden whimsy. Lina would have liked to be out there now, instead of with Sadie and Tyrell and their flickering eyes. Their eyes: that’s why the room felt like an oven.
With her remarks, Lina had only been trying to find a way to reach the girl, to help her understand the history and context behind their fight for the land. Then Miss Sadie had asked why the city shouldn’t work with big developers, why the city should waste itstime working with broke-ass grassroots groups like theirs. It was the same question that had worried Tyrell on their way back from Bernard & Company, and she’d been pondering it ever since. But the city had to think beyond “bang for the buck,” she thought. It had to think about justice. About priorities. If the city didn’t spend so lavishly on stadiums and military-grade equipment for the NYPD, the mayor could put funds into community groups that would construct the kind of housing and facilities people truly needed. And the community groups would do it right—they’d put their neighbors to work, hire young people to hammer and to paint, and give poor people collective ownership of the land. That was the real recipe for public safety and economic progress, in her view. That’s why Lina had asked the girl about her own family. She wanted Sadie to stop thinking so hard and insteadfeel. Wanted her to remember her inheritance. Chinese and Jewish people had experienced injustice and displacement too—she needed Sadie to tap into that memory.
Bearing a tray with three glasses of horchata, Lina returned to the living room and handed Miss Sadie a cup.
“This is amazing,” Miss Sadie said.
Lina had never met a mixed Chinese and Jewish person. It was hard to imagine the Chinese lady from the laundry on Rockaway sneaking over to Eastern Parkway and blowing kisses to one of the Hasid men with sidelocks.
With these thoughts, Lina had yet another hot flash, and she sat back down and reached forOur Time Press, folding the latest issue into a fan. There was no use speculating about Miss Sadie, she told herself again. She would have to finish this interview.
“Okay, so what do you want to know? You want to know about the Freedom School?” She sipped from her horchata. “I used to live at 78 Livonia Avenue, and I turned my apartment into an alternative school, a liberation school. We called it the Freedom School. We had a pantry, a free hair salon, art and political education classes. We even had a day care for the little kids. In the summer, we organized Black Power parades and Puerto Rican Pride parades.”
“How did you fund the school?” Sadie asked.
“Donations, fish fries, art sales, rent parties.”
“And how many years did the Freedom School exist?”
“About seven.”
“And then what happened?”
The girl wanted to talk about the fire.
