At two p.m., Carl Baker, a parent on the PTA at P.S. 401, sent an email that confirmed her worst fears.
Please stop emails to me and any others in Brownsville who you may be in contact with. Peace be with you.
Once again awash in the anxiety that had choked her the prior night, Sadie stared at the email, now completely at a loss. She was almost afraid to bike to Brownsville and see what people on the streets would say to her.
The following day, she biked there anyway, and when she arrived, there were no activists waiting to throw her across Utica Avenue. A Dominican man, smiling warmly, sold her a beef patty. Like always, the children gaped at her press pass. It was not until she found Ms. Davis, the director of a NYCHA senior center, that she was able to speak to someone in earnest.
“Miss Sadie, I’m going to be honest with you, I liked the article you wrote about the senior center last month,” Ms. Davis said as she opened boxes of applesauce in the center’s kitchen. “I don’t know what you did to make other people mad, but you sure did make them mad. A lot of people here don’t trust you anymore. How come you’re reporting in Brownsville, anyway? You report in other neighborhoods? Maybe you should try reporting in a different neighborhood.”
Sadie blew her breath out and leaned her hands on the metal countertop. As she’d always been a good student, this would be the first missed deadline of her life.
When Sadie left the senior center, it was snowing, the first flurry of the year, the flakes light and wispy like puffs of laundry lint. Ms. Lina and Tyrell’s building was a few blocks away. Out of desperation, she reached for her phone, wiping it with her reddening hands each time a flake curtsied on the screen.
Hey Tyrell, I’m in the area. Can we talk?
Waiting for a reply, she walked up and down Rockaway Avenue, watched the snow kiss the car hoods. A NYCHA janitor spread salt on the sidewalk, the chunks as big as fish tank pebbles.
No response.
Sadie snuck into their building quietly. On the sixth floor, she hesitated, unsure which door was his and afraid Ms. Lina would discover her standing there. Sadie picked the door with a bumper sticker shaped like a skull and bones.CRACK IS WACK, it read.
She knocked.
Footsteps. An eye in the peephole, widening. An awkward pause.
“Tyrell, is that you?” she whispered. “Can I please talk to you?”
She heard him cursing beneath his breath.
The scraping of the chain lock. He opened the door just a few inches and glanced beyond into the hallway, looking for Ms. Lina.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he whispered.
“Can I come in?”
“No,” he snapped, and then he swallowed, his forehead creased.
“Please, I really need to talk to you. Just for a second.”
Warily, he unchained the door, let her through the entry, and closed it behind her.
“What did you want to say?”
“Could we… sit down for a second?”
He bit his lip, and without speaking, led them to two separate chairs by the TV. In one corner sat a white machine that looked likesomething you might find in a doctor’s office, and near it, a table stacked with Clorox wipes and blue pads.
All of the warmth of their earlier interactions was gone, and more than ever, she felt like an outsider.
“Look, I didn’t mean to hide something—I didn’t expect any of this would happen.”
She waited for a sign of understanding, but she could not read his expression.
“I didn’t know anything about the fire when I started this job. I knew my grandfather ran a restaurant. And I was shocked when I learned the connection.”
“How can we trust anything you say?”
He pinched his temples as if he had a headache.
