Mr. Eugene trudged upstairs for the hot meals, and Patricia Taylor’s grandchildren raced downstairs for the music classes. The most persistent cat of the block, who the kids nicknamed Miss Freedom, received her daily tuna can courtesy of the Freedom School—in exchange, Lina hoped, for keeping rats away from the building. Lina told her old students about the school, and she paid visits to thefamilies in 80 Livonia, the tenement next door. Mr. Wong owned that building, too, and had subdivided the existing apartments to pack in more tenants. She listened to the residents’ stories and encouraged them to come speak about their experiences and share their insights with the community.
Her people had so much knowledge they didn’t know they had. They had been told all their lives that their experiences represented nothing but deviations from the true story of American greatness, when in fact theywereAmerica, the very foundation of it.
The building still had problems, but her team took maintenance into its own hands: repairing leaky sinks and toilets, sweeping the sidewalk, clearing leaves out of the roof drain. Her former student June was especially devoted to the school’s success. She designed a big orange banner that said,BROWNSVILLE FREEDOM SCHOOL, which they hung out the window, though Lina also kept the restaurant’sCHOW MEIN HERE!sign. It was a good landmark, a way to help people remember her school’s location. Some people even started calling it the Chow Mein School. And Lina insisted every visitor touch the red silk knot on the back of the front door—it was the Freedom School’s official good luck charm.
Lina was the founder and organizer, but she was also one of the students. It was during Mr. Parson’s Decolonize Your Mind seminars that Lina realized the struggle was no longer Black against white. Now in Brooklyn, you could find Black and Puerto Rican cops and Black and Puerto Rican politicians willing to terrorize their own people. Community control in Brownsville had devolved into one Black politician’s fiefdom, a quid-pro-quo machine to sugar up a few and disenfranchise the rest, negating everything they’d been trying to do—and all this while the pangs of hunger sharpened, the young men roamed the streets, and the city offered nothing but broken promises. It had promised to fix the crumbling homes and abandoned buildings, to build new homes and recreation centers and schools, but instead it let the structures rot, bulldozing what remained. Brownsville residents were tired of the neglect, tired of the fly-swarmed, trash-bagmountains. A few residents had taken that garbage into their own hands, and how could anyone blame them? The papers had called it a riot, but it was only after Brownsvillians had made the news for setting fire to their trash that the city had ramped up the garbage collection schedule.
So, the solution wasn’t Black faces in high places: it was time to knock down the whole system. They could look toward Cuba, toward China—proof that the oppressed people of the world could carve their own path.
One Saturday in autumn, after the babies went home from Altogether Now Day Care, a woman and her son hiked up the stairs. Lina was happy to hear shoes tapping on the fresh wood; she and Walter had recently replaced several steps that had sunk like hammocks from age.
“Good afternoon, someone said y’all giving away free meals for the kids?” the woman said with a Midwestern lilt.
Lina had not seen them before. The boy’s crown was no higher than his mother’s waist. When he saw Lina, his lower lip protruded, his eyes narrowed, and he tightened his grip on his mother’s arm as ifshewas the child.
“I’m Nellie Price and this is Wesley,” she said, her voice high and pineapple sweet. On her curvaceous body, she wore a pink jumpsuit, a cotton sweater, and wide hoop earrings. A crucifix hung from her neck, and her hair blossomed like a black hyacinth, rising nearly a foot into the air.
Here was probably the world’s most beautiful woman, Lina thought to herself—and there, the little boy at her side, the bittersweet evidence that she was already claimed by a man.
“You’ve come to the right place!” Lina said, waving them in. When it turned out there was nothing but a pot of plain rice in the fridge, she returned to the main room and, crouching beside the boy, asked him what he’d like her to cook. Both mother and son seemed embarrassed.
“How about some egg fried rice?” Lina suggested.
“We good with anything—we don’t mean to cause trouble,” Nellie said, tickling the crook of Wesley’s neck.
Lina returned to the kitchen. Inspired by the various pots and sauces that the Wongs had left behind, she’d taken out a book from the public library calledThe Easy Way to Chinese Cooking.
She was surprised when, a few minutes later, Nellie and Wesley appeared in the kitchen doorway.
“Where you buy them sauces? Those are Chinese ingredients?”
“In the city. Got a store on Canal with all this stuff.”
“All right now,” Nellie said. “And I saw the sign that says this is a school. You the principal?”
“This is an alternative school. But you’re the first to call me a principal.” Lina smiled, certain Nellie was not from New York.
“And the books and art supplies out there—it’s nice.”
“Your son can use them! This space belongs to everyone in the community.”
“You hear that, Wesley?” Nellie nudged her son. “Go and look at the books.”
He wouldn’t leave her side, and so she held him and fiddled with his ears. “I’d sure love to put Wesley in your school. I don’t know if you’d accept a new student? They got him at P.S. 183 right now.”
“Our Freedom School’s not a government-sanctioned school. I wish it was. But he can come here after school and on weekends.”
Amused by Nellie’s curiosity, Lina dished the fried rice into two bowls, took them back to the table in the main room, and explained the school’s origin story. Wesley ate tentatively at first, then rapidly, and Nellie replenished his bowl with spoonfuls from her own. Instead of eating, she looked around, absorbing the artwork on the walls and the charts outlining the Freedom School’s values and principles. Then she pushed her bowl toward her son—and, giving his mother a woeful glance, he took it and mowed down the remainder.
Nellie touched Lina’s naked ring finger. “You ain’t married?”
Before Lina had a chance to respond, she continued. “My son hastrouble with men who remind him of his dad. That’s why we drove all the way here from Detroit.”
They had been in Brooklyn for nine days, staying with a cousin who lived in Tilden Houses. Nellie didn’t have any skills, or so she claimed, and didn’t have a clue what she’d do about a job. “Well, I can do hair, but that’s about it.”
They stayed for the Decolonize Your Mind seminar that evening. The multigenerational group of students sat on chairs rescued from dumpsters, discussingThe Black Woman. To Lina’s surprise, it was the boldest ideas that captivated Nellie the most, that prompted her to hum in agreement, as if beneath her pretty exterior, her girlish sweetness, there was already a militant guerrilla ready to deploy for battle.
“I get what this lady Miss Kay Lindsey is writing,” Nellie said at one point. “I used to be like most girls, thinking I needed a man to come save me, you know, ‘a woman ain’t nothing without her man.’ But I don’t think I need men no more.”
