He sauntered over, kicking the trash and needles out of his way.
“You think I’m leaving you here by yourself so those cops can come lock you up, huh?”
She was about to make a clever retort, but then she thought about what he’d said and had to smile.
Tyrell had turned around.
“Hey Melvin!” he bellowed. “Melvin!”
She realized then that Melvin was on the other side of the street, squinting toward the lot as he stumbled along. He was still wearing that Mickey Mouse T-shirt along with shoes three sizes too big for him.
“I see you, man!” Melvin called back, and he crossed the street toward them.
“Melvin, how you been?”
Melvin nodded at Tyrell and leaned his forehead against the wire fence. “You got a dollar to help me get some pizza tonight?”
“You give me a hand with this trash for a few hours,” Tyrell said, pointing to the heavy-duty garbage bags, “I’ll pay you fifty.”
“Fifty cents?” Melvin asked.
“Fifty bucks.”
“Tyrell!” Lina cried.
“No sweat. Yesterday was payday,” Tyrell whispered back.
“No, nuh-uh.” Lina raised herself off the mini fridge and grabbed Tyrell’s arm. “I ain’t letting no one get hurt or arrested. I can’t deal with that no more.”
“No one said me or Melvin had to. What we do with our time is our business,” Tyrell replied. “At least I employ the neighborhood. At union wages too.”
Over the next hour, Melvin and Tyrell filled up three heavy-duty garbage bags with junk. Lina wanted to tear the implements out of their hands, but she was feeling dizzy from the heat, her limbs swollen and rigid as tree trunks. She sat back down on the rusted top of the mini fridge, baffled by her frailty. Back in the ’70s, everyone had written zines about sweat equity, but had any of them considered what they would do when they were all old and gray and just too damn tired?
“Ms. Lina, you had a good idea,” Tyrell said as he trimmed the rest of the lot. “But we need to get eyes on this site. Let’s make a press release, send it out to the New YorkDaily News, Our Time Press, to Brian atNew Gotham.And we follow our plan, at least the garden part. Get Ms. Freda and the others to work their magic. Then we get the whole community out here for a big rally. Take the 3 train, march to city hall.”
“We can’t involve the whole community,” she replied. “There are people in this community on parole. Kids one arrest away from Sing Sing. They can lock me up, it don’t matter—I’m gonna die soon anyway.”
“We’ll be careful. You know I always am,” he insisted, and he crouched in front of her and fixed her with a look. “Come on, Ms. Lina, listen to me this time, all right? How you gonna sustain a communityland trust without the community involved? You taught me that. We got to reach as many people as possible.”
She answered with a snort and looked away. “Last time I listened to you, I was talking to that fraud Sadie Chin.”
“Yeah.” Tyrell poked the side of his cheek with his tongue. “And that was my bad.”
“?’Cause you had the hots for her.”
“I’m sorry.”
They laughed, but there was enough sense to his words that when he and Melvin took a lunch break, she was still thinking about the idea.
Eventually, nature called, and with a groan she raised herself to her feet and went down Livonia to the church to use the women’s room. On her way back, she noticed two boys she knew from Brownsville Houses hollering curses up at a second-floor apartment in Marcus Garvey Village.
“What y’all doing?”
“Nothing.” They shifted their eyes to the sidewalk.
“Nothing? I can hear y’all down the block and you telling me you doing nothing?”
“We… chilling.” They shrugged and, always fidgety, the boy named Kenny kicked a beer can across the street.
