by Alyssa Cole
I place her clothes back into their cubbyholes and try to get the closet back to the neat state it was in before I tore through it looking for bedbugs. When I have it back in order, I pick up a few slips of paper that drifted out from the bottom-left cubby.
A receipt from the old Foodtown that’s currently being renovated so it can be reopened as a Whole Foods–type supermarket. A phone number and smiley face scrawled on a ripped scrap of paper with a blue ballpoint pen. An ATM deposit slip for fifty thousand dollars.
Fifty thousand dollars.
Drea tells me about all her side hustles, and especially if they pay even remotely well.
Fifty thousand dollars. What would pay that well and in a lump sum?
But this was from around the time I was in the deepest shit with Marcus. Maybe I’d forgotten, or she hadn’t wanted to rub it in while I was suffering. Yeah, that makes sense.
There’s a scan of the check itself on the receipt, which is dated from before I’d returned home. The name of the company it was issued by is hard to read at first, or maybe I just don’t want to see it, but it’s all too familiar to me.
I stare at it for a long moment, trying to reconcile it with what I know of the company. Drea would never . . .
She would never.
She’ll explain when she gets back. Of course there’s an explanation.
I march mindlessly back to the apartment downstairs and barricade myself in my bedroom with a bottle of wine and my cell phone. I wrap my hands in socks to keep from hurting myself as I scratch at imagined bugs crawling over my skin, and I jump at imaginary flecks of black just out of my line of sight. I can’t distract myself with TV because I need to hear if there are any more noises in the building, but I take a sip every time the possibility of what that check means pops into my mind.
By the time the sun rises, the bottle is empty, I haven’t slept a wink, and Drea still hasn’t come home.
Gifford Place OurHood post by Kaneisha Bell:
I just want to put out there that a strange white man showed up at my door and asked to come in and do a “valuation” of my house. This was the first I’d heard of any of this, so I didn’t let him in. I called the police, and they said they’d send someone out to get a statement, but no one ever came. Everyone keep an eye out.
Candace Tompkins: @Fitzroy Sweeney @Gracie Todd
Asia Martin: That is scary as fuck. Do you think he was trying to do a home invasion?
Josie Ulnar: No, no, we had our home valuated last week and it’s fine. They just come in and take a look around. It’s so they can figure out the property tax. You have to let them in.
Asia Martin: We don’t *have* to do shit, actually.
Chapter 13
Theo
“NORTH AMERICA. BRAZIL. THE DUTCH WEST INDIA COMPANY was founded explicitly to wage economic warfare. It’s in their charter. I thought the Dutch were a neutral people, but maybe I was thinking of the Swiss.”
Sydney grunts a response. Her behavior is worrying me. I’ve been talking for ten minutes straight and she hasn’t smiled, hasn’t made fun of me, hasn’t responded to the Dutch West India Company facts I’m spouting to impress her.
She stares into space as she waters the sunflowers along the edge of the community garden, the dark circles under her eyes so startling that my stomach twisted at first glance, mistaking them for black eyes. I’m starting to wonder if she’s slept at all this week—it’s hard not to notice that she’s more fidgety and fatigued every time I see her.
I’m also wondering why her problems, which she hasn’t asked for help with, are making me so antsy.
I keep talking.
“But the craziest thing I found was that a lot of these guys made their money from slaves—uh, enslaved people.”
“Duh. I thought you were supposed to be good at research,” she says. I can tell she’s trying for a jab, but it lands more like a weak poke.
I press on, trying to revive the Sydney who’s so passionate about history.
“Well, that’s not the crazy thing. After slavery ended, all these guys needed new jobs, so they just moved into the banking sector, even founding some of them. Like you know Veritas Bank? Started by a Brooklyn-Dutch former slave master. You told me before that the banks were all tied up in slavery, when you talked about that crash, but it’s like all these guys never gave up much power, they just . . .” I struggle to find the right way to say this, the right words to convey how royally fucked this is. “They just put on a different suit. Things didn’t change that much. They were still controlling all the money, and in a way they were still controlling the people they didn’t own anymore, because they controlled who got money, where money was invested. And one of the Veritas directors even lived in this neighborhood! His last name was Vriesendaal, like the old sanitarium.”
“Wow,” she says, but there’s no excitement in her voice. None of the passion from when she showed me her ideas, or even when she interrupted during the brownstone tour. “Good work. I can use that.”
I keep talking. You can usually talk people out of bad moods, just like you can talk them into other things. Keep the words flowing at a steady pace. Lull them into a kind of distracted comfort, or push them into annoyance. Either way, their reaction is under your control.
“And what kind of name is Usselincx, the name of the guy who founded the company? It sounds like the super-obvious villain in a movie. ‘Mwahaha, my name is Usselincx and I came here to steal land and get trounced by the British, and I’m all out of—’”
“Theo.” She cuts a glance at me through squinted eyes. “You’re wandering very close to the borders of Howdy Doody Land, and also tap-dancing just next to my last nerve. Step lightly.”
I shouldn’t be happy to have drawn this reaction from her, but that’s the first time she’s looked remotely up-and-at-’em today. I do my best approximation of a soft shuffle next to a patch of lettuce and she playfully swerves the spray of water in my direction, though she makes sure not to get me wet.
I feel slightly ridiculous for having just literally tap-danced for a woman I supposedly don’t care about, but her expression is a little less taut, and there’s a bit of light in her eyes.
She turns off the hose and wipes her hands over her shorts—longer cutoffs than she’s worn the past few days, accentuating her hips and thighs without revealing them. I take a deep breath and pull my thoughts in the opposite direction.
“Ready to meet the Day Club Crew and pump them for history?” she asks.
“Let’s go.”
WHEN WE GET to Candace’s house, I hate that I’m shocked at how nice it is, mostly because the outside is so markedly in a state of disrepair. I wouldn’t have picked this as one of the nicest places on the block, and I excel at that. Kim had always been annoyed by this house, saying it was being wasted. She would have thought differently if she’d stopped being a jerk long enough to be invited inside.
The inner door is glass embedded in dark wood, allowing you to see into the bright open-plan living room/dining room/kitchen area that takes up the floor.
The walls are an elegant eggshell and the furniture all looks expensive and classy. A long window along the kitchen wall floods the entire floor with sunlight from the backyard. It looks like a picture from the Boomtown app, except there are Black people in the frame.
At the dining room table sit three elderly women and an even older man, judging by the number of wrinkles on his face. He moves his mouth in the familiar way of someone with uncomfortable dentures working them with his tongue. One of the women is thin and wearing a scarf on her head, another has her hair in a straight gray bob, and the third has one half of hers undone—the other half has been put into a boxer braid, a style Kim was crazy about after seeing it in some fashion magazine.
Candace goes to stand behind the woman and begins braiding the other half of her hair with quick efficient twists and pulls of her fingers and wrists.
“Who’s this man?” the woman wit
h the scarf asks. There’s the slight singsong of Caribbean accent in her voice, but the wariness is unmissable. “Another come try to steal we homes?”
I don’t know how to respond so I look to Sydney.
“Hi, Miss Ruth,” she says, taking a seat at the table. “This is Theodore. He owns the house where the Paynes used to live.”
My name isn’t Theodore, but I nod in the woman’s direction anyway as I take a seat. “Nice to meet you, Miss Ruth.”
“Ah, it was the Payne house he took? I like him, then. I was so glad when that family left, let me tell you. I couldn’t stand Doris Payne, always thinking she better than everyone, trying to talk down her nose to me.” Miss Ruth’s accent grows harder to understand as she gets agitated, but I try to follow. “She look funny at my husband, asking him to come fix her kitchen sink and all that! I smack she black she white, and she never talk to him again.”
She nods decisively and the other women make noises of commiseration. I have no idea what she just said but I nod, too.
The old man works his dentures, then says, “Doris was a good woman in my book.”
“Of course you would say so, Fitzroy,” the woman with the gray bob says in an accent that could be British.
Sydney chuckles, an encouraging sign of life.
Candace shakes her head. “Theo, that’s Gracie and this is Paulette. Paulette don’t talk much.”
The woman getting her hair braided stays silent but keeps a wary gaze locked on me, even as Candace finishes her hair and pats her shoulder before taking her own seat.
“How are you doing, Sydney?” Gracie asks politely as she reaches for the teapot in the middle of the table and fills two cups before handing them to me and Sydney. “Haven’t talked to you much the last few months.”
“I’ve been busy,” Sydney says. “You know how it is.”
“Well, no, I don’t know, since I’m an old crone who spends my days watching stories with these miscreants, but I understand.”
That gets another laugh around the table, but Gracie’s blithe behavior doesn’t completely distract from the curious worry in her eyes.
I take a sip of the strong tea and try to keep my expression neutral as the bitter liquid hits my tongue, but something must give away my urge to do a spit-take because Gracie’s gaze meets mine with amusement dancing in her eyes. “Have you never had bush tea before, young man?”
“No,” I manage, eyes watering. “It’s . . . strong.”
“Good for the health,” Fitzroy says. “That’s why we old-timers are still here and kicking.”
“Don’t worry, it’s not poison,” Gracie adds, then tilts her head. “Not for us. But come to think of it, it is a recipe passed down from generation to generation, and back on the Bajan plantations it was called ‘buckra’s do-fa-do.’ Many slavers came to an unfortunate end after having a cup.”
Fitzroy snort-laughs. “Not enough of them, though!”
I wait for Gracie to laugh, too, and tell me she’s joking, but she just takes a sip of her tea and stares at me over the rim. I hold my cup awkwardly, knowing this is some kind of test but unsure whether it’s to see if I’m dumb enough to believe there’s a poison that works only on white people or dumb enough not to.
There’s a taut silence and then I think fuck it and take a sip.
Candace starts laughing, her eyes wide. “You think Gracie won’t poison you? Boy, this woman has gone through five husbands and I know some of them deaths wasn’t natural.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Gracie says demurely. “I just wanted to see if the young man could take a ribbing.”
She winks at me, and though she’s maybe sixty-five, I fully understand why men kept marrying her even if she was possibly a murderer.
“Sydney!” Miss Ruth calls her name suddenly, like Sydney hasn’t been sitting across the table from her the whole time. “I heard you left that man of yours, the one with a forehead like that Black Star Trek alien. I say, ‘Good riddance.’ Good for you. Never liked the way he acted when he came around here.” She dusts her hands in an exaggerated motion, then claps.
Sydney’s chest heaves up and down before she opens her mouth to speak.
“Uh, thanks, Miss Ruth. I just had some questions about the neighborhood for the history tour,” she says. “Can we talk about that, please?”
Miss Ruth doesn’t look happy about being denied gossip about Sydney’s ex. I’m bummed about it, too.
“You can’t ask your mother?” Fitzroy asks.
“Yolanda is not well, remember?” Gracie chides, and Fitzroy startles. Her glower dissolves into a pitying smile when she turns to Sydney. “Fitzroy is more like Forgets-roy these days. Ignore him. We all do.”
Sydney nods tightly, then blinks a few times and says, “It’s fine. I do have stories from my mother, but do any of you have fun facts about the neighborhood or people who lived here that I can use for my tour?”
“I have stories, but not ones you can use,” Miss Ruth says, and they all laugh.
Fitzroy scratches at his bald head.
“I came here before your mother, I believe. In seventy-two,” Fitzroy says. “I bought my home from a Jamaican man who worked at one of the Black real estate agencies. I think, now, all the white agencies come and push them out, too. And then they sell to the white people. But a few years ago, it was mostly us selling, and mostly us buying. At least on Gifford Place.”
Between this and Kendra Hill’s conversation, I’m realizing that I’d never thought much about Black communities, or Black people, really.
I had, of course, but in the same way I think about the U.S. Postal Service. It exists, and functions, mostly, but I don’t know the nuts and bolts of how things get delivered. When I think of a Black community, the first thing that comes to mind—even if I don’t want it to—is crime. Drugs. Gangs. Welfare. That’s all the news has talked about since I was a kid. Not old people drinking tea. Not complex self-sustaining financial systems that had to be created because racism means being left out to dry.
“You have to own property. You have to,” Gracie says. “My father always told us that. That’s why they don’t like to sell to us, you know? Making up stories about property value dropping like they aren’t the ones who decide the value.” She makes a derisive noise. “Truth is, if you own, you have power. That’s why they always try to strip it away.”
“Listen to all this capitalist talk,” Miss Ruth says with a head toss. “What we need is revolution.”
“Ruth, you own five houses. Don’t even start,” Candace says severely. “Your head would be the first on the block on this block.”
Ruth shrugs. “I play on the game board I’m given, Candace. At least if I sell four of the houses, maybe I’ll be able to pay the property taxes on the fifth. They can pry my house from my cold, dead fingers.”
“Ah, that reminds me of a story, Sydney.” Fitzroy nods. “When the blackout happened, way back when. I had to stand in front of my house with my cricket bat. Said, ‘Booooy, you wanna try it you can try it’ to every knucklehead who tried to take what I had worked for. Not a window was shattered, not a plant pot was overturned.” He laughs deeply and then coughs, and Candace walks over, picks up his cup, and holds it to his mouth so he sips.
“The blackout a few years back?” I ask.
“No, there was one in seventy-seven,” Sydney says. “There was looting and all kinds of wild stuff.”
“Looting.” Gracie snorts delicately.
“Yeah,” Sydney continues. “My mom told me the TV we had when I was a kid was one she ‘found on the street’ in front of an electronics store during the blackout.”
All of the older people around the table chuckle.
“Well, I don’t know how she got that TV, but I do know that someone stepped to your mama while she sat on the porch smoking and watching the madness,” Fitzroy says. “That man ended up dancing away from the end of her revolver. I thought I was doing something with my crick
et bat, and she was over there ready to shoot.”
Candace laughs. “Oh, you know Yolanda’s folks were those Virginians.”
“She never told me that,” Sydney says, bittersweet laughter in her voice. “But I can imagine it. She told me she wasn’t raised to take mess but she knew how to clean it up.”
“I can’t believe I don’t know anything about this blackout,” I say, itching to pull out my phone but not wanting to be rude. “What caused it?”
“It was on purpose,” a quiet voice says, and when I look across the table, Paulette is staring at me. Her dark eyes are hard, and her voice doesn’t have a Caribbean lilt, but sounds more like an imitation of a New York accent from an old movie. “They wanted us to destroy everything, so they could come in and fix it. Turned off the lights. Started trouble in the dark. They got a foot back in the door then, a toe, but it wasn’t enough damage. After that the drugs came, all of a sudden, and the violence, and the cops. Breaking everything down, so they could come in and build it up for themselves.”
Candace sighs into the heavy silence after that statement. “When I said Paulette don’t talk much, I meant when she does, it’s illuminati mess from watching too many YouTube videos.”
Paulette’s gaze hasn’t swerved from mine. “He knows. He’s one of them, always sneaking around at night, always watching. Here to break and build, break and build.” Her voice is rising steadily, gaining strength. “Race riots, they call them, but who started them? Why would we? Who profited? He’s one of them!”
Her last words bounce off the high ceiling and reverberate in the room. Her breathing is heavy and she’s looking at me as if she sees through the smile, the goofiness, right down to the poor trash grifter core of me.
Candace leans across the table and takes Paulette’s hand. “Paulie?”
Paulette looks at Candace for a long minute, gaze unfocused, but slowly she comes back to herself, then smiles. “Hey, Candy.”
“There we go, honey.” Candace gives her hand a squeeze.