by Ibi Zoboi
“Madrina! It’s not like that. I’m trying to keep Janae away from that house. From Ainsley.”
“What’s the big deal, mija? She likes a boy. That’s it. She’s a big girl, you know.”
I shake my head. “They’re arrogant. That’s what’s the big deal. You should see their house, Madrina.”
I stand in front of a small table covered in only yellow and gold things. Yellow is Ochún’s color. I remember asking Madrina when she was trying to teach me this tradition why the color of love isn’t pink, or red. Think of the golden sun, she said. It makes everything on earth fall in love—how the ocean kisses land, how land nestles trees, how swaying trees always whisper sweet nothings into our ears.
“So which one is Ainsley? The cute one, or the cute one?” She laughs and I shake my head.
I sigh big and loud. “Those boys don’t belong here. And they changed everything about this block by renovating that house. Papi says the property values will go up, and the taxes too. Is that true, Madrina? You’ll have to pay more taxes because of that nice house?”
“Zuri, mi amor! Don’t you worry your little head about taxes and property values. You’re seventeen. That’s not your job. Your job is to fall in love!”
“I didn’t come here for love advice!” I say.
“Yes, you did. You want to know that your beloved sister is not falling for a playa.” She winks at me, letting me know that she’s using slang correctly.
“I already know everything I need to know, Madrina.” I unfold my arms and take a seat on the empty chair near her small table.
Madrina has a crystal ball on that table, as well as tarot cards, small bones from god knows what, coins from god knows where, shells, stones, pieces of folded paper, and a small collection of cigars. But that’s all for show. Most times, she just sits there pulling from a plain ol’ cigarette and talking to her clients about any- and everything. She’ll drop hints here and there about who has a crush on them, who they should marry, who they should divorce, or if there’s a side chick or side family in the picture. And she’s always on point. She says that the spirits guide her thoughts, but I think she just has good intuition.
Madrina takes out a lighter from her bra. She lights a stick of incense and puts it between her teeth. The smoke dances across her face, then travels up around her head as if it’s saying a prayer over her thoughts and memories.
I’m seated directly across from her, and the Nag Champa scent tickles my nose, but I don’t tell her this. “Okay, fine,” I start. “This is what’s gonna happen: Janae is gonna go out with that guy. They’re gonna spend all summer together and Janae’s never gonna spend a minute with me, and—”
Madrina puts her hand up to stop me from finishing my list of future complaints.
“I keep hearing Janae’s name. Why you so worried about your big sister? It’s her life.”
I exhale and let myself sink into the chair a little bit. Madrina has disarmed me. “I don’t want Janae to change,” I say real quiet.
Madrina closes her eyes and starts humming. She extends her wide, cool hands over the table. I take them. She rubs my hands. She holds them for a long minute. Then she opens her eyes and grins. Her face is smooth for her age, but the wrinkles on her neck are like ripples in the ocean; the tiny brown spots above the neckline of her white dress are like small, muted suns.
“No, mija. You’re gonna change.”
“Me?” I tense up. “But Janae . . .”
She squeezes my hands and I relax again. I close my eyes. She inhales deep, and she begins.
“Listen, Zuri Luz. Let your big sister be. Let things change.”
“Maybe,” I reply. But my heart isn’t ready to let my big sister drift away.
That night, our doorbell buzzes. Well, not our doorbell, but the one downstairs, because ours broke years ago. The downstairs bell buzzes loud enough for us to hear. We’re always having visitors who want either Papi or Mama for a game of dominos or to return Tupperware.
“Zuri!” Mama calls out nice and loud from the downstairs. According to Janae, it’s the third time she’s called my name, and I’m already deep in my book by the time I hear her.
She calls me again. “Zuri! Come down here! You have a visitor.”
My stomach sinks, and I hear all my sisters’ footsteps rush to either the front window or the door to our apartment. I hear the twins and Marisol shushing each other. I don’t get visitors, and Charlise always texts or calls before she comes over. And plus she’d just come upstairs. Mama never calls me down because I have a visitor. So by the time I get to the bottom of the first flight of stairs, I know who it is.
Mama is smiling way too hard. And she winks at me before going back to the apartment. I don’t even look at Darius as he’s standing there in the doorway. I look at his sneakers and bare ankles.
With my eyes still cast down, he hands something to me. It’s my laptop.
“Oh, shit,” I say, and grab it from him. I didn’t even realize I had left it at his house.
“You’re welcome,” he says.
“Thank you.” I clutch my laptop to my chest.
My chin tilts up, and our eyes meet. I realize how close we’re standing. The street outside goes quiet, as if the neighborhood is holding its breath.
He just stands there, and I don’t know if he expects me to say something else, or if he’s waiting for me to invite him in. I search his eyes for some sort of clue, but he looks sideways, and I don’t know what else to do, so I just step back and close the door in his face.
Seven
WE’RE ALMOST AT the park when I hear Janae say, “A couple blocks down Knickerbocker was where Carmine Galante was murdered.” It’s the only bit of Bushwick history she shares with the Darcy brothers during our whole walk to the park. She insisted that I tag along with her and Ainsley on their date, but I had no idea what I was in for—or that Darius was coming too.
When he stepped out of his mini-mansion behind Ainsley, he said he wanted “a tour of the hood.”
But I am not a tour guide. And I’m especially not his tour guide.
Janae and Ainsley are being all cutesy as they walk, mostly talking about nonsense like the best campus frat parties and their white schoolmates who wear shorts and hoodies in the dead of winter. “Z, who was he again?” she calls out. I’m about ten steps ahead of her.
“A Bonanno crime family boss,” I say. Janae was never into Papi’s stories about old Bushwick. I was the one who took notes and wrote poems about them.
“A what?” Darius says. He’s only a few steps behind me.
“The Italian mob. They ran this whole area way back in the day—drugs, gambling, blackmailing . . . you name it.”
“Cool. Sounds like you know your shit.”
“I do,” I say, and keep walking.
Both Ainsley and Darius look around as if they’ve never seen buildings like these before—lined up next to each other with colorful signs and words like taquería, botánica, and Iglesia Pentecostal. Once we cross Myrtle Avenue, Bushwick starts to not look like Bushwick anymore.
Darius takes pics of the graffiti-covered walls that are more like art for tourists than for kids who want to rep their hood or show off their skills to other crews.
When we reach the park, Janae hands me a blanket from her bag. Then she and Ainsley go off on their own, leaving me to babysit Darius because he looks like a fish out of water. Or maybe I’m the fish out of water, because no one told me that we were going to some sort of art and music festival for white people.
I look around to see that almost everyone is sitting on blankets, something we never did when I used to come here years ago. Nobody was having picnics in this park back in the day. We sat on benches and kept our eyes wide open in case anything went down. And something used to always go down. Still, I’m tired of standing, so I spread the blanket out on the dry grass, confident that with all these white people here now, they’ve cleaned up the rat poop and broken glass.
> “Maria Hernandez Park should probably be called Mary Hernan Park now instead,” I say to Darius as he sits next to me with his hands in his too-tight khaki shorts pockets.
“What exactly are you saying? Why would the name of this park have to change?” Darius asks, raising an eyebrow.
A white woman gets up from her blanket and starts dancing for no reason at all. The music hasn’t even come on yet. So it’s not really dancing, it’s just random gyrating of her hips. “All these white people don’t even know who Maria Hernandez was,” I reply. “There’s nothing ‘Maria’ or ‘ez’ about this park anymore.”
“Lemme guess. You knew her. Are you related or something?”
I turn my whole body toward him, and he shifts to look at me. “When he was little, my father played with her kids here. She was murdered right inside her apartment for trying to stop drug dealers from selling in this very park.”
“Oh,” he says. “That’s cool.”
“That’s cool?” I say.
He shrugs, his button-down shirt going tight across his shoulders.
“What’s so cool about that? How ’bout you say, ‘That’s fucked up.’”
He leans back on the blanket, away from me, and props himself up on his elbows. “Okay. That’s fucked up,” he says. “And it’s cool that this park is named after her. And no, it shouldn’t be changed to Mary Hernan just because white people are here. That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Of course that doesn’t make any sense. It was sarcasm,” I say, side-eying him. “If you knew this park like I do, none of this makes any sense.”
“I know what sarcasm is.” He pauses and stretches out his legs. I have to move back to make room for him. “What’s your deal, Zuri Benitez?”
“What’s my deal? My deal is that you’re taking up this whole blanket. My deal is that I’ve been coming here my whole life. And I know guys who come out here to play ball and chill, and they look exactly like you.” I rub the back of my hand so he knows what I’m talking about. “My deal is that they don’t talk or dress like you. And they definitely don’t live in a house like yours. So what’s your deal, Darius Darcy?”
He quickly folds his legs and scoots back, shaking his head and laughing. “Point taken, Miss Benitez.”
A loud screeching sound comes from the stage and makes me jump. A thin white boy with long hair grabs a microphone and shouts, “What’s up, Bushwick!”
Everybody around cheers, and it’s all so incredibly surreal. “I can’t believe this,” I say out loud, and grab my phone to take a picture to send to Charlise.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Darius taking a picture too.
“That’s your homeboy?” I ask. “Oh, I’m sorry. I mean, your buddy? Your pal?”
His nostrils flare, he licks his lips, and he exhales. “That’s Jaime Grisham of Bushwick Riot. They’re my sister’s favorite band. I’m sending her a pic.”
He says this as if it’s information I should know already.
“Your sister?” I ask.
He nods. “Younger sister.”
I take a good look at this band called Bushwick Riot. There’s the skinny white boy with the hair, another one wearing a black ski hat, a shorter, chunkier black one with a thick beard, and two girls—a thick white one with bleached hair, and the other is a black girl with mohawk braids. Each one is either behind a keyboard, a drum set, an electric guitar, or a microphone. “Interesting,” I say out loud. “Is your sister still in . . . wherever y’all just came from?”
“Georgia’s interning in D.C. for the summer.”
“Interning?” I nod my head several times because this is all coming together. “Makes sense.”
“What do you mean by that?”
I shrug, not really wanting to spell it out for him. “Rock band, interning, tight shorts. Makes sense.”
He laughs with his mouth closed. “Your sister doesn’t seem to mind.”
“My sister’s just making new friends, that’s all.”
“Clearly.”
The band starts with a thunderous drumroll. Some people start to move closer to the stage. “So you’re a fan of this band too? Bushwick Riot?”
“No. That’s Georgia’s thing.” He inhales deeply, puts his phone into the back pocket of his too-tight shorts, and crosses his arms.
“Is this . . . your thing? Art festivals in parks? Like, how come you don’t go to the park to play ball or something?”
He smirks. “You don’t leave that little corner of your neighborhood too often, do you?”
I lean back to get a good look at him. He stares at me, but he blinks first. “Just so you know, in this hood, you’re just like everybody else. The cops and all these white people will take one good look at you and think you’re from Hope Gardens Projects no matter how many tight khaki shorts or grandpa shoes you wear.”
I tilt my head to the side, and we stare each other down.
His jaw shifts again, his nose flares. I’m beginning to realize that this is what happens to his face when he’s pissed. “Damn. I thought we were having a nice conversation, but you just went left.”
“To the left, to the left,” I say, reciting the Beyoncé lyrics while pointing my thumb and tossing my head to the left.
Darius throws both his hands up and shakes his head.
Over his shoulder, I can see Janae and Ainsley on their way back to us. They’re both holding little paper containers of food, hardly enough to fill my belly after that twenty-block stroll down Knickerbocker Avenue. They’re purposely bumping arms as they walk, and Janae is smiling with her whole body, it seems.
Janae hands me my little paper bowl filled with two small tacos and laughs at something Ainsley says. For the first time since she’s come home from college, I can’t stand her. She practically begged me to come with her. But now I feel like the third wheel, even though there’s four of us.
“Actually, Janae, I’m gonna head home,” I say. Darius gives me a look as I stand up.
“Wait, why? We just got here,” Janae says.
“Hey, man! Yo, Ainsley.” A black guy waves at our blanket. He walks up to Ainsley and gives him a pound. Ainsley awkwardly shakes his hand, of course, while this new boy gives him a straight dap like a normal black dude. Darius acknowledges this new boy with just a head nod.
“This is Janae,” Ainsley says to the boy, “and this is Zuri.”
The new guy nods in Janae’s direction, then looks at me and says, “What up, Zuri? I’m Warren.”
I pause from picking up my purse and give this Warren a second look. There’s a little bass in his voice, a little hood, a little swag, not like these Darcy boys.
He catches me staring at him, but I don’t look away. I want him to know that I’m checking him out, and I want Darius to know too. Our eyes lock for a long minute, and it’s as if everything around us—that band, those voices, that warm summer breeze, sirens, and honking cars in the distance—all come to a full stop.
“Zuri was just leaving,” Darius says, rudely. But Warren and I keep staring at each other.
This isn’t the love at first sight Madrina likes to talk about, but it’s a you-look-so-damn-good-that-my-eyes-are-eating-your-face thing we’ve got going.
Warren steps closer to me while pulling out his phone from his back pocket. “I wanna call you,” he says. “I wouldn’t mind getting to know one of the Benitez sisters too, right, Ains?” He throws a head nod over at Ainsley.
“How you know our name?” I ask.
“I’m from around here, and every dude from Cypress Hills to the Marcy Projects knows about the Benitez sisters with the fat asses.”
“Excuse you?” I quickly say. “Don’t be talking about our asses!”
“Oh! Pardon me, but you know how brothas get down. And none of y’all were checking for dudes from Hope Gardens.”
Now both Janae and I are thoroughly confused. “You’re from the projects?” I ask with a screw face.
“You don’t have to s
ay it like that, though.”
“Hold up. I just mentioned Hope Gardens to this dude over here,” I say, pointing at Darius with my chin. “And he didn’t say anything about knowing anybody from Bushwick, especially the projects.”
Warren laughs. “Darius and I go to the same school, and we’re two out of nine black guys in our whole grade. That’s about it.”
“What school is that?” I ask.
“The Easton School in Manhattan,” Janae answers for me, with her eyebrows raised as if this is something impressive. I’ve never heard of it.
“I got into one of those programs that takes smart kids from the hood and puts them into private schools,” Warren says, rubbing his chin. He says this as if it’s something impressive.
“Private school?” I say. I can’t hide the smile on my face, because I am definitely impressed with this boy. He smiles too. Warren’s smile is golden. Warren is smooth and easy. Warren is Bushwick.
My phone number just rolls out of my mouth. I don’t blink, I don’t think about it, I simply throw each number at him as if they’re dollar bills and he’s a male stripper at a club like in those music videos the twins like to watch.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Janae trying to hold in a laugh. Behind her is Darius and his tight jaw. I want him to see what’s going down; I want him to see how it’s done. This is swag. This is how you step to a girl from Bushwick—a Bushwick native.
“Zuri, weren’t you just leaving?” Darius asks.
“Nah, I’ll stick around,” I say. “Actually, Warren, do you want to get closer to the stage?”
“Let’s do it,” he says, and knocks my shoulder with his.
“Shoot your shot, sis!” Janae says, smiling at me.
Warren stands next to me the whole time Bushwick Riot plays. All around us are the white people doing their strange dances to this punk music, the Whole Foods bags, the colorful blankets, and the kids from around the way who try to carry on as if nothing is changing. But like Madrina said, everything is changing. Old and new are mixing together like oil and water, and I’m stuck here in the middle of it all.