The City We Became

by N. K. Jemisin

  And then another scrabbles over the chain-link fence, between tendrils of her neighbors’ gone-wild grapevine. The creature pauses for a moment, one leg sticking straight up as if to test the air.

  The phone is still in her hand. Her mouth dry, Brooklyn pulls it back to her face. “Jojo. Go inside.”

  “What?” She can see her daughter, still looking up, start a little. “Whoa!” For an instant she loses her balance, too, and Brooklyn suffers a horrified second of fearing that she will watch her only child tumble into the backyard with those things. But Jojo catches herself as her mother has already done, then looks around. “You see something, Mama?”

  “Yes. Go inside! Shut your window and move away from it.” Better still—“Go to Dad’s room. Get him up and in his chair.”

  “Oh, shit,” Jojo says, and immediately darts inside. She’s a smart child when she isn’t being a smart-ass—and she is herself a true child of New York, enough to know that Brooklyn doesn’t warn of danger without good reason. Under the circumstances, Brooklyn’s going to overlook the profanity.

  The moment Jojo slides the window closed—with a loud thump—the white X-spiders in the backyard react, shivering and then x-ing forward a few steps. There are three now, Brooklyn sees; another has just folded its front two legs over the lip of a wooden planter that it was apparently hidden behind. She’s guessed what they are now, though. They have a different shape from the white feathers that menaced her at the 2 train station and surrounded Manhattan in Inwood Hill Park, but they feel of the same prickling, jangling antithesis of presence that everything else associated with the Enemy seems to radiate. As if they erase some tiny part of New York with every iota of its space they occupy.

  And now there are six of them in her family’s backyard.

  Brooklyn runs to the bedroom door and down the hall. She hears a startled snort from one of the guest rooms as her feet drum down the corridor; Manhattan, waking from sleep. Can’t wait for him to help, for whatever good he’d be. She’s only wearing satin pajamas, no shoes, and carrying no gun, not that she ever would, given how many friends she’s lost to things like that. All she’s got is an illegal-in-the-city-of-New-York collapsible baton—which she snatches from the umbrella stand as she runs past—and fear for her daughter and father, which have so charged her with adrenaline that she feels as if she could tear apart ten men bare-handed. But what’s menacing her little girl isn’t men.

  Oh, but, baby. You know how to handle up on these things, too, laughs the city in her mind as she wrenches open the apartment door and the outside door and runs down the brownstone’s stoop steps. Her bare feet slap on the sidewalk as she jumps the gate—too damn old to do stuff like that without suffering tomorrow, but she manages the vault credibly, thank God for her personal trainer—and then she stops. She’s panting, shaking, and utterly horrified as she turns to face both buildings and finally understands the depth of her mistake.

  Because when Brooklyn came home, to this block that is hers and to these buildings that are hers in this borough that is so much hers that deep down she would’ve been surprised if someone else had gotten the job of becoming it, she did not go inside the brownstone that her father and daughter now occupy, along with a few tenants on the upper floors. She didn’t need to, because she always keeps a few clothes and toiletries in the vacation unit. And so, when the peculiar power of the city filled the brownstone that she did enter, suffusing it with Brooklyn-ness and making it impregnable against the incursions of the Enemy, she had simply assumed that the power would encompass both brownstones. But the power does not recognize property ownership—and worse, the modified brownstone has been shorn of the stoop that once connected it to the neighborhood. This amputation is a still-healing wound that makes the building even more susceptible to attack by foreign organisms. She should’ve been even more careful to protect this one.

  And because of Brooklyn’s folly, now dozens of white X-spiders twitch-crawl over the entire building’s facade. As Brooklyn watches, one of them drops onto the brick pathway and then x-wriggles under the front door, passing through the crack as easily as a sheet of paper.

  Brooklyn knows not to panic. That’s how people get killed when the bullets start flying—and this is a trap, she knows, just as much as Mrs. Yu’s pool was for Padmini. This is how the Enemy has lured her out of the safe building. Instead of giving in to the urge to hyperventilate or scream or run blindly into danger, she closes her eyes. Tries to think something other than Sweet Jesus one of those things is in there with my baby. She listens to her own panting breath, which hitches because she’s not that in shape, and she prays for her city to help her somehow because God hasn’t come through yet. And that is how she finally notices

  pant (gasp) pant pant (gasp)

  A perfect b-girl backbeat, which some part of her mind has noticed even amid her terror.

  That’s all she needs. Because she has been trained in the use of this weapon. She is a veteran of these sorts of battles. And if she must find a way to transform her old weapons into a new form? Then it’s done.

  Swagger first. She squares herself, pushes back her shoulders, bounces a little on the balls of her feet. Okay. Here she goes.

  “‘Battle Brooklyn? Well, let’s go.’” She whispers this aloud, to focus her mind. They are the lyrics that first made her famous—but already she is spinning new lines, remixing what she needs from aether and the memory of an entire catalog of musical history. Even as she thinks the next words, she feels the power come on, shaped more by her mind than anything else. The words are just a conduit—a construct, to which she’s already given a shape. A myth. A legend. The heroic power to tear apart ten men, or fifty fucked-up extradimensional spider monsters, with extreme prejudice.

  You thinking I should go high? Nah! I go low.

  She’s running at the building. Shouldering the door, low, at the lock to break it open. (It shouldn’t work. The door is heavy old wood in a metal frame. But the city has entered her bones and strengthened her muscles; she will not be denied.) Just beyond the door, the invading X-spider has already woven its web: lines of white, ugly light crisscrossing and tangling from the floor to the ceiling, forming a net meant to ensnare her for doing just this thing. Up close, Brooklyn can see that the lines aren’t just light. They are living things themselves, strands that whisper and shiver, covered in weird little holes like the thorns of roses turned inward—But she is Brooklyn, goddamn it, and when she makes claws of her hands and slashes at the spider-strands like a cat, a sheath of power surrounds and protects her fingers as the webs tear and burn away to ash. She hears the spider—because web and creature are one and the same—shriek once, and then go silent.

  I’m the core of this city, either live or compost.

  Your appealing lines really? Like rinds your rhymes tossed.

  There is another shriek, from further into the apartment. Jojo. In her father’s bedroom.

  There ain’t no way, no level you could defeat this.

  I’m a queen, a boss, with no weakness. / I’m Superman, but the kryptonite don’t work. I’m too advanced, you tyke.

  Brooklyn runs in to find Jojo and her father all right—but not for long, because a big X-spider is sliding into the room between the frames of the window. The damn things are infinitely two-dimensional when they want to be. But as two of its legs finish the slide through and spread out to brace against the wall, its body puffs up and the legs become thicker, cylindrical things again. And now Brooklyn sees that the little holes all over its legs are moving. They are tiny, tooth-ringed mouths gawping open and shut—

  … Go do your homework, Brooklyn thinks savagely, before she charges forward and slams her palm against the thing’s fat middle body. It looks translucent, as visually insubstantial as the feather things—but there is something solid under Brooklyn’s power-sheathed palm for just an instant, cold and buzzing and jittery and feeling less like something alive than like a sack of infinitesimal Legos tumbling apart an
d trying to re-form under her hand. Around her hand. Incorporating her hand.

  What Brooklyn is, though, defies the thing’s attempts. She’s one woman—but in this instant she is also two and a half million people, fifty trillion moving parts, the biggest and baddest borough of the greatest city in the world. And the stuff that binds her—the will and allegiance and collective strength that screams, We are Brooklyn—is far, far more powerful than the force that holds the X-spider together.

  So when her hand crushes the X-spider, it catches fire in a brief blue-white flare that Brooklyn barely feels. An instant later, it shrivels away like the web did. It is more than dead. Brooklyn has annihilated it.

  Then, with a shout, Brooklyn drops and slaps both hands against the floor. This is her floor. Her house, her family, her city, and oh how dare these fucking things invade it—

  Now take it end to end and run it back again. And every time that I see you, you catch a smack again. Send you home running and crying, another ass whoopin’.

  —and the wave of city-energy that ripples from her hands and throughout the building is so intense, so pure, that the entirety of New York shivers and rings with one soundless tone. For an instant she is tempted to merge herself into that harmony, lay claim to the whole city as Manhattan tried and failed to do… but no. She is content to be just Brooklyn. It’s always been enough for her to be able to take care of what’s hers.

  So she feels the X-spiders crawling all over the building, and she feels it, too, when they stop and shriek as they are destroyed by wavelets of Brooklyn-ness cascading forth from the old brown stones. And the block, and the neighborhood. Bed Stuy, do or die. Crown Heights, stand up. Flatbush, represent. She lays claim to all of it, from Greenpoint to Coney Island, Brooklyn Heights to East New York. She wills the contamination that has spread over so much of her city to die. It ain’t gotta go home, but it gots to get the fuck out of Brooklyn.

  It works—but that’s all she can do. When the wave of energy reaches the borders of the borough, Brooklyn can push it no farther. Even doing this much—alone, without the support of the others—leaves her utterly drained. She collapses to the floor in a heap, barely aware of Jojo’s hands as the girl runs over to her, hearing her father call her name but lacking the strength to reply.

  She grins to herself, however, even as her vision darkens and she hears Manhattan come thumping in. “Still got it,” she murmurs.

  Jojo’s panicking. “Got what? Mama? Granddaddy, I can’t get her to sit up—”

  “Let her rest,” says Manhattan. Brooklyn feels his hand touch hers, and something from him flows into her. She twitches a little in reaction, because so much of him disturbs her on a fundamental level—but his voice is kind, and it is good to know that she doesn’t fight alone. The infusion of strength is enough to pull her from the brink of something like a coma back to merely exhausted sleep. She understands with the clarity of epiphany that this is a lesser version of what they’ll all need to do for the one who embodies the whole of New York City, whenever they find him. Their touch will strengthen him the same way, and he will in turn strengthen them all. Then they can protect the whole city. Soon. Good.

  And as she drifts off to sleep, she smiles as, this time, she makes sure to finish her victorious rhyme.

  … So think again before you ever try to pass Brooklyn.

  It’s late afternoon the next day before Brooklyn finally drags herself out of bed. So much for getting an early start on finding the Bronx.

  But then she comes into the family kitchen to find Jojo, her father, Padmini, Manhattan, and even the family cat, Sweater, sitting around the living room table in silence. They’re staring at some kind of business letter, which sits open on the coffee table; her father must have pulled it from the day’s mail.

  “What’s going on?” Brooklyn asks, shuffling forward. She’s moving but still tired, and half the muscles in her body ache from overuse. Too goddamn old to fight transdimensional rap battles in the middle of the night. But she comes alert a moment later as her mind processes what she’s seeing. The Certified Mail postcard on the back of the torn-open envelope. The furious look on her father’s face. “Dad? What—”

  “This is an official notice of eviction,” Clyde Thomason says.

  “Eviction? That’s bullshit, Dad. We’re not renters. These buildings have been paid off for years.”

  Jojo seems so shaken that Brooklyn goes over and puts a hand on her shoulder. The girl says, “Yeah, but some kind of city agency says we didn’t pay arrears on taxes, or something—”

  Brooklyn can’t help it; she chuckles. Her family has always made fun of her control-freakish eagerness to pay all of her bills as soon as she can. She doesn’t like having the weight of unpaid debts hanging over her head. “This is a joke. Somebody’s fucking with us, Dad. Check the ID, the spelling of the name, it’s probably a mistake.”

  “I called the city.” He picks up the letter and shakes it. “Took an hour, but I actually talked to a person. They got the deeds. This building and the other, both have been sold, right out from under us. Something about a third-party transfer of title, or something…” His voice breaks. He’s holding it together, but Brooklyn knows her father; he’s on the brink. “And we have until next week to move out, or they’ll come with marshals to throw us out.”

  Too stunned to think of a response, Brooklyn takes the letter to read. It’s true, she realizes as she reads it. Her home is not her home. It has been stolen, the goods sold before the crime’s victims even noticed the theft.

  And the most brazen part of it? The thief’s name is right there on the letter, big as day: the Better New York Foundation.

  CHAPTER NINE

  A Better New York Is in Sight

  No one burns down the Center overnight, and the keyholders report no suspicious or hostile activity when Bronca comes in late that morning. She’s only half-awake, after having spent a fitful and uneasy night at home; nothing attacked, but she worried, and now she’s got under-eye baggage as souvenirs. There’s a message on her office voice mail from the board’s development chair, Raul: “Bronca, I respect your opinion about the Alt Artistes’ collective. We can’t promote bigotry of any kind. But like I told Jess, the collective is connected to a prospective donor, who—”

  “Blah blah blah blah,” Bronca says, hanging up with the message unfinished. It’s always blah with Raul. Bronca’s still appalled at Yijing for sleeping with him. Granted, Bronca is only lukewarm on dick at the best of times, but not even four-alarm dick is worth that much aggravation.

  There were two other messages in the voice mail box, but Bronca decides to listen to those after she’s had time to calm down and wake up. She grabs her morning coffee from the machine in the break room, then starts her usual post-opening walk-through of the Center.

  It’s easy for a nonprofit administrator to lose touch with her purpose. Life can become nothing but grant applications and payroll problems, supply orders and fund-raising schmoozes, if one isn’t careful. Bronca’s an artist, so she takes pains to keep art foremost in her routine, if not her mind, every day.

  Today she heads for their newest and most interesting exhibit. This one is a kind of summons, she’s always thought—and before yesterday at around noon, she didn’t quite know what she was trying to summon. The room contains photographs of graffiti found around the borough—graffiti by a very particular artist, whose work is distinctive, yet curiously eclectic in its composition. Bronca’s made out spray paint and house paint amid his materials, along with a little road tar and the occasional handful of natural pigments. (She hadn’t realized there was any indigo growing in the Bronx, but the university analysis she paid for is probably correct.) Whatever the artist could find, in other words, or buy or steal or make on a tight budget. His themes are strange: a giant howling mouth with two teeth. An enormous brown eye, giving a sly side-eye to the generic glass-and-steel condo being constructed next door. A strangely plain mural of sunset over a meadow, pa
inted onto the side of an old twelve-story derelict factory, which somebody really needs to knock down before it starts killing people with falling bricks. There’s an arrow painted into the middle of the idyllic meadow scene, wide and bright red, pointing down at a ledge underneath the meadow. Bronca was confused by that one until she finally had an epiphany. The meadow is a red herring; what matters is that the ledge is a handhold. A convenient place for something enormous to grab on and steady itself. What? Who knows. But it fits a pattern.

  The same artist, Bronca suspected before yesterday—and knows with certainty now. The same unseen ear, which hears the city’s song so clearly. Yes. This is the work of another of her people. Another of her, part of New York. She’s collected these pieces because the work is amazing, and because bringing them together is a kind of call-out to him. (Somehow she knows he’s a him.) Photos of the works, life-sized where the photographer got the right shot and poster-sized otherwise, now dominate Murrow Hall, which is the Center’s largest and best display space. BRONX UNKNOWN is the show’s title, hanging from the ceiling on a placard suspended by fishing line, and it’s almost ready to go. Maybe, when they get some media coverage at the July opening in a couple of weeks, her artist will come to find her and become less unknown. Since she’s not planning to go find him.

  Bronca stops short, however, at the sight of someone in Murrow Hall. She only just unlocked the Center’s doors, but already there is a woman in a white pantsuit and matching CEO heels examining one of the photographs. It’s certainly possible that someone could’ve entered the Center while Bronca was getting coffee, but usually Bronca hears anyone who comes in. The Center is old, and its hardwood floors creak. The woman is carrying a clipboard, her back to the hall’s door. Is she some kind of inspector?