The City We Became

by N. K. Jemisin

  It isn’t much. He’s not in his home borough. Still, abruptly there is a stir of city-energy, and the ghostly shape of a subway car shimmers into visibility around them as they run. Manny’s feet seem to lift off the ground and he zooms forward, fast as a train’s acceleration; Padmini yelps and Bronca curses as they’re all swept along. Then the world rushes past with a whiff of rat droppings and the blare of an industrial horn, and suddenly they have shot through the front windows of the Center and its shutters, too, their bodies briefly as intangible as the ghost-train—

  Then they are on the sidewalk across the street from the Center, stumbling and crying out as the train screeches to a halt there. “Holy shit,” Veneza blurts. “That was wilder than the Cyclone!”

  But as the phantom subway fades away and they turn back to the Bronx Art Center, a column of white erupts from the ground around the building and flings itself skyward. It is not completely here, not quite in this world; for a moment they can still see the Center within the rising mass, and the building itself seems undisturbed. But the column rises to quickly become thousands of white tendrils, each more massive than the flare that Manny once battled in an FDR fast lane. They interlock as they grow, enveloping the entire block in seconds. Manny can only stare, reverberating with the same stunned horror as the others, while the tangled wall of white rises before them. Fifty feet high. Sixty, and the tendrils have begun to tighten their weave and solidify together into a singular mass. Eighty feet high.

  A tower.

  “Oh, no, no, no,” Bronca breathes as they crane their necks, watching the thing form. It will be as high or higher than the strange arch over at Hunts Point, it’s already clear. “The keyholders. I don’t think any of them could have… I have to get them out!” And she actually starts back across the street, before Brooklyn and Veneza both drag her back.

  “You can’t,” says Hong. It’s softer than Hong usually speaks, but no less brutally true, for that. Bronca shudders all over and groans, anguished.

  “We should go.” Padmini is shaking visibly, her eyes wide and distraught. “We shouldn’t be this close.”

  Manny heartily agrees. Traffic on the street in front of the Center is a wreck—cars veering away and stopping in the middle of the street, others speeding up and getting the hell out of Dodge. None of the drivers can see the tower, but they’re all reacting to it regardless, sensing the presence of an interloper.

  Out of this chaos, however, a familiar yellow shape suddenly makes a U-turn and comes rapidly hurtling down the street before screeching to a halt in front of them. It’s a Checker cab. Someone’s put a sign in the passenger window with prominent handwritten letters: NOT A REAL CAB. DO NOT HAIL. The sign falls into the cab, however, as a woman leans across the passenger seat to hand-crank the window down. She stares at Manny, and Manny stares back. “Oh, I fucking knew it,” says Madison.

  It’s unbelievable. Well, no, it’s not. It’s the city. In spite of everything, Manny can’t help grinning, though he suspects he looks a little hysterical. “Small world?”

  “Is it?” She scrunches her face. Today she’s wearing a T-shirt that reads I’M NOT PERFECT BUT I’M FROM NEW YORK AND THAT’S KINDA THE SAME THING. “Are you gonna do the whole ride-’em-cowboy thing again? Because you probably should.” She jabs a thumb toward the Center.

  “No.” There’s only one reason for the city to have sent them a ride. “Can you take us to City Hall Station?”

  Madison rolls her eyes. “I’m not even going to ask how you knew I was headed that way anyway. Get in, damn it.”

  “Okay, hang on.” Manny straightens. “Do we have another car, for the Staten Island group?”

  Bronca tears her eyes from the awful thing that has enveloped her Center, and then rummages through her pockets. Her movements are shaky, her expression shocky, and Manny doesn’t blame her. But she sighs in relief and pulls a set of keys from one pocket. There’s an electronic key fob on it. “Yeah. Mine.”

  “I’ll go with you to Staten Island, then,” Brooklyn says to her. She looks at the Checker oddly. “Uh, you guys got a ride, I guess?”

  “Yeah,” Manny says. It is a need now, the pull toward City Hall that sits in his breast. Everything in him that understands strategy, violence, warfare, is certain that this tower, this direct attack, is a sign. The Woman in White has abandoned pretense; she’s making her move, and they aren’t ready. Manny’s going to City Hall even if none of the others want to go with him.

  Paulo says to Manny, as if hearing this thought, “I’ll go with you.” He’s still not looking great, but he moves with tolerable speed to climb through the cab’s rear passenger door, nodding politely to Madison inside.

  With a sudden gasp that makes all of them jump, Veneza slaps at her pockets, then groans in relief as she finds her car keys, too. “Oh my God, thought I was gonna be walking home. I can also carry—”

  Bronca makes a growling sound. “The only place you’re going is home!”

  They all jump again, except Brooklyn. It was a mom-voice, sharp and incontrovertible. Brooklyn just nods grimly, and takes out her phone.

  Veneza stares at Bronca like she’s crazy. “Old B, come on, you’re going to need all the—”

  “Shut the fuck up!” Then Bronca gestures at what used to be the Bronx Art Center. The tower is still growing, although not as quickly as before. It’s going to be taller than anything else in the Bronx, as far as Manny can tell. And it is breathing, he sees, in fitful, arrhythmic heaves; or pulsing, or maybe that’s its malleable, tendril-flecked surface just randomly twitching. The sound of it is poorly maintained nails on a cracked chalkboard; he finds himself humming tunelessly in a futile effort to drown it out. He can’t look at it for long, either, which makes Bronca’s next words painfully ironic. “Look at that shit! Do you know what it would do to me if you were in there?”

  Veneza blinks at her for a startled moment, then wilts a little. “Yeah. Yeah, okay. I just…” She sighs. “Wanted to help.”

  Bronca lets out a shaky breath and goes to her, gripping the younger woman’s shoulders. “You can’t help us. And right now, you’re just something else I have to worry about.”

  She thinks they’re going to fail, Manny realizes. Bronca believes they will be killed by the Enemy, and that the city will then be struck by some catastrophe. She’s sending Veneza away so that the girl will survive whatever happens.

  Veneza looks hurt by Bronca’s words for a moment—and then she scowls. “No, you did not just try the whole reverse-psychology thing on me. Do I look stupid? If you want me to go that bad, just say it outright, don’t pretend you don’t want me around—”

  “I want you to go,” Bronca says. Her voice is flint.

  Veneza falters and falls silent, then grimaces. “Well. Shit. Okay.” After a moment, she begins backing toward her own car, though she’s clearly not happy about it. “B, if you get killed, or eaten, or… squiggleized, or whateverthefuck, I’m gonna kill you,” she says. “I’m gonna follow you to the happy hunting ground and slap the shit out of you.” But then she turns and runs toward her car, which seems to be a good ways down the block.

  Bronca looks torn between sorrow at Veneza’s leaving and relief that the girl doesn’t think less of her for the attempt at harshness. “We talked about those stereotypes, didn’t we,” Bronca calls after her. “Didn’t we!” Veneza lifts a middle finger in farewell.

  Bronca gazes after her for a moment, smiling a little, though her lips are tight. Then she takes a deep breath and beckons to Brooklyn and the rest. “Gonna be a tight squeeze in my car,” she says. “And somebody else is going to have to pay the Verrazano toll, I don’t have any cash—”

  “That’s all electronic now,” Brooklyn says, though she’s distracted. Manny can see that her phone is dialing someone. “They snap your license on cameras, send you a bill later.”

  “Well, whoop-de-do for the surveillance state. I’m right here.” She uses the key fob to unlock a Jeep a few cars
down.

  The others follow her. Padmini has been furiously texting someone; a moment later the phone rings, and they all hear Aishwarya’s voice shouting in rapid Tamil while Padmini winces and tries to explain that the family needs to get out of town. Brooklyn says, “Yeah, Dad. Like we talked about. My aide will be there to pick you up in thirty minutes. Tell him to drive like you know an earthquake is coming.” Pause. “I love you, too.”

  She hangs up, and then she alone glances back at Manny. There’s so much guarded fear in her expression that it makes him ache inside. She isn’t afraid for any of them, of course; they are nothing to each other, the boon companions of less than three days. Still, on their collective success or failure does her family’s fate now rest. Words like goodbye or good luck would just feel too final.

  In token of which, Brooklyn finally just turns away and hurries after the others to Bronca’s car.

  Manny stares after her for a moment longer, registering only belatedly that he, alone among them, has no family or loved ones to worry about. Except New York itself. Himself.

  He gets in the cab with Paulo, and Madison pulls away from the curb quickly, as eager to get away from the tower as any of them. Now Manny can focus, at last.

  “On my way,” he murmurs very softly to the air. Paulo glances at him, but says nothing. He knows exactly who Manny’s talking to. “See you soon.”

  And as Veneza anxiously drives away from the others and tries to convince herself that surprising her asshole father down in Philly really is a better choice than staying to face an interdimensional apocalypse—

  —something in her back seat gulps, very softly,

  Da-dump.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The Gauntlet of Second Avenue

  It starts as soon as they’re in the car. Bronca takes out her phone so that she can use navigation. She squints at the thing as she always does, laboriously pecking out letters and numbers with one finger until Queens says, “I’ll do it,” and reaches up from the back seat to take the phone from her. “Just start heading for Staten Island.”

  It’s no worse than what she’s put up with from Veneza, but Queens isn’t Veneza. “Ask before you take things from people, heathen.”

  “I’m just trying to be efficient! I need a destination address.” Her fingers fly across the keyboard with the uncanny speed of anyone younger than thirty. Bronca starts driving. Since Brooklyn’s on the phone in the front passenger seat, Queens looks at Hong.

  “I’m Hong Kong,” he snaps.

  “Oh, yes. I guess you wouldn’t know.” Queens opens out the map as Bronca starts driving. “But can you at least point to where you found Paulo? She’s probably somewhere near there.”

  While she and Hong haggle over the approximate last known location of the Staten Island avatar, Brooklyn gets off the phone again. She’s been talking more quietly this time, and Bronca hasn’t bothered her because she recognized that tone and pitch of voice. That’s how parents sound when they’re trying to say goodbye to their kids, possibly for the last time. It’s what she probably should be saying to her own son… but Mettshish is in his thirties and lives in California, and frankly that’s likely to turn into an argument, which she doesn’t have the strength for at the moment. And orphaning a grown man is an entirely different thing from doing it to a fourteen-year-old girl. If anything, Bronca wishes she could say farewell to her grandchild, due to be born in three months or so… but maybe it’s best that she be only a mystery to the child, and not a tragedy, when they tell stories of her.

  In the wake of her phone call, Brooklyn gazes out the window for a while, brooding, and Bronca lets her. Not much that can be said in a moment like this. But eventually she tries. “Sending her to her dad?”

  Brooklyn snorts with such bitterness that Bronca immediately knows it was the wrong thing to ask. “Her father’s dead, so I hope not.”

  Ouch. “Drugs?”

  Brooklyn turns to glare at her. “Cancer.”

  Ah, shit. Bronca sighs. “Look, I didn’t mean—I just used to listen to your music, sometimes, and you always talked about getting with guys who were dealers or bangers or… you know.”

  “Yeah. A lot of dudes like that are just doing what they have to do to take care of people they care about, which makes them more decent than your average nice upstanding predatory lender or whatever. But regardless, what I talked about in my music wasn’t always what I was doing in real life. Shit, I thought only white people believe everything they hear in rap is real.” She shakes her head and stares at the road.

  Bronca feels herself getting heated. It’s the wrong place and the wrong time and the wrong target, and she’s old enough to know that she’s only sniping at Brooklyn because this is something she can control, unlike the rest of their whole awful situation. But even knowing all this… well, Bronca’s never going to be a very good wise elder, if she even makes it that far.

  “Yeah? It’s not real?” She keeps her eyes on the road, but her hands have tightened on the steering wheel. “I remember some of your lyrics that were pretty fucking real. ‘And if a bitch tries to hit it, I’ll gut her with my gat,’ you remember that one?”

  Brooklyn is groaning and angry-laughing at once. “Oh, here we go. I apologized for those lyrics, years ago, publicly. And I donated a thousand dollars to the Ali Forney Center—”

  “You think that makes up for it? You know how many queer kids get stabbed or shot to death—” She takes a corner to get them lined up for the Bruckner Expressway and slews a little, forcing her to cross-control the wheel more than usual to get them back on track.

  “Please, please, get into a catastrophic car accident,” Hong sighs from the back seat. “Destroy half the city in a single collision, do all the Enemy’s work for her. Then I can go home.”

  Bronca sets her jaw, fuming. But in the silence, Brooklyn lets out a long, slow breath.

  “I know an apology don’t make up for it,” she says. She’s slipped back into her old-school Brooklyn accent, dropping the politician voice, and somehow this eases a little of Bronca’s temper. Neither Brooklyn is false, but this one feels a little truer to MC Free, and that’s the part of her Bronca’s got beef with. “I know it don’t, okay? I damn sure got called a dyke enough myself just for stepping into a ring that dude rappers thought was theirs by default. Motherfuckers tried to rape me, all because I didn’t fit into what they thought a woman should be—and I passed that shit on. I know I did. But I got better. I had some friends slap sense into me, and I listened when they did. And I figured out that the dudes were fucked in the head, so maybe it wasn’t the best idea to imitate them. Shit, back then, most of us were just…” She gestures in frustration, then sighs heavily. “Bullshitting, right? High on the hype. Cooning for a record deal and suburban white-boy dollars. I just…” She sighs. “Fuck. It’s done.”

  Bronca looks at her, reading the deep weariness and sorrow of her. And sincerity. So she drives on in silence for a while, letting the aethers settle, before she finally says, “Sorry about the ‘drugs.’ That was, uh, racist. Technically prejudiced because the power dynamics are basically flat, but…” She grins in an attempt to ease the awkwardness. “I have Black friends? Also aunties and grandmothers.”

  She can almost hear Brooklyn roll her eyes. Still, after a moment, quietly: “I did lose a lot of friends to drugs, so I’m a little…”

  Touchy. Yeah. “Me, too.” She snorts. “I am the Bronx.”

  An answering snort, followed by a tired, dry, “And I am Brooklyn.”

  “You fight crime!” says Queens, beaming. Brooklyn turns and looks at her until she sits back and shuts up.

  They’re taking a route that should get them there fastest, even though it means paying a pirate’s ransom in tolls. But right before they’re supposed to transfer from the Bruckner to FDR, Bronca’s phone bleeps a warning. “Uh, there’s an accident or something on FDR,” Queens says, frowning as she leans forward to peer at it. She reaches forward and taps s
omething. “There’s an alternate route through the city that seems clear.”

  “Fine,” Bronca says, and follows the directions issued by the bland computer-lady voice of the navigation app.

  “Through the city is actually faster than the FDR?” Brooklyn asks. “Huh. Must be a hell of an accident.”

  “I don’t think—” Bronca’s been half listening to the radio; it’s just on for noise. But the DJ mentions the FDR, so Bronca turns the radio up.

  “—have actually shut down the FDR Drive,” the guy is saying, sounding incredulous. “Police are describing this as a spontaneous demonstration because apparently there are no permits on file, but news agencies in the city have received a statement from the group, sent several hours before the protest began. They call themselves the Proud Men of NYC. Not to be confused with NYC Pride, this group is right-wing and has been linked to violent incidents such as—”

  The report goes on for a bit, and then there is a brief audio clip. Bronca hears many voices—all of them male, as far as she can tell—chanting indistinctly, with police sirens in the background. “We’re here to let New York know!” says one young man’s voice, shaky with movement and adrenaline. “We took over Greenpoint and Williamsburg and now it’s time for Manhattan to see that the men—” Someone jostles him. “Dude, come on, these shoes are new. The men of New York City aren’t going to take—” There’s a jumble of words that Bronca doesn’t get. Something about being replaced. “—and feminist liberal nonsense! It’s okay to be a white man! We’re not gonna feel guilty about our white dicks, and you’re gonna learn how it feels to get f—”

  The clip cuts off abruptly, back to the DJ who is now chuckling with palpable unease. “We-he-hell, hopefully we didn’t just earn ourselves an FCC violation there. Anyway, folks, stay away from FDR Drive for now, unless you want to park and look at the view.” The station’s music resumes.