Chapter 4
Craigslist/Accom/Manhattan/
$1025 Big Bedroom in 2 br apartment (Upper East Side)
Date: 2023-07-03 4:32PM EST
I’m breaking my lease and I have a big bedroom in a 2-bedroom apt and need somebody to move in. The room has a lot of closet space and the apt is nice. It’s located on 89th and 1st av and the rent is $2025. Great, fun neighborhood. My roommate is 25, fun and works a lot. She’s very easy to live with.
Looking for someone, tidy, easy-going to take my place. Reply to ad and tell me a bit about yourself.
Though Omar the concierge tells me that the city isn’t as bustling as normal because ‘everyone’s at the Hamptons’, on the Fourth of July the streets swell with tourists. I’d forgotten about the holiday until I’d sat up with my jetlag last night trying to organise apartment viewings and had responses making times for later in the week. It puts me behind schedule and, reluctantly, I ask Omar to book me into the hotel for another few days because there’s no way I’m going to find a place and be able to move out by the ninth.
This date sits weirdly with me and though I venture out to get some sun, hoping it will help banish the dregs of my jetlag, the sheer number of American flags stirs memories of Invasion Day back home. Though the so-called celebrations are for different things, I can’t help but feel like everyone here has forgotten the real owners of these lands and the history of this country, which stretches back much further than independence from the British and then even further back before colonisation.
While I’ve got Mum’s Missions in my bag and knowing there are some touristy things on the list I could do to use up the public holiday, I decide to catch the 4 train downtown and visit the National Museum of the American Indian.
I spend most of my time in the exhibition called ‘Native New York’ learning about the different Nations of the area and the ways in which Native peoples have contributed to the fabric of this place. I learn about the Haudenosaunee Confederacy and the first peoples of New York. Then I wander through the art and head into the gift shop and struggle to resist buying souvenirs. After the museum I walk to Battery Park for a glimpse of the Statue of Liberty and though I’d love to jump on the ferry and finally get out to the island, the lines are huge because of the holiday, so I snap a few selfies with Lady Liberty in the background and upload them to Instagram.
That night I ignore the urge to press my face against the window to try to catch a glimpse of the fireworks. Instead, I curl up in my hotel bed and listen to them while I search apartment and job listings, and send up silent prayers to the Ancestors— both mine and those of this place—that things will work out for me here.
When I start apartment viewings later in the week, I see a lot of the city as I traipse uptown and downtown, learning how to navigate the subway and avoid the off-brand Elmo and Cookie Monster who ambush people for photos in Times Square.
The first apartment is a one-bedroom studio that makes my stomach roll. It’s clean and neat; made for a busy New Yorker who comes home only to sleep. And while, yes, I want to be a busy New Yorker, I also like to sleep without touching the walls either side of my bed and get dressed in the bathroom without my butt rubbing up against the door.
Back out on the street, I wrinkle my nose. Clean and neat is one thing, but something about it didn’t feel quite right. Growing up with both Nan and Mum has taught me that gut feelings matter just as much as any other instinct.
‘I’ll think about it,’ I say to the agent, adding a question mark to the address on my phone’s Notes.
I look at three more places while I’m near NYU. I love the area, and wonder if it’s because it’s close to where Mum lived when she was here. I walk past Tisch between viewings and linger for a moment, watching students carrying massive dance bags, the girls with hair pulled back into slick ballet buns, imagining that one of them is my mum. I want to call her so badly and tell her where I am. I line myself up for a selfie, the Tisch School of the Arts sign in the background, and flick it to Chris. He replies immediately: ‘She’s with you every step of the way. Me and Matty and Henry too . ’ After a couple of seconds, a picture comes through: Chris in his home office in front of the computer while he’s obviously working late, Henry curled up on his lap.
Though I love the Lower East Side, and it’s close to the place where Mum stayed, one of the apartments gives me the creeps and the others are tiny and grotty. Worry begins to eat at me as I leave the third viewing. I can’t stay in the hotel forever. But the idea of signing a lease is scary without a job because I’m not exactly sure how to budget for rent without knowing what my pay will be.
I’m tired and stressed and worried about how quickly things seem to be slipping out of my grasp when I ring the buzzer at the building on East 89th Street for my final viewing of the day. The door unlocks and I walk up four very narrow, steep flights of stairs, stopping halfway to take a puff on my asthma spray.
When the apartment door opens to reveal a girl who should be on a catwalk somewhere, something inside me says home . She is short and curvy with long black hair tied up in one of those effortlessly chic, but sort of messy and casual ponytails. She has dark eyes and is wearing a flowing, black silk dress that I’m one hundred per cent sure is designer. She beams, and when she shakes my hand, an armful of gold bracelets jingles. ‘Hey, you must be Brynn. I’m Corey. Come on inside.’ She steps back and holds the door open.
The living room is small and the kitchen even smaller, but there is room on the comfy-looking beige couch in front of the big, flatscreen TV for pyjama days. She has paintings on the walls—colourful art that looks as though it might be Native American—flowers in vases, and books on almost every surface. Her own room is small with clothes and jewellery strewn around in a sort of artfully messy way. I notice the three pairs of shoes with tell-tale red soles lying on the floor. Louboutin . The bathroom is tiny but has space for me to get dressed without any bits touching the walls like the other apartments, and then she leads me into the second bedroom.
The first thing I notice is the fluorescent magenta feature wall. It’s so bright I have to blink several times to get my eyes to adjust. ‘Argh,’ I groan.
‘The wall? Yeah I know, revolting, right? But you can paint it, the landlord’s totally cool with that.’
When my eyes adjust, I see the room is much bigger than others I’ve looked at. There’s a bed on one side, and there’s still enough space for a desk (looking out the window with a view of a tree-lined street, no less), a bookshelf and maybe a small couch or reading chair. But at the moment everything is just bare bed; an almost blank canvas.
‘This is great.’
‘It’s pretty good,’ she agrees.
She goes on to explain the rent, how the bills would be split, and then we go into the living room. She makes coffee and we chat about her work—a publicity assistant for a big PR firm—and what I want to do in New York.
‘I think you’ll fit in,’ she says. ‘It’s the right place for that sort of work.’
‘Deadly. Now I’ve just got to try not to get lost every time I get out of the subway and I’ll be all good.’
‘Oh god, I remember doing that when I first got here,’ she says.
‘Where did you move from?’ I ask.
‘Tkaronto,’ she says.
Not sure I’ve heard her right I say, ‘In Canada?’
‘Yeah, Toronto,’ she says. ‘Sorry, I’m trying to do this thing where I unapologetically use proper place names when I know them but you’re not even from here so I gotta choose my audience better.’
I grin. ‘Does that mean you’re ... Indigenous? Sorry, I don’t know what terminology people prefer.’
‘First Nations is the blanket term,’ she says. ‘So you’re ...?’
‘Aboriginal is the blanket back home. But I’m Bigambul mob.’
‘Ahh, so if you move in, this will be the house that intergenerational trauma built,’ she says, smiling. I laugh and decide I like Corey a lot.
Two hours later I leave with a partial education on the colonisation of Turtle Island and her promising to call by Monday. I’m pretty sure it’s the one interview I’ve aced.
I catch the subway and plan to extend my stay at the hotel a few days into next week—just until I’ve heard from Corey. But as soon as I’m back above ground and my phone finds a signal, a text message comes through from her, asking when I can move in.
I grin at my phone as I type: ‘Tomorrow afternoon too soon?’
A second later, she replies: ‘Definitely not. Heading to a work thing now but I’ll call you later with the details. See you soon, roomie.’
I smile. In just over a week, I’ve managed to get a place to live with a perfect roommate. Everything is coming up Brynn.