Chapter 5 Sadie #2
“Let’s change the subject,” Sadie said. “What year did you move out of Brownsville?”
“How come so many question?”
“Well.” Sadie hesitated. “I got a job as a reporter for New Gotham. It’s a newspaper. I cover Brownsville news.”
“You go to Brownsville?” Ngen Ngen’s eyebrows furrowed.
“Yeah. It’s much safer now. I actually saw where the restaurant used to be.” Sadie reached for her phone. “I’ll show you a photo.”
“You go to Brownsville? No good! Your father say you can go there?”
Sadie left the apartment soon after, but it was like one of those chain reaction games with dominoes to flatten, pitchers to tip, a marble swirling down a plastic spiral—the marble being the fact that she was reporting in Brownsville, which resulted not only in multiple messages to her parents’ landline, but also calls to Aunt Jackie in Jersey, who relayed the news by text to Aunt Jennifer in Massapequa, who sent an email to Aunt Julie in Patchogue, who forwarded the email to Uncle Johnny.
Uncle Johnny happened to be somewhat high-ranking in the New York City Police Department.
He called Sadie from a 718 number the same morning she was on her way to Brownsville for a mayoral press conference.
“Sadie.”
She recognized his voice right away: it had hints of her grandmother’s pitter-patter along with the slurry of consonant-dropping usually associated with Bensonhurst Italians.
“For real? Ngen Ngen told you too?”
Sadie was locking up her bike—strung first through the front wheel, then through the bike frame, as Uncle Johnny had once taught her.
“Am I being charged with a crime?” Sadie said, the phone pinched between her shoulder and her ear. “Otherwise, I really have to go.”
“Sadie, you gotta listen for a minute. Brownsville is one of our hardest precincts in Brooklyn. Last year: fifteen murders, forty-two rapes. I don’t want you getting hurt.”
He had joined the force around the time they’d eliminated the NYPD height requirement, meaning a five-foot-six Chinese boy could finally wear the badge. He was now the commanding officer of Patrol Borough Brooklyn South.
“Well, I’m not going to quit.”
“Don’t quit,” he said. “Just listen. Go home by eight o’clock. Don’t go into the projects or into people’s houses.”
A little boy with a Spider-Man backpack ran up to her and squinted at her press pass, then darted away, giggling.
She believed her uncle Johnny had a hard job, but she was still annoyed that he had defended stop-and-frisk for the entire decade before it had been ruled unconstitutional.
They had fought about it during Thanksgiving for years.
“I’m a reporter,” Sadie said as she hurried to the press conference. “I’m supposed to follow the story.”
“You have to promise to follow my rules.” He sighed.
She spotted what she was looking for: a group of residents gathered in one of Brownsville Houses’ courtyards. She had to get her uncle off her back, or she’d be late.
“Fine. I promise.”
“Be serious.”
“I promise. Really. I have to go.”
Shortly after she’d hung up, the mayor arrived, his head and shoulders above the rest. He shook hands with the tenant association leaders and the youth advocates, then took the mic to announce his plan for “ending the neglect of Brownsville Houses” and “reversing the racist legacy of Robert Moses.”
Sadie listened, took notes, and felt zero remorse for lying to Uncle Johnny.
Her relatives didn’t understand what it was like to have no soil, to never fully belong anywhere.
Chinese people looked Sadie in the eye and had no idea she was kin.
On the high holidays, Hasidic men approached almost every white person on the streets of Brooklyn to ask, “Are you Jewish?” and she was always missed.
When no one knows who you are, it becomes easy to cross borders.
She looked at the residents around her and saw mostly older men and women.
Some beamed and nodded as the mayor spoke; others frowned, their arms crossed.
There was also one young man. He was tall and wiry, thin wrists poking from the sleeves of his hoodie like scarecrow sticks.
After a number of other speakers, the officials handed this young man the microphone.
“Good morning. I’m Tyrell Scott,” he said calmly.
“I was born and raised in Brownsville Houses. If you’re here today, you should really see firsthand the conditions folks are living in, so I’m taking a group through 289.
We have some residents kind enough to let us in their apartments, and you can also meet members of BYTE—that’s Brownsville Youth for Truth and Excellence, my 501(c)(3). ”
Sadie jotted down the acronym, impressed. Perhaps she could do a profile on BYTE later in the fall.
She joined the tour through Brownsville Houses.
As Tyrell pointed out the broken elevators, the peeling paint on the walls, and the window cracks, the mayor shook his head and complained of the prior administration’s neglect.
Sadie tried her very best to focus on getting good quotes from the mayor, but she was distracted by Tyrell.
He slapped the hands of every kid in the hallway, remarked on how BYTE was breaking the “school-to-prison pipeline,” and helped an elder tie her laces.
At the end of the tour, Sadie approached him, and he smiled warmly and shook her hand as if they’d known each other for years.
She asked for his card, and since he didn’t have one, he typed his cell number into her phone.
She stared at it on the train ride home, aware her giddiness was inappropriate.
That night, she stayed up late writing the article, and Wendy had it posted by six a.m. the next morning. Immediately, Sadie sent it to Uncle Johnny. Maybe within a few years, the neighborhood would finally begin to flourish, and people like her uncle would change their tune.
She was proud of the piece and inspired—at least until the comment section blew up.
DoTePeters1953: This reporter just copied and pasted the mayor’s press release. There’s no quotes from residents. I don’t think she actually knows anyone in this neighborhood.
EsmeraldaFrancois-Conrad: NEW GOTHAM THINKS IT CAN COLONIZE OUR NEIGHBORHOOD LIKE JUST ANOTHER THIRD WORLD COUNTRY BUT THE TRUTH IS brOWNSVILLE HAS HISTORY, THERE ARE CONTEXTS TO EVERY ONE OF THESE INITIATIVES AND PROGRAMS THE REPORTER MENTIONS, ITS NOT LIKE THE MAYOR JUST THOUGHT OF ALL THESE THINGS BY HISSONERS SELF.
TyScott1ply: How does Broken Windows Policing fit into the larger plan? That’s a follow-up question for the mayor.
TrevorGMWBE: “After years of total neglect, Brownsville may now see some light”—Am I the only one who finds this phrasing racist?
Melissa P: By “light,” does she mean white folk?
LinaRodriguezArmstrong44: Please ask the mayor about exact timeline & budget allocations for each initiative, especially the development of vacant land on Livonia Ave. We’re not interested in empty promises.