Chapter 13 Sadie & Lina #2
Lina wondered if something was wrong with the radiator. Or maybe this was a hot flash—felt like she was going through menopause all over again. She removed her beret and wiped the sweat from her forehead.
Reaching the kitchen, she opened the window and looked down at the street.
A quietness came over Brownsville when it rained.
She thought of her mother Isabella, who always said it was good luck to get wet by the first May rain.
Each spring, Mami would grab their hands and pull them out to the courtyard, where they’d laugh and catch droplets on their tongues, delighted by their mother’s sudden whimsy.
Lina would have liked to be out there now, instead of with Sadie and Tyrell and their flickering eyes.
Their eyes: that’s why the room felt like an oven.
With her remarks, Lina had only been trying to find a way to reach the girl, to help her understand the history and context behind their fight for the land.
Then Miss Sadie had asked why the city shouldn’t work with big developers, why the city should waste its time working with broke-ass grassroots groups like theirs.
It was the same question that had worried Tyrell on their way back from Bernard & Company, and she’d been pondering it ever since.
But the city had to think beyond “bang for the buck,” she thought.
It had to think about justice. About priorities.
If the city didn’t spend so lavishly on stadiums and military-grade equipment for the NYPD, the mayor could put funds into community groups that would construct the kind of housing and facilities people truly needed.
And the community groups would do it right—they’d put their neighbors to work, hire young people to hammer and to paint, and give poor people collective ownership of the land.
That was the real recipe for public safety and economic progress, in her view.
That’s why Lina had asked the girl about her own family.
She wanted Sadie to stop thinking so hard and instead feel.
Wanted her to remember her inheritance. Chinese and Jewish people had experienced injustice and displacement too—she needed Sadie to tap into that memory.
Bearing a tray with three glasses of horchata, Lina returned to the living room and handed Miss Sadie a cup.
“This is amazing,” Miss Sadie said.
Lina had never met a mixed Chinese and Jewish person. It was hard to imagine the Chinese lady from the laundry on Rockaway sneaking over to Eastern Parkway and blowing kisses to one of the Hasid men with sidelocks.
With these thoughts, Lina had yet another hot flash, and she sat back down and reached for Our Time Press, folding the latest issue into a fan. There was no use speculating about Miss Sadie, she told herself again. She would have to finish this interview.
“Okay, so what do you want to know? You want to know about the Freedom School?” She sipped from her horchata.
“I used to live at 78 Livonia Avenue, and I turned my apartment into an alternative school, a liberation school. We called it the Freedom School. We had a pantry, a free hair salon, art and political education classes. We even had a day care for the little kids. In the summer, we organized Black Power parades and Puerto Rican Pride parades.”
“How did you fund the school?” Sadie asked.
“Donations, fish fries, art sales, rent parties.”
“And how many years did the Freedom School exist?”
“About seven.”
“And then what happened?”
The girl wanted to talk about the fire.
Lina sipped from her cup. “Well,” she said, but she found herself struggling for words. The cold cream of the horchata touched her brain and glazed her throat, and she sat rigid, frozen. It had been so long since she’d spoken of that day.
“Ms. Lina never told me about the fire,” Tyrell said, perhaps trying to buy her some time—she could tell he wanted to make eye contact with her, but she couldn’t meet his gaze yet. “That was some real heavy shit, right?”
“No, no,” Lina muttered, shaking off the stiffness. “I’ll tell you guys about the fire.”
She eyed the lower left corner of the mural. Her students had painted a young Lina there—glowing Afro, leather jacket, the black-purple beret.
“It was August 24, 1978. I was thirty-four. The building was falling apart, and we’d been in court with the landlord.
There was a sign on the door that said the city was going to evict, but we thought that was some kind of mistake because the court had said the landlord had two months to fix the place up and he hadn’t done any of the work yet.
So, this one night, guess it was one, two in the morning, I opened the door and the hallway was already in flames.
I went into the next apartment, where the Browns lived.
We got the three girls out through the fire escape.
But when we reached the street, the fire had spread.
And some of the neighbors were trapped inside. ”
Lina reached for the boom box, shut it off.
“People called nine-one-one, but the trucks didn’t show up. I went in the next building myself, went up to the top floor. There was this old woman. We used to call her Grandma. I wanted to get her out, but she kept telling me her brother was in the next room.”
Lina clutched her stomach. Felt like she’d swallowed a live snake. “I’m trying to give you guys the facts, but I’ve been having nightmares about that night for forty years and it’s hard to say what really happened.”
Just the prior night, she’d dreamed of Grandma.
The old woman had jumped out of a window, then become a monster, attacking people on the street.
And two weeks earlier, Lina had locked the Brown girls in a closet to protect them from a pedophile.
Then the building was on fire, and the girls still trapped inside.
Lina studied the wrinkles on the front page of Our Time Press.
“I didn’t make it in time.”
She kept her eyes on her lap.
“We had to leave without the brother, and we made it down. But by the time the fire trucks showed up, we had one dead, three injured, and sixteen people homeless.”
When she finally raised her head, Miss Sadie looked like she was about to cry. Pity, likely, and Lina didn’t want any of that.
“Who did it?” Tyrell asked.
“I saw the two boys who lit the match. But those kids were paid by the landlord.”
“The landlord—do you remember his name?” Miss Sadie asked.
“Richard Wong.”
“Was there ever an investigation?”
Lina couldn’t help but laugh. “The city didn’t investigate these fires! No, Mr. Wong took the money and ran.”
Miss Sadie reached for her backpack, withdrew her laptop.
“I was looking at the deed record for the building.” Sadie said. “I saw Richard Wong owned the building from May 3, 1966, through August 9, 1978. So August 9 is about two weeks before the day of the fire. Is it possible that someone else already owned the building by then?”
Tyrell leaned closer to the girl, squinting at the screen. Lina stared at the two of them, confused. “What deed record?” She hadn’t even known a person could have access to the lot’s deed record. “What’s that you said?”
“August 9 is two weeks before the fire. And there’s a buyer listed here—78 Livonia Avenue LLC. Do you know what that is?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“What about the restaurant?” Miss Sadie asked next. “What happened to it?”
“The Chinese restaurant? That was gone long before we started the Freedom School.”
As soon as Lina answered the question, she knew something was off. That girl was hiding something. Tyrell must have sensed it too. He leaned away from Sadie now, glancing at Lina, his jaw suddenly rigid.
“How did you know there used to be a restaurant in the building?”
The reporter looked down at her notebook, but Lina could tell she was flustered.
“Miss Sadie, what do you know about Richard Wong?”
The girl put her head in her hands like she really was going to cry. Lina didn’t want to see this. Didn’t even want to know. She wished she’d never invited Sadie up to her apartment.
“He’s my grandfather.”
Sadie raised her face, met Lina’s eyes—and Lina held the gaze, held it without moving or screaming.
“Is Richard Wong alive?”
“No. He died when I was a baby.”
“You knew what he did when you came to my house today?” She tried to keep her voice flat, her face devoid of emotion.
“I… knew he owned the building. I knew he did something.”
“And why didn’t you say anything about that, Miss Sadie?”
“I wanted to know what happened.”
“Your family couldn’t tell you? You wanted to hear it from the victim’s mouth?”
“No one in my family knows.”
“Now you know what happened! Now you can get out of my house!” Unable to bear the sight of Sadie’s face, Lina limped to the window.
“I’m so sorry. I was just hoping to bring this to light, to write…”
“Your grandpa burned down my home! And now you have the nerve to set foot in this one?”
“Maybe if you give me a chance to explain, we could work together.”
Lina was appalled by the girl’s audacity. She gripped the window frame with one hand. “You think after you lied to me, I still trust you enough to work with you? When I say get out of my house, you get out of my house!”
No one said anything then. She heard the rustle of coats and furniture.
“I’m really sorry,” the reporter attempted once again.
Lina heard footsteps and the door slowly opening. Several footsteps—Tyrell’s sneakers. He had unlocked the front door.
She looked over her shoulder—saw Tyrell with his eyes lowered and his arms folded, propping open the door, and the girl, tearing up as she shuffled into the hallway.
Once Sadie Chin was gone, Lina could tell Tyrell wanted to talk to her, but she didn’t want to hear it.
She dialed a tenant organizer, reaching her voicemail.
“Rhonda, it’s Lina. You know that reporter I told you about? She ain’t who she said she was. Just wanted to let you know. See you Sunday.”
She dialed the violence interrupter, Mr. Q.
“Mr. Q, Lina here. That reporter I told you about, don’t bother with her. Yeah. I shouldn’t have given her your number. You get a call from her, let it ring, she ain’t worth your time.”
She dialed the youth mentors, the leaders of the running club, the librarians, and a few additional community organizers Miss Sadie might have met on her own time, Tyrell watching her from the door of the kitchen.
Last, she dialed Keesha, canceled their meeting, and collapsed in her living room chair.
“I’m protecting my people,” she said aloud. “I could’ve done a better job of that in ’78. And now I’m doing it.”
Tyrell sat down on the couch across from her, silent.