Gifford Place OurHood post by Derek James:
Anyone been feeling the ground shake at night sometimes? Feels like when I used to live on Nostrand over the A train line. You think all this construction is messing with the already fucked up infrastructure? I’m not tryna die by sinkhole.
Angie C.: Does it always happen at 2 am?
Derek James: Yes!
Angie C.: That’s the witching hour, my guy. Get you some holy water and some sage and you’ll be straight.
AS I BRUSH MY TEETH WITH ONE HAND, I HAVE MY PHONE IN the other, web browser open, scrolling through search results for “why does it feel like my bed is shaking when I fall asleep?”
My other searches this morning have been “earthquake + Brooklyn” and “do demons shake your bed,” so whichever NSA Brad is collecting my Google searches is probably having a good laugh.
I, on the other hand, am so tired I want to throw up.
The only nonsupernatural explanation in the results is that high stress levels and overconsumption of caffeine can create the sensation that your bed is shaking, like how you sometimes feel like you’re falling even though neither your body nor your bed has moved.
I place the phone on the edge of the sink and finish brushing my teeth.
My phone buzzes and a text message pops up: Hello Ms. Green, we’re messaging you with a lucrative offer on your house! Please contact us at 212–555-CASH.
I trash the message, minty-hot rage zinging through me as I spit and rinse my mouth.
These vultures can even harass you by text now? It’s like real estate psychological warfare—they bombard you with flyers, blow up your phone, have people showing up at your door, and now can show up in your text inbox. How many people do they wear down, or catch in a moment of weakness or desperation?
Bastards.
I apply my undereye concealer with shaking hands, not wanting to deal with questions at the hair braiding shop. Five hours of someone tugging at your scalp is bad enough without every other person who comes in commenting on how tired you look.
I head into my room and open the sealed plastic bag that contains my clothes—after the first couple of bedbug scares, I’m not taking any chances. I check the baseboards of the apartment and the furniture every few days, too. Drea says I’m being crazy, which isn’t my favorite descriptor after what happened in Seattle, but she’s seemingly immune to them. She doesn’t have clusters of cocoa butter–resistant scars marring her neck and ankles. She doesn’t start itching every time she sees a tiny dark mote from the corner of her eye. And she doesn’t lie in bed at night wondering why the mattresses out on the curb are quickly being followed by moving trucks.
I do.
I lock up the house, cringing as Josie yells at her kid, or her dog, or her husband, and head to the community garden to make sure everything is good.
By the time I get there, I’m already sweating through my T-shirt. It’s hot and humid and there’s no way I’m walking all the way to the salon in this heat.
Ms. Candace is in there with Paulette. She’s picking some tomatoes, lettuce, and peppers from her plot, dropping them into a basket in Paulette’s lap. Paulette’s dark eyes lock on me as I stop at the entrance, but she doesn’t say anything. Her gaze strays toward the toolshed, then she looks down.
You’re imagining it, I tell myself, though more beads of sweat pop up along my hairline. The shadows of the sunflowers sway back and forth over the two women.
“Everything good? You need anything?” I ask.
Candace looks up at me and gives me a warm smile. “Everything’s good. We’re getting some salad makings for the Day Club Crew’s lunch later, isn’t that right?” She glances at Paulette, who doesn’t respond, then looks back at me. “What you up to?”
“Heading to the beauty supply, then the braid shop,” I say. “And then working on the tour some more.”
She rests her hands on her knees, examining me, and I know the concealer isn’t doing its work. “Stay safe, okay?”
She’s told me this countless times since I was little, but this time it seems like an actual request.
“I will.”
I look over the garden one more time before I turn to leave; all the plots, except the one I’m tending, are thick with green and red and orange foliage. Honeysuckle climbs over archways, shading the gravel pathways. Sunflowers, Mommy’s favorite, stand tall and heavy-headed along the back edge.
The three-block walk to the beauty supply to pick up my hair feels like I’m moving underwater. It strikes me when I’m walking that several of the stores on just this short stretch are new. The West Indian fruit and veggie store is still here, as are the patty shop and the nail salon, but the pet store where I got my first goldfish is gone. The barbershop where older men used to congregate and play jazz records is now a home goods boutique. And the halal market is a thrift shop that has price tags more expensive than neighboring stores that sell brand-new items.
I start walking faster, pushing through the fatigue as a single terrifying thought possesses me: What if the beauty supply is gone? I passed it two days ago, but . . .
I speed walk that final half a block and feel a sense of disproportionate relief when I catch sight of the pink awning with BEAUTYLAND written across it in bold white letters.
I step into the air-conditioning, out of breath and out of it. I wander through the aisles, my pulse racing for absolutely no reason and the panic trying to get a tight hold on my sweat-slick body, but eventually it loses its hold on me.
“Hey. You okay?” the older woman behind the counter asks as she rings me up, then gestures toward the fridge near the register. “Want to add a Red Bull?”
This store has been here for years, and this woman has never asked me how I was doing. I must look a mess, but Red Bull is the last thing my jackrabbit heart rate needs right now.
“No, thank you. I’m fine.”
She nods, though her expression shows she disagrees.
The salon is a fifteen-minute walk from the beauty supply since my stylist moved to a cheaper storefront, and I decide to do myself a favor and order an Uber. I’ll have to wait . . . six minutes for Terrel in his Nissan Altima, but it’s hot as balls and I already feel dizzy from the short walk to the main drag of stores.
My phone vibrates and I check it.
Terrel has canceled the ride.
“Okay, fuck you too, Terrel,” I mutter, wondering if I really need my hair braided. Then, in what feels like a miracle given the general bullshit that has been my life lately, I immediately get a new alert.
Your driver is arriving in 1 min. Look for Drew in a black Ford Crown Victoria.
Someone lays on the horn, and I jump and look up to see the Crown Vic idling at the curb in front of me. He honks again, then again, and I hurry over and pull open the rear door.
“Drew?”
An older white guy wearing a Red Sox cap and reflective aviators looks back over his shoulder at me. “Yup. Sydney?”
I get in and he jerks into traffic, making me almost fall to my side before I can finish getting my seat belt on.
I snap it into place and shoot him a look in the rearview mirror, but he’s staring resolutely ahead and his aviators reveal nothing. My annoyance starts to grow as I realize there was no damn reason for him to be honking like that when he arrived.
I look around the car’s interior. It’s old, with no decorative accents. Instead of the usual air freshener scent, it smells . . . antiseptic. The hairs on my arms rise. When I glance at him again, I notice how the hair at the back of his thick neck is cut—shaved close to the skin with brutal efficiency, like a crew cut.
“Man, things have changed around here,” he says as we roll to a stop at a red light, pointing to a billboard for an upcoming luxury condominium. The ad features a white woman with sleeve tattoos relaxing in a luxurious bathtub, and the BVT Realty logo that can be seen on most new builds around here is stamped in the corner.
“Yeah,” I say tersely, wishing I’d had time to put in my earphones.
“You don’t like the change?” he asks.
“I grew up here. I don’t like people getting pushed out of their homes by rising rent and property tax,” I say, even though I should keep my mouth shut.
“Ohhh,” he says as the light turns green and he starts driving again. “Were you one of the people who protested?”
“No.”
He laughs. “Good. It didn’t get them anywhere, did it?”
Everything about this conversation is making me regret my life choices, so I decide to bury myself in my phone. When I try to navigate away from the app screen my phone doesn’t respond. I stare at the picture of the man in the driver photo—if it’s my current driver, he’s put on a lot of bulk since the picture was taken. There’s a license plate on the screen, but I realize I didn’t have time to check if it matched, since he’d hurried me into the car.
“The way I see it, it’s just . . . Darwin,” Drew says easily. “Survival of the fittest. You can’t protest that shit.”
The click of the doors locking echoes in the car as a punctuation to his statement and my hands reflexively curl into fists.
“Why did you lock the doors?” I ask.
“Those are the child safety locks, they kick in automatically after a while,” he says.
I glance through the window, willing myself to calm down. This feels wrong, all wrong, but after we pass this corner we’ll be just a few blocks away and it’s a straightaway on a busy Brooklyn thoroughfare. I’ve been extra jumpy lately and I had an unprovoked panic attack over a beauty supply shop. I’m probably just being paranoid.
“You find something nefarious in everything,” Marcus’s voice echoes in my head. “Then you wonder why I call you crazy.”
Drew suddenly whips a left onto a side street.
“What are you doing? The beauty shop is straight down this street.”
“My GPS said there was an obstacle on Fulton, so I decided to take another route. Don’t worry about it.”
There’s no damn GPS in this car. It has a radio with a cassette deck and his cell phone is facedown in the cubbyhole below it.
“Pull over,” I demand in the steadiest voice I can manage.
“We’re almost there,” he says in a calm down tone. “But like I was saying, it’s survival of the fittest. This part of Brooklyn has been riddled with crime for decades: drugs, shooting, theft. We don’t have those problems where I live because we understand the order of things. We follow the law. Back when I was a cop, I hated patrolling this neighborhood.”
“Pull. Over.”
I search for the lock on the door next to me, but there’s a hole where it should be sticking out. Sick fear pools in my stomach as I jiggle the handle, but Drew keeps talking.
“I always thought it would be a great place to live if there were just more . . . civilized people. Right?”
He makes a right and the car glides down a street with barely any traffic that’s lined with garages, industrial buildings, and half-erected condos.
My phone’s screen is still frozen and I try to force restart, but the app stubbornly resists.
We pass a couple who’ve stopped to kiss in the middle of the sidewalk and I bang on the window as we fly past them, but when I look back they’re laughing and she’s giving me the finger. They didn’t see that I was trying to get help, not judging them for their PDA.
“Back in the day people didn’t take romantic walks over here. It was a good place to chat with people who didn’t understand civility, and make them understand.” He laughs, as if he’s reminiscing about something benign. “But I guess that’s the stuff people call brutality these days. People who don’t know what it takes to keep a community safe.”
I’m digging in my purse for my keys. I’m gonna have to jab one into his neck on the right, and then reach past him on the left for the master lock. I am not dying in a motherfucking Uber, at the hands of a Sox fan no less.
I slide the keys between my knuckles and flex my fingers around them, my heart thumping and my hands tingling, preparing myself to strike, but then the car pulls to an abrupt stop and I jerk forward and then back.
My keys puncture the leather at the back of the driver’s seat, leaving two small rips.
Drew looks back over his shoulder at me. “Location is a block over but this street is one-way. Hope you don’t mind walking a little, Ms. Green.”
The doors unlock and I push out of the car and jog off on wobbly legs, not bothering to close the door.
Up ahead, I see the flow of human traffic on Fulton Street and jog toward it. When I stumble out into the middle of the sidewalk, stopping short of one of the subway grates, people look at me funny but flow around me without saying anything.
I fumble with my phone, trying to take a screenshot of the frozen page with Drew’s info, but when I look at the screen, it shows the message letting me know that Terrel canceled the ride.
Shit. Shit.
I look behind me and the street is empty.
Did I imagine that whole ride? No. I can’t have. A wisp of seat stuffing is still clinging to my keys.
I think about Seattle, and Marcus looking at me quizzically when I asked him about the texts I’d seen pop up on his phone and telling me he had no idea what I was talking about.
I shake my head and compose a text message to send to Drea.
Just had a wild ass Uber ride. I thought the motherfucker was gonna kill me. He knew my last name somehow?
I look at the last message Drea sent me, in the middle of the night when I’d texted to see if she was awake after my latest nightmare.
I know you’re not feeling therapy after what happened in Seattle and everything else, but I can’t be the only one carrying this with you. I love you, but I’m stressed, too.
I delete the message I was about to send her and pull myself together. Okay. The car ride was scary but I have no evidence and nothing happened in the end—I don’t need to worry Drea, and it’s not like I can get the police involved. I’ll send a report to Uber and be more careful in the future.
I’m okay.
I’m not okay.
I call Mommy and feel a bit of relief go through me when her voicemail message plays. I don’t hang up after the beep.
“Something scary just happened,” I say as I begin to walk. “I was ready to use my keys how you taught me, though. He really had the wrong one. I’ll—I’ll see you soon, okay?”
I get to the shop and stand in front of the window covered with glossy posters of Black women of all shades sporting different braided styles, and see myself reflected, phone pressed to my chest to still my racing heart, expression wild and unfamiliar.
Breathe, Sydney. Get it together.
A white couple walks past behind me as I take deep breaths while pretending to choose a style.
“Uh yeah, guess we’re never going in here,” the dude says as their reflections pass behind mine. “Can you imagine?”
“What are you talking about? Maybe I’ll get some of those Kardashian braids,” his girlfriend says. They laugh, and then their reflections are gone.
Survival of the fittest.
I go inside.
FOUR AND A half hours later, Sandrine, my hair braider, taps me on the shoulder for probably the fifteenth time and I jerk awake.
In the background, the low shouts of drama as a Real Housewife of Somewhere flips over a table on the television filter through the small, clean three-chair salon.
“Here.” Her Malian accent softens the r in the word. She presses a cup of coffee from the nearby Dunkin’ Donuts into my hand. “The mailman who always flirts picked it up for us. Yours is light and sweet with hazelnut flavor.”
“Thank you.” I lift the cup to my mouth to cover my yawn, then work at the plastic lid. “I’m sorry I keep falling asleep and making it harder for you.”
I take a sip and let the impending sugar crash flood my taste buds. I’d vaguely mentioned not sleeping and having a bad experience with my driver when she’d noticed how shaken I was earlier. I’d fallen asleep because I was tired, but also because I had kind of shut down after the adrenaline rush.
She laughs softly as she separates some strands from the pack of brightly colored hair I picked up. “If you’re so tired you can sleep through getting your scalp pulled, then you must need the rest. I’m almost done.”
I raise my brows dubiously. “I’m not falling for that. You’ll have me getting all excited to get out of this chair, then start splitting the same one-inch tuft of hair into fifty braids.”
She sucks her teeth playfully, which doesn’t ease the pain as her knuckles dig into my forehead as she starts to braid one bit along my hairline. I wince and send up a prayer to the god of edges that she doesn’t fuck my shit up.
When my teeth are no longer gritted I say, “Thanks again for fitting me in.”
“It’s all good. But I have to give you my new number because next week I’m moving to a new shop.”
I glance at her reflection in the mirror to gauge whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. Her fingers move with a rapid efficiency that’s its own art form as she weaves the Kanekalon hair with my own, forming thick braids that ombré from black at the roots to teal at the tips. Her expression is tight and her lips are pouted out in a frown that isn’t her usual expression of concentration.
“Is it the rent?” I ask, already knowing.
She nods. “Landlord suddenly wants us out. He’s selling the building, and the new owners don’t want any tenants to deal with. I believe they’ll knock it down and make one of those ugly condos.”
“Doesn’t he have to give you time?” I ask her.
“Probably. He told me if we had a problem with it, he could call ICE to do the job for him. I’m still waiting for my green card and I don’t want any problems.”
I pass my coffee cup from hand to hand. “I’m sorry, Sandrine.”
“It’s okay. I’m going to rent a chair at the barbershop around the corner. They have a little room for me to work in, so that will mean you don’t have five dudes in your face watching you get styled.” She tries to laugh, but it comes out more of a sigh. “How’s your mother doing? Did you ever call my friend, the home health aide?”
I regret how much I used to share with Sandrine during the hours and hours I passed in her chair.
“We actually decided on an assisted living home,” I say, the words heavy in my mouth. “It hurts, not seeing her every day, but it’s what she wanted. I visit her as often as I can.”
“You made the choice that was right for you both. Don’t feel guilty.”
I take in a shaky breath and dab at my eyes.
“Need a tissue?”
“No. You know I always tear up when you do my edges. I’m fine.”
Sandrine is quiet after that, and there’s nothing but the sound of rich people acting up for the reality TV cameras until the shop doorbell rings.
Sandrine pauses to look over her shoulder, sighs, then says, “Can you push the button?”
I press the unlock button on the underside of the counter in front of me and hear the jingling bells hanging from the door, followed by the scrape of flip-flops as someone shuffles into the room slowly without lifting their feet.
“Hey, Sandrine. And is that Ms. Green’s daughter?”
I see why Sandrine sighed. “Hi, Denise.”
Denise knows my name is Sydney. She just likes trying to start mess and has for years.
“Girl, you look like shit.”
“Did you wash your hair this time, Denise?” Sandrine asks, in a tone that’s much different from the one she uses to speak with me.
“My appointment is in half an hour, I’m going to wash it now,” Denise snaps. “I popped in because—”
Sandrine sighs. “I’m almost finished with Sydney. How long do you think I will wait?”
Denise draws her head back to look down her nose at Sandrine. “You’ll wait just like I have to wait for you every other time I come here.”
I can’t argue with that, even if she does get on my nerves.
They stare at each other for a long moment. Sandrine loses and goes back to focusing on my braid.
“Anyway, I popped in before washing my hair because the police swarmed up on Gifford Place a little bit ago.”
My hands grip the edge of the seat.
“Is that what all those sirens were?” Sandrine asks casually. She doesn’t live there. Only knows me and a couple of people who are her clients.
“Yup. They rolled up to Jamel and Ashley Jones’s house and stormed in. Pulled up the floorboards in Preston’s room. The boy was moving weight, apparently. Felony weight.”
My stomach turns. “Preston Jones? That doesn’t make sense.”
I’m not gonna pretend I know anyone’s secrets, but his family is solid, does all right for themselves, and he seems to have a very definite idea of how he wants his life to turn out.
I can’t reconcile “moving felony weight” with the nerdy boy who regularly showed up at my door over the winter to see if I needed help shoveling, and who always has his face in his books. It isn’t that he’s “too smart” to sell drugs, but if he is involved in that, he’s too smart to be holding an amount that would jeopardize his future or put his parents in danger.
Denise shrugs. “Not a bit of sense. And no one was in the room when they found the drugs, either. Don’t change the fact that they arrested him a little while ago. He was crying like a baby. His mama is a mess.”
Part of me wants to get up and swing on her, going around telling the Joneses’ business to anyone who’ll listen. But when I glance at her in the mirror and see the red flush under her light brown skin and her wide eyes darting back and forth, the urge fades away. What is the proper response to seeing a child arrested? Another child, the umpteenth child, when you’ve lived here long enough. And worse, arrested for something you can’t be sure they actually did, even if they get found guilty?
Denise and Sandrine continue talking, but their conversation fades into the background as my breath starts to come fast and shallow.
The police came for Preston.
The knowledge that it can happen just like that, that they can show up and ruin your life, feels like an itch in the middle of my back that I can’t reach.
Sandrine rests a hand on my shoulder, stilling me. When she speaks, her voice is gentle. “I’m almost done.”
After what seems like eternity but is likely about twenty minutes, I’m out of the chair and marching back to Gifford Place.
When I get there, people are congregating in front of Mr. Perkins’s house.
“Do we know where Preston is?” Gracie Todd asks in her crisp Masterpiece Theatre accent. She’s pushing eighty and wearing a simple blouse and slacks, but with her elegant gray bob and fine bone structure, she looks like an aging Black starlet. “There’s no more cash bail, right? I saw that on the morning news show. Shouldn’t he be home soon?”
Mr. Perkins shakes his head. “They can still add bail for what they call major traffickers. And apparently whatever they found makes him a major trafficker, being held at major-trafficker bond amount.”
Rumbles of anger and disbelief roll through the small crowd.
“Were they wearing body cams?” I ask.
Mr. Perkins sighs heavily and Count whines at his feet. “Apparently, they forgot to turn them on.”
“Preston didn’t mess with no drugs, John,” Ms. Candace says, fury in her voice. “We all know that.”
“Yes, we all know that. Maybe the police know that, too. Doesn’t change a thing.” Mr. Perkins’s lips press together.
“How will they pay the bail?” I ask. “Can we raise money or something? GoFundMe?”
“When I left, they were on the phone with someone talking about the equity of their house.”
“That’s why 223 sold, you know,” Gracie says. “The husband got caught up in some charges, assault or something, before the bail reform. He was exonerated eventually, but they had to sell the house to pay for all the legal fees.”
Goose bumps rise on my forearms even though the midday sun is scorching and the humidity is strangling. I rub my palms over my arms as I worry my bottom lip. Something about this whole thing nags at me, but grief is running interference on my thought processes. Preston hasn’t died, and people are already coming together to figure out what to do, but this very well could be the wake for the boy’s future.
My chest hurts and my head is pounding from the tight braids and the sadness. Without saying anything, I step back from the crowd and head back to my apartment, wondering whether it’s too early to have some wine.
The answer is no.