The City We Became

by N. K. Jemisin

  “No…” Aislyn shakes her head, trying to convey that she’s all right. But is she? The dizziness is fading but she feels wrong, all over. When she recovers enough to look down at her arms, which are bare given the light sundress she’s wearing, she blinks to see them covered in faint, but rising, puffy welts. Hives. She’s breaking out in hives.

  The driver has seen them, too. He frowns, drawing back a little. “Ma’am, if you’re sick, you shouldn’t ride on public transportation.”

  “A-allergies,” Aislyn murmurs, staring at her arms. She’s allergic to pine nuts and basil, but she cannot imagine where she might have encountered any surprise pesto. “Just allergies. I, uh, I’ll be okay.”

  The driver looks skeptical, but he helps her up, and when Aislyn is clearly able to walk on her own, he shrugs and gestures for her to board.

  It’s ten minutes into the ride, with Aislyn staring at the passing buildings and people and not-thinking other than to wonder whether she should start carrying an EpiPen, when she remembers the Woman in White. With a start, she looks around, but there are only the other bus passengers, a few of whom favor her with disinterested looks in return. The Woman has vanished, as easily as she appeared.

  And yet. Aislyn’s gaze alights on the STOP REQUESTED sign, and stops there… because just over the driver’s head, dangling about a foot down from the sign, is another of those lovely white floral fronds that the Woman in White pointed out at the station.

  Don’t worry. I’m here.

  What was the Woman’s name again? Something that started with an R is all Aislyn can remember. The rest was a blur of incomprehensible foreign sounds.

  Rosie, Aislyn decides. She will call the Woman Rosie. It fits her, even; Aislyn smiles as she imagines the Woman baring a biceps on an old-fashioned poster. I WANT YOU, reads the caption. No, wait; Aislyn’s getting her vintage posters mixed up. She can’t remember Rosie the Riveter’s slogan.

  Well, it doesn’t matter. Feeling immeasurably better, Aislyn resists the urge to scratch her hives, and settles in for the rest of the ride home.

  INTERRUPTION

  Something is very wrong at Inwood Hill Park.

  It’s always difficult for Paulo to tell where he’s going in another city. As a child—just himself, a quick and sharp-toothed favela rat, long before he’d become twelve million people—he had an uncanny sense of direction, enabling him to tell which way was east or south just by glancing at the sun. Even in strange places he’d been able to do that, but the ability vanished when he became a city. Now he is São Paulo, and his feet are configured for different streets. His skin craves different breezes, different angles of light. North and south are the same everywhere, of course, but in his land, it should be winter—never cold in São Paulo, but certainly cooler and drier than the muggy, searing summer heat of this ridiculous city. Every day that he spends here, he feels backward, upside down. Home isn’t where the heart is; it’s wherever the wind feels right.

  Ah, he has no time for such maunderings.

  The grid pattern of Manhattan and the pleasant Brazilian Portuguese voice of Google Maps both make up for his lost sense of direction, and presently he reaches the place that pings on his senses as intrusion, interference, inimical. Enemy. That sense has grown stronger in the hours since New York’s birth, rather than weaker, as it should have—and it is changing, too, in a way he’s never before experienced. Rising everywhere, tugging at his awareness like magnetic lines. Developing poles. The one at FDR Drive he expected, given the events that preceded New York’s birth, though he means to go and inspect that site next in case it holds more clues. The one in Inwood is new.

  He strolls through the park, enjoying the cooler air and fresher scents of greenery, though he remains wary. At first he sees nothing to explain the looming, prickling sense of wrongness that tugs him along, worse on one side of his body than the other as he orients himself. It’s a workday and the park is nearly empty. The birds sing beautifully, however foreign their songs sound to his ear. Mosquitoes torment him; he waves at them constantly. That, at least, is no different from home.

  Then he wends his way around a particularly thick stand of trees, and stops.

  At the foot of the narrow walking path is a clearing, beyond which is a wide grassy meadow that overlooks what his map calls Spuyten Duyvil Creek. At the heart of the clearing is what he expected to see: a simple monument to the site where Europeans bargained to turn a beautiful forested island into a reeking parking lot and glorified shopping mall. (Paulo is aware that this opinion is uncharitable. He is disinclined to correct himself while he is stuck in New York.) It’s a rock with a plaque on it. It also, he guesses given the history, represents a place of power for anyone who hears the city’s voice.

  The first thing he understands is that a battle has taken place here. The scent that tinges the air holds no longer purely green vegetation, but a saltier, briny whiff as well. He knows this scent. There’s money all over the ground—and again, understanding something of the nature of Manhattan, Paulo knows at once that someone has used the money as a construct, to more precisely aim the power of the city. Aim at what? The Enemy. He does not know what form the Enemy took, but that’s the only possible answer. And whoever fought the Enemy here won, or at least managed to walk away unbloodied.

  But—this is the second thing Paulo understands, though it was the first thing he saw—the Enemy has left its mark, too.

  The clearing is full of people. At least twenty of them mill about near the monument rock, chattering. He hears some of the chatter when the wind shifts. (“—cannot believe how low the rents are here, so much better than Brooklyn—” “—authentic Dominican food—” “—I just don’t understand why they have to play their music so loud!”) A couple of the people in the clearing carry food or drink: one woman has an expensive-looking waffle cone topped with at least three scoops; one’s got a bottle of Soylent visible in his back pocket; one’s actually sipping from a plastic wineglass of rosé. Most of them are white and well dressed, though there’s a smattering of browner or grungier people.

  None of them are talking to each other, Paulo notes. Instead they simply speak to the air, or into darkened cell phones held up to their mouths in speaker mode—or, in one man’s case, to the small dog he carries in one arm, who keeps licking his face and whining and squirming. None of them face each other. The ice cream in the woman’s hand has mostly melted, and three colors of dairy goo run down her arm and onto her clothes, apparently unnoticed. Pigeons have begun to gather where the melted ice cream puddles at her feet.

  And all of them, Paulo has noticed, noticed first, are wearing white.

  This is nothing that Paulo has ever seen before, but he’s fairly certain that he has not happened upon a surprise white party in the middle of the park. Frowning, he lifts his cell phone and snaps a photo. It makes a faint shutter-sound because he hasn’t bothered to turn off that option in the settings. At the sound, all of the people around the rock fall silent, and turn to look at him.

  Paulo tenses. As casually as he can, however, he puts the phone in his pants pocket, and pulls a cigarette from his jacket pocket. He taps it twice before putting it between his lips. Old habit. Then, as twenty sets of eyes stare unblinking at him, Paulo pulls out his lighter and takes a good, deep drag. Folds his arms casually, the cigarette held between two fingers. Lets the smoke trickle from his nostrils slowly. It drifts up in clouds in front of his face.

  Their eyes unfocus. Some of them frown and dart glances around, as if they’ve lost something and can’t remember what. When Paulo backs away, around the trail-bend and out of their sight, they do not follow. After a moment, he hears their automatic, directionless chatter resume.

  Paulo leaves quickly. The park is big and the walk is long, but Paulo does not slow his pace until he’s at least a block outside of Inwood Hill’s boundaries. Then, and only then, does he check the photo that he just took.

  It’s the scene he saw, eerie enough on its
own—but every person’s face is distorted as if the digital photo is an old Polaroid that’s been heat-warped here and there. And although it’s not clear in some cases, Paulo notes an additional distortion just behind each person’s head, or near their shoulders. Indistinct, just a warping of the air, but consistent; he can see it on most of them. Something is there that he cannot see. Yet.

  He goes into a tiny, poorly lit ancient restaurant whose staff are clearly all related. There he sits down and orders something at random. He’s not hungry, but there is power in what he’s doing, and he feels the need to bolster his defenses. This is not his city. He is more vulnerable here than he’s used to.

  Then, while he nibbles on some of the best pernil he’s ever had, he texts the distorted photo to the international number. He adds, It’s boroughs. There will be five of them. And I’m going to need your help.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Boogie-Down Bronca and the Bathroom Stall of Doom

  Bronca shoves open the bathroom door. “Hey. Becky.”

  The tall Asian woman working on her eye makeup at the mirror sighs and does not turn. “You know I hate it when you call me that.”

  “I’mma call you whatever I want right now.” Bronca goes over to stand beside her at the mirror, and does not miss the sudden tension in the other woman’s shoulders. “Relax, I’m not here to kick your ass that way. We’re gonna do this civilized. I’ll use my words to tell you to fuck off, and you’re going to find somewhere to fuck off to, at least for a few days. I don’t want to look at your stupid face for a while.”

  The woman turns, scowling. “If we’re going to be civilized, then you can use my actual name. Yijing.”

  “I don’t know, I thought we were being all familiar with each other. You know how like my name has a PhD after it but you always forget to call me ‘Doctor’?” Bronca gets in the other woman’s face and points a finger at her nose. “You submitted that grant application, most of which I wrote, without my name on it. How fucking dare—”

  “I did,” Yijing interrupts, even though they’ve got rules about that, interrupting women is sexist bullshit, but Yijing is bullshit, so Bronca isn’t exactly surprised. Yijing folds her arms. “I thought hard about whether to include you, Bronca, but the fact remains that you’re not doing any new work, and—”

  Incredulous, Bronca turns and flings a hand toward the bathroom’s back wall. Rioting over its surface is an abstract profusion of colors and shapes, photorealistic in places and airily watercoloresque in others. The signature in the bottom corner: a heavily stylized graffitiesque curlicue reading Da Bronca.

  Yijing grimaces. “I mean that you aren’t showing anywhere, Bronca. The galleries—”

  “I got a gallery, you dumb-ass, not even two miles from here!”

  “Yeah, and that’s the problem!” Exasperated, Yijing abandons her attempt to stay cool, raising her own voice. That’s good. Bronca’s seen Yijing get into it with other staffers and her various boyfriends on occasion; she’s louder than Bronca, with the kind of voice that can crack glass. Bronca respects honest rage, however ugly it might get. “You’re too local. The committee could give us a bigger grant, but to get it, we have to have broader reach. A Manhattan gallery.”

  Bronca curses, turning away to begin pacing. “Manhattan galleries don’t want real art. They want inoffensive stuff from some upstate kid who went to NYU and majored in art just to rebel against her parents.” With this, she grins fiercely at Yijing.

  “You can try to make this about me, but that doesn’t change the basic fucking point, Bronca.” Yijing shakes her head, with just enough real pity in the gesture to infuriate Bronca. “Your work isn’t relevant enough. You’re not speaking to people outside this borough. And even though you like to brag about that PhD, you teach at a community college! I don’t have a problem with that—this job doesn’t leave enough time for academia, too—but you know that’s not how grant committees think.”

  Bronca stares for a moment, too stricken to really register how hurt she’s feeling. Not relevant? But it’s old habit to lash back. “What, you sleep with the grant committee chair?”

  “Oh, fuck you, Bronca—” And then Yijing slips into Mandarin, and her voice rises an octave and several decibels to well and truly curse her out.

  Fine, though. Bronca squares up. She doesn’t know enough Munsee to really go toe-to-non-English-toe with Yijing, but she’s picked up a few of the worst bits over the years. “Matantoowiineeng uch kpaam! Kalumpiil! Kiss my ‘irrelevant’ Lenape ass!”

  The bathroom door bangs open again, and both Bronca and Yijing jump. It’s Jess, the director of the experimental theater program, glaring at them both. “You know we can hear you, right? People down the block can hear you.”

  Yijing shakes her head, throws Bronca a last reproachful look, and then circles around Jess to leave. Bronca leans against one of the sinks, folding her arms and setting her jaw. Jess watches Yijing go, then shakes her head and cocks an eyebrow skeptically at Bronca’s posture. “Tell me you aren’t sulking. You’re like sixty.”

  “Sulking is petulant, pointless anger. Mine is righteous.” And she’s actually nearly seventy, but nobody needs to be reminded of that.

  “Uh-huh.” Jess shakes her head. “Never thought I’d hear you going in for slut-shaming, though.”

  Bronca flinches. Oh fuck, she did, didn’t she? But she is angry—righteously, petulantly angry—and it’s making her fall back on old bad habits. Like getting defensive when she knows she’s in the wrong. “Bitch has bad taste. I could see it if she fucked men who were worth something.”

  Jess rolls her eyes. “And now with the ‘bitch.’ Also, you think all men are shit.”

  “My son’s okay.” But this is an old joke between them, and Bronca feels herself relaxing, which is probably Jess’s goal. “I just… Fuck, Jess.”

  Jess shakes her head. “Nobody can deny what you’ve done for this place, Bronca. Not even Yijing. Cool the fuck down, though, okay? Then let’s talk later about the grant. Right now I’ve got a problem brewing, and I’m gonna need you on your game.”

  It’s exactly what Bronca needs to hear. She feels herself focusing, thoughts climbing out of their grim spiral (If I’m irrelevant, is it because I’m old? Is this how my career ends, with a whimper instead of a bang? All I ever wanted was to give meaning to the world) as she straightens and flicks imaginary lint off her denim jacket to compose herself. “Yeah, okay. What’s going on?”

  “New artists’ group wants to do a show. They’re connected to a big donor, so Raul’s on it like a fly on shit. But the art is…” She grimaces.

  “What? We’ve shown bad art before.” Every publicly funded artist space has to, occasionally.

  “This is worse.” And there’s something to the set of Jess’s shoulders that finally does pull Bronca out of her own navel. She’s never seen Jess truly angry, but it’s there now underneath her professional veneer, along with affront and disgust. “So get it together and get out here.” She closes the bathroom door and leaves.

  Bronca sighs and glances at the mirror, more out of habit than any real concern for how she looks. Okay, she looks calm. Jess is going to want her to make up with Yijing soon, but that only makes sense; the Center’s staff is small, and everybody has to be able to work together. Still, though…

  “‘Turning and turning in the widening gyre,’” says a woman’s soft voice. As Bronca stiffens, belatedly realizing some poor sapette has been trapped in a stall this whole time by their argument, the voice laughs. This is bright, delighted laughter, almost infectious in its pleasantry. For a moment Bronca feels herself smile, too, but then she wonders what’s so funny, and stops.

  There’s a row of six stalls in the women’s room, and the three at the far end are shut. Bronca doesn’t lean down to look for feet, mostly because she doesn’t want to discover that there are three people who’ve gotten stuck listening to her and Yijing. “Sorry about the yelling,” Bronca calls to the closed stal
ls. “Got carried away.”

  “It happens,” replies the voice. Low, husky, despite the high-pitched laughter. It’s a Lauren Bacall voice. Bronca loves Lauren Bacall’s voice and has since she was a baby dyke. “Yijing is just young. Doesn’t want to show respect like she should, to her elders. One must respect elders.”

  “Well, yeah.” Abruptly Bronca realizes she doesn’t recognize the voice. “Uh, sorry, have we met?”

  “So often, ‘the falcon cannot hear the falconer.’” Another of those little ripples of laughter. And no answer.

  Bronca scowls. This must be another of Yijing’s pretentious little NYU friends. “Yeah? I can quote Yeats, too. ‘Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world—’”

  “‘The blood-dimmed tide is loosed’!” The voice is positively gleeful now. “‘And everywhere / The ceremony of innocence is drowned…’ Ah, that’s my favorite line. Gets right at the shallow performativity of so many things, don’t you think? Innocence is nothing but a ceremony, after all. So strange that you people venerate it the way you do. What other world celebrates not knowing anything about how life really works?” A soft laugh-sigh. “How your species managed to get this far, I will never know.”

  Bronca is… not liking this conversation. For a minute she sort of thought the unknown woman was flirting with her. Now, though, she’s pretty sure the woman in the stall is doing something other than flirting. Something closer to dropping veiled threats.

  Don’t get into it with patrons, she reminds herself, fussing with her hair in the mirror to displace anxiety. The hubs used to joke that she was hotter than Vasquez from Aliens, which was hilarious because while she was checking out Vasquez, he was eyeballing Hicks, and it was only a year or so later that each had fessed up to the other—

  Another giggle from the closed stall, and with a sudden swift chill, Bronca realizes she has almost forgotten the person in there, just in the few seconds since the voice fell silent. Through the mirror, she fixes her gaze on the last three stalls. From this angle, she can’t see any feet on the floor.