(1/5) “All I have to do is think real hard about something, and...

(1/5) “All I have to do is think real hard about something, and it happens. Been that way my entire life. When I was a little girl I thought real hard about learning how to swim. No Harlem kids knew how to swim, but my neighbor Mr. Thorpe was from the islands. He brought me to the beach with his family, put me on his shoulders, walked me in the water, and taught me how to swim. Next thing I thought about was playing basketball. I wasn’t even five feet tall, but I went to the Milbank Recreation Center and tried out for the team. Coach Cherry Jackson made me starting forward. I ended up scoring 34 points one night at Madison Square Garden. Played so hard that game I had an asthma attack. Anyway, whenever I think really hard about something, it happens. My two daughters really wanted to live in a brownstone when they were younger. But I was a second-grade teacher, so I could never afford it. One Christmas I went to the store and got them a brownstone dollhouse. Set it up in the living room. It was a big joke in our family: ‘Mom finally got us a brownstone.’ But even though I was laughing, I’d started thinking hard about getting a real brownstone. Around that time the city decided it would be holding its first ever brownstone lottery. I put in our name. My husband thought I was crazy. On the night of the drawing I was attending a seminar across town. Somebody brought me the phone, and on the other end my daughter is screaming that the lottery people called. We won a brownstone! I wrote down the address and hailed the first cab that drove down the street. When we finally got to the block, the driver started going real slow. It was so dark that we couldn’t find the house. Right as we were getting close to the address, a cop pulled up behind us and started flashing his lights. He knocked on the window, and asked if we were trying to buy drugs. I pointed right past him, into the darkness. I screamed ‘Officer! I just won that brownstone!’ That’s when he ran back to his car, turned on the search light, and swung it around. The entire façade of the house lit up. And I couldn’t breathe. My heart stopped. Because it was a giant version of the dollhouse in my living room.”