When No One Is Watching

by Alyssa Cole

People bury the parts of history they don’t like, pave it over like African cemeteries beneath Manhattan skyscrapers.

everyone was annoying when you just wanted to sleep

“Baby, if you wanna keep what’s yours, you gotta hold on to it better than that. Someone is always waiting to snatch what you got, even these damn birds.”

“You’re making me feel unsafe, and if you don’t stop, I’ll—I’ll call the police.” There’s a malicious glee on her face as she says it, like when she knows her renovating work has woken me up. An expression that says, I’m fucking with you just because I can.

My run-ins with her had either been abrupt and awkward, or from a detached distance, like watching a character in a Sims video game go about her business.

Still, while they’d been worried I was attending some kind of anarchists’ meeting, they’d been having their own kaffeeklatsch about what a loser I was.

I’d worked on a few sites for condos like these—and after dating Kim, had been friends with people who could afford to live in them.

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.

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.

I guess this is what happens when you stop skulking in your room or walking the streets when no one is around—you run into some really weird people.

I bust out laughing, imagining white people chastising their kids for literally describing a person’s race. I guess if you think being Black is an unfortunate affliction, of course it would seem rude.

“Why would slavery affect people in Brooklyn?” he asks. I can’t even hate because I only learned this shit recently myself. “Slavery ended in New York ten years before the panic, but not completely. And New York was the banking capital of the U.S. Slavery was a business. Cotton was a business. Rum was a business. Sugar was a business. Banks handle money for businesses. So . . . boom. That’s why.”

I should just start building my cabin alongside Fuckboy Creek because obviously it’s where I intend to spend the rest of my days.

BOREDOM-INDUCED NAP,

I snort. Yeah, having just been fired from a bank job, I know why some lazy asshole would turn to that business. Easy money, made from other people’s hard work.

“You two look like criminals casing a joint. Trying to get your picture put up on OurHood? ‘The Ebony and Ivory cat burglars.’ You just need matching striped shirts.”

“It’s weird how a dream can feel so real.

the idea of someone watching my every move creeps me out, whether it’s Santa or Jesus.

In all the times I’d moved in New York, I’d only thought about how safe the area was for me, not what my presence meant for people in the neighborhood. Not about what advantages I had that they didn’t. I was poor, too, after all, even though I had figured out how not to be, for a little while at least.

“You work at the public school. This is going to be an independent school priced just high enough to do the work of segregation for the people who will send their kids there.

Between this and Kendra Hill’s conversation, I’m realizing that I’d never thought much about Black communities, or Black people, really.

When I think of a Black community, the first thing that comes to mind—even if I don’t want it to—is crime. Drugs. Gangs. Welfare. That’s all the news has talked about since I was a kid. Not old people drinking tea. Not complex self-sustaining financial systems that had to be created because racism means being left out to dry.

My mere presence was enough to give this woman a panic attack, which is annoying, because I haven’t done anything to her. And I can’t say that or defend myself because, well, Howdy fucking Doody.

She’d never invited Drea down, or gone to Mr. Perkins or Ms. Candace. Sydney always tries to soldier through alone—maybe she needs someone to come barging in, to know that someone cares enough to try, even if it is the annoying neighbor from across the street.

I’m reminded that even though they stink and cause cancer, a cigarette is sexy as hell in the right hands.

There’s no fear of all the awful things that’ve happened before this moment, or all the bad things that might happen after.

I don’t know the banging-after-attempting-to-hide-a-body-for-you etiquette.

The police presence has exploded over the last few years, with cops stationed en masse at subway entrances and stepped-up foot patrols that were supposed to increase safety, but haven’t for the people who lived here. Preston and the many other people in the neighborhood who’ve been arrested over the last couple of years have likely been taken to VerenTech’s jails and prisons. All the new condos going up in any available slice of land are owned by BVT. Veritas Bank, the biggest lender to the new businesses opening—and the owner of so many of the defaulted loans of the past—is part of VerenTech.

“I need you to channel the confidence of a mediocre white man.

Not being able to call the police when you need help really sucks, I’m learning.

Funny how much race matters until it doesn’t.

It strikes me that it’s pretty typical that I’d discover a goddamn conspiracy theory, infiltrate a secret research center, kill a bunch of bad guys, and still end up not saving the day.