The World We Make (Great Cities #2)

by N.K. Jemisin

Call me Neek. No, I’m not hunting no fucking whale. Giant squid, maybe. Got some homoerotic shit going on, too, yo. Maybe I should write a book. Instead of Moby-Dick I’ll call it Suck My Interdimensional Dick—a thriller, or maybe a horror, with some comedy and romance and tragedy. Little for everybody.

Guess I should talk proper when I’m slinging shit about literature.

“But now they know there’s more to her. They know she has a name, and that she works through manipulating institutions and systems as much as individuals. If I were a living city who suddenly realized the Enemy was in real estate, I would look back on every bit of city planning over the last fifty years with a different eye. Education budgets, policing, zoning, liquor licenses, public transportation, even popular culture—and the signs would be there. She’s been playing the long game, stifling progress and weakening cities to make them easier to destroy, and once you know what to look for, the cancer is everywhere.”

A living city blends the will of its citizens with the impressions of outsiders, as filtered through legends and media.

The reality of New York is being assailed by a thousand other New Yorks that don’t exist… but a bunch of people suddenly want them to. And, oh God, I can feel their belief actually dragging at me, trying to pull me away from who I actually am.

CHAPTER ONE Living Just Enough in the City

Send me your tired, your poor schtick has turned out to be more like Send me your smartest and hardest working so we can suck the life out of them then ship the exhausted dregs right back. So Padmini shrugs and plays it off.

It’s like a group hug of concern, her borough folding gentle arms around her and slapping away all that Wall Street coldness, and for a moment Padmini cries harder. Can’t help it. “I’m okay,” she blurts, taking a tissue from the packet that the young man waves at her. “I’m sorry. It’s just… hard, sometimes. This damn city.” There are nods around her. “Fuck this city,” says the old lady.

“Yeahs” of agreement from people who are watching. It’s enough to pull a laugh from Padmini, which helps a lot even though absolutely none of her problems have been solved. Well—maybe one problem. In a moment when the world has made her feel valueless and alone, this little bit of human connection is exactly what she needs.

Okay. “Thank you,” Padmini mumbles, trying to smile and trying not to look too disoriented as she pulls herself together. “Thank you, I’m sorry, you’re so kind, I love you all, I’ll be all right.”

Padmini feels the sidewalks start to purr and sees the sky suddenly brighten and she inhales as the power of the city flows back into her limbs and mind and soul. She is New York again. She is the borough of the city’s besieged working class, huddled masses done with everybody’s shit, and they’ve got her back.

“You all right?” “Yeah,” she says. “You?” “Mi deh yah. Nobody smack my face wit a snow globe, see?” He grins, and Padmini can’t help laughing back. The laugh’s a bit hysterical, but badly needed. “Don’t let them hurt that guy,” she says, even though there’s no reason to expect Bomboclaat to do anything more than he’s already done. “He’s an asshole, but you know what the cops are like.” Nobody deserves to die just for being an asshole. “Queen,” Bomboclaat says, in amusement. “Too nice. Fine, tho, I gotchu.”

But before all that, Padmini’s going home. She needs her family. Her scrapes and bruises have already healed, but she decides she also needs a long soaking bath with scented Epsom salts, and a pillow to cry into, and maybe some of those little brigadeiro things she’s been loving ever since they met São Paulo. There’s a Brazilian bakery on the way home.

“Queens is families,” Neek says. It’s soft. He hasn’t turned to face them, speaking to the window, but all of them fall silent and turn to him. “Little-big dreams. An apartment with rent stabilization, parking for a car the neighbors will admire. Queens is people climbing out of hell and dragging everyone they care about along with them, just to make it to purgatory.”

New York is pretty progressive, but that energy gets spread across a lot of small constituencies, like the local-control-of-schools advocates, the police defunders and abolitionists, the marginalized communities, and all the unions that aren’t cops. If Panfilo can get the bigots in line, it’ll create a voting bloc that can wedge through all of that, and maybe even attract a few subgroups that currently vote Democratic—the dirtbag leftists, for example.

“But a coalition like that will fall apart as soon as he’s elected. This isn’t the Eighties or Nineties anymore; the city’s not struggling, and we’ve got more of a police violence epidemic these days than a drug-fueled one. The only way…”

“But it was really about real estate. Crime was bad all over the city back then, but Giuliani made it seem like those neighborhoods were the only problem. Between the predatory policing and the economy, and Giuliani undermining rent stabilization, people of color were getting evicted and foreclosed-on all over those ’hoods. Now, nearly all of them have become predominantly white, and homes that used to be affordable are now worth millions. Panfilo must be planning to try something similar. Target an ethnic group to please his base, then take their stuff to make the landlords and businesspeople happy. The latter will keep him in power for a while.”

“The change we’re talking about wasn’t just demographic,” Bronca says. “It was spiritual. Once, New York City was known for its art. Fashion, fine art, the performing arts, music; we were the center of the world for all of that, creating new genres and even new ways of thinking on the regular. Notice how many of us come from that background?” She eyes Neek and Veneza. “But not all of us, because New York’s not such a good city for art anymore. That wasn’t an organic, grassroots change; it was imposed from the top down, over decades, and it worked. Now we’re best known for overpriced real estate and money laundering. In barely forty years we’ve completely transformed. So maybe, if the change happens too fast and we don’t change enough to keep up…”

Sometimes Brooklyn wonders what it was like for her ancestors who survived these thoroughly American pogroms, building lives and futures for themselves again and again only to have it all shot and lynched away. Did they hear the mobs coming? Were there warnings ahead of time—whispers over the wire, soldier instincts astir, sympathetic officials pulling aside favored servants or even clandestine lovers and telling them to brace for attack? What could they do, those proud but powerless people, in a country where no law protected them and even basic human decency turned its back? Where could they go, with no ancestral homes to return to and no one to rely on but themselves?

The caravan’s drivers have deliberately spread out so as to block the intersection, so a good bit of the honking is coming from other cars trying to get around them. On one corner, a cellphone vendor has put out a six-foot-tall speaker that’s bumping Biggie. It’s mostly drowning out the honking and whatever country-music nonsense one of the trucks is trying to blast, but the result is auditory chaos. It’s all a little corny. And yet Brooklyn cannot bring herself to find it funny. Open racists usually don’t come to Black areas, preferring to target isolated individuals, or other ethnicities that they think won’t fight back. That sort are cowards at heart, and they know coming to Bed Stuy is a great way to get knocked the fuck out.

At the edges of her vision, Brooklyn is aware of other people on the street standing up as well, others who are 100 percent New York no matter where they came from and no matter that they are not avatars. They’re the ones who belong here, not these wannabe-lynch-mob motherfuckers with Jersey or Pennsylvania plates,

From a sturdy Haitian grandmother who has her hand tight on the shoulder of a little boy: “Dispèse! Don’t even belong here! Pa janm!”

Beat-riff and beat-riff and beat-riff and beat-riff and beat-riff and beat slow-riff, go the speakers, before finally letting the bridge go. But the city’s work is done. Brooklyn releases the circle of silence and breathes out slowly as the ordinary sounds of her borough resume.

“You might want to leave now,” she says. The first shooter cringes from her. Another man who was in the car with him grabs for his shoulders as if to pull him back. They both look utterly terrified of a middle-aged Black woman in a pantsuit. “Some of these folks you hurt are gonna want payback. I’d advise you to stick together ’til you get out of the neighborhood. If you stay in a group, they probably won’t jump you. Probably.”

“Oh, God,” the first shooter blurts. He’s hyperventilating. “Oh my God, what did you do? Where’s my, my truck? How, how…” He shakes his head and keeps shaking it. Brooklyn snorts. “I made Brooklyn great again. Now get the fuck out of my borough.”

Usually when people witness the what-the-fuckery that is city magic, they just… forget.

“These people,” Brooklyn concludes, “they come here for a weekend maybe. Usually never leave Midtown, watch movies about us made in LA by producers who grew up in Kansas. They think they know us. They tell each other that New York is the boogeyman of cities, full of scary—” She catches herself and takes a deep breath. Puts on a yeah-I-almost-slipped smile, which makes Mariam chuckle. “Scary Black people and eeee-legal criminals and trans women who’ll beat them up in a bathroom. And then they have the nerve to come here waving banners that say Our city not yours. People like this only want to use New York. They steal our tragedies to hype themselves up. They claim ownership of a New York that never existed outside their imaginations. And they actually think they can tell us who we are!”

Tokyo sighs. “You are so American. This isn’t some gerrymandered pretend democracy like what you’re used to. If enough of us want to meet, the meeting will simply happen as reality responds to our collective will. No vote needed. And no, I will not support a meeting, if that’s what you’ve come here to beg for. Again: I am aware that your city is in danger, but this sounds like a ‘you’ problem.”

“I don’t care if you’ve transcended human bodily needs or not. Everyone needs a good meal to get their head on straight. Especially in your case, since you have like a million heads inside you now.” “Two million people in Queens,” Barsaat says, pushing up his glasses and returning his attention to his phone. “Well, she’ll need seconds, then.”

“You’re making jokes?” she says, even though she knows it sounds petulant. “I lost my job, the city’s in danger again, and I have to hear your terrible jokes before we all die?”

Aishwarya swats his hand, then sighs at Padmini. “All right, I’m sorry, but I was just worried for you, kunju. Look, my point is, take up with however many, I don’t know, Netflix-and-actually-watch-Netflix partners you like. But make sure you marry one of them, please, if they’re a citizen. And at least consider having a child, because you’re so good with babies, and a lot of insurances cover intrauterine insemination—”

Because it’s not a class day, Padmini heads back into her room to try and do some course reading. She’s about to be reduced to an absentee avatar of New York, but that’s no excuse for letting her grades slip. (Though first she moves her lone sex toy to a new hiding spot. Just in case.)

Nothing. There’s nothing she can do. Queens is the borough whose heart is immigrants. With that identity comes the ugly knowledge that sometimes those immigrants get attacked in their homes and dragged off by secret police who put them into camps and take all their belongings on a whim, or because some politician thinks he can score points by seeming tough on “illegals,” or—

“The school can verify her status. That’s nothing her coworkers should have anything to do with. You could check her status yourself with five minutes on SEVIS! This constitutes harassment, and—”

“Are you sure you’re all right with me staying here?” she asks him. “I don’t want to put you at risk. You’re on an F-1, too, aren’t you?” “J-1. Research scholar. But close enough by ICE standards—and yeah, even so, I’m all right with it.”

It does help to hear the words. Then Padmini turns to face Manny, taking a deep breath. “So, um. While we’re on the subject of huge favors, I need you to do me one more. For New York. Let’s get married.”

Still, the crowd loves it, and Aislyn loves it. He wants to give more money to the NYPD and stop making them waste time on diversity training! He’s going to fire the city council! Fire everyone running the MTA so that the trains will finally run on time! Stop funding CUNY, since all it does is crank out “wokeism” and socialists anyway—Aislyn doesn’t really understand this part, because the College of Staten Island is part of the CUNY system and Aislyn doesn’t think she ran into any woke socialists while she was a student there—but the crowd seems to love this statement, so it must be a good thing. It’s an amazing thing. She had no idea the mayor of New York had so much power.

“They don’t want us anyway. So why don’t we just take our balls and go home?”

“Oh, yeah, I got you, honey, we got lots of that lined up. Some Springsteen, little Linkin Park, ‘Fortunate Son,’ oldie goldies and newie twoies! Whole stadium’s got a party comin’.” “Yeah, but…” Aislyn can’t think of how to articulate her frustration. “What about, like, Wu-Tang Clan or, or RZA? They’re actually from Staten Island. And, like, Joan Baez, and—” “Baez, maybe,” the DJ says, a little dismissively. “I think I got that Dixie song she did somewhere? When things slow down a little I’ll spin that one. No Wu-Tang or RZA, tho. I don’t play that jungle music shit.” It’s a slap in the face, even though the guy at least used the “at-home” version of the word Aislyn suspects he really wanted to use.

She gets that not everyone likes Black people, but everybody likes Wu-Tang. Don’t they?

“People think New York is just Manhattan—skyscrapers and Broadway and Park Avenue. Maybe they go see a ball game in Queens, or hit up the Bronx Zoo or the Brooklyn Botanic Garden… but they don’t come to the Staten Island Botanic Garden. They ride the ferry here so they can see the Statue of Liberty for cheap, but then they turn right around and leave again. We’re gonna change all that.”

“Well, there’s a long-term plan and a short-term one. Long term, we need more real people in this city, people who aren’t freeloaders or gangbangers or, uh, sexually confused.” He grins. “And they need to see that Staten Island is where all the normal people of New York live—hardworking all-American people, who understand family values. If we play it right, get some movie shoots in to showcase how beautiful this borough is, maybe open up to new development, Staten Island can grow. Imagine if this borough had as many people as Brooklyn! We could get anything we wanted out of the city, then.”

Too much development, too many new people, would inevitably mean the loss of the Staten Island Aislyn has always loved. No more farms. Less parkland. No more stately Victorian houses with twenty rooms for the same price as a two-bedroom condo in Midtown Manhattan. Everything might end up as dense as the North Shore of the island, which is so packed with multifamily high-rises and traffic that Aislyn kind of hates going there. Feels too much like the rest of New York.

“You definitely should! It bothers me that this country has changed so much over the years. We used to be number one for education in the world! Then liberals got into the schools and used taxpayer money to teach all sorts of godless, perverted, useless things. Sex ed for elementary schoolers! Diversity. Art therapy.” He laughs at the very idea. “It just has to stop.”

Everyone is here for Staten Island. And yet, as the DJ starts playing more thumping, feel-good music made by someone from New York but not from Staten, and the bartender hands out free Manhattans but has no idea how to make a good Staten Island Ferry… Aislyn finds herself just standing there for a long moment, feeling lost. No one talks to her.

Local businesses have begun to bake bread and grill fish, as they have done every day for millennia. He nods to the local tea seller in his traditional vest and bright, striped pants, who smiles and tilts the massive carafe on his back to pour Istanbul a cup. Istanbul pays more than the tea is worth, to cover any free cups the seller might choose to offer to the poor. They have argued about this in the past, he and the tea seller, because the seller prefers to do his own charity.

Then he hands back the cup and nods with pointed graciousness; the tea seller rolls his eyes but smiles in rueful amusement as he walks off. Istanbul has been arguing with tea sellers for more than a thousand years.

So they keep walking, in silence this time. Istanbul is amused by the way the young man keeps looking around in wonder. This happens particularly in the older parts of the city that they pass through; the young man can feel their age, naturally, and seems mind-blown by the sheer weight of years embedded in this three-thousand-year-old set of steps, or that leftover bit of aqueduct from the time of Constantine. The awe is rather charming, really. Seeing oneself anew through the eyes of a child usually is.

The New York frowns. “If we need to win the elders over—” “You don’t need their agreement, you need their attention. So many young cities have come and gone over the years, you see. It’s like in the very old days, when parents had a lot of children because it was understood that so many would die before adulthood. Some doted on all the children, of course, but many parents learned to stay detached until a child had lived long enough to love safely. To us, these days, such detachment seems callous, but it should be understood as a way to cushion the heart against possible pain.” Istanbul spreads his hands. “Because of this, you, New York, will not be heeded no matter how diplomatic your approach. You aren’t safe to care about until you’ve been around awhile. But we also like routine, we elder cities. We like quiet. We can ignore one whiny child, but if the whole schoolroom kicks up a ruckus?”

He lingers first, watching while Istanbul takes out a small thermos of tea—his own home brew, linden flower, good for health—to pour on the trapped animals. He’s been doing this every week for years now. He can’t keep the patch from being dangerous because it’s outside his city limits, but everything that considers itself Istanbul is Istanbul, so he isn’t completely powerless. The tea hits the tendrils like acid; they screech and wither and fall away. The gull squawks and flaps off, looking disgruntled at being wet with tea, but the newly freed cats run over to rub up against Istanbul’s ankles