The three-block walk to the beauty supply to pick up my hair feels like I’m moving under water. Small businesses are being squeezed out, good kids are getting arrested, and more and more cops are patrolling the street.

Lifelong residents are disappearing and hostile yuppies are moving in. Things are happening to her neighborhood. Coming off of a divorce and her mother’s long illness, the last thing she needs is an eager, attractive white boy who’s living with another woman.īut Theo is really the least of her concerns. When newcomer Theo volunteers to help her with research, she’s hesitant. Frustrated by a historical tour that whitewashed the neighborhood, she decides to put together her own to showcase the true history-and shine a light on the notable people who still call the Place home. Sydney Green has spent nearly all of her life in Gifford Place, a brownstone-lined block in Brooklyn. Cranes loomed ominously over the surrounding blocks like invaders from an alien movie, mantis-like shadows with red eyes blinking against the night, the American flags attached to them flapping darkly in the wind, signaling that they came in peace when really they were here to destroy. When I’d clambered up there as an adult, alone, I’d been struck by how claustrophobic the view looked, with new buildings filling the neighborhoods around where there had once been open air. Brooklyn sprawling around us as fireworks burst in the distance. When I was a teenager, Mommy and Drea and I would picnic on the roof every Fourth of July.

Alyssa cole when no one is watching