The City We Became

Sao Paulo’s sense of danger has grown ever since New York City’s birth. Exploring Inwood Hill Park, he comes upon the stone monument where Manny, Bel, and Brooklyn confronted the Woman in White. He sees the money Manny flung to the ground, and he understands some kind of battle occurred here. Then, he notices the people in the park are all wearing white, commenting, “The Enemy has left its mark, too” (112). He takes a picture of the crowd and looks at it after leaving the park. All the faces—and in some cases the air around their heads and bodies—are distorted. He texts the photo to an international number, adding “It’s boroughs. There will be five of them. And I’m going to need your help” (114).

Bronca, an artist of Lenape ancestry, argues with her colleague Yijing in the bathroom of a community arts center. Bronca’s art, Yijing tells her, is “too local” for a Manhattan gallery or for prominent arts grants. Seemingly alone in the bathroom, Bronca hears a voice from one of the stalls. It’s the Woman in White, the avatar of the Enemy, and she tries to lure Bronca to her side with threats of Armageddon and genocide. Suddenly, Bronca feels everything around her “rippling” and “stretching.” She is becoming the Bronx. Angry at the woman’s veiled threats, Bronca approaches the stall door, which opens just slightly, and into which Bronca glimpses a surreal vision of utter white, of depth far beyond the size of the actual stall, and of a strange pulsing entity. She kicks the door open and, for a brief moment, she hears a piercing scream. Then, the door swings back to reveal an ordinary bathroom stall. In that moment, Bronca understands who and what she is, and what her task is: to join with the other boroughs and fight the Enemy. Initially, however, Bronca resists; she is nearly 70 years old, and she is tired. The other four boroughs will have to get by without her.

Manny and Brooklyn wait for a bus and try to sense the identities and locations of the Bronx and Queens. Having more or less adjusted to their bizarre new circumstances, Manny and Brooklyn navigate more by feeling than anything else. They wonder why the white tendrils are visible to some, like Madison and Bel, but not to all. Manny reasons that people will see what they need to see in order to be of use to the cause. As they ride the bus, they discuss how they’ve changed: Manny has amnesia, and Brooklyn feels like she’s being pulled back to her old, pre-motherhood identity as hip hop artist, MC Free. Then, Brooklyn gives Manny a primer on what it means to be a New Yorker: “So, lesson one of New York: what people think about us isn’t what we really are” (134). She describes the characteristics of each borough: the Bronx is, in many ways, the real heart of New York, the gritty, creative, survived-the-fire heart; Queens is working-class, the last remnant of “old New York;” Staten Island is the outlier, the borough that doesn’t want to be part of the city.

Riding the subway out near Jackson Heights in Queens, Brooklyn and Manny both experience the sensation of familiarity that means the avatar is near. They exit the subway. Standing on a street corner, Manny sees a tweet about a weird incident involving a backyard swimming pool. He follows a link, and both he and Brooklyn are immediately drawn to the woman in the posted video. At the same time, Brooklyn sees an image on her phone of an abstract mural that Manny senses was painted from the perspective of the “other” New York, the phantom version of the city. They sense they have located the Bronx as well. Desperate to unite all five boroughs as quickly as possible, they call for a rideshare and go in search of Queens.

At the Bronx Art Center, Bronca vets the work of a White, male artist collective which is hoping for a showing at the gallery. Bronca finds the art objectionable—racist, homophobic, and derivative—until they unveil the final piece: a painting of a city scene, possibly Chinatown, populated with grimy, not-quite-human figures. Bronca is drawn into the world of the painting until she can “hear” the chatter of the strange figures and see their blank faces watching her. She is nearly lost in the painting until Veneza, a gallery worker, pulls her back. She understands that she has barely averted some extreme danger. She rejects the collective’s work, and as they pack up the art, she notices a white tendril creeping out from one of the men’s ankles. As he leaves, she asks who he’s working for. He responds, “Oh, don’t worry. You’re going to meet her soon. Face-to-face, she said. Without a bathroom door to protect you” (151). Interpreting this as a threat, Bronca closes the center early and sends everyone home except for the “keyholders,” homeless artists and neglected kids for whom the center is home.

Searching for information about the artist collective, Veneza finds a series of YouTube videos. The collective is called Alt Artistes, a group of White supremacists who post videos about the “disrespect of a superior culture” (153) in the art world. Confronted with possible stalking and death threats, Bronca and the rest of the art center’s management—Jess and Yijing—try to conceal their online personal information.

Later, Veneza confesses to Bronca that she “experienced” the painting and felt as if she was inside it. Bronca decides to tell her the truth: that the painting was a glimpse into an alternate, sinister version of New York. She decides to show Veneza rather than tell her, so she drives her to the South Bronx on the banks of the Harlem River. There, she immerses herself into “her city,” moves to its rhythms, and becomes it. She moves a drainage pipe as if it was an appendage, telling Veneza, “Whatever you see…first and foremost, it’s real” (163). She then describes for Veneza an origin theory of millions of alternate universes, overlaid on top of each other with cities as the sole common denominator. One of the alternate realities, she says, tries to destroy newly birthed cities like New York, but for some reason, the entity has changed its tactics and appearance, using humans as minions. Bronca drives Veneza home to Jersey City, refusing Veneza’s offer to stay with her. In order to protect the city, she must be physically within its limits.