It had gotten bad, though, even I had to admit. After the last one, there had barely been time to rebuild the worst hit coastal areas like Gravesend and Sheepshead Bay. Of course, all the smash had been poured into Manhattan and the wealthiest parts of Brooklyn, as it was every time. They had things back up and running there in a few weeks, but even then you could see people getting restless. How many more times? Why hadn’t more been done to prepare? There was jaw on the news of Hesco bastions and better power grid protection, and they were building a buffer and a barrier that kept getting destroyed every time a new storm hit. They couldn’t build fast enough. The subways still had those sienty sandbags protecting them, and the lines at the gas stations were blocks long.

My grandma was living out in public housing on the edge of Gravesend, and last time her twelfth-floor apartment was fine but she didn’t have heat or lights for weeks. I went over there to try to get her out before the storm came, but she just sat there in the dark with the TV on and say, “Makayla, where’m I gonna go?” And I said, come back home with me, back to the neighborhood, back where she lived all those years before my mother and father checked, before she had to live on what the government gives her, before I had to live in some ’trosh basement that I still can’t afford. I kept jawing. Come with me, Granny, the water almost never gets in that far, it’s better than being out here alone. And she said, “No, Makayla. I stay here.” And she did.

She said the same thing before Bernice. But then I didn’t fight her, because then my sienty basement apartment was all packed up in boxes. I didn’t want to move. But the rent had gone from $2,000 to $2,500, and I couldn’t make that extra five hundred dollars come from anywhere. Same old story that anybody who’d lived on my block ten years ago could tell you. I knew that the minute I was out, my rentboss would have the chum slingers showing the place before he could even slap a new coat of paint on it. Then he’d make promises, gut everything, make it the sort of place he could charge three or four grand for. But there was nothing I could do. There was no such thing as security in the city anymore, not for people like me.

So I didn’t fight my grandmother’s decision. I just made sure she had a shit-ton of gallons of water, food that didn’t need to be cooked and wouldn’t go bad, and a case of slurree. As soon as the subways were back up, I’d go back out there and take care of her.