I should have been prepared for moving out. For months Lillian had been waitressing, but I was still shocked when all those months of lunch shifts added up to the first month’s rent plus deposit on a place of our own. It was a one-bedroom like Kaja and Grete’s, part of a mansion that had been chopped into eight apartments when Park Slope had started going downhill. In our living room, you could see where they’d thrown a wall right through the middle so another family could live on the other half of the first floor. We were far enough from Kaja and Grete that I was zoned for a different school, one Lillian said was supposed to be better. Grete had found a different school for Kaja, too, my mother said, so she and I wouldn’t have stayed in the same first-grade class anyway. Plus, she said, don’t you want your own bed? I did, but that didn’t stop me from crying like we were moving to China and not fifteen blocks away.

GRETE WASHINGTON: Paul did not like Prospect Friends, but he never saw this place, so really it is more correct to say that he did not like the idea of a private Quaker school. He wished for Kaja to receive a strong public education with other black children. This was my preference as well, but such a school did not exist. The public school where Kaja and Samantha started first grade together had many black and Puerto Rican children, but forty children were placed inside each classroom with not enough desks or books. The teacher yelled often, and Kaja was unhappy. I heard this school called bad by many neighbors who sent their children to Catholic school instead. The public school close to Lillian and Samantha’s address was considered good. This school was overcrowded also, with not enough desks or books and with teachers who yelled, but the children inside its classrooms were mostly white. At Prospect Friends, the classes were small. The teachers did not yell. There were lessons in music and foreign language and art, and Kaja received a full scholarship. This was perhaps the only time in our life together when her dark skin was a benefit.