At the dining room table sit three elderly women and an even older man, judging by the number of wrinkles on his face. He moves his mouth in the familiar way of someone with uncomfortable dentures working them with his tongue. One of the women is thin and wearing a scarf on her head, another has her hair in a straight gray bob, and the third has one half of hers undone—the other half has been put into a boxer braid, a style Kim was crazy about after seeing it in some fashion magazine.

Candace goes to stand behind the woman and begins braiding the other half of her hair with quick efficient twists and pulls of her fingers and wrists.

“Who’s this man?” the woman with the scarf asks. There’s the slight singsong of Caribbean accent in her voice, but the wariness is unmissable. “Another come try to steal we homes?”

I don’t know how to respond so I look to Sydney.

“Hi, Miss Ruth,” she says, taking a seat at the table. “This is Theodore. He owns the house where the Paynes used to live.”

My name isn’t Theodore, but I nod in the woman’s direction anyway as I take a seat. “Nice to meet you, Miss Ruth.”

“Ah, it was the Payne house he took? I like him, then. I was so glad when that family left, let me tell you. I couldn’t stand Doris Payne, always thinking she better than everyone, trying to talk down her nose to me.” Miss Ruth’s accent grows harder to understand as she gets agitated, but I try to follow. “She look funny at my husband, asking him to come fix her kitchen sink and all that! I smack she black she white, and she never talk to him again.”

She nods decisively and the other women make noises of commiseration. I have no idea what she just said but I nod, too.

The old man works his dentures, then says, “Doris was a good woman in my book.”

“Of course you would say so, Fitzroy,” the woman with the gray bob says in an accent that could be British.

Sydney chuckles, an encouraging sign of life.

Candace shakes her head. “Theo, that’s Gracie and this is Paulette. Paulette don’t talk much.”

The woman getting her hair braided stays silent but keeps a wary gaze locked on me, even as Candace finishes her hair and pats her shoulder before taking her own seat.

“How are you doing, Sydney?” Gracie asks politely as she reaches for the teapot in the middle of the table and fills two cups before handing them to me and Sydney. “Haven’t talked to you much the last few months.”

“I’ve been busy,” Sydney says. “You know how it is.”

“Well, no, I don’t know, since I’m an old crone who spends my days watching stories with these miscreants, but I understand.”

That gets another laugh around the table, but Gracie’s blithe behavior doesn’t completely distract from the curious worry in her eyes.

I take a sip of the strong tea and try to keep my expression neutral as the bitter liquid hits my tongue, but something must give away my urge to do a spit-take because Gracie’s gaze meets mine with amusement dancing in her eyes. “Have you never had bush tea before, young man?”

“No,” I manage, eyes watering. “It’s . . . strong.”

“Good for the health,” Fitzroy says. “That’s why we old-timers are still here and kicking.”

“Don’t worry, it’s not poison,” Gracie adds, then tilts her head. “Not for us. But come to think of it, it is a recipe passed down from generation to generation, and back on the Bajan plantations it was called ‘buckra’s do-fa-do.’ Many slavers came to an unfortunate end after having a cup.”

Fitzroy snort-laughs. “Not enough of them, though!”

I wait for Gracie to laugh, too, and tell me she’s joking, but she just takes a sip of her tea and stares at me over the rim. I hold my cup awkwardly, knowing this is some kind of test but unsure whether it’s to see if I’m dumb enough to believe there’s a poison that works only on white people or dumb enough not to.

There’s a taut silence and then I think fuck it and take a sip.

Candace starts laughing, her eyes wide. “You think Gracie won’t poison you? Boy, this woman has gone through five husbands and I know some of them deaths wasn’t natural.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Gracie says demurely. “I just wanted to see if the young man could take a ribbing.”

She winks at me, and though she’s maybe sixty-five, I fully understand why men kept marrying her even if she was possibly a murderer.

“Sydney!” Miss Ruth calls her name suddenly, like Sydney hasn’t been sitting across the table from her the whole time. “I heard you left that man of yours, the one with a forehead like that Black Star Trek alien. I say, ‘Good riddance.’ Good for you. Never liked the way he acted when he came around here.” She dusts her hands in an exaggerated motion, then claps.

Sydney’s chest heaves up and down before she opens her mouth to speak.

“Uh, thanks, Miss Ruth. I just had some questions about the neighborhood for the history tour,” she says. “Can we talk about that, please?”

Miss Ruth doesn’t look happy about being denied gossip about Sydney’s ex. I’m bummed about it, too.

“You can’t ask your mother?” Fitzroy asks.

“Yolanda is not well, remember?” Gracie chides, and Fitzroy startles. Her glower dissolves into a pitying smile when she turns to Sydney. “Fitzroy is more like Forgets-roy these days. Ignore him. We all do.”

Sydney nods tightly, then blinks a few times and says, “It’s fine. I do have stories from my mother, but do any of you have fun facts about the neighborhood or people who lived here that I can use for my tour?”

“I have stories, but not ones you can use,” Miss Ruth says, and they all laugh.

Fitzroy scratches at his bald head.

“I came here before your mother, I believe. In seventy-two,” Fitzroy says. “I bought my home from a Jamaican man who worked at one of the Black real estate agencies. I think, now, all the white agencies come and push them out, too. And then they sell to the white people. But a few years ago, it was mostly us selling, and mostly us buying. At least on Gifford Place.”

Between this and Kendra Hill’s conversation, I’m realizing that I’d never thought much about Black communities, or Black people, really.

I had, of course, but in the same way I think about the U.S. Postal Service. It exists, and functions, mostly, but I don’t know the nuts and bolts of how things get delivered. When I think of a Black community, the first thing that comes to mind—even if I don’t want it to—is crime. Drugs. Gangs. Welfare. That’s all the news has talked about since I was a kid. Not old people drinking tea. Not complex self-sustaining financial systems that had to be created because racism means being left out to dry.

“You have to own property. You have to,” Gracie says. “My father always told us that. That’s why they don’t like to sell to us, you know? Making up stories about property value dropping like they aren’t the ones who decide the value.” She makes a derisive noise. “Truth is, if you own, you have power. That’s why they always try to strip it away.”

“Listen to all this capitalist talk,” Miss Ruth says with a head toss. “What we need is revolution.”

“Ruth, you own five houses. Don’t even start,” Candace says severely. “Your head would be the first on the block on this block.”

Ruth shrugs. “I play on the game board I’m given, Candace. At least if I sell four of the houses, maybe I’ll be able to pay the property taxes on the fifth. They can pry my house from my cold, dead fingers.”

“Ah, that reminds me of a story, Sydney.” Fitzroy nods. “When the blackout happened, way back when. I had to stand in front of my house with my cricket bat. Said, ‘Booooy, you wanna try it you can try it’ to every knucklehead who tried to take what I had worked for. Not a window was shattered, not a plant pot was overturned.” He laughs deeply and then coughs, and Candace walks over, picks up his cup, and holds it to his mouth so he sips.

“The blackout a few years back?” I ask.

“No, there was one in seventy-seven,” Sydney says. “There was looting and all kinds of wild stuff.”

“Looting.” Gracie snorts delicately.

“Yeah,” Sydney continues. “My mom told me the TV we had when I was a kid was one she ‘found on the street’ in front of an electronics store during the blackout.”

All of the older people around the table chuckle.

“Well, I don’t know how she got that TV, but I do know that someone stepped to your mama while she sat on the porch smoking and watching the madness,” Fitzroy says. “That man ended up dancing away from the end of her revolver. I thought I was doing something with my cricket bat, and she was over there ready to shoot.”

Candace laughs. “Oh, you know Yolanda’s folks were those Virginians.”

“She never told me that,” Sydney says, bittersweet laughter in her voice. “But I can imagine it. She told me she wasn’t raised to take mess but she knew how to clean it up.”