Work Text:
Hamilton pressed her face as far up against the window as she could. Her nose began to grow numb from the freezing glass, but she couldn’t care less.
Her social worker smiled warmly.
This wasn’t her normal social worker, Mr. Hugh Knox. When that man had tried to smile, it looked more like he had smelled something terrible, and his eyes were watering from the pain. No, Mr. Knox had given up on her. Practically treated her like the antichrist after that fiasco at the group home. This one, a certain Mr. Myles Cooper, was much nicer. Hamilton had been driven down to Brooklyn to meet him, and now he was going to be the one to bring her to the place she had dreamed about for as long as she could remember.
“Like what you see?” Mr. Cooper called from the front seat.
That was the understatement of the century.
Hamilton didn’t know where to look. In an attempt to look at everything at once, her eyes darted around every which way, cursing how the speed of the car blurred certain things from her view.
New York City was...breathtaking.
She’d heard stories, of course, about the city that never sleeps, but she had never pictured it like this. The buildings were the tallest things she had ever seen in her life.
Once, her brother had dragged her to see the tallest palm tree on St. Croix, peaking at a whopping 85 feet. She had stood there, absolutely mesmerized, and thought in that moment that she would never see anything as tall or awe-inspiring in her whole life.
She was very, very wrong.
They weren’t even in the city yet. They were across the water from Manhattan, zooming down a highway. Hamilton wracked her brain for the name of it. She remembered what Mr. Cooper had said when they first hit some traffic: “Damned BQE. Couldn’t be on my side for this one friggin day?”
Right. The Brooklyn Queens Expressway. Also more infrequently known as the Interstate 278, or I-278 for short.
She could almost hear her brother rolling his eyes.
“Putain, tais-toi, je m'en fiche,” he would say if he could hear her now. “You don’t need to memorize the whole, toute l'encyclopédie putain for people to like you.”
But Jem wasn’t here now. Hamilton always felt a tug in her heart every time she thought of him, but for now she let a small smile creep onto her face. He wasn’t here. He wouldn’t have even wanted to be here. He always made fun of Hamilton when she babbled about New York City. But Hamilton’s smile slipped as she thought of a girl who would’ve loved to be here with her, a girl with thick ivory hair and playful lips and bright, bright brown eyes-
Anyway. The main thing was, right now, Hamilton could do whatever the hell she wanted.
There was graffiti everywhere, ranging from abstract designs, to completely incoherent statements (did that one actually say “YOUTH MOOSE”?), to gorgeous murals taking up entire sides of buildings.
Her eyes widened as she realized they were zooming past one of those murals now. Hamilton nearly banged her head on the driver’s seat headrest as she scrambled to the window on the other side of the backseat to get a better look.
Most of the wall was taken up by three black women, dressed in shades of brown. One was holding a giant paintbrush, and spilling from that paintbrush was a red banner, stark against the sky-blue background, spelling out the words “WE ARE NOT GOVERNMENT ISSUED.” All around the women were much smaller figures hanging from tiny parachutes. The biggest parachute read “Keep Illegal War Out of…” in cursive. All the smaller parachutes completed the sentence in different ways: “Our humanity,” “Our dreams,” “Our bodies,” “Our schools.”
As the car passed by and the mural became too far away to see, Hamilton opened the backseat window and stuck her head out to keep reading it, ignoring her social worker’s indignant cries.
Her inky hair was whipping in the wind and slapping her in the face, so she impatiently tied it back as she squinted against the sunlight. She leaned as far out of the car as she could, but she couldn’t see any more of the mural. The angle was too steep.
She huffed and slid back inside the car.
“You can’t just do things like that!” Mr. Cooper was yelling. “What if your head got chopped off by a streetlight?”
That would be an amazing way to go out, Hamilton thought to herself.
“M’sorry,” she mumbled, not sorry in the slightest.
Hamilton couldn’t stop thinking about that mural. Was everyone in New York City this politically active? Just from that mural, she knew that her kind of people lived here. At home, she was no stranger to gang fights and rich men being able to circumvent the law however they pleased. At her last placement, there had been less crime, for sure, but everyone seemed in a fog, not knowing what was going on around them and not caring in the slightest.
Here, Hamilton knew it would be completely different. Yeah, sure, it was still a city, like where she was from. And it was still New York, like her last placement. But this was New York City. People were free here. Free to do whatever they wanted, say whatever they wanted, make as many big-ass murals on the sides of buildings as they wanted-
“Are you even listening to me?”
She internally rolled her eyes at her social worker. Normally, Hamilton would be on red alert in such close quarters with an adult, but she had known from the start that Mr. Cooper was harmless. He was much to preoccupied with dabbing the sweat from his brow and compulsively checking his phone to do her any serious harm. But still. It could never hurt to be polite. Just in case.
“Yes, sir.” she said, as placatingly as she could.
“Now, as I was saying,” her social worker continued, “you need to be sure that you take care of yourself. You’re lucky enough that I managed to find you this placement with the Washingtons after what you did to the poor woman in charge of that last group home.”
Hamilton’s tentative smile faded, for good this time. That woman, Mrs. Witherspoon, her name was, had been one of the worst. She was the type of person who changed size when she grew angry, took up the whole room. Her fingers elongated into claws, her teeth sharpened into talons, and her eyes sank into her head until they were spinning black voids, trying to suck you in.
Hamilton remembered the last day she’d spent in that group home like it was yesterday. Probably because it was.
TWO MONTHS AGO
Hamilton had been looking forward to living in Manhattan for her entire life.
When she found out she wasn’t going to live in the city, or anywhere near the city, but instead in some place called Cooperstown, her heart sank all the way down to her feet.
It must have shown on her face when she was introduced to the woman in charge of the group home, because she frowned.
The woman looked like a caricature. She towered over Hamilton, but she was so thin Hamilton worried her bones would break if she moved around too much. She had white hair piled high above her head, and a mouth with thin lips that seemed to be permanently drawn into a scowl.
“You should be grateful that we’re taking you in,” the woman said coldly, once the social worker had left and the two of them were standing in the kitchen. The woman folded her hands neatly on top of her black skirt as she spoke. In fact, the woman’s entire outfit was in black. Hamilton wondered if she was in mourning, and quickly realized that the only thing this woman had to be in mourning for was her sense of humor and capacity for human decency.
“Your caretaker on St. Croix, Nicholas Cruger, is a personal friend of mine,” the woman continued.
Hamilton had to stop herself from snorting. Caretaker indeed. Nicholas Cruger was her boss, the man she had worked for since she was twelve. She had learned the trading business from him, and had made herself so invaluable that he decided sending her away for a proper education was worth more to him than keeping her around to balance the books.
But child labor was illegal, especially in America, so “caretaker” it would have to be.
“I wasn’t accepting any new wards,” the woman continued, “especially not illegal immigrants. But, I made an exception for him as a personal favor.”
Hamilton felt anger bubbling up inside her. Her head had been bowed under the weight of her disappointment, but she lifted it slightly now so the woman could see the fire in her eyes. Instead of staring at her withered hands, Hamilton fixed her eyes on the glittering broach pinned to her blouse.
“I’m not an illegal immigrant,” Hamilton snarled. “The whole concept of human beings being an illegality to be rectified is inherently racist and extremely disrespectful to the thousands of-”
“Excuse me,” the woman yelled. Well, not really. In fact, the woman said the words so softly that Hamilton almost didn’t hear her. But the threat behind the words was powerful enough that she might as well have used a megaphone inches away from Hamilton’s face. With those two words, Hamilton finally looked into the woman’s eyes for the first time. They were like a shark’s, black and glassy, with a hint of a murderous gleam. No intelligence, no kindness, and certainly no mercy.
Hamilton felt a fist of fear grip her heart and took an involuntary step backward.
The woman grabbed hold of her wrist with a fist like iron, and she cried out.
“You’ve got to learn to be quiet, Catherine.” the woman said, just as softly. And just as loudly. “My name is Mrs. Witherspoon, and I expect to be spoken to with respect. My husband John didn’t set this home up so that cretins like you could show me disrespect.”
The woman’s grip tightened on her arm. Hamilton had underestimated her strength. She looked very frail, but the grip on her arm was unyielding.
“Let go of me,” Hamilton gasped.
The woman cocked her head, as if confused. “What did you say?”
“Please let go of me,” Hamilton said through gritted teeth, “ma’am.”
She did, after a long moment. Hamilton recoiled, clutching her arm to her chest.
“Don’t worry,” the woman said, with a smile that conveyed the exact opposite. “You’ll learn your place soon enough.” She looked Hamilton up and down like she was a piece of trash stuck to her shoe, and her smile widened. Hamilton thought it was more like she was baring her teeth.
“After all,” the woman said, lifting Hamilton’s chin with her finger, like they were sharing a secret, “nobody likes a spic. Certainly not my girls.”
Lots more French than Hispanic, dipshit, Hamilton thought. But she didn’t say it out loud.
The woman looked to something behind Hamilton, and Hamilton whipped around to look.
There was a haughty looking girl with her blonde hair scraped back from her face and too much makeup on standing there.
“I’ll show you where you’ll be sleeping,” the girl said, turning briskly and running up the stairs.
Hamilton tightened her ponytail, set her jaw, and clenched her hands into fists. She slung her tiny bag over her shoulder and began to climb after her.
In all honesty, the group home wasn’t too bad.
Sure, Hamilton didn’t have her own room. Or any privacy. And she couldn’t see even one of the grattes ciels from any of the windows. Her social worker had said this place was in New York, but Hamilton was skeptical. Hamilton silently cursed herself for not doing more research about the geography of New York State.
Tú eres una completa idiota, Catherine. When it matters, finalmente, you can’t remember una cosa al respecto? Pourquoi es-tu si inutile, sœurette?
That voice in her head sounded much too close to her brother’s for comfort. Hamilton shoved it aside.
All Hamilton knew was that this place looked a hell of a lot like what she had read about Tom Sawyer’s hometown, except it had all the boredom and none of the charm.
But still. Hamilton had her own bed, and it was nice and soft. No one made fun of her for reading. (Well, no one really talked to her for any reason, but that was besides the point.) And she was rarely hungry.
Hamilton had actually made one friend. There was a girl who had the same name as she did, with only one letter difference. Catharine, she spelled it. Her last name was Livingston, and she was the most beautiful person Hamilton had ever seen.
She had long, dark hair that spilled over her shoulders. Her skin was the color of brown sugar, and she had impossibly long eyelashes that framed eyes as warm as molten chocolate. If Hamilton looked very closely, she could see a hint of freckles smattering her cheeks, accentuating her dimples when she grinned.
Hamilton felt extremely scruffy and boyish next to this girl. Hamilton knew she had a scar or a scrape or a callus covering every part of her skin and her ink-black hair stuck up in all directions, no matter how she tried to tame it. But somehow, she couldn’t bring herself to mind very much.
The two of them immediately bonded over their shared name. Both of them detested it. Chocolate-eyed Catharine Livingston asked everyone to call her Livvy. Hamilton loved that name. It definitely suited her.
“What about you?” Livvy asked her when they first met. “What’s your nickname?”
“Just Catherine,” Hamilton said uncomfortably. “No one’s ever called me anything else.”
Not outloud, at least, Hamilton thought.
Livvy paused for a moment, thinking. “What did you say your last name was, again?”
“Hamilton,” she said warily.
Livvy made a face of disgust. “Catherine it is.”
Hamilton burst into giggles.
They shared a room. Well, they shared a room with three other girls, but their beds were closest together. Whatever time they had, they spent it with each other.
If she hadn’t been constantly reminded she was the only immigrant, Hamilton would have sworn Livvy had a round, soft-edged accent that only showed itself late at night.
Livvy was Hamilton’s only friend. The other girls went out of their way to avoid her, and the Warden (they had both given up on calling her “Mrs. Witherspoon”) was only good to talk to if you wanted to get beaten within an inch of your life. Hamilton tried her hardest not to think about what she would do if Livvy left, and for the most part, she succeeded.
One afternoon, about a month after Hamilton had arrived, she was telling Livvy the few good stories she had about St. Croix. She was pacing the floor and gesturing wildly as Livvy watched her from where she was sitting cross-legged on the floor. When Hamilton finally looked at her, Livvy had this look on her face, like she wanted to say something but was afraid of what would happen if she did.
“Hey,” Hamilton said, relaxing her body language as much as possible. “You can tell me anything.”
Hamilton threw herself down on the floor next to Livvy and looked at her expectantly.
With a frown, Livvy pulled her small suitcase out from under her bed and opened it. Inside was a mass of multicolored fabrics that looked very, very expensive. Much more expensive than anything Hamilton had ever even seen.
“These are clothes my mother brought with her. From fah-kee behnn sall-ah.” Livvy said the name extra slowly, glancing over her shoulder as if she was afraid someone was listening.
“Fquih Ben Salah? That’s in Morocco,” Hamilton said, sitting up a bit straighter.
Livvy’s eyes looked like they were going to pop out of her head. “Yeah, it is. How in the world did you know that?”
“I like to read,” Hamilton said simply. You can’t help yourself, can you, little miss je-sais-tout?
Livvy bit her lip and Hamilton’s eyes were drawn to the movement like a magnet. She leaned in close and said, “Catherine, don’t tell anyone I’m from Morocco. The Warden only knows that my dad was born in New Jersey. You know how she is.”
Hamilton definitely did. All of the girls except for Hamilton were white. Well, all the other girls except Livvy, Hamilton supposed. Whenever one of them did something wrong, even if Hamilton couldn’t possibly have been responsible, she’d be the one to get in trouble.
Last week, one of the girls had knocked over a vase. Hamilton had been sitting in an armchair next to it, so engrossed in a book she didn’t notice. All the other girls had made themselves scarce, but when the Warden came in, Hamilton was the one to face her rage. Without a word, the Warden had hurled her book into the fireplace.
It was one of the only things Hamilton had that had belonged to her mother. Hamilton had burned her hands from trying to save it from the flames, while the Warden only watched.
When Hamilton finally gave up on the book and gasped over and over at the cracked blisters on her hands, the Warden had cooed and said, “Look how careless you’ve been! I knew beaners were slow, but honestly.”
The Warden had dragged her to her feet. “Go clean yourself up, now.”
Luckily, by climbing up on top of the toilet in the upstairs bathroom, Hamilton had been able to reach the cabinet with the ointment and bandages. Without Livvy’s help to wrap her hands, Hamilton didn’t know what she would’ve done.
That had been the absolute worst punishment. Not the beatings, not the lectures, not being shunned by everyone she came in contact with. With her hands burned, Hamilton hadn’t been able to write. It still hurt like hell today, but Hamilton refused to stop unless the pain absolutely forced her to.
“Can- can this, y’know, my mom being from Morocco, can it be our secret?” Livvy was saying.
Hamilton swallowed nervously. She realized she couldn’t stop looking at Livvy’s lips. They were plump, and the top one was just slightly darker than the bottom one. Her Cupid’s bow was sharply defined, like she was wearing lipstick, but Hamilton knew that was just how it looked all the time. The part she was biting had flushed a deep ruby red, stark against the pink, and her lips looked so soft -
“Catherine?”
Hamilton’s head snapped up. “Ouais! Yeah! Absolutely! No- no problem at all!” Of course Hamilton wouldn’t let Livvy run the risk of being punished like she was. She wouldn’t do that to Livvy, but in all honesty, she probably wouldn’t even do it to her worst enemy.
“Well, look at this,” Livvy said. She began to pull a long sheet of green fabric out of her bag. It was so big that Hamilton didn’t have the slightest idea what it was supposed to be.
“What the hell is that?” Hamilton asked, slack-jawed, as Livvy only pulled more and more of the fabric out of the suitcase. How in the world did it fit in there?
Livvy laughed. “It’s a kaftan, Catherine. Like, a fancy party dress?”
Hamilton hummed in acknowledgment as she examined the glittering silk laid out on the floor.
”You wanna try it on?” Livvy asked with a grin.
Something inside Hamilton recoiled at the idea of wearing a dress.
”Um,” Hamilton stammered, not totally sure how to decline the offer. “Don’t you?”
”Nah,” Livvy said. “It was my mother’s, anyway. Come on. It’s been ages since I’ve seen someone wear it. Could you try it on?”
Hamilton steeled herself. She’d do it for Livvy. Hamilton picked the fabric up off the floor and threw it over her head. She soon realized she was never going to find her way out of it, let alone find the arm holes.
“Help!” she called to Livvy, her voice muffled.
Livvy tugged it off of her head, giggling the whole time.
“You’re an idiot.”
Hamilton shot Livvy her best grin, although the charm was slightly diluted by the frizzy hair sticking to her face. “I know.”
When everyone else had gone to sleep, the two of them whispered to each other, trying to teach the other phrases in the languages they knew. They giggled as quietly as they could when the other completely butchered whatever they were trying to say, and quickly stifled their laughter so they wouldn’t wake the others.
Two days after that, Hamilton woke up alone.
When Hamilton went down into the living room, three of the girls were sprawled on the couch, painting their nails.
She worked up the courage to ask one of them where Livvy had gone.
“Oh, her?” the girl on the left, Leigh, said while concentrating on painting her right thumb blood red. “She got transferred.”
Hamilton felt a shudder run through her body. You knew no one would ever willingly stay with you.
Hamilton forced the lump in her throat down, and choked out, “Why?”
Leigh looked up at Hamilton, raising one eyebrow like she was being an idiot. “You know why. Mrs. Witherspoon can barely handle one like you.”
Hamilton knew several things in that instant:
- While a lot separated Hamilton from the other girls, the main thing the Warden drilled into all of them was that she was inferior because of where she was from.
- (Prediction from 1) If that pattern were to continue, that would mean that the Warden would treat any person from outside of America and Europe as inferior.
- The only reason the Warden hadn’t kicked Hamilton out was because of the Warden’s personal friendship with Hamilton’s former boss, Nicholas Cruger.
- Livvy did not have a former boss who was a personal friend of the Warden.
- (Conclusion #1, from all previous points) The Warden had found out Livvy wasn’t fully American or European, and had kicked her out.
- Livvy was extremely careful with what she said.
- (Inference from 6) So, no one could have found out about her background.
- (Exception to 6 & 7) The only way someone could have found out about Livvy was if someone was listening to their conversation from the other night.
- The Warden never goes upstairs.
- (Conclusion #2, from 8 & 9) One of the girls had snitched on Livvy.
- Hamilton could see Leigh failing to hide an arrogant smile as she worked all this out in her head.
- (Conclusion #3, from 11) Based on the way Leigh was smiling, it was her.
“Helloo? You still in there, or have you finally lost it?”
Hamilton blinked and looked down at the girl that had robbed her of her only friend in the world.
Hamilton clasped her hands tightly behind her back and smiled. “Thank you for telling me, Leigh.”
She forced herself to turn around and walk back upstairs. She barely registered the girls giggling behind her back. “Oh my god, she’s such a lunatic!”
Hamilton threw herself up the stairs and collapsed into her bed. Shivers wracked her body, and she halfheartedly blamed it on the draft coming through the window.
She knew she would never see Livvy again.
Hamilton smothered her face in her pillow so the other girls wouldn’t hear her crying.
When Hamilton woke up, she knew the time for tears was over.
It was before dawn, so everyone else was asleep. Hamilton glanced at the analog clock that sat on their shared dresser: 2:22 AM.
Hamilton remembered that one of the girls had taken up a painting hobby a few weeks ago. She had dropped it out of boredom soon after, but all the expensive paints the Warden had bought her were still lying in some cupboard or cabinet in the basement.
Before she went down to the basement, Hamilton made sure everything that mattered to her was protected. She got dressed and stuffed her pajamas into the bright pink suitcase she had brought with her when she first came to the group home. She packed her spare sets of clothes and all the books she had managed to find or steal from various shops in St. Croix. Lastly, she popped open the loose floorboard next to her bed as quietly as she could, one eye on the sleeping girls. She pulled out her precious notebooks and gingerly laid them in her bag, perfectly stacked and in order.
Hamilton opened the girls’ shared dresser and took out most of Leigh’s clothes, shoving them in her bag. Just for good measure.
Hamilton slowly opened the window, gritting her teeth at the weight of it. She popped the bottom corners of the screen off the windowpane, leaving just enough space to get her bag through. She fed it through the hole and dropped it as gently as possible into the flowerbed below.
Hamilton wasn’t going to take any chances with her prized possessions.
Hamilton back over to the dresser, grabbing Leigh’s cell phone and pocketing it. Leigh was the only one who had one. Hamilton bitterly wondered if Leigh had been given it as a reward for her loyalty.
With her sock-covered feet sliding on the hardwood floor, Hamilton slowly made her way downstairs. She knew to get to the stairs leading to the basement, she’d need to pass the Warden’s bedroom.
Hamilton slowly made her way past the couch and into the small connecting hallway that ran alongside the kitchen.
Creak.
Hamilton froze. She concentrated on calming her breaths, and after counting to ten, she kept moving.
She could see the basement door through the darkness.
She inched her way closer, her feet not even leaving the ground as she slowly shuffled forwards.
She was less than a foot away from the Warden’s bedroom.
Suddenly, a loud noise made her jump out of her skin.
Hamilton clapped a hand over her mouth to keep herself from screaming. The noise sounded again, quieter this time. Hamilton sighed in relief as she realized it was only a snore.
Breathing heavily, Hamilton’s fingertips finally touched the basement door. She gripped the brass doorknob and pulled it open. She opened Leigh’s phone to use the screen as a makeshift-flashlight, closing the door behind her. She let out a loud sigh of relief and quickly clapped her free hand over her mouth to muffle the noise.
She went down the remaining stone steps and found the chest containing all the discarded paints at the bottom of the stairs. She opened it and realized there were a lot more of them than she realized. Hamilton picked one tube up to examine it and laughed quietly when she read its pretentious name.
Next to the chest, there were several large buckets and bundles of twine.
Hamilton knew she would have to work very quickly.
She grinned.
When the rest of the house woke up, Hamilton was ready.
One great thing about the kitchen in this house was that it actually had a door with a large section of wall sitting right above the frame of it. Hamilton still couldn’t believe that the Warden was rich enough to have her kitchen in an entire separate room- but that was besides the point.
The main feature of the kitchen was the fact that it had a window. A very large window, to be precise, and the only window in the house without bars or a screen. Coincidentally, it also happened to open right onto the flowerbeds directly beneath Hamilton’s bedroom window.
Every day at 7:15 AM, the Warden came into the kitchen to make herself a cup of coffee.
Hamilton checked Leigh’s phone. 7:14.
She heard the Warden’s shuffling footsteps approaching the kitchen door. Right on time.
From where Hamilton was sitting with her feet up on the kitchen table, she’d have prime viewing.
The kitchen door opened and the Warden stood there, blinking sleepily.
Her lethargy did not last for long. When she saw Hamilton sitting sprawled at the table like she owned the place, her spine became ramrod straight and her eyes filled with fire.
“What on earth do you think you’re doing?” the Warden growled.
Hamilton smiled. ““Go to hell, you racist gringa connasse!”
She yanked sharply on the twine wrapped around her fingers. The bucket placed precariously above the door violently flipped over from the force, dumping three and a half gallons of paint (Hamilton had measured exactly) all over the Warden. The bucket itself fell down at the end, falling right on top of the Warden’s head like a hat.
For a minute, she just stood there, gasping, Midnight Black and Chocolate Brown and Grass Green dripping into her eyes, and Seafoam Blue all over her robe. She finally ripped the bucket off her head, attempted to wipe the Rose Pink paint from her eyes, but only succeeding in smearing it even more.
“I’ll kill you,” the Warden snarled.
Hamilton couldn’t help but laugh. The Warden was attempting to be extremely intimidating, and ordinarily Hamilton would’ve been scared shitless, but it was very hard to be scared of someone who was covered in exactly 117 different colors of acrylic paint.
“Adiós, bitch!” Hamilton crowed.
The Warden lunged for her, but she had already climbed out the window.
Running down the block with her bag slung over her shoulder, she dialed the one number she had memorized on Leigh’s phone.
“Hugh, buddy!” she said when the man picked up, in between panting for breath. “You’ll never guess what I’ve gotten myself into.”
It was only when Hugh Knox had grudgingly agreed to come get her that she allowed herself to sit down on the sidewalk and cry.
PRESENT DAY
Hamilton went back to her place at the driver’s side window where she was sitting in the backseat of Mr. Cooper’s beat-up care. She laid her head against the window, not minding the bumpiness of the car in the least, and soaked everything in.
She gasped every time a new building came into view, impossibly tall, and craned her neck to check if she could see the sky above them.
“Are they all this tall?” she asked her social worker.
Mr. Cooper sighed good-naturedly. “These are not tall. We’re not even in the city yet.”
Hamilton frowned. How could this be nothing? These buildings were already six, seven times taller than the ones at home. And they weren’t just tall, they were impossibly wide, too, with windows twice as large as she was. She grinned as she realized all the windows on the building they were just passing were mismatched. Some had long beige curtains drawn in front of them. Some were painted varying shades of green. Others were illuminated by bright light. But most of them were dull, without anything inside to be seen.
“What’s that building?” she asked.
Mr. Cooper didn’t even look up from the road. “Some construction project, probably?”
Hamilton frowned. He hadn’t even looked at it.
They zoomed past a green sign and her eyes snagged on it, trying to read as much of it as she could: EXIT 27- ATLANTIC AVE.
She leaned as far forward as she could without headbutting the back of the driver’s seat to catch a glimpse of the Manhattan skyline, and they were almost there, she could just about see it-
Wait. Was that a water tank made out of stained glass?
She couldn’t help but laugh. It was nothing like the big, rusty water tanks they had at home. There, you actually used the water tanks for, you know, storing water . This looked completely decorative, and no one was even paying it any mind. It was covered in a glass mosaic pattern of squares every color of the rainbow, shining in the sunlight. Hamilton didn’t think she’d ever seen anything so beautiful.
But then the car zoomed past the water tank, and she was finally faced with Manhattan.
The glistening water keeping her and the city apart was much grayer and murkier than she expected. But nonetheless, small waves glistened in the sunlight and beckoned her closer. Look, they seemed to say. Look what we helped create.
A small part of her brain was begging her to get away from the water, to get to higher ground, to run, to run as fast as she possibly could, to get away before she drowned, but she stubbornly ignored it. Nothing would ruin this for her.
She forced her eyes upwards toward the buildings, and it certainly wasn’t difficult for her to become enthralled.
Hamilton had never understood why they called them skyscrapers. Now, she did.
The buildings were very far away, and Hamilton had to strain her eyes to see them against the stark contrast of the sun, but even from this distance, she could tell that they were nothing like anything she had ever seen. It was like that old Egyptian myth about the gods of Earth and Sky forever reaching toward each other, desperate to be as close as they once were. It looked like that old Earth god had thrust his hands out of the ground, stretching his impossibly large fingers as high as they would go so he could reach his bride at last.
As the Brooklyn Bridge finally came into view, Hamilton couldn’t hide her gasp of wonder. It was as if someone had reached into her mind, found all the memories she had of studying photographs of Manhattan, and had extrapolated them onto the world. It was just like she had pictured, but at the same time, it was so much more.
She bit her lip and imagined an acrobat keeping up with the car’s pace by swinging and tumbling from wire to wire on the side of the bridge, smiling at her as if to say, just you wait.
Once they were in the city, Hamilton realized that she had really, really underestimated the size of the buildings.
She craned her neck against the window to try and see the tops of the buildings as they zoomed past, but it was impossible. It was as if the sky was but a distant dream; all that existed were these towers of iron and glass.
She hadn’t realized her mouth was hanging open as she tried to take in everything at the same time. Hamilton felt a lump in her throat as she realized that after years and years, after all she had survived, she was finally here.
She felt the ghost of her mother’s touch on her shoulder. Hamilton straightened, her muscles pulled taut as a wire, and didn’t dare turn her head to the seat beside her.
J'ai toujours su que tu te retrouverais ici, her mother seemed to say. Haz algo por mí, mija. Utilisez cet esprit merveilleux. Blow us all away.
Hamilton turned her head slowly and saw her mother sitting there, smiling at her, warm as the sun. Hamilton blinked, and she was gone. She swallowed thickly and blinked away the tears forming in her eyes.
“Someday, maman,” she said quietly, so Mr. Cooper wouldn’t hear. “Someday.”