CHAPTER 2
BROOKLYN
“Dimanch se jou fanmi an.” (Sunday is family day)
—Aunt Joseline
My parents bought a two-family home at 71 Cornelia Street in Bushwick, Brooklyn, tucked just off Bushwick Avenue. It wasn’t grand, but it was ours— a modest structure built of brick and pride. The family had grown, with aunts and uncles and young children—my cousins. My father and mother both worked long hours at Brooklyn Jewish Hospital on Prospect Place in Bed-Stuy. A short commute, so they left together each morning like a pair of devoted parents with love and survival in mind. They returned together in the evening, wearied but still standing. Their footsteps were rhythmic. Steady. Predictable. Love lived in that routine and in that house.
In those early days, Bushwick had yet to become the hipster haven people romanticize now. It was raw, gritty, and ours. My other aunts and uncles lived nearby, just blocks away. As more of our kin made their way from Haiti to New York, the neighborhood grew into something like a family compound. That was the pattern: first the siblings arrived, then came the children. Every Sunday, we’d gather—passing poulet en sauce (chicken in sauce), bannann peze (fried plantains), diri ak djon (black rice), tassot, pikliz, soup Joumou and gossip across the table. “Dimanch se jou fanmi an.” Sunday is family day, Aunt Joseline said it like a prayer.
Those Sunday gatherings were more than tradition—they were a bridge between who we had been and who we were becoming. The language in the room shifted constantly. Kreyòl poured like molasses from our elders’ tongues, while the younger ones fumbled through English like foreign students in their own country. They weren’t fluent, but they were determined. Every conversation was part reunion, part rehearsal for this American stage we had all been thrown onto—except me, of course. I liked being the real, true American. It made me feel different from everyone else.
Although I wasn’t forced to speak Creole, I was surrounded by it—yet not submerged in it. That’s something I’d come to regret. The language of my blood was spoken less often than it should’ve been, diluted by survival. Outside of my immediate family, I didn’t know any Haitians in the neighborhood. We seemed to be the only ones.
My parents were devout Catholics. There was no negotiation about church. We lit candles in reverence to the Virgin Mary and bowed our heads in front of saints we didn’t yet understand. My siblings and I were all enrolled in the same Catholic school, and for a while, I followed their path—pressed shirt, stiff collar, polished shoes. Communion was sacred. Confession was sacred. God was sacred. The statues were too. Even though I hadn’t had Communion, I’d go up to the priest when he put a white substance in my mouth and said, “The body of Christ.” My mother scolded me one Sunday for doing so, and I told her I wanted to digest God. She didn’t think that was funny.
But by first grade, the rhythm shifted. My parents sat me down—gently, lovingly—and said they could no longer afford to send me to private school. I’d be transferring to public school, several blocks from the house. I’d heard whispers from my older siblings about how bad the school was. Kids with jagged energy. Teachers who seemed tired of caring.
We were a close-knit family, so outside of my siblings, I didn’t know many kids. I saw the change as a kind of exile. Yet it also gave me something new: independence. I walked to school alone, my little legs carrying more than a backpack—they carried the weight of stepping out of shelter.
Three weeks in, during the lunch line, a boy my age—brown-skinned like me but with nothing familiar in his eyes—walked up and punched me square in the face. No words. No warning. Just pain. I cried the rest of the day. But more than tears, I carried confusion. Why? Who was this kid? What did I do? I stared him down every time I saw him after that, my jaw clenched, eyes swollen with a mix of fear and fire. The honeymoon was over.
That moment stripped away the softness that Catholic school had offered. No more confession booths where a priest nodded at my childish sins about defying my parents’ rules or stealing candy. No more warm glow of altar candles. This was Brooklyn. And Brooklyn was unkind.
I had entered a new world—one pulsing with rage, neglect, and survival. I was no longer under the Virgin Mary’s watchful eyes. I was now under the gaze of boys trained by chaos. The rules were different here. Every punch had a message, even if it didn’t come with words. That one—my first—was a warning shot, and I understood it later for what it was:
A violent welcome.
An unwanted lesson.
A prophecy. That boy didn’t know me. But he saw me.
And in his own way, he prepared me for what
to expect from that point on these
Brooklyn streets.
CHAPTER 2
BROOKLYN
“Dimanch se jou fanmi an.” (Sunday is family day)
—Aunt Joseline
My parents bought a two-family home at 71 Cornelia Street in Bushwick, Brooklyn, tucked just off Bushwick Avenue. It wasn’t grand, but it was ours— a modest structure built of brick and pride. The family had grown, with aunts and uncles and young children—my cousins. My father and mother both worked long hours at Brooklyn Jewish Hospital on Prospect Place in Bed-Stuy. A short commute, so they left together each morning like a pair of devoted parents with love and survival in mind. They returned together in the evening, wearied but still standing. Their footsteps were rhythmic. Steady. Predictable. Love lived in that routine and in that house.
In those early days, Bushwick had yet to become the hipster haven people romanticize now. It was raw, gritty, and ours. My other aunts and uncles lived nearby, just blocks away. As more of our kin made their way from Haiti to New York, the neighborhood grew into something like a family compound. That was the pattern: first the siblings arrived, then came the children. Every Sunday, we’d gather—passing poulet en sauce (chicken in sauce), bannann peze (fried plantains), diri ak djon (black rice), tassot, pikliz, soup Joumou and gossip across the table. “Dimanch se jou fanmi an.” Sunday is family day, Aunt Joseline said it like a prayer.
Those Sunday gatherings were more than tradition—they were a bridge between who we had been and who we were becoming. The language in the room shifted constantly. Kreyòl poured like molasses from our elders’ tongues, while the younger ones fumbled through English like foreign students in their own country. They weren’t fluent, but they were determined. Every conversation was part reunion, part rehearsal for this American stage we had all been thrown onto—except me, of course. I liked being the real, true American. It made me feel different from everyone else.
Although I wasn’t forced to speak Creole, I was surrounded by it—yet not submerged in it. That’s something I’d come to regret. The language of my blood was spoken less often than it should’ve been, diluted by survival. Outside of my immediate family, I didn’t know any Haitians in the neighborhood. We seemed to be the only ones.
My parents were devout Catholics. There was no negotiation about church. We lit candles in reverence to the Virgin Mary and bowed our heads in front of saints we didn’t yet understand. My siblings and I were all enrolled in the same Catholic school, and for a while, I followed their path—pressed shirt, stiff collar, polished shoes. Communion was sacred. Confession was sacred. God was sacred. The statues were too. Even though I hadn’t had Communion, I’d go up to the priest when he put a white substance in my mouth and said, “The body of Christ.” My mother scolded me one Sunday for doing so, and I told her I wanted to digest God. She didn’t think that was funny.
But by first grade, the rhythm shifted. My parents sat me down—gently, lovingly—and said they could no longer afford to send me to private school. I’d be transferring to public school, several blocks from the house. I’d heard whispers from my older siblings about how bad the school was. Kids with jagged energy. Teachers who seemed tired of caring.
We were a close-knit family, so outside of my siblings, I didn’t know many kids. I saw the change as a kind of exile. Yet it also gave me something new: independence. I walked to school alone, my little legs carrying more than a backpack—they carried the weight of stepping out of shelter.
Three weeks in, during the lunch line, a boy my age—brown-skinned like me but with nothing familiar in his eyes—walked up and punched me square in the face. No words. No warning. Just pain. I cried the rest of the day. But more than tears, I carried confusion. Why? Who was this kid? What did I do? I stared him down every time I saw him after that, my jaw clenched, eyes swollen with a mix of fear and fire. The honeymoon was over.
That moment stripped away the softness that Catholic school had offered. No more confession booths where a priest nodded at my childish sins about defying my parents’ rules or stealing candy. No more warm glow of altar candles. This was Brooklyn. And Brooklyn was unkind.
I had entered a new world—one pulsing with rage, neglect, and survival. I was no longer under the Virgin Mary’s watchful eyes. I was now under the gaze of boys trained by chaos. The rules were different here. Every punch had a message, even if it didn’t come with words. That one—my first—was a warning shot, and I understood it later for what it was:
A violent welcome.
An unwanted lesson.
A prophecy. That boy didn’t know me. But he saw me.
And in his own way, he prepared me for what
to expect from that point on these
Brooklyn streets.