Nobody asked them. " "No," Sienna said, "nobody asked them. " Maya was quiet for a moment watching. Sienna watched her watch. The expression on her daughter's face was one she recognized, not the wide-eyed awe of a child encountering something surprising, but the specific focus quality of a person filing something away, sorting it into a category of things that would matter later. Hawk came to stand beside her. "I should have told you this was coming," he said.
"You told me you didn't organize it," she said. "I didn't organize it, but I should have anticipated it and told you anyway. " He paused. "I should have done a lot of things differently in the last 2 weeks. " "Yes," she said and left it there because he already knew which things and didn't need a list from her. They stood side by side on the steps watching the street reorganize itself into something that didn't have a name she knew something between a block party and a repair crew and a conversation that had been waiting to happen for the whole time the neighborhood had been afraid of what it didn't understand. "Tell me about the neighbors," Hawk said, "the ones who were scared. " She told him, not everything but the shape of it.
Mr. Patterson's property values and Deb Kowalski's warnings and Terrence and his arms crossed outside her building and Rhonda who had been genuinely kind and genuinely worried at the the time. She told it without judgment because she had never been able to sustain judgment toward people who were afraid having been afraid herself more times than she could count. Hawk listened. The woman with the walker, he said.
Mrs. Delgado, she lives in your building. Downstairs from me, Sienna said. She watches Maya sometimes on Sunday mornings. What does she need?
Sienna thought about it. Her bathroom grab bars are loose. She mentioned it to me in September. I kept meaning to. Hawk raised his hand, a small gesture.
20 seconds later a man detached from the group near Mrs. Delgado and went up to speak to her and the conversation that followed ended with him going inside with her and Sienna knew the grab bars would be fixed before the morning was over. You don't have to do all of this, Sienna said. We want to, Hawk said simply. Because of me, because uh because it's what we do, he said.
You're why we're here, but this he gestured at the street, this is just what happens when you put a group of people who know how to fix things in a neighborhood that needs things fixed. Sienna looked at the street. Terrence had come across the alley. She saw him approach a cluster of riders near the corner and say something and the rider he said it to listened and then gestured and then Terrence was shaking his hand and the quality of Terrence's body had changed from the arms crossed version she'd been watching all week. He was upright now, present, the crossed arms gone.
Deb Kowalski had come outside. She had a dress for it. That was the detail Sienna noticed because Deb never came outside in anything less than her full self and the fact that she had put on her good cardigan and her good shoes before coming down to the street was its own kind of statement about how seriously she was taking this. She was standing near the base of the building step and watching not yet moving toward anyone but not retreating either, which for Deb Kowalski was a meaningful position. Go talk to her, Hawk said.
You could tell what I was thinking, Sienna said. You've been watching her for 2 minutes," he said. She went down the steps. Deb turned when she heard her, and her face did the thing it always did when she was trying to reassemble her position, a micro-adjustment, a slight squaring of the shoulders, the specific expression of a person who has been wrong about something and is in the process of deciding how to handle it. "Sienna," she said.
"Deb. " They stood for a moment. "The man fixing Mrs. Delgado's grab bars," Deb said. "One of them. " "Yes. " "She's been asking the landlord about those for a year," Deb said. "I know. " "He's doing it for free. " "They don't do things for money," Sienna said.
Deb looked at her. The squaring of the shoulders had softened. In its place was something that was trying to be honest without quite knowing how to get there. "I said some things this week," Deb said. "Yes," Sienna said.
"You did. " "I wasn't wrong to be concerned," Deb said, and Sienna gave her this because it was true. The concern hadn't been wrong, only the conclusion she'd drawn from it. "No," Sienna said. "You weren't wrong to be concerned, but I was" Deb stopped. She looked at the street, at the men fixing the fence at Cole, walking back from Ronda's doorstep, at the women talking with Mrs.
Delgado, at Terrence shaking someone's hand at the corner. "I was working with the wrong picture," she finally said. "We usually are," Sienna said, "until we get a better one. " Deb was quiet. "Your daughter came down in her pajamas," she said, which was not what Sienna had expected her to say. "Yes," Sienna said.
"She wasn't scared. " "Deb said, 'I was watching from the window. The whole street is out here, and Maya just'" She made a gesture. "She just walked out and stood next to you like it was ordinary. " "She's braver than me," Sienna said. "She's like you," Deb said, and it came out soft, which was not a register Deb operated in often. Sienna looked at her neighbor, this woman who had known her for 4 years, who brought casseroles when she was sick, and monitored the building with the dedication of a one-person neighborhood watch, and had her own fears and her own history that Sienna didn't know all of, same as everyone.