The city shimmered in summertime like gemstone jewelry under a relentless sun whose light sanctified the trash-filled streets and crumbling buildings. Deep in the ghetto, vacant overgrown lots that had been marked for development for decades became breeding grounds for cultural rot, and people lived and died in the rubble of apartments that were older than municipal codes. In Harlem in 1991, gold was the color of summer, and it peaked in the morning when the light was still stark and directional. Then everyone who lived there could forget for a while that the waters of the river were rising, people were dying, and the city hated them.
In a remote community park within the sprawling courtyard of colossal tenements where children chased each other around rusted playground equipment, teenage boys played basketball on the half-court, and girls gossiped and chewed bubblegum on steel bleachers, one lonely castaway rested on a picnic bench under the shade of a massive Callery pear. Lit by the golden glow of the season that simmered the city like fire, she was magnetic and romantic.
Because it was so early, the sun reached through the canopy to make her proud peanut-butter skin dazzle. There was a small garden in that grassy oasis tended by urban saints where only marigolds grew, stark yellow and green like the spirit of summer. She picked one and put it in her hair because she thought it looked pretty. It was going to be a wonderful day, after all, and looking pretty was a necessity.
