Speaking of Summer. Kalisha Buckhanon
clearing to point out where the herb garden, vericomposting bin, and beehive should go when our landlords got their act together.
Harlem was still a neighborhood then, teeming with foot soldiers and African dress, and black and brown families pushing carts up its daring hills. The storefront paints were faded and the Spanish carried. The most striking folks strut from jobs downtown or their own ventures right in our community. The many brownstones widowed of their owners blended in eventually, boarded behind sidewalk edges of tall grass. Vagrants sawed the padlocks off fences of empty lots to create tents nobody complained about but the police dismantled anyway. Those who were born here could not understand the mass immigration or the fuss. And too many were accustomed to their White property owners, for they had always been.
Every day, more and more trucks arrived with men to carry sheetrock and piping into unboarded doors, aired-out windows, and swept great rooms selling for more now. More and more Whites fell out of moving trucks in two categories: the ones who smiled at everybody too much, and the ones who smiled at nobody at all. I put my trust in the latter. I heard the chitchat and banter from old men based on corner stools, the testy objections in their West Indian or born–New Yorker voices. The gracefully dictated bullshit of telltale liberals amused me: about how it was a good thing to mix cultures, elevate property values, bring in healthier stores, and give “natives” something to strive for and compete with. Still, the crumbs I saved from Mama’s life insurance could not purchase a building like this one I rented a sliver of.
And the wonderland our rooftop was to become never transformed as such and was now off-limits, a site of strange circumstances none of us could explain.
But Asha had a dream to grow her business beyond rent money and hang-ups on bill collectors. She would own her own brownstone and healing place soon: community roundtable center, day spa, and famous dignitary rest spot all in one.
She had told me all this, over and over again. So we said nothing now.
Even shadows are promising when someone you love is lost. Every face and body shaped the same, even a little bit, grabs your attention and hope. Then the lack of recognition, just a glimpse of familiarity, is a defeat you didn’t ask for. This guaranteed failure made going out so hard for me. Or, maybe it was just my excuse to give up on wanting more out of the world. But I was determined withdrawal wouldn’t equal laziness.
The New York City Office of Vital Records kept me on hold over ten minutes. I managed impatience with the day’s Daily News and Post, neither reporting stories of any unidentified Black women’s bodies I could call a hotline and demand to see. I reread another email from one of Hedgewood’s two detectives (both past retirement age).
“Ms. Spencer: No trouble at all to check things for you again. All bodies in our town hospital and morgue are identified. And none have been found, knock on wood. I gave your description and photo to COs at the county and beat cops on the streets. If a woman fitting your sister turns up, I’ll tell you. God bless you.”
I believed it. The town was too small for travesties police couldn’t unwind just by showing up at the right bars after witnesses had the right number of drinks in them. He did not rule out authorities searching for Summer in Hedgewood. And he did confirm she did not go home to wind up dead, knock on wood. When a veteran big-city government employee returned to our call, he was less absolute.
“I’m just not finding any death certificates with that name on it,” he announced. “Whadya say it is again? Autumn Spence?”
“No,” I insisted. “Autumn Spencer is my name. I’m alive and well. And I’m the one talking to you right now. The decedent’s name would be Summer Spencer.”
“Oh, yes,” he chuckled. “Sorry, I had my note upside down. I did look up Summer, of that prior address. You live there, cause they would’ve come to—”
“I’m not here every second,” I interrupted. “They could’ve missed me.”
“What relation would you be to the decedent, ma’am? Only spouses and—”
“I’m her sibling,” I interrupted. “According to your policies I’m authorized to obtain a certificate. She has no spouse or children. Our parents are dead. I’m legal next of kin. I’d have to notify what family we have left, tell her friends.”
With a death certificate, I could rest well again. I could shut this gaping hole of not knowing, and get back to order. I could start on Summer’s affairs: run an obituary, transfer money from her bank accounts, address any bills she left behind, and (most importantly) do what Mama would want most: I would purchase her magnificent headstone for our family plot that Mr. Murphy’s business mind pressured her to pay for in advance, away from our father’s Spencer family burial ground in another town cemetery.
“Okay, when was this again?” he asked.
“She’s been missing since December 20. Or, maybe it was the nineteenth.” I sighed. “Look, I don’t know. I remember it was a frantic Christmas. But whether it was last year or last night, you’d have a death notice for a dead New York County resident.”
“Well, it takes a while to generate. And wait, you say she’s missing, or dead?”
“I’m saying I do not know, sir. No one does. But if by chance she has died, an accident or God knows what else in New York City, I am reporting as next of kin to see.”
“So if it was that recent and if some ID was on the decedent, something should be in our system. You be surprised how many people nobody bothers with. They get welfare burials, belongings auctioned off. But I have looked in—”
“Jesus Christ, sir, is there a supervisor I can speak with?”
“Ma’am, maybe you can come down here to Worth Street and fill out—”
I hung up. It was the third time I had called. I had completed two tasks of the day: checking coroner’s office procedures to look at unidentified black women for possible identification (I did not qualify for clearance) and pursuing a death certificate. Now I had to get down to Worth Street, and I would not make it before five o’clock.
I switched to finding more about Jaylyn Stewart, and more Black women I never heard of who were killed in Harlem. My top inbox was piled with stories that Google and my last days of a paid LexisNexis subscription helped me compile.
Regina Desormeaux was bludgeoned to death in her Morningside Drive garden apartment. The killer came through a sidewalk-level window that, in code violation, was missing its gate. Robbery was the apparent motive, with both jewelry and signs of sexual assault missing.
Graciela Alvarez was also killed at home, though technically not in Harlem but Washington Heights, past 159th Street. Her attacker was known: an ex-boyfriend. No rape.
Monique Salter was fourteen, and a fight with her grandmother (over boys in the home) ended in her falling down the stairs of their Mount Morris walk-up. She broke her neck.
Twenty-two-year-old Kameika Williams was found in a 135th street SRO strangled to death. It was unclear if sex was forced or consensual. A little cash was on the nightstand.
An unnamed woman was pushed into a gangway, her purse and cell phone taken, and her face slashed. She was still alive. This one committed by a duo. They were still at large.
There was also a professor in her sixties, walking into her brownstone after a class. The university was unnamed, but given the crime’s location it was probably City College. She was carjacked of her and her city official husband’s Lincoln Town Car, parked in a rare Manhattan driveway. She had not stereotyped the “Black male” who walked behind her for several blocks. He made his move quickly. She survived being thrown to the cement with only a broken hip. No arrests were made.
There seemed to be no boilerplate habit or way of being that could shield women from the unthinkable. It was possible I had heard of all of these lives