Independence, to me, means that I am the eldest daughter of an unemployed man of color with no sons.
Every time I write I rise above my station.
And yes, before you ask, I did steal someone’s Disney+ login so I could watch Lin-Manuel Miranda’s reinvention of Alexander “Hamilton”’s life twice and then stream the album immediately afterward. That was my July 4th present to myself since we didn’t party or celebrate much, but I digress.
As I gaze from atop my tar beach, or rooftop, at the flashes and bangs of a cacophony of fireworks exploding throughout the darkened streets below, I wonder about the past.
I wonder about the British troops marching up and down what would be Flatbush and Flatlands, claiming Native American trails in the name of the King and making them highways for mail and services.
The hills Breukelen battles were fought on. The colonizing Dutch families that farmed land here. Built wealth here.
The way an African slave’s feet probably ached. Did they learn to hate the sea, and view water as a harbinger of mystery and bondage, or praise it for its watery escape of death? I wonder if they stared at the moon the way I do, wishing.
I wonder about the Union regiments of soldiers hurriedly erecting impressive, reddish, brown-bricked forts and armories all over the borough when Brooklyn was its own mighty city. How these sleeping architectural giants housed the downtrodden and dying then, and the homeless now.
The moon looks full and heavily perched in the night’s sky, as fireworks continue to graze rooftops, buildings, cars, trees, traffic lights, people, and maybe, just maybe, clouds. The sound’s loud, but after a few months of this, I’m a little numbed to the way the boom hits my chest and makes my heart jump a little, and then lightly crackle out and die. From the roof, you can see the all-white smoke clouds left behind from the sheer volume of them going off all at once from every street.
My neighbors are Trinidadian, Jamaican, Jewish, Brazilian, Guyanese, African American, Italian, Irish, and a myriad mixture of any of those cultures and more I can’t name or remember. Some of them have gatherings, some don’t. Some listen and watch how America celebrates its independence from other governing white men.
In front of McDonald’s, someone lights a screamer, that streaks orange high into the air and pops green and gold.
It looks like war, or it could if it weren’t so pretty. On these few blocks at least, no one clutches in pain from canon fire or bayonets or handguns or semi-automatic rifles. But, we are no strangers to the violence of guns.
A bright light burns hot from ground level in the distance, and people dance and delight in it, casting their long shadows along the buildings.
In the morning, red and cardboard packets with grand and adrenaline-inducing names will litter the streets.
