The Cave Dwellers, Christina McDowell [ap literature book list .TXT] 📗

“So who should I give the money to?” Bunny asks.

Anacostia

In 1608 explorer John Smith discovered a village along the Anacostia River that belonged to the Nacotchtank tribeI (Anacostia is the Anglicized version of their name). It turned out to be an abundant trading center frequented by the Iroquois of New York among others. By 1668, the Native Americans were being forced out and uprooted by war. It wasn’t until 1854 that Anacostia became an early suburb of the District of Columbia. Known in those days as Uniontown, it was built to provide affordable housing for the white working class until desegregation spread and public housing units were built in the 1950s and ’60s. During this time, Anacostia saw a dramatic change, its population quickly becoming predominantly Black amidst cultural, political, and racial tensions.

During the crack cocaine crisis of the 1980s and ’90s, Anacostia took a violent turn as an epicenter for drug dealing in Washington, making the city the murder capital of the United States. Its name became synonymous with gun violence for the white elites, perpetuating even deeper racial tensions, gentrification, and segregation.II Once home to abolitionist Fredrick Douglass, Anacostia today is being eyed by aggressive developers eager to build properties as the massive infrastructure project of the Eleventh Street Bridge Park, connecting the Navy Yard district to Anacostia, is scheduled to open in the near future.

I. https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/wash/dc90.htm

II. Asch and Musgrove, Chocolate City.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Bunny stares down at the brown river as her Uber crosses the Eleventh Street Bridge. She couldn’t risk getting lost or parking her car on the street, given what her mother’s always told her: Don’t get lost and end up in Anacostia, you might get shot.

On Bunny’s sixth-grade field trip hiking through Great Falls, the only Hispanic kid in her class slipped on a wet rock by the river, splitting his forehead open. When Bunny saw the blood spilling down his cheek, she felt it was the inevitable result of socioeconomic and racial consequences: This is what happens to Hispanic children. The thought came to her as though she’d been warned of it her entire eleven years on earth. And for the rest of the school year, Bunny was afraid to sit near him, as if she might catch a fall through osmosis—it was a white psychosis. Slipping: it can happen to anyone.

For Bunny’s entire life, everyone in her inner circle always said not to cross the bridge into Anacostia. But as she enters Ward Eight, passing Fredrick Douglass’s large house, its porch buzzing with tourists, the crossing of the wards feels anticlimactic. Where are all the loose gunmen? Children bleeding and starving in the street?

They drive down Good Hope Road passing signs for CASH KING and HOPE DOLLAR STORE, abandoned laundromats in art deco buildings hugging corners, liquor stores. Bunny sees an “eye in the sky” tower for the first time. After her visit at the jail, she knows what it’s for: government and police surveillance. Intimidation.

“Is this the right location, miss?” asks the Uber driver, a Middle Eastern man.

“Yep. Here is good.”

He pulls the car over to the curb.

Bunny gets out and checks the address, then looks up to the yellow row house, protected by a chain-link fence. She walks up the porch steps, proud of herself, and reaches for the doorbell, but before she can press it, the door swings open.

“May I help you?” A striking Black woman stands behind a screen door, her long braids swept up into an elegant bun.

Bunny jumps back. “Ohmigod, I’m so sorry, you scared me,” she says, catching her breath. Bunny notices the woman’s distinctive style, a baby-blue turtleneck sweater complementing her dark complexion.

Bunny waits for her to respond, but the woman remains unmoved.

“Hi, I’m… Grace. Did Anthony mention I was coming by? Are you his sister?” Bunny asks, suddenly hating the acute sound of her voice.

“No, Anthony did not tell us you were coming by.… Are you a social worker?”

“Oh,” Bunny says, trying to hide her confusion. “No, but I am here to—to drop something off for his case.”

“What do you mean? I’m not following,” the woman says, somewhere between paranoid and skeptical.

“I’m here to provide some financial help. For his case,” Bunny says, mustering confidence and pride.

The woman looks up and over Bunny’s head, scanning her surroundings. “What? Who sent you here? Did the attorney send you?”

“No one sent me. Well, Anthony told me where you lived. I thought he would be able to tell you I’d be coming by and why—”

“I haven’t talked to Anthony in months,” she says.

“I’m sure this seems super weird, me just showing up on your doorstep on a Saturday morning.…” Bunny says, trying to convince her she’s not a threat.

“Do you have any identification on you? Or a business card?” she asks.

Bunny’s hands begin to shake a little from nerves as she reaches for her tote bag. No one has ever asked her for a business card before. Bunny is unsettled by this lack of trust.

“I have a driver’s license. I don’t have a business card.” She takes out her cousin’s driver’s license she’s been using to get into the jail, several receipts spilling out of her bag in the process. “Sorry,” Bunny says, handing her the ID, then kneeling to gather the scattered trash, heart racing.

“Do you work for a clinic?” the woman asks. “You look young.”

This isn’t how Bunny planned, prepared for, imagined it. Instead, this woman is poised, beautiful and intelligent, rightfully suspicious, questioning—everything Bunny’s always been told didn’t exist over on the other side of the river. In this moment—her learned stereotype obliterated by reality—humiliation courses through her.

“How do you know my brother?” the woman asks.

“I…” Bunny thinks twice now about telling her she’s a journalist. “I saw what happened in the news and took it upon myself to visit him. I remember when it happened, it… was close to where I live, and I began to question whether