August thinks back to the beginning of her adolescence, when men began to notice and call to them on the streets. At a younger age, they had already begun sharing stories of the shoe repairman who paid to see girls’ panties. When Gigi revealed that her choir teacher presses his erection against her, her friends encouraged her to continue pursuing her dreams—but to be careful, too. As the girls’ bodies changed, they locked arms to protect each other, knowing they would not be safe alone. August’s mother admonition not to trust women became a distant memory.

As she grew closer to her friends, August stayed close to her brother. She states that the two continued to watch Brooklyn through their window. Thinking of her apartment, she remembers a conversation with her father. She asked him what was in a particular jar—“whose ashes?” Her father, frustrated, tells her that she already knows.

During the summer of the New York blackout, August and her brother want to participate in the looting and revelry, but their father instructs them to stay behind the front gate. They watched their white neighbors flee their apartments, renting to anyone who would take over the lease.