The Lowery Home, Queen, September, 2001

The Lowery home in Queens, to which Richard and Brandon walk the afternoon after the trauma of the World Trade Center attack, symbolizes the generous sanctuary possible when people cooperate, when people, strangers with a diverse background and no shared experience, help each other through a crisis. Brandon is a first-generation Honduran American from the working-class neighborhoods of Brooklyn, the Lowerys an affluent Black family living in one of the most cosmopolitan and swankiest boroughs in the city. The home is a typical upper middle-class dwelling, nothing pretentious or particularly striking about its furnishings or its layout, but tidy and spacious rooms with “shelves full of books, dolls, and toy cars on the floor, family pictures on the walls” (286). None of that matters to the emotionally exhausted Brandon. The home represents a sense of security and comfort, a welcoming home. The family is just...