Summary

The narrator meets with Aisha, who warns about how she runs her classes and shows her footage of Leonard stealing her wallet. Leonard’s dad joins the meeting. He apologizes and pays the narrator the $200 he thinks Leonard stole, although it was over $2,000. Afterwards, the narrator surreptitiously follows Leonard’s dad, ending up in East Harlem. On the train home, she notices every other passenger is a Black man. She realizes how “aware of the color of [her] skin” she has become since moving to New York (188).

Over the following days, the narrator only leaves her apartment to visit CVS, Home Depot, and Sasha. She breaks up with Sasha and asks for her key back. Back home, she begins a new project. She builds a structure in her empty living room, filling it with dirt and plants, and painting it blue. She stops...