“Does that make you angry? Does that get you going, big man?”

Sachin’s pale eyes never wavered from Clive. He was a father whose child had been taken from him; his loss was black magic, allowing him to see through Clive and know the things that he had taken. When Sachin delivered a swift, fierce kick to his groin, Clive fell to his knees, spat into the dirt. The world began to swirl. Sachin kicked at his ribs like he was trying to dislodge a stubborn flat tire. He kicked and kicked—he was moaning, Clive realized. The sound had been going on for some time. It filtered down from far above his body like the voice of God.

Then footsteps, stumbling away. He caught a fleeting whiff of berries. Tinkling laughter. A final howl: Sachin’s? His? Hers? Clive sailed away on it.

HE COULD not stay in the apartment. It wasn’t just Sachin. After that night, he could find within himself only pity for Sachin, whose family was gone and always would be, no matter how he tried to batter the truth of his life out of existence. But he hated Fazil. (Where would the money he’d stolen end up? Clive wondered. He imagined grandkids in Guyana opening a package of Nikes and CDs. Or maybe Fazil had no one back home and would spend the money in small morsels on himself; he saw him hunched over a large slice of red velvet cake in a café, scraping every last bit of frosting from the plate.)

Ouss loaned him the money for his back rent and the deposit on a new place. He found an open bed in an apartment shared by five roommates just a few blocks away. Not long after that, a shift opened up at the garage, and Clive returned to work. His first night back, in early March, was the first warm night of the year, a promise of spring. When he got off in the morning, he decided to walk. He crossed Manhattan on Forty-Second Street, Times Square so early in the morning empty, his. When he reached First Avenue he turned south. He walked past the United Nations, its sweep of flags snapping in the wind, past the brick projects of the Lower East Side, quiet and softly lit at this hour. At Delancey, he turned onto the pedestrian ramp for the Williamsburg Bridge. He crossed the bridge, pushed forward by westward winds and fanned, at intervals, by ephemeral breezes from bikes whizzing past. When he reached the bridge’s apex, he stopped. At the edges of the panorama, the silver tip of Manhattan and the brown fa?ades of Brooklyn aproned the river; the water was a rich, indeterminate color, as if the essence of the city had been condensed into a dark, sparkling broth, and here he was above it, catching its cool upward breezes.

Things would get better now. He would be able to wire money to Sara and his grandmother soon. His cuts from the fight with Sachin had scabbed over. His whole body felt tight and new as a bud. He got on the J at Marcy Avenue, then rode the B46 down Malcolm X and Utica. When he got home, the phone was ringing. He picked it up just in time. It was Sara.

“I was just thinking about you,” he said.

“Oh?”

“I’m back at work. It’s all sorted out. I’ll be wiring money in a few days.”

She said nothing.

“Sara?”

“That’s wonderful.” She paused. “I want you to know I’m proud of you, Clive. I know it hasn’t been easy there.” Years later, the memory of it was enough to pull tears to his eyes. “I’m calling because I have something to tell you.” Her voice sounded neither happy nor sad.

“What is it, Sara?”

“I’m married.”

For a moment he couldn’t speak. “You’re—Sara, did you say y-y-y—”

“Yes,” she snapped. “I said I’m married. I got married. Last week.”

“No.”

“I’m sorry, Clive.”

“You should have told me. You should have given me a chance to—”

“To what? To try to stop me? I’m sorry, Clive, but I couldn’t do it anymore. I’ve been here, all this time, raising our son alone.”

“While I’m up here slaving away for that boy.”

“And how do you think it’s been for me? You don’t have to take the stares when all you want is to buy groceries.”

“Please, Sara. Listen to me. I love you. I—”

“It’s Edwin,” she said. “Do you hear me? It’s Edwin.” Her voice seemed to study the words, as if she only half believed them. “I married Edwin.”

Bery Wilson, Sculptress. That’s what it says on my business card. These days every actress wants to be called an actor, every waitress wants to be a waiter. But I’m a woman and I want every last person who sees my work to know it. My artist friends scoff when I show them my card. They think it’s vulgar, like I’m an electrician or an accountant hocking my services. But I’m making a living doing what I love, and I want the world to know that, too.

In my twenties, when I was new to New York, my love affair with the city just beginning, I salvaged my materials from its streets: twisted bike rims, concrete, pigeon feathers, lots of metal. My latest pieces are different. In this place of my adulthood, I resurrect the spaces of my youth.

Rubbish Day went up last year in a pocket park in the West Village. If you’re not from where I’m from, you’d see it and think it was just a sculpture made of castaway items, but anyone from home would see the bottle of Maggi and the box of Goya Sazon, the Ivory soap and Crix crackers wrappers, the bottles of D&G pineapple soda and Vita Malt and the canister of Nestlé Klim and know it was a love letter.

School Girls was installed in front of the Adam Clayton Powell Building in Harlem a few years ago. A circle of straw-and-plaster girls with painted-on skirts and blouses, maroon and pink. On the opposite edge of the plaza there was another girl, alone, looking back at the others and flaying them with her eyes. The piece was up November through March. The decay of the materials over the course of the winter was part of the project from its inception. I used to ride up there to see how people interacted with my work. Hardly anybody noticed the lone girl. I would watch her as if held there by something. Watch the snow settle on her shoulders, pigeons peck at her straw, sleet lash her wide-open eyes. I wanted to take her home and make her cinnamon tea and tell her, Just you wait.

Faraway Woman will be my next project, on Governors Island. I’ve only done sketches so far, but I know she will be larger than life. A woman twelve feet high with locks of black hair six feet long and bright white haunches thick as tree trunks. Hooves for feet. I want people to fall in love with her. I want her to give them nightmares.

When that girl died on Faraway, I knew it was the woman who took her. You might expect me to believe it was Gogo Richardson, on account of the afternoon he punched me so hard my legs flew out from under me. But that afternoon wasn’t what I thought about when I heard that he and Edwin had been taken into custody. Instead, I thought of a morning many years earlier, the first day of second grade, when Gogo’s terrible stutter almost caused him to wet himself in front of the entire class. I felt such rage at him then. Rage for allowing something so humiliating to happen to himself. Rage that he couldn’t just fit in. I know, I know. Irony is a live wire. It seems to me now that for years of my life, rage is all I was. It lived in my skin and crackled in my teeth. I would have followed it anywhere.

STARLIGHT