There is a bodega on Amsterdam Avenue, near my place in Harlem, and the cat who lives there has finally decided I'm allowed.
This took two years. Two years of me buying oat milk and the wrong onions and one emergency packet of Parle-G at 11PM, and the cat watching me from the top of the chip rack with the disdain of a Mughal emperor.
This week he came down. He wove between my ankles while I paid for cardamom and bread, and the guy behind the counter, Hamza, looked genuinely moved. "He never does that," he said. The bodega cat had vouched for me. I have lived in this country for years and nothing has ever felt more like citizenship.
I think about belonging a lot. The official version is paperwork and the F-1 and the lawyer's emails. The real version is the bodega on Amsterdam knowing I take my chai seriously and stocking green cardamom because I asked once, a year ago, and Hamza just remembered.
The official version costs thousands of dollars. The real version cost me a packet of Parle-G and a lot of small consistent kindness to a cat.
New York doesn't give you belonging all at once. It gives it to you in installments. The bodega cat. The guy at the 125th newsstand who nods. The lady on the 2 train who I've never spoken to but we've made the same eye contact at the same delayed announcement forty times.
I walked home up Amsterdam with my cardamom, feeling absurdly settled. The tabby went back to the chip rack to resume judging the next customer.
In Harlem, the doorman has whiskers and zero loyalty, and I'd die for him.
Love,