Everything for Everyone by M. E. O'Brien

Author:M. E. O'Brien
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Common Notions

7: ANIYAH REED ON PACHA AND THE COMMUNIZATION OF SPACE

Recorded on October 30, 2068, at the Harlem Commune.

Eman Abdelhadi: This is Eman Abdelhadi, conducting an oral history interview with Aniyah Reed for a project on the history of the communes of the Mid-Atlantic Free Assembly. We’re here in Grey House, at the Harlem Commune. It is October 30, 2068. Aniyah, thanks for agreeing to speak to me!

Aniyah Reed: Yeah, you got it.

Abdelhadi: Aniyah—the purpose of this interview is to get to know you and your life story. Let’s start with the basics. What year were you born?

Reed: 2010.

Abdelhadi: And you live here in Harlem?

Reed: Yeah, on Powell and the One-Two-Five.

Abdelhadi: Oh. At the old Hotel Theresa?

Reed: Yeah. Where Malcolm X met—

Abdelhadi: Fidel Castro! Yes! That’s a lovely building. In another life, a lover gave me a book called, what was it? Oh, I remember: Radical Tours of New York City. We walked the Harlem Tour together, including that building.

Reed: It’s a real special place.

Abdelhadi: Wonderful. And how do you spend your time these days?

Reed: I am a competitive runner, and I love puzzles. When I’m not doing those things, I work on spacecraft design.

Abdelhadi: You’re being humble. I hear you’re in charge of a whole design council, not just working on it! [Laughs.] I’ll ask you more about that later in the interview, but for now let’s talk about your childhood. Are you from Harlem?

Reed: Actually, I was born out in Jersey. My mom had me when she was sixteen. She moved out of my grannie’s house soon after, and we were on our own. It wasn’t stable though, we moved around from place to place. My mom had what was then called “bipolar.” It was really hard for her to maintain relationships or keep a job, and in those days that meant you had a really, really hard life.

Abdelhadi: Definitely. Did you stay with her throughout your childhood?

Reed: No. I was with her until I was five or six. At that point, we were living in Georgia. She had people down there and rent was cheaper, so she took us down there, but then we got evicted from the apartment we were at, because her man at the time wasn’t paying rent. Anyway, we packed up what we could carry. I remember I had this purple backpack that I loved, and I stuffed it full of my favorite clothes. Anyway, we showed up unannounced at my grannie’s apartment, she lived here in Harlem. Of course, she took us in. The next day, my mom said she would go out and look for a job. And … she didn’t come back.

Abdelhadi: Ever? She didn’t come back ever?

Reed: She came back, every once in a while, kind of sporadically. But she was never really my parent again after that. Sometimes she’d come for a while and say that she was going to take me, that we would get our own place. But no one was going to let her do that, not after she left that first time.

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