The woman who falls has many names. To customers, she is Mei—a sex worker with good prices and a sharp tongue. Online, where people know her for her nail art, she goes by Songbird Sophia. Hundreds of videos are posted on her WeChat page, hundreds of Tik-Toks and tutorials. “This is how you paint a raven,” she says, “and this is how you give it wings.” You never hear her voice in the videos. Instead there’s captions. Music. In the comment section of a video titled “How to flowers,” you’ll find yet another name. Huan-Huan. This is the name her friends call her, and it’s the name written on all her documents. This includes the search warrant the cops hold as they knock on her door.

But before that, there’s footsteps. There’s whispering on the street and glances directed at the policemen: one tall, the other short. Both are white and wearing plain clothes. Unremarkable—except they’re walking in Brooklyn’s “Little Fuzhou.” There are few white people here, few tourists. The ones who come are accompanied by Chinese people—friends who want to introduce a John, a Jake, or a Stacy to something called “real Asian cooking.” There’s a smell of cumin in the air. Onions, peppercorns, and soy sauce. Then, as the cops approach the building with the salon on the first floor, the smell becomes one of flowers-in-cream. Herbal oils, as a man walks out of the salon—a youngster in a puffer jacket and boots. He walks past the cops, stares while the short one pulls out his phone. 

“I’m outside… Yes, I’m alone… Of course I have my wallet—I’m no cheapskate… Can I come up now? Sorry—I said, can I come up now? Five minutes?”

The tall cop shakes his head. “We go in now.”

The building is half-commercial and has no locks, no buzzers. Chinese businesses line the first floor. These include: a cell phone stand, a sandwich shop, a driving school, and (in the back) a yogurt store. Signs on the wall direct visitors to Mrs. Lin, an immigration lawyer on the second floor. Her office is next to an accounting firm and a job agency. The cops look at these with bland curiosity as they walk up the stairs. Their bodies are captured by cameras, tucked in corners and staring. They capture the cops in their leather jackets. Their hats with (on the short man) the wide brim and (on the tall one) the faded logo. If the cameras had memory, they would remember the short cop’s face. He’s been here before. Last week. That day, he walked up the five flights of stairs in the same jacket, the same boots. That day, he wondered, bored but also a little anxious, about his wife coming home before him. If she did—what kinds of excuses would he make, what kinds of lies? He was alone at the time. Undercover, because a whore won’t talk to you if you have a wingman. And when he saw Huan-Huan and her body like a devil’s, he thought: “Well if she wants to, then why not?”

(Later, during the investigation, the short cop will deny that he had sex with Huan-Huan. He will say that the witness—an old cleaning woman—was mistaken when she saw him “with his pants down.” Camera footage will be watched. Yes, that man looks like the short cop, but how can we be sure? When this doesn’t work, the argument becomes: those twenty-two minutes between his entering her home and leaving it—who has sex for only that long? In the end, the investigation will lead to nothing, and the short cop’s narrative will stand. In his words: “I talked to her for fifteen minutes, realized what she was. I was gathering evidence. Then I left. I told her I would come back next week if only she’d give me a price. She did and I came back—to arrest her.”)

Two knocks on the door, followed by three. Huan-Huan doesn’t come out. After five minutes the short cop takes out his phone. He dials, hears music on the other side. That and the whir of a kitchen exhaust. It’s been turned on to hide Huan-Huan’s footsteps. She’s neatly dressed, her hair is tied back in a ponytail. A length of black lace peeks out from underneath her shirt. Panic fills her head, panic and anger. Why are there two men outside her door? She sees them through the peephole—two similar looking men in dark clothes and dark boots. Possibilities are considered. They could be gang members. They could be police. Or (and she immediately shrugs this off) they could be two men looking for a good time; one a repeat customer, the other a new one.

It’s at that moment her phone rings. It’s at that moment the short cop hears her ringtone, a Chinese song from the 90s. Woman Flower. And it’s to the short tune of this song that Huan-Huan moves. She runs from the kitchen, where the door is, to the living room, the bedroom, the balcony. Her eyes scan each for a weapon. There’s pepper spray on a countertop. Scissors. The kitchen knife is considered, but it’s too dull—she had trouble cutting through a strip of chicken skin this morning. Where’s the taser? She runs and runs, the door knocks grow louder. There’s also a voice now. A yelling she hears but doesn’t listen to, because now she knows the men are police. Now she knows it’s life or death. 

She can’t be arrested. Not when she’s about to apply for a green card, and not when she—months earlier—had her first offense removed from her record. Huan-Huan knows it’s all over when the handcuffs click shut. When they grab and push you and spray spit all over your face. It doesn’t matter what you say. She remembers how the woman cop from last time ignored her pleas, her yelling. They don’t care that immigrant jobs pay 2,000 dollars a month, and they don’t care that she used to work twelve hours a day, six days a week at a sweatshop in Chinatown. Once, she tried to explain to a white lawyer—a customer who (for a time) became her boyfriend—that she didn’t like or dislike what she did. “It’s a job,” she said, “and I do it for the money.” Money that she would send home to her family in Min An Village. Money that would go toward rent, beauty school, and the great dream of opening a nail salon in some American suburb, somewhere. But nothing matters to the cops outside her door. To them, she’s a prostitute. And they’re going to take her. They’re going to ruin her life.

A drawer opens, and Huan-Huan rummages. Batteries are thrown out. Hair ties, hair clips, Korean skincare samples. A bootleg DVD of her favorite variety show falls out, and after that, a bag of old photographs. They spill out as the knocks against her door become kicks. As the cops’ commands begin to slam like sledgehammers. There’s no taser here—where did it go? She runs across the room, past the spilled pictures of: Huan-Huan and her Mama, standing in a field and smiling; Huan-Huan with her friends at a beach in Chang Le; Huan-Huan with a man twice her age, and between them—a little girl wrapped in blankets. 

The door to Huan-Huan’s apartment is kicked open at 19:14:36. The date, according to the security footage, is November 10, 2017. If you watch it, you’ll see the short cop and the tall cop, knocking and kicking. You’ll see a neighbor poke her head out from a nearby apartment. You’ll see an old man walk up from downstairs, and you’ll see the tall cop point with something resembling a gun. Afterwards, running. They run into Huan-Huan’s apartment, and six minutes later, the short cop runs back out. Ten minutes later, the tall cop follows. There are conflicting reports about what happened in those sixteen minutes. According to the police: Huan-Huan, resisting arrest, jumps off her balcony. But an old man living across the street says this is a lie. He tells his neighbors, his dead wife, his son, that Huan-Huan was pushed. 

“She had something in her hands. She used it, and the man on her balcony clawed at his eyes like a bear attacked by bees. Then there was a movement. He rushed at her, I blinked, and she was falling.”

And as she falls, she remembers. She remembers a memory long forgotten. It’s one from before America. Before the nail tutorials, the johns, the first offense and the many court appearances. The setting is a glove factory in Min An. Huan-Huan and her friends are resting after work. They sit, stand, stare in the girls’ dormitory with music in the background. English language booklets are cradled in open palms. Everyone has the same one—“Practical English for People Working in Chinese Restaurants”—and everyone refuses to read it. It’s too difficult, too confusing, too boring. Instead the girls talk about what they want in America. They talk about making a lot of money; about buying homes, cars, handbags, candy. They go around the room, sharing their dreams. “I want a vacuum cleaner, a home with a carpet.” “I want lipstick. Wigs made of human hair.” “I want to eat French food, Italian food, a cheeseburger with french fries…” When it’s Huan-Huan’s turn, she says: “I want a music player. I want to dance, I want to be a singer.” Like Anita Mui, she thinks. Anita Mui whose song is playing on her friend’s music player. Slowly, the lyrics return to Huan-Huan:

“I keep a flower, hidden within my heart… Shrouded in mist: a woman flower…”

At three the following morning, she is pronounced dead.