For my brother, Jeffrey
You can’t trust Life to give you decent parents or beautiful eyes, a fine French accent or an outstanding flair for fashion. No, Life does what it wants. It’s sneaky as a thief. People themselves are sneaky. I am sneaky. I’m also a thief. Looking back at this last year, that’s the lesson I learned.
Bronx, 1960
WHAT’S GOING DOWN
Richie O’Neill signals me from his apartment,
which is directly opposite mine.
He’s waving his dad’s Fulton GI flashlight,
describing tight circles that beam
directly into my bedroom window,
hissing alert:
Something important is going down.
Just knowing he’s there, that I’m not alone,
helps me get through
so many days and nights.
All I have to do is peek around
the ugly purple thrift store curtains
my mother hung.
Even though she loves to sew,
she decorated my room
with “feel bad about yourself” drapes.
Thanks, Mom. I do.
LANDING GEAR
Richie and I have a system:
Horizontal swipes mean
come down to the lobby when you can.
But extensive, sweeping circles,
like you might see on a tarmac
when a plane’s lost its landing gear,
mean emergency. Help. Five-star alarm.
(I lost my landing gear a long time ago.)
I open then close my curtains,
signaling my departure.
Then I grab my jacket;
the lobby’s always cold,
except in summer,
when you wish to the Gods of the Bronx
that it would cool off.
But there are no gods
here in the Bronx.
MARRIED PEOPLE
Richie and I both have parents
who could compete to be
the most unhappily married people
in all of Parkchester.
The most destructive, too.
All of them thought that
moving into this vast, planned complex
of buildings—
designed to be a retreat
from the noisy urban streets—
would make life easier.
It’s pretty nice here;
terra-cotta figurines
decorate the tall brick buildings.
There are oak, sycamore, and maple trees.
And we have parks, baseball fields, playgrounds.
Apartments have decent kitchens,
good carpeting, sunlight.
But, still, the city invades.
Ambulances, fire trucks, burglar alarms
shriek through the neighborhood.
Lumbering buses, kids cracking bats
against hardballs, street fights,
loud radios blasting sports scores,
girlfriends’ singsong scolding
their no-good boyfriends—“chico malo”—
zip around us at all hours.
Nobody who lives in the Bronx can relax.
WHEN YOU’RE FOURTEEN
It’s the night before the first day
of high school.
I was hoping, for once,
to be consumed with choosing an outfit.
Like a normal kid.
Entrances are everything
when you’re my age.
Sometimes my father,
the globe-trotting Perfume Magnate,
the proud self-made man,
gives me the once-over.
He looks at me as if I’m a possible model
for a new scent he’s launching
from his boutique company.
He says, coolly, “You’re pretty.”
I wait. It’s never that simple.
“Not the prettiest,” he usually clarifies.
According to him, this is a good thing
because, he says,
the ultra-gorgeous ones,
like Merilee Stabiner and Jessica Levin,
never bother to develop a personality.
It’s creepy to me that he has these opinions
about girls my age.
That he’s obsessed with beauty.
“But, Dad, my personality is problematic,”
I object at those times.
We both know problematic
is a guidance counselor word.
My mother calls me worse things.
I say,
“My so-called personality is too big
for this house.
Too big for my mother.
And sometimes for me, too.”
He nods.
At least my father talks to me.
ONGOING WAR
So tonight, instead of concentrating
on questions like should I wear
a pleated skirt or a pencil-thin straight one,
a coral sweater or a blue-green one,
I’m descending in the elevator, deciding
if I should tell Richie how things are going
before or after
I hear his tale of woe.
Should I pretend
that, with his flashlight, he interrupted
only my clothing showdown?
This would be a lie.
I happened to see
his signal.
It reached all the way into our kitchen,
where I was hiding out,
trying to ignore the mayhem
coming from my parents’ bedroom.
Rat-a-tat phrases were firing
from both sides of the ongoing war.
There might as well be gunfire,
might as well be blood seeping out
from under their door.
These angry nights
are more and more frequent.
EBONY PENCIL
Lucky for me, I like to draw,
which is why I was stationed
at the kitchen table,
furiously scratching a newsprint pad.
Newsprint is cheap.
You can make mistakes, experiment.
I was using my ebony pencil.
Once I really concentrate,
I can escape, lose track of time.
Obliterate sounds.
Take a vacation from the hostilities.
I was studying the geography of my gym socks,
determined to understand
why each sock has creases
that fall a certain way.
And the small mountains and shadows
that make it seem
like it is its own country.
It’s more complicated than I thought!
This everyday white cotton sock
that I’ve folded hundreds of times
becomes fascinating! Compelling!
I’m shading, erasing, trying to get it right.
Loving every minute.
Drawing calms me down.
PROBABLY JAMES JOYCE
I shoved the pad under my bed,
rushed to the hallway.
The elevator—belching from its old motor
and stinking of macaroni and cheese,
cigarette butts, stale beer—finally arrived.
There are bits of old pizza crusts on the floor.
A cheap-looking magenta lipstick
lies missing its cap in the corner
like a reminder of someone’s forced smile.
In the lobby, the door creaks open.
Richie’s sitting on a bench reading.
He always has a book.
Probably James Joyce.
He’s obsessed.
Then, there’s arguing from across the street.
Richie slaps closed his paperback
when he sees me.
Some guy is yelling:
“Get your hands off me!
I’m a Vietnam vet, assholes!”