by Liz Murray
The four of us together. French-fry grease on my fingertips. Lisa chewing on a cheeseburger. Ma and Daddy, twitching and shifting just behind us, euphoric.
“Between the cushions, Lizzy. Yes, I’m telling you, inside the sofa. Press your ear down hard enough, give it a few minutes, and you will hear the ocean.”
“Really?”
“Yes, Lizzy. Don’t make me say it twice. You know I don’t like that. Either you want to hear it, or you don’t.”
“But I do!”
“Then put your ear down there, press hard, and listen.”
“Okay.”
Being my older sister, Lisa held an air of mystery; there was a power about her that gripped and awed me as a child. Some of her talents that most impressed me then—just to name a few—ranged from braiding hair to snapping her fingers to whistling the entire Bewitched theme song. She seemed regal in my eyes, holding herself high by professing authority over multiple matters of no particular consistency; declarations that I, in my youth, believed without question. Even if her claims seemed abstract, I figured that she possessed knowledge the way that math teachers command arithmetic: mysteriously and unquestionably so. My blind trust left me at the mercy of more than a few of her practical jokes.
“Okay, now put this other cushion on top of your head.”
“Why?”
“You’re aggravating me. Do you or don’t you want to hear the ocean?”
Why not? I knew that you could hear the ocean inside the lowly seashells we brought home from trips to Orchard Beach with Ma, which were nowhere near the ocean, so why should a couch cushion be any less likely? And how was I to know what Lisa was going to do when she then upped and sat on my head? How could I have guessed she might blow one huge, hot fart all over me?
“Take that! Hear the ocean breeze now, Lizzy!” she shouted while I flailed wildly beneath her, my screams muffled under her weight.
Should that experience have better prepared me for the Halloween when Lisa and her friend from the first grade, Jesenia, “taste-tested” all of my candy “for safety,” leaving behind only pennies and old-lady lozenges in my trick-or-treat bag? During the whole “inspection,” I’d concealed a single stick of gum in my closed palm, truly believing that I was putting one over on her.
But as the younger sibling, I wasn’t always the one shortchanged; once in a while it was the other way around. As second in line, I could approach most of life’s curiosities with a kind of borrowed knowledge, thanks to my older sister. By watching Lisa deal with all kinds of issues in our household, I was able to maneuver similar situations with less difficulty.
This advantage helped me navigate life with our parents. Watching where Lisa made the wrong moves, I understood at least what not to do. I was able to figure out the exact behavior it took to gain my parents’ approval and attention—something that could prove slippery in our home.
Saturday was furniture garbage day for the people who lived in Manhattan, which Daddy said automatically meant that they were “living well.” Manhattan people threw things away that were still perfectly useable; you just needed to look hard to find the good stuff. Daddy had several regular spots where he knew to look. I had a collection going already in my room: three metal army men with only slightly chipped paint, their protruding muskets cracked in different, scarcely visible places; an old set of trick handcuffs I liked to clip on my belt loop with a plastic gun so that I could be just like a real cop; and a set of marbles in a worn, leather pouch stamped GLEASON’S on the side.
Always, along with the gifts, came a triumphant story of the retrieval process; tales all about how Daddy dug through bags while bystanders gawked, turning their noses up at “perfectly good stuff.” In his stories, Daddy was always the hero, underestimated by people who he managed, eventually, to dazzle with his ironic wit.
Once in a while, I’d go downtown with him. Standing there, it was hard to know how to feel when people stared and Daddy just turned his back to them and continued to dig unabashedly. I tried to see through their eyes what this man must look like, dressed in a dirty, buttoned-up flannel shirt tucked neatly into his equally filthy jeans, mumbling to himself, picking through Dumpsters—as though he had stubbornly dressed for some long-lost professional life from years ago. A serious man, dark-haired, with angular facial features that made him both handsome and stern-looking, with a young daughter, standing in the middle of garbage that everyone else walked wide circles around. I can remember feeling nakedly embarrassed, until Daddy stopped me in my tracks.
“What, you embarrassed, Lizzy?” he asked, briefly lifting his face from the rancid pile and removing his newsboy cap. “Who cares what people think?” He stared into my eyes, unblinking, leaning in. “If you know something’s good for you, go right ahead and get it, and let them go blow it out of their asses. That’s their hang-up.”
Staring up at Daddy in all his defiance, I felt proud, like he was sharing a secret with me: how to forget what other people thought of you. I wanted to feel the way he did, but it was something I’d have to work at. When I tried hard enough, for those moments, I could manage it, standing there beside Daddy and sneering back at the people who stared. But only if I used his voice to tell myself, over and over, that it was their hang-up.
Daddy took a certain pride in his treasure hunting. He never stopped telling this one story about how he’d found a brand-new keyboard at the precise moment some guy called him a “garbage-digger.” In the story, the guy had enough nerve to ask, after he saw how good it was, whether or not Daddy was keeping the keyboard for himself. Daddy enjoyed repeating his answer in an indignant tone: “Fat chance, buddy.”
“Their loss, our gain,” he would say when we delighted over our secondhand toys, hardly used, or when he presented Ma with a blouse with a loose stitch simply in need of sewing.
Sitting before us on the couch, he sang the indecipherable lyrics to an oldies song and fumbled with his bag while we waited in anticipation. Daddy had his own calculated way of doing things, such as opening a backpack or unbuttoning an eyeglass case. We weren’t supposed to interrupt him; the exact motions were a routine he didn’t like to break. If he missed a step, he became obviously flustered and had to start over again. Ma called his habits obsessive.
Lisa and I were impatient.
“What did you get, just tell us! I wanna know,” Lisa demanded.
“Yeah, please Daddy,” I said.
“Hold it a minute, guys.”
He was stuck on a zipper. It wasn’t caught, but he had a certain way of undoing it. He hummed and continued.
“Daaa, da dum, darlin’, you’re the one.”
Ma, tired from a nap, looked at us and shrugged her shoulders.
Finally, he produced a pink plastic toy hair dryer for Lisa. The creases where the plastic had been welded together were dirty. Stickers substituted for buttons; the settings were marked by a color-coded HIGH, MEDIUM, and . . . the lowest setting had been ripped off; only a streak of white remained. Lisa dangled the dryer by its end and rolled her eyes.
“Thanks, Daddy,” she said unenthusiastically.
“I thought you might like that,” he commented, rummaging in his bag for what he’d brought me.
“Can we eat now?” Lisa asked.
“Just a minute,” Ma replied with a raised finger.
Next, Daddy lifted up a white-and-blue toy monster truck with reflective windows and thick, grooved tires. Dirt had found its way into every crevice, darkening the white parts to gray, making the truck look truly road-worn.
Before it even left his hands, I knew just the way I would react to Daddy’s gift. Most of my behavior toward my parents was deliberate; I carefully thought out choices about my actions and exact words. This way, I didn’t leave things to chance. Instead, it was a skill I developed, knowing exactly how to get their attention. In this case, Daddy was giving me what he thought to be a “boy’s toy,” and I knew exactly how to respond. Years of listening carefully to Daddy�
�s comments scorning “girly” things told me so.
Whenever Ma watched TV talk shows discussing women’s issues like “feeling fat” or “standing up to your man,” Daddy drifted through the living room and sent his voice into a high-pitched wail, impersonating the women using an agonized whine.
“Oh, the world is so foul to women. Let’s have a pity party and never get over it. Oh!”
He reacted the same way to Lisa’s habit of looking in the mirror. Lisa liked to sit curled in a corner and examine her reflection, trying out different smiles and facial expressions. She could spend a whole hour looking at herself.
In response to this, Daddy rolled his eyes way back, lifted his chin, and fanned his fingers out behind his head in the rough shape of a crown. He spoke in that same voice that I grew to interpret as the way he viewed anything “female.” “Will you just look at my face? Oh, well, I’ll just look at it then.”
Daddy always followed up his own jokes with a roar of laughter that would make Lisa hide her mirror and fidget.
“Creep,” I’d once heard her say angrily.
Early on, I decided that I would ridicule anything “girly” right along with Daddy, so he would forget I was a girl, too. I made sure never to let my voice sound meek. Dresses were an absolute joke—“girl crap” that I wasn’t interested in anyway. I knew it was working when Daddy began to bring home these boys’ toys for me, which, I noticed, made him smile and watch me far longer than he would Lisa.
I grabbed the toy truck (which I happened to sincerely like) roughly from him and exclaimed, “Wow! Thanks, Daddy!” I ran the wheels along the coffee table and made loud, throaty engine noises for him to hear.
Daddy smiled approval at me, reaching back into his bag.
“I saved the best for last,” he said, turning to Ma, who looked up curiously at him from her seat at the living room table. She’d been adjusting the table fan onto all of us, but in the humidity, it only circulated hot air.
Her gift must be special, I thought as I watched Daddy unwrap it from a careful layering of newspaper sheets.
“Here we go,” Daddy said, tonguing his cheek and holding up a thick glass jewelry box on the ends of his stiffened fingers, like a waiter presenting a delicate platter.
Ma let out a long, pleased sigh as she cupped the gift in her hands. Before, she’d seemed only mildly interested, but from her reaction, I could tell that she truly liked the box—although I couldn’t help thinking that she had no jewelry to put inside it. While Ma stared at the box, Daddy narrated.
“You should have seen this woman look at me like I was nuts, going through her neighbors’ bags. You know what I have to say to that.”
He raised his middle finger into the air and made a sour face. “Screw you, that’s what. Nosy.”
The jewelry box was a shallow, rounded work of carved glass. A thick, silver lid sat on the top, covered with intricate designs. The lid held a single silver rose in the corner, which bowed gracefully forward. When you twisted it, the softest music played while the rose moved in slow circles, as though dancing a sad ballet. It was beautiful. Instantly, I wanted it for myself.
“Daddy! Can I have it?” Lisa yelled, speaking my mind. Daddy ignored her.
“This is so nice, who could throw it away?” Ma asked.
“I don’t know, but too bad for them. Picked it up on Astor Place, under those big loft buildings,” Daddy said as he unlaced his sneakers with rough, quick jerks. He had a habit of double-, sometimes triple-knotting his laces.
“All right, can we eat now?” Lisa asked.
I was relieved that she brought it up; my stomach had begun to burn, but I was reluctant to interrupt. We hadn’t eaten since that morning, when Lisa and I had rolled-up mayonnaise sandwiches. Most days, that’s all we ever ate, eggs and mayonnaise sandwiches. Lisa and I hated them equally, but they got us through a lot of days when my empty stomach cramped and burned, and all we would have had otherwise was water. It was five days after check day by now, so the money was completely gone and the food in the fridge mostly eaten. I’d been looking forward to some dinner.
“Just a minute,” Daddy answered. “Just wait a minute, let me get settled.”
While Lisa sat watching TV, Ma and Daddy busied themselves in their bedroom. Off to the side, I watched them from the edge of the doorway that provided the only separation between my room and theirs.
Ma sifted through their stack of records in the closet. Since she was with Daddy, she wasn’t going to play Judy Collins; she was in a good mood, so it would be something light. Together they worked a two-man assembly line with some mysterious purpose. Daddy sat on the edge of the bed, sorting through something that looked like dirt, which he pinched between his fingertips and, carefully, spread on a New Yorker magazine taken from the squeaky nightstand drawer that was on his lap. Ma then rolled the gathered bits into an onionskin paper and licked the ends before twisting them tight. Ma raised her lighter, sparking it several times before it fired up, her eyes directed at the cigarette. She took three labored pulls and passed it to Daddy. I’d never seen Daddy smoke a cigarette before.
“What are you guys doing?” I asked, unable to help myself. I questioned them about everything from “Why are you making cigarettes if Ma has some ready-made ones right on her dresser,” to “How come they don’t smell like cigarettes?”
Their nervous laughter told me I was being lied to.
“Liz, enough,” Daddy managed, through his giggling with Ma. I got the feeling that I had said something naïve, and the thought embarrassed me. I could feel myself begin to blush.
“Enough for now,” he said.
Strange smoke filled the air and I tugged my shirt collar over my nose to avoid inhaling the foreign smell. They were in their own world, and not one of my attempts could penetrate it. I stood, seeking Ma’s eyes in the hope that she’d let me in on their secret, but she didn’t look at me. On the bed, the New Yorker sat open to a typed page sprinkled with their cigarette filler.
“Are we ever going to eat anything?” Lisa bellowed when the credits from her show began to roll across our small television screen.
“Sure, honey,” Ma replied smoothly. Unsteadily, she rose to enter the kitchen, moving her legs in large strides, like an astronaut venturing onto the moon’s surface. The awkwardness of her movements went unnoticed by anyone but me.
Soon Lisa and I sat at the living room table to a dinner of scrambled eggs and ice water. The fight began as soon as Ma set down our plates in front of us.
“Why do we have to eat eggs again?” Lisa complained. “I want chicken.”
“We don’t have chicken,” Ma answered flatly before walking back over to Daddy to take another puff.
“Well, I want real food. I don’t want any more eggs; we eat eggs every single day, eggs and franks. I want chicken.”
Daddy could hardly get over his laughter to speak. “Think of it as a small chicken,” he said.
“Screw you!” Lisa snapped.
“It tastes good,” I said, hoping to make things better.
Lisa whispered across the table, “Liar. You hate this crap as much as I do.”
Lisa detested my urge to be agreeable, regarding it as the threat to her ongoing campaign of demanding better from our parents.
I stuck my tongue out at her and dumped globs of ketchup on my eggs to drown out the bad taste. Lisa was right; I did hate eggs. On television, a picture of Donald Trump shaking hands with a city official flickered and crackled into static. I ate hurriedly, hoping to get rid of the hot mush by forcing down large mouthfuls. I ran my truck around and around my plate, making sound effects that shot wet bits of egg onto the table and onto Lisa.
Back and forth, I watched her argue a losing battle. If there was nothing but eggs, then we had to eat them. It seemed simple to me. At least if Lisa was quiet, we could all get along. But I was also grateful that she was demanding, because it gave me a chance to be agreeable. I would be the easy-going daughter. I did
n’t need to look into mirrors; I wasn’t vain or girly. I liked trucks, and I ate my eggs.
Lisa went on until she’d worked herself up into tears. When she was sure of the dead end before her, she screamed, “I hate you!” at both of them. But, from the smoke-filled bedroom, which was heavy now with slow guitar music and a man’s singing, neither of them responded.
Lisa always seemed to be pulling her standards from some higher place, apparent only to herself. If I had to guess now where her resistance to being shortchanged came from, I’d say it had something to do with the year before I was born.
When she was pregnant with me, Ma had what she called a nervous breakdown. With Daddy in prison, Ma had trouble managing her mental health while caring for Lisa at the same time, and Lisa was placed with a foster family for nearly eight months.
The couple who cared for Lisa were wealthy and could not conceive children of their own, so they treated Lisa as a permanent fixture in their family. They lavished so much attention and care on her that when Ma got well and came to get Lisa, she protested by locking herself in the closet and refusing to leave. Ma had to pry Lisa out of the house and drag her back to University Avenue, both of them in tears—which, it seemed, Lisa never got over. From then on, Ma said Lisa was tough to please. It appeared she had developed a sharp sense of what was owed to her, and she was quick to put her foot down whenever she was presented with less—which was nearly all the time.
Lisa screamed a final “I hate you” from the table, folding her arms over her chest, staring back at the TV. “And, I’m not poor—my daddy’s Donald Trump!” she shouted.
“Well then, go ask Daddy Trump for some chicken, why don’t you?” Daddy said. Ma buried her laughter as Daddy howled at his own joke openly, clapping his palm over his knee.
Abruptly, Lisa clanked her plate into mine, which tipped, scooting my eggs into a pile. She stomped off and slammed her door, hard. The noise faded into the blare of pop music from her distorted speakers. Ma and Daddy had taken over the living room, two tired bodies sprawled over the cushions, limp as cooked noodles.