If the neighborhood had ever amounted to anything, it was a long time ago. Now the only claim it could make was the fading memory that forty years earlier Andy Warhol had lived there as a little boy. The street I lived on was called Ophelia Street, and it was narrow and fronted on either side by worn-out brick houses packed tightly together and inhabited by ex-steelworkers. There was a playground nearby with swings and a giant metal turtle that could be climbed on top of, or under, but no children were ever seen. Across the street from our apartment was a small corner store that sold candy and soda and did a brisk business, but other than that the area had a deserted feel, a ghost town where only a few remaining holdouts continued to live. One block away was the Monongahela River. In a few miles it would connect with the Allegheny, and the two together would form the Ohio. For more than a century these three rivers had been busy day and night, bringing in coal and taking out steel, but by the time my mother and I arrived, the steel industry was collapsing, and one century of booming prosperity was coming to an end, leaving Pittsburgh an aged and decimated city. The Monongahela River carried nothing now, lying empty and still like a parking lot that had been thoughtlessly constructed in the middle of nowhere. Our neighborhood sloped down toward the water and gave the impression that in due time all the streets and houses would slide completely into it and be no longer.
Up the hill from us, strategically placed so as to be easily accessible to the downtrodden of the neighborhood, was the headquarters for the Pittsburgh branch of the Socialist Workers Party, both meeting hall and bookstore, with twenty or so members. It was a small building, just a few rooms and a basement, with a storefront that was always pasted with signs calling out to the workers.
Our move to this neighborhood and to this apartment made me feel that I had descended from a great height and fallen hard to earth. For this reason I took to referring to our apartment as “the cave,” and my mother, rather than seeing this as a troubling indicator, instead found it delightful, asking me to repeat it to comrades, who also found it delightful.
“Go on, Saïd, tell Ed and Carla and Bill and Ginny what you said about our new apartment.…” And I would repeat it, finding myself strangely happy, reveling in the gales of laughter that greeted me.
The difference between us and the other poor families in this neighborhood was that our poverty was intentional and self-inflicted. A choice chased after, as opposed to a reality that could not be avoided. There was no compelling reason for such deprivation. From the secondhand clothing to the secondhand furniture, from the unpaid library books to the unbought skateboard, it was all artifice. We were without money, yes, but we were not without options. My mother was highly literate, well read, well spoken, and she held an undergraduate degree in English literature from a time when many women did not even attend college. Not to mention that fifteen minutes away lived a wealthy brother who had generously helped her throughout the years, had even helped pay her tuition when she had wanted to return to school. Then there was the matter of the missing husband, who, with some cajoling—or the cajoling of the judicial system—could be pressed into aiding us.
Instead, my mother actively, consciously, chose not only for us to be poor but for us to remain poor, and the two of us suffered greatly for it. Because to suffer and to suffer greatly was the point. It was the fulfillment of ourselves. My mother was no doubt emboldened by the philosophy that there was honor in wretchedness, virtue in misery, nobility in hardship. Members of the Socialist Workers Party might outwardly deride Christian ideals extolling poverty and the renunciation of material goods, but inwardly they were convinced that there was nothing more ignominious than to succeed in a society that was as morally bankrupt as ours. It was no accident that almost every comrade was from a middle-class background and had repudiated their upbringing and their college degrees in order to pursue a higher, more profound calling. If you flourished in this society, you flourished because you were deviant and unethical, an exploiter of the working class. Marx had believed that it was the oppressed who would inherit the earth, and every communist since him had believed it as well, including Lenin, Trotsky, and the members of the Socialist Workers Party. My mother and I lived within a slightly retailored version of the Sermon on the Mount—but only slightly. When the revolution finally arrived, we would stand first among the deserving. My mother would see to it.
I was not without my own resources in this neighborhood. I refused to be without them. A week or so after our arrival, I was befriended by a boy a year or two older than I, blond-haired and blue-eyed, named Michael March. He was also the single child of a single mother, and he was also left to his own devices, but while my early life had caused me to shield myself from danger and confrontation and turn inward, his had caused him to seek out precarious situations and place himself in the middle of them. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to play with that boy,” my mother had said upon meeting him, sensing danger—and she had been right. Not more than ten years later he’d kill himself playing Russian roulette with a group of friends.
One night, as we wandered the neighborhood looking for something to do, I had unwittingly followed him up the stairs to the front door of a stranger’s house. Hardly registering what was transpiring before me, I watched as he soundlessly turned the doorknob and crawled into the home unannounced. Unable to turn away—because I had nowhere else to go—I had slunk after him down the dim hallway. From an adjacent room came the sounds of the family at dinner. It was a peculiar, distressing sensation to be inside a stranger’s home when the stranger did not know I was there. The house felt haunted and I knew, distantly, that I was the one doing the haunting. Silently, Michael and I had crawled on our hands and knees down into the basement, where, in the clammy darkness, we rummaged through boxes of old clothes and books until we found what it was we were after: toys. Through the box we went, examining each ball and game and car, as if we had been taken on a shopping spree. Finally I settled on a Barbie doll in a pink dress, one shoe missing. Michael, in response, took for himself Barbie’s boyfriend, Ken. That we had allowed ourselves only one toy apiece was a bizarre limit in what could have been a limitless transgression. Just as the two of us were preparing to make our getaway, we heard the family’s conversation cease abruptly, and the sound of a chair scraping out from the table, and vigorous male footsteps rapidly approaching overhead. In a panic, we scurried around the basement looking for a place to save ourselves. Michael managed to conceal himself expertly beneath the laundry table. “Hide me!” I had whispered in desperation, but there was room for only one. Not knowing what to do, I had buried my head in my hands in the hope that if I could not see, I could not be seen. But the footsteps passed over and faded away, and once we were sure the family had safely resumed their dinner, the two of us crawled back the way we had come, our hands and knees making impressions in the carpeting. Later that night, in Michael’s empty apartment, showing no signs of remorse, we stripped Barbie and Ken of their clothes and, in feverish child’s play, pressed their plastic bodies against each other.
Not very long after that, with my mother still unemployed and the teachers still on strike, she and I woke one day before dawn and, along with a few other comrades, caught a Greyhound bus to Richmond, Virginia. The ride took six hours, and the combination of the cold winter air, the stale heat blowing through the vents, the uncomfortable seats, and the incessant swerving along highways caused me, midway through the trip, to vomit into an empty paper cup that my mother held in front of my mouth. It felt like an act of penance for what I had done with Michael, and I accepted it as such. Once in Richmond, we had joined about five hundred other protesters, mostly women, including comrades from other branches, and listened to speaker after speaker, also mostly women, as they demanded that Virginia pass the Equal Rights Amendment.
Richmond was no warmer than Pittsburgh, but I accepted this also as penance. When the last speaker had spoken, all five hundred of us marched through downtown toward the statehouse, chanti
ng and holding our banners aloft, passing shoppers and office workers who stopped to stare at us curiously as if we were a circus come to town. I felt the familiar sensation of being naked, on display, a monkey being led through the streets for the townspeople to gape at. A woman leading the throng chanted through her bullhorn, “Hey, hey, what do you say? Ratify the ERA!” Voices rose up in unison, and soon my mother joined the chorus, her voice sounding frail in the open air of the city. I shouted along as well. To remain silent would have made me conspicuous in the eyes of both the bystanders and the people with whom I was marching.
“What do we want?” the bullhorn asked.
“The ERA!” I screamed.
“When do we want it?”
“Now!” I screamed.
There was comfort in being able to see the problem before me, contained and defined, and understanding clearly what the remedy for that problem was. There was comfort also in knowing that there were five hundred other people who understood this problem as well. And as I marched and shouted, I began to feel that we were the ones who were on the inside and those who stood idly on the sidewalks with their bags and their briefcases were on the outside, lost and confused. They were the circus, and I had come to watch them.
When we finally arrived at the Virginia statehouse, a few women took the microphone to again make our demands known. Behind them was a well-scrubbed flight of stairs ascending toward a gigantic white building surrounded by impassive columns. “The seat of ruling-class power,” my mother had said with bitterness. Its grand, imperial architecture had a sobering effect on the day’s events, putting into perspective what the odds really were. By late afternoon the protest broke up, and with the winter sun beginning to set, my mother and I rode six hours back to Ophelia Street on the Greyhound bus, where I once again, midway through, vomited into an empty paper cup that my mother held before my mouth.
After that, my mother landed a job as a secretary at Carnegie Mellon University, and the teachers’ strike ended, and I found myself standing in front of a door that I could not open. Was it the wrong door?
I had worked at the lock calmly at first, operating under the premise that it would only be a matter of time before it would click. I had assumed that the defect was in me, not the lock, but soon I began to feel that I was attempting something that could never be achieved. It was freezing, and I sensed that I was in grave danger, or would soon be. I thought perhaps I should go to Michael’s house, but I was so unfamiliar with the neighborhood that I didn’t know how to get there. As the sky darkened toward evening and it grew colder, I became delirious with the thought that eventually the key would find the right groove and the door would swing wide. The key fitting, the door swinging, the key fitting … I knocked on the door. “Ma!” I called out, and the sound of my voice startled me, emphasizing the silence of the neighborhood. Then I kicked on the door. I pulled on its knob. Then I pushed on its knob. I knocked again, this time louder and with both fists. “Ma! Ma!” And from down the street I could hear, “Saïd! Saïd!” But when I turned to greet my mother, she was not there.
Without bothering to consider what I was doing, I turned and stood flat against the unyielding door, my back pressing into the cold steel, giving myself up to its mercy. Then I pulled the fluttering storm door closed around me, so that I was sandwiched between the two doors, protected as best I could against the elements. My head reached just high enough that I was able to look through the glass of the storm door, out onto the world. There was nothing to observe. Everything was blank. It grew darker. It grew colder. The wind picked up. The storm door rattled. In the darkness the refrigerator smiled at me, its white body glowing like it was alive and well. I imagined my mother arriving at any moment, now, now, now. Then I imagined Michael March coming to find me. After that, I imagined my uncle’s light-blue Mercedes rounding the corner.
At one point, two older boys came running down the street, happily tossing a football back and forth. They stopped for a minute in front of my building, laughing loudly and chasing the football as it bounced around and beneath parked cars. Their shouts flew in the face of the general order of things, as if they were violating a code of conduct of the neighborhood. Then they decided to take a shortcut through a small opening beside my building, and as they did they noticed me. I looked at them through the glass and they looked back at me. They hesitated for a moment before walking off, unsettled by the sensation of a door seemingly come to life. Then a small man appeared at the far end of the street and the boys ran on.
I watched the man as he approached. He was wrapped in scarves and bent against the wind, carrying with some difficulty a small bag of groceries that made him look a bit like a cripple, the weight pulling one shoulder unevenly toward the ground. As the man drew closer, the wind blew straight into him and he turned slightly to one side, trying to deflect the blow from his face. Then the wind subsided and the man moved forward quickly until he was directly in front of my door, peering at me through the glass.
“What are you doing in there?” my mother asked, and it was asked with displeasure, as if I was playing a naughty game she had asked me not to play.
“The lock doesn’t work, Ma!” I said.
“What do you mean the lock doesn’t work?” Again the tone of displeasure, impatience. “It worked this morning. How could it not work now?”
“The key doesn’t work, Ma!”
“Which is it?” she said.
“I have to go to the bathroom, Ma!”
She undid the latch of the storm door, and I was released back out into the air of the neighborhood. I handed her the useless key.
“Why didn’t you walk over to the party headquarters?” she asked. “It’s only a few blocks away.” When she said it, I saw myself from above, a bird’s-eye view, wandering through foreign streets that crisscrossed one another. “There will always be a comrade there,” she said.
The word comrade was fluffy and sweet, like cotton candy, and I faulted myself for not having thought of it. The error had been mine.
“Next time,” my mother said more gently now.
“Next time,” I said.
Then my mother put the disobedient key into the lock, jiggled it once, and the door clicked and swung open as if it had been waiting to do that all along. And the two of us entered our new home, with the boxes still unpacked and the broom propped against the wall.
8.
THAT SPRING WE HAD A picnic. All the comrades were there, twenty maybe. Plus about ten “sympathizers,” those who were not yet officially comrades but whom everyone hoped would soon decide to be. “They don’t have parks like this in New York City,” my mother told me. I helped Ed carry cans of soda from the trunk of his car. Ed, whose apartment floor I had slept on not too long ago. I liked Ed. Maybe I even loved him. His hands were big and his arms were strong. Machinist’s arms, or steelworker’s, or coal miner’s. Whatever it was my mother had told me. Today he was shirtless, and his broad chest glistened with sweat. On one of his shoulders was a giant scar—really, many scars, all in a bunch like shredded cheese. He had explained to me that when he was in the military he had gotten a tattoo of an American flag on that shoulder. Then he discovered socialism and had the tattoo destroyed.
Sitting in the shade beneath a tree, my mother spoke animatedly. I watched her hands move up and down in quick succession. “That’s right, Martha,” a sympathizer said. “You got that right.” Some other comrades came and sat down on the grass beside her. Everyone was expecting the arrival soon of an old party veteran who was coming from New York City to give a special speech that weekend. He was due any minute. In the meantime, the grill was started.
I had been to a picnic once before. That was when I lived in Brooklyn. My brother and sister were there too. I hadn’t seen them for a long time. There had been a pond with lily pads, which I played on the edge of all afternoon. At some point I went looking for my brother and sister but was unable to find them among the dozens of comrades. Around and around
the pond I went, until it was dark and time to go home. Only at the very last minute did I see them standing together under a tree.
“Where have you been?” I stomped my feet.
They looked at me with startled eyes. “We’ve been here the whole time.”
When the party veteran arrived, we tramped up the hill to greet him at his car. He was bald and wore thick eyeglasses and carried a cane. I was alarmed by how old he was. There were not many old people in the party. Most of them had been driven out over the years by the various factional disputes concerning policy or strategy. The Shachtmanites. The Cochranites. The Global Class War Faction. Each time the party had grown smaller, and each time the members had assured themselves that now only those with the correct ideas remained. Somehow, though, this party veteran had managed to endure. Comrades welcomed him warmly and helped him to the picnic table. A paper plate of food was handed to him. He ate slowly. We all sat around and talked about things I did not understand. I drank a can of soda. And then another one. Then I had to pee.
When Skateboards Will Be Free Page 6