“You healthy and beautiful? Why you not come visit Mami?”
Maria wipes the corners of her mouth with her napkin, while listening to L’s excuses about being busy, having lots of fun, and life overall being just too fabulous for her to drag herself to Queens.
“Why we don’t meet then, in the city? I know you having fun after work. But why we don’t meet for lunch one day? Mami will treat, ok, my sweetie? Tuesday?”
The thought of seeing her daughter makes her happy. She decides to get off the phone before L has a chance to change her mind.
“You needing anything, my sweetie?”
That has been her final question ever since L moved out in early May. And the answer has so far invariably been no. She has to give it to her baby girl. L is so competent in taking care of herself in spite of the naïve and sometimes silly image she projects. Maria is so proud of her! She herself had trouble standing on her own two feet, and she was older than L, and with much more experience. She’s happy to see her baby girl living life on her own terms, not crawling back home to Queens defeated, the way she herself was forced to do, the one time she wanted to leave. She once again promises herself that on some momentous occasion, maybe when L gets a real job, or when she comes back from Italy, or when she moves in by herself, maybe when she decides to go to graduate school, whatever the next milestone worthy of a special mother-daughter moment, she will sit her down, open a good bottle of wine, and tell her the story of the horrible thing she did, the one she’ll never be able to forgive herself for. The one her husband could never forgive. She knows L is smart enough to understand. And she knows it will inspire her to pursue her own dreams, not somebody else’s. She knows that L will avenge her, that she will make her proud.
She sighs. Reluctantly, she dials the next number. It’s taken her two days to return his call. And mostly it’s because talking to him is so unpleasant. He doesn’t just make her angry. He actually still makes her nervous.
Maria and her husband have not shared a bed for ten years now. They have not shared an apartment for eight years, and a bank account for seven. All those have been her choices. She has particularly insisted on the bank account, more than on any of the other separations. The better his business did, the more she insisted on not partaking of his money.
The only thing she could not stop him from was giving allowances to the children. She would pay for their rent, their meals, their clothes, their subway fares. He could provide them with frivolous spending money if he wanted. They didn’t need it anyway.
Of course, when it came time for the kids to go to college, it was just understood that he would pay. Just as it was understood that their children would go to college. Still, although she never told this to him, or to her children, Maria felt the need to save for Alex and Lili’s education herself. She didn’t quite come up with a sufficient amount, but it made her feel good to know that, if Victor forfeited the bill, her savings, combined with student loans could help put her kids through college.
Her stomach tightens as the phone rings at his furniture store. She scolds herself for being nervous. Especially since she knows he won’t answer. She’s purposefully calling at a time when he’s bound to be out. He always goes to lunch with people: clients, suppliers, people from “the community,” or maybe members of a club called “My Wife is a Witch.” Maybe right now he’s having lunch with his hot young girlfriend.
The phone rings five times, and then, just as her stomach relaxes and her breath gets back to normal, there it is: Victor’s voice. Of course, it’s just a recording. He’s changed the greeting for the store. She has to admit she likes it better with his voice on it. The bastard.
Quickly, in an artificially friendly tone, she leaves the numbers for both Gretchen’s apartment and Bella, the place where L works.
There. Now it’s done. She exhales sharply, then looks at her watch. Her lunch break is over, and she hasn’t even had time to look at the real estate section in the paper, something she’s been looking forward to all day.
She’ll have to put it off for later, when she’ll take a few minutes to eat a piece of fruit, invariably an apple or an orange. For now she’ll have to return to her station.
Every day, Maria walks four extra blocks on her way home. She’s been doing this ever since she noticed the little bulge of fat building up on her previously flat stomach, the thick upper arms, and a shocking new need for larger bras. She hates the idea of getting fat, hates the cellulite on her thighs, on her arms, the general loss of firmness she knows is unavoidable in old age. Unless, of course, you can afford lipo. Not that she would do that. She’s had enough painful medical interventions for a lifetime, what with having children and all that horror. And she’s never been good at handling pain.
So she walks. At least it’s moderately useful, sometimes enjoyable, and free. She prefers to walk through the city, sharing her daughter’s distaste for Queens, a distaste she has carried with her since her arrival in the new country. She can remember it so vividly, the day they got to this horrible place, she can taste it still, can still feel the muggy July evening on her skin. The humidity felt filthy. So did the large and decrepit car her husband’s friend picked them up in. The seats smelled weird. Old plastic in a dirty city. Such an unfriendly scent. She hated it, and as they drove on, she also hated the graffiti on the bridges, the gloomy neighborhoods of exposed brick. She shuddered at the thought that such a place would be her home. She never grew to like it. But after rebelling in every way she could, she finally decided (or was she forced to this decision?) to stifle her dissent and carry on. What else could she do? It is what it is, after all.
So nowadays she walks a few blocks in Manhattan, before finally descending into ‘the gutter’ as her daughter calls it, the overheated, smelly New York subway, where fat rats roam freely among the tracks, but every now and then she can hear the melancholy sound of an accordion. It’s always a nostalgic song, a song that makes her think of home, her real home, the faraway country she fled from, a country that no longer truly is, the country of her youth and of her past, the only time and place where she was happy. She always gives the gypsy playing the accordion a clean, crisp dollar bill. She’s done so even in her times of need and misery, in the days .99 cent boxes of macaroni and cheese for her kids were an important budget item. Even then, it was a habit, giving him money. But she never ever talks to the man. She makes sure she has the dollar bill out before she approaches him, and she has mastered the art of dropping it into his tip jar without looking at him, and most importantly, without stopping.
Tonight her detour is longer than usual. Her feet have a will of their own, and she smiles when she realizes where she’s going. There she is, looking up at the number indicated in the newspaper ad she carefully circled earlier today. She counts the windows, gazing up to the seventh floor. Seven is a special number. It has mystical powers. She knows that much.
A light is on in the windows. She can make out the color of the wall behind it, warm and pleasing. A pigeon rests briefly on the window frame. She smiles again, considering it yet another sign, a blessing.
She stands there, looking up for nearly an hour, forgetting that she’s hot and tired. The delicious smell coming from a store finally reminds her that she’s starving. Feeling slightly naughty, she steps inside, buys a slice of crunchy, juicy pizza, and devours it like a hungry child.
By the time she gets to the subway she has a spring in her step. She gives the old accordion player five dollars, and hurries off quickly before he has a chance to talk to her. When she gets home she does something unprecedented. She feeds the leftover roast chicken to a cat lingering on the fire escape. Fuck the chicken. She’s finally free!
5
Hide and Seek
Things have been awkward at Gretchen’s lately. I wish I were invisible. Leaving before G gets up is easy. Staying out late, to avoid awkward hours of hiding my room is a bit trickier.
Early one Moday morning, I found a key on
the kitchen counter, accompanied by a little pink card: “I had Juanita make this. Sorry for the delay, roomie.” There was a little heart above the ‘i,’ and a smiley face next to Gretchen’s signature. I crumpled up the card and threw it in the toilet. I wanted to do the same with the key. But I needed the key. And I didn’t want to clog the toilet.
The toilet clogs anyway. Juanita, the housekeeper, a middle aged Puerto Rican woman with little sense of humor, informs me of this development matter-of-factly.
“I had to call plumber,” she says, while putting on her sandals. Juanita wears sneakers to work, but puts on cute shoes when she’s getting ready to leave. Today it’s pink suede sandals, so delicate and feminine that I have trouble reconciling them with the image of her always scrubbing. I’m embarrassed about the toilet. And I’m afraid they’ll add the plumber bill to my tab. God knows what plumbers cost in Manhattan.
I also hate Juanita’s pretty shoes. Mami does that. She changes into pretty shoes. I hate to think Juanita is like Mami, and Mami like Juanita. Could it be, that while other people move up the social ladder, my Mami, just like Juanita is stuck somewhere between ugly sneakers and cute shoes? I guess my mother is a servant to rich people too. It’s not that different, really, being in sales, high end as the department store might be. For the first time, I kind of see Tati’s point. If I go on at Bella, I’ll be just as stuck too.
But what else could I do? I’ve never had another job. I was lucky Francesca hired me, in my last semester of college. I was so happy to finally wither Mami’s resistance and start working, so happy to be dealing with those beautiful bags, and to be speaking Italian every now and then… Mami begged me to wait until college was over (Romanian parents think having a job takes focus away from studying). But I wanted to start working at Bella right away. I loved it from day one. Then it got boring, even a bit oppressive. But what choice do I have? Especially now that I need money more than ever so I can pay my stupid rent. Still, looking at Juanita’s pretty shoes, I want to quit right now. If I stay on, and let things slide, I can just see myself one day: middle aged and poor, walking to work in ragged sneakers, my feet too sore to accommodate normal shoes. Pantofi normali.
“Do not throw tampon in toilet!” Juanita warns me, as a parting thought. “No tampon in toilet!” She gathers her purse, which once matched her dainty sandals, but now shows so much wear that it seems from a different era. O eră diferită.
“Que verguenza con esta chica, viviendo aqui come si fuera su casa… Y no paga nada”
I’m not supposed to hear this. I’m not supposed to understand. But Spanish is not that different from Italian. Or Romanian, really.
No paga nada. She pays nothing. Has Gretchen complained to Juanita about me?
I’ve never felt more like a trespasser. I need to start paying Gretchen. I will start paying Gretchen. I repeat the thought like it’s my new mantra. I will it to chase away my fears of impending homelessness. I badly need a distraction. I need to get out. I have neglected everybody since I moved here. I need to call people. I need to go visit others for a change. I make a list in my head. I’ll call Rachelle first, then Momo.
Rachelle is not Jewish, although that’s what I thought when I saw the name of my assigned lab partner in biology class last year. I wrote down the name, and imagined a Jewish girl in a white lab coat. Curly hair, high cheekbones, designer glasses, killer purse. I imagined myself dissecting frogs with a Jewish American Princess. We would become fast friends, and she’d teach me a few things in Yiddish. But the person who met me in the hallway of the yucky smelling biology building was obviously not Jewish. She was Black.
Rachelle later scolded me, explaining that the two categories were by no means mutually exclusive.
“So why do you think that just because I’m Black I can’t be Jewish? What if my mother was Jewish?”
That was just the start of a long rant.
“Why would you look at a person’s name and wonder if they are Jewish? Does it matter if they are Jewish?”
I only partially managed to redeem myself by explaining my interest in language, words, culture, and my fascination with Yiddish. Rachelle said it was another stereotype to expect a young Jewish woman to know Yiddish. I felt that expecting a student to be young was a stereotype too, but I kept that to myself, because the thing was, I liked Rachelle, and I really badly wanted to be her friend.
Initially, Rachelle was distant. She acted like she was annoyed, though just a tiny bit flattered, by my eagerness to gain her attention. She told me I was immature, spoiled, and a bit irritating, but that I made up for some of those flaws by being occasionally amusing, a much needed diversion for a single mother working full time and taking night classes at CUNY
I call Rachelle at work, and she seems happy to hear me but doesn’t have time to meet up. I wish I’d had the foresight to book a get together two weeks in advance. Rachelle has school and work, plus a baby. This week she says she has no babysitter, and that she can’t afford her subway fare, let alone going out. Rachelle is the only friend I have who has no problem admitting she has no money. I find this utterly refreshing.
I offer to come over and bring pizza.
Rachelle declines. I insist. She gives in.
So Tuesday night, cheered up by a rather pleasant pizza lunch with Mami, who seemed uncharacteristically happy, I take the tramway to Roosevelt Island. The thought of having pizza twice in a day makes me queasy, but I cannot disappoint Rachelle. Besides, I only had a slice at lunch, as Mami practically forced me to eat a side salad and some fresh cut mango.
Rachelle’s place is much cleaner than usual, though Jurron is running around with a roll of toilet paper he spreads all over the floor.
“Quit messing with that paper, Jurron!” Rachelle calls after him. “I’ve just finished cleaning, and I’ve had a hard day, and I’m tired.”
She places the pizza box on her kitchen table, and gets out plates and napkins. Other than Mami, she’s the only person I know who actually uses real plates for pizza.
“You didn’t have to bring over pizza, girl. Thank you, though.”
Rachelle opens a bottle of wine and pours it into real glasses.
The leather couch that was there last time I visited is gone, so we sit on the floor. Rachelle still manages to eat with decorum, while I spill both tomato sauce and wine on myself. It occurs to me later, while Rachelle is dabbing the spots with seltzer, that the shirt is Gretchen’s, and that it probably cost more than a brand new laptop. I feel the sting of fresh tears, and I have to blink hard, then improvise a quick mathematical exercise involving the number of cans on top of the fridge. I can’t cry in front of Rachelle.
She’d go on a rant about me being a spoiled white child. Un copil alb alintat. Her own life was not easy. She grew up in the projects. One of her sisters died when she was little. She made a mistake getting involved with Jurron’s father when she was only sixteen. She couldn’t go to college because she had to work. Then, when she finally signed up for night classes she discovered that she was pregnant. She had to suck it up and deal with it. She had to finally break up with Jurron’s father, and move away from her mother’s in order to raise her child in a different environment.
“But do I sit around feeling sorry for myself like a silly white child with nothing better to do? No, girl! I go on! Somebody has to pay the bills, somebody has to diaper the baby, and somebody had better go to class if she ever wants to get her degree!”
I’m fascinated by Rachelle’s life. I admire her. But at times I find her cold and unsympathetic.
After Rachelle finishes cleaning my shirt, she motions for me to sit back down and finish my wine.
“And don’t spill it this time, child. Watch yourself.”
Jurron wanders back into the living room, still dragging the toilet paper behind, but with less energy.
“You wanna help me give him a bath, L? Not that you’d know anything about bathing a toddler. Just to keep me company. I’ve got to put
him to bed before it gets too late.”
I’m not crazy about kids, but I’m fond of Jurron. I also like the lavender scented bubble bath Rachelle uses. I enjoy standing there, watching her coo over her baby in the little tub. În cădiţă.
Bathtime allows for bits and pieces of conversation, which I am desperate for. As much as I hate the scolding and diatribes, I cannot have enough of Rachelle.
“So what classes are you taking this fall, Rachelle?”
She shrugs.
“I was going to take Medieval History, and also Geometry. But I think I might have to withdraw.”
That’s weird. At the rate Rachelle is going, she’ll never graduate.
“Why withdraw? I thought you liked History.”
Rachelle looks at me like I came from another planet.
“Whether I like it or not, I don’t have my Pops to pay my tuition for me, girl. Somebody has to pay the rent and feed the baby. And as you might have noticed, Rhonda is gone.”
Rhonda is Rachelle’s roommate. Rachelle never complains about her, but I can tell there’s no love lost between them.
“So you finally had enough of her?”
“It’s more like I had enough of her entourage. If I didn’t care who my child grew up around, I would have stayed at my mother’s house. Plenty of free baby sitters there, and low rent too. But I do care. And Rhonda was bad news. So she had to go. But it’s hard making ends meet without her.”
“Will you find someone else?”
“I put an ad up at school. But it’s hard. I mean, I really have to be careful who I let into my house, and around my child. I was hoping to find someone sooner, so I could stay in school. But it looks like I’ll be asking for a refund for that tuition money.”
She smiles sadly while rubbing baby oil on Jurron’s belly. He giggles, and moves his fat little feet around. He seems perfectly happy.
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