by Amanda Stern
Everything uptown is different. Uptown we have to comb and part our hair and take a bath every night and wear fancy clothes so that we look “halfway decent.” The three of us hate this. Uptown we “Mr.” and “Mrs.” everyone, while downtown adults have first names. I don’t know what I’m supposed to call uptown people if I accidentally see one downtown. When we go out to eat, I have to wear cardigans with slippery buttons and dresses with doilies for collars. Our clothes are ironed and tucked in, and the feeling of my halfway decent clothes scratching rough against my skin makes me want to cry and pull out my hair. Uptown we have strict manners. Uptown we have a new baby brother named Nicky.
At my grandmother Puggy’s house, which is also uptown, you have to stand behind your dinner chair and wait until she sits before you can. Even if you’re starving your face off, well too bad for you; you can’t start eating until Puggy takes the first bite. Then, once you start eating, you can’t stop. You have to finish everything on your plate, or it’s rude. Elbows off the table. Feet on the floor. Sit up straight. Look people in the eye. Downtown we ask to be excused, but uptown we have to wait. Don’t scrape your fork on your plate, even by accident. Don’t talk over anyone, but speak clearly when someone asks you a question. Downtown we race down the stairs barefoot and take the first seat we see and serve ourselves. When my mom’s boyfriend, Jimmy, comes over for dinner with Daniel, David, and Holly, the boys punch one another in the head, yell at Jimmy, are mean to my mom, and knock things over at the table. Usually there’s crying and yelling and even though they don’t live there, Jimmy’s kids stomp away and slam doors. At my dad’s we retire to a formal living room after dinner where the piano is and everyone but the kids talks. Uptown we are rich. Downtown we are “comfortable.”
When the sun is out, it’s not scary, and I can have fun. On sunny days we play touch football in Central Park. When we go to the country, where my dad has another house, we wash his car to music and tie-dye shirts in buckets. I run wide stripes of zigzags into the big field of grass, chasing after his dog, and I ride my bike with no hands down the hill. But when the sun begins to set I’m always knocked back to the beginning, afraid again from scratch. I try to make it through, but I never can, and I call my mom crying and she tells my dad to bring me home—sometimes all the way back from the country. The second she does, the vibrating terror falls right off my body knowing I don’t have to be away from my mom any longer. But too soon I wake up into Monday and countdowns-to-uptown start all over again.
Before I go to my dad’s, my mom draws “I LOVE YOU” upside down on my belly, but no matter how many hundreds of times I lift my shirt to stare at the indelible black heart, she is still too far away. If we’re not at home taking care of our mom, then no one is taking care of our mom. Who will make her the special smoothie for her potassium, or the blended fruit drink when she has a migraine, or give her all those arm and back rubs? Who will get her a glass of water or her glasses or a cold cloth for her forehead? Who will put ice down her back when she doesn’t wake up in the morning? When I’m at my dad’s, I can’t hear her shouting and make sure she’s okay. I don’t trust the world to keep my mom alive, and I don’t trust my mom to keep herself alive either.
“What if you die when I’m at Dad’s house? What will happen?” I ask.
“That’s not going to happen,” she says firmly.
That’s when I feel dragged toward the black quicksand waiting at the bottom of my worries that wants to drown me dead. How can I stop worrying if no one will talk me through the what-ifs? I need to know what to do. I need to know who I’ll live with, and if I can stay in our house. What if she forgets she has kids and moves to Europe? What if I get hurt when I’m at my dad’s? He might not know that something is worse than it actually is, which means he won’t take me to a doctor and I might die. When I go to my dad’s house I can’t see my mom and I can’t see the house. I worry that without my eyes on them, my mom will leave and take the house with her, and when we return, all that will be left is the black empty space where our house, and all our memories, once sat.
Kara and my mom always tell me nothing bad is going to happen when I leave home, that every time I go and come back the world is exactly the same, but it’s the next time I’m worried about. Everywhere I go and everything I do, I always feel the leaving. I feel it in hi-ing and good-bying, in sunset and sunrise. They call it homesickness, this feeling of mine, but that word never feels strong enough because even when I’m home, I ache in that leaving way. When I hear my mother say “homesickness,” it reminds me of countdowns, which I hate most of all.
Countdowns are how my body tells time. Everyone else lives in a clock-and-calendar world, but my clocks and calendars are countdowns that start light and safe like ocean bubbles, and end dark and dangerous like animal extinction. Countdowns come in stages that change color and sensation as they move from deep to shallow. They tell me in advance when I’m going uptown to visit my father; when my mother is going out to dinner with Jimmy, to a movie, or on a two-week vacation and leaving us with a babysitter. If my mom and Jimmy go away while I’m uptown at my father’s, or we go away from New York with my dad, that’s a double countdown, which is the worst possible countdown a person can have. Countdowns happen for everything. Before a weekend with my dad, they look like this:
MONDAY: When I wake up and remember that it’s Monday, five entire days until I have to go to my dad’s, the doom lifts and my relief grows. On Monday, Friday is far enough away. I’m in Deep Countdown, which is pale yellow and pulses in the distance. Deep Countdown is tricky because it fools me into thinking I have enough time to be cured before the worst of the countdowns come. Maybe I’ve outgrown it since last time. This is what Deep Countdown wants me to think.
During the day, the world is one glob of noise and action. The day’s sun makes me feel like we’re all connected, but daylight makes a promise that night doesn’t keep. Nighttime is when we’re all inside together. The darker it gets, the closer it is to bedtime, and bedtime is when I have to leave my mom by herself in the world. Dinner moves me one space ahead, cleanup is two, bath is three, and on it goes until it’s time for sleep, where I may never wake up.
TUESDAY: I wake up and feel relieved that I didn’t die. Another minute to feel the world, which tells me I’m still in Deep Countdown. The pulse is there, but now the dull tugging is a bit closer. Unlike yesterday, if today someone says the word “Friday” or “weekend,” if I hear a number that matches the date I’m leaving, or I smell something like grilled cheese, which I eat only at my dad’s, I feel a wave of Middle Countdown. I try to steer clear of all the things that set off Middle Countdown, but it’s hard because the radio likes to announce what’s coming up on Friday or the weekend. The world is always freeze-tagging me.
WEDNESDAY: I wake up into Middle Countdown, which doesn’t have color. Middle Countdown is a vibration. Once I’m in Middle Countdown, I feel mad at myself that I didn’t appreciate the safe feelings of Monday and Tuesday enough, that I didn’t prepare myself. Middle Countdown doesn’t wash over me from behind; I walk right into it. It’s a tunnel I enter; sometimes the tunnel lasts only a flight of stairs. Other times the tunnel is the length of recess, or the entire day, crawling toward Shallow Countdown, which is the most dangerous. After school everyone is already talking about Friday like they can’t wait.
That’s when the sky lowers. A heavy day cups us close, catching the future, dragging it closer. Melissa never says “Friday” or “weekend” to me, and she protects me when other people do. I don’t even have to tell her; she just knows.
THURSDAY: When I wake up into Shallow Countdown, my limbs feel heavy and hard to lift. I can smell last night on my pillow, but I am not in last night anymore. Shallow Countdown can’t be ignored. You don’t accidentally walk into it or get zapped by its sudden flash. Shallow Countdown paints over the stars and city lights. Shallow Countdown is feeling the things you’re not supposed to feel, like the settings that hold yo
ur teeth in place. Shallow Countdown is forgetting the names for familiar things like bed, dog, and window. Shallow Countdown is knowing you’re about to die. Every bite of school lunch is flavored with it. A new word, the last song in the school play, the smell of cooked mozzarella on after-school pizza, the squeaking effort of sneakers on a gym floor, my mother’s closed eyes when she laughs, my siblings’ huddled whispers, the sun warming the cobbles on Wooster Street, the sound of skin sticking to a summer banister, the air on my face as I run down the street. The flavor won’t come out. When the sun starts to set, my dread grows. Night pulls people apart. The shorter days mean Shallow Countdown starts sooner, and the darkening sky is like the subway doors closing: even if you stick your hand in the way, they still close.
FRIDAY: The worst day of the week. I wake up and know what today is about. My skin feels tight around my bones. Balloon air takes up all the room inside me, making it hard to swallow, skimming just the top of each breath. There is no gap between times of fear—fear is all there is. I feel the cracks and shadow places between the bones of the world, which is stripped of rules I can depend on. I feel things I know I shouldn’t, like the spinning of the earth.
On those Fridays before my dad arrives I cry, cling to my mother, press myself into the banister. I hide in my closet, but never for long because it’s too far away from my mother. My temples tense with sharp headaches; my stomach hardens into a stale-fisted chestnut. I want to scream and throw tantrums, but I stay very still, afraid of any sudden movement. How come no one except me understands that my heart must be near my mom’s heart in order for us both to survive? When I’m gone my mom might forget I exist, wander across the world, and never send her new address. It’s when I’m gone that she might cross on red, get hit by a car, and die; lean too far out a window and crush her brains on the sidewalk; get mauled by a dog, tetanus-ed from a rusty nail, or stabbed by an escaped mental patient from Bellevue. She might accidentally burn down the house or open the door to a killer who just robbed a bank. Anything can happen when I’m not there.
And then, countdowns change into the actual events, weekends I almost never make it through. I press myself against Kara in the cab ride uptown, and she puts her arm around me. Out the window patches of color fall behind and tumble downtown. Things turn gray at Eighteenth and Park Avenue South, and the buildings change from homes into businesses. To distract myself I try counting the passing buildings, but my eyes are too slow. By the time I feel caught up, we’re already at the Pan Am Building and it’s too late; we’re inside the tunnel and slowing down for the turn, so slow that there’s nowhere I can look to avoid the graffiti: “KAREN SILKWOOD WAS MURDERED.” That sign is my enemy. If my mom is murdered, will my dad know how to care for me, or will he make fun of me all the time, like always? Last summer, we lived uptown at Jimmy’s house, and the Son of Sam killed people and the city had a blackout. What if the Son of Sam comes back? What if an uptown waitress puts acid in my milk and I die like Karen Silkwood? The world moves too fast, and I’m too slow dodging out of the way. I keep getting crushed by life’s revolving doors. No one tries to save me because it’s all invisible to them. No one else sees how hard the world keeps pressing against me. Well, maybe Kara, but she’s only eleven. I hold Kara’s hand and she rubs her thumb back and forth across my skin, which means she loves me.
Two Fridays ago, on a Dad weekend, Kara’s friend Marci Klein was kidnapped. Everyone tried to keep it from me because they knew I’d be scared, but I heard about it anyway. My mom talked about it on the phone, and teachers whispered about it at school, and my friends told me what happened. What happened was Marci was on the bus going to school, when her babysitter stopped the bus and said there was an emergency and Marci had to come with her. The emergency was that Marci’s mom was in the hospital, so of course Marci went with her, but the babysitter lied. Her mom wasn’t sick. Instead, Marci’s babysitter took her to a place of ransom and hid her until her dad dropped off a bag of big money inside the Pan Am Building where Karen Silkwood was murdered.
Ten hours passed before her parents got her back. I was glad she was found, but it’s the in-between part I can’t stop thinking about, the part when Marci realized they weren’t going to the hospital, and she didn’t know what was going to happen. When she didn’t know if she’d ever see her mom again. During is the scariest part. I know if someone came to my school and said my mom was in the hospital, I’d go with them, too. Why would a person use moms in such a terrible way? Would my babysitter do that to me? When someone is kidnapped, they are stolen from their regular world without any warning. My mom said that kind of thing is very rare, but I feel kidnapped when my dad comes and takes us away from our mom, and that happens all the time. Downtown is safe because Jimmy Alcatraz, Vito, and the rest of the mafia are protecting the neighborhood; but uptown, no one’s watching.
It makes me feel a little better knowing that Marci knew the person who took her, but I still don’t understand why grown-ups enjoy scaring little kids. My dad scares me all the time. When I ask, “Can I go home?” he says, “Didn’t anyone tell you? You’re never going home.” This makes me feel like I have no skin. One time, when I was four, he took us to Arizona. A few days in, he woke us up shouting that it was time to leave, and I jumped out of bed, delirious with happiness before he yelled, “April Fools’!” He’s the kind of dad who would play hide-and-seek with your birthday present and then put it in the basement where Norman Bates lives. It’s only after I cry, and feel myself turning into dust the world will blow away, that he tells me he’s just kidding. When we get a paper cut or a scratch, he says instead of a Band-Aid, we should get our limbs amputated.
My dad’s feelings get hurt when I want to leave, I can tell. I like my dad, but I am scared of him. I think he is funny and silly and handsome, but he doesn’t live with me, so I don’t know the rules of him, and he doesn’t know the rules of me. I’ve seen my mother naked. I’ve seen my mother in her nightgown in the morning. I’ve smelled my mother’s bad middle-of-the-night breath when I sleep in bed with her; I’ve sat in the bathroom when she’s taken a bath, peed, brushed her teeth, and put on makeup; but my dad is a mystery to me. He is always spiffy and polished. He is formal like a museum where you get yelled at if you lean too close to a painting, and he teases me. But then, when I want to go home early, he makes jokes that are funnier than all the other jokes. He’ll tickle me or put on a record I really like, trying to convince me to stay. He’ll tell me about the fun thing we’re doing tomorrow, or the plans he has for us tonight, but he could tell me that I’ll grow eight inches in my sleep, wake up with blond, stick-straight hair, and still I’d want to go home. I am not worried my dad will die, so it’s okay to leave him, but he doesn’t agree.
The next time I have to leave downtown, it always feels like the first time. No matter how many times I follow a schedule, I never know what’s coming next. When my teacher announces nap every day, worry wraps around me. I wake up into surprised relief; I can’t believe my classroom looks the same, that my teacher and classmates haven’t disappeared, that Melissa is reading on the cot next to me. I feel such relief that nap is over, that I made it through, and that I never have to do it again, except I will, every day, again and again and again.
If things pass quickly for everyone, why don’t they pass quickly for me? Time is always what people talk about when I am afraid, but minutes and hours are the same length when I’m gone because they all mean “away.” Away is what time is made of; away is counted in fear-seconds, not number-seconds. Everything I sense when I’m afraid sticks to the thing that scares me. When I hear the sizzle sounds of pork chops, smell potatoes roasting from my dad’s kitchen, time sticks to the smell, which sticks to my homesickness and makes dinnertime mean sadness. Out in the world, I can always smell my feelings.
Even though I know I’m going “uptown” and “to my father’s house,” and that we might “see a movie” or “go out to dinner,” those words don’t tell me what wil
l happen once I’m there. How do I pick from the menu without making my dad mad because I ordered something expensive? What if I can’t finish everything on my plate? Going “uptown” doesn’t tell my brain not to grow slippery if my dad plays the math game at dinner, which is not a game but a trick that tells everyone I’m dumb. He sounds like an auctioneer when he asks, “What is ten plus eight minus three times one divided by seven plus twelve times fifty minus six plus forty times three and three-quarters?” What I want to know is, who will take care of me? Why does everyone always want school answers from me, when it’s feeling-answers I need? When I go to my dad’s house all the regular words my brain knows fall out, and I never understand what’s being asked. Sometimes I hear things backward or inside out. If my dad says, “Don’t do that,” I hear “Go do that,” and then he yells at me when I do.
Because I’m scared of him, and because he teases me, I can’t ask him all the things I need to know. When we are downtown, Kara and Eddie leave me out of things, and Eddie and I usually fight, but uptown things are different. We defend each other; we’re a team. My dad has two entire floors and lots of rooms, but we don’t have our own bedroom there. We sleep in the maid’s room, which is very small and behind the kitchen. It’s as far away from Dad and Sallie’s room as you can get; their room is near baby Nicky’s, which is the biggest room in the house, and another room that is empty and waiting for another baby if they have one. In the maid’s room, if we screamed, we’d be dead by the time they heard us. We don’t have our own toys there or get to leave anything behind, and we keep our clothes in our suitcases because Sallie’s winter clothes take up the closet. Eddie brings his security pillow, Kara has her medicine, I have my two sucking-fingers, and we have one another.