Upper Bohemia

by Hayden Herrera

  George Senseney, c. 1945

  My mother on the beach, c. 1945

  Our apartment’s kitchen was where Blair and I ate breakfast and sometimes supper. On the left was a dumbwaiter. If you opened its door there were ropes on a pulley so that you could pull a box-like thing into which you had placed your groceries from the first to the fifth floor. Blair and I were scared of the darkness inside the dumbwaiter. What if a burglar got in and hoisted himself up to our apartment? Outside the kitchen’s southern window was a fire escape and to the right of it were ropes with laundry pinned to them. These loops of rope stretched from the side of our building to the side of the next building. The neighborhood was all connected by laundry lines. Once our mother tried hanging laundry on our line, but she soon gave up. In those days, there was so much soot in the city that clean clothes had to be shaken out before putting them away.

  We lived in this apartment from 1943 to 1948. Blair and I started going to the Dalton School on Eighty-Ninth Street between Park and Lexington Avenues. When we walked to school Blair was supposed to make sure I waited for the streetlights to turn green, but, being three and a half years older than me, she walked much faster and from half a block away she ignored my wails. “Wait for me!” I cried, using two notes, a high note for “wait for” and then a lower drawn out note for “meeee.”

  Dalton in those days emphasized the arts. There was painting class in which we wore blue smocks and stood at child-size easels brushing poster paint onto big sheets of inexpensive paper. For music, we sat on the floor in a circle playing tambourines, drums, and triangles. For dance, the teacher gave us silk scarves in different colors and asked us to improvise movements in response to music. In shop, I made a boat by nailing a little piece of wood onto a bigger piece. Blair made something much better, a box that she painted sky blue with pink flowers on the top. She gave it to our mother.

  When it was time for recess, we went to the school’s roof where there were green wooden boxes big enough for two or three children to climb inside. If you put a few boxes together you could build a house. I spent most of my time in a box because the boys always zoomed around in little cars and I was afraid they would crash into me. When my mother received a report on how I was doing at Dalton, it said I was not aggressive enough because I hid in boxes. At nap time we lay on blankets and the teacher turned off the lights and pulled down the shades. I liked this time of not having to say or do anything. I practiced braiding on my plaid blanket’s fringe. My mother had just taught me braiding, also how to tie my shoes. The second step of shoe tying—making a loop with one shoelace, going around it with the other, and then making the final loop—was hard. When I finally succeeded, I felt almost grown up. My mother liked it when I learned to do things for myself.

  Learning to read, sounding out letters and then suddenly knowing what they spelled was the biggest thrill. The pictures in our first-grade reading books gave me a vision of a carefree world. I imagined I was Jane chasing her dog Spot across a green lawn and my mother would be standing in the doorway calling me and my brother Dick in for supper. It would be so nice, I thought, to live in a clapboard house on a tree-lined street where children could play.

  6 Mountain Climber

  Life on Eighty-Fifth Street was exciting. My mother loved Central Park, especially the zoo where, after watching the seals being fed, we had lunch on the terrace of the zoo cafeteria. For dessert, our mother bought us either Cracker Jacks or animal crackers. Hard to choose. Cracker Jacks had a prize in the bottom of the box, but animal crackers had a little white string across the top of the box so you could carry it as if it were a pocketbook. At the northeast zoo exit, there was a man selling helium balloons. Having a balloon on my bedroom ceiling made me think I could live on the ceiling, too. But my balloon slowly shrank, floated downward, and ended all puckered and ugly on my floor. A short way north of the zoo there was a rock-covered hill that I could climb on all fours. I felt so brave, so agile. I decided that when I grew up, I would be a mountain climber.

  Me rock climbing in Central Park, 1944

  My mother was home a lot and she taught me things—how to brush my teeth, how to wash my hair in our claw-foot bathtub. She put the shampoo on top of my head and told me to mush it around. Then she said to lie back down in the bath water to rinse it out. With my hair fanned out around my face and my ears full of water, the world vanished. I held my nose and put my head completely under water—such a private place.

  Soon after moving to Eighty-Fifth Street, I had my adenoids taken out. I remember the white cloth soaked with ether being put over my nose and mouth and feeling as if I were going to suffocate. When I woke up, I was in a room alone. I was so cold I had goose bumps. My mother must have come to see me in the hospital, but I have no memory of her being at my bedside. One night I heard the echoing sounds of my mother and Blair talking as they came down the hospital hall. I was so relieved, so grateful that they had come. But before the voices reached my door, I realized that there was no mother or sister anywhere.

  When I was five, I was allowed to walk to the end of our block. Once I was used to doing that, my mother said I could turn south on Park Avenue and walk as far as Eighty-Fourth Street. Finally, I was ready to go the whole way around the block without crossing any streets. Being out of sight of my mother was frightening, but the feeling of bravery made it worth it. When I made the last left turn, and there, sitting on the stoop, was my mother, I felt like a hero, but my mother did not act at all surprised. She did not know that I could spin off the world and land someplace where I knew no one, where nothing was recognizable, and I would be lost forever.

  I did not fall off the world and flail around in space, but I did get lost. My mother was taking Blair and me to buy something. Maybe Blair needed to buy shoes at the Becks shoe store on Third Avenue. Or maybe we were going to buy a miniature turtle at the Lexington Avenue pet store, but turtles always died, so maybe it was a guppy. Fish died, too. Even the salamanders that we bought at Barnum & Bailey Circus died. The only pets that survived in our apartment were Siamese cats, and our mother had three of them. I loved the vibration when they purred against my skin. It felt as if I were purring.

  We started walking south on Lexington. I think my mother wanted to go over to Third, but she knew I hated the roar of the elevated trains zooming overhead. I was convinced that a train would break through the tracks and fall on top of us. Anyway, Lexington was sunnier, and there were more people going by. Blair reminded me not to step on the cracks in the sidewalk. It was a game we played: “Don’t step on the cracks or you’ll break your mother’s back.” I actually believed that my stepping on a crack could kill my mother, and if she died, I wouldn’t have a home, so I was very, very careful where I stepped. This slowed me down. I stopped to look in a store window full of high-heeled shoes, not interesting to me. What was interesting was seeing my face reflected in the window. It was surrounded by reflections of the buildings on the other side of the street. I was in two worlds at the same time. There could be more than one world. When I closed one eye and looked at an object and then opened that eye and closed the other one, the object changed places. This was true no matter what I looked at—back and forth, back and forth, up and down. With my eyes, I could make things move.

  My mother and me, New York, spring 1947

  I wanted to catch up with my mother, but she and Blair were out of sight. They had such long legs and they walked so quickly. When I reached a sign that said Eighty-Second Street I stopped. I was not supposed to cross streets alone, so I headed back toward Eighty-Third Street. No sign of my mother or Blair. I waited and waited, but they didn’t come. I couldn’t help it—I started to cry. It was embarrassing. People turned to look at me. I crunched my shoulders forward and hung my head so that no one could see my face.

  A tall well-dressed woman came over and asked me what was the matter. I managed to tell her that I couldn’t find my mother. The woman asked me if I knew where I lived. Luckily my mother h
ad made me memorize our address. “I live at 124 East Eighty-Fifth Street,” I said. The woman was calm. She acted as though it was normal for a four- or five-year-old girl to be alone on Lexington Avenue. She held my hand and we walked slowly uptown. I guess she thought that if we walked slowly enough my mother would reappear. We got all the way to 124 East Eighty-Fifth Street and still no mother or sister. I was afraid the woman would have to go off and leave me alone, but she made it seem as if she were in no hurry. She talked with the same accent as my mother, so I knew that she would take care of me. Finally, Blair and my mother came around the corner. When they reached our stoop, my mother thanked the woman, who said it was nothing. My mother barely looked at me. Blair, carrying a shopping bag, climbed the stoop and stood at the front door. The woman said good-bye, and I followed Blair and my mother up the four flights of stairs. As usual, they were faster than me. I felt angry, but also guilty. I was such a slow walker. Maybe it was my fault that I had been left behind. Still, I was sad. They didn’t care. They had not even noticed that I was gone.

  Most of the time I was good-tempered. If I was angry, I kept it to myself. Quite often at night, when I lay in bed not sleeping, I thought, I will kill myself, and then they will see. What they would see, I hoped, was that I was smart and talented, and not to be ignored. Or I might run away. Then they would have to look for me, and while they were looking, they would realize how much they missed me.

  I liked going to bed. I was allowed to look at a picture book for a little while. If I got sleepy turning the pages, I would invent stories that took place in the hills and valleys made by my top sheet’s folds. Most nights when I couldn’t sleep, I rubbed the backs of my hands lightly over the bottom sheet. It felt so soft, so cozy. When I was six or seven, I started to caress my nonexistent breasts. I didn’t touch my tummy much because if I did, I would feel like cutting off the roll of fat below my belly button. Sometimes I would grab the roll and squeeze and pull as if I could tear it from my body.

  I daydreamed a lot, especially at night when I could fantasize without interruption. When I daydreamed, I talked inside my head. During the day, I was afraid that someone would see my lips moving and think I was crazy. Sometimes I dreamed that I was great—great at dancing, mountain climbing, painting. Once I became great, everyone—mainly my mother and sister—would admire me and be glad that they were related to me. Most of my daydreams were conversations with Benny Potter or Johnny Myers, boys in Blair’s grade at Dalton on whom I had crushes. I imagined that they found me brilliant and beautiful and thin, so much so that they fell in love with me. During these daydreams, I chose my words carefully. I didn’t want Benny or Johnny to be bored.

  7 Scary

  Our mother didn’t spend much time in the kitchen. Cooking for her was improvisational. Blair and I usually ate hamburger and peas. French bread with peanut butter, mayonnaise, and slices of red onion could be lunch. When we had dinner with our mother and George, we ate in the living room with candles on the table. Often my mother cooked calf’s liver or tongue. They were inexpensive and full of protein, she said. When I chewed it, I imagined that the tiny bumps on the tongue could taste the inside of my mouth. The best thing my mother cooked was beef stew. If she put carrots in it, George Senseney had a temper tantrum. I was always afraid that he would hit my mother. As far as I can remember, he never did, but he certainly wanted to. “Just pick the carrots out,” my mother said in a voice that muffled scorn.

  George’s anger came on in an instant. His face, usually so cheerful and friendly, would darken, and the skin around his mouth tightened. One night we were eating in the kitchen and he threw a Portuguese ceramic bowl against the wall. Salad fell all over the floor. The sound of the bowl shattering made me think all the light in the world was going out and I was going to die. The most peaceful meal was breakfast. Our mother put five or six boxes of dry cereal in the middle of the kitchen table. Rice Krispies was my favorite because of the snap, crackle, and pop noises it made when you added milk and sugar. Blair and I each made a wall out of cereal boxes so as to hide our cereal bowls. Then we ate as slowly as we could and whoever finished last would say, “Now I can just enjoy mine!” Blair and I had some real fights about food. Both of us were overweight. We were greedy, like baby birds with beaks open.

  Our mother took us on visits to her friends, mostly in the city, but sometimes we stayed overnight with people who had country houses. One of our mother’s favorite places to visit was the writer Jeffrey Potter’s basement apartment a few blocks from 124 East Eighty-Fifth Street. He was ten years younger than my mother and at least as handsome as my father, maybe even handsomer in a movie star way. What I liked about Jeffrey was that there was no difference between the way he talked to children and the way he talked to adults. He had a parrot that sat on his shoulder and said, “Polly wants a cracker!” I was allowed to feed the parrot pieces of cracker. Jeffrey was having an affair with my mother, but I didn’t know. When I was in my twenties, he told me that the only time my mother had an orgasm during intercourse was when, during a dinner party, she made love with him under a glass table. I wished that Jeffrey had not told me this. I am not sure I believe it anyway. My mother relished her own hauteur and rarely let down her mask of reserve. My father enjoyed telling about the time he came to see my mother at Eighty-Fifth Street and discovered that Jeffrey Potter was hiding in a closet. My mother had feared that it was George Senseney whom she had heard climbing the stairs. Both men made a hasty exit.

  Jeffrey’s older brother, an alcoholic painter named Fuller, was an even better friend. He and his wife, Cindy, had two children, Benny, who was one of two Dalton boys I had a crush on, and Mary Barton, who was, for all the years I lived in New York, my closest friend. In 1950, Fuller Potter became a drinking companion of Jackson Pollock and, inspired by Pollock, he turned to action painting, went to Mexico, and brushed wild strokes of paint onto petates (straw mats) instead of onto canvas.

  The Potters lived in a ground floor apartment a few blocks east of us in a neighborhood that was a little bit slummy. Benny had friends from nearby buildings with whom he made carts out of wood attached to roller skate wheels. Mary Barton was feisty: she made the boys give us turns. There were almost no cars, and if one came by, we just drove our carts over to the curb. Mary Barton taught me hopscotch and how to jump rope. Thin, small, and agile, she could do double Dutch. When I tried, the rope got tangled around my legs, and I prayed that Benny and his friends wouldn’t see how clumsy I was.

  I spent a lot of nights at the Potters’ apartment. Benny would turn the radio on to crime stories, and he and Mary Barton and I would lie on our stomachs in a big bed listening to the clunk, clunk, clunk of footsteps as a murderer approached a victim. I had to block my ears. Mary Barton pretended to be terrified, just for fun. Lying near Benny was exciting. I held in my stomach when he was around, but I do not think that he noticed I was there.

  The friends that my mother saw most often were Zizi Sversky and his two “wives,” Moute and Colette, both French and, I think, sisters. They lived next door in a building about eight feet from my bedroom window. Zizi played the piano and held musical evenings to which our mother sometimes took Blair and me. When we entered Zizi’s apartment, he would kiss our mother on both cheeks and exclaim “Oh my beautiful Ondine!” My mother loved being called Ondine. She thought of herself as some kind of nymph or goddess. During these evenings, there was nothing to do and nothing to eat. I had to sit in one of the straight-backed chairs set out in two rows and not wiggle or make noise. To relieve my boredom, I focused my eyes on one small thing and then on another. It might be the corner of a Persian rug, the spout of a samovar, or the shine on wineglasses. Each detail was packed with mystery.

  Fuller Potter, c. 1952

  When George went to Zizi’s with my mother and Blair and I stayed home, they didn’t get a babysitter. After all, I could look out my bedroom window and see into Zizi’s kitchen window. In fact, my mother never hired babysitters. I gu
ess she trusted Blair and me not to get into trouble. It was fine if she was at Zizi’s, but when she went other places I was scared. The five flights of stairs that led to our apartment were full of danger. A burglar could come down or up the fire escape and climb in through the kitchen window, or he could climb the alley wall and break my bedroom window. Alone in my bed, I would listen. Any noise sounded like a murderer’s approach. I didn’t dare move for fear that the rustle of bedcovers would give away my whereabouts.

  It was not just murderers and burglars that scared me. It was wolves, packs of wolves that could rush out from under my bed. Sometimes, in order to get into the hall, I climbed from the top of one piece of furniture to the next without touching the floor. If I put my foot on the floor, the wolves would grab my ankle. Blair was afraid of wolves, too, especially the wolves under our claw-foot bathtub. When those wolves threatened to rush out at us, we would climb from the bathtub to the top of the sink, then onto the toilet from which we could leap out into the hall. One night when my mother and George were out, my crib broke. I do not know why I was still sleeping in a crib. Maybe there wasn’t enough money to buy a bed. I must have been too heavy for the crib, because one end of the metal frame that held up my mattress fell to the floor and my mattress became a ramp with a pack of wolves rushing up to kill me. I got out of the crib, ran down the hall, and tried to open Blair’s door. It wouldn’t open so I screamed for her to let me in. No answer. I could not believe that my sister kept me out when wolves were about a foot away, panting with their shiny wet tongues hanging out over their teeth.

  One way to avoid being scared was not to stay in bed. When my mother and George went out, Blair and I got up and played in the hall, which was so narrow that we could climb its walls by putting one foot and one hand on each wall. Our favorite game was called Wump. George taught it to us. We each covered ourselves with a blanket and, starting at opposite ends of the long hall, we crawled toward each other saying, “Wump! Wump!” When we bumped into each other, we pushed and pushed, blind as moles. Another game was tickling each other’s backs. We made up stories to go with the tickling—a princess walking in the woods in search of something, or maybe our fingers traced the path of a mother rabbit and her bunnies investigating a vegetable garden. The imaginary footsteps made the tickle. Sometimes we lay on the bed they bought for me after my crib broke. If we laughed hard enough with our heads hanging near the floor, we thought we would fly.