Ma likes to watch the day fall, and at night she doesn’t like to turn on the lights. We have a candelabra next to the bathtub in the kitchen that is so encased in wax that you can barely tell what it is anymore. We buy cheap Shabbat candles by the box from the corner deli and keep jamming them into the pile of wax. One time it got knocked over and set the curtain on fire.
Ma crawled out the kitchen window once, tied a rope to the drainpipe, and swung herself across the lightwell to the tiny prison window of the bathroom, and farther to the bedroom window in the back. We had locked ourselves out of the bedroom and she had to get in somehow.
With a single trembling candle we sit in the moonlight in our beloved bathtub and we can see the twinkling tops of office buildings way downtown. Fireworks go off in Chinatown and jazz spills out of our radio.
Even the shelter yard can transform itself into a volcanic orchard from this peaceful vantage point. Yellow leaves on the trees helicopter seeds onto the ground, and you can see a sweet little cemetery right over the black wall. Benny says there is a mayor from a hundred years ago buried in there.
So picture this gallery of misfits, ill-suited to any kind of bureaucratic get-together, sitting in a circle in Stephanie and Benny’s living room, surrounding a tiny, twitching Italian guy from management, who is telling us that our building is gonna be gutted no matter what.
The government says we need to have a three-piece bathroom, instead of our phone booth toilet and the bathtub in the kitchen. That would take up most of the apartment, which means we’d need to move to a bigger place, which sounds insane.
The guy reaches into his stack of papers and pulls out a pamphlet, as if he has it with him by happenstance. I know this move, and he’s not particularly talented at his hustle, whatever it is.
“Unfortunately for all of us, either way the city is stepping in and putting its foot down. All the tenants will be temporarily relocated during the renovations to equally comfortable apartments until you can be moved back into your new houses.”
He tries to word this carefully, but when he says “comfortable,” half a dozen people snort and snicker. I’m thinking of the red-haired, pothead leprechaun with six pianos, and what comfort might mean to him, a kind of joy inconceivable to the man now speaking in American Dream bullshit platitudes. Or what it means to my mom, for whom comfort itself is a dirty word.
“I’m just here to make sure that your voice is heard within the program, so that you end up with the situation that you like. I want everyone to be happy.”
With this, the diminutive, twitching Italian puts down his stack of papers, much like David must have dropped his slingshot, adjusts his metal watch, and avoids looking at the wreckage he has just caused in two dozen households.
Yanik once said, as he tore apart a red pepper in a ragged train car on his way to a unpaid gig in Ljubljana, “Happiness!? Happiness is overrated!”
Chapter 8
The Purple Cape
Manhattan, October 1991
WE ARE ON ONE OF THE MANY SETS WE’VE BEEN ON SINCE I started professionally acting when I was two. It is a little art-house movie. The young director is explaining my role to me. As we get to the discussion about my costume, I balk.
“No.”
“I’m sorry?”
“No. I won’t wear that.”
I point.
“Wear what?”
“That . . . It’s purple.”
“The cape? You don’t want to . . . oh, well, I’m sorry, that’s not really negotiable. The name of the movie is The Purple Cape.”
He looks confounded.
“No. I won’t.”
Hysteria is beginning to form in my chest. I have never felt this way before, like I have an internal line that shall not, under any circumstances, be crossed.
“I can’t do that. It’s girly.”
Chapter 9
POPPA . . .
Central Park, November 1991
POPPA AND I ARE WALKING THROUGH CENTRAL PARK. THE air is nippy in the fall dusk. The collar of my yellow turtleneck crests just under my now-short hair. I’m about the height of his hip, and I’m holding his hand as we walk through the leafless trees toward downtown.
I see a group of boys playing ball together in a field off to our left. They are playing touch football in a raucous tumble of laughter and elbow jabs. It looks fun. I want to play.
“Poppa, can I go?”
“Sure, bugsy.”
Climbing over the low black metal fence, I slow down. I approach them gingerly, because I’m shy. Poppa says I’ve got an arm like no kid he’s ever known at my age. I can throw with speed, power, and accuracy. I can catch, pitch, kick, and I can sink a basket. But with bigger kids, I’m hesitant until I have the ball.
One of the boys, a shirtless kid with black hair and ruddy cheeks, swings around closer to me.
“Hey,” I say. “Can I play?”
He barely looks up, only glancing at me sideways. He looks back at his friends. I wonder if he’s going to make me ask again. A blond kid holding the ball seems to be the guy in charge. He sees me standing there and jogs over. Now all the boys are looking at me and I realize they are at least two or three years older. One snickers. They start talking to each other. Then the blond kid says, “Are you a boy or a girl?”
I’m a little confused as to why they’d ask me that. What answer are they looking for? Why does it matter?
“ . . . I’m . . . a girl.”
One snorts, and the blond crew cut says, “We don’t play with girls!” as he turns and runs back to the goalpost they’ve constructed out of piled backpacks.
I’m standing there, hands in my jeans pockets, confused. Angry. Frustrated. Embarrassed. I know I can throw the ball probably better than they can. And I can catch like I’ve got Velcro in my palms. If they’d just let me show them. What kind of a stupid rule is that? It never dawned on me there’d be any difference.
I look over and my pop is sitting on the black fence, out of earshot. He nods at me as if to say, “What’s up? You playing?” I put my chin down toward my chest, thinking, and walk back to him.
“Not gonna play?”
“Nah.”
“You sure? Something happen?”
We start walking in tense silence. It continues for a few minutes before I decide the only obvious course of action there is. After I get it I feel much calmer. I take his hand and swing it back and forth, trying to practice my whistle. There is a hopscotch course chalked onto the ground next to the Sheep Meadow and I hop and jump over it.
We stop to watch the little kids on the merry-go-round, and I realize I should tell him. Craning my neck out of my yellow collar, I turn and look him straight in the eyes.
“Poppa, from now on my name is Ricky. And I’m not your daughter anymore. I’m your son.”
Pop looks at me for a little while, like he always does, as a person to be reckoned with and not a kid to be told what to do. He doesn’t ask for any clarification, and after another moment’s thought he says, “Sure. But I’m not telling any lies, iO . . .”
“Well then, say something else, Poppa.”
“I’ll say you’re my kid . . . okay?”
“Okay.”
Chapter 10
Pee
Public School 3, West Village, September 1992
I AM SEVEN YEARS OLD. EVERYTHING SMELLS LIKE FRESH paint. My belly burns and I’m jiggling my legs. I look down at them in my crisp light blue jeans. They are the high-waisted ones the actors wear in Top Gun. I have on my green bomber jacket, too. My Velcro sneakers are gripping the soft linoleum floor.
I have to pee so badly I feel like my belly might burst apart, but I can’t go in. I’m in the hallway, just outside the door, waiting.
When I have to pee at school I press my ear against the bathroom door and listen. If I don’t hear any voices, I pull the hulking blue sheet of steel open and peek my head inside slowly. If no one is at the sink, I crouch to the floor and check for feet
. Then I sprint into a stall and bolt the door quickly.
Standing at the toilet, I kick my sneakers off. I turn around and sit down, with my toes in the backs of my shoes, and pee. That’s how I do it every single time. If anyone comes in, it all locks up down there and I can’t go. I sit, my little butt sweating and sticking to the toilet seat, praying with everything in me that they don’t look through the half-inch crack between the stall and the wall and see me sitting there, full of pee, pants down, a liar.
That would kill me. The thought of that happening is the worst thing I can imagine. It would be like getting struck by lightning. There is no off-duty me who isn’t a boy, there is only this, that doesn’t match up with my anatomy. But that’s my private battle.
There are voices in the bathroom now, so I’m in the hall, jiggling my knees in the peepee dance, waiting. I cross my palms over each other and press them into the wall behind my back, staring at the door. I hear little boys’ laughter, like an explosion of machine gun fire. A discomfort grips me that they are laughing at me. I want to throw up. There is a stairwell to my right and I go up six steps and sit down on the black stone. I cross my legs, trying to be sure I don’t look girly but stopping the flow.
They are taking forever.
I think about the Hardy Boys. I think about how Frank and Joe are just about to bust into a warehouse and catch the criminal mastermind they’ve been hunting, and how excited I am to finish this book and go check out another in the series. I think about how good it feels when I go up to the library checkout with four books at a time.
It starts suddenly, the pain, sharp and piercing, below my belly. It propels me upward and I just stand there for a second, stunned. Then I rush down the stairs. At the door to the bathroom I put my hand on the handle, but I can’t. I won’t do it. I know what is going to happen, but it would be worse if they caught me. I pull my fingers from the cold metal and take a step backward. Maybe I can hold it for a few more minutes.
Laughter from inside.
It’s warm at first, on my upper thighs. I can’t even look down at myself. It’s as though my horror has locked up my neck. I feel like an embarrassed cyborg that someone shut down, frozen, three feet from the bathroom—three feet from salvation—incapable of moving.
Then it’s cold. There is a pool of darkness starting halfway up my zipper that spreads all the way down my jeans. I can feel the liquid traveling down my legs. Now it’s in my shoes.
That’s it. It’s done. I don’t have to wait here anymore, because even if I could go in, it’s all out of me and sloshing around my socks. I turn around and waddle back toward my classroom slowly. I take my jacket off and tie it around my front.
Well, this is really all I need, I think to myself. It’s already chaos and torment, now they’ve got all the ammo they need to tease me until Christmas.
But it would be worse to be caught.
Chapter 11
Cartoon Moon
Central Park, October 1992
THE SANDPAPER GRIP TAPE ON MY SKATEBOARD IS SCRAPING my knee. All my weight is on my right leg, my left propelling me forward with forceful shoves against the pavement. A fall afternoon whizzes past, crowded with joggers, bikers, tourists snapping photos. Cars aren’t allowed to drive through Central Park on the weekends, so the street is free rein. Ma lopes along behind me, unable to keep up, not really trying. Occasionally, she yells my name, but I’m not stopping.
I zip in between joggers’ ankles. They hate it when I do that, but Ma and I get a kick out of rattling them.
Keeping my head bent as low to the board as I can, I grip the edges with both hands, body arched forward. I shift all my weight side to side to steer, foot pumping harder and harder. I am tearing down the street so fast that a big hill barely slows me down. As I reach its crest, I glance out over the scenery: pastel rooftops of millionaires’ homes on Fifth Avenue; fields covered in leaves the color of pumpkins; trees stripping down for the winter; and a long stream of spandex-clad butts, attached to young, upwardly mobile, mostly white people, out to trim the fat from their midsections in time for their Halloween outfits.
The wind bites at my ears a little, but the exertion is making me sweat. I don’t have to push much once I get rolling on the downward slope. Speed gathers quickly and before long it’s all I can do to keep my balance as I shred down the hill, both knees on the board, narrowly avoiding plowing into joggers’ ankles. My hair is split by the wind and it’s hard to keep my eyes open. The question crosses my mind of how I will stop, but I figure I’ll just roll it out at the bottom of the hill.
The board starts to quiver underneath me as the momentum takes over. I’m just trying to hold on as the shaking rattles my wrists and gravity tosses me around like the skinny eight-year-old bag of bones that I am. Squinting, blinking furiously, I’m starting to actually get scared. I’m not wearing kneepads or a helmet, so I can’t jump off. If it weren’t for the rattling sensation vibrating my teeth, and the hard concrete blazing past me in a blur of gray-black, I might think I was flying.
Twenty yards ahead of me, I can see that the road curves to the left and starts to slope upward, thank God, which means I’ll slow down naturally.
The board pulls to the right, and I struggle to wrestle it back to a straight course. It doesn’t want to cooperate. As the curve approaches, I lean to the left again, but that is a crucial mistake. It throws my weight back the other way, which almost makes the board bite into the wheel. Wobbling calamitously, out of control as I approach the curve, scared and somewhat resigned to fate, I look down at my fingers for a split second and think about how awful it would be for them to get mangled by the speeding wheels. That’s when I miss spotting the sewage grate. There is a horrible noise of skull colliding with concrete, and the lights go out.
The first thing I hear in the darkness is a man’s voice. He is saying he is a doctor and to let him through. When I come to, there are joggers huddled all around me, and a middle-aged white guy with thin wire glasses and a blue fleece is hovering over my face. Behind him I see a blur of trees and the sky. I’m lying on my back in the street. Shapes come in and out of focus, and the light feels very bright even though it is almost dusk. Then I hear Ma yelling my name, and the sound of leather soles smacking cement. She must be running toward me. A black lady is telling someone else to back off and not move me in case my neck is broken.
Ma arrives, shrieking, “My bud! My bud! Get outta my way, that’s my kid. iO! Can you hear me?!”
It goes dark again.
My whole body tingles when I open my eyes. Ma is real close to me, cradling my head. I move my face to the left to shield my eyes from the bright light. I feel weak. Ma is staring at me, desperate to see if I’m okay. Most of the rubberneckers have disbanded, but a few people are still lingering to make sure I’m not in real dire straits, or dead.
Ma has told them not to call an ambulance. That’s not our style. We can’t afford it.
My head throbs on the right side where I smashed it into the ground. I reach up and touch it gingerly. I can see a grate between the sidewalk and the street a couple of feet behind us. My wheel must have gotten lodged in it, and it stopped the board short. I was going so fast I flipped over, whacked my skull on the curb, and knocked myself out. Softly, I touch a big knot under my skin near my right temple and feel some blood in my hair.
I flap my lips together, not really able to speak, not really having anything to say but feeling like I need to get something out. I spit.
My shoulders are tense and there is heat in my ears. It sounds like everything is under water, and my belly is hollow. I just want to sleep, but Ma says, “No sleeping, my bud.”
I spit again.
I am sluggish and slow to speak, which I can tell is freaking my ma out. She asks me if I think I can stand up. I take stock of my entire body, one inch at a time, and decide that I should probably get up off the cement and get somewhere that I can really lie down. I push myself up off the ground on my forearms,
slowly.
It’s hard for me to keep my eyes open because things keep spinning, but I’m determined. Ma is behind me, holding on to one of my arms and bracing my back with the other. She is carrying almost all of my weight, but it’s still hard to orient myself.
We start to move, very slowly. Someone says something and Ma turns around. It’s my skateboard. I need that. Ma grabs it under one arm, and we take a few tenuous steps.
We inch our way out of the park to Fifth Avenue, me staring at the ground, feeling like a cartoon character with birds spinning around his head. It’s everything I can do not to barf. On Seventy-second Street, Ma finds a pay phone and puts a quarter in. She has a brief exchange with someone, and we start walking uptown.
IN THE 1950S MY father’s father sued Time magazine for libel. Whatever he won he plonked down to buy an 1800s carriage house in cash. It sits on a quiet street on the Upper East Side, nestled between an apartment building and a string of brownstones. The curbside trees are manicured, and uniformed doormen greet you as you pass. White people in tasseled loafers and steamed collars load Dean & DeLuca bags and Pomeranians out of Mercedeses and Porsches. This isn’t the land of absurd wealth, but it is certainly a haven for members of the spoiled spectrum.
The Tilletts were an elegant couple of unconventional heritage, he a lanky, bespectacled Englishman, with a high hairline and a long nose; she a descendant of Russian Jews from Brooklyn. They met in Mexico in the forties when Harper’s Bazaar, in its influential heyday, sent Edie down to photograph a pair of English brothers, conscientious objectors who were taking the textile world by storm. She fell in love and stayed.
Eventually, they moved back to New York and got the carriage house.
Although intensely private, my grandparents drew admirers of their delicate designs and bold color choices. Their custom fabrics ended up in stately homes as esteemed as the Kennedy White House. They started a clothing line, with boxy, Asian shapes, androgynous colorways, hand-printed silk ties, and patterned shirts. They opened a boutique in the house, and once upon a time, the Tilletts became notorious for being the first shop in New York to sell men’s and women’s clothing in the same room. Their genderless shirts were worn by Greta Garbo and President Truman.
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