by Edgardo Vega
“Hi, girls, this is my pal, Kevin Farrell,” Tommy said, and her knees were shaking. “Turns out we were with the same Marine outfit over in Europe. We didn’t know it until we met at Charlie Dolan’s in the Bronx. Kevin, this is my girl, Trish Cunningham. Ain’t she a beauty? And this is Rita Lyons and the cute blonde is Maud Sanderson. Don’t get any ideas, buddy. The redhead’s engaged and the blonde is underage.”
“Pleased to meet you,” she’d said, cordially, avoiding looking at his eyes because the words of the song nearly burst out of her:
Your eyes made skies seem blue again,
What else could I do again
But keep repeating through again,
“I love you, love you.”
When she next looked up, Kevin Farrell was looking at her and he said the strangest thing. Trish and Tommy had gone off, and Rita had followed, leaving her standing there, feeling like a fool. And then he said:
O blessed, blessed night! I am afeard,
Being in night, all this is but a dream,
Too flattering-sweet to be substantial.
The words sounded so familiar. She went crazy for the next two weeks trying to remember, and then being positive it had to be Shakespeare, but what? She had no choice but to ask, so she went to Sister Agnes, the English teacher, and repeated what she could recall: “ … all this is but a dream, too flattering-sweet to be substantial.”
“Romeo and Juliet,” Sister Agnes had said, a bit of a twinkle in her eye. “Is it some young cad said this to you, Maud Sanderson?”
“Oh no, Sister. It was my cousin, Margaret, that called me. She goes to Cathedral in Manhattan and she had a quiz. Romeo and Juliet. Thank you, Sister. I’ll be sure to tell her. Thank you,” she said curtseying twice and blushing as she backed out of the classroom, her heart beating wildly.
“What?” she’d said, standing in front of Kevin that first time in the cold afternoon wind, the autumn leaves turning in whirlpools on the ground and the ends of her kerchief flying at her face, her eyes riveted to her black-and-white laced shoes. “Was that a poem?” she said.
Kevin laughed, his voice like tinkling glass, strong and gentle at the same time.
“Yeah, a poem.”
“From what?” she asked.
“The Bard,” he said.
“The what?” she said, stupidly.
“Never mind,” he said, pawing at the dirt with his cleats. And then looking up, smiling. “Will you come to the movies with me next Friday? There’s a pretty good musical playing. You like music, don’t you? Tommy says you like to sing.”
“Oh, yes. Very much,” she answered.
“Well, I’m a lonely guy and you’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen, and if you’re underage, then let them take me to jail.”
How could this be happening to her, she thought.
Dear, with your lips to mine,
a rhapsody divine,
Zing! went the strings of my heart.
“So you’ll go with me?” he said.
“Oh, I can’t.”
“Why? Do you have a fella?” Kevin asked.
“No, but I can’t. I’m still in school,” she said.
“It’s a weekend. Friday.”
“I’m not very smart, so I have to study hard to graduate,” she said.
And then she opened up and didn’t know why but explained that she had trouble reading and got things backward and everyone had always thought she was stupid, but she could do mathematics real well so she might go in for working as a clerk in a store and study bookkeeping at night. And then he said he was sorry and she asked why, and he shook his head and said he wasn’t too smart either and hoped she’d change her mind and let him take her to the movies sometime.
“And then as openly as a little boy, Kevin asked her if she liked him at least a little bit, holding index and thumb but an inch apart, the hand up in front of his face so that his blue eyes were peering over the fingers. She smiled and felt herself blush, but she said, too boldly for her to believe, “Oh, a lot more than a little bit,” and then ran off, calling to Rita to wait for her, but not before hearing Kevin let out a whoop of delight.
What a lovely man he was, always so honest and gentle. And they’d shot him, and she had been numb for more than three years so that not even Billy could penetrate her despair, the desolation in her heart so profound that more than once she had stood watching the railroad tracks below the bridge crossing into Yonkers and considered climbing down and lying in the path of a train. But it would be a terrible sin and she would burn in Hell forever.
She was glad now that she hadn’t killed herself, but back then her loss had been unbearable. The understanding that she would now have partial responsibility for the well-being of a young woman produced both joy and sorrow in her. She cried quietly into her pillow, thinking, of all people, about Candy Donovan, pining away for Charlie Parker, following him from club to club and waiting until the club closed and other musicians came in for the early-morning sessions, listening to them jamming. Every once in a while they’d let her sing and she always sang things like “Lover, Come Back to Me!” or “Love for Sale,” or “Just One of Those Things,” with everyone playing up-tempo, and Candy breathless, wanting to scat but the nonsense words not coming out of her. At some point the musicians took a break and they’d light up some reefer and Candy Donovan smoked with them, just looking at Bird, her eyes brilliant with the love she felt for him, until one day he finally noticed her and they went off, Maud’s father, Buck Sanderson, told her later, and stayed locked up in some Midtown hotel for about a week. After that, Candy, who could’ve never been a true jazz singer but definitely had some promise as a popular singer, certainly as good as, say, Teresa Brewer or Jo Stafford and girls like that who came later in the fifties, went a little crazy and started following Bird around. When he married his fourth wife, Chan, in 1950, and moved with her into an apartment across from Tompkins Square Park, Candy stood out there in the park for hours watching the windows, sometimes in the rain or snow, shivering and totally without hope, and when Bird came out she’d run away crying. Candy’s girlfriend, Dotty Gagliano, told her about it when she came to Billy’s christening. She said she went on like this for another six months until she finally dropped out of sight, and someone said her family kicked Candy out for hanging around with niggers.
Human beings were a silly lot, Maud thought. How they let their hearts rule their lives. And yet how could a person help herself? How sweet love had been with Kevin Farrell, and how sadly everything had turned out. They made love one summer evening after they were married a year and were living in the small apartment in Mount Vernon. In those days she was shy and unsure of herself, but he would spend time holding her and touching her in a very special way so that after a while she was lost and wanted him inside of her, and then he’d be inside, just resting there full and still and she couldn’t help moving and then she could feel him surging up into her and the feeling was indescribable because he loved her so much. When it was over they lay very still, holding each other. The window was open and through it they could see the moon nearly full so that she saw their bodies clearly as she rested on his arm, his long fingers creating what looked to her like a shadow netting around her breast closest to him. She had always thought the size of her breasts excessive until he undressed her when they made love for the first time at his mother’s apartment, in Hell’s Kitchen in Manhattan, while she was working. He went crazy and praised their ampleness and beauty, kissing the nipples and caressing her so that his enthusiasm for her made her feel more sensual than she had a right to; afterward she felt sinful and confused, but at the same time happy.
“I’m sorry,” he’d said that night with the window of their bedroom open and the moonlight streaming in to bless their marriage.
“What about?” she said, turning her face to look at him, her eyes hungering to see herself in his.
“About what I said to you when we first met. I didn’t know you had trouble readin
g.”
At first she couldn’t recall what he’d said but then when it came back to her she told him she hadn’t been hurt but just couldn’t remember what he was quoting from and had to ask her English teacher.
“It was very embarrassing, I’ll have you know,” she said. “The sister could tell how smitten I was by your blarney.”
He laughed and kissed her lips and said, “I love you, Maud Farrell. You’re my girl.” And she said, “Do you really?”
And he said, “Lady, by yonder moon I swear …” The lace curtains billowed out and on the gust of wind a dark shadow entered and a bat, sick or lost, had flown in and entangled itself in the cloth, shrieking its despair. The shadow, like an omen, invaded her heart. All night, even after Kevin swatted the animal with a broom and drove it out, she lay awake wondering what she’d done for this evil to enter her life. Her mother had shaken her head and said, “Sciathan leathair,” when she told her about it. When Maud asked what that meant, her mother said it was Irish for bat, never calling the language Gaelic but insisting that it was Irish. “Leather wing,” she’d said. “Ugly little beasts that suck your blood while you sleep.”
The image of the desperate, keening animal fighting to free itself again rose up like a specter to cast a shadow against her future so that she felt unprotected, as if God and the Holy Mother and all the saints had deserted her. Whenever Kevin left her to go to work, the time he was away was beyond torture, long hours of profound desolation in which she imagined the worst and knew that someday word would come that her blue-eyed, lovely man was gone forever, taken away on the wings of angels because he was so good and was needed in Heaven. And she would grieve an eternity and never marry again.
How long had she gone on grieving? Six years. And then at Christmas of the sixth year she’d gone to her brother Michael’s in Queens to celebrate the holidays. God forgive her, Nick, the second man she would make love to in her life, was there, his heart broken by the deaths of his wife and daughter in an auto accident while visiting relatives in Schenectady for Easter the previous spring. Nick Andreadakis worked with her brother at the firehouse, the two of them buddies, so she had felt at ease. He was a short, stocky man with black, sorrowful eyes and a thick mustache, about Michael’s age, thirty-one or -two at the time. When it was time to leave, Nick said Michael didn’t have to bother and he’d drive her back to the city. She said, unsure of herself, that it would certainly save Michael a trip, but she lived in Mount Vernon. He said that was no problem at all.
When they arrived at her apartment she thanked him and began getting out of the car. But he said, “Wait a minute,” with the fierce urgency of someone whose life depended on what he was going to say next. He berated himself for not honoring his wife’s death, but asked her if he could see her again. He seemed so vulnerable that she had no choice and said, “Sure, write down my number.”
The following week he came and picked her up and they drove over to White Plains listening to the radio. Every other song was from the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, which had come out that year. They had dinner and then saw a movie. Halfway through the film, which she couldn’t recall, she could feel Nick squirming around, trying to decide if he should take her hand. She was reminded of Kevin the first time they’d gone out, and all at once she felt a great feeling of joy lift up in her heart and she was there again, feeling the excitement of those first moments alone in the dark with him after the show was over and as the applause died down the place went dark and the newsreels came on. For the first time in six years she again felt the hot feeling in the middle of her body. She shifted in her seat so that she was closer to Nick and he put his arm, which was resting on the seat, around her shoulder and she snuggled against him and could feel him release a sigh of relief.
They went out a few more times and then one Saturday afternoon he picked her up at work. She asked him if he’d like to come to her apartment, she’d cook supper for him. He nodded and they drove off in silence, both certain of what would happen. Once they were inside her apartment and she removed her coat and he removed his, he was immediately on her, kissing her with an animal passion she had never experienced in a man, God forgive her. His swarthy face and mustache aroused her so much that she was clutching desperately at him, her tongue searching for his, her sex thrusting against him. She led him to the bedroom and when they were undressed rather than going up into her he knelt and lowered his head between her legs, which she had heard about men doing to women and women doing to men but which she and Kevin had never done. A moment later his face was on her and his tongue was lapping at her little button and she was calling out to God, over and over, holding his face down, imagining the mustache knitting itself with her own hair, creating a wide, woven ribbon of black and blond that went on and on as the pain of the release left her in wave after wave of sobs and tears. When she thought there could be no sweeter pleasure, he was in her, immense and rigid, pounding her so that she was feeling release again and then felt his own orgasm in violent thrusts that later made her ache.
They were together three months, always making love with the same intensity and then one day he announced that he couldn’t see her again because he’d met a young girl, recently arrived from Greece, and he was planning to marry her and that he hoped she understood. She was slightly hurt, but not as much as she had thought she would be. She wished him luck.
She missed Nick for a month or so and then she went to Atlantic City with Dotty Gagliano and her husband and they introduced her to Dotty’s cousin Louis from Philadelphia, who was in construction and drove a convertible and the first night they were together they made love and that was fine because they laughed a lot and he said he’d come to New York and see her, if his wife let him. And they laughed some more and that was it. She understood then that she needed a man from time to time, and she began cultivating friendships with three or four men, married and needing her companionship; she had dinner with them and then they made love and they usually talked about their children and she listened and then they said goodbye and that was that—everything neat and orderly with no regrets and no attachments. She often thought of Kevin, but never while she was with someone else, feeling sinful then and not liking the feeling, yet able to separate the experiences, one a memory and the other a need.
She again thought of Vidamía and recognized that there was something of Kevin in the girl, a deep, passionate love of life and a poetry which always remained a mystery to her, being as he was so gentle and such a big, rough man. There had always been something at the forefront of his existence, accessible and at the same time elusive. It was like his voice, which even in a whisper commanded attention. It was like what Candy Donovan had once said about singing: “Let the song sing you, honey.” That was how she perceived this little Spanish wisp, like a powerful force over which she’d have no control. Maud could only bask in her radiance and be thankful to God that she’d come into her life. Kevin had been like that, fragile and yet solid as granite, a paradox. She prayed fervently and sincerely that God keep her new child safe. When she was finished she crossed herself and felt better, seeing her granddaughter’s face again until she drifted off to sleep.
5. A Latin from Manhattan
The torture of the pregnancy was unceasing and Elsa’s visits to the maternity clinic interminably long. On the days that Elsa didn’t skip school she acted unconcerned. If teachers asked her what was the matter, she said, “Nothing.” When she began showing, in her sixth month, word finally got to the principal. The guidance counselor set up a time when she had to bring in her mother. Carefully, in very bad Spanish, they explained that her daughter couldn’t stay in school if she was pregnant. They recommended a GED certificate or night school after the baby was born. Her mother nodded politely, never letting on that she read, wrote, and spoke English quite adequately. When she got outside she spit on the ground and cursed mightily. “They don’t have mothers!” she said in Spanish, dismissing them all as sons of b
itches. It was March. New clothes. Easter. Bonnets. Her mother bought her a beautiful maternity dress and a hat and they went to church, and in the afternoon Milagros’s husband came to pick them up to go to their apartment in the Bronx to eat dinner.
In time she got used to being alone, and the weeks began to pass more quickly. Then she was finally in the maternity ward of Bellevue Hospital, rushed there by her mother when her contractions began coming twenty minutes apart. When her water broke it was nearly two o’clock in the morning. She was lying in bed dreaming of being at Orchard Beach, where she often had gone with her homegirls. To get to the beach in those days, they would all walk over to Spring Street on summer mornings and take the Lexington Avenue Local, christened the Number 6 line by the Transit Authority in the winter of 1947, though always known as the Pelham Bay Local until 1967, when everything was spiffed up and made modern and the lines were color-coded on the maps so that everybody began calling it the Number 6—“El Número Seis”—Bobby Rodríguez y La Compañía’s salsa number about the train that was their link to the sea, running from the Lower East Side up to East Harlem and into the South Bronx.
The neighborhoods were like towns in Puerto Rico. El Barrio, Loisaida, Los Sures, Bushwee, and, of course, El Bron which was their very own even though they had not yet colonized it, or brought it into the hegemony of salsa, Spanglish, the insouciance of being Rican and of mañana being synonymous with the next party. Hers was the Lower East Side which extended, in her childhood, from Fourteenth Street to Canal Street, at one point bisected so that north of Houston Street became the East Village, part of which would be christened Loisaida by the Celestial Warrior, Bimbo Rivas, converted into the Loisaida of poetry and dreams, with its bohemian ambiance and garishly painted bodegas and restaurants and signs in Spanish.
