No Matter How Much You Promise

by Edgardo Vega

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, nobody told me,” Mike Cunningham replied. “I’m sorry.”

  His mother invited him in, gave him coffee and a sandwich. She asked him if he’d seen his mother yet. Mike shook his head, said he was going down to the Bronx to see her that night. Billy noticed that Mike still seemed young, even though he looked like he’d gone through hell. In spite of his youth, Mike reminded Billy of an old man in the way he moved and did everything carefully, as if something might suddenly fall and break. His mother began to say something but changed her mind. Perhaps she was about to tell Mike that Peggy Lyons had gotten married and moved to Boston, but maybe he knew, and if he didn’t she didn’t want to be the one to give him any more bad news.

  Billy wondered if he behaved that way, if the last twenty years of remaining locked up in his memories had caused him to age the way Mike Cunningham had. Billy also wondered if Mike had felt the same rage and regret and sadness of life which haunted him, and which, it seemed, would always remain with him.

  42. Faceless Shadows

  Like all whom the nightmare calls as it gallops madly in the pale moonlight, Fawn Singleton Farrell wrote secretly, living each day in resignation as she wandered through a labyrinth of interminable sorrow, fear and despair her only companions. She loved desperately and without hope, much like a caged bird that yearns to give itself to flight but, unable to, cries mournfully through the day. There was no specific person whose love she sought, or whom she wished to grace with hers. Still, within her heart there existed a need to nurture and give comfort, much as a child will feel pity for a wet, hungry kitten, or, having found a broken-winged bird, will pick it up gingerly, observing its naked uncertainty, hoping to assuage the quivering bird’s instinctive dread that its benefactor may be a predator. Having picked up the wounded bird and smoothed its feathers, the child sets out to find some understanding adult who will help with the bird. And thus each day she sought an answer to her life, desperately but shyly, undemanding and alone.

  Juxtaposed against her protective instincts there was within her another side seething with rage, seeking to obliterate that which threatened; wishing, at least in fantasy, destruction of the miscreant, rendering him to a fine powder that would drift away in the wind forever—him, because she never thought of women as harmful, having received from her mother and her sisters and Grandma Maud loving care and affection, but from her father, in her perception, hardly a glance, his distance and inaccessibility monumental in her yes, even though he felt exactly the same distance from his other children. Inside the cauldron of emotion that consistently boiled within her, the notion existed that no matter what took place in her life, she couldn’t be happy.

  But all of this life of contradictions, of violets and daggers, of violence and goodness, all of it remained within her, struggling to express itself, so that at times she would feel violent spasms of pain within her chest and her face would contort horribly, disfiguring her generally kindly and innocent features so that if observed closely one could see previewed a wizened old hag of eighty or ninety, the fine nose grown bony and hooked, the skin around the eyes creased with wrinkles, the smooth, rose-tinted porcelain skin gray and warted. Even when she stood behind the drums keeping the beat for the family, inside her there raged this battle, and despite her best efforts at dissimulation, every once in a while the smooth exterior of emotions was interrupted by the facial contortions, which for the most part went unnoticed, except when she had to solo, and then she put her head way down over the snare and let the thick blond hair fall over her face to cover the horror. But there was no band now, so it didn’t matter. Lately the dread that lived within her had become intensified in response to her father’s own rage; the horror within her centered around a distorted view of herself, which her mother, Lurleen, with love and understanding, had tried to ease by explaining her condition.

  “I know, Mama, but am I a girl?” she had cried out once when she was eleven.

  “Of course you are, darling,” Lurleen had replied, holding her to her bosom and smoothing her hair. “A beautiful, lovely, talented girl whose mama loves her very, very much.”

  “Then why do I have to have that yinandyango hanging down offa me like Cliff?” calling the horrific appendage the funny name Lurleen had given her brother’s infant organ.

  Billy had once asked Lurleen why she called Cliff’s thing a yinandyango while she called his own a “big red baby,” like the times after the children were asleep when she’d come and sit on his left side on the sofa and with her right hand reach down and massage him and whisper throatily, “Honey, whynatcha let me borrow your big red baby so’s I can have some fun,” and he’d sort of smile, his eyes veiled and he’d reach his lips down to try and find her nipples.

  She explained that she had an uncle, Luke, in Minnesota who was married to a Swedish gal named Hannah and she had spent two summers with them up near Rush City, where there was a large Swedish community, and this Hannah, who had eight sons, called their thing a “ninganango.”

  Lurleen had imagined it was the name that Swedish mothers used, just like some mothers called their little boy’s organ a peepee or a winkle. Except years later when Lurleen was in college she’d met a girl who did yoga and meditated and was into herbal cures and acupuncture. Around her neck on a silver chain she wore an amulet which was a perfect circle with what seemed to be the inside part of an S with one side of it black and the other white, onyx and mother-of-pearl, and within each side a black dot on the top of the white side and a white dot on the bottom of the black side. Valerie called it a yin-yang and said that it explained the duality of all things.

  One day she and Billy were making love and she was lying atop him with his organ completely in her. She began moving gently, letting her pelvis massage itself against him, and after a few moments the sensation was so strong that she felt as if his organ was attached to her and she was within him, and then it dawned on her that perhaps what Hannah might have been saying was “yin-yang,” so she began calling Cliff’s penis his “yinandyango,” imagining that it was both male and female and belonged to both the man and the woman since it gave so much pleasure to both when used the right way, and Billy, in spite of everything that troubled him, sure knew how to use his yinandyango.

  But Fawn knew nothing of this. What she did know is that she had once stood, fully clothed, watching her mother giving her brother a bath and had wanted to take off her clothes and get into the bathtub with Cliff, but knew that she couldn’t. Her mother had said she must always dress and bathe privately. And now it was worse, because she had hair down there and the thing had grown over or out of it, it seemed, all weird, so that it felt like a finger without any bones. So when she asked about her odd appendage, which hung over her own place where she peed from, serving no purpose and looking more each day like those awful, wrinkled-up, red things that hang from a turkey’s head, Lurleen’s heart nearly broke.

  “Oh, you poor baby,” Lurleen said, and then explained that the doctor had said that this type of condition took place in nature from time to time. “It also happens in animals: cows and goats, pigs and horses, you know. It ain’t as serious as it looks, sugar. You just have to trust me and the doctors and everything will be all right.”

  Although Lurleen hadn’t explained it then, eventually she told Fawn that what she had was a type of pseudo-hermaphrodism. There were cases in which the person “presented,” as the doctor had said, complete male genitals but upon reaching puberty, this person who had grown up as a boy began to grow breasts and widen at the hips and the pelvis began rotating downward. After a few examinations, doctors could tell the person had a set of ovaries, fallopian tubes, a uterus, and a vaginal canal.

  In those cases the false penis and testicles had to be surgically removed and a vaginal canal opened in order for the person, now a woman, to be able to bear children, though in fact they were seldom able to. Lurleen didn’t go into it with Fawn, but recalled listening to the doctor tell her th
at in the beginning only the vaginal canal was opened. But this was not the case with Fawn.

  When Fawn was born, the doctors had discussed the tiny penis-like growth and the almost imperceptible vagina below it, explaining to Lurleen that Fawn would have to be examined periodically.

  “We could remove the pseudopenis now, but we don’t yet know the psychic disposition of the child as it develops. From all appearances your infant may be intersexual. It is probably best if we do further tests and wait until she’s gone through puberty to see what happens then. We’ll monitor how she develops and what gender choices she makes.”

  Although Billy was aware of Fawn’s condition, he didn’t feel comfortable in dealing with it. Lurleen brought Fawn home and did the best she could. Every six months she would take Fawn to the doctor for examinations. On one of those early visits Lurleen asked the doctor if he had any books she could read about the condition. The doctor took her address and a few weeks later she received a manila envelope with photocopies of a section from a medical book. In a chapter called Intersexuality, in section 4, “Principles in Management of Intersexuals,” she underlined the passage to which the doctor had alluded. “There are two prevailing periods in the life of intersexual patients when a choice has to be made: shortly after birth and at the age of puberty.” She put the article away in the bottom of a suitcase with her other important papers. Fawn was definitely a girl socially and sexually, but Lurleen was still advised to wait until Fawn had finished developing before making any decisions. If, after puberty, Fawn continued growing as a female, the surgery would be performed.

  On her way home from seeing the doctor the last time, having decided to go ahead with the operation, Lurleen worried about the impact this would have on Fawn. While Fawn had reluctantly agreed to the surgery, it was obvious that she was frightened. She still seemed unsure of her sexuality. But she had always been a girl, except for the growth, which had no reproductive purpose. She’d be fine. If she asked questions, Lurleen would answer them honestly, as she always did.

  There were times when Lurleen wanted to explain to Fawn about the sexual duality of all human beings. Every man had a bit of woman in him and every woman was in part male. This was common knowledge, but with Fawn one had to proceed slowly. If not, she might become confused and, like a frightened colt, bolt away. One could harness both sides of his or her sexuality and use either element, masculine or feminine, to enhance one’s life.

  Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, Fawn thought. Her mama had explained that except for the yinandyango, she had a vagina and a clitoris and could have babies someday, although Fawn couldn’t imagine that she could take the pain of childbirth or even wanted a boy touching her, like Cookie, who was so fresh, said she would, letting Mario do it, and also Vee with Wyn, and her mama and her papa and everybody else, Cliff with different girls and maybe with his new, rich, stuck-up girlfriend, Phillipa Ralston, all of them doing it. But if she chose she could have babies, and maybe having a boy in her would feel good like Cookie and Vee said. She didn’t know.

  She sat alone in her room, watching the rain outside as it streaked the bridges to Brooklyn in silver and gray, listening to Willie Nelson singing “On the Road Again,” “Uncloudy Day,” and “Me and Bobby McGee,” and imagining that this Bobby McGee was neither a boy nor a girl, and she got out her harmonica, which was by far her favorite instrument, and played mournfully along with the music. Although she enjoyed playing with her family, it was this music that seemed more of a mystery to her because California and Louisiana, Kentucky and Texas, Minnesota and Missouri, North Dakota and Georgia were places she had never been, though she knew if she went there she could find Bobby McGee whom she loved desperately and then they’d go everywhere together, singing and playing the harmonica, just like it said in the song, except that Willie Nelson called it a harpoon, which was weird because that’s how she felt having the thing down there.

  Sometimes she felt happy, like when everybody had agreed that it was okay to do “Me and Bobby McGee” when they played down in the subways, and Lurleen had gotten her a harmonica holder so she could continue to play the drums and also play her harpoon, and they had rehearsed and everything and it sounded so good that she could actually see herself traveling throughout the land which her great-grandpa Buck said was the best and most beautiful land in the world; traveling all over with Bobby McGee, from the gulf-stream waters to the redwood forests, hitching rides and sometimes sleeping under the stars next to Bobby McGee. And Bobby wasn’t white, and he wasn’t black or brown, or yellow or red. He was just a person and her friend who loved her and whom she loved with all her true and loyal heart. She listened once again to the song, trying to understand what the words meant: “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”

  As she lay on her bed, listening to the characters on Sesame Street who kept Caitlin company, she allowed her mind to drift away. She loved everyone in her family, but most of all Vidamía, who was so honest with her and told her everything she wanted to know. She had loved playing with them down in the subways or out in the street, but all of that had stopped now with the video store doing so well and she just sitting around listening to music and wondering what was going to become of her life. She hadn’t been accepted at Performing Arts, and she was glad because she didn’t know if she could handle some of the things that Cookie and Cliff talked about, the jealousy and phoniness of some of the people, or even just the size of the place.

  She figured maybe she played too loud or maybe she wasn’t creative enough in her playing or maybe her face had started twitching and she’d looked weird or maybe they could tell about her thing through the pants and she should’ve worn a skirt but that would’ve looked even stranger, a girl playing drums in a skirt. It didn’t matter. She was glad. She guessed she’d go to Seward Park like everybody else was doing. She loved singing the songs and playing the drums, but most of all she loved it when the family was at home and they played bluegrass tunes. Then she could play the harmonica and sing her heart out and let the pain come out of her soul, “somebody robbed the Glendale train,” listening to Cliff pick at the banjo and imagining being up in the hills of Tennessee or Missouri, lost in the woods and living with the deer and the other animals, a wild girl who needed no one. She tried to imagine sex, but the subject frightened her. Sometimes when she thought about certain things like Cookie and Mario, or Vee and Wyn, she got wet and her turkey thing got hard and she had thought of maybe bending it and putting it in herself but was afraid and never tried it. Maybe women had to have men’s things inside of them and she should do it and then she wouldn’t have to depend on a man, because there was no way she’d let anyone touch her.

  When she was alone and wasn’t thinking, she sat down and wrote, letting her mind go and inventing words, letting the images and the sounds come to her unbidden, as if in a dream. That big boy had looked at her the other day. His look was direct and it made her uncomfortable. She remembered him from the fourth grade, but he was with the other boys and they were scary and loud and kept laughing and pushing each other. She didn’t know whether he remembered her, but she remembered him because he was cross-eyed and always kept his head down, like she did, ashamed of his deficiency and fearful that someone would see him.

  She wanted to tell her mother or Vidamía about the boy looking at her and how funny it made her feel, but changed her mind, since they were all so busy. God, she couldn’t believe her father played the way he did. It was awesome, the things he could do. He was still very strange and hardly ever said anything and when he did he was generally angry these days, but when he sat down at the piano, you couldn’t believe he didn’t have those two fingers. He played so fast and yet every note was so clear that it gave her goose bumps. He’d asked her if she wanted to learn and she’d nodded and he patted the piano bench and she sat next to him. He had just finished working and he had a real strong smell and all she could think about was that maybe all men smelled like that and it would be awf
ul to let them get too close. But she made herself concentrate and learned to do some things on the piano that she really liked. “Just make believe you’re playing a conga,” her father said, “or the drums.” And she could do it. She tried playing a salsa tune and it came out pretty good and she laughed, but got up because of her father’s smell. She went into the bathroom, locked the door, and, without looking at herself, took a shower and changed her underwear and clothes.

  Everything was happening too quickly. Vidamía and Cookie were like two crazy girls these days, on the phone all the time and talking about doing a million and one things and still keeping the store going, and at night they’d come in with the money and Lurleen filled out the slips for the bank and in the morning she’d go with them and deposit the cash, and from the checkbook they’d pay the bills for the store. It was a separate checkbook from the one her mama paid the regular bills from.

  One day in the beginning of June, Vidamía came in with Cookie and announced that they had been over in the Village and went by this place and they had jazz and they’d gone in and asked the owner if their father could play there. Lurleen wanted to know what kind of place.

  “It’s a restaurant,” Cookie said.

  “What’s the name of it?” Lurleen asked.

  “I don’t know,” Cookie said. “What was the name of it, Vee?”

  “The Cornelia Street Café,” Vidamía said. “On Cornelia Street.”

  “Boring,” Cookie said. “Where’s it gonna be? Thompson Street?”

  “Chill, okay, Cookie?” Vidamía said. “Anyway, I asked this guy if Daddy could play there and he said it depends. When I asked him what it depended on, he said he had to be able to play jazz and he and his partners had to hear him. I told him no problem.”

  “I think you should’ve waited and talked to him first,” Lurleen said.