by Amanda Stern
The attention and excitement of the night feel like a drug. For the entire two-night run, I am buoyant, but when it ends I crash hard on the other side. The despair is paralyzing, exhausting, and confusing. When by Monday it still hasn’t passed, I stay home. Midday, I get a weirdly frantic phone call from Aram, wondering where I am. I can hear the sounds of the schoolyard in the background. When I tell him I just needed a day of rest and will be back tomorrow, he doesn’t seem to believe me.
“You’re…uh, you’re not with Paolo, are you?” he asks.
“Paolo? No. He’s not at school?”
“Nope,” he says. “And it’s weird, because of…you know, the kiss.”
The kiss! I’d completely forgotten about it.
“I wouldn’t worry about it. I’m sure he’s fine and will be back tomorrow,” I say, ignoring a wave of nerves.
As I’m about to hang up, Aram says, “We’re still friends, right? Like will we still hang out and stuff, even though the play is done?”
Holy shit. “Yes, of course,” I say, trying to sound casual. “I mean, I feel like the play made us closer, don’t you think?” I am expecting him to confess his love right there.
“Yeah, totally. Okay, I gotta get to class. Get rest!” he says and hangs up before I can say anything else.
When the phone rings again, I’m still smiling and I think it’s him again because I hear school sounds before the speaker says anything.
“Yeeeuuusss?” I say, singsongy.
“Hi there. May I please speak to Mrs. Stern?” a woman asks. “This is Eileen Duva.” The guidance counselor. I tell her my mother is out.
“I’d like to have a conversation with her about your college plans, and with you also. Will you be in tomorrow?”
“Yeah,” I say. “What do you want to talk about?”
“Well, your grades are terrible, your PSAT scores are abysmal, your standardized testing scores are suboptimal, and while your achievements outside school are impressive, I’m afraid it’s your in-school performance colleges look for, and, quite frankly, you don’t have it.”
“I don’t want to go to college,” I retort, offended but also hurt. “I want to keep doing what I’m doing. Maybe work in film, or write. What’s the point of college?” Until I say it out loud, I haven’t even known that’s how I feel, but it’s true. I don’t want to go to college. If I already know what I want to do, why not just start doing it? Besides, I’m not smart enough for college.
“Do your parents know you feel this way?”
“No,” I say.
She agrees to have this conversation with my mother tomorrow. My mom didn’t go to college, so this probably won’t be a big deal. Eddie didn’t go to college either. He just went straight out into the real world and got himself an apartment and a job making T-shirts. When I think of jumping into the real world, it doesn’t scare me as much as college does. I can hide how academically out of my depth I am in the real world, but I can’t in college. I wonder where Aram will go to college. If I’m not in college, I’ll be able to visit him whenever I want.
I’m shocked out of my reverie by another phone call. This time it’s Paolo.
“I’m in so much trouble,” he says with no preamble. “I told them that was in the script, okay? That it was part of the play, so if they ask you, tell them that, all right?” he asks.
“Yeah, okay. Don’t worry.” I do my best to reassure him.
“Thanks…hopefully my one-day suspension will be all I have to deal with.”
“You got suspended?”
“Yep. All for you, kid. But don’t worry. It was fun and worth it,” he says. This reversal is odd—instead of being his student, I feel like his teacher, and if I’m his teacher, then I have a crush on a student, whom I’m on the phone with, at home, talking about a kiss that shouldn’t have happened, and annoyed by my layer of envy and resentment. Why are all these male teachers trying to fuck their students? Can’t they get anyone their own age? Hearing Paolo’s glee that he kissed a student, and the fact that he hasn’t even mentioned Wren, or how she might feel, makes me feel contempt for him. I hope she and Carlos don’t break up because of the kiss. Then it will be my fault.
Aram is waiting on the front steps for me the next day. I feel like a rock star at school; everyone congratulates me on the play, but because the topic of the play was suicide, they also seem a little wary of me, which I love. Even though I’m now dressing more like a painter than a punk, the more afraid people are of me, the more they’ll believe their own stories about me, and I’ll feel safe and hidden. I recognize the quandary I’ve gotten myself into here, but I don’t know how to get out. I wanted someone to figure out what was wrong with me, and in order to do that, I went in the direction they sent me, but that sent up a decoy that took on a life of its own and now the decoy is all they see. It’s too late to reveal my truth to anyone. I’m an idiot who can’t get anything right, and I’m not even trying to get someone to see what’s wrong with me.
Eileen Duva catches me in the hall. “I spoke with your mother this morning,” she says. “I think I woke her up.”
“Probably. Did you tell her I don’t want to go to college?”
“You’re going to college,” she says.
“But I don’t want to!” I protest. I am not ready for my lack of intelligence to be revealed. I won’t get in anywhere.
“My dear, according to your mother, you have no choice.”
1984
Dr. Parker Prentice
My conclusion is that Amanda has convinced herself she is not smart. Her efforts are spent avoiding situations where she might be challenged and exposed for who she believes herself to be. While there is no question she struggles with some specific tasks, the monumental struggle appears to be low self-esteem and insecurity resulting from an emotionally based issue. Perhaps it is time for her to be examined by a child psychologist.
One Right Way to Be a Person
Wren and her boyfriend, Carlos, don’t break up, thank God. The kiss brought them even closer together, and they come uptown to see a play I’m in with the acting school, and they meet Taylor, who does cocaine with us. They can’t believe my luck that he gives me as much as I want, whenever I want. So long as I never tell Gwen, the drugs will keep coming.
One weekend when Taylor is out of town, we run out of coke. Desperate, I decide to do what needs to be done.
“I know where we can buy some,” I tell Carlos and Wren. “But one of you has to come with me.”
“I’ll come,” Carlos says.
“Yeah, he’ll go,” Wren says and looks out my bedroom window. “I’ll wait here.”
Carlos and I walk across Houston Street. I don’t tell him where we’re headed, but my confidence never flags until we near Avenue A. The streets smell of smoke: garbage can fires, cigarettes, pot, and, based on all the discarded vials we pass, crack. We pass open fire hydrants, parking meters covered in graffiti, streetlamps with sneakers hanging off the top of them. Last time I was here, updated posters of Etan Patz were glued to the lampposts. A computer had him age-progressed, morphing him into a teenager, a person who doesn’t exist, erasing him all over again. I worried that if I looked at it for too long, the image of him I have in my head might get wiped away by the new one.
There’s an audible crunch underneath our feet of used hypodermic needles and crack vials. People with Mohawks and face tattoos are sitting in doorways and nodding off on fire escapes. The scene is the same as last time, only this time we’re lacking an adult.
“You sure this is safe?” Carlos asks.
“Sure,” I tell him. “Don’t worry about it.”
I scour the lampposts for Etan’s face, but already the posters have been plastered over. Two homeless teenagers with Mohawks, a guy and a girl, sit on the sidewalk with a skinny, mangy dog asleep in front of them.
“Got money? Give us money, man. Got money?” they yell at us as we walk by.
“Oh my God,” Carlos says
and presses in closer to me. “That guy had Africa-sized holes in his ears. With no jewelry.”
“Shhh…be cool,” I say, sounding utterly uncool.
“I’m cool,” he says, insulted.
He follows me across St. Mark’s and when he realizes I’m leading him toward B, he stops. “How badly do we need this?” he asks.
“Badly,” I say.
“Enough to die for it?”
“We’re not going to die, Carlos,” I hiss, not entirely believing this.
He looks around us. “Yeah, actually, we might.”
My entire body is numb, and yet my brain is focused, will not stop pushing until it gets what it needs—more drugs. I’m a pit bull who won’t unclench until my teeth touch, and yet I am also the flesh being bitten. The coke already in my system has made me fearless enough to get this far, but now it’s starting to wear off, and we’re too far to turn back. I have no choice but to keep pretending I’m tough.
I cross the street. He runs after me and grabs my arm. “I can’t just let you go by yourself,” he says.
“You can, but you shouldn’t,” I say, tasting my own false bravado.
“I really don’t want to, Amanda. I don’t think it’s safe.”
I don’t know where else to get coke, and I’ve come to rely on it like the medicine in my mom’s bathroom cabinet. It takes away all my fear so completely that now, allowing any inkling of fear inside me is unbearable. There is only one way to escape my mental anguish and that’s to numb it out, and this is the only thing that works. I am willing to face death in order to buy the thing that saves me from ever having to fear death.
“I’m going whether or not you come with me, but if you stay behind and make me do all the work, I’m not sharing with you.”
He throws his head back and groans his frustration. “Fine. Fine. I’ll come, but I swear to God if we die, I’ll never forgive you.”
“I can live with that,” I say. I don’t know where my words are coming from, since I am not inside my body at all; I’m not even in the same time zone as Carlos.
We’re on Ninth Street now, nearing a car on fire, nearing C, the street where you go if you’re suicidal and survival isn’t your bag. Even Eddie doesn’t go to C. This is the most dangerous place I’ve ever been.
“How many times have you done this before?” he asks.
“Tons,” I lie. Just once, and even then, I faked my calm.
As we cross C and walk toward D, we’re completely silent, powered only by our clipped steps. I can’t take a proper inhale and Carlos is practically hyperventilating. I’m really hoping that instead of looking like two nervous kids from the rich side of the Village, we look more like hypertense cokeheads who need to buy more drugs.
We get to the boarded-up, crumbling town house on Avenue D. I take some change out of my pocket, and following the procedure I remember from last time, hurl it toward the window. A few minutes pass, and nothing happens. I throw a few more, muttering under my breath, “Come on, come on.” A window cracks open, then widens. A metal pail is slowly lowered down by a rope. The familiar sight momentarily soothes me. I snag a key from the pail, unlock the front door, and Carlos follows me inside. We squeeze past oily, oozing garbage, not even in bags, just piles of vile old food cans and used diapers. It sounds like people are trapped inside the walls, scratching and thumping to get out. I hope we don’t end up buried alive alongside them in the shallow drywall. Babies cry and shriek, and a couple scream at each other in Spanish, or maybe it’s TV. Things are thrown and break. We walk up the steps, avoiding the cavernous holes where rats and roaches scurry. Spanish music, Spanish radio, and rap, all playing at full volume. It smells like burned plastic or turpentine. Streaks on the walls look like smeared diarrhea. We go all the way to the top; I knock on the dented door.
The same man from last time opens it, keeping his face hidden. I walk inside and Carlos follows. Misty is sitting on a mattress in her underwear and a wife beater. It’s freezing, but she doesn’t seem to care. She’s folding pieces of aluminum foil. When she looks up at us I see scratches down her face and open sores. I didn’t get such a close look last time. Now I can’t stop staring; she has four visible teeth and no body fat.
When she speaks to us, I’m captivated by her bulging eyes. What little hair she has is greasy.
“What do you want?” she asks.
“Eight ball,” I say.
“Come here, sweetie,” she says to Carlos, tapping out a line on a mirror. “Try it.” Carlos goes to the woman and tries it, then nods.
“You look like his namesake,” she says to Carlos. “Ricardo, look, it’s your namesake—Ricky Ricardo.”
Ricardo turns around and looks at me. “She don’t look like Ricky Ricardo,” he says. I glance at Carlos, whose face is completely white.
I pay and we strip the wind as we tear out of the apartment and fly down the stairs. Once we’ve safely crossed over Avenue A, we’re giddy with joy and new toughness. Our survival was a triumph all its own. I am almost hyperkinetic with relief. Twice now, I’ve gone past my comfort zone, and now A no longer scares me. My fear has grown muscles.
We do coke the rest of the night, and when Carlos and Wren start to make out, I discreetly tear off one aluminum edge, pinch a pebble, and fill the foil like a burrito, swishing it under my bed for later. I lick the mirrors we use. I like the numbness on my teeth best. I have a drawer filled with Taylor’s paraphernalia: a grinder, an engraved mirror with its own velvet sleeve that I don’t use, because I don’t want it to accidentally wick away or absorb any overlooked residue and deprive me of precious granules.
As time goes by, I need more coke to get the same effects, to feel the same freedom from myself, to be enveloped inside a cocoon of magical intelligence. Am I becoming immune to it? When Carlos isn’t around, Wren confides that she cheats on him all the time, which now makes me mad at her, and I coke-lecture her about the different ways we need to find affection because we didn’t get it from our fathers. I tell her the attention from the other men is the reward she’s seeking, but that it’ll lead to despair when it fails to fulfill the gaping hole inside her. How do I know all this? she asks me.
“I’ve been around,” I tell her. I’m making it up as I go along.
“Have you had sex?” she asks.
“Oh yeah. I lost my virginity when I was like fourteen,” I tell her.
“To who?”
“Man, I don’t even remember. I think his name was Marco. He was in college.”
I’m blurring every edge of one truth to create a different truth so that I don’t feel like a liar. Is something a lie when you know what a thing signifies without ever having experienced it? I continue to explain her psychological makeup to her in ways that not only sound, but feel, right.
Soon Wren is telling other people how much I know, and before I understand what’s happening, I’m holding court in a booth at Joe Junior’s during lunch while some new kid slides in to ask for my advice or for me to explain things to him, which I do. I’m so remarkably good at it, I convince myself of my own authority. Even Paolo asks for my advice, and he’s a teacher.
There’s not much I feel accomplished at, and not much I understand, but since I was a baby one thing I’ve never failed to recognize are feelings. Yes, I know I’m broken and defective, but underneath that conviction lies a question—what if my value lies somewhere else? What the tests have taught me is that there exists one right answer to every question, and I am not the right answer to any question—and yet I know, based on the way people respond to me, that I am the answer to something. I just don’t know what the question is.
There can’t be just one right way to be a person. Eddie isn’t one right way. Mr. Indresano and Basi weren’t one right way. The adults around me think there is just one way to be, and I am beginning to think they are wrong.
1986
Dr. Wallace
A petite, attractive girl with long, very curly hair, Amanda came to both
afternoon testing sessions rather tired. She had been up late the first night at a rock concert and hadn’t slept the second night because of the heat and her inability to work the air-conditioning. I found her to be kind and patient, but skeptical of me and the process, referring to it a few times as “the system.”
Homeless
In my forty years of life, my mom has never before called a family meeting. Not even when Nina was born. But by now, we all know what it’s about. For months our mom has been talking about turning the top two floors of the MacDougal Street house into an apartment, but the cost of construction is too high. She’s been dropping hints about wanting to downsize, maybe rent the house for a while, and I’m terrified this is the first step toward selling it. The last thing I want is to sit in my childhood home being told that after all her promises, our future is being sold. That’s why I’m late. I’m stuffing my bag full of things I don’t need when there’s a knock on my door; someone whisper-calls my name. Through the peephole I see my downstairs neighbor Haruko, her face blotched with dirty tears.
“Amanda. Amanda. Amanda. Amanda. Amanda.”
I open the door and before I can register what’s happening, she steps into my arms and presses her face into my neck. “I need a hug. Please give me a hug,” she says, hugging me. I reach forward awkwardly and reluctantly place my arms around her. She feels smaller than she looks; her neck smells like beer and attempted suicide. Tiny beads of hostility string themselves on my lip. I resent this forced intimacy.
“What’s going on?”
“I need a hug,” she says.
“We’re hugging,” I tell her, trying not to sound impatient. “Are you okay?”
When she lets go, she starts sobbing and walks into my living room. How do I politely tell her that I need to be somewhere?
“I’ve done something terrible.” She lies facedown on my living room rug. Probably she’s killed her boyfriend. “What did you do?”
