Cobwebs

by Karen Romano Young

The woman leaned out and stared up, her mouth like a fish’s. “This building got no fifth floor.”

  “The roof, I mean. Or should I say roofhouse? Penthouse?”

  Nancy didn’t dare laugh. Here was her dad, already making the neighbors think they had a freak on their roof. If only they knew…

  “This how you going downstairs every time?”

  “This? Oh no. Emergency measures, that’s all,” said Ned. The window slammed shut, and Nancy saw the woman walk away inside it, shaking her head. “Emergency measures,” Ned said again. “Go on, Nance.”

  Emergency measures were what Dion felt were needed just then. He felt it from the other side of Brooklyn, the very boundary of it, on the railing of the walkway of the Brooklyn Bridge where he sat staring toward the Promenade a mile away and thinking about the girl he’d seen there. Not the crabby Asian one. The other girl, the one with the hair and the eyes and the thin legs in Doc Martens with painted-on polka dots, nutty shoes that his little sister, Mina, would like.

  Dion whipped off his Mets cap and wiped the palm of his hand across his bald head. A hollow feeling grew in the pit of his stomach, a feeling of being scared, not hungry. His palms turned sticky and sweaty. He wondered if this was an anxiety attack, something he’d heard of from his mother. His mother … Was he going to be like this from now on, because of what his father had caught his mother doing? Anyone who would jump off a roof, on purpose to fall…How could he go home and have dinner with such a person? Or with the person who would let her get into such a risky position?

  “Stop chasing that Angel of Brooklyn,” his mother, Rose, had said. “Leave well enough alone.” She thought Dad was selling out, and selling the Angel out, and maybe selling the city out in the bargain. Dad said she was a bleeding heart, so worried about desperate people’s problems that she didn’t worry enough about her own family.

  Rose had gotten angry enough with Niko that she threatened to hurt herself, then tried to. Did she think by hurting herself she’d hurt him?

  Dion made himself think about the girl on the Promenade instead. Maybe he’d find her in that neighborhood or somewhere close by, if he hung around a lot. He pulled himself into a more comfortable position on the railing and suddenly felt a whoosh of nausea that came out of nowhere. He slammed his feet down onto the walkway and leaned there, gripping the rail, steadying himself.

  There was nothing under Nancy. The fire escape ended a story above the street. Nothing but strips of rusty fire escape held her up. “Crawl over the edge,” Ned advised. “Hang on by your fingertips.”

  With her hands above her head, she was six and a half feet high. (Ned had measured, so that she’d know.) It wasn’t so far to the ground. Far enough, though. Her knees crackled when she landed. Relief for Nancy.

  Down came Ned.

  “Chicken,” she said. Because there was no crackle landing for him. He landed softly on those slick cowboy boots that clacked when he touched the pavement. A strand of soft gray silk slowed his fall, glimmering just enough to be visible.

  “Hey,” he said, as they set off for the grocery store. “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?”

  “I did,” said Nancy. He let her get away with it, because, while she was still sweating, he was perfectly cool.

  4

  Ned was a son of Anansi. His mother Aso’s side of the family were the African-Jamaican magical tricksters, able to leap and fall and disappear into shadows. Rachel’s were the Scottish orb weavers (Granny’s forebears, descendants of the unstoppable spider that had inspired Robert the Bruce) that hid among the thistles and the heather. Then there was Grandpa Joke’s side—just plain old Italians. Nancy had her father’s black hair—only a little softer, more Italian. She had her father’s brown skin—only a little lighter. Her mother was pale white. Nancy’s eyes were all Rachel, though. And inside?

  “Anything new?” Mama Rachel and Granny Tina had been asking Nancy too often lately (for the last three years or so). Rachel said she had begun to become what she was at around thirteen. Ned began a little later, as boys do. Nancy was older than both.

  “Same old beautiful me,” she told them, though it made a sharp hurt inside her to say it.

  Her mother and grandmother turned away to hide their faces. It was Grandpa Joke who stroked the hair back from her forehead and said, “That’s fine.” But lately she thought he was the one who looked most worried of them all. There was no special spiderness coming from anywhere inside her, no matter how hard Nancy listened for it, watched for it, waited for it. It seemed that so far Rachel and Ned’s genes had canceled each other out in Nancy.

  Canceled out meant no heights and no depths. When Nancy grew dizzy on one of Dad’s rooftops, she’d leave. Down to Mama’s basement, her pied-à-terre. Foot on the ground. Where, if you stood in the kitchen looking out toward the greenhouse, your nose was on a level with the grass. The truth was, Nancy wasn’t really comfortable anywhere.

  But she tried. It was the old nature/nurture question, which Nancy had studied in freshman biology. The question was what made you who you were: The nature you got from your parents’ genes? Or your experiences? Her parents couldn’t change her nature, but they were determined not to skimp on experiences, whether or not they drove Nancy nuts in the process. Rachel taught her weaving, that was her way, and asked for nothing more. But Ned was always pushing her, leading her, guiding her to the edges of things. And then telling her not to look down!

  Clorox and Ajax and Windex. Sponges and mops and ammonia. A ball-peen hammer and brass nails. The New York Times and the New York Post and the Daily News. General Tso’s chicken and moo shu pancakes and plum sauce. Red wine, and tomato juice and vodka so Ned could make his Bloody Mary in the morning. A box of Rice Krispies for Nancy.

  Outside the cleaned-up windows, hours later, the lights of the city twinkled on and the moon rose up. Furniture would come later. For tonight, Nancy and Ned would sleep in sleeping bags, cocooned in their own warmth. Reflected light dappled the ceiling.

  “Thirty thousand nights,” Ned said.

  “What?” Nancy was trying to go directly to sleep without thinking of the drop outside.

  “That’s what we’re given on this planet.”

  “Thirty thousand?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s a long time.”

  “Long enough to get sick of them, take them for granted.”

  “So?” she asked slowly.

  “So, we don’t even look up to see if the stars are there or the moon is out.”

  “I do.”

  Ned rolled onto his stomach, leaned on his elbows. “What if you only got one night, Nancy egg? It’d be magic! You couldn’t stop looking. You’d never go to sleep, all night long.” He sat up so that he could see out the windows. He sat there so long that at last Nancy sat up, too, and put a hand on his shoulder.

  “Dad, you live here now,” she said. “It’ll be here tomorrow.”

  “We live here now.” He put his finger on her nose, smiled a little, lay down, and went to sleep pretty fast.

  How could Nancy sleep with that empty space waiting for her to fall through it, just beyond the low wall? She slid from her sleeping bag and pushed open the metal door. She padded silently to the edge, grasped the curved railing of the ladder.

  You’re going to have to, Nancy, said the voice in her head. She had been working on a theory, based on an article she’d read in the Times. Paralyzed people were learning to walk again by having their legs mechanically put through the motions of walking. Supposedly this electrified some part of their brains, the walking part made dead by paralysis, and brought it back to life. Maybe, Nancy reasoned, if she placed herself in spidery situations, she could electrify some inactive spidery part of her brain.

  She stepped onto the ladder.

  On a rooftop in Vinegar Hill where he was spending the night, Dion turned over in his sleep, pulled his overcoat up to his chin, and began to have one of his climbing dreams.

 
The rail curved slippery-slick beneath Nancy’s hands, the metal so cold it felt buttered. Nancy forced her bare feet to climb the rusty-edged steps. She instructed her toes to hold on tight. At the top of the wall she crouched, scared to stand and raise her center of gravity into the wind. Make it quick, Nancy; get it over with; don’t think about how you’ll get back up.

  With a nauseating twist she forced herself to turn, wrenching her body through dark space. Sweat sprang out in shudders across her neck and between her shoulders. City lights swirled above her. Her toe caught the step and her feet scrambled to save her. Somehow she landed her sorry self on the first landing of the fire escape. She collapsed, her hands cold and gritty with flaked-off rust. She’d made it one whole flight down.

  She straightened her soft blue pajamas under her behind, wiped her streaming eyes on her sleeves, and wondered at the image of the boy on the Promenade that appeared suddenly in her mind. What must she herself look like?

  She leaned back against the brick. She could breathe now. The breeze blew silver-lined clouds across the moon. The city lights trembled but stayed pretty much in place.

  She thought, I’ll never make it to the bottom alone.

  5

  “I want a boyfriend!” Annette moaned out over the balcony of her apartment.

  I don’t, Nancy thought. If she were to fall in love with somebody, if she were to want to marry someday, there would be all these considerations. It wouldn’t just be a matter of pretty blue eyes. She poked her toes through the balcony railing and studied them. “You just keep doing what you’re doing,” she told Annette. Annette was going to every dance and church thing and strutting the streets lately looking like—well, looking like the other girls in their homeroom, with their curled eyelashes and fingernail polish and shaved legs. Those legs bothered Nancy. She wasn’t allowed to shave hers. Instead she made her fashion statement with crazy tights and bright shoes that didn’t go against the school dress code of black skirt and white shirt, even if they didn’t exactly go with it.

  “That’s what Shamiqua says, too,” Annette said. Shamiqua! Nancy peered at the little kids running around the Promenade playground across Pierrepont Place, and tried not to feel bad. Shamiqua was queen of homeroom, and queen of the dances. It was Shamiqua who had told Annette today that some boy named Jimmy might ask her out.

  Annette flapped the Daily News at Nancy, changing the subject. “Look. He saw him again.”

  “Who saw who?”

  “Well, nobody saw anything. Just the results.”

  “Who saw what results?”

  “Nestor Paprika, that reporter. ROBBER IMPOUNDED. He says it was the Angel. Do you think it was that ghost boy from the Promenade?”

  Nancy’s mouth fell open at the stream of loose connections Annette had just made. She said, “If he were the Angel, he’d be trying to be inconspicuous. Walking on the railing of the Promenade isn’t very inconspicuous.”

  “Spoilsport,” said Annette. “He dropped a hammer on the robber’s head.”

  “Ouch. Is he dead?”

  “The Angel? I hope not. Shamiqua told me this fantasy she had about him. They were up on the roof and he was fluttering his black wings over his head…”

  “Did you read the English yet?” Nancy said, to change the subject again. She had heard enough about Shamiqua. What kind of fantasy? Fluttering black wings on a rooftop. Yes, Shamiqua definitely sounded more interesting than she was. Nancy consoled herself: she was still the one Annette asked over after school to keep her company.

  Annette made an annoyed sound, but took out the book. “Want me to read it to you?” she asked, as usual. Nancy nodded, as usual. They were reading Hemingway, which bored them, and Walt Whitman, which made them cry, the best thing so far in high school English since Greek myths freshman year.

  And you O my soul where you stand,

  Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,

  Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,

  Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,

  Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

  From the balcony over Pierrepont Place they peeked through the leaves of the Promenade trees at slivers of silver downtown Manhattan. Annette laid the book in her lap, and wailed out to New York, “I want a boyfriend.”

  “I know it, Annette,” said Nancy wearily. “Half of Brooklyn surely knows it by now.”

  “Surely,” mimicked Annette. “What about you? Don’t you?”

  Nancy wondered what made her ask now, when she hadn’t ever asked before. She shrugged one shoulder.

  “You do?” Annette peered into her eyes. “Who?” She knew enough about Nancy to know it wouldn’t be just any generic boyfriend, but someone in particular.

  Nancy shrugged her shoulder again, looked away. But away was toward the Promenade.

  “Oh, stop,” Annette said. “That freak?”

  “Why is he a freak?” Nancy demanded. “Because he’s got good balance?”

  “Most girls wouldn’t have good balance on their list.”

  “Since when do you care about most girls?” Nancy couldn’t help herself.

  Annette rolled her eyes, moaned. “He’s got no hair, for one. Like a ghost. You like Ghost Boy?”

  Nancy shrugged again.

  “You don’t know a thing about him,” Annette said dismissively.

  “But I do,” said Nancy.

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. Just—”

  “What?”

  “His eyes,” said Nancy. “That’s enough.”

  “You might never see him again!”

  “Something might bring us together. It did once. I’m keeping my eyes open, that’s all.”

  “Good plan,” said Annette.

  Nancy shrugged again. Annette picked up the book and started reading.

  At school, in homeroom, the girls sat and complained:

  “My mother? That witch! You know what she did/said/wants now?”

  It made Nancy curl within herself. And, curling, she bent an ear forward to listen.

  “If I don’t clean my room/get home soon/change my tune, she’s gonna—”

  Nancy’s mother made no demands. She showed Nancy weaving and told her information about the best yarn to use to warp a loom with, the sort of tea to brew depending on the weather, or the best kohl to put around your eyes. She didn’t mind if Nancy slept at Dad’s when it was his night. She didn’t make Nancy call either one home. She made Nancy’s bed when she wasn’t there, rolled her comforter, tucked in the sheets, put away the trundle, kept her pillow fluffed on the dresser top, handy.

  Nobody else’s mother made their bed; Nancy had listened enough to gather that fact. It was a downright bone of contention, the idea that anyone had to make a bed at all.

  “I’ve gotta/I hafta/I’d betta or I’ll get pounded/punished/grounded.”

  Grounded? Nancy’s father would never do such a thing. “That’s no place for me,” he’d say, “so how could I do it to you? What terrible things are you plotting, anyway, that you’re considering consequences like grounding?”

  Nancy just smiled, wanting him to think she was as brave a roof dweller as he was. And listened to what was going on in homeroom.

  6

  Rachel and Nancy’s door stood behind a cobweb iron gate set under Granny and Grandpa’s stoop. This afternoon Rachel was sound asleep when Nancy turned her key in the lock and stepped in. The apartment was dark and the air felt soft like down. The drawn shades let streams of dusty sunshine into the tiny underground kitchen. Like Thumbelina’s house, Nancy had always thought. Her mama was the mole.

  Nancy stood in the doorway that led from the kitchen up cement steps to the yard. She listened to Rachel snoring. Later in the day her mama would emerge, like someone with a star-shaped nose, to cook beautiful soup and bake bread or brownies to contribute to the big dinner Granny was making upst
airs. She’d be happy, ready to nourish and nurture Nancy. Nancy knew this because from here she could see into Mama’s greenhouse studio; she could see that Mama’s loom was warped. New smooth shining threads like a river flowing over a dam waited there practically vibrating, so ready were they. Ready for what? For weft threads to swim through them, crisscrossing into a pattern that was visible now only to Mama, who was probably seeing it in her mind as she slept.

  But here Mama came now, shuffling into the kitchen toward the kettle, saying guilty things, making a plea.

  “You poor little caterpillar, Nancy, you ought to have a better mother. I can’t even go for groceries without the screaming heebie-jeebies! And now we’re out of tea.”

  “Mama, the tulips are blooming in Prospect Park,” Nancy said.

  “I know,” Rachel said tersely. “I’ve seen them before. Why do I need to see them again?” She gripped Nancy’s arm suddenly. “What’s that?”

  “It’s just a car alarm, Ma. Out on the street.”

  Rachel could never get used to that. “Oh,” she said.

  How had Ned ever found Rachel? Grandpa had brought him home. Grandpa Joke had met Grandma Aso long ago, before she’d gone back to Jamaica. Her son Ned was an inside carpenter then, just getting started out of high school. Grandpa needed bookshelves, so when he heard about Ned, he asked Grandma Aso to send him over to look at the job.

  Rachel was living at home, doing giant weavings hung on the wall. She and Ned fell in love. They rented the basement apartment. They fixed the greenhouse together. And Ned built the floor loom.

  He thought it was all temporary, that he would soon make enough as a carpenter, and she’d sell enough weaving, for them to find a place of their own, someplace where they (and soon, Nancy) could be closer to the sky. He was a typical guy, Rachel said, who thought she’d just go with him wherever he went.