“I’m starving,” Annie whined. I had been saving a Hershey bar in my pocket and reluctantly broke it in half and offered her a piece of my coveted chocolate.
The moon was bright, the air cold enough to burn my nose. When the Westchester El roared by, we jumped back, not sure whether the flying white sparks would burn if they landed on us.
On Simpson Street, we held hands to brace ourselves against the wind coming around the Telephone Company Building. In winter, on our way home from school, it was often strong enough to blow us off the street. After a long block without any signs of life, we stopped at the corner. Looking up, I saw the street sign read Tiffany, not Kelly. “Where are we?” I could hear the fear in Annie’s voice and realized we had gotten turned around.
My feet were screaming, the pointy shoes getting smaller with each step. Just as we were about to turn around and go back the way we came, three teenage girls stepped out of the shadows, tall as lampposts, like a tangle of black ghosts that sprang to life to scare the living shit out of us. Getting held at knifepoint or even gunpoint was an everyday event on these Fort Apache streets, and I felt myself step back.
I recognized one of the girls from school. Her name was Biffy, and she was big enough to swallow me whole. I stood still, waiting to see what she would do. I had been to her apartment in the Classon Point projects. Being invited to her place was a big deal and gave me a look at her poverty, which weighed even more than mine. Her bedroom had security gates that covered grime-coated windows. A broken mirror had been propped against a dresser, a bookshelf held rows of paperbacks, their bright jackets incongruous in that lifeless room. I had never gone back.
“Hey, how come you don’t say hello,” Biffy asked, pitching her cigarette into the gutter.
“I’m sorry,” I blurted out. “It’s so dark I didn’t see you.”
Whoops and whistles came from her cohorts, and I realized my mistake. Biffy’s skin was jet black. I was close to tears but laughed instead.
“You a funny girl.” Biffy gave me a smirk. “You takin’ your life in your own hands out here at night, but I’m a let you go cause it’s Christmas.”
“Thanks a lot,” I said over my shoulder. “See ya.” And then I grabbed Annie’s hand and ran down the street, not caring that my shoes were rubbing blisters into my heels.
We double-backed, crossed over Simpson Street, and passed by the gated candy store where I often bought six-cent cokes. It was cold enough to scare the junkies off the street, scatter them to abandoned hallways where no one was celebrating Christmas. We stepped around flattened cardboard boxes and broken bottles. We checked the crashed-out tenements, Gracie’s name echoing in the empty hallways when we called out to her. In one vestibule a group of young Hispanics gathered around a radiator. One of them stepped forward when I opened the door.
“I’m looking for Gracie or George. Have you seen them?”
“No, man. Ain’t seen nobody,” he slurred, so stoned I could have pushed him over.
A fire truck screamed by, momentarily diverting his attention, giving us the chance to get away. I opened another door to a wall of mailboxes gouged open. Scorch marks decorated the marble steps. I hated that Gracie frequented tenement buildings like these, where lobbies held the spoils of the lives of drug addicts, where the floors were littered with spoons and matches, so filthy and smelly you needed a gas mask to breathe. I had been to buildings like these before on other searches, and my best guess was that she could be found behind some dark stairway where no one could see her shoot heroin into her arm.
Close to 8:00 p.m., we stopped in front of the manger set up on the small lawn outside our church and studied the baby Jesus in his crèche scene. We had been looking for over an hour.
“Maybe if we go in and say about a hundred Hail Marys we’ll find Gracie on the next street,” Annie said half-heartedly.
There had been a time not so long ago when Annie believed flying reindeer would take her for rides over the rooftops of the Bronx. She didn’t believe in much of anything anymore.
The church door opened, and out walked Angela with her mother, who had probably driven there in her car so Angela could set up flowers on the altar for mass. I wanted to hide, but they saw us.
“I thought we were going to meet up at my apartment before midnight mass.” Angela didn’t seem surprised to see us walking around. Helen, one of the few tenants my mother liked because she went to work and minded her own business, smiled at us.
“I know. I’m sorry. My mother sent us to look for Gracie, and we can’t find her.”
Helen’s smile faded. “I can drive you home.”
It was a treat when Helen drove us anywhere. No one in my family had a driver’s license. Instead of accepting the ride and walking into our apartment without Matt, I lied.
“We’ll be back in time for mass, I think I know where she is.”
A few days before, Angela told me about the shopping trip to Bloomingdale’s she took with her mother, and I noticed the proper coat and hat. I looked down at my own cheap, ruined shoes, and thought about Annie and me traipsing around the freezing streets on Christmas Eve, dressed all wrong. I hated her.
“All right.” Her voice was light-hearted, like missing our night out was no big deal. “See you later.” Helen looked back as they headed for their car, her arm around Angela’s shoulder, her face now a worried frown.
“I’m freezing,” Annie whined again.
And then I saw it: the green light outside the 41st Precinct. It was like a beacon that drew me forward. After more than an hour of wandering the streets, the light looked surreal.
“Let’s go to the police.”
“No!” Annie’s expression was confused. “She’ll get arrested.”
“Listen to me,” I said. “Matt is out there somewhere. He could be cold and hungry. It’s not just about Gracie. She is probably stoned by now. She could forget about him and leave him in an abandoned building.”
The wreath on the door of the precinct was a reminder of what we were missing out on tonight. Inside the warm reception area an officer sat behind a high wooden counter. He had black hair and a friendly face, and I made a weak attempt at a smile.
In a shaky voice I said, “Our sister is a drug addict who took her baby with her to get drugs. We’ve been looking for hours and can’t find them. Can you help us?”
If Annie said the words they would have sounded more pathetic. I used her to ask for what I wanted when being cute was more important than being practical, but I could tell that the policeman took me seriously.
“Come with me.” He was bigger than he looked behind the desk and had a twinkly smile he probably reserved for kids. He ushered us into a small room that smelled of stale cigarettes. “Sit here. I’ll be right back.”
We sat on the metal chairs, and he came back a few minutes later with two mugs of hot chocolate. His name tag read Fallon. “What’s your name?” he asked.
“Kathleen, and this is Anne.” She sat up straight, her hands folded in her lap like a good little girl.
“Where do you live?” Officer Fallon was tall, heavy-set with light brown eyes, and a mahogany voice. He was Paul Newman and Elvis Presley, and I fell a little bit in love.
“We live on Faile Street,” I said, and Annie piped up, “It’s not like she kidnapped her son or anything.” Annie was irresistible, and I could tell he thought so too.
“We’ve been up and down Faile Street, Southern Boulevard, Hoe Avenue, and even Tiffany Street.” My senses felt heightened, intrusive, my new bra and garter belt rough and scratchy. The taste of hot chocolate lingered on my tongue, sweet and gummy. “We wanted to go over to Kelly Street, but were turned around.” The 41st Precinct was in the worst neighborhood in the Bronx, and Kelly Street was off the radar. You did not want to walk around there, especially in the dark.
Officer Fallon looked like a
family man, the kind of father I wanted all my life, and I watched him while he wrote down our words.
“Do you have any kids, Officer Fallon?” I asked.
“Two sons.” He brightened a bit, and his smile seemed out of place in the room. “Five and seven.”
“I guess they’re waiting for you to come home for Christmas.” He would own a car, I imagined, and drive home to a tree-lined street lit with holiday lights.
“We’ll have Christmas tomorrow. Someone’s gotta work Christmas Eve, and I won the privilege. By the way, call me Officer Tom. My father is Officer Fallon.”
I thought about Officer Tom’s two boys and how they must love roughhousing with their father, how excited they must be anticipating his coming home. I pictured his wife as she looked into his soft brown eyes and said, I love you. I pictured his living room filled with great gifts and the boys tearing open all their dreams come true.
“Stay here. I’ll try to find your sister and her son and be back before you know it.”
The room felt empty when he shut the door, and we sat in the small, dirty space that was once painted green and was now a sooty-gray, the only furniture the scarred table and four metal chairs. There were no windows, and the bright bulb in the ceiling put a sharp edge on everything.
We sat quietly, warming our hands on the hot cups. My feet were freezing and on fire at the same time; I released them from the crippling shoes and wiggled my toes. When I looked down, they were red and swollen, my nylon stockings pooled around my ankles.
I should have been a stranger in that precinct, but the truth was I had been there many times, when my father beat up my mother, when Corky beat me up. That was the short list. I watched Annie swing her Maryjanes back and forth, the ruffle of her white socks blurring. Her hair, which we took so much time to fix, now looked like it had not been combed at all. She was still beautiful, her cheeks rosy, her pouty lips red from the cold. She was missing her first midnight mass, the first time she was allowed to stay up on Christmas Eve, but she had not said a word about it.
“What do you think we’ll get for Christmas?” I asked her.
“I don’t know.” She was just past the Santa stage. “Not a doll, I hope.” She rubbed her arms. Her coat was too thin, not really suited for a cold winter night like this. She had picked it out when Delaney, our mother’s cousin, brought us to Alexander’s for our Christmas gift, thinking the red color Christmassy, excited when she bought it, never imagining she would wear it to find her sister on freezing streets.
The hot chocolate made me feel warm and sleepy, and I considered putting my head on the table, but the door opened and I saw the wobbly wheels of Matt’s carriage. Officer Tom ushered Gracie in. It had only been a few hours since I last saw her, but already her hair looked oily, her clothes grimy.
“Found them on Kelly Street, just like you thought.” He nodded to me. “She and her boyfriend were sleeping in a hallway.” He shook his head at her like he was disappointed. “Her boyfriend is in lockup. The baby seems fine.” Both Annie and I peeked into the carriage where Matt looked warm and cozy.
“When did he eat last?” Annie asked.
“He had a bottle about an hour ago. I took him to Gloria’s where I fed and changed him.” Gracie gave her a long look. “I am his mother.”
I saw Annie’s eyebrows shoot up, like this was debatable. I watched Officer Tom fill out paperwork and wondered what he would do with Gracie. I was too afraid to ask.
“Let’s go.” He stood up. “I’m going to walk you home,” he said. “I’d like to talk to your mother.”
Matt was still sleeping peacefully, unaware of his surroundings, and we strolled down Southern Boulevard as snowflakes began to swirl softly from the sky.
“Can I get a cup of coffee?” Gracie asked when we passed the Boulevard Diner.
“Sure,” Officer Tom said.
Inside the empty restaurant, we sat in one of the red leather booths and parked the carriage next to us. A waitress came over, and without asking, Officer Tom ordered apple pie à la mode for everybody.
“I’m not hungry.” Gracie gave a weak smile to the lady. “Just coffee, thanks.”
I watched her pour half the sugar-jar into her coffee cup. She couldn’t stop moving, twitching, scratching, wiping her nose. Please, just leave me here and go home without me, her eyes pleaded. But I couldn’t leave her. A police officer was sitting with us and there was no going back. I looked out the window of the coffee shop into the ruined night and said a prayer for my sister. Please, God, just let her kick drugs and make her back into the old Gracie.
Outside, a light coating of snow had settled on the deserted streets, showing the track marks of Matt’s coach carriage. Officer Tom helped us down the cement stairs with the carriage and walked through the dark passageway where someone had broken the light bulb again. My mother was waiting for us in the kitchen.
“Thank God.” Tears were streaming down her face. She looked like a shadow of my mother, smaller, less imposing. The overhead pipes were unusually quiet, and the radio was playing “Jingle Bells” softly in the next room. The little ones were asleep, and my mother had been sitting alone on Christmas Eve for hours, a cup of cold coffee with a smudge of lipstick on the rim, an overflowing ashtray in front of her. A few moments passed before she saw the police officer, and I caught the hesitation, the relief that everyone was all right usurped by the fear that a cop was standing in her kitchen.
Annie reached into the baby carriage and picked up Matt, holding him to her. She looked too small to be holding a baby, too young, but she was the one who knew what should be done. “I’m going to put you to bed,” she told him.
I went to the bathroom to wash off the stink of the Bronx streets, and when I came out, Gracie was sitting on the living room couch alone, watching the blinking lights from a strand of fake garland my mother had strung over the doorway. The air in the room felt heavy and even the blinking lights seemed to have slowed, as if the spirit had gone out of them. She was still wearing the same pilled red sweater and black pants with the hem coming down. Her worn-out shoes had been tossed aside, and a bone-like knuckle stuck out of her red, chafed feet. I made a mental note to give her my gym sneakers and some warm socks, but I didn’t get up. Taking off my shoes, I rubbed the circulation back into my toes, and ran my hand over the blisters. Gracie studied the nails she had bitten down to nubs. She was 21 years old and looked 40.
“He found drugs.” She glanced up at me. “They arrested George.” She didn’t ask me why I had gone to the police. She seemed resigned to her fate.
I squeezed my eyes shut trying to drown out the clamor she unleashed in my mind. When I opened them, I could tell she was thinking it over to see what kind of new pattern jail would make in her life. I started to say something reassuring but let it go. She was too preoccupied to listen, her blue eyes glazed over. I could smell the fear on her, the disease.
Finally, she lit a cigarette and watched the fire burn down the match until it was a little black stick, then tossed it in the ashtray. When she looked at me I saw a plea. Years of sisterhood made us able to communicate without words. She wanted me to help her tame whatever demons had ahold of her. But there were so few options for me, a thirteen-year-old girl in the basement of a Bronx tenement.
We listened as our mother sat in the kitchen pleading for Gracie’s freedom. In the end, Gracie was allowed to go live with Aunt Delia to detox and get clean. “I’ll kick the habit,” Gracie said, standing next to Officer Tom in our little kitchen. “I promise.” But somewhere in me, I knew I had lost my sister. I had picked law and order over her, and things would never quite be the same between us after that. And though Gracie would continue to leave and come back into my life, I understood that I would have to make a choice for a different kind of sisterhood if I didn’t want to end up like her.
Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact.
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Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.
— Marcus Aurelius
Behind the Shield
“Come on, get up,” Paul yelled up the stairs a few days after Mr. Hutchinson brought news that I would receive half Brian’s salary. “I’m on loan from the department for the week.” Paul was one of the few NYPD who kept in touch. He and Brian had been close friends since their days at the academy. Paul and Roseanne were Chris’s godparents. “I plan to take my role in his life seriously,” he said right after the funeral. “I want to be there for him and for Keith.”
“Shush,” I called down, trying to find my robe. How did he get in? “The boys are sleeping.”
“No they’re not,” Paul called back. “Keith let me in. They’re in the kitchen having breakfast.”
I never heard them. These days, I was either awake all night or slept like the dead. In the kitchen, I stepped on cereal covering the floor. Paul was working on a pile of dishes still in the sink.
I ruffled Keith’s hair. “Chris.” I looked at my little boy who needed a bath. “You know you’re not supposed to get out of your crib.” An acrobat, Chris could do flips out of his crib with one hand. A few weeks ago, my neighbor called to tell me he was standing on the second-floor windowsill.
“I climb out,” he said.
“From now on call Mommy when you want to get out, okay?”
He played with his cereal while I kissed his head.
“What do you need me to do today?” Paul put a cup of coffee in my hands.
Life Detonated Page 7
