Grandma was worried about me for other reasons. “Jesus Christ, Rene, you should see what she’s wearing,” she told my aunt, twisted phone cord bouncing against her elbow as she tried to conceal her laughter.
Emboldened by a summer spent reading Sassy magazine, thrift shopping, and sewing, I had the perfect outfit in mind for my first day of high school, something that would announce to my fellow classmates that I had zero shits left to give about them and warn the seniors that they were dealing with a wholly unique motherfucker. I purchased almost thirty neckties at a thrift store bag sale—anything you could fit in a brown paper bag was yours for one dollar—bought a zipper from Dayton’s, and spent a full day at my sewing machine dutifully stitching them all together halfway down, letting the pointed ends fly free. In the end, I had concocted a multicolored, technicolor dreamcoat of a tie skirt, stiff at the top for lack of a waistband. I threw on a white T-shirt, some white leggings, and my Converse sneakers. I looked fucking rad.
I’d modeled the finished product for Grandma as soon as I completed the final stitch, but she was still shocked when I followed through with wearing it to my first day of high school. “So that’s your outfit, then?” Her shoulders shook, a marker of how she geared up for one of her epic howls. “That’s my grandchild,” she laughed, shaking her head.
In the hallways at school, people stared. Some pointed. Fuck ’em, I thought, stomping toward my assigned locker in the basement. I already live with the meanest person in town. For the next four years, I was determined to avoid the trap of normalcy and become the art-loving, city-roaming weirdo I knew I was meant to be.
* * *
—
For no good reason other than I thought it looked cool, I had decided to shave my head. My commitment to not giving a fuck what people thought of me grew with every day I walked the halls. I wanted a little ponytail left at the top, and the rest underneath it gone. The only barber in town seemed to cater to old men, and I wasn’t sure they’d even let me in the door. Cory became my only option; his friend Lucian, a recent transplant from New York City, had clippers that Cory could borrow.
I sat on the floor in front of my bed while the clippers buzzed to life behind me. “Grandma is going to kill you,” Cory said smiling, shearing off the first clump of hair.
“Just concentrate on making a straight line!” I snapped. I knew that he was right. Even though she repeatedly told me that I could do what I wanted to do with my own body, she still held Cory and me to strict ideals that involved not embarrassing her in public.
When he was finished, I stood up as Cory eyeballed a measurement on either side of my ears using his pointer finger. “I think I got it pretty straight,” he said proudly.
“You think?!” I ran to the mirror. My cheekbones were more prominent, but I still looked like a Cabbage Patch Kid instead of a cool, heavy metal–loving badass. “It’s not really even on the right.” I paused. “I guess we can just cut more?”
Cory’s eyes lit up. “Okay!”
When Grandma came home from work, I trotted downstairs and walked past her to the kitchen as casually as possible. “Child, what did you do to your head?” I returned to the living room.
“I shaved it.” I didn’t want to apologize for what I wanted to look like anymore, whether it made Grandma feel bad or not. It was a bit too heavy to carry the burden of my whole race and the respectability politics that ruled Grandma’s life. I wanted the freedom of a white kid—to mess up, to go wild, and still have access to a life beyond my teenage mistakes.
Grandma stared at me. “I don’t like it.”
I stared back. “Well, it’s my head, so you don’t have to.” I was testing out the defiance that I wanted to possess as I moved through the world, except I was starting with the scariest character at the end of the video game level—my grandma. If I could defeat her, no one else stood a chance.
“It certainly is your head,” Grandma said, sighing. She was tired from being on her feet all day in the Greenbrier Room. She unbuttoned her shirt halfway, then reached back and unhooked her bra. Her tits dropped like boulders rolling down a hill as she tossed the bra to the far side of the couch. “I guess you can do whatever you want, even if you look like a boy. It’s your problem now.”
There was a bit of freedom in knowing Grandma didn’t like my haircut but there was nothing she could do to change it. I could possess my body in this small way.
* * *
—
I wanted to take my new self into the real world, to see how I fit and if I could find like-minded people. New York City seemed like the perfect testing ground; it was the home of the bright, peacock-colored club kids who were sometimes on Phil Donahue; CBGB and the punk scene I was starting to discover; and Anna Sui, a favorite of the designers I was beginning to pay attention to in magazines. Most Warwick kids went to the city with their families; they’d come home with reports of seeing the tree in Rockefeller Center or some show at Radio City Music Hall. I didn’t give a shit about family fun—I wanted to see the real New York City, the one that was a playground for my grandparents and the site of personal transformation for almost everyone I admired.
Grandma drew the line at letting me go to the city alone, where, in her mind, I would instantly be raped, strangled, and mutilated in the middle of Times Square. “It’s a disgusting place,” she said, screwing up her face. “We left for a reason, you know.” It never occurred to me, but Grandma hadn’t been back to the city more than a handful of times since she moved to Greenwood Lake. Our city family always came to us. She had completely distanced herself from her roots and was confused that I was now dying to go there.
She agreed that I could go to the Willowbrook Mall. It was one stop away from New York City on the bus but felt safer to my grandma than the thought of me roaming around the East Village on my own.
“I could still get raped and mutilated in a mall,” I said matter-of-factly.
“Not likely—you’re six feet tall, and you look like a crazy person with that hair,” Grandma said, laughing. “You won’t be anyone’s first choice. Now, which side do you look at when you want to come home?”
I was kneeling on a kitchen chair, hunched over the table, as Grandma stood next to me and pointed to the tiny print on the black-and-white New Jersey Transit bus schedule.
“The other side.”
“Right.” She flipped over the rectangular tri-folded paper. “Show me what time.”
I squinted at the numbers, running my eyes down the list, trying to keep them in line with the places the bus stopped. I pointed at the grid.
“Four forty-five.”
“Good. You still biting those nails?” Grandma lifted my finger from the schedule and sucked her teeth in disgust. “A filthy habit. No boys are gonna want to hold your hand if you always have your fingers in your mouth, you know.”
“I don’t want to hold hands with any boys.”
“You’re going to get typhus, sucking on those filthy fingers all day.”
“What’s typhus?”
“Never mind. If you’re not home by six p.m., I’m going to assume you’ve been kidnapped, and if you get kidnapped, well, that serves you right.”
I grabbed the schedule from the table and stood up. “I’m six feet tall, and everyone already assumes I’m an adult. I’m not going to get adult-napped.” I looked down at Grandma, lightly poking the top of her head. “You’re getting a bald spot.”
Grandma laughed. “Get the fuck out of here,” she said, swatting my hand away. “You have enough money?”
“Yeah. I have a hundred dollars in babysitting money.”
“Don’t go flashing it around,” Grandma said seriously. “Keep your money in your bag, and when you pay for things, don’t take it all out at once.”
“I knoooooooow,” I said, rolling my eyes. She’d been giving me the same instructions forever, even
if I was just going to the Grand Union to buy her maxi pads in our cowpoke town.
“I’d tell you to tuck it in your little bra,” she said, motioning to my flat chest, “but it would just slide down.” Grandma laughed one of her Pillsbury Doughboy laughs, cracking herself up. “Keep your bus fare in your bra,” she said, suddenly serious. “If anyone tries to grab you, you know what to do?”
I rolled my eyes again. “Cut his dick off.”
“That’s right,” Grandma said. She pointed at me and tilted her head up to look me in the eye. “If anybody ever puts their hands on you, you cut their pecker right off.”
Grandma had been encouraging me to castrate men since I was old enough to know what dicks even were. She’d regale me with tales of her friends from the city who got mixed up with bad men, and that was combined with the threat of street violence, horror movies, and after-school episodes of Oprah. The mechanics of this seemed dubious to me; where was I going to carry a knife? Would they just be standing there while I unbuttoned their pants to flop out their offensive member?
Grandma filled the kettle at the sink and popped it on the stove. “Have fun at the mall, baby. Back by six, you hear me?”
I heard her. I smiled and ran upstairs. I was finally going to experience some freedom. I was too excited—it was just a mall, after all. But if I conquered this trip a few times, I might muster the courage to stay on the bus for one more stop and reach my true destination.
The bus stop in front of the Burger King and next to the Chinese restaurant on Oakland Avenue had a small vestibule, but most of us stood waiting near the high wooden planter box instead. When the bus arrived, the door swung open, and I hopped on. Oakland Avenue was the first and last stop of route 197; I was the only one on the bus. The fourth seat back had the most leg room, but it was reserved for people with disabilities, so I wedged myself into the third row.
It took almost two hours to go over the mountain, wind our way around Greenwood Lake, through the woodsy parts of New Jersey where the Real Housewives live, and on to Willowbrook Mall. I listened to my cassette player a little bit but was afraid the batteries would die, leaving me with no music for the way home. I looked out the window instead and thought about how many twists, turns, and potholes I would recognize if I were put in the trunk of a car, assuming the inevitable kidnappers took this exact route.
The mall was okay. It had the same stores as the Galleria, but their head shop had better incense and cloth purses. What I liked most was being alone. In my house and life, solitude was rare. I took my time navigating in any direction I wanted to go, choosing when I was hungry for a snack, and deciding how long I wanted to spend in the record store without being hurried along to Sears. I meandered and relaxed, feeling the day spread before me.
When it was time to get back on the bus, I stood at one of three bus stops. The 197 came through, and I hopped on, but thought to ask, “Is this bus going to Warwick?”
The driver looked at me and motioned for me to stand aside so the other passengers could get through. “One more stop, and that’s Port Authority,” he said gruffly. “Warwick bus, stand at that one.” He pointed to one of the other bus stops across from ours. I thanked him and hopped off the bus, proud of myself for thinking to ask the question but excited by the notion that Manhattan was just twenty minutes and one stop away.
* * *
—
After a few more trips to the Willowbrook Mall, I started staying on the bus and sneaking into New York City. The markers started becoming familiar—the skyline visible across the Hudson River as the bus made the arc that delivered us into the Lincoln Tunnel, the whoosh of sound as we rocketed underwater, the valve release of being poured into Midtown, past the Covenant House, around the blazing-red New Yorker Hotel sign, and into the hot, rank Port Authority Bus Terminal. I followed the other riders off the bus and down the stairs, frantically trying to read signs overhead that pointed me toward the street. I flashed back to Grandma squeezing my hand tight as I left the building. I walked, not knowing where I was going, just to feel like I was part of the humming sea of New Yorkers. The street numbers started going up, but I knew I wanted to go downtown toward the Village, so I crossed the street and walked toward where I had just come from. The post office building had huge pillars and looked more like the White House than our tiny brick building on Main Street in Warwick. It was right across from Madison Square Garden, which I’d seen on TV when the Knicks played.
It felt like I couldn’t go a square inch without bumping into something I’d seen, heard, or read about. My mind exploded, every synapse firing at once while I took in how tall the buildings were, how loud the cars honked, how fast the people moved. No one paid any attention to me—they didn’t call me weird or ask what planet I came from. I just fit in, an invisible molecule in a larger, more interesting system.
When my friend Leslie and I decided to sneak into the city to see a Jellyfish concert at the Roseland Ballroom, I’d never been to the city at night, but we were confident that we’d be back before anyone could even think to be suspect. Leslie lived in Pine Island; we bonded over our love of heavy metal. She wore black every single day, rotating out a carefully cultivated group of band T-shirts that, if she sold them on eBay today, would make her a few thousand dollars. Leslie was always up for a concert, or anything having to do with getting out of town. We told our wards we were going roller-skating at a rink near the Pennsylvania border. They believed us because we were both good kids, and dorky enough to choose something as old-fashioned as roller-skating for a fun Saturday night out. I took the bus from Oakland Avenue, while Leslie drove to the new park-and-ride near Homestead Village and met me on the bus.
The address for the Roseland was on the ticket; both Leslie and I knew that the streets of New York were laid out like a grid and figured we could find out where it was on our own. In the time before cell phones, we all navigated like Pilgrims. We excitedly ran through the Port Authority, spilling out the entrance near Strawberry and the Peter Pan bus counters on the Forty-Second Street side of Eighth Avenue.
New York City at night was a different animal. The buildings felt taller, as the lights from the windows stretched into the night sky like stars. Steam poured out of holes in the streets for reasons I could not fathom, giving everything the feeling of an old black-and-white movie. Instead of seeing faces, you just felt movement, like being constantly aware that someone was behind you. The smell of steaming hot dog carts rivaled the smell of piss as drunk men rambled out of bars, relieving themselves on any building that was close enough to conceal them. Sometimes, if you stayed close to the Port Authority and the Theater District, you’d see the glittering shimmer of a going-out dress, the soft whisper of a camel hair coat, hair swept into distinctive curls around faces with too much makeup on. All of this life, this wonder, experienced in a span of minutes.
I can’t remember if it was an all-ages show or if we just talked our way in. I was used to the doorman dance by now, having weaseled my underaged way into a few butt-rock shows at the Chance in Poughkeepsie, a tiny club where people eventually started getting stabbed. “I don’t drink—I just want to see the show. You can even give me a bracelet so the bartenders know not to serve me.” At my full height of six feet tall, most doormen just let me in without asking, assuming I was eighteen or, possibly worse, knowing that I wasn’t. It was a hustle, but it was also the truth, and it always worked.
The show started a little late, but we didn’t care. We spilled out onto the street with the crowd, and Leslie asked someone what time it was. When I heard 11:30 p.m., my heart sank. The last bus to Warwick was at 12:03 a.m.
We started running. We gave up running after three blocks; I felt like my lungs were going to explode. Instead, we walked very fast, like a couple of grandmas trying to exercise by doing laps around the mall. Waiting at red lights was agony, the clock ticking down.
When we were a block away from
the Port Authority, we started running again. “What time is it?” I breathlessly asked someone as we sprinted by. “It’s eleven fifty-four p.m.”
I stopped short. “Shit. What gate?”
Leslie looked at me. I knew that we could buy tickets on the bus but had no idea which gate the last bus to Warwick left from.
There was a line at the only open booth. We sped past it and right to the front with the full audacity of teenagers who were scared shitless. “I’m sorry, it’s an emergency!” I pleaded with the line behind me. “We just have one question!” I turned to the booth agent. “Which gate for 197 to Warwick? Please?” My voice was shaky. I was trying not to cry, not to feel the defeat of watching the bus pull away before it actually happened.
The booth agent, a short black woman with deep maroon lipstick, snapped her gum. She spoke to me without making eye contact. “Gate 403.” The farthest away point from the highest side of the building.
“What time is it?” Leslie asked.
“Just run!” I shouted back.
We rounded the corner to the 400 gates. Small lines of people splayed out diagonally at each gate marker, but there was no line at 403. That wasn’t a good sign.
When we got to the gate, though, the bus was still idling in its spot.
I ran to the door and jumped on. “One. For. Warwick. Please,” I said to the driver, completely out of breath. I glanced down the long aisle to see if we would be able to get a seat. That was when I saw Granddad, sitting in the front seat directly to my left, the light from the seat lamp shining down on the New York Post open on his lap.
I leapt off the bus.
“You have to buy the tickets,” I whispered to Leslie.
“You ladies getting on or what?” the driver called out the door.
The Ugly Cry Page 17
