I Am Here Now, page 22
“But I’d rather she hated me
than be on my case.
Next time you run away,
take me with you. Promise, Maisie?”
“Okay, Davy. Promise.”
DAVY’S ROOM
New, awful development:
My mother is after Davy now.
“Where’ve you been?”
she hollers whenever
he comes home late.
“Out,” he says vaguely.
“Why is a twelve-year-old boy
so secretive?” she hollers.
“Leave me alone. I’m studying!”
He shuts his door.
“I will not accept this behavior,” she huffs.
“Go away!”
Davy growls.
“I’m not a stand-in for your husband.”
Wow!!! That was brave!
But she doesn’t leave him alone.
Instead,
she looks through his underwear drawer,
finds some papers
like the ones he hid in my sock drawer.
“Pablo? Who the hell is Pablo, Davy?”
Davy’s mute.
“Maisie, get in here!” she screams.
“Have you ever heard about any of Davy’s friends
with that name?”
“There’s a Michael,
who he walks to school with,
and Darren, who he calls
to check his homework.
But Pablo?”
I think, miracle!
For once it’s not me.
Then I think,
why does it have to be either one of us?
MAMA’S BOY
I try to intervene before it gets worse.
I say, “Listen, he’s growing up.
You don’t want him to turn into a mama’s boy.”
“I’m the mother!” she screams.
“He’s my responsibility!”
“Can you please calm down?
You’re out of control,” I say.
This is new for me,
sticking my neck out for Davy.
Davy, of course, says nothing.
PRIVACY
“Why’re you so upset?” I ask.
She bleats, “Why? Why. Are. These. Notes.
Hidden. In. His. Drawer?
Since when does he keep secrets?
Is he writing love notes to a Pablo?”
Davy finally speaks,
his face grim and frozen:
“It’s none of your business, Mother!”
“Everything in this house is my business, David!”
“You’d be surprised!” he shouts
uncharacteristically loudly.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
she screams.
“It means you don’t know everything
about me and never will.
You should leave, Mother!”
GET OUT OF HERE
“You don’t tell me to leave!”
His face is turning barn-fire red.
“Why are you blushing, David?”
Her hands rest on her hips,
always a bad sign.
“I want you to respect me!”
he demands, disturbingly, utterly calm.
“You don’t tell me what to do, boy!”
“I hate you!” he hollers, cheeks crimson.
Her hand swings back. Slap.
He recoils, covers his face.
“You’re getting to be like your sister,”
she says. “Big mistake, buster!”
Slap on his other cheek.
He swings at her.
She tries to grab his hand in hers.
“You’re going to be sorry!” she screams,
and lets loose, pounding him
like homemade bread.
ARE YOU CRAZY?
At first I’m immobilized.
These two have never fought. Never ever.
Then I plant myself between them.
Next thing I know, I’m down.
My right shoulder hits the nightstand.
I glare at Judith, and out of me comes this:
“Are you crazy? What are you thinking?
We’re your children!
You’re supposed to take care of us,
not torment us!”
Davy helps me back up on my unsteady feet,
then I see he wants to hit her again.
“No, Davy!”
I hold his arm steady.
“You’re not angry at us, Mom,” I yell.
“You’re angry at yourself. Your life!”
I throw myself against the door.
Instead of hitting her,
I slam it hard a few times
until the frame makes a cracking sound.
“I’ll never be like you!” I sob.
WHAT I GAVE UP FOR YOU
“Be like me?!” she yells.
“You don’t even know me.
You’ve no idea what I gave up for you.”
“That’s what mothers do!” I say.
“But you couldn’t!”
“Here’s why.” She glowers.
“I never wanted children!
How’s that for the truth?
You were both mistakes!”
She turns on Davy.
“What are you looking at?”
“You don’t know me, either, Mother,”
he mewls.
“What I know is that no woman
will marry you if you don’t change.”
“Don’t worry. I’m never getting married,”
says Davy. “No thanks!”
“What the hell does that mean?”
she screams.
She removes her high-heeled pump
and starts to slam it on my cheek.
“It’s all your fault.”
Sweat beads are forming
under her makeup.
Davy tries to grab the shoe from her.
So she starts clobbering him
on the head, that same head
that he flings against the wall every night.
HE’S YOUR BABY
“Stop! He’s your baby!”
I scream. “You’re hurting him!”
I feel the desire to obliterate this woman
who gave me life
and then did all she could
to make sure I had no shot at it.
ON THE FLOOR
Davy and I grab Judith’s hands
and hold them behind her back.
I say slowly,
“Control yourself. Stop!
You have to stop.”
Her eyes flip open as if hit by lightning.
Then she wrangles free and storms out
of Davy’s room and into her bedroom.
I hear her muttering,
“Oh God. Oh God!”
CALLING DAD
“I’m calling Dad” are the words I hear
escape from my own mouth
while standing outside her door.
I sound like a prison guard,
measured, sane, defiant.
“Mother, you have to tell him
that we can’t stay with you anymore.
We’re not safe here.
You know it’s true.
I have his number.
Shall I call him, or will you?”
OVER
She emerges, walks to the living room.
Her face is no longer raging.
Distorted, yes, but eerily calm.
Like an automaton,
she picks up the phone,
dials, trembles,
but manages to say:
“Joe, I’m done. It’s over.
It has to be over.”
She instructs him to get in the car
and drive up here to the Bronx.
I am standing close enough
to hear my father mumble,
“It’s late, Jude.”
She says, “I know it’s late, moron!
That should make you realize this has to happen.”
“You’re sure?”
His half-asleep voice is so much creamier
than his dad-the-boss voice.
The words fall out of her,
tensely, quietly, deliberately.
“Yes, Joe. I am. I am sure.
You need to take them.”
“Okay.” He coughs a smoker’s cough.
“I’m on my way.”
Davy and I pack some stuff.
We’re frantic.
Like refugees who will never set eyes
on their homeland again,
we ride the elevator down to the lobby
to wait for the ship that is my father’s car
to ferry us across the Harlem River
to a different life.
I STOLE FROM YOU
Dear Rachel,
I know. I know.
You’re not speaking to me.
I don’t blame you.
But please know
you’re the best thing
that happened to me in all my years
in the Bronx.
You lent me your home and your heart
when I needed both so badly.
And what did I do?
I stole from you!
The worst kind of thief.
I don’t blame you for hating me.
I realize I have to let you go,
but I can’t. Not yet.
So I’m writing to you.
And even though
you won’t read my letters …
I have to send them anyway.
Did you at least notice the postmark?
It’s New York City.
Manhattan!
I had to tell you. We’re safe now.
BLAME ME IF YOU WANT
Dear Rachel,
I’m realizing there’s no reason
for Davy and me
to go back to the Bronx again.
The Bronx is history.
The Bronx was never good to me.
Or to him.
I’m trying to lose my accent
and my memories, too.
Except for you.
I’m not making excuses,
but after my father left
and Richie disappeared,
I felt I was going under.
It seemed to be life or death.
I thought Gino was somehow necessary
for me to survive.
Stupid! Ridiculous! Despicable!
Selfish, out of control, a jerk of a friend.
A horror show.
I get it would be difficult,
no, impossible to trust me again.
You could call me every name in the book
and it wouldn’t begin to describe
how underhanded I was.
DESTINY
Dear Rachel,
It’s been three days
since Davy and I became brand-new downtowners.
That first morning,
we woke up on the fourteenth floor
of his building on East End Avenue.
We look down on Gracie Mansion.
That’s where the mayor lives!
Light bulb moment.
There might be one potential great thing
about living in Manhattan
if, only if, I could get in
to the High School of Art and Design.
Once your mother told me about it,
I decided that has to be my destiny!
I’m writing in case
you have the tiniest shred of interest.
But why would you?
I know this is a one-way street.
SWANK
You wouldn’t believe this, Rachel.
My dad’s apartment walls
have fabric on them!
Silk! It’s sumptuous, swank.
Mirrors everywhere, a Jewish Taj Mahal.
Dad said, “Kids, Brandy did the decorating.
She has a great eye.”
Naturally, Brandy—Dad’s girlfriend,
or whatever she is—brightened.
I thought, Dad, of course you’d say that:
Those eyes looked around and found you!
The two of them were standing by the doorway.
He draped his arm around her,
and she sank into him.
I admit it:
I’ve never seen my mother happy
when my dad touched her.
“We’re going to have a nice time together,”
my dad said.
“You bet,” Brandy agreed.
“I love you, kids,” he added.
I wish I could hear what you’d say about that.
I always cherished what you thought.
But I’m not holding my breath.
I HOPE
So, Rachel,
I told Brandy about
the High School of Art and Design.
The next thing I knew we were in a taxicab
driving down Lexington,
going for a preliminary interview!
Mrs. De Floria, the assistant principal, said
I’ll have to show them a portfolio as a kind of audition
to get in next year.
She gave me a list of pieces
to include,
plus essays to write, grades to transfer.
Brandy made sure to tell the vice principal
I’m included in a gallery show
on Madison Avenue.
That’s because of Nastasia,
your mom’s friend.
Mrs. De Floria’s eyebrows rose up.
Smile.
THE LIST
For the portfolio, I’ll need
an exterior landscape,
an original graphic design,
a three-dimensional sculpture,
an idea for a toy,
the map of an imagined country,
three figure drawings,
two portraits.
You know I love to draw faces;
they’re landscapes to me,
foreign countries of forms,
shapes, and volume.
I lose myself in them.
I love the way a nostril can tell you
someone’s haughty or a chin suggests
a certain kind of laziness
or defiance, as if personalities
are inscribed in flesh and bone
for all the world to see.
Nothing on them is random;
all our features are a code!
Who is the artist who figured that out?
Daumier, maybe?
Did you ever think about these things, Rachel?
I miss you so much.
I love your face, your perfect face.
I AM THE MASTER
Rachel, you’d understand better than anyone
how my mother’s visage haunts me.
Those cold eyes,
the lips gripping each other,
the severity of her spirit.
I’m drawing to understand her,
I guess, or to stop being afraid.
A pencil in my hand
helps me feel some control.
SLOPPY LINES
My first attempts are totally abstract;
an unknown energy moves my hands.
There’s an astonishing motor inside me,
turned on like never before.
Big inhales, exhales,
and I want to sing and I can’t sing!
I get so involved, so captured, and honestly,
if Naples Yellow right next to Cerulean
doesn’t completely carry you away,
nothing ever will!
I feel what the masters must have felt:
benign delirium!
Giotto, Rembrandt, Matisse, Tchelitchew.
When I meet them in art heaven,
will they talk to me
about light sources
or the meaning of turquoise, please?
Well, I don’t really think
I’ll land in heaven …
Anyway, I don’t know how long I’ve been at it,
but finally I step back.
What I’ve made is ugly.
But somehow it is also beautiful.
HARD TO EXPLAIN
I picture you at the mailbox,
seeing my letters,
getting annoyed and tossing them out
before you even open them.
Telling your mom
what a complete disaster it was
that you bothered to know me.
Still, I keep writing to you.
The poetry of apology.
COURAGE
Dear Rachel,
Brandy isn’t bitchy
if I treat her a certain way
(which means saying a million times a day
how beautiful she is and that
she has a great rack,
which is humongous,
then, ugh, she has to tell me
that my dad loves them, too).
Brandy cooks a great roast duck.
And sometimes comes into my room
and actually talks to me.
I guess I’ll put her on probation.
MISS YOU MISS YOU MISS YOU
Dear Rachel,
One last attempt to get through to you:
Enclosed is the invite to the opening
of the gallery show.
If you don’t come,
I promise I’ll never bother you again.
One more thing:
I got an encouraging letter from Art and Design!
Alone, at night,
I pretend you and I have conversations
and that you’re happy for me.
You would be,
if only I hadn’t been a total scoundrel.
WHO YOU CAN AND WHO YOU CAN’T HAVE
Dear Maisie,
Can you believe, Gino lives with his mother!
Nobody knows where the dad went!
His perfect family was perfect fiction!
Last week he left a rose at my front door.
Romantic, right?
Then I found out he left roses
for four other girls
at their front doors!
I personally know three of them!
I get it now:
I’m the dense one.
