At night when you and Dad were out, I sometimes rummaged through your bureau drawers in an effort to discover your secrets. Everything of yours was immaculately folded. I admired your filmy underwear.
“We’re poor. We can’t afford it,” you would say if I asked for something like a new sweater or if, more significantly, I asked to go away to boarding school. Nonetheless, you spent large amounts dining out and shopped at the most expensive stores.
I never felt well-dressed. So I would save up my pocket money and go to discount stores and factory outlets via infrequent bus connections. I wanted to get a job and have money of my own to spend, but I couldn’t because of the long school day.
In the locker room at school I felt embarrassed with my worn, stretched panties and the gray grime that wouldn’t wash out from my bra. The “in” girls possessed lithe, petite bodies, impeccable white lacy bras and fresh cotton underpants that looked as if they had just been taken out of their Best’s tissue wrappings.
I would secretively wash out several pairs of blood-stained cotton panties after they had accumulated in my closet. Then I would dry them on a rack behind a towel in the attic bathroom, where I hoped they would be invisible. The stains never came completely out. They came from blood that leaked over the edge of my sanitary pads. I bled far too much. The smell of the dark, dried menstrual blood embarrassed me. It was rich, sweet, heavy. I would bleed huge purple clots of blood. This would go on for many days. When I asked for new underwear, you said vaguely, “We’ll see,” adding that I needed to wash what I had more thoroughly.
When I was ten, struck with a desire to look like other girls—this had never concerned me much before—I asked to have my braids cut off. Now my hair was full and frizzy, and you were constantly telling me to brush it. In your mind, my hair was someone else’s, smooth, flat, and shiny. I longed for you to help me with my hair, but you never did.
At times you had generous impulses. You bought me a few beautiful dresses, as well as some that seemed chosen for someone who wasn’t me at all—glaring yellow or chartreuse. It was hit or miss. I seemed to be an abstraction in your mind. There was no connection with the fibers and nerves and reality of me.
When a boy at school invited me to a prom, you took me from store to store in a tireless search for the perfect dress. Finally we found a pale blue strapless gown that I thought far too expensive. But you liked it. As a finishing touch, you bought me a pair of sheer blue nylon panties. I was shocked. Why the sexy underwear for a boy I barely knew?
When I did buy clothes, I feared making a wrong choice. I was also afraid of choosing the wrong music on the car radio. What you considered bad taste would invoke something worse than scorn. It would make me an inferior being in your eyes. This was evident from the way in which you judged and mocked others.
Mockery was like an invisible, electric fence all around me.
None of us, in truth, were spared your mockery, except perhaps for Howard.
“Rosa said something so funny the other day … I asked her what she wanted to do when she grew up, and she said, ‘I want to work hard.’” Everyone laughed uproariously. It was Sunday night, and we were gathered on the terrace. Lights from candles flickered on the table. The food had been exquisite; the guests, who consisted of three or four faculty members and a White Russian refugee who had fallen on hard times, were a little in awe of you. I laughed, too, but I felt undone.
For a while we had a black spaniel named April who was very high strung. “I need to take Rosa to get spayed. Oh, I meant to say the dog.” You found this slip of the tongue most amusing.
I wanted to be a cheerleader. For days I would practice, although I feared your mockery, ever ready to surface. I could imagine you saying, “Rosa spent hours thumping up and down on the floor. She was going through the strangest contortions.”
I was never chosen.
Was it because I was unpopular? Clumsy? Or was it because of my arm?
I would look into a mirror, see just how far I could stretch it without revealing the extreme double-jointedness, and I practiced how to camouflage its crookedness. I chose clothing with sleeves that hid the bulk of bone on my upper arm.
Old Photo: I’m standing on Jones Beach, a skinny girl of ten in a bathing suit with a big smile on my face, not yet conscious of the glaring crookedness of my outstretched arm. I imagine Dad scrutinizing my body as if I were a piece of sculpture. There is a closure over his heart. He watches my brothers ride the waves hand in hand. A breaker knocks Jesse over. He stamps his feet furiously, beats the water with his fists, and battles the next one, while Howard dives smoothly through.
We lived inside our dreams at home. At times you would lower your voice and let your words trail off, as if speaking were superfluous. Reality was filtered. There was little connection between our strangely censored, muted world and that found in books, movies, theater, and black families down the street whose loud voices and music spilled out through the walls of their houses.
The way you and Dad had of averting your glances, of changing the subject, of dismissing what I said, of not hearing me—all this silenced me. The strange thing is, I believed your words, while part of me knew that far different truths lay beneath. It was as if between the words and the core lay an entire sphere of reality that I did not know how to deal with.
Another girl and I—one of my friends from the old public school—are in a photo booth at a bus station. We are twelve. We take pictures of ourselves, and we’re giggling a lot. Two boys begin to flirt with us. Heady with their attention, I don’t notice what they’re doing. After they leave, I realize that they’ve taken my wallet.
I’m riding a subway in Manhattan. After I get off and the train zooms away, I realize I’ve left my new red purse behind. My spaciness scares me. I go to Travelers’ Aid, but they’re no help. Finally, I scrounge up change from strangers to get home.
Spacey. Like you, Mother, I was spacey. But who was I really? The “real” me—not one, but many identities—at times erupted in strange, frightening ways.