Sunday Memories - Jutta's Kitchen - Part Three

There are stories of Jutta's not mine to tell.

And in surviving there are things put aside, as one does after plane crashes and other sundry disasters.

But then one day she picked up her brushes again.

Early early days she relearned each stroke.

And then one day I began to sit for her.

Early early days she relearned to look and then to see.

Restart, relearn, rebirth, repeat. Again, again, again, repeat.

There in Jutta's Kitchen, sitting quietly for hours, often hung-over, anticipating my next cigarette and daydreaming of a life eventually never lived, I learned how "in action there is release from anguish of mind."*



*Frank Lloyd Wright

Jutta's Kitchen - Part Two

Even after Jutta's 16 year old son Marc and 14 year old me stopped dating (if you call listening to Sibelius's violin concerto while holding hands "dating") I still found my way to her kitchen several times a week for years after. Lots of times there was a gaggle around the small wooden table - me, Marc, the two Haitian brothers from down the street, the Korean prodigy alone in NY since he was like 12 and Chops the dog who had a blue eye and a brown eye. Whatever Jutta put on the table was a feast and the words and the laughter and the languages poured over meals and cigarettes and coffee and sometimes dessert.

I didn't know I was destined to live a life where nothing else matter except the attempt to tell a story with all my heart and soul. I didn't know until 35 years later that because her kitchen was a home for a bunch of motley baby artists, my surrender to my life was fueled by her example.

Jutta's Kitchen - Part One

She is now 82. I have been visiting her since I was 13. Now at almost 50 I realized I had the rare thing for a girl of my time. A role model who was a woman AND an artist.

Sunday Memories - WHAT WE DID ON OUR SUMMER VACATION

Vacations were for other people.  For us, summer was a stand-off between our need to have something to do during the day and our parents’ need to not have to think about it. Everything really worked much better when we were at school.  He was at work and she was at the piano.

Time stops for no man or pianist for that matter and neither do the seasons. Summer came. Repeatedly.

I am not sure when it started and when it ended - it didn’t last long - but for a couple of years, Atlantic City became our Riviera. And with the recent purchase of a car needed to get my father to his job out on Long Island, it was suddenly accessible.

The exotic motel we stayed at had an ice machine - the push of a lever and a cascade of perfectly formed ice cubes tumbled down - not the bitterly small, thin ones we made in aluminum trays.  And right below our small balcony was a real swimming pool -  not the huge ocean of Pitt Street Pool, but small and shallow enough to paddle across and splash about.  It even had a fancy swirling shape.   It was DESIGNED like from out of a Jacque Tati movie.

Those few days in such a luxurious setting - whatever was or wasn’t happening in this family didn’t matter -  there were things to delight in - the beautifulness of the old boarding houses and cheap motels pushing the battered boardwalk into the sea, all the salt-water taffy stands in every flavor in the world, all the magic peelers transforming radishes into flowers. 

The beaches were  clean like the Beatle’s movie HELP, not a cigarette or empty beer bottle in sight.  And the wonderful waves didn’t smell bad.  And the big seafood restaurant had fancy chowder crackers in beautiful little seashell shapes.  Beat the penny pretzel we got on Delancey Street any day, hands down.

The four of us in one room, two beds, no memory of how my sister and I negotiated sudden close space but we slept not missing the familiar rumble of the Williamsburg Bridge.

Time stops for no man and no family either.  We all moved out to other worlds, leaving Florence behind in the former home of the family.  Not sure what my sister or my father did for their summer vacation, but Florence’s became day trips to Coney and, in between shit jobs, I worked for room and board in a fancy commune upstate. 

And soon after, Atlantic City got torn down and shiny casino hotels we could have never afforded took the place of those old motels and boarding houses.

Still, there was an unexpected silver lining.  Searching for eager gamblers who didn’t drive, the casinos sent buses to the Lower East Side with an offer hard to refuse - take our free bus to our fancy shiny casino hotel and we’ll give you $10 to gamble.

Surrounded by shabby men of all sizes, religions, races and cigarette brands, Florence, bathing suit under her jeans, beach towel in hand, grabbed that free trip to Atlantic City  - $10 to splurge on a cold beer and a sandwich she didn’t have to cook?  Now that was a vacation.

Home Is Where The Heart Is

He lives above me. Has ever since he was born. He is a smart junior high schooler. Has always made music on my ceiling - running jumping rattling my dishes to his beat and one night, when he was tiny tiny tiny, with his wail of indignation because he was being sent to bed before something really really good was going to happen he didn't know what but he knew it was good. Now he plays bass. And I just laugh with delight when that familiar Led Zeppelin bass walks across my head during evening bill paying or writing this blog.


I, who grew up under a grand piano pounding Liszt and Chopin, live between them.


He lives below me. Has ever since I was younger younger younger 32 years ago. He is an important music critic. And unless they're on vacation, I listen to whatever he listens to through my floor. A recognizable beat during the 1980s when he was writing the history of rock and roll ("He's up to Motown now," said Joni, who lived with me in 1987). Or recently a night silence I really could have done without suddenly I put my ear to the crack on the living room floor, heard something completely new and felt my heart lift.


*thanks to Mukul for his suggestion about this post.

The Old Gardening Bears

They've been across the street for as long as I remembered to look out the window.

A balcony above the Japanese restaurant, filled with plants and two chairs and sometimes a few pieces of laundry.

Her blonde Sir Lancelot haircut, a bear comfort to her body. Him, dark maybe South East Asian, salt and pepper through his short afro and, like her, also a bear in his body.

On summer days I watched her putter around the plants and in winter I watched the two of them on Second Avenue with their sturdy knapsacks out of place in the crowd of young sex-in-the-city-wannabees and very rich kids pretending to have not enough money to buy un-beat-up clothes. As they wove in and out of cell-phone conversations and sauntering Ugg boots there was a shared a graceful lumber that spoke of many years walking side by side in comfort and companionship.

And then I stopped seeing her. Only him, knapsack firmly in place. For a long, long time. The balcony stayed empty. The plants still there but not the laundry. Years.

A couple of days ago, there she was.

On an early weekend morning of quiet before the young neighborhood woke up. What I had wondered or feared or suspected may have been true. Her hair now gray-white and her face gaunt, she stood still on the balcony in an old cotton sleeveless house dress. And he gently cut her hair. I watched this haircut become as intimate as the dance they walked together.

Sunday Memories - The Lioness Rules the Pride

1982.

All the other gay seniors rode. In the convertible, on the bus, in wheelchairs.

But not Florence. 

58 years old.  Waited her entire life to walk down a street as who she really was. And she wasn't going to give up that walk for anybody or anything.

The Not-On-TV Office

Sometimes he gets up on the desk by the fax machine, leans over the cubicle wall and checks to see if I'm OK, and if I am OK, willing to say hello without being sarcastic.

That day she wanted to know what he was doing, who he was talking to, what he was looking at.

So during a busy afternoon of many clients attempting clean and sober, and full urine cups checking to see if they did, Constance climbed up onto the desk too, and she and YaYa, old friends and long-time colleagues, got a little visit in. I just took pictures.

Atlantic City: The Other Coney for New Yorkers - Part One

There are people in that neon ball of lights and metal being bounced with atomic force into the stratosphere. The screams ricochet AAAARRR as it CRASHES almost to the ground and then aaaaaaarrrr as it is FLUNG into the sky again.

We stand there wondering if we should risk our $150 dinner on complete surrender to a force greater than ourselves. Instead we choose the slot machine where we get to keep our dinner but not our pennies.

Sunday Memories - From That Moment On The World Was Different

B. told us. Of course none of us believed her. But she insisted. She had it on good authority and could even prove it to us.

So we all trooped off to the Children's Section of the Seward Park Library on East Broadway where the librarian nodded gravely at B.'s request and then guided us to a little bookcase we had never really paid attention to before. And there she pulled out a big enough picture book with big enough pictures called How Babies Are Made.

The sudden information that not only did our fathers have one of those but that they did that with our mothers was numbingly shocking.

That is until we discovered dirty jokes.

A Parallel Universe in an Elevator

I needed a break from worrying and calling and emailing and strategizing  (is the eye infected can we get her out of bed what about the air conditioner where can we let her still make decisions so she feels she is not meaningless does anything we do even matter).

Headed over to a friend.  Another old building, those elevators took forever to show up.  After a long wait, I caught an empty one and just as I was about to ride to the 9th floor, a young hand shot out and stopped the door from closing.

Two women entered - a young home attendant puzzled by a voice mail on her cellphone and the other a tiny little old lady as fragile as a dandelion and obviously loved enough to be dressed well and smell clean.

The little dandelion leaned on her walker and looked at me - that sweet little girl look that often come back with dementia. I smiled at her. I smiled because I knew how few people did.  Old age is what cancer used to be - if you don't look it in the eye it will never happen to you.

Such loneliness, such loneliness. To be visible and not be seen.

The two women got off on the 6th floor, the home attendant gently guiding the little dandelion out. But once in the hallway, the dandelion stopped and, befuddled, pushed her walker back towards the elevator.

As the door closed, I heard the young home attendant gently coaxing her back:  “Florence. Florence. This way. It's this way home."

"Let the rain kiss you... Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops..." Langston Hughes

Even the homeless man wheeled his hand truck under the awning. But I threw myself forward hoping the clouds growing dark were lying or at least not telling me the truth for a few more blocks.

and then it rained and the two old ladies cared tenderly for one another as they prepared to step into the storm.



their love I cried later after the storm had finished.

Sunday Memories - Over the Hills and Through the Woods to Grandmother's House We Go

Now, Today, These Days: The hallway leading to the roach apartment where Sophie kept her last years has been repainted.



Then, Before, In Those Days: We visited once a week. Friday nights. Take the Madison Street bus to Market Street. Or walk down East Broadway. And when I got older, ride the old Raleigh 3 speed.

Then, Before, In Those Days: Press 9 and the elevator would take me and my sister up to the only time of the week we got to drink a C&C coke, eat a hostess cupcake and watch the TV. Slam the elevator door open, run as fast as we could to the next to the last door, the next to the last door down the really long hallway banging the old knocker bang bang bang GRAMMMA!!!!



And at the end of the night sometimes being picked up by Florence and our father, a meandering walk home where we tortured Florence with questions about why she couldn't walk in a straight line, or what happened to her eye, or how come she had no hair on her legs. Or I would hold my father's hand and ask why do we die and do I have to marry a Jewish man.

Then, Before, In Those Days: But other nights just me and my sister maybe I'm 8 maybe she's 12, walking home at 10pm along East Broadway



me asking and asking and asking every questions I had about Star Trek and Captain Kirk asking because I knew she was the smartest person in the world and would know the answer to what I didn't understand about that episode that week.

Blog With A View

At the end of us all being a family she moved into our childhood bedroom and never left.

Now when I sit beside her I see what I looked at for hours before I learned to talk and what I looked at after I learned to say nothing.

The Real Joy That Day

They shut down 8th Avenue because a second guy climbed the Times Building. Just like when we were kids, watching an accident or a fire, we all hung out smack in the middle of the street watching the flashing lights, playing with one another and reenacting the news we were going to watch later.

Sunday Memories - Like the Corners of My Mind

The corner between our buildings and the barrel park had a special secret passage way wide enough for all of us to slip under until one day we were suddenly almost too big. And then shortly after that it was cemented up and we had to walk around to the gate like all the adults.



Before lobby doors were locked and kids were imprisoned inside their apartments for all their play dates, we ran wild from building to building a hide-n-seek game that spanned the entire housing project, almost peed on ourselves giggling as we hid under all the stairs.



And then one day this corner stopped us all when jumping rope B. called "leaders allowed!" and jumped in backwards on a Spay and I followed, not going to let her get the best of me I catapulted myself through the air to jump in on the "J" and when I hit the bricks they all thought I was laughing but the sound didn't stop and people came running from the other end of the courtyard and someone ran up to tell my parents who never ever got interrupted ever about our playing outside unless of course we did something really really wrong like go on the roof or make fun of A. until she cried. Even though Florence thought an ice pack would make my left arm better, finally my father realized it was serious enough not to take the bus but actually take a rare taxi ride to Beth Israel where they put my arm in a sling, and which I quickly slipped out of because I didn't want to ask anyone else to tie my shoes. So the following week they put me in a sling wrapped to my body and I spent the next two months looking like a one-armed lady with a big lopsided tit, being forced by Florence to practice all the right hand parts of my piano lessons, and made to learn cymbals for the stupid student orchestra performance of "Love of Three Oranges" which of course at the big concert I screwed up and just slammed the right cymbal into the left crash crash crash because I didn't know where we were but I knew it was the end and there were many cymbal crashes at the end and Mrs. K the conductor couldn't stop me for all the glaring she did.

An Untitled Day - Part II

Lunch is done.

I pull out the new walker Medicaid has gotten us.  None of us are strong enough to hold her up anymore. Especially when she does that I-gotta-sit-down-on-the-floor/sidewalk/doctor’s office/stairwell/lobby thing.

That walker is our safety net. It has a chair and it can hold her weight on its arms better than me or Penny or Gabriella.  Beats calling 911 or the Maintenance Guys to pick her up.

Florence does not see it that way.  She hates that walker like I hated the violin.  And she is seriously pissed off about having to use it.  So I sell it like the masterful liar I’ve become.  If she uses the walker, she’ll get strong again and can then tell me, Penny and Gabriella to go to hell and live by herself again and go to dances with lots of girls ready to foxtrot with her and run up and down Sixth Avenue eating whatever fast food she wants.

With that in mind she grabs the handles and starts shoving herself through space. I shout things at her like You're Doing Great and Let's Go You're Strong Go Florence.

She's as bad a driver as me and neither of us can get the walker through one doorway and into another without banging into walls, the desk, bookcases and every chair in the apartment.

At some point we all give up.  Florences settles into the big chair in front of the TV. I put on THE PARENT TRAP with Lindsey Lohan because I don't have anything left inside to watch SINGING IN THE RAIN for the thirtieth time I just don't. There's nothing left inside.

THE PARENT TRAP is a miserable movie for both of us. She can't follow it because there is no music to take her through a familiar story.  I wince at the bad writing and crude acting, but marvel at the young Lohan and answer Florence's repeated questions about the title the plot the actors the title the plot the actors the title the plot and soon it's over ...

...and I surrender and put on SINGING IN THE RAIN and Florence sings furiously along, each and every note and soon to hell with Gene Kelly wherever he is in the song.  She motions me to join in and I sing along with her "... in the rain, what a glorious feeling..."

"YOU'RE NOT SINGING IT IN TUNE!" she yells.

An Untitled Day

It’s Sunday and I’ve arrived with my usual bags of food from various eating joints.  Penny has successfully cleaned Florence up and gotten her to the kitchen table.

The Jonathan Schwartz show is on and Sinatra pours out of the old kitchen table radio.  Florence sings along furiously along and at some point, to hell with Sinatra wherever he is at in the song, she is in the middle of her own rendition.  She motions me to join in and I sing along with her as I dish food onto her plate.

"I am singing every note in tune! You don't sing in tune!" Florence yells at me.

I don't bother to argue with her that she is in a different key than the radio. Like most recent experiences it doesn't matter what I do. Today all that matters is that Florence needs me to be someone incapable of singing as well as she does, keys be damned. It's the highlight of her week.

Coleslaw shakes precariously on her fork. I hover with a napkin. Florence hates everything she eats, save the coleslaw. That she'll eat without telling me how awful it tastes.

I cut another piece of meatloaf. Hand it to her. Do the mommy thing of "Just one bite come on you need to eat some more..."

She bites. "This is terrible."

It's the third sandwich I've tried on her this week. Nothing works. “How can I make it better?"

"Make the food taste good again."

I stare at all the pills I've poured into little neat daily piles. The drugs keeping her alive are killing her life.

The Up Side of Gentrification

this


and this



and then this



because lemme tell you we never saw this shit when I was growing up...and I'm including that fake green grass too...

Sunday Memories - River Runs Through It

The internet hadn’t been invented yet.  So, at 3am when I couldn't sleep or after a night of futile socializing and too depressed to go back to an empty apartment,  I came here: an all-night diner with a counter that swirled like a river you see in pictures taken from far, far away ... like the moon.

My favorite spot at that beat-up counter faced Second Avenue.  Sat there for years - staring out the window hoping "he'd" see me and come in to renew love (“he” did several times) or writing all the stories I knew could change the world if only someone would read them.

The two old counter ladies - called Jurassic Park behind their back by all the dishwashers -  fed me coffee, which was all I could afford  in those days (except for an occasional splurge on borscht).  And once, when I started to cry at a finished love poem that didn’t have a happy ending, the red-head one even patted my hand and got me a free refill.

Besides the Jurassic Park ladies, I was almost always the rare female there, surrounded by men also sitting in their favorite spots and talking themselves non-stop out of their own darkness.

*** the 4 foot 9 inches cop who insisted the Thompkin Square Park Riots was the fault of only one or two corrupt cops because he knew all the guys at the precinct and they were straight up and honest.

*** the Robert Redford look-alike who loved astrology and whose daughter didn't talk to him and in five minutes you understood why.

*** the unshaven, slightly slovenly, plump "theater-something-or-other" with papers sticking out of his beat-up portfolio who talked in ferocious whispers to the Robert Redford look-alike.

*** the short-order cook who broadcasted his marital problems while flipping late night food on the grill and demanding explanation from the cashier about why his new bride should get so upset after he locked her out by accident. Again. For the third time. And did any of us think he was trying to tell her something because he didn't think he was HE JUST FORGOT!?

*** the famous artist who sat and looked for who would be his next subject(s) in his next famous murals (never me even after 17 years of us facing each other)

Night after night all of us floating on this old counter…and when the streets took a breather from muggings and other assorted crap, we all (quickly) wandered home.

Then the owner's grandson went to restaurant college.

And shortly after, light fixtures got changed, new murals went up, walls came down and the counter was amputated into a brief moment of no-view-not-worth-sitting-down.  All the regulars regularly peeked into the new place as it slowly filled up with folk we didn’t recognize.

One day I ran into the Jurassic Park ladies by the Polish Meat Market.  Hugging me, they kept insisting it was the same and urged me to come back.  So I did.

But it wasn't the same.

The borscht came in small expensive bowls, the pierogis changed into Northern California inventions filled with goat cheese and sun-dried tomatoes and soon the Jurassic Park ladies were gone and in their stead were new waitresses who were young and tight and pretty and impatient to the many new diners who thought they had found an authentic East Village eatery because they were being treated so rudely.

And soon after that, splurging on a more-expensive bowl of borscht, I recognized only one face in the new mural the famous artists did for the reopening - a tiny memorial to an old drinking buddy who died of a heart attack on the corner of 7th Street and Avenue B in 1979.

There is no picture for this kind of sound.

The scream from the office down the hall filled us like a tsunami of words strung together painting horror a son a son a son found dead.

We all ran through fluorescent light down the linoleum hallway to grab hold tight the body trying to push her way into another reality where the voice snapping from her cell phone was making a big mistake a big mistake calling the wrong number someone else with the same name and same son but not her not hers.

Waiting

Until the lease runs out and they're evicted so that a fancy something-or-other can move in, it's a thin, narrow bare bones waiting room that, past a crammed nurses-bill paying-file-getting corner, trickles into a small labyrinth of tiny rooms where patients pee into cups, bleed into tubes and whisper common complaints.

The old Italian lady, one tooth on the bottom, hobbles out of the trickle into the waiting room, her Dominican home attendant behind her. The Italian lady is from the old neighborhood that doesn't exist anymore. You can tell from her accent. And the comfortable way she bosses the home attendant around like she was a baby chicklet needing protection and guidance. "Sit here, no, not there, here, put the bag there..."

They get settled. W, a young Black man sits down. The Italian lady knows him from the waiting room and starts telling him about her current situation.

"I'm waiting for the ambulance, don't feel well. We're going to St. Vincent's."

The home attendant slips into a nap.

W nods concerned. The Italian lady continues.

"Since Easter."

W asks, "Did you have Easter Dinner?"

"Yeah. With Rosie. It's good company."

A tall White guy walks in. There are no more chairs. The nurse calls my name, asks, "You ready?"

The White guy looks at my chair, says. "You're on."

I gather up all my stuff, but not neatly. "I'm ready."

Sunday Memories - Breaking Braking

There are things you just can’t take back and as it pours out of you, your wails of NO don't reverse the seconds it took to make a decision...

... that night in 1993 to throw that shoe across the room, sobbing mad at the suicidal prison built from family misery but then watching the shoe shatter the only present you loved from your father a ceramic owl penny bank, a gift of beauty and care and poetry from a far away country bought at Macy's in 1967 a rare expression of his delight in you being his little girl your sobbing now howls trying to make time run backwards so that maybe like in the movies the owl would rise up from tiny pieces and bloom back into whole, you’d throw the shoe to another part of the room you promised…

... or that day in 1972 seconds after your friend got you to stop looking out the window of the front car of the F train, the decision that woman made, the train brakes screaming and her screaming the two of them screaming like an orchestra blasting the final notes of a really big symphony, did she as she watched herself unfurl her body into the tracks wish suddenly desperately her cries would become the wind that turns back time and brings her safely to the platform and another decision?

V.'s Last Day Here

15 years Dictaphone Operator
11 years Regular Secretary
2 years Legal Secretary
6 years Medical Secretary



Going to Disneyland and then the Price is Right in California, Oprah in Chicago and Rachel Ray back in New York. Want to see what these TV shows are all about.

And after that, the college is right down the block. Learn PowerPoint and Excel. Mostly Excel. Get another job.

keeping kosher, eating babe

...and the swine... he is unclean unto you - Leviticus

It wasn't that we had to wear skirts during the High Holy Days even if we were on our way to music school and it was Shabbos to boot. For a brief time it was the special every-once-in-a-while treat of crispy bacon - the whole package - all mine that Florence would make me never on a Saturday, but always on a Sunday with the windows open. I loved it more than the once a week Hostess cupcake I got to have at my gramma's house.

"Hoy Hong makes the best pork buns in the city," my father would announce as we walked on Mott toward another once-in-a-while treat. I never questioned him how he knew that. He was all knowing and he knew Hoy Hong made the best pork buns. A steamed white cloud with something delectable inside. Almost like a Christmas present.

Stuffed into a paper wine bottle bag and dragged to JHS 56 on Henry Street a reluctant lunch was much too often a ham sandwich on dry Arnold white bread with an unappetizing apple lurking about for dessert, but I looked longingly at my classmates' exotic and (to me) rich people's food of peanut and jelly sandwiches on Wonder bread and extra stuff like pudding and cake and things that came already made from the supermarket. And soon after that I moved to a place where chocolate donuts were the norm and I got to eat as many peanut and jelly sandwiches as I wanted and soon after that I got a job and could order anything at any place I wanted.

But when the movie BABE came out and confirmed that pigs were smarter than dogs, all I wanted after watching it was bacon and sausage and then even more bacon.

Sunday Memories - I Shot The Sheriff But I Did Not Shoot the Deputy

It was a bad week, that week in 1965. In a rare moment of having the brief upper hand I had taken my sister's head and banged it quite hard against the baseboard of our sturdy couch. I was six. She was nine and a half. In a hour she was in bed crying differently than ever before and in a week she was in Beth Israel Hospital with spinal meningitis.

I knew it was my fault. I believe I tried to tell my parents that in fact I was the cause of my sister being at death's door with thousands of needles stuck in her spine. But Florence and our father, being destroyed human beings incapable of experiencing any more trauma than what they carried in their bones and souls and hearts let alone hear the anguished fears of a little kid may not have understood what I was trying to say.

During this time, an amazing invention heralding great luxury entered our home facing the Williamsburg Bridge. A dimmer for the living room "chandelier." It was not the ordinary light switch that went on for the piano students from the neighborhood and off when we were not in the room. It, like silk gowns in the movies we watched, ushered in light with elegance and grace.

I was given strict instructions by my father to never touch it. However, in a not so rare moment of refusing to follow orders I stood before that new knob one evening and decided to know the power of the dimming. My sister in the hospital, my father somewhere in the mysterious travel between work and home, and my mother, oddly enough, not in the living room at her piano, a place she spent more time in than in the embrace of anyone who loved her. I was alone and I was ready to go on tippy toes to fulfill my mission and satisfy my desire.

I gently turns the knob and the lights glowed. I gently turned it back and they faded and turned again and they glowed. It was better than music. It was magic and I glowed them again and then suddenly the room went black. Frozen in terror, I looked at the living room light. Not working. Then beyond the light, out the window, I saw worse. The bridge and the entire Lower East Side had gone black as well.

Florence came stomping back from where ever she had been and went to the building's hallway. Neighbors' voices filled the stairs. There were no lights anywhere and with this being November, our entire world became very, very quickly very, very dark. The horrifying truth faced me. My act of disobeying my father had broken the lights of New York City.

All the Shabbas candles came pouring out of all the apartments and lit the stair banisters into a magic fairyland, my father found his way home from some darken subway station or did he walk over the bridge that night? I can't remember. All I remember was being so scared of the dark, I clutched Florence's skirt and refused to let go until, needing to pee, she refused to let me into the bathroom with her. So I stood outside the bathroom door, in the pitch black, and slowly died inside from the knowledge that this was the fate of a destroyer - unloved and in the dark.

The next day or so my parents and I walked up to 15th Street and 2nd Avenue and waved up to my sister on the 9th or 17th floor of the hospital. She merrily waved back. Beth Israel had its own generator and she had been spared the dark.

Of course it was just a bunch of rats in some power station somewhere, my sister returned home well enough to continue being my sister, and nine months later a whole bunch of babies appeared on the street. And years after that I understood that my dimming and glowing the lights was just bad timing on my part and made for a great dinner story to friends who didn't grow up in New York City and were easily impressed.

But a few years after that, the internet was invented and someone introduced me to Google. The first thing I looked up was causes of spinal meningitis. And there, in very clear language, after bacterial and viral, were these words: "a traumatic injury to the head or spine."

stupid hope in stupid cement

Every corner, every block like being run over back and forth by a truck made with 32 years in this neighborhood of heartbreak and brilliantly stupid hope here is where he kissed me there is where she cursed at me here is where I ran away there is where we argued here is where I wept there is where I thought things were going to get better here is where in 1976 I bought the cheap high heels with borrowed money from Florence so I could look for office work because X. had just gotten stabbed to death and I didn't think I could go back to babysitting or bike messengering just needed a place to sit during the day and was willing to do it in nice clothes today trudging back from yet another attempt at brilliant stupid hope and hating each and every moment of cement.

What We Did On Our Night Off

The fake purple flowers, the soft gray tones, the rose accents pillows, the comfortable couches, a lovely meeting room, big flat screens, expensive stackable chairs, the best fluorescent lights money and funding can buy…

It's the Alzheimer Chapter's Tuesday night “How to Bath your Batty Mother-Father-Husband-Wife-Aunt-Sister” workshop!  How to bath them without them freaking out, screaming, crying, wailing and punching the shit out of you.

The workshop facilitators start the workshop with a video. I never saw anyone like my mother before but here she is, appearing as a frightened and bewildered ancient skinny bald white guy with boney sticks for legs, a not-as-ancient-but-pretty old Black woman who is very Christian judging from the prayers she is crying out, a middle-aged plump, blond with a southern accent clutching a dolly begging to be left alone…

I see and hear Florence in their crying and screaming and flying fists and shouted fears, yelling they are being hurt and it’s cold and it’s wet and they don’t want to fall and…

I look around. The room is packed with lots of people who suddenly finds themselves not in the relationship they started out in years before.  The faces are fierce and tired and the questions loaded and desperate.

**She took him on an expensive cruise he wouldn't shave should she try to shave him?

**Why did he stop playing the piano?

**He lies about bathing but won't let anyone in the bathroom with him.

**She is hiding soiled underwear and…

We are all clutching the remnants of someone as they slip out of our grasp and begin a plummet into insanity that only comes when something inside the head starts eating the brain for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

"Lower your standards," the facilitators tell us.

Florence, once crisp in her chic pants she got for $2 at the flea market at Coney Island, a bit of silk flare around her neck, a jaunty man's jacket that made Hepburn look dull, her old Stride-Rite snappy heels… now in diapers and cheap $10 sweatpants that pill after only one wash.

 I turn to the wall and bury myself in my workshop notes so no one sees me cry.

After tonight there will be no more baths. The baby wipes will do just fine.

Sunday Memories -Return To The Promised Land

There was a cat clock that wagged its tail and rolled its eyes to each ticking second. Very exotic compared to our bare-bones kitchen clock.  The almost leather seats were burgundy-something. The so-called carpet was dusty and the lights were, of course, florescent. Only uptown stores where rich people shopped had real lights.

Kaplan's Shoes - on Clinton between Rivington and Stanton.

We went there for our once-a-year-(ugly)-pair-of-oxfords that wouldn't become hip and fashionable for another twenty years. In the interim, the meaner girls at P.S. 110 in their white go-go boots called me "baby shoes" which is devastating if you're only 8 and suddenly in the 4th grade with the bigger kids.

Florence's rule was whatever ugly oxford you picked at Kaplan's you had to wear out of the store. This showed commitment to the shoe you'd be with all year. And, since that and the sneakers from Sears & Roebucks were the only things we bought new, you had to really know if the shoe fit.

The pressure was tough. But those ugly oxfords were made so good and Mr. Kaplan's measurements were so precise, somehow everything worked out.  Except for the part of looking like a dork from a-turn-of-the-century picture by Jacob Reis.

I spend the next forty years wearing shit that looks hot while avoiding any shoes stores that sold anything that was comfortable and good for your feet.

But there is a God and She does wear lots of shoes because ugly came back into style and was even hipper than hip, especially if the jeans were tight.  It was perfect timing. My feet were old and unhappy.  It was time to find a place where the oxfords were made so good and the measurements were so precise.

And when I walked into the dusty shoe store on 39th Street, it was just like being back home.

My Mama Done Told Me

Florence is refusing to do much but lie in bed.

I say, "Fine. You don't want to get out of bed, then go lay down and die."

She yells, "Lie down! Lie down!"

I say, "You can't get out of bed, but you can still correct my grammar?"

She yells, "Yes! It matters!"

I yell, "THEN GET OUT OF BED!"

She doesn't.

The Jonathan Schwartz show starts.

We settle in to listen.

I look at her butchered hair. That's because the week before I took the household scissors and chopped off big chunks of it. I did that because it was a huge halo of wildness, so thick and silver sparkling. Now it was a huge halo of wildness that got caught in a buzz saw.

Sinatra comes on. She sings along.

"My mama done told me... a woman is two faced... cry in the night..."

Knowing something of her dating history, I ask her if that's true.

She says, "I didn't make it up. That's what's written.

I start laughing. She asks why.

"You're singing with heart.”

Shrugs, "I'm just trying to get the words."

And then she - who broke many hearts of many old girls and garnered many angry love letters and hurtful looks across crowded dances put on by the local gay senior citizen group - she looks up and asks, "Is it true? A woman is two faced?"

Kindred Spirit

This is how I feel about shoes.

Sunday Memories-Grand Street: Aladdin's Cave

Right past the ice cream sign. In a corner nobody can see in the new luncheonette now painted nice and white and cheerful. A splotch of brown.

That's what's left of the first luncheonette. Brown walls and moldings and red-brown stools...Aladdin's Cave, safe and dark, a passage way in to something rare and beautiful and dazzling.

We were allowed ice cream sodas once a year, sometimes twice if we performed at some big music school concert. But for the most part, once a year. Last day of school an ice cream soda. A celebration of surviving earnest young teachers with ideals and bitter old ones with rage and rulers, quizzes I could never study for, school projects I attempted to finish last minute in a midnight bathroom, classmates with newer clothes and meaner dispositions, and tougher kids in other classes really pissed off about things none of us ever decided for them but somehow ended up being responsible for.

I don't remember who was behind the counter or what flavors I picked. Or why it was an ice cream soda, not a sundae or even just a dish. Perhaps it was the lack of daily sodas in our lives. And a sundae was as foreign to my parents as the Episcopal church. I don't even remember liking my yearly soda or not. I just remembered entering, entering that soft safe brown and visiting briefly a place of utter beautiful dazzling, rare richness.

The Bar

The guy says the place smells like cat pee. 

But like a lover or a family I hold tight all I smell is home.

One Day on the BMT

Like the 2006 photograph of Britney Spears’s labia, the woman’s wallet peeked out of her jacket pocket.

I leaned over and said, "Miss, your wallet is going to get stolen."

She gave me that thank-fuck-you look, the favorite glare of all those who just moved here and thought they had street cred because they went into the neighborhood’s last remaining bodega down the street from their luxury condo.

I shrugged, went back to watching the subway fly by local stops.

But inside, I cursed Florence and the day she caught me stealing a stick of penny gum from the newspaper-candy store on Delancey Street, had me apologize to the owner and then made me promise never to steal again.

Sunday Memories-Grand Street: Dialing A Wrong Number Just To Get An Answer

Everybody called her the Phone Lady
.
She had regular rounds up and down Grand Street. Going from public phone to public phone, she’d pick up the receiver and start screaming into it.

Screaming, like the Flood but no ark.  Nobody stopped her or asked her why.  Or anything. We all just stood there and watched or walked by and watched.

After screaming for about five minutes, she'd take the receiver and repeatedly slammed it down.

Bang
Bash Bash Bash
Bang

Like a parent raining down a billion fists rained upon an errant child because they didn’t give the right answer.

Bang
Bash Bash Bash
Bang

Then she'd walk to the next public pay phone.  And the next and the next and the next…

A day or so later, the Ma Bell guy would quietly retrace her footsteps and, like a social worker, gently fix each phone.

A day or a week or a couple of hours later the Phone Lady would return and it would all begin again.

We Fall in Four Language

Rush hour, everybody rushing home.

Except for the nicely dressed lady lying on the ground by Greeley Square.  Between the serious men's clothing store and the Dunkin Donut.

There are a lot of people over her making sure her shopping bags and her purse are O.K. There is a cup of something by her and the security guy or police chief or whatever he is is talking into a walkie-talkie.

Me and two guys hang out on the curb by the flower pots and watch a skinny homeless guy shout at the crowd. He looks like the guy who kicked me in the ass when I bumped into him on a rainy day. Wouldn't be surprised if it were. This is his neighborhood.

The two guys said that she began to fall and the homeless guy caught her and was shouting GET HELP GET HELP and once non-homeless guys showed up and shooed him away he got upset. After all, he was there first and just because he was homeless didn't mean he was less of a hero.

The daily convoy of twenty-five blaring police cars roar up Sixth Avenue. None stop.

"She fell. Her heart, her blood pressure or diabetic. They give her an orange juice with some sugar. Look, she is fine."

A third man joins us. His patter sounds like poems made of rain on a roof. When I ask if it is Arabic, his friend nods. "I speak Danish too. And Spanish and English and Arabic."

We look across the street at the woman again. Two ambulances come as she sits up and talks on her cell phone.

One of the guys says to me, "We are nothing. A heart or something and we fall... we are nothing."