took another tissue and silently wiped them off.
I knew, all of a sudden, what the tears were for. They were for wanting love, and for dreading loss—loss of everything I’d ever had: Zischa. Lottie. My people. My home. Wanting love so much I was willing to pay the price and give all that up eventually, if I had to—even my present, and my past.
See, I wanted it so badly—to love, and to be free—but I wasn’t quite ready for it. And because of all that, I was crying.
*
Danny paid the fare, helped steer me off the sidewalk into the stuffy old hallway, barely lit with this ancient sort of imitation-rococo lighting they keep threatening to renovate but never do. The elevator was busted again. Definitely bad news: I would need him, now, to aid my crawl up five flights.
It would be a triumph for Lottie, though, who never takes elevators if she can help it. Carrying bags of groceries up five flights after work, week in, week out. Cradling abandoned dogs, garbage-slathered kittens, in her arms, up five flights to bathe them and bandage them, down five flights to the street and the veterinarian’s office near Houston where she made sure they had their shots, bought medicine for their injuries and diseases with money we did not have, posted adoption notices on the bulletin board and brought them back home, up five flights to wait. Never kept an animal more than two months. But never failed to see one adopted. All in good homes! she’d boast. She’d cross-examine prospective pet owners like some social service demon, each question geared to root out hidden cruelties and passions. Scuttling past elevators with a visible shudder.
Railroad cars, she says, prison cells. They box you in — and then, who knows?
Whenever she says something like that I get an image in my head: This old daguerreotype of her, Lottie as a young woman, with hair piled high on top of her head and these very, almost, art-deco frills around her neck, and Oskar, her baby boy— My Oskar! she would say, seven months! a joy! —swaddled in lace and blankets, proudly cuddled on her lap.
Also I get this other image: baby teeth, taffeta discolored with dried blood. Smoke blows over it in the Polish wind, German wind. You can smell human hair in the wind.
For plenty of years, growing up, I went to sleep with bedtime stories like that. I went to sleep with puppy tails slapping my pillow, cuddling balls of living fur I’d never be allowed to keep, wedged between the beat of cats’ hearts and Woolworth’s clocks—calico, electric, gray tabby, windup. Smell of vaccinations. Dreams of tattoos. Until I stopped begging Please Lottie, please may I keep them? and she and Zischa had a fight, and then—for a long time—she would not bring them home at all.
* * *
Those were the years I’d punch kids out in the playground for teasing Danny. Soon, though, he discovered free weights and biceps and he was punching them out himself. And I was in another school, beating other girls at the forty-yard freestyle—all our swimming done in a crumbling twenty-yard city pool we’d take a bus to for practice four nights a week, with once-weekly meets on Saturdays. Coaching courtesy of Mr. Marachietti, a boys’ gym teacher who had volunteered for the job—and who, unlike others I have had the displeasure to swim for since, at least never did any harm. He was a big, balding guy who used to get red in the face and jump around on the wet pool tiles when you did a fast set, almost falling on his butt every time, and he called all the girls Miss. Actually, Mizz.
Mizz Marks! he’d yell—pronouncing it MAWKS— Mizz Mawks, keep it up! Just keep working hard. You could maybe get a scholarship somewhere, you know—pay for your education, finish a college degree. You’d get a good job then. Or get married, have a couple kids. But keep doing stuff like this, keep working hard, and you’ll stay healthy the rest of your life.
I’d say: Okay, Mr. Marachietti. And do an extra
I knew, all of a sudden, what the tears were for. They were for wanting love, and for dreading loss—loss of everything I’d ever had: Zischa. Lottie. My people. My home. Wanting love so much I was willing to pay the price and give all that up eventually, if I had to—even my present, and my past.
See, I wanted it so badly—to love, and to be free—but I wasn’t quite ready for it. And because of all that, I was crying.
*
Danny paid the fare, helped steer me off the sidewalk into the stuffy old hallway, barely lit with this ancient sort of imitation-rococo lighting they keep threatening to renovate but never do. The elevator was busted again. Definitely bad news: I would need him, now, to aid my crawl up five flights.
It would be a triumph for Lottie, though, who never takes elevators if she can help it. Carrying bags of groceries up five flights after work, week in, week out. Cradling abandoned dogs, garbage-slathered kittens, in her arms, up five flights to bathe them and bandage them, down five flights to the street and the veterinarian’s office near Houston where she made sure they had their shots, bought medicine for their injuries and diseases with money we did not have, posted adoption notices on the bulletin board and brought them back home, up five flights to wait. Never kept an animal more than two months. But never failed to see one adopted. All in good homes! she’d boast. She’d cross-examine prospective pet owners like some social service demon, each question geared to root out hidden cruelties and passions. Scuttling past elevators with a visible shudder.
Railroad cars, she says, prison cells. They box you in — and then, who knows?
Whenever she says something like that I get an image in my head: This old daguerreotype of her, Lottie as a young woman, with hair piled high on top of her head and these very, almost, art-deco frills around her neck, and Oskar, her baby boy— My Oskar! she would say, seven months! a joy! —swaddled in lace and blankets, proudly cuddled on her lap.
Also I get this other image: baby teeth, taffeta discolored with dried blood. Smoke blows over it in the Polish wind, German wind. You can smell human hair in the wind.
For plenty of years, growing up, I went to sleep with bedtime stories like that. I went to sleep with puppy tails slapping my pillow, cuddling balls of living fur I’d never be allowed to keep, wedged between the beat of cats’ hearts and Woolworth’s clocks—calico, electric, gray tabby, windup. Smell of vaccinations. Dreams of tattoos. Until I stopped begging Please Lottie, please may I keep them? and she and Zischa had a fight, and then—for a long time—she would not bring them home at all.
* * *
Those were the years I’d punch kids out in the playground for teasing Danny. Soon, though, he discovered free weights and biceps and he was punching them out himself. And I was in another school, beating other girls at the forty-yard freestyle—all our swimming done in a crumbling twenty-yard city pool we’d take a bus to for practice four nights a week, with once-weekly meets on Saturdays. Coaching courtesy of Mr. Marachietti, a boys’ gym teacher who had volunteered for the job—and who, unlike others I have had the displeasure to swim for since, at least never did any harm. He was a big, balding guy who used to get red in the face and jump around on the wet pool tiles when you did a fast set, almost falling on his butt every time, and he called all the girls Miss. Actually, Mizz.
Mizz Marks! he’d yell—pronouncing it MAWKS— Mizz Mawks, keep it up! Just keep working hard. You could maybe get a scholarship somewhere, you know—pay for your education, finish a college degree. You’d get a good job then. Or get married, have a couple kids. But keep doing stuff like this, keep working hard, and you’ll stay healthy the rest of your life.
I’d say: Okay, Mr. Marachietti. And do an extra
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