The Big Bad Wolf

I spent my first nine years living in a seventh-floor apartment on the Upper West Side. When I turned nine in 1990, my family moved to a two-story house in New Hampshire.

If there was ever a storm in the 1980’s, I do not remember it. I do not even remember rain. When I looked out my bedroom window, all I ever saw were buildings. Nighttime: buildings in macadam shadows. Daytime: buildings so visible I could comfortably leer at their inhabitants.

If there were trees in New York City, I never saw them move. Trees were just as fixed as buildings were. They grew from the concrete, like fire hydrants and homeless people. They didn’t sway. They were guarded by fences like castles, but didn’t have moats.

And if the wind ever blew, it didn’t ever rustle my feathers.

But there is a picture of me as a toddler in a bright pink snowsuit, cheeks rosy, surrounded by snow drifts several feet high. This is proof that my memory serves me wrong. So why didn’t my brain register weather as a child?

I think it is because there were no trees that were seven-stories high.

In New England, nothing stood still. Our house, a relic of the late-1800’s, creaked each time a cloud passed by. The shrubs scratched the windows on blustery afternoons. The trees were not trees but whole forests of leaves that weltered, confused, trying to obey the Gods as best they could lest they be torn from their branches sacrificially.

As a nine-year old girl, New Hampshire was a wild and obnoxious land and it terrified me. I was especially frightened of the wind. My bedroom was on the second floor of our old house. Outside my window, on inclement evenings, a wire would slap against the rotting shingles, keeping me awake. I would only breathe sometimes.

When I heard the wire, I would pull back the curtain and stare at the American flag that marked the entrance to the cemetery across the street. If the flag was horizontal, that was It, that meant the end, and I became a frozen statue. I could not take my eyes off of the whipping reds, whites and blues, willing them to be less brazen. I never succeeded and watched the wind wake the sun countless times.

When Hurricane Bob ventured further north than anyone expected, I created a fort made of stuffed animals and pillows behind the recliner in the living room and stuck my fingers in my ears. I hummed loudly while my family lit candles and mouthed the words, ‘Don’t be afraid.’

But I was afraid, and it didn’t matter to me that I didn’t know why.

When I returned to New York in 2002, I lost my fear of the wind. In fact, I was taking a nap when a tornado came to Queens last year. Perhaps I missed the storm of the decade because of all those sleepless New England nights.

When I have children, I will introduce them to the wind. We will say hello to it. I will walk my children through parks and say, ‘That tree is not bowing down; it is actually putting up a fight against the angry air. As long as its roots grab the earth it is winning a battle against its most versatile predator.’

It’s even possible my parents said those words to me. Perhaps I was simply unable to grasp the concept of unseen forces.

Now, my fear has begun to creep back and I am stuck somewhere in the middle of my former selves. If I see trees move I become tense. If I am home, I pull back my curtains to watch the sky. And then I remember that I cannot will the weather away, nor can I manifest anxiety if my drapes, and eyelids, happen to be closed during the onset of the Apocalypse.

where do you put your nightmares?

I wake with my dreams. There’s no reason to leave them behind. Me and the woman with the high-pitched screams and the man with fleas and the giant, growing ever larger, fumble into coherence hand in hand, sleep passing out of us, ears now perked to mundane sounds: the radiator, those very same morning birds- or so you imagine- someone in the shower.

Sadly, only I’ll survive this brighter world. My friends, or demons, only waste away. My mind will harbor what is left, will try to reconnect with them in consciousness, but they shouldn’t have handed me their fate like that. My lunch plans erase them from existence.

It’s possible they’ll flicker through my purview when I gaze into the mirror or when I let the clicking of the keyboard saturate the air around me until I’m back in the thick of my brain with them and the air is sweating, too close to breathe, and I’m gasping for real air, sane faces, and one more opportunity to live in normalcy with the rest of the world, instead of stuck inside my mind where the gallows are, where men with rumpled-up faces make no apologies for stealing your lucidity.

I do not know my neighbors’ love

I wasn’t as drunk as everyone thought I was. I never am.  The conversation, or my part in it, was finished so I assembled my things. My coat was over there, hanging on a hook. My bag was on my lap because I was afraid to hang it- I had already lost a pack of gum that night, or perhaps it was stolen by a very feisty quick-handed hipster on Bedford Avenue- they steal for fun and not out of necessity. I believe they exist, like leprechauns. Hipsters are not to be trusted and I’ve never had the chance to meet a rainbow’s end so the possibilities are endless on both fronts.

I wrapped my scarf too tightly around my neck. I zipped up my coat. I put on my gloves. I walked away. But I didn’t make it to the door for at least another hour.

The bar had two rooms; it was a very large establishment. I had spent most of my time that evening sitting at one of many picnic tables. I felt like I was either camping or in the fifth grade all night. The second room, the one I entered into from out of the freezing night, contained the bartender, bar stools, drinks, people laughing-as they should, and in the corner there was a swing band.

Bingo.

They weren’t there when I’d arrived but they were there now and they were, ah, fantastic! Fast scratchy drum thing played on one musician’s lap while he bobbed his knee up and down. I do not know its name and I am embarrassed. Was there a stand-up bass? I think there must have been. There was a clarinet player Benny Goodman would have been proud of, a singer with a fast tongue, and, of course, a trumpet player.

Recipe for delight on a Saturday night. But, oh, it just kept getting better. There was a couple swing dancing in front of the band. Fast feet, she bounced all over the place, smiling and whimsical. He also smiled, and men rarely smile. He tossed her left and right, his knees bent as the trumpet popped, simultaneously, as if planned. Their elbows bent in rhythm and each step was a surprise.

I was leaning against the wall, close, but watching as if from afar. My hood, I hadn’t realized, was still on. My hands were in my pockets. I was sweating and I looked out of place. Why doesn’t she sit down, stay awhile, I felt the crowd asking as time elapsed. I would have if I could have told them why: Because I was frozen in ecstasy. As each song ended, I grew teary- is it over? And then the singer leaned forward again into the microphone and that scratchy washboard rattled like a snake in the grass and then whap! The trumpet joined the tune and the dancers started in with an endless energy that made me feel so alive.

They must have been in love, he and she. I studied his face and I saw an old high school classmate of mine whom I was never close to. I studied her face, and I saw a current co-worker of mine, though it was not them. My mind made them familiar, was all.

I imagined their bedtime whispers while they danced. I imagined them walking to get coffee in the morning, hand in hand. They were the perfect couple, but mostly because they were not perfectly in step. When his foot would land elegantly, her’s would hit staccato, pointed. When he stepped to the side, he kept his leg close to his body, a small step was all he could give. She, his asymmetrical mirror, stepped further from her body, though her body was smaller, as if she wanted to spread herself all over the dance floor like a skater on ice. But they hit every note ensemble, never missing a beat, similar but different; a lesson for all mates: ‘Be one with your lover while maintaining your identity.’

And then the music stopped, the band took a break, and the woman released her partner’s hand and walked away. She left him. She did not look like she was coming back and while I watched she never did.

My heart was broken. They were not in love. I looked down, confused. I sent a text message to my boyfriend that I would be returning home soon, and when I looked up again the man was grabbing another woman’s hand. She, like me, had been watching the dancers all night. Unlike the other woman whose hair was a bouquet of red curls, her hair was long, black, and straight. Her eyes were dark, her body slightly larger.

The music started up and the new couple started dancing and I almost fainted- their movements matched perfectly. He was smooth, and she was smooth. Elegant, liquidy, buoyant; there were not two figures but one gliding creature with four feet and four hands and one heart.

The true couple, alike, and in love.

Strangers in the Night

While walking down the street late one December evening, I crossed paths with yet another New York City cad. I was carrying three bags of groceries. Comfortably encased from my calves to my cheeks in a long winter coat, I felt like an anonymous winter warrior.

Two bags were slung over my right shoulder; one over my left; I was tilted to one side like a granny and could have been anywhere from 19 years old to 92. But I was 29 and almost home when a van drove slowly past me. The driver’s window was rolled down like it was July and his left arm filled the space where the glass should have been.

“Hola, sweetie,” he shouted. I looked around and I was alone. He was talking to me. He was assaulting me in two languages, just to make sure I understood his prurience.

I kept walking. He had slowed to a stop just two cars back from the traffic light on the corner. I was still within his sights. I crossed the street and walked past my apartment building so he wouldn’t see where I lived.

When the light changed, he drove straight away, down the block, maybe turning right or left, I couldn’t be certain, and my thoughts drifted back to dinner plans: mashed potatoes, a small steak, some onions, something simple because money is tight.

He didn’t come to mind again until yesterday afternoon, when in broad daylight I crossed the same street headed home. The sun was high, it was almost one o’clock. I’d just had coffee with my best friend; also 29. We talked about men, one-night stands and varicose veins. We poured honey in our cups, getting sticky, both avoiding sugar for different reasons. I’d had a fine time, chatting as women do about nothing and everything all at once. I was feeling about as content as any woman could in a cold January.

And then I remembered van man. I remembered how men who holler from vans can always tell that you are a woman even though your only visible body part is your forehead. I remembered how I was neither bothered nor terribly upset after van man shouted at me. I remembered how what he had said had seemed stranger than the fact that he had said anything at all. Hootin’ and hollerin’ is normal; men can be a lascivious lot.

When I was in my early twenties I used to smile when I received ‘compliments’. I even referred to comments from men I’d never met as ‘compliments.’ I suppose I was encouraging them without realizing it.

When I was 25 or so, I tended to yell back. Once, a pack of teenage boys were shooting insults at my best friend and me from behind us. So first we walked to the other side of the street, not far enough away in hindsight, then we started flinging insults back. Almost ten years older than they, we females were outnumbered and therefore in danger. Or that’s what the boys wanted us to believe. One encouraged me to suck his dick. I said, I would if he had one. We’d never met before that side street and yet so much hate was tossed around that we might have seemed to yet another stranger to be bitter ex-lovers reunited by fate or hard luck.

But van man and I had a mutual understanding. Once van man’s stare returned to his dashboard, his grubby steering wheel, the turn signal, we both moved on. Though I’ve turned his words into dialogue, I know for certain he will never read them, and even if he does he will almost positively never hear my voice. He never saw me, actually. Not my love of Nerds and recycling; not the two or three gray hairs that have started to grow from the center of my forehead.

He saw woman. He saw weak.

Nor did I see him. His love of –, his addiction to –; all assumptions. Nor did I weigh the possibility that he genuinely felt some love for me in that moment. Perhaps that was his good deed for the day. Perhaps he normally throws in some profanity. Perhaps he was being nice.

We looked beyond each other, through each other, seeing others like statues or place markers of individuality.

His ears do not register “woman” and I sing too sweetly for the dogs.