Authors: Liz Murray
It rained that entire first week she was home, overflowing potholes and washing old beer cans and cigarette butts clear from the gutters. It rained so much that the weathermen diligently provided updates on commercial break. The sky was so gray it seemed to be evening all day long. On the third straight night of the rain, Ma commented that it was “tsunami weather,” exaggerating its significance.
“Wherever tsunamis hit, this is probably what the weather looks like,” Ma said, while we sat together one evening to watch the rain pimple the asphalt in the alley.
“What’s a tsunami?” I asked, more in an attempt to gauge her mood than in sincere curiosity.
She picked at tiny pieces of ancient paint, chipping it off the windowsill, the scent of rain riding in with each cool burst of wind. “A tsunami is a really big wave that kills people and destroys houses and villages, Lizzy. It’s huge, the size of a mountain.”
Sometimes, the randomness of what Ma offered in conversation made her seem like a stranger. I both did and didn’t like learning things about her this way. It was like bobbing for pieces of Ma in the dark space that was her past. It was all too indistinct, with no rhythm to what she shared. I could learn something important about Ma as easily as I could not learn it. The thought of how much I didn’t know about her bothered me; it made us feel separate, and I hated that.
“How does it destroy stuff if it’s only a wave? Waves are in the ocean, and villages and people are on the ground.”
“Yeah, but this wave is different, Lizzy. It’s not like at the beach, ya know. It’s a lot bigger.” Lightning flashed through our window, illuminating old water stains like a stencil on the glass. It was followed by a deep crack of thunder that set off car alarms outside.
“How big are they?” I asked, draping a sheet over my shoulders for protection.
“Huge. So tall. As tall as our building, like six stories, or sometimes even higher.” Ma extended her arm above her head. Her faced tensed with emphasis. “I’m telling you, Lizzy, like this. They’re huge. They darken the whole sky before they drop down.”
“Wow. Have you ever seen one?” I fished to link the information to Ma’s life.
“Oh no, hell no, they happen only in places far from here. But I used to have nightmares about them all the time. After I saw this news report on tsunamis when I was a kid, I always dreamed I was swimming as fast as I could, with this huge one right on my back. And I never made it out; the wave took me every goddamn time.”
“Do you dream of them now?”
“Every now and then. Last night. I guess the rain has me thinking about them.”
“Why don’t people just leave before it comes?” I asked. Ma stared again out into the alley.
“They would if they knew when to expect it, but they can’t. It takes them by surprise, and then it’s too late to get away. I’m going to get some sleep now, pumpkin. I’m tired.”
“But Ma, no matter how fast they run?”
“No matter
how
fast they run, Lizzy. Once they see it coming, it’s already too late to escape.”
Ma and Daddy plowed through Ma’s saved-up welfare check in just a matter of days. For Lisa and me, they’d purchased thirty dollars’ worth of groceries, but just under a week later, money was scarce, and we had to be careful about our portion sizes again. Each day that I tried to work in Met Food, every slot was full. So Lisa and I divided what was left of the food. That night, I made myself peanut butter and jelly sandwiches out of my supply, while I worked on a diorama assignment for Ms. Benning’s class. The rain was still coming down in noisy sheets, blowing bursts of cool air onto my legs and arms from the open living room window.
In fifth grade that October, we’d read
Charlotte’s Web
for the fall reading fair. I was using construction paper from the art lounge to cut and paste careful sketches of Charlotte, Wilbur, and Templeton into a shoebox for a depiction of the scene where Charlotte weaves the word
humble
into a web. The three best models from each class were going to be displayed in the school lobby for the month of December, where everyone would see them. Tomorrow morning, first thing, Ms. Pinders, the school librarian, was going to pick the winners. If I made the characters vivid enough, I was sure that my diorama had a chance.
I spent all night on the finishing touches: Elmer’s glue joined Popsicle sticks to form the barn’s low fence. Pencil shavings sat in for tufts of hay. Every so often, I stepped back to take in my progress, pleased with how well it was coming along. As I worked at the living room table, Ma and Daddy stormed in and out of the apartment behind me, headed to bars or to cop drugs. It was clear from their aggressive but indistinguishable conversation that something was up. Just what it was remained unclear. More than once, Ma staggered out of the apartment in tears, headed for the bar. From my window, I’d watched her dissolve into rain so thick, it concealed University Avenue.
Finally, around four o’clock, my arms grew tired and my eyelids heavy. Though neither Ma nor Daddy was home, I went to bed. Once the finished diorama sat safely on my dresser top, I made my way through my darkened room, under the covers, my head sinking into the pillow. Outside, cars whizzed by, casting fast-moving shadows on my empty walls. A gate rattled in the wind, barely audible over the pouring rain. The repetitive
clink
carried me into sleep until a closer, more urgent sound brought me back, waking me—Ma’s beer bottle tipping and sloshing with the tapping of her foot.
“Hey, pumpkin.” Weighing down the corner of my bed, Ma sat with her legs crossed, the remainder of the mostly consumed beer in her hand.
“Hi, Ma.” Rubbing sleep out of my eyes, I became instantly ready to console her, to listen well to whatever was wrong.
“You want to talk? Are you okay?” I asked.
Tears streaked down Ma’s face, shimmering in the moonlight. She rubbed them away harshly with the back of her hand. She said nothing, only taking in deep breaths and letting more tears fall. I always knew what to do when Ma spoke, but this silence thing was new. It made me tense, clumsy.
“Ma, talk to me. . . . You know, I love you. Ma? I love you. Whatever it is, you should talk to me. Did someone say something mean to you at the bar? You know I want to hear it. . . .”
“I love you, pumpkin. Don’t
ever
let anyone tell you you’re not my baby. You got that? No matter how old you get, you are always my baby.”
“Ma, please, what’s wrong?” Watching her face contort in some private pain, I wished for one of our better nights, when Ma let her thick, curly hair dangle down to brush my cheeks while I lay in bed. She’d tickle me until I burst with laughter. But sometimes she just didn’t have it in her. I knew those nights did not come easily to her. And she needed my help through the harder ones, like this, when memories of her past caught up with her. This was when I needed to listen, to soothe her, when she needed me most.
“Ma, I love you. You shouldn’t cry. We’re all here, we all love you. Whatever it is, it’ll be okay.”
I searched her eyes for recognition, but she was somewhere far away. I could tell that this was going to be one of our long nights, when we talked until the sky lightened and the birds were the only noise outside. The thought alone exhausted me. I thought of Ms. Pinders and the fall reading competition in the morning, and I wished for some way to make Ma as tired as I was. Maybe then she’d just fall asleep.
“Okay, Ma, talk to me.” I grabbed her hand; it was wet with her tears.
“Lizzy, listen. I’ll always be in your life.
Always
. When you get big—” She suddenly sobbed, letting out a heavy moan that scared me. “When you get big and have your own kids, I’ll babysit them. I’ll watch you graduate from school. You will always be my baby. You know that? No matter how big you get, you’ll always be my baby.”
“Let me hug you.” I began shaking, but tried hard to conceal my fear. “I know you’ll always be here. I’ll always be here for you, too. Don’t worry so much, Ma.”
“Lizzy, pumpkin, I’m sick. . . . I’m sick, I have AIDS. They diagnosed me at the hospital. Daddy thought it would be better not to say anything until I got sick. . . . They gave me a blood test. I have AIDS, Lizzy.”
Television images of pale men spread out on stretchers came to mind; people on cots, limp with sickness. I remembered someone saying that all AIDS patients eventually died. It took me only a moment to connect the images and the word
death
with Ma. Was Ma going to die? A hot quiver shot up from my stomach, and I burst into tears.
“Ma, are you going to die? Are you going to die, Ma?”
I was fully awake. I watched the rain fall behind Ma as she continued to cry, illuminated by the streetlight. It made a silhouette of my mother, like a stark, vacant painting. Only a few minutes ago, the rain fell just as steadily and Ma wasn’t dying. Somehow, my bed and my furniture all stayed in place, the shadows of my window guards remained stationary along the wall, but Ma had changed.
Ma gathered me into her arms, digging her beer bottle into my back. Hugging each other, we shook with quiet sobs on my bed for long, disbelieving moments. My mother and this thing, both seated beside me, both in my arms. Holding her, I held it, and shared her, took what I could get away from the alcohol and from the disease.
“Ma . . . you can’t go.”
“Not right now, pumpkin. I’ll be here for a while. At least a few years.”
“
What?
No, Ma!”
Now it was me who was sobbing uncontrollably, choking on my own tears.
“I mean, I’ll be here for a long, long time. Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere. I love you, pumpkin. I’m not going to die. Mommy’s not going to die for a long time. I might not even have AIDS, who knows. Never mind what I said.”
But it was too late. I knew Ma too well, with her inability to keep secrets. I was sure it was true. She couldn’t just take it back. I wished so badly that this was a delusion, a sign of another oncoming episode, but I knew this was real.
“But you just said . . . Ma, don’t lie to me. Are you going to die?” I coughed and choked on my tears; I was hysterical.
Abruptly, Ma stood up and reached for my doorknob.
“Forget it, Lizzy,” she said. “You get some sleep now. Never mind what I told you. Who knows
what
I have. These days, no one knows anything. Don’t worry, I was just kidding. It’s fine. I’m fine,” she said, taking another drink from her bottle. “We’ll be just fine,” she added, before stepping out and shutting the door.
“Wait,” I screamed. “Wait!
Ma!
. . . Maaaa!” I knew she’d left because I failed to give the right response. That must be why she’d left. I hated myself for whining, for being so needy. Whenever I needed too much, it always pushed Ma and Daddy away. i should have known better. I called out to her one final time, “Maaa!”
But as loud as I yelled, and as much as I cried, she did not come back. I couldn’t find it in me to chase after her, either. Something about climbing out of bed would make the moment more real.
I drew deep breaths and tried to quiet down; I gripped the sheets to ease my trembling. The silence made the room feel emptier than it had before. Only ten minutes ago, I was asleep and Ma didn’t have AIDS.
As much as I wanted to hold things together, I was always letting them fall apart. I tried to help Ma, to give her what she needed, but maybe I only made things worse. Knowing what she needed the money for, there were countless times I still gave Ma my tips from packing bags or the dollars taped inside my birthday cards sent from Long Island. It hit me then, like a hammer to my chest, that maybe I’d driven her crazy
and
paid for the needle that infected her with AIDS, too.
“Idiot,” I said out loud. “Moron.”
I hurled a pillow across the room, smashing the pieces of my diorama. The Popsicle stick fence, still glued together, clacked onto the floor, snapping in half.
IF OUR APARTMENT HAD BEEN A WORLD UNTO ITSELF BEFORE, THEN
by the time I was nearly twelve years old, the four of us came to live on entirely different continents, separated in our own locked rooms, detached and floating so independently from one another that I worried we might never come together again. I spent the majority of my time out of the house, hanging out with friends or packing bags and pumping gas. Lisa, in her room, blasted music from her radio, her door permanently shut. Daddy had his trips downtown, and his long walks around the neighborhood. And Ma made a new friend to keep her company, a detestable man whose presence in our apartment drove a wedge between us at a fragile time when we were already farther apart than we could afford.
Leonard Mohn was a flamboyant, bone-thin man who resembled Munch’s painting
The Scream
. He had small tufts of hair on either side of his bald head and his eyes bulged from his sockets as though he were being strangled. He was jittery and impatient, and suffered from a mental illness, not unlike Ma’s, which he treated with all sorts of colorful pills. He and Ma met and became good friends in the bar one night when they discovered they had the same taste in men. Together, Leonard Mohn and Ma took over our kitchen and transformed it into something between a grievance group meeting, a smoking lounge, and what addicts like to call a shooting gallery; a place, usually deserted, where people go to mainline.
Their routine together was consistent with each cycle of government checks: Daddy was the gofer; he ran to cop the drugs, while Ma and Leonard sat in the kitchen moping about life, guzzling large bottles of Budweiser, setting up the works, and waiting for Daddy to return so they could get high. This sequence was repeated for two nearly sleepless weeks (the time it took to run through both Ma’s and Leonard’s checks combined), until dark rings surfaced under their eyes and between them, there wasn’t a single dollar left to spend. Leonard could be expected back when the checks came in again, either his own or Ma’s. He didn’t stick around much for the mid-month grubbing from bars. In his absence, Ma slept for days.
Daddy, Ma, Lisa, and me all made fun of Leonard behind his back. I don’t think any of us liked him, not even Ma really. With his shrill voice, obsessive self-concern, and obvious disgust for children (despite the fact that he was a substitute schoolteacher), he wasn’t exactly likable. But Ma and Daddy did not make decisions based on what they liked or didn’t like, just as they didn’t make decisions based on what was good or bad for our family. Instead, Ma and Daddy made decisions based on drugs, and Leonard was a resource, if nothing else. The more he was around, the greater the check money and the more they could get high. So on the nights when I took long walks with Daddy, tagging along for his drug runs, he’d make me laugh hard by imitating Leonard’s over-the-top effeminate voice and his incessant whining, while simultaneously teaching me how to press the bright beeping letters of a Chase ATM, while we typed in Leonard’s PIN, “WATERS,” to get out cash for their next round of coke. I could always make Daddy laugh when I did my imitation of Leonard, bulging out my eyes big and doing my best version of his voice whining to Ma in our kitchen: “Ooooh, Jeanie! Oh, life’s so hard, oooohhhh.”
Daddy would smack his knee and crack up laughing in the empty ATM carrel, receipts and trash strewn about our feet, as we were totally alone in those predawn hours. Then he’d ask me to do it again and again for our whole walk to the drug spot and home. When we’d get back to our apartment, you could already hear Leonard’s shrieking voice all the way from out in the hallway, before we even put our key in to open the front door.
“If not for the kids, Jeanie, my job would be great. Oh, the little beasts,” he’d say. “I just wish I could give them a good wallop when they get out of hand, the monsters!”
Leonard was as strongly disapproving of the idea of having children as he was pessimistic and dramatic. And he wasn’t at all reserved about saying so. Throughout his visits, I could hear him complain to Ma, using a stage whisper from the very next room with the door open.
“Jean, they’re such little ingrates. I don’t know
how
you do it.” He always sucked on his cigarettes audibly, making a small kissing noise when he pulled them back. “I can’t even take them at work. God help you with them here in
your home
.”
“Oh, Leonard, stop it,” she said, weakly.
This was the single response Ma came up with. I’d like to think it was Leonard’s check money that kept Ma quiet, but I’ll never be sure why she sat there complacently, sipping her beer, oblivious to his verbal attacks on us.
If it had been only this nasty attitude of his that I had to deal with, I probably could have tolerated Leonard Mohn. But what escalated him from irritatingly difficult to impossible to deal with was this one recurring conversation he shared with Ma, regarding their shared status as HIV positive. That conversation was too painful to overhear. It made me need to escape him, to escape her.
The subject always came up just as their coke was wearing off, in that stage when the high had lost its thrust and reality came flooding back in a wave of melancholy.
“Jeanie, my heart is racing. Jeanie, hold my hand.” Even if she hadn’t held mine in years, even though the last real hug she gave me was on that night she told me of her diagnosis, she’d sit there and clasp Leonard’s hand, crossing their fingers through each other’s.
“Jeanie, I just don’t want to get sick,” he’d say. “Well, we’re going to get sick, but at least we won’t ever have to be old. No, we’ll never have to have that happen, thank God. Aren’t you grateful for that, Jean?”
Most times when they talked like this, I was no more than ten feet away, lying on the couch, well within earshot. Close enough so I could smell the sour beer, see the fog of cigarette smoke streaming out of the doorway, and hear every distressed word of his, spoken so blatantly, distorted by his tears.
“Oh, Jeanie, in a way it could be a blessing. The good years are all gone before forty anyway.”
“I know, Leonard. That’s one good thing,” she’d agree. “We’ll never be old.”
Any delusion I had that Ma’s and Daddy’s drug habit was somehow harmless vanished with her diagnosis and the intrusion of Leonard. I eventually outgrew my tolerance for being witness to all of this: my parents’ naked arms under our flickering fluorescent light; the very moment a needle punctured their flesh, thin and vulnerable as grape skin; their blood drawn up the syringe in a red cloud, and then shot back in again, causing that electric rush to overtake their faces. Then, blood all over—blood speckling the walls, across their shirts, onto our newest pack of Wonder bread, on the sugar jar. Maybe worst of all was watching them overuse one spot on their bodies, the way it swelled and began to darken, to shine, and even to smell. The way Ma searched desperately for a clean spot on her feet or between her toes. Far more than the gore aspect was their desperation that grew more obvious to me over time. That’s what the whole thing was—an ongoing movie of their desperation playing out in front of me, as though I were seated alone in a dark cinema, watching an eerie slow-motion black-and-white film of their lives crashing and burning. It wore on me, and where I had once tried so hard to be involved, I now grew tired and longed to go anywhere else in order to escape it.
When Ma and Daddy went on their late-night binges, I stopped coming with Daddy and I never explained to him why. Instead, I was compelled by a distinct feeling of resistance that sent me slipping out the front door quietly to take aimless walks along Fordham Road, up and down the deserted shopping strip, by myself. Some nights I searched through plastic trash bags along the sidewalk for defective store clothing, a trick Daddy had taught me. I filled my backpack with damaged or inaccurately stitched clothing while my parents made their runs, occasionally staying out until the sun began to rise. One night while I was foraging for clothing, I actually saw Daddy walking briskly down Fordham Road and I said nothing to him. I did not call out his name but instead just stood in front of the trash bags watching him walk at top speed toward Grand Avenue. Calling out his name would have made me sad for some reason; not calling it out made me sad, too.
Some days, children at school made jokes about my messed-up clothing, the pocket sewn onto the back of a shirt or a short pants leg on my too-large jeans. Most days, I avoided school and walked a different route entirely, arriving early in the morning at Met Food, so I could stand alongside the cashiers to watch the manager unlock and raise his gate for the start of business.
It’s not that I
never
went to school, but more like I passed through it the way a net passes through water, passively snagging whatever happens to drift inside. Any formal education I received came from the few days I spent in attendance, mixed with knowledge I absorbed from random readings of my or Daddy’s ever-growing supply of unreturned library books. And as long as I still showed up steadily the last few weeks of classes to take the standardized tests, I kept squeaking by from grade to grade.
Cutting school, I walked or rode the subway, traveling all over the Bronx and Manhattan just for the feel of sitting among crowds, to hear the sound of conversations, arguments, panhandlers singing, and my favorite sound of all, laughter. I could disappear in the crowds of people—who would notice a short skinny girl in need of a shower, with knotty, filthy hair, if I slung a hood over my head and walked with my eyes downcast, invisible? Even though I worried about getting picked up by truancy officers, it was worth the risk. I just needed to have life around me—the pulse and vibration of people out in the world doing things. I traded school for this. I traded my home for this. Soon, I accumulated two steady absences: one from school and the other from our apartment.
Sometimes, I had company. Rick and Danny abandoned class to ride the number 4 train with me, back and forth on its Lexington Avenue line, for hours. This was a different kind of cutting school; not peaceful like my solitary trips, but marked by adventure. Together on the train, we swung on straps and kicked open empty conductor’s booths to use the PA system, announcing that sandwiches and drinks were being served in the last car. We broke stink bombs—little glass tubes containing the foulest-smelling liquid—onto the floors of crowded cars, delighting in people curling their faces in disgust.
Bowling Green was the only station where we ever deboarded (unless we were being chased by the conductor). Here, we hopped on the Staten Island Ferry; if we rode on the bottom deck, forward bound, the sea breeze drizzled on our cheeks and the ocean split and foamed beneath us. Return trips to Manhattan cost two quarters, a fee easily averted by hiding in the men’s room (I was outvoted by the boys two to one), sneakers jammed against the stalls to support our weight while the ferry staff made their rounds in search of fare beaters.
The ride home always snapped me back to reality. Surrounded by hordes of commuting schoolchildren, dressed in crisp uniforms or the latest fashion, I always felt lonely. I worried the whole hour-long ride home about what might have gone on in school, what I’d missed.
A surprise visit from a caseworker could come on any day, like the day I returned from the ferry to find Ms. Cole in our home. It was her second visit to our apartment that month. Ma had let her in half an hour before I returned. They were in mid-conversation when I walked through the door, clutching my book bag like a prop. Before I passed through the doorway into the living room, I’d already smelled the lilac aroma of Ms. Cole’s perfume, distinct from the musky smell emanating from the rest of the house.
She was the first to speak, establishing her dominance over Ma and me. “Nice to see you, Elizabeth,” she said with a raised chin, her gaze fixed on me. Her legs were crossed, her hands resting flat on her knee. Daddy’s fan had been hauled out from the bedroom. It looked unfamiliar propped in the living room window, aimed at Ms. Cole. It stirred the ends of her feathery weave as she spoke.
“Elizabeth, I’m here today because even though you promised to go to school, I got another call. Mrs. Peebles hasn’t seen you in almost a week. Now I want to hear what you have to say for yourself. Why haven’t you been going to school, Elizabeth?”
Her question struck me in its directness and in its airtight logic. In one way, it made sense for her to ask it, but in another way it made no sense at all, given the chaos we lived in. Because if logic were enough to change things, I suppose she could just as easily turn to Ma and ask, Why are you on drugs, ma’am? Why is the fridge empty? Why did you let yourself contract HIV when you have two daughters and a whole life ahead of you? Ms. Cole could have asked any one of these questions, too. Instead, she chose this one question, out of all the possible question marks we lived in as a family, and she directed it at me.
I looked to Ma, who sat hunched in her chair, eyes half-open. “I can’t do anything, Lizzy. You just need to go to school. You have to.” She addressed the last part of her statement to the wall. Ms. Cole patted the coffee table, clicking her gold ring against the glass.
“Have a seat, Elizabeth,” she said. I hated her for calling me Elizabeth, for coming into our home and bossing us around. Obediently, I sat on the edge of the table. She gave me a look that implied she was getting down to business. If I hadn’t seen the same expression so many times before, I probably would have taken her more seriously.
“You
need
to get to school, Elizabeth. If you don’t go, I’m going to take you; it’s as simple as that. Your mother told me she sends you to school and you don’t go. Well, that needs to change. And you and your sister need to help your mother out and clean up this mess. Tell Lisa that. I mean it. This house is
disgusting
, an absolute pigsty.”
I could tell from the way she used the word
disgusting,
dragging it out, smiling, that it made her feel powerful to say so. Ms. Cole liked her power trips.