A-Train Lullaby

By Sergia Flores

A Message to the Reader:

I started writing this book in 1995, when I was still not yet thirty years old but approaching it too quickly to not make note of where I was, who I was, or why I was. The story behind the reason for writing is a part of this work so I wont burden you with it twice, but I will say that I have never had more intimate conversations with God both frustrating and revealing than on those 4 a.m.s while staring at a blank page or screen. I think that on some level, one of the reasons why it has taken me so long to finally put this before you has been simply that I will miss those particular conversations, and I havent quite figured out what else I want to talk about.

So many things have happened since the final draft was completed. So many of the endings to these stories have changed. I swear I thought about Lullaby every day. I went from rejection to rejection, first draft to third, and another couple of years passed. I never gave up on the notion that I wanted it out there, but I couldnt simply let it go. The unmentionable then occurred on September 11th, 2001, and after that morning nothing made sense or mattered much, aside from the fact that somehow, I was still alive and breathing and trying not to lose my mind. My coworkers and I were beginning our day across the street from the Towers when it all began, and I join the sentiments of thousands maybe millions when I say that we struggle on a daily basis to maintain some semblance of equanimity.

I write this message to you a little over four months from that day so full of fear and love. Even on that day, I swear I thought about Lullaby and how maybe someday someone would find it in the rubble of what was left and have a smile over what New York City was before it was obliterated. For months I have been wondering whether its the right thing to do, to put this out there at a time when really, who cares about one womans ride on the A train? How selfish and careless of me would it be to expect that anyone will read this and connect after all that has happened and is happening on this beloved planet? Over and over again I have asked myself these questions.

Then I saw The Nutcracker and Contact with my mom during the Christmas holidays. I listened to Nanci Griffith sing during her concert at the Beacon Theatre in December and just recently, I almost passed out with laughter during John Leguizamos one-man explosion called Sexaholix. Ive seen A Beautiful Mind, The Majestic, Vanilla Sky and Oceans 11 in the span of one month, and Ive read the last verse of Bruce Springsteens Land of Hope and Dreams pinned to one of the walls in my office cubicle - once a day. At the office Holiday party a woman sang Oh Come, All Ye Faithful, and I hugged everyone I hadnt seen since September for at least five minutes each and then I danced a few body parts clear off of my person.

A friend and I were writing each other recently about the pain following the loss of a loved one. Everyone grieves in their own way, but what remains constant is that sometimes ruthlessly, the rest of the world moves forward in its evolution, regardless of the fact that for you, time has stopped. It seems unfair sometimes that even in the face of the world your world ending, Earth doesnt take a breather and give you a few minutes or days to get your heart back inside of your chest. It seems a curse. But its a blessing. Its a blessing that in the face of so much, Nanci and Bruce still write and sing, The New York City Ballet still dances, John still makes us laugh, and people still believe.

So, I am taking the next step in the life of Lullaby, and Im placing it in your hands with all the love and hope for its appreciation that I can muster. The world as many of us know it has ended and we may never fully understand why, but I would betray the Force behind my every inspiration if I didnt allow this to completely evolve.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 24, 2002
• ISBN: 9781462832422

Sergia Flores

Sergia Flores was born in the island of Manhattan and lives with her mom, Zenaida and bird, Tiburón in Manhattan’s Washington Heights. She was employed at and attended New York University for most of her adult life where she at last received her Bachelor and Master of Arts degrees. Ms. Flores has since worked as a coordinator for the television production company, Televisa, and she is currently pretending to be an analyst at Fidelity Investments. This compilation of stories is her first formal project in the creative realm.

Book preview

THE RIDE DOWN

175th Street

Standing two flights below street level on the dank, colorless subway platform; waiting for the lights of the 9:25 a.m. train to appear at the opposite end of the tunnel. They tried to brighten this place up a bit now that I look around. The staircase railings and the edge of the platform are a cautionary yellow, the columns that keep the streets above from caving in are a protective evergreen, the New York City Subway Map that stands behind me is an involved maze of oranges, blues, reds and purples. Indeed, they tried. But somehow it all blends into the shades of the rats that play hide-and-seek along the depressed tracks and sip from the shallow puddles of congealed leakage that never seem to drain or evaporate.

People don’t smile down here. People avoid whoever is smiling down here. People here are going somewhere else in a hurry, even if they have all day to get there, even if they aren’t particularly fond of their particular somewhere else. People here tend to avoid social contact either out of fear or apathy. I am certainly one of these people.

My own emotional state down here has rarely been one of fear, though. This platform has seen my beginnings and endings every single day for over a decade, and for as menacing as it can appear, it’s too much a part of me and my existence for me to fear it. This foul-smelling, grim-looking, lunatic-housing, vermin- breeding hole in the overpopulated rock that is Manhattan, this is my first and last stop. This is Almost Home. I gather strength— and let it go—down here.

And I don’t like to be interrupted while in that groggy, gathering process. I’m on my way to that particular somewhere else that I’m not fond of—namely work—and mornings have never, ever been a good time for me to interact with others of my species. So, unless something extraordinary has happened in between the robotic motions of my morning coffee, shower, and various steps of minimal adorning, I am categorically apathetic. I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to hear you and, much less, myself. Familiar face? If I don’t get the chance to turn away without drawing attention to the fact that I’m turning away, my eyes will glaze over in that way, that I-Am-In-Another-Dimension-Far-Away way, and I will not blink until you’re out of sight. I may even ask for Divine Intervention. (Is that … ah sheeeit … Pleasepleaseplease Dear God don’t let him see me.J For the most part, though, I keep those requests at a bare minimum by burying my head in my ever-present book. It is magical, my book. It entertains me, it educates me, takes me to other, more desirable places. But the real rabbit-out-of-a-hat is that while on this platform, it’s an impenetrable mask or an inviolable task. (I thought I saw you on the train the other morning, but your head was down and you looked so involved with your book. Please, save your applause for the end of the show, folks.) It’s nothing personal. Even the people I love have been warned—and have paid dearly for not listening—that engaging me in conversation in the morning is simply not in anyone’s best interest.

A male figure in black jeans, black construction boots, a black leather jacket, a black knapsack and a black cap is walking—no, bopping—from the 177th Street entrance of the platform to the end where I’m standing—the 175th Street end. When the train arrives I’ll be in the first car and closer to the exit I’ll need at the end of this ride. I guess that’s the car he wants too, because his progressively appealing features are still in motion and there’s no sign of him slowing down. Could it be him?

I have one foot on the cautionary yellow edge and the other on the safe rat-gray center, my body is rocking back and forth, and I’m searching alternately for the lights of the A and the defining features of this man’s face. Once he’s a few bops closer I can see that the features are his, and his is the only familiarity that I don’t avoid.

His distracted scowl is fake. I know this because I know him, and his expression never reflects such negativity. Both the bop and the scowl mean only one thing: he has already spotted me and he’s performing. I’m an appreciative audience. The show is always the same, but like every enjoyable performance, you can watch it a hundred times and still walk away with something new. He begins by making me believe that he doesn’t see me. Once we make undeniable eye contact he does like a TV cop dodging bullets, approaching me in short, melodramatic sprints and jumping behind the columns to hide. He does this from column to column, poking his head out from behind the evergreen pillars and staring until I look directly at him, then disappearing again until he’s ready for another sprint. I can’t stop laughing, and I can’t wait for him to reach me. The end of this show is the audience favorite.

He’s wearing his walkman again. I can see this as the distance between us shortens, and if I’m not mistaken I can hear the faint vibrations of Afro-Cuban music escaping from his headphones.

He’s here now, and he’s tall, dark and painfully adorable. Although our parents come from the same place, his features stand in contrast to my own. He is undeniably handsome, but the soothing depth of his color is what most draws me from places that are at once very desirous and a little envious. His darkness could create a sense of unapproachable mystery. Instead, he’s an invitation to come inside: his big white smile and dimples as delicious a vision as the image of a Caribbean beach that magically appears during the dead of winter. There may be a hint of that vision in some of my features, perhaps in the shape of my eyes or the curve of my hips. But there is nothing sultry about the pale tones of my flesh or the light brown strands of my hair. Not enough café in my café con leche.

Around us, there’s an island of hurried handshakes and defensive glances—this is a subway platform in Manhattan, after all—but between us, there’s the balmy memory and anticipation of a slow embrace. That deeper reality is ours alone, ours as the children of Cuban parents. Black eyes, dark wavy hair, full lips, and olive skin: he’s a picture of our parents’ past. It’s a past that we’ve only heard of, but one that I somehow miss the way one misses a lover’s touch.

We’re first generation Cuban-American. Our parents landed in New York almost forty years ago, turning their backs on a tropical dead-end to face the wintry void called Hope. They taught us to work hard for our dreams, to seize the endless opportunities available to us in this great and free country, and to be thankful for having what they did not—beginning with English as a first language.

Aside from this and with as much, if not more persistence, they taught us to dance the rumba, cha-cha-chá, mambo, and danzón shortly after we could walk. I can’t speak for how others may have been introduced to their instinct, but my mother gingerly placed me on my father’s feet when holding myself up was still new. My arms were stretched to their limit as I clung to Papi’s enormous hands and my head hung down to watch the movement of his shoes. Before even that was possible, I have a hundred pictures of Mami, Papi and infant me in different living rooms and dance halls throughout Washington Heights, and I know from the way we were poised that the three of us were in motion. Even though I was being held high above the floor, and even though my own participation required nothing more of me than to hang on, I’m convinced that the pattern in the gentle sway made sense to me, because I can’t remember a time when it didn’t.

At the age of seven I chose to exchange a much valued quarter for Rockin’ Robin—my first record—my first 45. It was a conscious and deliberate choice. I walked into Kappy’s, the neighborhood record store on the southwest corner of 181st Street and Ft. Washington Avenue, with great ceremony and excitement, and I flipped through each vinyl disc until I found what I surely needed more than oxygen and water. I wanted everything in Kappy’s, more than I wanted everything in Hobbyland, the neighborhood toy store. It was the only place that made me feel that way, not because I loved everything I heard but because I loved records.

Kappy’s could barely contain the six-foot table that sat in the center, but vinyl and plastic filled every millimeter within arm’s reach. The L.P.’s stood like sentinels on this center table, and there was never more than one copy of anything, so you always felt like finding it and buying it was your one and only chance. The singles—or 45’s—were in small racks along the walls, while the walls themselves were floor-to-ceiling collages of album covers and autographed pictures of musicians.

To the right of the store entrance were the elevated counter and cash register at which always stood the Tall Man, maybe the owner, and his wide lapels. He was a very serious dude whose aloof demeanor was more a mission in coolness than menace. There was always something playing, and it was always pretty loud, and his groove was always on either in the way he pushed the keys on the register or the imperceptible nod when you asked him for some latest release. He had a thick, dark moustache that fanned out underneath a long hawkish nose, and of his tight brown curls he achieved a style as close to an Afro as a white man could ever hope to have.

On this day, once I found the almighty Jackson Five and the one and only copy of Rockin’ Robin, I was ready and eager to hand my quarter over to the Tall Man at the counter. When he saw the crown of my head and two small hands reaching out to him, one holding vinyl and one a quarter, he took his groovy side step to the register. The register itself was a large metal artifact which was the height and width of a fully grown human torso and which would, upon pushing the magic button, scream, Bing! Congratulations! The jack-in-the-box drawer would pop open, and this time my money would be tossed into it. The Tall Man took the record out of my hand to slip it into a thin brown bag, handed it back to me for good, and I bolted three blocks home to play my new record on my parents’ record player. At first I only sang along, but by the time Michael was into his second verse, I was dancing on the couch.

That choice gave me infinite joy for many days, and over twenty-five years later I can still feel my composure dwindle when I hear The Jackson Five. I’ve made a lot of choices at Kappy’s and other music stores ever since, from Elvis to Springsteen to U2. Oddly enough, none of those choices diminish my response to Celia Cruz. Not even a little bit.

on the edge of this platform, in the middle of this city of choices, I am face-to-face with my Instinct. I can hear it clearly through his headphones now. This is not the appropriate place to respond, but as my friend’s mouth approaches my right cheek, then makes its way around to my left, I find the entirety of this temptation a bit overwhelming.

Surprisingly, he keeps his face against mine. Bodies pressed together in a hug, he’s wrapping one arm around my waist and holding my hand against his chest. We still haven’t said a word, but let’s be honest: who the hell feels like talking in the morning? It’s impossible for either one of us to listen to a conga from a distance, to ignore the craving of becoming one with it. There’s only one honest and respectful way to respond to this, and that is to dance.

What started as a hug and a kiss is now a wave of motion that crests around our hips, ripples through our chests and shoulders, and breaks at our feet. His hold on me leaves no space between us. I have no option to move in any direction other than the one he’s offering, and no other direction is as appetizing anyway. All at once, he is firm and smooth, solid and fluid, determined and graceful. Before I have the time to resist, we’re already a few cycles into the glorious pattern of salsa.

Underneath us, there’s a slight tremor. The platform is beginning to quake with the force of the oncoming train, and the distant thunder is quickly crushing the sound of the conga. I’m violently jolted from the pattern, but he doesn’t release me. As the A pulls into the station, he leads me into a spin away from him without letting go of my hand. The doors are opening and hand-in-hand, we face the entrance of our ride and stake out a pair of seats. In a nanosecond, we are the New York Giants, and finding a clear path around the offense, we rush the car and hurl our asses into the endzone.

Settling in for the ride, he’s polite enough to remove his headphones, but comfortable enough to yawn five times in a row. The puffiness around our eyes tells the other that last night is still with us, despite the coffee, the shower, and the walk to the station. Somehow, I find the words to let him know that if his dreams need finishing, he’s welcome to get back to them.

Listen to your music, I tell him. You don’t have to talk.

I’m so sleepy, he says without fighting the raspy moan in his voice.

As my head cradles in the juncture between his neck and shoulder, I start to think of how easy it is to be with him.

The doors are closing. An uninterrupted ride to West 4th Street is about thirty minutes long, and I couldn’t think of a more pleasant way of spending them. Sometimes you get stuck. Rush-hour congestion, police activity, a sick passenger, red lights, a switch from the express to the local track: these and other assorted disasters are all the source of much anguish in the lives of New York City’s Underground Travelers. Once at your destination, the story of a delay can become epic in its telling, taking hours out of your workday to dramatically impart to the boss, colleagues, and anyone else who feels your pain. I’m actually looking forward to a delay this morning. No bitching and moaning from me. No, señor. A prayer, a simple request to The One, may get me a little more than thirty minutes of this.

Dear God, I begin silently, It’s me. I’m praying for a healthy, happy day for myself and all of my loved ones. And I’d really appreciate it if you could make this train to go local.

My thoughts are slower in the morning, but they’re also clearer than they are throughout the rest of the day. Right now, it occurs to me that I usually shift from island to island, from Cuba to Manhattan, with the ease and unselfconsciousness of a blink. I’ve always known that there must be a place, some microscopic no-man’s land where my mind disintegrates and reintegrates in between each of my two worlds. But now that Cuba has happened on the train platform, where there has always been nothing but New York, this microscopic land with the width and breadth of a blink is very suddenly a vast continent of conflicts. And the conflict is embodied in the way that each island dances.

I imagine a real dance floor, the one at the Copa Cabana. When you walk in, the first thing before you is a sunken expanse of hardwood graced by some good and some not-so-good salsa lovers. They’re all in couples and they’re all taking the same steps, albeit in very different ways, and even the couples who are blatantly struggling to find the pattern look like they belong together. If you walk along the edge and past this expanse to what seems to be the back of the nightclub, a large doorway to another dance floor appears. If the spirit moves you, you’re invited to take part in the insurrection on the other side of this wall. No one is in couples, no one is taking a step that resembles anyone else’s, and the only articulate force is the throb of the house- music bass line. Each side of the wall defines an emotional need, and no two needs are more opposed than the ones reflected in the movements of New York and Cuba.

Stepping back from a crowd in the throes of house music, it’s hard to tell who’s dancing with whom. Each individual is on his or her own cathartic mission, occasionally finding a similar pattern of grinding with a partner and succumbing to a fit of horniness. If it happens that two people find each other, then the movements become a series of calls and responses. But even as one dancer reaches for another, the dance itself answers to no other hunger than the one to separate and define. They may become one with the music, but never one with one another. Manhattan movement says, This is who I am and what I want to do. No other place nurtures that mind frame more than this city. No other activity reflects it more clearly than the dance we’ve seen in clubs since the death of the hustle.

My parents’ dance is of another place in the soul. The music defines a pattern that’s as specific and omnipotent as the role of each of the partners. In each other’s arms, two people find and become the rhythm. There is one who leads, who complicates or simplifies, who holds firmly or gently suggests. There is one who follows, who at first reads and internalizes the variations, and eventually learns the meaning behind each subtlety. The leader sometimes allows a partner to step away. The follower sometimes embellishes. But the omnipresent pattern existed long before either partner found it, and it will continue to exist long after their limbs have grown too weak to move within it. You can dance alone, but your hands will always rise to embrace an imaginary partner. That’s why you’ll always see a solitary salsa dancer with one arm up at a right angle to his or her body, and the opposite hand on his or her stomach. It’s where our hands would be on a partner. Today’s Latin dance, as it has for decades, answers to the hunger of intimacy. At its essence, it begs for absolute trust in your partner and absolute faith in the pattern.

Very few things are more disheartening than the ever-present threat of dancing salsa with a partner who just can’t find the rhythm, someone whose touch is an imposition, or someone whose movements don’t flow from and into your own. I’ve been exposed to this threat mainly at family functions when an aunt or an uncle insists that I dance with a distant cousin who is blatantly terrified to try. It’s almost unmentionable to be Latin and not know how to dance to our parents’ music, and I never mock what I know must be an exasperating condition, but let me tell you, a spin with a rhythmically challenged partner is a full-fledged nightmare. On the other hand, a spin in the arms of someone worthy … it’s absolutely intoxicating.

If every man is an island, I am two. I love the rhythm of this city, yet I’m loyal to the steady beat of a conga. I praise the anonymity that this city nurtures, yet I melt in the embrace of an old friend. I am impressed by a man’s wit and intelligence and want a companion who respects me, yet none of that matters much in the arms of a man who can dance salsa.

In the middle of my attempt to recapture the intoxicating moment on the platform, a moment only just passed and already a moment to recapture, the conductor blows into the microphone, drowning our car in a sound as welcome as the screech of nails across a chalkboard. The decibel level is as obnoxious as the orange shades of these seats.

"Brooklyn-bound A express to Lefferts Boulevard! Lefferts Boulevard! This is an A express! One hundred sixty-eighth street is the next stop!"

His voice hurts my eyes. The mike sounds like it’s down his throat.

I’m going to hear him spit out the word "express" at every stop, and the train’s not going local. Son of a bitch. Here’s the one day I need for the trains to be slow, and I’m riding a bullet. I’ll just close my eyes and bury my left ear into my friend’s shoulder. Might as well protect one ear from the onslaught.

We aren’t lovers, although just about anyone in this car may find that difficult to believe. All our lives we’ve lived one block away from each other, and although we weren’t in the same group of friends, we were friendly neighborhood acquaintances when we were kids. Now, twenty years later, we keep running into each other on the train. We’ve never been out together, either in a group or alone, and our few telephone conversations haven’t been followed by anything more than another chance run-in. We both confess to looking for one another every morning, but neither one of us has thought to arrange it. There is absolutely nothing choreographed about us. He awakens whatever parts of me I’ve never planned on being, or feel I should become. They’re the parts that are simply who I am.

I don’t think that what we do when we do find each other can be called flirting. That’s too deliberate. We just like to touch. We only flirted once, and it was a short and sweet exchange that didn’t compromise the comfort of our train ride together.

So, he started one morning, without warning or even opening his eyes, how’s your boyfriend?

My boyfriend? What are you talking about?

I really couldn’t remember ever having said anything to him about a boyfriend. It would have been a lie. Had I lied to him at some given point?

"You know, that guy," he insisted.

"What guy?"

"That guy you were seeing."

It slowly dawned on me. I hadn’t lied to him. I resort to that lie when I’m trying to get someone to stay away from me. Keeping this boy away from me was certainly the least of my intentions.

Is this your way of finding out if I’m involved with someone? I asked, amazed with my own forwardness.

Well, yeah. He answered without hesitating.

I’m not. Oh.

He was silenced. But I wanted to play too.

So, how’s your girlfriend?

"My girlfriend? What girlfriend?"

"You know, that girl you were seeing."

I’m not seeing anyone. Oh.

We were both silenced. We went back to sleep.

In all honesty, I don’t know him very well and I should be questioning the fact that I’m allowing him to hold my hand. It occurs to me that I haven’t trusted someone enough in years—not enough to hold my hand. Maybe at some other time of the day when my thoughts are inevitably clouded by a chain of frustrations, maybe then my head would be ringing with the steady drone of over-analysis. Right now, I’m not even tempted. It’s too damn early.

Right now, if I allow the weight of my head to fall completely, I have the perfect fit between the curve of my face and the curve of his shoulder. If I turn my head just a touch, I can see a little past the first opened button of his shirt, and it gives way to a glorious view. If I deeply inhale, I have the smell of his just- showered skin. His hand is protectively wrapped around my own, and they are both resting on the smooth arch of his thigh. Life is good. And another little prayer couldn’t hurt.

Okay, okay. I’ll forget about the local request. Who am I to ask for more than what I have at this very moment? But how about just a little congestion up ahead?

168th Street

"Transfer here for the I.R.T. numbers 1 and 9, and the B and C locals."

Thank you, Mr. Conductor.

Locals are virtually empty. If I were to get out of bed just a little earlier I could transfer right here and get to my destination with my legs stretched out, my bag in the seat next to me, my book wide open, and my sense of space uninterrupted. But I’m like everyone else here. I get up at the last minute and ride the express. Have to get there fast. New Yorkers take a local like they take medicine—only when they have to.

There’s a haven on the streets above this stop. It’s not appealing to the eye in color or design. In fact, it’s not a place where one would expect to want to be. Its main entrance reads Emergency in ominous red letters, and the only ethereal thought that it might inspire may be the thought of the souls that have passed from its rooms to the afterlife. Its outer walls are grimy gray even on the sunniest of days, and the thousands of rain and snow storms that have battered its surface over the years have made its appearance a sad one at best. It seems an unworthy place for angels to be, but they’re there. I know some of them. They carried me on their wings once.

I was twenty-two years old. I had spent too much time playing Spades in the student lounge to complete my bachelor’s degree in four years, so I was still working on it, but happily so. Four years earlier, New York University had been generous enough to offer me a scholarship in exchange for a grade point average of 2.0, and although my end of the deal seemed more than reasonable when I was a diligent freshman, it didn’t take long for the experience outside of the classroom to take command of my time and energy. Amazingly enough, my g.p.a. didn’t hit zero, but the scholarship was threatened and finally revoked, and I couldn’t afford to pay for the four semesters that remained in between me and a BA.

Through a friend who worked for the university on a part- time basis, I got a full-time job at the School of Law. The benefits included tuition remission for nine credits per semester. At first I thought it a horrible idea. The thought of taking twice the time to finish weighed very heavily on me, and it took a few weeks to analyze my options and choose which challenge to face. One of them was to go to a less expensive school and get my degree from there. But no. I wanted my degree from NYU, and this is where an otherwise passive and submissive history turned into the chronicles of a pit bull.

My college buddies had moved on to higher ground and it was incredibly difficult to not travel with them, to not celebrate the edge of one level and look to the next one with them. I was so overwhelmed with self-pity and sadness that I didn’t attend the graduation ceremony as one of their guests. That my days would find me separate from them was enough to begin the steady stream of tears. Not sitting with all of them in what would surely be our last party in Washington Square Park, not being a part of the great undulating procession of purple robes, this turned a stream into a river, and I didn’t want their commencement to drown in my stagnation. I stayed home that sunny morning and when I knew that the ceremony would be over, when I was certain that every photograph would reflect elation and pride, I went to the park and looked for my friends. They all asked where I had been and I told them that my stomach had been a mess that morning. That had been an honest explanation, but it had only been the symptomatic one. They didn’t need the rest of it on such a glorious day. From that afternoon in late May until they went to Europe in August I spent as much time with them as I could. While they were away I settled into the nine-to-five workday, and prepared for the beginning of another fall semester at the College of Arts and Science.

My transcript at the end of the first post-graduate undergraduate semester had two perfect grades on it. The level of self-confidence and determination were unshakable after that, and although the final goal on my wall still seemed as distant as dentures on my night table, I didn’t feel stuck anymore. The first real semester was over, and it was almost Christmas time. Since the university offices closed down for the Holidays and Mami had some vacation time, she and I decided to visit the multitude of family members in Miami.

During Papi’s life and especially after his death, Mami and I went to Miami almost every year. Without siblings and without Papi, there’s only so much commotion that Mami and I can make to stir the stillness of a Christmas season without family. Mami and I travel away from the stillness and toward this commotion, known lovingly as la familia, especially when the stillness is all we seem to notice.

Most of our family members live in the Cuban Triborough area of Miami, Miami Beach and Hialeah. Mami and I have often pondered and discussed the possibility of living there ourselves and as with everything else, there are as many repellants as there are attractants. In Miami, I am a part of a big, boisterous, colorful puzzle, the pieces of which relate to my own edges in their own ways. At times we meet each other’s edges in complimentary contours, at others we meet in angular opposition. I don’t mind that sometimes we don’t fit, but I would guess that my biggest reason for not being in Miami permanently is that I’m still changing shapes.

I do love to visit once in a while, though, and when I do the questions about my shape come at me like rapid gunfire.

¿Tienes novio? ¿Cuando piensan casarse?

¿Estás estudiando? ¿Cuando acabas la carrera?

¿Estás trabajando? ¿En que tiempo estudias?

This year would be a juicy one for the aunts, uncles and cousins who wanted the chisme on la sobrinita or la primita de Nueva York. My boyfriend of four years, one of the members of the college crew who had graduated the summer before, had started to make his way back to me after break-up number five, delivered by him at Café Figaro on Bleecker Street shortly before his trip to Europe. He had partied his lovely ass to shreds by September, and December found him at my always-open door again. School was still a part of my reality, but it was going well. Full-time employment wasn’t as full-time as it sounded, and endless thanks to a mother who took care of everything at home, I was more than ready for the stream of bullets. I went to Miami that Christmas feeling that everything had found its place, and I was naive enough to believe that it was all anchored.

At different kitchen tables throughout the Cuban Triborough area, Mami must have said it a hundred times.

Mamita, cuando viras la cabeza, tienes una pelotica en el pescuezo.

She turned to every tía and tío, every prima and primo, and asked them if they saw it too.

That Christmas, the bump at the base of my neck was the size of something only Mami could notice. Every time she mentioned it, I would wave a distracted hand in her general direction, a shoo-fly gesture meant to lift the importance of whatever she was addressing.

No es nada, vieja, I would tell her in a sorry attempt to quiet her alarm by not acknowledging it.

I wasn’t entirely convinced that there was no reason for alarm, but I would never show her that. Instead I would go into the bathroom and try turning my head to the left and looking in the mirror at the same time. Impossible. Ridiculous. I didn’t have access to Mami’s angle. Yet I resorted to this game of rolling my eyeballs into the furthest corners of my sockets, of doing this to the point of nausea, instead of simply saying, ¿Sí, Mami? ¿Y qué tu ves? This was out of the question because since Papi’s death, my self-appointed duty had been to minimize, if not completely eliminate, all of Mami’s worries.

Four weeks later, back in New York and already ass-deep in required readings and assignments, there was no missing the grape-sized ball lodged into the juncture between my neck and clavicle. There was no pain, no itch, no discoloration, no hint of what it could have been other than that it was there and it wasn’t supposed to be. And it was growing.

I didn’t discuss it in any serious way with anyone, not friends or relatives or coworkers. My boyfriend and I were together again, but we were both so busy that we hardly had time to enjoy each other’s company, much less spend that time worrying about this fuckin’ little lump. It terrified him, though. He would look at it and remove all affect from the directive, Go to the doctor. I knew what he was thinking. His mother had died of cancer just before I had met him at NYU and he carried the despair of his loss in the shape of his eyes. They were honey colored spheres that slipped downward ever so slightly at the outer corners—the kind that are fully exposed in sadness, worry or wonder, and completely disappear behind the upward force of a smile. The baritone of his voice and a drag from his cigarette hid worlds of emotion, and so I always looked for his deeper truths not in his words or mannerisms, but in how much of the honey I could see. I could see all of it when he looked at the bump in my neck.

For Mami and for Honey, I finally conceded to an appointment with a doctor. The first one I tried had a private practice in Inwood, a short bus ride up from Washington Heights. He was recommended to us by a friend of Mami’s and for lack of a regular general physician, I went to him. I hadn’t had a regular checkup since the summer before college, and only then because my admittance to school had depended upon it. The worst of my physical troubles had been a fractured ankle for which I had needed surgery, and that really didn’t qualify as trouble in an otherwise healthy existence.

After ceremoniously leading me into an examination room and performing the ritualistic inspection for normal blood pressure, clear lungs, and a rhythmic heartbeat, this doctor—a humorless little dark-haired man—addressed the reason for my visit to his somber office. Perhaps he felt that his choice to treat patients— a choice provided by his achievement of a medical degree—had also provided him with an exemption from the more secular levels of human interaction. Maybe his conversational tone was hypothermic only with his patients. There are a thousand factors that contribute to a person’s way with other people, and I don’t know what inspired this doctor’s way with me. What I do know is that whatever this starched lab coat with hands and a face imparted, even if it was news that I was growing a fucking diamond in my neck, it landed like a death sentence.

After the examination and as soon as I was fully dressed, I opened the door of the examination room that led directly into Lab Coat’s office. I walked to the chair that was before his desk and sat as silently as he did behind it. This desk was the size of a small aircraft carrier. While his eyes remained involved with the contents of a file, my own remain involved with him. Aside from all of the Freudian implications that I’d have ruthlessly drawn regarding the size of that desk and Lab Coat’s own stature, I was aware of the melodramatic mass of it. It was so deliberate that it appeared more a prop than a tool, and I imagined that everything about him was some kind of a performance. Even the way he remained silent and unaware of me seemed a tactic of some sort— a theory supported by the absence of any sudden movements usually accompanied by sudden realizations. He didn’t move when I appeared or walked in, didn’t stir when I approached his aircraft carrier and took a seat across from him. When he was good and done with the page he was reading he lifted his head, removed his glasses (another prop), and spoke at me from behind the polished barrier. I almost suggested a bullhorn.

"Well, we’re going to need a CAT scan and a biopsy to really know what this is."

I responded with a silent nod. It was more an announcement than a suggestion open to comments and questions, so I didn’t verbally expose the claustrophobia that directly followed the term CAT scan, nor to the terror that followed the word biopsy. They were words outside of my existence thus far and my frame of reference was very limited. Even a few episodes of ER would have helped, but I’m not sure that it was more than a twinkle in Michael Crichton’s eye at that time.

After a few moments of silence, Lab Coat began the litany of questions that were also a first to me,