Songs from the Street: A Native New Yorker Comes of Age in the Fifties

By Karen S. Kendler

Songs from the Street is about a native New Yorker coming of age in the fifties, from age eleven to age twenty. The success story of a Jewish girl and her Puerto Rican friends is a combination of circumstance, luck, and learning from mistakes. Karen's story includes coping with a dysfunctional alcoholic family, days of excellent schooling contrasted with nights in the street, a drug-addicted boyfriend, a May-December romance with a high school teacher, and the culture shock encountered in educational and economic border-crossing. In addition to the story of one person and her friends, the narrative provides a universal paradigm of growth anyone can identify with. Moreover, the book includes a wealth of 1950's cultural and historical information not typically found in memoirs. This includes city tales about life on the rooftops and under the boardwalks, Forty-second Street before Disney, and Alan Freed's rock and roll shows. Whether your interest is in New York City, the fifties, or a teenager coming of age under adverse circumstances, the reader will be entertained and educated.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Sep 5, 2002
• ISBN: 9781469780337

Karen S. Kendler

Karen S. Kendler was born and raised in Manhattan. She attended P.S. 41, Hunter College Junior High School, and Bronx Science. Dr. Kendler has a B.S. from The City College of New York, a Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University, and an M.S. in Computer Science from Columbia Engineering. Dr. Kendler was Columbia Engineering?s HEOP director from 1978-1983 and then she a second career in the computer field. Songs from the Street is Dr. Kendler?s first book-length literary work as she continues to develop her lifelong passion for writing. She lives in New York City.

Book preview

1

The Beginning and the End

It was 1961 and a year of milestones. Yuri Gagarin became the first person to orbit the Earth successfully. Back on the planet, demonstrations against racial injustice began in Birmingham, Alabama and President Kennedy created the Peace Corps. We all hoped for a better world.

In 1961, U.S. cigarette companies spent $115 million on television advertising. It was also the year television was first called a vast wasteland. The powerful play, West Side Story, a modern day Romeo and Juliet, was made into a movie in 1961. As with the 1957 play, the Puerto Rican Juliet was not allowed to be Puerto Rican. Carole Lawrence had starred in the play and Natalie Wood was even less convincing in the movie role. In 1961 also, an unknown singing group called The Supremes signed with Berry Gordy’s four year-old Motown Records.

I was twenty years old in 1961 and living alone in a studio apartment on West 82nd Street. On Thanksgiving Day 1961, I got married.

This end to my story does not match the beginning nor the events in between. Unguided and unsupported, I was a risk taker who had negotiated a mostly random path through my second decade, especially my chaotic teenage years.

To this day, I am in awe of how I was compelled to make this journey with little more than determination. I did not have loving parents or a nurturing home environment, only the caring families my close friends shared with me. I had little educational guidance or financial support to optimize my potential. At first by accident and then on purpose, however, I took advantage of the free and excellent educational opportunities New York City offered.

With very modest means, my friends and I struggled with little more than resilience and resourcefulness. Our life songs are all similar. Born and raised in New York City, a rich diversity of people and experiences helped us effect success from adversity and our legacy the best of both worlds. In contrast, others followed a middle ground of mediocrity, tragically assuming life held no more. And for no real reason, still others like us self-destructed, mentally or physically, whether they lived or died. I could have been one of those so many times and in so many ways, the thought scares me even now.

Growing up from eleven to twenty was the most fulfilling, dramatic, and traumatic time of my life. Yet I never romanticize about my past. Instead, I always think how arbitrary the path was from the street to my present.

2

In the Beginning

Dusk enveloped the city, with the sky and Hudson River blending into a sapphire blue backdrop. The black building silhouettes were still in sharp contrast to the sky and studded with random lights like golden sequins tossed with abandon. Standing on the docks and facing the city, Sixteenth Street seemed an infinite dark narrow gorge with buildings of different sizes, shapes, and colors, respectfully standing apart on opposite sides of the street.

Traveling from west to east, the character of Sixteenth Street changed. First were the business blocks exuding the collective silent darkness of nightly abandonment. Then came the residential blocks, where people continually punctuated the scene, walking the streets, sitting on stoops, or viewing the world outside as living portraits framed by small apartment windows.

Between Eighth and Seventh Avenues, Sixteenth Street became banks of brownstones, punctuated by small businesses. There was Abe and Moe who sold us vegetables but secretly gave some to children whose parents had no money for such luxuries. There was also the blind man with the small newspaper and candy store who made change by touch.

At Seventh Avenue, cars impersonally rushed by, ignoring life on both sides of the street. Between Seventh and Sixth Avenues, the character of Sixteenth Street changed once again. Unlike the narrow brownstones of the previous block, here were wide apartment buildings, many with small courtyards. A strange exception was the subway power substation on the south side of the block near Seventh Avenue. This was my block and the electrical generator’s incessant hum moved in and out of my consciousness along with the rest of the city’s background din all the time I was growing up.

On the north side of Sixteenth Street, nearer Sixth Avenue than Seventh, three identical buildings stood in a row. Their numbers were their nicknames: 135, 125, and 115. I lived in 135, Dorothy’s father was the super in 125, and Mercedes’ father the super in 115. These three buildings were to strongly influence my personal destiny. Mercedes and Dorothy were to become my best friends for all of our teen years and forever after. Yet proximity was the stroke of luck bringing us all together.

My family first lived in 135 and then 115. Sometimes, we had a back apartment, facing an inner courtyard and other apartments. Other times, we had a front apartment facing the street, with a fire escape serving as a makeshift extension to our small living quarters. In the continual struggle to exchange old problems for new ones, my family moved from a one-bedroom front apartment in 135, to a two-bedroom back apartment in 135, to a two-bedroom front apartment in 115. This is as far as we ever got.

I did not see the dusk that evening or any evening. Instead, my Manhattan block was my only vista. I had no connection to the natural beauty of dawns and sunsets. I had no provocative vistas to encourage contemplating anything larger than the microcosm of my existence: my mind, my bed, my room, my fire escape, my block, and the surrounding neighborhood. Only once grown would I see my first expansive dawn or sunset and have a broader vision of myself as well as my life.

It was 1952 and I was eleven years old. Oblivious to the drama of that dusk, in the ever-increasing darkness of my room and silence of the approaching night, I was afloat on a private mental island, trying to understand all the thoughts flooding into my consciousness. I was lying on my stomach across my bed in the room I shared with my sister. My long dark wavy hair was tumbled askew, long since having returned to its natural semi-tangled state. My chameleon hazel eyes were gray now, the color of my blanket. I stared into space unseeing, as always thinking about everything. Life. Death. Friends. Boys. Right and wrong. And as usual, I was counting the years before I could leave home forever.

My mother was short and attractive but to me she was ugly, her personality always overshadowing her physical appearance. Evil always seemed to seep out from within and give all her features a negative sharpness. Her brown eyes were hot glaring coals. Her nose had a monster’s nostrils. Her thin lipstick-painted lips were a harsh horizontal red gash, pursed in silent negativity when not spewing hurtful words. Even my mother’s infrequent smiles looked cruel.

My mother was always angry with me. Sometimes she hit me, with her hands or a belt. Most of the time, however, she screamed at me and told me how rotten I was. Her favorite expression was, You never were any good and never will be. No matter what I did, I could never please her. She never seemed to forgive me for some past or present evil or just for being an incurably bad child.

My mother worked as the head of the filing department in a law firm. When she came home from work, we ate dinner quickly and then she read the paper or went about her private business in our apartment. She never seemed to want to have much to do with anyone.

My father was a comedian in burlesque shows and often on the road. He was also short, very handsome, and had all the good features of every actor I had ever seen. My father had thick pitch-black wavy hair and a swarthy complexion that always made him look suntanned. My father’s liquid dark brown eyes usually reflected a quiet wistfulness and his wan smile was an emotional match. My father was physically affectionate but always acquiesced control of the house to my mother. The angrier my mother got, the more my father faded into the background. At the age of eleven, I did not understand that my father never stood up for himself or defended me against my mother. Since he rarely yelled at me, I naively believed I was my father’s favorite and my sister my mother’s favorite. Ultimately I learned my family’s dynamics were far more complicated.

My sister was five years younger than me and we had very different personalities. My mother encouraged our natural division and we were usually estranged from each other. The few times we played together or giggled, my mother would say in a foreboding voice, You are laughing now but will be crying later. These words always seemed to send a chill through us and taint our rare rapport, as if we were doing something wrong. Soon after, we would retreat to the separate worlds we inhabited most of the time.

My father was on the road then, so I had no one at home who loved me. And as I lay on my bed surrounded by darkness, a chorus of foghorns suddenly started up on the Hudson River, piercing and pulling at my heart and soul with a soft pain. I imagined being on a ship, surrounded by the fog, and sailing away to mysterious and exciting foreign shores. With each new foghorn blast, despair and loneliness welled up ever more forcefully inside me. All I wanted was someone to love and love me. All I wanted was a soft cushion of comfort, a respite and refuge from the hostility called home and the impersonal outside world.

And as I innocently lay across my bed that night, I was unaware someone had just made a decision dramatically changing my life forever. To this day, I am completely ignorant of that person’s identity.

3

Lost and Found

I always walked to public school alone, down Seventh Avenue to

Greenwich Village and Greenwich Street, where P.S. 41 was located then. The worst part of my journey was crossing Fourteenth Street, with trucks and cars taking full advantage of the wide street by speeding. By the time I left for school each morning, I had a stomachache out of fear.

That morning, many thoughts whirled around in my head as I walked. I had more cavities. My dentist joked that if I kept coming so often, we would have to announce our engagement. I never minded the dentist since he always gave me mercury. Now I had almost a full test tube of the mysterious liquid metal.

Tim and Beverly. Beverly and Tim. You never said one name without the other. Beverly said Tim had stuck it in her. Well, true or not, Beverly did have budding breasts. So did Marion, who always wore a tee shirt to show off. So did Francis but she was a year older. All I had were swollen nipples. Once dressed, I still looked flat-chested, which was very discouraging.

As I approached Fourteenth Street, I hoped with all my might that Charlie, the shoeshine man, would be there. He was usually on the northeast corner of Fourteenth Street and always offered to help me cross that terrible intersection. Charlie was a small man, dressed in the same old clothes every day. Like his clothes, his face was also weathered. In complete contradiction, Charlie had sparkling eyes and the world’s biggest smile. When Charlie saw me, he would get up, take my hand, and walk me across the street, all for a small girl’s thank you.

The only time he ever stopped smiling was the day I asked, Where do you live, Charlie? He looked down and replied, Nowhere. With innocent curiosity, I pressed on, But where do you sleep? In the movies, he answered, looking down again. I did not understand but sensed the emotion behind his answer and a mutual sadness. The conversation ended in a wide silence dividing our very different lives.

Now I appreciate Charlie’s generosity. He probably lost precious business every time he walked across Fourteenth Street and back again, especially since he had a bad limp. Yet Charlie’s limp was like the rest of him, a source of energetic enthusiasm rather than a focus for despair.

Charlie was there that morning and after crossing Fourteenth Street, we parted and I continued on my way. After arriving at school, I went to my classroom and took my seat. Once the bell rang and the chattering died down, my teacher rose with a piece of paper in her hand. Five of you have been recommended to take the entrance examination for Hunter College Junior High School, she said. And my name was one of the five she read.

I vaguely knew what this meant and felt a rush of excitement mixed with a chill of fear. So far, junior high school for me was to be the rapid advancement program at P.S. Three, completing seventh, eighth, and ninth grades in two years. Somehow I already knew P.S. Three had a bad reputation while it was an honor to go to Hunter. However, I was scared of going to a school outside my neighborhood. Everyone I knew was going to P.S. Three.

A few weeks later, I was excused from school to take Hunter’s entrance examination. With instructions memorized for my new journey, I left home for my first train ride alone, to the wilds of Sixty-eight Street and Lexington Avenue. All my P.S. 41 classmates were in school by then and it felt strange to be absent without being sick.

I waited on the subway platform, feeling very insecure until the train arrived. Taking a seat, I never let my eyes leave the window until the two short stops to Thirty-fourth Street. I was afraid if I looked away, I would miss my stop. At Thirty-fourth Street, I rode the long escalator to the station’s upper level and, for the first time, encountered the underground maze of signs and tunnels where so many train lines converge. I found the BMT by trial and error and, after arriving at Fifty-ninth Street and Lexington Avenue, took the Lexington Avenue local for one last stop to Sixty-eighth Street.

I climbed the stairs back to the street and scanned the novel intersection, taking in everything, including the gray facade of Hunter. I entered the building, along with a hesitant stream of other girls like myself. Teachers seated at tables right inside the school entrance checked off our names from lists and gave us our test room numbers. I wandered the hallway to my assigned classroom and saw other girls looking as lost as I felt. Once inside and seated, I took out the new sharp pencils I was told to bring and placed them on my desk. The class was silent as we all waited. I could almost touch the tension in the air.

I looked at the large clock at the front of the room. The examination would start in ten minutes. Soon the teacher called the class to order and said to put all our belongings under our seats except for our pencils. Then she distributed the test booklets with a caution not to start. We filled out the cover as instructed and waited in silence once more. The teacher explained the examination was divided into timed sections. Even if we finished a section ahead of time, we could not return to a previous one to answer additional questions.

We spent the next few hours answering questions, punctuated by start and stop commands. I found the mathematics part easy and the verbal part hard. I desperately wanted to spend extra time on the verbal sections but did not dare. I worked slowly at first but more rapidly as time progressed. By the end of the examination, I had finished ten minutes early. At first, I stared into space but then started going over my answers. So much was at stake. Upon reaching what I thought was the last page of the examination again, I discovered I had overlooked a full page of questions!

As I started, the bell rang and the teacher told us to put our pencils down. I had answered only one more question. I was certain I had failed the test and would have to go to P.S. Three. It was all over. I felt sick and went home too sad and ashamed to tell anyone what had happened. Now I wanted to go to Hunter but would never get the chance. However, whether I was smarter than I thought or whether the gods cheated on my behalf that day, I was one of the three out of five P.S. 41 sixth graders who passed Hunter’s entrance examination in 1952. Yet even after receiving the news, I did not know Hunter Junior High School was going to change my life forever.

4

Friends

After school, I went downstairs to play with Mercedes and Dorothy as usual. On the day we had met, they were also downstairs, parochial school twins in their crisp white shirts, ties, plaid jumpers, long socks, and orthopedic-looking shoes. At the time, each block was a separate universe and all but one’s own enemy territory. Despite our proximity, however, we could become friends or enemies. In typical city fashion, we surreptitiously checked each other out. Although completely aware of each other’s presence, we all repeatedly looked down, at each other quickly, and back down again. If our eyes had caught with hostility, further encounters might be with an ever-growing and baseless animosity. However, our eyes met again, for a bit longer. And with shy smiles laced with curiosity, we said our first hellos.

I already knew Mercedes was the 115 super’s daughter, Dorothy the 125 super’s daughter, and that the two girls were friends. We continued our meeting ritual by sharing our names, schools, and grades we were in. While I went to P.S. 41, Mercedes and Dorothy both attended St. Frances Xavier Parochial School. We smiled as we shared our birthdays, for we were all born in 1941. I was born in March, Dorothy in June, and Mercedes in September.

Mercedes was a little taller than my four feet ten and one-halfinches but not by much. Her fair complexion provided the backdrop for large dark but soft warm brown eyes, framed by even darker arching eyebrows. Her thin nose curved down slightly at the end. Mercedes’ lips were sensual and full. Her hair was a rich dark brown, very long, wavy, and full. Like mine, whether loose or tied back, it was a bushy bundle, perpetually threatening to be out of control. Overall, Mercedes’ features bespoke a beautiful genetic confluence of the many cultures comprising her Puerto Rican heritage.

Dorothy was Puerto Rican too and about Mercedes’ height but the resemblance ended there. Dorothy’s dark brown hair and eyes were almost too great a contrast to her ivory complexion, as if painted in black on a white canvas. Dorothy’s straight hair was pulled back into a ponytail, except for bangs like vertical brushstrokes across her forehead. This contrast also emphasized Dorothy’s large eyes, almond-shaped and glittering like black gems. Equally dark eyebrows framed her eyes, tracing from her graceful aquiline nose and over her eyes and high cheekbones. Although Dorothy’s lips were thinner than Mercedes’, she usually had them pursed, making them look thicker and more sensual. While Mercedes projected straightforwardness, Dorothy had more elegance, despite her youth.

After the day we met, we always looked for each other in the street, to skate, play hopscotch or games with pink rubber Spalding balls, or just to hang out and talk. Mercedes and Dorothy also shared the mysterious basement maze with me. Our three buildings were connected in one vast concrete underground, with a field’s worth of space to run through from 115 through 125 to 135 and back again. Besides the basement caverns, my new friends invited me to their apartments where their parents always welcomed me warmly. I soon became familiar with the unevenly plastered walls painted in bright colors, the patchwork quilted linoleum floors, and the animation of extended families going about their daily business. I even became accustomed to the ever-present smell oflard, strange at first but then so familiar. Had it ever disappeared, I would have noticed its absence.

Mercedes’ father and mother were short like my parents. Mercedes’ father had black hair, a black mustache, and a swarthy complexion. Like my father, he looked like an actor. Mercedes’ mother was fair with dark wavy hair and Mercedes strongly resembled her. Mercedes’ parents always enthusiastically welcomed me into their home as if a long lost relative. Her father had a loud booming voice but it never lost its warmth. Her mother was more reserved but always spoke her mind. Mercedes’ younger brother was small, slim, and shy. He always seemed to slip away into another room whenever Dorothy and I visited.

Gloria was a Dominican woman who rented a back bedroom in Mercedes’ apartment. She both lived and ran a sewing business in that small space. Gloria’s bed almost completely spanned one wall and was her sofa when we in to visit her. An adjacent wall was filled with a rack of dresses, of infinite diversity and in various stages of progress. The rack was always crammed so full it looked as if ready to explode. Gloria’s gift was magically transforming yards of fabric and trim into one-of-a-kind fashions. A customer would bring in a newspaper photograph or merely describe what she wanted. With that vague specification and without a pattern, Gloria would make a garment exceeding expectations and fitting its new owner perfectly. We always loved going to Gloria’s room to see her ever-changing display of fashions.

Dorothy’s father was fair, bald, and also had a mustache. He always reminded me of the Spanish gentry depicted in the wooden cigar box pictures. He carried himself with a quiescent majesty, talking softly in a thoughtful and eloquent way that made me forget his slight Spanish accent. I was always intrigued by the strong resemblance between Dorothy and her father, down to the gap between their upper two front teeth. Somehow her father’s features made him look very masculine while they made Dorothy look so feminine.

Dorothy’s mother was small with a dark complexion and curly black hair. Her beautiful cartoon big eyes always reflected kindness and her warm smile was as oversized as it was genuine. Dorothy’s younger brother and sister were dark like their mother and so petite they looked fragile. They both had their mother’s big eyes but with small thin bodies, their expressions were always wistful, even when they were smiling. Dorothy’s grandmother lived with her family and spoke very little English. Whenever I visited, she would appear out of one of the apartment’s dark hallways, joyfully speaking Spanish to me. As Dorothy translated, our eyes met in rapport despite the language barrier.

I never knew why Dorothy called her mother by her first name until Dorothy revealed she was her stepmother. I waited for Dorothy to finish her story. Sensing my silent questions, she added that her father and grandmother had said her mother was dead. Her expression and the inflection of her words told me she never believed this. Dorothy said there were no pictures of her mother just as there were no details about her life. Despite repeated questioning, Dorothy could never find out anything concerning the circumstances surrounding her mother’s absence. Dorothy was convinced her grandmother also knew the secret but she only echoed her father’s silence.

A great deal of sorrow flowed into that vacuum, especially with her mother’s absence shrouded in such mystery. Once we knew each other better, Dorothy and I would often lay across her bed, wondering about the real story as we conjured up one fantasy after another. Each tale we told was different but always had the same ending, a mother who disappears forever.

Dorothy’s stepmother was very loving. In typical Puerto Rican fashion, a child was to be cared for, whether biological or not. Sometimes, Dorothy would call her stepmother mother but other times she called her by her first name. Maybe she wanted to preserve the distance between herself and her stepmother, to honor her real mother or to protest the unresolved mystery concerning this important part of her identity.

Once I had been over Mercedes’ and Dorothy’s apartments, I felt compelled to reciprocate although with trepidation. My mother greeted my new friends with a predictable icy chill but I was grateful she was not more negative.

The label Jewish was essentially my entire religious identity. We never prayed together to any God at home nor did we ever go to temple. We never discussed being Jewish and the name of God was invoked only infrequently as a judgmental spectator oflife. After meeting my friends and despite my parents’ implicit negativism towards Judaism, my mother suddenly began suggesting I play with Toby and Peggy or Linda and Sherry, two sets of Jewish sisters on my block. Toby was my age but aloof and the other three girls much younger. I knew my mother disliked Mercedes and Dorothy but her suggestions made no sense. Mercedes and Dorothy were more like me, loving and adventurous.

I never understood why my mother wanted me to have Jewish instead of Puerto Rican friends nor how my friends’ families provided sorely needed support. And it was inconceivable that our first encounter was to begin lifelong friendships as we grew into very different teenagers and adults than the three innocent children we were at the time.

5

Home Sweet Home

I opened my eyes to one of those damp days when the fog washes away all the city’s color. Even the bricks outside my bedroom window were covered with a translucent gray veneer. Yet the rain tapping on the window made me feel warm and cozy. It was Saturday and I did not have to get up but already felt dread. The sounds in the kitchen had to be my mother. My father was on the road and my sister still asleep, in her bed across the room from mine. As long as I remained in bed, my mother could not start up with me and I could preserve the peace.

After a few more turns, energy coursed through my body and I could not stay motionless any longer. I got up quietly, went over to the window, and leaned on the windowsill. I looked down the six stories to the concrete courtyard. The rain was collecting in small dark puddles, their shiny surfaces marked with the moving pox of newly falling raindrops.

My mother worked all week and rarely went out on weekends. On weekdays I had a small respite after school before she returned from work but never on Saturday or Sunday. My father rarely started up with me but whether he was home or away, my mother ran the house and all our relationships. And that always included starting up with me.

I was too hungry to remain in my room. For better or worse, I opened the bedroom door knowing I had started the day. In the kitchen, I said good morning to my mother and received a sullen reply. My mother always cleaned Saturday mornings, so she was in a bad mood even before the day began. I prepared my breakfast and ate as quietly and quickly as possible. My best chance of avoiding conflict was to stay out of her way.

After eating, I took a shower. By the time I returned to my room to dress, my sister was up and my mother already vacuuming there. Then it started. God damn it! My mother shouted over the whining vacuum motor. Can’t you ever do anything right? I had not make my bed as soon as I had gotten up but if not that, she would be yelling at me for something else. Being home was like trying to avoid lightning in a perpetual thunderstorm.

I began making my bed with my mother spitefully cleaning around me, using the vacuum more like a weapon than an appliance. Now I had to dodge that too. I always hated the sound of the vacuum since all hell would break loose whenever she turned it on. I continued making my bed and my mother continued yelling. As I pulled the bedspread over my blanket and smoothed it out, my mother said, You never were any good and you never will be. Those familiar words were a relief. Now she would leave me alone.

My mother was finished yelling at me but my stress continued growing. I had to get out. I looked out the window again and the rain seemed to have stopped. The streets were too public. The roof’s spacious privacy would be better. I left my apartment, climbed the dirty stairs past the sixth floor, and opened the heavy metal door. I stepped outside into silence.

I loved being up on the roof, away from everybody and everything. This was the only place I ever felt completely free. I could soar above myself and look at my life with intellectual and narcissistic curiosity. I could see the days of my life leading to the future and could celebrate the decreasing years until I could leave home.

I became caught up in a whirlpool of thoughts and emotions. Life, life, what is life? Life is so short compared with the eternity of death. Concentrate on what is important, I told myself. Do not give up even when things seem impossible. You will be able to leave home someday.

I always had these private sermons in my head, with half my brain giving advice and the other half listening. Spontaneously spawning new thoughts like this was scary. I was growing mentally as well as physically but did not understand that.

With my thoughts and the gloomy weather, my restlessness grew into recklessness and, as always, I was drawn to the edge of the roof. The rain had returned as pinpoint drops of moisture now and I felt very detached from reality. I had a strong desire to jump off this cliff of life into oblivion, to smash myself against the pavement below.

A bolt of fear shot through me. A strong silken thread of survival instinct was woven through my core of consciousness. My dependence on the known and fear of the unknown was stronger than my desire to die. Would I ever have the nerve to step over that infinitely thin line of indecision? One part of me was thinking I would finally learn the secret of life and death for all eternity. The other part of me was terrified I could consider killing myself.

As I stood at the edge of the roof, the raindrops grew larger and larger, washing away the oppression from the air and my soul. I looked down and saw the rain smashing against the pavement below. I smelled the rain and felt its wetness. I was soaked but refreshed.

It was time to go inside. Mentally and physically drained, I walked away from the edge of the roof, back through the heavy metal door and down the stairs, conscious that, step by step, I was resuming the constraints of my life.

Although only eleven, I had already learned to survive by distancing myself from the negativity at home any way I could. Mentally, I split my mind and body by developing a protectively tough outer shell. Inside, I spawned a private and pleasant universe, for feelings and dreams. That is where I went when I had to be home. Physically, I went out whenever I could. To Mercedes’ or Dorothy’s. To Fourteenth Street to window shop. To the fire escape at night, with the window shut to lock away the apartment and hostility within. Sometimes I also escaped by staying up late until my parents went to bed and it became blissfully quiet. And then there was the roof. The screams and slaps did not even hurt anymore. It was just feeling so trapped all the time. Sometimes my mother got so angry, she would not talk to me for days and that was much better. Everything was relative.

My first life lessons were that avoidance minimized conflict and love was not an emotion to exercise at home. Yet for some irrational reason, I was afraid to confront my mother about the way she treated me. My only response was a trivial and unnoticed passive-aggressive one. Every Mother’s Day I bought the obligatory card but not until I found one without the word, love.

Back in my apartment, I looked out the window again. The rain seemed to have abated. I could go out now and escape for a while. Weekends are so hard, I thought.

6

Cheers

I learned about my father’s alcoholism as with any other taboo topic, little by little. With this knowledge, came a sea of turmoil, despair, and anger. The immediate impact was family dynamics with bizarre emotional roles and expectations. The long-range impact was unhealthy behavior it took me decades to unlearn.

Even before my teens, I frequently noticed alcohol on my father’s breath and knew something was wrong. I always hated that smell, by itself or as the hypocritical blend of alcohol and aftershave lotion. I suspected my father drank regularly but was confused since he seemed normal during the day. I did notice his increasing restlessness at night. He always prodded us all to go to asleep so he could go to the kitchen for his night lunch, a habit he had as an actor. And I instinctively knew he drank then.

My father never went to sleep with my mother. Even when he went into their bedroom for what I finally figured out was sex, he always returned to the kitchen. This is how I learned about my father’s nightly drinking ritual, while eating and reading the newspaper as an accompaniment.

I soon developed a perverse curiosity about all the details of my father’s drinking. At first, I went into the kitchen at night on some pretext to catch him in the act but never succeeded. Afterwards, I lay awake in bed, straining to hear the sounds in the kitchen, the same song night after night. First was the slap of a frozen hamburger into the frying pan. Then came the sizzle, as the meat met its raw death. Soon there was the familiar odor of fat drifting towards my bedroom. Next were the dishes rattling as my father finished preparing his meal. Then it was the scraping ofhis chair as he sat down to eat. Afterwards, there was the repeated chorus of my father getting up, opening one of the wooden cabinet drawers, the sharp metallic sound of a bottle cap being screwed off and back on, and the wooden drawer opening and closing once again. The scenario of sound always ended with dishes clattering in the sink and the uneven scuffing of my father’s footsteps as he passed my bedroom and staggered to bed.

Soon I became obsessed about where my father hid his bottle. However, it took time before I had the nerve to search. Only two wooden drawers in the kitchen could make the familiar sound greeting my ears nightly. One held the silverware. The other held neatly folded dishtow-els and I knew the bottle had to be hidden under them.

One day, with a mixture of fear and disgust, I opened that drawer and uncovered a large half empty bottle of gin. I quickly covered it again and shut the drawer. While not surprised, seeing that first bottle of gin still gave me an unexpected chill of confirmation.

The last part of my detective work was figuring out that sometimes when my father went food shopping, he was really going out to buy gin. I took a perverse pleasure in monitoring the bottle daily, watching the level of liquid decrease and then my father going food shopping.

From the fire escape window, I watched my father walk to Seventh Avenue and the liquor store instead of Sixth Avenue to the A & P. Once he returned, I listened for the paper bag crumpling and the familiar opening and closing of the wooden drawer. When he was no longer around, I went into the kitchen and a new bottle of gin was always nestled in its usual hiding place.

One of my fantasies was diluting the gin with water. Another was pouring it down the drain and returning the empty bottle to its hiding place. However, even the thought of doing either act terrified me.

At the time, I never understood how all our family roles ignored, distracted from, or facilitated my father’s habit. In remaining with him, my mother obviously accepted his drinking. Yet despite my father’s alcoholism affecting everything from all our relationships to our limited family income, it was never discussed or even acknowledged. I instinctively knew the topic was taboo, even more so than sex.

Besides my mother fighting with me, the hardest part ofliving home was my parents constantly fighting with each other. I once pleaded with my father to secretly save a few dollars a week to buy my mother one of the diamond engagement and wedding ring sets I had seen on Fourteenth Street and lusted after. I innocently thought this would please my mother and stop the fighting but my father laughed at my proposal, making me feel bad and helpless once more.

My father only fought back when my mother started up with him. Even then, he never stood up for himself very much. In contrast, my mother was almost perpetually angry although I do not know how much was her personality and how much my father’s drinking. It was probably a good proportion of both. But it was definitely my mother who made me the family scapegoat, the focus ofher hostility and frustration. This obviously made my parents’ lives easier since neither had to acknowledge my father’s alcoholism or their perpetual quarrel with each other.

Although my mother hit me, her constant yelling and verbal abuse was worse. Whatever I said was