Tipping his body forward to tip himself back, player one threw the neon ball into the air, pointing at it, swung his racket around. He delivered it fast and fierce over the net at the Beverly Hills Tennis Club. I loved watching bodies move, my stupid sneakers dangling above the terracotta tiles…isn’t it amazing what we can do? With the time given to us?

Angelica threw her BH tennis cap to the back of her red Cadillac. Her hair fell over red leather like feathers, and she said it for the very first time. “The time has come for the time has come for you to pay attention.”

“Do you know Julio Iglesias?”

Before I could respond, her hand reached for me over the seat, her nails red, “I didn’t think so—believe me.” She cracked herself up. “Yes I do,” I said, the baby of the whitest woman alive. “Oh???” Leaning her back up against her car door, she crossed her arms dramatically and took a good look at me, a little princess. “Oh really?” Her brows rose.

“Yes.”

“No,” she shook that away.

“Yes.”

Dismissing that like a tough bitch, “No, no, you don’t,” she said.

“Yes.”

“No you don’t,” I didn’t. “Stop it,” she snapped. She pointed at me as she assumed her position behind her red wheel as if she knew how to handle a big one, baby. “But you will, believe me.” The stork who came to snatch a baby back, me, was ready to take flight, in other”words, getting down already. “Pay attention,” she warned me, sincerely. “It’s time to listen the words,” and the way she said words was delicious. “It’s time to listen and learn.”

Braz Dos Santos and partner Isabel winning the ‘campeão dos campeões’ (Champion of Champions) competition at Boca da Barra / Mano Ribeiro Wikimedia

“Me Va Me Va” by Julio Iglesias began to flow from the stereo. She clapped, moved her booty in her seat to the intro, which was the perfect take off song. We were going on a journey most definitely, baby. Checking her rearview mirror, she took on a tone that adults can take around young children, as taking on a young persona, even to reassure me, “we’re going to have fun,” she said, checking, like a bull-athlete-dancer, all blind spots. ”We’re going to play…” she said, as she thought that was all I needed, some amusement. Beginning to merge onto a wide, empty boulevard, you never know what’s coming, and it was funny, wasn’t it? A streak flew past her window, a car. You never know.

Tipping up the volume, “pay attention” was the name of the game, baby. “I like I like,” she flashed her brows and wondered if I knew what that meant, not thinking that I did. I did, she was referring to sex. Hand on the dial, chest forward, the big band instruments rose in volume. She grooved down La Cienega, smiling, getting sexy, thinking about sex, mostly. A driver did something stupid. She snapped — turned her body to check traffic out the back. She maneuvered this boat for a car — to switch lanes and speed after him.

Pulling up, coming to a halt, she honked long and hard. She waved with a nice fake smile in her fire-red Cadillac. She let it rip — she flailed about like a mad bird and gave a strong middle finger, hurled FUCK YOU at him like a bull. Now she was down low, tipping back up the volume, “pay attention… are you listening? Listening to the words? Do you understand what they mean?”

Around Ralphs, we finished the opening number… and now, it was time to take it to the next level but differently. A little Bee Gees flowed from the stereo, sung by Barbara Streisand. “I am a Woman in Love.” Clapping in her seat at a red light, we were going to deepen our understanding of life, even, love, of course, love love love above all. She spoke of nothing else. “Pay attention,” she said, with her pointer finger, for this song was important. She didn’t sing me the song, she taught me the song, if not the value of Barbara Streisand this day. Tipping up the volume, as if she had a tick, “pay attention,” she leaned over the armrest and began to diffuse the wisdom to me in her angel voice… here we go…

“Life is a moment in space…” she began, “pay attention, when the dream is gone,” she tipped it up, as her fingers were now glued to the dial, “pay attention, it’s a lonelier place. Why? Pay attention.” She turned it up. “I kiss the morning goodbye,” she waved it bye bye across her body, “but down inside,” she tipped her head down, “you know we never know why…” but she did, she made love all morning long, she communicated, cracking herself up, getting turned on. I laughed, she snapped. Hey, “Pay attention.”

Facing one another over the armrest, she looked as though she were telling a little girl a fairytale. “The road is narrow and long…” She drew the sight lines down La Cienega, barely able to sit still, “when eyes meet eyes,” her fingers demonstrated her eyes meeting these eyes out the windshield, “pay attention,” and she gave it to me with a fist, “and the feeling is strong,” and she was, “strong,” she repeated it, made sure it was clear with her instructional finger, okay? “I turned away from the wall,” She wailed, softly, in her angel voice over the middle rest.. “I stumble and fall, but I give you it all…” She kept teaching me the love song, with this degree of intensity. The wheels rolled on…. into West LA. “Pay attention,” she said, her eyes hazily on the road.

“I am a woman in love…” here, right here, she delivered her passion to me that rose WITH Barbara Streisand’s EMOTION, “and I do anything to bring you into my world,” another sex reference coming my way, “and hold you within,” I got the picture with the way she gathered her fist. “It’s a riiiiiiiiiiight,” she declared, “I defend over and over again…” she really asked me, “what do I dooooo?” Ahhh, the story was developing. The question would be answered in the next stanza.

“Pay attention.”

She turned it up.

Navigating this ride once again in my mind, turning, switching lanes, remembering her fantastic performance, the song even today sweeps me away down an old boulevard. She never gave up her lesson— “in love there is no measure of time.”

“She didn’t call?”

“Who?”

“Your mother…”

“No.”

People always asked me that.

I tried to tell those who listened to this story over the years, as it tended to hook people, which didn’t help me, speaking of not foreseeing dangers down the road, that it was a love song. They didn’t tend to understand. It just was, a love song. I could not help it held dissonant chords, and that I could not resolve them. People got affected by this story because it held the right blend of ingredients…

“In love there is no measure of time…”

As people believed this story sounded more like something you’d see on TV, on the big screen, the love songs would be just the emotional drive through it, and I wouldn’t have to explain why even if it was perplexing, an idea it’s taken me a long time to digest and comment on. This was a love story… don’t you see? I’d say, and what did that mean? “Whoa whoa whoaaaaa, love!” Fist on the DASHBOARD, “I am a woman in love,” checking traffic behind her, stroking her Brazilian prayer bracelets hanging from the rearview and bringing her fingers to her lips, as she performed this small act of devotion, prayer, good luck charm. Love, she spoke of nothing else, and yes, it was sex, and yes, it was good, goddammit —“I am a woman in LOVE, hey!” She cried. “I’m talking to YOU,” she directed to me, “YOU,” as in me, “you know you know how you feel? What a woman can do…” and isn’t it true? As she was ripping the air into her a fist, she’s DOING it, over and over again. Swept away to Barbara Streisand sustaining the note, I saw the sign: Miracle Mile, a neighborhood in Los Angeles famous for dinosaurs sinking in tar and do not stand a chance. I knew of miracles, from church, and I could sort of read already because I could compute letters as pictures. Miracle Mile. I remember remarking that sign once upon a time, like a marker along the road, the big mythic road. SHE was ENRAGED…the were windows down. Barbara Streisand poured out the car. She was sharing her love baby for the world to see, sure, she didn’t give a shit, cursed like a salior, could. The Cadillac veered into the left-hand turn lane, “It’s a riiiiiiiiiiiight,” and melting into it, she turned the wheel… “over and over again….”

At any time, she could flip out at a car, driver, and she could very well pull something.

carnival in rio - brazil 2005 - Ciska Tobing / wikimedia

“I am a woman in love!”

Into a driveway, she kept instructing as she made a U-Turn, still insisting that I pay attention! “I am!” We pulled up to a perfect house on the greenest patch of grass you ever saw. I jumped, to her surprise, her key still in the ignition, out the door. I bolted across her lawn, engine still running, to the end of the song…the heels of my patent leather black Mary Janes kicking up blades of grass. There was a world, and I was in it —I launched myself at her door, pushed it open and according to Angelica, at the club, I was one of the cutest babies she had ever seen, so I was a cute baby. Time to see it, in my cute opinion, then, as a torpedo in a princess dress and a matching bow. Wow… I twirled in a black and white checkered foyer, under a stunning crystal chandelier, with I am a Woman in Love filling my body and soul… if you picture that song continuing to play as I let it all go, twirling under this chandelier.

Her youngest daughter, Nicole, came to the banister up above a little puzzled; some girl was twirling with her arms outstretched in the foyer, and her mother was tripping over the names of her six children as if sneezing, trying to get to mine! It made her angrier! She combusted somewhere on her lawn and cursed to herself in Portuguese, yelling at a spot in the grass. “POHA!” Dammit! She said to herself. She had sort of a hazy stare. JESUS. “YOU! GIRL!” Maria!” I left the door open, and she wasn’t looking for a seventh child. “HEY!” Oooooh, I thought, oblivious to her, I saw a backyard through the threshold of the kitchen and out a window, as the bottom floor of this house revolved around the entrance foyer. But a woman stood in my way…a little taken aback by this little explosion that came through the door. I marched right up to her and said, “get out of my way.” I’ll never forget her face as she took a closer look at me down there. “Excuse me?” In a Brazilian accent. I believed I was clear, but I said it again to make sure. “OUT…of my way.” Angelita grabbed my arm, “what about please, sorry…?” It didn’t seem like I knew these words, so she got a little firmer, shook me a little, like spit it up girl, not squeezing me, but holding onto me, “PLEASE, SORRY???” I flipped out. Boom— quick—Angelita backed up like a real beast of athlete, told her cousin to BACK UP! Her sneaks squeaked across the foyer while she looked at me very clearly like are you kidding me girl???

I am a woman in love!

A moment of silence, shock, between these women — keeping their distance from me— her cousin looked at me as if I were the tazmanian devil.”Who is this person?” I made a run for it. Angelica’s mouth fell OPEN. She reached for her cousin with her hand, stretching from her. Her bird-like face almost laughed from surprise at my outburst, but her emotional response, as she had a proverbial whip at her disposal at all times, was about to whip back around — gaining momentum, even — a force of nature this woman— I could almost see “the whip” fly out of her and retract like the cord in old vaccuum cleaners and SNAP back into place. “HEY!”

Stomping her sneak, anytime she attempted to say anyone’s name, she would trip over her six children’s names, trip over at least one, if not two, three, even, POHA! Her sincere hatred for herself was hysterical. She could never really quite forget them, they were close to her.

I pushed the screen door open. I was a strong baby—with a pop of my shoulders, destined to be a gymnast. My shiny black shoes kicked up blades of grass as they charged through a backyard out of the American Dream towards a plum tree towering into the sky the color of my mother’s eyes… I grabbed a plump purple bum off the grass encircled by fruit. She had whipped back — anger — “hey!” She was coming for me, and she’d say it many times: “I’m coming for you…” Through the kitchen, I heard her coming, tripping over her six children’s names with her cousin who seemed to just let this go —the screech of the back door opening, the white in her eyes as she roared expanding. “NO!” She threw herself forward losing her balance! It slammed shut.

I am in a woman in love!

“DO NOT EAT THAT PLUM!”

And I’m talking to you!

I SNAPPED AT HER. “IT’S MINE!”

What a woman can do…

“DON’T EAT THAT!”

….Riiiiiiight I defend!

The love songs, through this…

If she took a step towards me, I screamed, I believe. I remember if she’d try to take a step, she couldn’t, didn’t, so she expressed her body largely to COMMUNICATE TO ME, and she was a bombastically physical woman — talented, birthed sports stars. She was spilling OUT. The stork who snatched a baby back, as I called her that, looked comical in her tennis outfit meets grandma sweater spotlit in direct sunlight. She SCREAMED! “DO NOT EAT THAT PLUM!” “MINE!” “IT WILL MAKE YOU SICK! NO! SHE PLEADED WITH ME. “SICK!” I DID NOT BELIEVE HER. “YES! IT WILL.” “NO!” “YES!” “NO!”THE TREE IS SICK.” TAPPING HER TEMPLE, her voice sounded like the tennis sneaks squeaking across the court, she PLEADED with me TO NOT BE STUPID. “DIE.” I growled at her, “STAY AWAY!” “DIE? YOU WANNA DIE????” I stared her down, held my ground, my plum in my hand. I got bratty, and she got BITCHY. I just stood there, staring at her. I didn’t try to eat the plum, so she turned her cheek and crossed her arms, a bull this woman. She let me be, rocking on her heels, her pelvis the seat of her power, a swinger, not literally I believe, but a power who led from here. She didn’t know what she was looking at with me. She studied me, observed me. I was observing her as well, I came from a house of liars, so was she lying? Huh, right? From her perspective. What is this girl doing? I was holding onto this plum, looking at her…

In squeaky tones, her arm shot to — tree, tapped her temple, girl. Don’t be dumb and eat that plum.

I came from a sick tree as if this story were more like a parable that gave me the answer right at the start as well as a question to work out. Did the fruit fall far from the tree? Did it only apply to apples? (That’s for the Catholics.) What do we inherit, what do we have to inherit? Are we bad or good? What’s true? I never lived this moment down, who I was when I was four. Blades of grass turned flew over Angelita like confetti, so unreal.

Out the back door, the one and only José Leibowitz, twelve, pimply, hormonal, slipped into the backyard to back his mother up.“What? Excuse me?” The door slammed shut behind him, he had green eyes like laser beams, and Angelica snapped at him, “DOOR.” The pre-teen pro-athlete kicking his feet just like his mother did asked his mother who I was, who THIS was, and she could hit Jose with a roller up piece of paper, type deal, to which he would wince, because she was harmless, just annoying. Nicole, sweet and soft as grass, already over José as he picked on her, appeared through them, a seven-year-old Dorothy in ruby slippers sparkling in the sunlight hyperreal, bright white. Calmly, simply, she walked right up to me. “You can’t eat that,” she said. I didn’t say anything. I just eyed her not knowing if she was a liar. I couldn’t, she said, referring to the tree. “It’s sick.”

“Louise,” Angelica stomped at Nicole, “Mich-Andrea,” Angelica flipped, “José!” He snapped, “what?” “Not YOU,” she was FED UP. “Nicole!” She cried at her “wispy” child, obsessed with astrology, which annoyed her. “Do not eat that plum!” With her arm, Angelica cleared an invisible shelf, cast its contents to the ground. “No one goes on the slide! The bees!” The treehouse had been usurped by a colony of bees. Well then, where were these bees? Looking at this woman, suspiciously. I didn’t trust this woman’s story. “Nicole, Maria, Nicole, Maria.” Angelica told Jose, that she didn’t know who I was. “I was just here to play for the day, Alan.” Something about Alan. “Enough of this bull!” She barked, he went quiet.

Nicole suggested that I give the plum to her because I couldn’t eat it. It was simple. I didn’t know what to do. “Or,” I could just drop it, she said. It would make me sick, but by the looks of it, you’d never know, just like the bees, sickness lurked here, though it appeared so perfect. Nicole was diffused and gentle. I dropped it. Did I want to play? Okay, I nodded. Earthy, airy, peering at me, she wondered what my sign was. Like I knew what this was. She explained it was related to the stars, our connection to them. “Andrea, Jo,” Angelica stomped, shook these names OUT — SPEWED their names SO ANNOYED at herself. “LOUISE! MICHELLE!”

“You have a match!” The third and fourth children came out the small gate in the back with their soccer balls —the sole brunette and sole blond couplet in soccer game, black and white. Louise was kind and the darkest in complexion of the bunch, the Brady Bunch now Brazilian, which was funny, meets The Sound of Music. In baggy soccer shorts and in a ponytail, she was the future lesbian of the family. Laughing at me, she spun her ball, and asked her mother in Portuguese.“Who’s the doll?” Michele, the lioness, scanned me bitchily, as she was the bitch in the family, but in the best way. Lethal, too, as blonds usually are. “Who’s this chick, Ma?” They were training to go pro. They were both professional soccer players. Angelica snapped at her, as she always did, but not in the same way, or Michelle was a whip, she just had a presence, that — made it unnecessary to wield it, it was contained in her, you didn’t want it to come out. “I’m just playing, relax,” Michele fixed her ponytail, gave her bitchy eyes, and kissed her cheek. José, Michele, and Louise—after a head nod at me, an “Love you Moooom, you’re the cutest! Nicole, you smell, later alligator!”—ran towards the mini-van waiting out front. Nicole dimpled at Louise. “Good soul…” Softly, expansively, she brought her green/blue gaze back to me. She informed me that her eyes could go between the two, nodding, resolved about it. “When’s your birthday?” I told her, not knowing why she was asking me that question. “Oh, horse and human,” she nodded, softly smiling at me, “I see that. I’m a Virgo.”

“What’s that?”

She, cutely, a seven-year-old, explained that I was “fire,” and she was earth, “a maiden….” and now, we had to figure out the rest of my signs…. I was a saggitarius, yes, but that was a simple way of approaching astrology. She always had her astrology book, a complex system, we’d sit on the greenest grass in our sparkly slippers and she explained this system of thought, referring to her siblings, like Jose is a Getmini, so he’s air, she nodded, smiled, as he pissed her off, bad. That was why we, of course, didn’t get along, "I was fire, he was air,” so it was a bit volatile there, airy. She’s a maiden, but Nicole could get very angry, especially with Jose.

“And I started living with you just like that?” I asked.

Angelica snapped her fingers in my face, “like that,” by the pool at the Beverly Hills Tennis Club. We were courtside in the shade of the umbrella with chic battlement for trim. And chic, the battlefield, of love, became, though Pat Benatar wasn’t really her speed, and if I had to pick one from that artist, I would pick “Weeee—belong!” As Dr. J was “a wee person.” The rhythm of that song is like horses charging down the plains….the intensity is right, that’s how Angelica Leibowitz loved, that’s what she was talking about, teaching you, you see, she was teaching the love song, every car ride, more or less, there wasn’t a moment that this woman wasn’t listening to music or embodying music, she lived in a state of dance, a libra, Nicole showed me the pictures of the signs in the grass. We would have matching sparkling shoes, soon, as we became the very best of friends. Mine were gold. I really was in a fairytale.

I started living with her just like that, Angelica said, magically, overnight. She kicked the chair in front of her putting her feet up on it, called my mother a sick bitch. Now, one would have to make space for her vitriol as that was pretty fucked up, and there are situations that you just gotta call as is, it was. She had every right to be furious. Her Adidas sandals were a nice touch, as if she were a God, and why does that touch of banal resonate as divine? I don’t know, even the brand names she’s wearing resonated mythically to me, almost if there was a world to come…a world that was coming… I did see Dr. J as reflective or prescient, not a genius, exactly, her obsession, but prescient, yes, but what was that exactly? What was coming…? What did this reflect? Since it rang as true….somewhere out there… she was the villain for today, Dr. J. A true Joker. A real one. She belonged to this clan of archetype, if you would, psychologically, which dawned on me as an adult, later, as “sitting down to write about this time,” that idea, woke me up to what happened, so I am not the same, now, as I write this, as if this were a fiction, which it was, meaning, that’s what it sounded like to people to bring it back to basics. It didn’t sound real to them, and they didn’t totally understand what they are saying. It was a real fiction—fascinating. A invention of the mind, obviously, but it really happened. That was the fundamental gap I had to bridge, and one I would have to make totally on my own, as people could not even do it, for me, you see. Into the Looking Glass. Unreal. This song was… important to her… we listened to it… its meaning ripening like wine, better with time.

“No truth is ever a lie,” she barked, this time, in her Cadillac, turning up the stereo, Jose and Louise finally snapping at her, Mom, with their gear in the backseat, and I would be laughing through this, as some primal force was unleashed within her whenever this song came on… interesting line, to me at nine, what was the truth? Conceptually? It’s a riiiiiiight I defend, over and over again….

And I picture myself, growing up through this, listening to Foreigner “I want to know what love is….” in headphones, or something, beginning to dance, sort of making fun of her, to this love song, as it was one after another… she’s dancing in her bedroom. Her kids barking through this or trying to communicate with her….and she really couldn’t care less about their needs…. not in these moments. The love song was sacred, sexy, yes. She truly celebrated her sexuality… her sensuality, but it was love 24/7, and she was referring to the act of, to her. In order for a song like this to be born, in other words, it could have only come from sex, right? In her mind, and I laughed at her, I really did, and she sort of laughed at all of it, actually, a woman, moving her feet, clapping, checking herself out as she pulled a sexy move in the mirror, maybe getting hooked by her own body in space and she’s going to get pulled in… taking her dance… deeper. I laughed.