"The time has come for YOU to pay attention," Angelica Leibowitz said.

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.

"Can you describe Dr. J's personality?"

Photo by Laura Marks on Unsplash

*sensitive content warning, again—

The tennis players got off to a good start. They moved in smears around our table, grunting from the effort of chasing the ball with strict focus. Their sneakers squeaked in bright tones that broke the day, just like Joy. 

“Can you describe her personality?” 

My bare feet dangled above the ground. We were close to one another now, positioned around the table at 6 and 9 o’clock in the shade. The ball streaked back and forth between our bodies as the tennis court was beside us, the match a poignant backdrop for a psychological drama.

Angelica mimed bringing a phone to her ear. “Ohhhhh,” she sighed like a princess in a meadow. “I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you,” she rattled on, fourteen times, not four, as if love were even a joke. One of the problems I ran into was —the concept of exaggeration. Dr. J was a walking exaggeration, and people exaggerate, they do, all the time, so it was another one of these reflection moments where I wanted to ask people —listening to this story — do you exaggerate too much? This is some relinquishing of control, or some spill over into some inventive area of the psyche, perhaps, and one of my questions about Dr. J had to do with her psychic makeup. In any case, Dr. J threw “I love you” at her in quick succession like happy daggers. “BULLSHIT.” Angelica was a bull, not just a bird. “The biggest — ” She got up in my FACE. “Whore, piece of shit.” I nodded, “right,” given the circumstances. It passed. She reflected that this situation was vulgar. “The fakest human being I have ever seen.” Her eyes were demonic over her beak. She froze. Bumblebees buzzed around the flower pots.

“Not one REAL thread…”

She pinched it and showed it to me as if it were real. The fire blazed in her eyes.

“…in this bitch.”

She damned that unreal strand to hell.

My mother’s fakeness was — enraging. Made of powder poof powder, Dr. J, a record that skips made of a talc — intangible and harsh.

Riiiight, of course, I thought. A situation like this would produce a violent reaction—Angelica was embodying the gore, the messy guts of the scandal. Of course she would flip out — she’s not going to remain calm. Forget that I’m a child, in fact, it appeared too easy to forget entirely,. “I am from Brazil,” she said. She reminded me many times—she was who she was, so she’s not going to be polite, chewing on her gum and flashing a NICE fake smile. She was not going to behave well, because it was not well, and a jury, in a court of law, would probably be on her side. She acted as if she’d even reject the notion that she could act “evolved.”

She actually got wrapped up in a sex scandal. My mother wrapped her up in a sex scandal over some four-year-old girl she took home for one fucking day, so she cursed. She had a foul mouth, but it was foul. She was told that a man was raping his four-year-old daughter. A situation like this — it’s similar to tyranny, it’s a mad government. It’s insane. “RAPE,” she fired that word at me many times. “Maria,” she pointed at me, “this bitch told me rape.” Her flesh burned, because sex was real, it was really really real to this woman, so you don’t go around talking about raping a goddamn four year old and acting like some Disney princess on steroids.

I supported her divine response. I made room for her vitriol, in fact. It passed, her truth. Valid. Her reaction was valid. “The biggest,” Angelica kept her voice down but not her intensity, “liar on earth!” Yet she reflected so much truth.

The ball hit the net, “no.” A fist of defeat from player one. He bounced the ball back to the service line with his racket.

Angelica tipped her head down. A tennis player prepared for the serve. She delivered the operatic exclamation that Dr. J could fire at any time silently: “AH!” She popped, confetti, fireworks, Dr. J, on the phone. “AAH!” Dr. J called her every day for a while. Angelica mimed the phone to her ear. Never asked for me.

“DISGUSTINGLY sweet,” pop, she let it rip. Angelica flicked my mother’s sweetness off her and spilled out in her chair to pop pop — in quick succession, nothing but skill — she exclaimed, quietly, “breath like death! Maria! You died.” And then, yes, her breath. “Legendary…” Angelica looked at me with EYES, practically bringing her chair forward towards me as she spilled over. 

“Maria,” she whispered down low, LOOKING at ME, “Maria, look at me. Maria.” 

I could laugh, what a performance, you see, even from Angelica, a real personality.

“She breathed, and she could kill flowers…”

Angelica paused and looked the flowers in pots, bees buzzing: “dead.”

“Is there a DEAD ANIMAL in there?” 

“Did she EAT a dead animal…?” 

“And she wouldn’t stay away,” Angelica clutched onto the arms of her chair and shot fire out of her eyes over her beak. “She would walk right up to you and breathe all over you.” Sincerely, in a red bikini, looking hot, lol, Angelica had to ask, “Why, Maria, why?” With a fist, “why is she making it more pronounced, why isn’t she staying away?” She spurted yuck from her body, caressed the air, herself, as if my mother were made of slime. She flicked her off — her body. Handsy, Dr. J. She didn’t appear to have a sense of physical boundaries — in listening to Angelica. She kicked the chair, practically, “this bitch,” in trying to rest her Adidas sandals on the edge of her seat. Her performance was sort of genius and animal in her chair, sticking her finger in her mouth, accompanied by a ghastly, deathly sound. Haunted.

She opened her legs, even, by the jacuzzi once. She opened her legs to show me how my mother smelled down there with a kind of amusement, almost a smile, on the crack of a joke. It was funny, to be fair to Angelica, like you couldn’t really help but laugh, out of sheer shock. It was graphic, important, and even art—our conversations — because we were at the Beverly Hills Tennis Club. It was grotesque. That made sense as a style, huh, I thought. She gave me a fleshy idea of how loose and smelly my mother’s anatomy was. “Every man…” Angelica said it, with feeling, every time, eyes side to side, leaning toward me, “every man.”

Dr. J was a picture-perfect grotesque. A beauty, fashionable, girlie, disjointed. Her wrists were like flimsy hankies flopping at you. “Bye bye for now,” she’d say. Even the garlic cloves, “her candy,” the whole picture —  her persona was in this style. She was a grotesque creature. Her ingratiating sweetness. Was she not bathed? I peered through this scenario. Was she a product of extreme neglect? Why was she abject? I thought, if she came from the darkest, sickest of backgrounds, why would I look away? There wasn’t a darkness too dark I wouldn’t face for a child, thinking about my mother. She was one, once upon a time, so what happened from there to here?

The jets went off. Angelita, perky as a bird, adjusted her seat to face the guests who were getting into the jacuzzi with a smile. She knew them.

I moved to the sun lounger, so I could face her. A row fanned out behind me, almost like a parallax. The players congratulated one another on a game well played, nice, smiles. We all have that mask or defense or reaction — of friendliness, or that everything is okay: a smile. Dr. J led with it, and the crack of it haunted me. Plastered on her face, it was so pretty that it was hard to tell how tight it was. She wasn’t a soft or tender person. She was, in my mind, the Joker — next generation. Her mirrors, her eyes as blue as the sky… so clear…expansive… not a spot of darkness in her. The Joker card was an unusual card to find included in the deck handed to me at the beginning of my life. But there’s good in it, there was something useful in it, I thought, for its vulgarity too, because the subject was vulgar, not ethereal. And yet, Dr. J reflected that it could be treated as such.

She even looked like a Joker. But she was a beauty, you see, not a disfigured face — that came later. She ended up being a little Portrait of Dorian Grey, actually. Today, she looks visibly twisted, hard. She was always insane, but her ugliness is pronounced. Her eyes, they were always wells, but in a picture I saw, they looked as if they could devour the whole world and still be hungry. I showed it to my cousins — “does this not look like a Joker?” They didn’t even hesitate. “Yes it does, she really looks like a Joker.”

The sky above me on a sunny day, the night sky felt so clean and cool next to her. “We tend to see the path of a villain as a fall from grace…” but hero hero, another way is possible for us all, she’d say, Joy gets it. The light could be dark, dark could be light, and there was truth in it, profound, as sex is, for instance, viewed as dirty or shameful, when it’s good, our earthly nature.

The Joker today isn’t Heath Ledger. She’s going to crack a smile without a flaw on her face. She’s even Tiktok, complete with sparkles and hearts around her figure. The Joker today is surrounded by cameras, dazzling, holding up a Bible at a protest, like Trump did. She knows what the audience is. The smile is societal — why so serious? Her white fur, business suit, rushing to the IRS — it was desperate, hysterical. Our fiscal responsibility — wee, out a limo, Joy. You see? The sweetest of them all. She gagged, Angelica… she was spectacular, a kite flying high, loose, disconnected from Earth.

There’s real truth in the yin and yang, thinking about the balance between light and shadow. It’s more about how we qualify these ideas. That was the problem with Joy, I think. She’s like the priest that molests children, in that, she’s an extreme version of innocence — the most chaste woman in the world with her eyes like an erasure that wants to devour, but if you’re looking closely, this is a diluted being, who will then show up naked and throw herself on you. It is, hm, this phrase: mentally ill, indeed. There was so much truth in it, actually, thinking about the Catholic Church’s offenses, and this sensational rumor that they kidnapped an eleven-year-old girl on her way to a music lesson…there’s even a documentary about it, and is that true? Did they? Or is that just a fun story? Dr. J—reflecting more truth. How sensational it is. Then, my cousins, in Italy, discussed it at a lunch table right before we were going to eat… as if child rape, if not slavery, or murder were not the subject at hand, as she’s never been found. Did they hear what they were saying? So, in the Joker’s tone, why so serious? Some girl is locked in some Vatican dungeon… I don’t know how to describe that disconnect. Joy’s denying it, of course. She’s never had SEX, practically, only to have me.

Her personality was SO BRIGHT you had to shield your eyes, so did that indicate a very dark past? That’s what it looked like, but Angelica didn’t see that, exactly. Joy was in a state of emergency. She kept saying, “she’s SICK IN THE HEAD,” and was it in the head? Interesting language. Someone could be saying sex, overtly, even, and no one makes a connection; she might be sick, there, but no one will take it seriously because of the delivery… 

She saw that Joy was sick, but it was not an insult; it was time to get help, but she was stoning her to death. It’s not that it was not deserved, a seductive feeling, righteousness, if not true, and be careful, of course it’s “true,” but a system of punishment was fundamental, structural. This was part of the problem. 

And, well, I always saw Dr. J as patriarchal, you see. MEN aren’t typically seen as “mentally ill” when they behave in parallel ways to her. Reflections. They aren’t considered ill if they’re extreme dicks, if they skip out on their families, if they rape or abuse a child. They’re seen as criminal, even. And Angelica isn’t overexaggerating. We were in a sex scandal; my mother orchestrated a sex scandal.

Why the violence Dr. J? She wants it? She’s provoking it?

Nothing but beating and rape from this woman. It was an outrageous act thus there is, an equal and opposite reaction, though that’s not always the case when it comes to human relationships, depends, people overreact. But in this case, we’re in a sex scandal. What she did — produced this effect. 

I mean, in Angelica’s words: “Maria imagine! Maria, imagine?” She fired her pointer finger at me. “Imagine?” She simply offered Dr. J a playdate, and then got cash and child molesters and her breasts thrown in her face. 

And why did it appear so poignant to me? 

Angelica’s demonic, monstrous performance…?

I thought about it later in my pink room. Her reaction. Her guttural, vulgar reaction — it was good, you see. Sure, it’s vulgar, but it’s true, like, if it’s vulgar, it’s vulgar. But why Angelica’s performance was wise and meaningful, I couldn’t really tell. Not yet. Her demonic, but almost like shamanic, performance: did it reflect a truly gross situation? Reflections. Is that true, Dr. J? Did she actually come from somewhere gross>? Her house?

 She was, she could drink whipping cream out of the carton… Dr. J, not like you can’t, do it, but it’s a strange choice… what is that? Her eating habits were….basically nonexistent, but truly. What happened here?

It was true, you see. It was indeed sick. Wouldn’t it be? Incest? Was this what I was looking at? An abusive home? Abject poverty? Where did that come from? Now, Dr. J might have taken a turn, but my father didn’t really seem to act like she changed all that much, only that “the success went to her head,” which makes me laugh. It’s just that she was so crazy, like she was reaching for the stars. I always saw Joy sort of like an Icarus, an idiot, who thought he could literally reach the sun — burn through your existence as if you were a speck. There are limits, blue eyes. And some of the coddling I received, like, “don’t say that,” was not the just path. 

Sometimes, you gotta call it how it is. Stupid. A judge would be on my side here, calling ORDER, what the HELL was this? 

Flying a little too high there, Dr. J, why did this appear prescient to me as some warning from above, too? There was truth in it, you see. 

The TikTok filters of today, the “you create your own reality,” obsession, the manifestation techniques, the “spiritual ascent,” this desire, by “ridding one of earthly ties…” disconnection, “everything is disconnected,” people say, today, sort of disconnected, already, because you — keep saying it. The age of disconnection? Dr. J. “Wee.” That’s Dr. J to me: desperately getting into her limo, “to the IRS immediately!” That’s the real joke. She’s the keeper of taxes as a Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland. “Step on it Michel,” her driver/lover. I hear my father’s voice over this imagining, when he explained what the IRS was: “Everything works,” he said. “Everyone shares,” he drew the connection with his hands between him and everyone else, “a reponsibility in ensuring society works,” basically speaking. Just picturing the version of her as a real villain, even, she could be wearing a tiny tiny top hat angled to the side… running across a street to GET TO THE IRS… in magazine clothes, as if she stepped off the pages…looking smashing… There was a lot of reality, I’m sure, driving the fantasy of her… but what? It didn’t look too pretty. That broke my heart young. 

Back in my pink room, squinting out the pink blinds, meditating on the mirror in my periphery, as this object reflected vanity, Dr. J was vain, so I didn't like it. I rejected it practically. I would live to regret it, obviously, but I had problems to work out. Evidently, it just came with the territory, unfortunately, truly. I would have preferred not having had to work out these problems — with a smile. But I did. Not wanting to get caught up in the mirror at all, actually. There was, at times, too much about her that appeared true.

I had a picture. One. Of me, as a baby, in the arms of my father’s brother and wife, at Dr. J’s family house. And my father and I were going to the east coast now, now that he was no longer a child molester, supposedly, and I was going to get the only eyes I could find that had entered this home.

When my father and I arrived to my aunt and uncle’s house in an old mining town, we pulled up to a slender street of row houses up real steps. In the inky night, winter, Adele from Malta (Queens) appeared with her simple smile. She was a black haired, black eyed, pale Italian, with “double z’s” for breasts, she even admitted, airing out her shirt, because she was sweating from cooking. She had a lovely laugh, made cannolis constantly. They were the best. She was, in our family, the star chef. Her mother was, professionally.

Gus was a carpenter, so he carved all the thresholds into curving screens. It gave the house charm. He looked like a little boxer, Gus. He was Fred Willard’s old comedy partner, appeared on the Ed Sullivan show, but he had a nervous breakdown, anger management issues, also. He was never the same. His daughters — and Adele, but mostly them — had a hard time with his touring schedule, he was at it, constantly. And then, he had a breakdown. And now, he would, without fail, leave during any family party (primetime) to prepare his stand-up routine which he delivered at the table. He would laugh, forcefully, at his own jokes. Mentally ill, yes. We were a family of comedians, we really were. I, of course, had a tape recorder that I spoke into as if this were really a show, happening before me—real life.

We were eating ziti, tomato sauce. I was a nine-year-old with seniors. My father was sixty when I was born. He was sixty eight, then, and so was Gus. I got to the point quick — sticking my fork in the rich and deep tomato sauce — that they had been to Dr. J’s — you see. “Oh yeah,” they didn’t miss a beat there. “Yes we did.” We went through the game of tennis, where they gave me a sum up of what I already knew, “wanted to meet you.” “Yeah…” I told them what had happened, “she gave me away to Brazilians…” and I suppose I heard a comedic note in it, so I delivered it as such. I was open about it, but no one heard me. And here, it’s one of these moments where my father appears as the focus of my memory, one of these, graining back, all these years later. “Did you lie?” Nick? I wondered if anyone approached him, in this family, I don’t think they did. In any case, I needed in — I needed to know about their experience at her family’s house.

“Tell me about it…”

And in front of my father, eating his ziti, they communicated how strange her home was, first sentence. “Yeah,” Adele’s nasal “yeah,” and Gus’s reply, “creepy.” That’s how he would describe “what it felt like,” as I had asked the question. “Creepy.” In this case, that’s what I was expecting. If I’m being “honest,” a word you’re not supposed to use, I also had a couple of “otherworldly” folders in my cabinet labeled “undercover investigation.”

Curiosities around the field of energy. I wondered if I might be able to feel into this house, get a feeling about it based on them. Tune into them. If I could even get a picture, not literally, though at times, I could get an image, something, as I was listening and trying to connect with their bodies, the impression it left.

“What happened?”

They spoke of walking into the house, they had just gotten there, picturing Gus’s face, as there was a freeze over his eyes, so was it cold? They were in the garage, I asked them to describe, the space. “Her sister…” walked through the door. They were still downstairs, as if they had just walked in. “Started acting strange.”

“Yeah…”

Adele had to crack up. “Yes,” I told them she could call the Mickey Mouse phone from time to time as if she were dying… this woman. “She would call you…” she began, “in a…” “yeah,” Gus interjected. “Creepy,” he said, “yeah,” she said. “Of calling you with this ghoulish sounds,” but it was a bit too involved there, they said, she acted abnormally, and I was cracking up hysterically as a baby in the next room. “Hysterically.” I still do, laugh hysterically, like, they had to leave the next day, they said. I had to stay because I could not move. They had planned to stay a few days, but no way, no way they could stay there. “12 people sleeping in the same room…” and they put THEM in the same room. “There was an uncle, a sleepwalker…”

“Uh huh…”

So fourteen people were sleeping in the same room.

That’s what I’m expecting upfront in this case. A visibly strange set-up.

I went in deep, as I said. 

*

“So listen, listen to me,” I sang on Miracle Mile, my bare feet sliding across her white carpet, “I can feel your eyes go through meeeee… do do do do do do do do…” only the best love songs scored these years, but I permit myself the right to invent, as this fictional thread helped me through the real story. “So listen, listen to me…” the passion. “You know I love you but I just can’t take this,” picturing my fists beside her, she laughed at me a lot. “You know I want to but I’m in too deep,” and I can’t help but laugh, because she was the type of person who would crack a sex joke about that… you see, like, “not possible.” She liked it, crossing her bedroom, deep baby, and then she’d dance a little… she could got carried away. We laughed, we did. But then, is that totally true? Yes, it is, I laughed at her constantly, but this situation was so strange, I was so young, that any affection I showcased for them… wouldn’t that be ill-advised? Wouldn’t I be healthier retaining distance? Nothing was appropriate or fun about it, but life turns out to be complicated, our ties, and as I write these lines, I can feel people agreeing—but were they in a sex scandal? Were they in a situation like this? I always return to this question: what would you think about it as a parent?

She was the whitest woman I have ever seen...

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

And the day broke from the mouth of Madame Butterfly…the hope that the sun will rise again … the amber waves glittered hot white as the sun moved towards the afternoon. To “Un Bel Di…” (not literally) Dr. J descended the stair in Ferragamo. This woman existed on the dimension of opera, however, literally, not a metaphor. She was an aria, classical, but buffoon, but buffoon is classical. After all, she was a prodigy on the piano and organ, a professional musician, once upon a time, according to Neiman Marcus Magazine, and a genius at it. A genius no matter what. Above all, that. Her genius was of a caliber beyond the stars in the sky, where she often rested her sky blue eyes, as she sparkled in haute couture sequins in the back of her limo. “Mama,” in her little girl/showgirl way, only wore Krizia to work, exclusively, a fashionista, as all good villains are because they exist in the dimension of fantasy, I believe—Dr J’s home. Her dusty violet Krizia suit with gold buttons was stunning. She was a chic woman, but she had a real passion, so range: ballgowns, cocktail dresses, doll dresses, and a closet of kimonos down the hall. From what I gathered, her outfits in church could sometimes be out of place. But I associate pianists with a touch of wild flair, why? I don’t know. Maybe one has to exit the mind, become one with, as classical can evoke that. Where someone is tuned into some conduit of electricity and is playing like mad, genius, as classical composers, I feel, almost occupy the same elastic headspace as mathematicians. Will Hunting, in Good Will Hunting, describes doing math like playing the piano. Beethoven, he could just play, and math was the same exercise for him. Dr. J sort of acted like BAD ACTOR trying to play the role of “genius” but uppity, girlie, flat like a glossy magazine but with her pianist hands— cultured, even classy. A pianist in Alice in Wonderland the opera, who will then punch numbers, glide across space in her chair — desperate — lives on the line…to Un Bel Di. It was life and death, for sure. “THE IRS IS COMING…” they were always coming to see Dr. J, specifically.

I’m giving you a little introduction to Dr. J to set the tone for a most unbelievably theatrical woman with a particular look and physicality… who exists in a world that dreams about these “great minds…” as Dr. J breaks glass… she looked about the air, as Russell Crowe did in A Beautiful Mind as in there were triangles in it. She was seeing equations, not empty space, Dr. J. She— was a genius. This was her objective— to BE— in ridiculous gestures — the one to rule them all: the geniuses. To “Un Bel Di.” Like, if you actually played that track over her real person moving through space, they would match, it might be groundbreaking, even, as a performance. This was her emotional state, saving the world via the IRS, accosting the priest with her rapes every Sunday, and wrapping her baby up in a sex scandal — Un Bel Di.

“Protect my baby,” tears falling down her cheeks. “Please, I beg you.”

Angelica might crack up/get angry, as Dr. J pushed a funny bone.

Once, coming back from Neimans in her cherry red Mercedes, she was high from shopping and possibly pills. She cranked up AIDA to the MAX and rolled the windows down. She began some ludicrous buffoon mocking aria over this melody at me, sort of cracking up, silly. “Ahhh…” I couldn’t make it up. I closed my ears, because she didn’t sound good, but Dr. J didn’t care—she was provocative in this way. The joke is, practically nightly, “she’s drinking, driving, and looking for sex downtown…” in the same car. She was a pathetic character, so pathos, that’s where Dr. J lives on the comic spectrum as representing some desperate need for care. There’s a function to pathos, and I didn’t need the pity, neither did she, but she did need care. I might have had a rapier, but I was wrong to put it aside, I refused to take on ANY “oh, poor you,” like, go read a book. Sorry, that’s just who I am. “This was your wish, not mine,” meaning you wanted to know. She acted as if she came from the darkest of childhoods as the brightest thing in it. And over the years, people looked at me as if I were delivering a turn of phrase.

Pathetic: it’s a condition. Not an insult. But because I spoke of it really, and I’d never use that word casually, as a joke, you see, or as an insult, it was too close to real for some people, just like the words crazy and insane. People say things they don’t really mean, I got the picture—wink. Dr. J. They speak unreally—wink again. Dr. J. I saw her in everyone and everything. Because I was being real, it discredited me, even, like this person can go around yapping pathetic because they didn’t really mean it. People could get confused between the two and discredit the real deal, because they can’t handle it. “She was a real pathetic.” Joy was a real psychological case. She didn’t want to be normal, you see, she had no interest in it. She acted like a buffoon—a genius, in her mind. This wasn’t a woman to take it easy on, and I did for the majority of my life, as I didn’t have this point of view for most of my life. What she did was unacceptable. And everyone in my life missed it.

Imagine?

Imagine!

She cried, Angelica — firing her pointer finger at me.

“This bitch told me RAPE,” she desperately tried to COMMUNICATE IT. She wrapped up this woman in a sex scandal. Let’s be real. I’m more on the LEGAL end, you see, not on the “aw she was mentally ill,” sure, she most certaintly was, but there are LINES.

In another reflection moment, would you be concerned about someone’s woundedness, someone who abuses a child? No, are you concerned about their mental health state? NO, but if that’s the case, just get it out of my face and deal with it, you know what I mean? Go handle it. Deal with it. It’s a health care issue. It needs to be treated, and not in a system of punishment. This person is sick. It’s a disease. What she did was not okay, a parent was needed—that concerns my healing from all this.

On her way to the goddamn IRS in limo driven by her lover, supposedly, getting into the limo in front of us—absurd. My mother was completely absurd. Angelica told me to “pay attention” for the very first time in her red Cadillac — it was time for my first love song lesson. She clapped and turned up the stereo… “Me Va Me Va…” as Dr. J’s limo took off — probably she went to sleep with a man, shop, and then make a stop at the IRS…

I start here, because it was the worst, just the worst — telling someone this? Trying to EXPLAIN who Dr. J is? A woman who would wrap her child up in a sex scandal. Like, were they expecting Santa Claus? Are you expecting someone who isn’t unhinged? You know? This was my mother. This is the woman who is going to do this. She was a severe case, and they do indeed exist, in fairytale tones, even, since people were ignorant to the existence of madness, abuse, um, “these people exist…” Sorry to be “the one” for you, but welcome to a world with about eight billion people in it. Next. Mirror mirror…mirrors. And not speaking this way — caused me problems. I’m not going to waste my time rummaging through your disbelief just in trying to EXPLAIN who this woman was.

And so, by nature of how gross and offensive she was, Dr. J, and I say that with the spiritual support of political theorist Hannah Arendt because she’d definitely read this, and I definitely read her if not relied on her to help me through the insanity of this story. She was a woman, dead, who supported me better than anybody alive, especially through the insanity of everything that came along with this story. She saw “the world,” as a real entity, a real structure, and I needed her understanding of it to get how much of a role that idea plays into one’s psychology: what it means to appear in the world. That was hard due to the otherworldly nature of this story. This wasn’t a political battle, but it was a battle on the personal front.

That’s exactly how Arendt would have described it. “Maria can’t exactly appear in the world with a story like that. It didn’t even seem that people could SEE her as real.” Sure, Joy’s not a dictator, but there are some acts, some crimes, some ideas, call it what you want, that should not be treated as if they were made of pixie dust—rage is necessary, spiritual, in saying no, where it must be said. It’s a little Dr. J. “This is not okay—maybe in a few generations, we could revisit the idea of a relationship.” I had to, strangely, avoid very true ways of looking “evolved” or “resolved.” It wasn’t that, “all mothers are crazy,” which someone said, to me, of all people, or “she was wounded,” the path was — what she did was unacceptable. The path was one of a parent — if you touch my kid, you’re dead. There’s a big difference between social justice and —if you touch my kid, you see—a parent will kill you. It’s — a deep relationship, typically, not in my case, but generally parents are going to lose their minds. I was disrespected, at a very young age. If you touch my kid, you see, this is the parent, not the wiseman, per se, I’ll kill you. There is wisdom in it when it’s appropriate, you see, which in my case, it was — if someone wrapped up my baby in some ridiculous sex scandal, I would be furious. No? Yet, no one thought of it.

Except, the Zen Master Sybil: the reason why I was able to make through my dark night, as I went through one when I reopened all this. She was a Zen Master psychologist with the middle name Sybil, so I called her the Zen Master Sybil, evidently. I gave her an official title — she was spiritual in her approach, and rage was most certainly that — spiritual, necessary, red. She said.

She told me to — “pay attention” Angelica, behind the red wheel of her red Cadillac. The perfect day, that was Dr. J. The brightest colors, the day. Her backyard — I remember it — it was the greenest grass I ever saw, the field of dreams we twirled upon though it might be more like belief. The field of. Dr. J sounded and acted as if she came from this realm.

What was her general impression of her? I asked Angelica. What’s the first thing that came to her mind when she saw her? I don’t know about how she was at work, but she was never normal. I tried to explain this to people. She was not a “hi how are you” person. All you know about me is: I was beaten at two to the point of being sent away. That’s Dr. J. I don’t know if she thought she was normal, but she did not seem to care if she gave a normal impression of herself….getting naked in her office to seduce a man and running into church and accosting a priest with her rapes. I can’t follow her logic. Except, need, only need. She appeared primally starved, she appeared desperate though her money produced some flouncy spin through it all.

Angelica Liebowitz stuck her fork into her club salad that came in a glass leaf bowl—chic— she made some modifications to it, I remember. I don’t think I even got lunch, and didn’t my father pay her for these visits? To hang out with her, I had to pay, but I didn’t really get lunch, did I — you see? What I noticed in retrospect—that position took me a real effort to get to, thanks to Angelica, a woman who went on and on about how selfless she was, in taking care of me…for money… regardless of the reasons. Not just a couple hundred bucks, either.

So, how did she appear to you…?

Angelica paused and received that question now at an intimate angle at the end of the afternoon. What did she notice about my mother….firstly? She turned her head and searched across the pool at 3 o’clock. She paused. She really thought about it, her eyes darting around.

“She was…” She blinked and peered over the pool as if there were meaning in it that she, herself, could not totally describe.

“…the whitest woman I have ever seen…”

I had to laugh but on the inside. I didn’t want to put her in the position of needing to apologize, and she would have, which would have been ridiculous. It was the first phrase out of everybody’s mouth. “Never seen someone so white.” That struck a chord regardless of her intention, a file in my drawer. I felt the tremble through the architecture. There was a structure that held the world up, that held up a person, and I could feel it and it fascinated me. Racism, in particular, coming out of a sex scandal, when I was four? You know, some unspeakable, unbelievable, insane situation… that people don’t…see. That affected me. That was systemic. That was clear to me.

“You could not not see how white she was.”

There might be something right in front of you that you might be blind to, which is why, it gets annoying when people ACT innocent about it—another Dr. J reflection. In that, Dr. J is REALLY ACTING like she CAN’T SEE. It’s to a pitch that might make these attitudes or behaviors stick out to someone.

You’d think, no, it’s not possible, that a mother could do that to her child, and yet, people have done much worse than that. They lost the war, even, so the winners collect slaves, and they will be used as those in powers wish them to be used…. it’s very simple, cold, cruel, and not that unbelievable. White people, sorry, Europeans, showed up to the United States of America and passed out blankets infected with smallpox to the Native Americans— disgusting behavior. To the people who were so shocked, read a history book, you know what I mean? Was I supposed to support this? Now I know—no. It’s just, people got SO AFFECTED when they could spread it around.

“She was the whitest woman I have ever seen,” but truly! Really! The eye witness in church said, she “kinda” reminded her of Cruella de Vil in 101 Dalmations. It wasn’t a joke, she was sincere. “So she was a white villain who would kill puppies for a fur coat?” As this woman wasn’t white. “Yes.” As if beginning a Grimm’s fairytale, Angelica continued, “she was white, really white, strikingly so.”

“Beautiful,” she said. “Unusual shade.”

With skin whiter than snow, “she glowed,” Angelita wondered, seriously, if she glowed in the dark while making love, as Angelita only thought along these lines. Paired with her extraordinary eyes the exact shade of the sky too clear for comfort, and a red wig, real but fake, Angelita described her as “an attractive woman,” sincerely. Which she was…I saw it as part of her pathoogy, hard to explain. So was Ted Bundy. A beauty…with skin whiter than snow, Angelica said, once upon a time.

“Striking,” she said. “Features.”

“Sexy body…”

“Oh?”

“Oh yes,” she said. “Very sexy body.”

“Beautiful breasts,” she said. Uh huh, as I said, I was eight or nine, confused, mostly, but I had gotten that impression. That she had an appealing figure. And, uh, “how many times did she come over in these four years?”

She flashed two fingers for “like twice.”

That’s a snapshot of Dr. J. A naked woman, didn’t matter where she was. Angelica saw her breasts more than once.

She snapped, the blue bottle hit the table, “put on sunscreen.” A fight between us since I was four. The whip came out, she practically sneezed through her six children’s names to get to mine as she always did. “My nose was getting red.” She even encouraged me to like my skin tone, a nice detail. I was the daughter of the whitest woman anyone had ever seen.  

I left with Angelica for one day that became four years

Side by side, we left my condo in a polyester tennis skirt and princess dress made of the finest silk. Her calves were sculpted by the Gods next my hunter green bow with a ribbon.

She squatted—a woman who birthed sports stars—eagerly on the first couple of steps to assist me… as I was four. My little hand reached for hers, she was already strange to me, because she was so attentive.

I don’t know what I did, I don’t remember, but I was about to be wrapped up in a sex scandal with this woman at an age where I might not have been able to totally walk down the steps by myself. That’s the joke. I was four, not fourteen. Maybe I was one of these independent types who rejected her help in sounds while I grabbed onto the railing, unaware of myself.

“Okay, you’re a big girl…” who cannot fully coordinate.

Walking to the black gate in patent leather Mary Jane’s, the chiffon under my skirt scratched. I hated these doll clothes from her beloved Neiman Marcus. I hated the tights, white, red hearts sewn in. I couldn’t reach the handle on the gate nor push it open, but Angelica, quick on her feet, did it for me. She stepped off the ledge, held the gate open (no help from Dr. J), and presented her hand. Down the next step, she continued to observe me, telling me to careful, as I stepped onto the boulevard of bottlebrush trees. I began to feel lost and expansive outside my house, in a world without walls.

“I could have been anyone,” Angelica said, scooching forward in her chair back at the BH tennis club, with demonic eyes over her beak. “Anyone.”

Across the grass wall separating my street from a housing development and down the boulevard disappearing…we know that danger lurks at every turn for a child, and yet, this story was impossible, according to the people I spoke to who did not read, I guess, I don’t know. But the danger is always sex. Always. Terrible, unspeakable, that’s the fear. But it came out of a family home as if the real danger lurked inside, not out there. But these people exist, regardless of where they live and the biological processes they possess that ensure that making a baby is indeed possible regardless of their wits.

Parked directly behind Angelica’s red Cadillac was Dr. J’s red Mercedes convertible, as if they were a pair but warped, psychedelic, mysterious. The edges of the cars multiply and overlap, and the real world appears unreal, where the solid stuff we see, is in fact a delicate balance of the wires in our head. I didn’t know what to do with it. I thought about larger relationships like the laws of attraction, in this case: what exactly brought these players together, if there were bigger forces at work out there… to Un Bel Di, of course. It was emotional.

My mother’s license plate read IRSHELP, truly. This is what I mean about how she acted as if she were a joke. The joke was apparent, couldn’t miss it, but where it began, I did not know. My father later wrote in his divorce file, which I didn’t read until I was in my twenties, that Dr. J was getting pulled over almost nightly “for drinking, driving, and looking for sex downtown” in this car.

Picturing this car swerving, driving unusually slow, just taking out a trash can, “oops,” or just killing someone along the way, even, she was on the hunt for sex, Dr. J, to Un Bel Di, as this was the tenor that vibrated through her behavior on her white mink coat. And the thing is, Dr. J was an opera fan, so she very well could have been listening to opera.

I came to realize all this when I began writing about it. Wait, what? She was engaging in prostitution? Or was she releasing herself into a great big world without rules or consequences searching for sex, generally speaking, in this area…?

“Night after night,” my father said, as some hilarious interjection to Un Bel Di. “We were picking her up at the police station night after night…” for these reasons.

There’s a picture of me in front of her car in a black velvet dress and white tights. The license plate did not escape me. Neither did my father’s explanation of what the IRS was. Making noises of defiance at him, I needed to know what the hell this woman did. Finally, he said something like “we all chip in to ensure society works basically speaking.” And he kept saying it, turning his fingers into a gear, turning. “Everything works, Maria…this is nature,” he stirred his adhesive. Letters were pictures to me, so if you would have brought me a tablet of the alphabet, I would have been able to spell it out with my finger. I-R-S-H-E-L-P. I got the picture, and I was scared. So, I tried to express that as my father wanted to take a photo of ME in front of this car. I brought my fists by my head, I was about to cry, and I pushed my little face through these fists, trying to tell somebody that I didn’t know where I was, and it didn’t look good. “Help.” This woman needed it. Please help. IRSHELP. It was too real. She worked for the fiscal branch of the government to Un Bel Di, picturing her storming the IRS to save the life of a man.

My father emotionally erupted as to how we had to pick her up in the middle of the night for drinking, driving, and looking for sex, but he left me alone with this person, an alcoholic and drug addict for 5-7 weeks at a time. What sense does that make? Not the time to travel. You have problems at home sir. He was so unaware of himself, it was epic. He did not see what he was doing.

I’m just puttering along, confused at her, the car.

Her limousine turned onto my block…driven by her lover Michel—“him too!” Angelita cried. “She told me!” — I nodded, at nine, because I got the feeling when I was four that it was true. Angelica shook her head in disbelief in her chair, in a swimsuit. A player drove that ball through, as the only way is through. I didn’t know if Dr. J had her license revoked, in other words, but she got a limousine around this time, this Mother Teresa. Knowing Dr. J, she could have simply decided that it was time to move up in the world, weeee! Since, that’s how she acted, clapping like a monkey with cymbals and waving her hand like a flimsy hanky.

But I don’t know if these facts align: she was frequently at the police station, and so, she got herself a limo to solve the problem. We can be quick to make connections, which isn’t necessarily an asset in an investigation, that’s for reading comprehension. It’s valid, but she existed outside of sense, and it’s going to be a problem in this case throughout my life—people making connections, drawing conclusions, without the need for any direct evidence, with some hierarchical need to be absolutely correct.

The people I spoke to tried to understand her, as she fascinated most. She was a hook, kept them engaged, which would be problematic for me growing up and responding appropriately to her actions, or even relinquishing my attachment to this story, as I quickly became a TV show that people were watching.

Dr. J inspired many questions, so I was often in a peculiar position whenever I opened my mouth. “I cannot speak to what motivated her actions,” I would say as I follow a legal understanding of what the truth is in this context, which I abided by, I suppose, to make a point that was never clear. “I cannot FACTUALLY say what motivated her actions.” No one got that. But the audience tended to not accept it. They insisted what the meaning was, like there had to be meaning. A reason, specifically.

Is there a reason for child abuse? Are they searching for it? No. I said, many times, “some things do not make sense.”

And I definitely didn’t make sense, not around this story for a long time.

On the clearest day in LA, a hyperreal dream devoid of clouds and rain, her white limo leisurely rolled on by…A line of black windows reflected the sky the color of her eyes. That’s the central relationship in Dr. J with her eyes as wide and blue as that overhanging canopy.

Her eyes were otherworldly, they always were, and there was so much truth in them that I couldn’t help but interpret her as a true villain, which mythically, holds lessons for society. But that’s later, once I reopened this, but the seeds were planted back then. We tend to associate the path of a villain as a fall from grace, but Dr. J seemed to show another way was possible— up up up into the sky the color of her eyes, not down down down, the inevitable fall. Her name was Joy.

This was an ascent —to Un Bel Di — she was not a hero, not an anti-heroine neither, she was a villain— and the emotional tug of war within us, wanting to get rid of the word villain, even, as I met those people. Well, there are villains, but of course, a villain stirs emotion because of the path—the path is typically the point. How they become a villain. The better person is, the better the villain. The descent of Harvey Den is —heartbreaking, because he was so good. People, generally, at least those I spoke to, had that narrative anchored into their being. “But she’s not really a villain.” Yes, yes, she is. She wrapped her child up in a sex scandal. And that would be good to keep in mind, spread around town, not reserve for this lady. Maybe open some prison cells, parcel out some that empathy. She was a woman that most people just did not see, and I am one of them to a certain extent, yet, she couldn’t have been brighter—fabulous, even.

Oh, that one. I called her fabulous, I would have to stomach it, too, but that was part of her facade.

It was Joyce, by the way, and rejoice works, but I simplified it to pinpoint the root, as Joyce is Irish for Joy.

I was amazed as only a child could be. She was unbelievably bright, brilliantly so, in a world without limits. We carved all that in, we’re designed, structurally, to mitigate impulses, to operate on roads that go in logical directions, except, if you look more closely at a history book, all of that can get warped, psychedelic, fearsome. So there’s range in the world, contradictions, hypocrises…which people forgot, when I told them this story, which was structural, I just didn’t want to talk to them as if they were stupid, but she didn’t appear to have a past, so was that the sign of a very dark one in fact?

Inside her limo, Dr. J gave me a piece of advice once in her white mink against black leather. “Don’t tell anybody how smart you really are…”

She suggested against it, Dr. J, telling anybody, how smart I really was, cracking a real smile, unhinged. She pat the air with her hand, waved it away. We had a “jeu” of shushing, patting our lips, I didn’t understand. She was silly. “Mama didn’t tell anyone that Mama was a genius…” smiling, a weird routine. “And you are smart like Mama,” Not in villain tones, no no no. She was spotless, chaste, as bright as day, brighter than day.

Her name was Joy.

Coming to the window box on our condominium with black bars, Joy waved her hand like a flimsy hanky in the sharpest dusty violet Krizia suit with bright gold buttons. In her red wig, she looked like a Disney princess that just was the executive villain in her white tower in some TikTok version of Alice in Wonderland. A hyper unreal real person — her wrist floppy.

“Can you describe how she appeared to you…” I asked Angelica…my feet dangling off the chair.