We faced one another in chairs at the Beverly Hills Tennis Club as if conducting a formal interview in recreational attire. The sun beat down on her well-oiled skin covered in sunscreen and tanning oil. She glowed. A tennis court stretched behind Angélica Leibowitz like a mainstage, which served as the backdrop for my undercover investigation I had just launched into the sex scandal I was just in. I was nine, in a bucket hat with a greasy face.
“What did Dr. J tell you?”
Angélica rose from her chair with legs shaped by the Gods. A tennis player punctuated her sassy stance in the background. She turned and picked up her chair in a red suit, cut-off jeans, and Adidas sandals. She moved it closer to me; she held up her hand, eh? Just a moment please. A player ran to the center service line and whacked that ball. Adjusting her cap, she took a seat; she wanted to tell me exactly what Dr. J said. I called her “the stork that snatched a baby back” with soft feathers for hair fanning out of a BH tennis cap. This woman had enough sass to slap a man to the next country, and she would be the one to tell you the truth of it with her pointer finger that dragged down her cheek, now, okay? “Pay attention,” she fired. “Real tears!” Her finger pointed straight up at her beak. Her finger shook. “She cried real tears!” With fire in her eyes, she assured me, “Maria,” her finger the punctuation mark. “I saw the tears.” Like a bull, she cursed my mother’s name in Portuguese to fall back in her chair in disgust, looking off.
I studied her emotion spilling over from the extreme situation that brought us together. I thought about my mother’s outrageous personality, wondered if she really came from an unbelievable beginning, once upon a time. Did Angelita reflect that?
“What did she say?”
Popping up, she pointed at me to “pay attention,” and she didn’t hesitate to tell me again. “Pay attention.” Her little pinky, eh? She bent her little pinky at me with a nice fake smile on her face. Taking her free hand, she pointed once more straight up her nose, “pay attention.” She rested it upon her pinky as if trying to remember an innocent item on, you know, the grocery list, while chewing spearmint gum.
“Rape,” she lifted her eyes and finger at me, quick. Tapping her pinky, “you,” she said, smiling, “her.” Moving onto the next finger, “molest,” she pointed at me. “Her, you.” Dangling her middle finger as if it were made of gum, “beating, her you,” she lost her patience and she got up IN MY FACE. “And if you tell ME…” She clenched her fist; it shook before my freckled nose. She released it, looked off, and squeezed it again, ENRAGED. “If you tell me…” She lowered her voice, not her intensity, and then, let it all go… nothing but space in her loving eyes. “That a man touched even a hair on a child’s head…” Plucking a strand from the air as if it were really hair, she regarded it full of wonder before releasing it to the winds of chance. She even watched it float away…to suddenly, tip her head down, sharply. Her eyes were demonic over her beak. “Any child,” she growled, froze, and raised her brows. “You wanna know what I’m going to do?” Looking at me as if I were a lost cause, I was even cute to her. “Do you know?” She FIRED her finger like a weapon. “If you tell me, “she tipped herself forward in her chair. “That a man is raping,” she gave me her ear on that one. “A child?” She said it again, as if the word were real. “Rape,” she pointed at me. “Maria.” Her finger shook like a wizard wand ready to zap a dick out of existence. “This bitch said to me rape.” Releasing that divinity, for the woman was divine, she settled back into her chair. Her Adidas sandals slapped in a hard clack against the red-hot terracotta tiles as she slipped down her chair to stretch out her fantastic legs and soak in some sun. Her hands hung off the chair, limp.
A grotesque pose, I thought, how fascinating.
“Do you know what I’m going to do?” She pointed from down low.
The ball popped hard and clean across the court.
“Do you?”
“Do you?” She meant it.
“I’m going to tell you,” she nodded, proud, “what Angie’s going to do…”
*
“We’re going to play a nice game—with this son-of-a bitch.”
She spat on his name, once upon a time on Miracle Mile. I was four.
“A nice game.”
Sign up for my Substack to follow this story and more.