She turned her whole body—not just her head— to confront the blind-spot behind her on La Cienega to switch lanes. Her bird head searched. She was a dancer, not by trade but by breathing—and there was no way she could have seen this coming. Honking, cursing, getting sexy and excited about an opening, she had a world, simply, as we all do, which I saw as structural. She was driving through a universe in her own world, that’s a frame, she had a focus. She knew abuse happened out there, but she never thought it could enter her world. Making a right onto my street, the song spilled out her windows.
“And you never met her before?” I asked, in the shade.
“No, never.”
A ball sliced across the court. We had popped out like a couple of moons off the frosted table in the scorching sun. “She never met me didn’t know me at all.”
“No clue,” she hit that clue, “who I was.” She tapped her temple, like my mother was even stupid. “No clue,” she even had to laugh, the stork that snatched a baby back.
Angelica Leibowitz pulled up to a bright white box, getting down and dirty in her fire engine red Cadillac to music, still. She turned off the stereo at the very last second. Putting on her trusty Beverly Hills Tennis Cap and carrying the verse out of her door in her angel voice, she was the stork coming to snatch a baby back with legs shaped by the Gods coming out of a short tennis skirt. She shut the car door in clean white sneaks. She held, in her hands, more keys than St. Peter because everybody gave her their spare key. Her red sweater had a photograph of her grandkids on it. VOVO was written in ALL-CAPS or “grandma.” She was 46, had her first child when she was nineteen. Her calves sculpted, her superhuman stems approached my white condo with hanging black lanterns in Ladera Heights, also known as “The Black Beverly Hills,” according to Frank Ocean. Or, as I call it: the kingdom of Magic Johnson. This is where “the wicked witch of the west” was lurking, my mother, Dr. J. The layers, of this story.
As I did indeed reopen these years to write a little story about it, which irrevocably changed my life, she said that. She said she’d never met my mother, but her husband’s best friend asked her if she could pick up his tax return on her way home. I interviewed him. One of Dr. J’s lovers I would find out. Her husband filed his taxes with Dr. J. People might send their accountant paperwork, but it was 1989, so that required a visit.
What about the fear though? Angelica didn’t know if her husband might have slept with Dr. J. I remember that. She looked off. I gave her the space at the frosted glass table closest to the game. Player one bounced the ball, prepared for the serve.
Angelita flipped out to squeaking sneakers all over this terracotta patio that my mother threw herself on “every man,” which she delivered to me with demonic brows even, coming over the table, down low, and sometimes she was wide-eyed, at me, “Maria, every man.” We both knew. The sound of the sneaks, the location, it all sounded Grimm.
“That’s true, right?” I needed support, evidently, in believing my mother was real, too, so I was talking to Angelica because she was the only person I knew who interacted with this woman. “Every man,” she said. Her giant Diet Coke fizzed beside her head as big as her head. She took a refreshing sip. She had never seen anything like it.
“She slept with her clients upstairs!” My father exclaimed to me more than once, when we argued about his responsibility in all this. The idiocy of this man, my father, continues to astound me, as I recently came to wake up to all this. His ridiculous outbursts about her sleeping with all these men upstairs, in his house, with my four-year-old face not that far away.
I couldn’t even begin talking about Dr. J without leading with her practically legendary sexual behavior. In real life, however, that’s a hard debut to voice. It’s already a subject that’s very real but very unreal to people. She was a woman with a sexual dysfunction. So that was some twisted form of a twisted idea, that a man would, and does, but not a woman, even if you know, considering the sheer number of people in the world, it exists. My mother was sexually dysfunctional. I mean, “it functioned” but it was scary, picturing some woman showing up in a mirrored room naked. Like, wow, Dr. J. That’s a bold move. In a tax law office. With tea cup sets. A tea cup set has its charm, but it’s the whole package in this case.
“I don’t think that he could,” Angelica shivered. She needed my support in that moment. Did I know? If her husband slept with my mother… she looked at me. She didn’t ask, with words.
In a strangely adult chair, my stupid sneakers with lava in pockets dangled above the ground. I didn’t think so. She might have made a pass, she would have. She’s going after your man, you see, my mother. I’m sending the alarm up into the sky for the women of the world to know—join me. This bitch, my mother, is going after — with Angelica’s demonic brows lifting — your man. But as far I knew, I had never seen her husband before. But her statement would imply that her husband had been to my house. He described me to her, as a particularly cute baby. I remember that.
I don’t know how to approach that, given everything we’ve heard, but I didn’t believe in lying to someone to make them feel better, either. I thought about Dr. J: the biggest liar on earth. I searched for real roots in her condition, so when I saw reflections in others or myself, I noticed. Was she trying to make herself feel better, once upon a time? Where did this all begin?
Now, as an adult, I don’t know what to say about this chain of people.
Dr. J’s saving the world via the IRS— with a comic degree of intensity and selflessness. The Mother Teresa of the Tax Industry. She’s sleeping with these people, at the same time, in her office of mirrors. Another step—she’s charging 400 dollars an hour today, and Angelica’s husband and his best friend filed their taxes by her… I felt lost there, and she reeks of “gangster vibes,” something illegal, Dr. J. Nothing she’s doing, in the way she’s doing it, feels legal. What was this business? And did the Leibowitzs have money, or did they not have money? As members of the Beverly Hills Tennis Club.
This is step one.
“Can you tell me what happened when you came into my house?”
At the courtside table, she wasn’t so much a stork but a mother hen now as she had different birds in her.
All she had to do was take “ONE STEP,” she said, into my house…as if these stems were indeed sent in by divine forces, and she was a woman who would tell you I speak the truth. Her Star of David glistened on her tan neckline, attached to a gold chain. The sheer fact that she was a Brazilian-Jew… this mother… I couldn’t help but laugh.
“ONE,” she flashed her sassy one finger in my face back at the club, as she overly emphasized the one foot. She even wanted me to look at the step.
“Maria look.”
She tapped the terracotta tile with her Adidas sandal.
It was practically pantomime, her telling of it…
She froze upon entry into my house, not five minutes later. A glass panel next to my door downed her in amber waves of light. It was practically a stage play. Wouldn’t theatre makers be floored if a lightning designer came up with that idea? “Let’s put a panel of glass like amber waves, you know, by the door.” Genius. It was even spiritual. Spelled out. In amber waves of light, she told me many times, “I am from Brazil,” so she, too, was from America, so if there’s a glacial chill, she’s going to feel it—she ran hot. She wasn’t pretending that she didn’t, she knew who she was: Nina from The Forbidden Dance 1990.
And the reference is important. It’s even a sign of the scope of my film knowledge — I know what that movie is. It was a film that was made in the wake of the success of Kaoma’s “Lambada,” as that song did kick up quite a frenzy that year. We watched it many times, even at her house. She unabashed ably fast forwarded the film to the sexy parts, in her king-sized white bed. This was a palace to her, for sure. I laughed at her.
Not just any woman, any mother, came over to my house— she said it many many times along this terracotta deck. “BRA-ZIL,” she broke it up into syllables. This woman seemed to possess a whip, truly, spiritually speaking, that she could unleash at any time. She would laugh at that. I swear I could hear it almost retracting like the cord in old vacuum cleaner and snapping back into place. Brazil was divine, most definitely, that message was extremely clear. She wasn’t the type of woman who was going to respond well to hearing that a man is raping someone, let alone a four-year-old. And—
She was dancing sexy regardless.
She was dancing regardless, just like Nina in The Forbidden Dance. Even if evil real estate developers were about to bulldoze her jungle home, she was dancing sexy regardless. This was Angelica Leibowitz. It didn’t matter if catastrophe stood at her gates, she’s dancing, it was breathing to her.
She even laughed at herself, she felt it, she did. The chill, upon entry, I was smashing barbie heads together. It struck her, in profile, she froze upon entry. She gazed off, towards the court. The temperature of my house was cold.
I was stationed in front of the TV from Grumpy Old Men, a vintage classic set. It looked as if it just moved to this story, as my father was sixty years my senior, so he had the “old set,” still, in 1989. In a hunter green dress and bow in my curly hair, I was smashing barbie heads together in an angry trance. I was fixed on their eyes cold, dead, and bright blue just like Dr. J’s but I remember how Angelica grained towards the railing speckled white and gold as if I had an outer body experience.
People who heard this story over the years said it sounded like something you’d see on TV as if the TV made the real unbelievable and the unbelievable real, simultaneously, just like sex: it’s real and unreal. It felt staged, as if I could begin a play about it like that, depending on what I was trying to achieve. But this line—existing as a real person that appeared like a TV show to people—was terrible, because flipping through the channels, it would be relatively easy to find another remarkable true story.
“What did you think?” I asked.
A couple of moons off the table, the sun beat down on our moist skin beginning to bead sweat. She practically laughed in her blindingly white chair. She sipped her ginormous Diet Coke packed with fresh citruses. Putting that down, she tilted her head, regarding me down her beak as a Mama grandma bird. She’d never seen anything like it.
“That girl needs a friend!”
By the jacuzzi, this time, we sat in true cool shade by a wall of foliage that caught the sunlight at the end of the day, tips heavenly gold. Heaven also appeared psychological in nature. I think, on the religious end of my childhood, as my father was Catholic, I was intrigued that these concepts seemed to exist, in a real way.
“What did you tell her?”
Her Adidas sandals fell off the chair and onto the terracotta tiles before I could complete my sentence. She flashed another sassy ONE finger in my face. “ONE DAY.” She even looked at her ONE finger up close. “Maria,” her eyes demonic over her beak. “I did not mean this day.”
Kindly, Angelica told her that she had a daughter about her age, Nicole, and that they could set up a playdate “one day…” it wouldn’t be a problem. I had affected her. “I did not mean that day…” she snapped, the whip came out. Pop, the ball. She fell back into her chair, cursed my mother’s existence in Portuguese. She would live to regret it, but not as much as I would.
“What did she say when…?”
She cut me off and threw her hands in my face. “HERE! TAKE HER!”
Dr. J popped like a Jack in Box. Confetti even flew. And that image would make sense to Angelica. “Like this! She did it like this Maria! Sick bitch.” Dr. J inspired fantastical imagery. That made sense to her.
“What did you think?” I wondered, quickly.
Angelica threw her arms at me, again, in her chair. Popping like a Jack in the box, she expressed. She grimaced, shook it out. She’d never seen anything like that. “Was she joking?” She asked me, sincerely.
You never knew with Dr. J.
Was there a difference between real and joke or true and false? She didn’t appear to possess these distinctions. Her eyes as blue as the sky, they held the whole limitless idea— a whiteout. Just erase it. But in contemplating what “the truth was,” you see, one of my files, it became an increasingly complex idea even just reflecting on a “real personality” before me—is there always a difference?
Social masks can appear fake, and the word you’re not supposed to use in life is “honestly,” when that word means that a mask is coming off, so dishonesty is built into concept. There’s a certain degree of it that’s required to function in society. That’s what we believe. And, even at four, yes, in church, listening to these stories, I wondered if people even knew what it was that they believed in.
Dr. J cracked on a particular line, and it wasn’t untrue. That fascinated me. This is what I mean about how she could reflect the truth. These lines exist, but they didn’t exist in her exactly.
Except, she had a hard veneer: SMILE. She was a flat photo with suggestive shoulders out of sync with the head. She was a societal monster, indeed, it seemed.
Angelita really laughed at how she did it, too, threw me onto her as if I became goddamn Cinderella or something to “Un Bel Di” from Madame Butterfly, as Dr. J was operatic in scale. “Here take her,” she really indulged, when she told me. She even laughed at me. She was trying to hurt me, huh. It didn’t hurt me. She looked like the stepmother from Cinderella. I sort of refused to be “hurt” by some adult making this my problem. I was just studying it, instead, this strange so-called human reaction. That was my response as an eight, nine year old. My innocence didn’t exist, huh. In fact, it put me more at risk. How fascinating. A woman with six children could turn against me. At the same time, a moment can be layered, reality has depth, this was my thought process, as if I had gotten stunned by the sheer structure of existence. There’s a lot happening in just this moment, but this was the moment, but the innocent person will always get the blame.
“So what did you say…?” I asked, “when she popped like a Jack in the Box, and told you here take her?”
“Um,” arms crossed, “okay,” Angelica said, even empathetically, she wasn’t busy. Okay. Okay. “Uh,” she shook her face at me, “do you want me number? Address?” Dr. J was whatever about it.
And then, the movie poster for the film about it: “be careful who you let in,” that’s the tagline, and it’s my four-year-old face looking over my shoulder with some shadowy figure at her front door, you’ll see.
We cracked up, we really did. I have to imagine that someone at the Beverly Hills Tennis Club noticed us. It was hard not to laugh about Dr. J. She could wave at us with her wrist like a flimsy hanky, clap like a monkey with cymbals, with Angelita clutching onto her chair. “Maria! She clapped like this.” So laughter appeared to be a theme.
Did I see a reflection? One of these glimmers. Was she mocked as a girl? She acted as if she wanted to be laughed at. One of these weird girls. She looked like it. She looked like she could have been “the weird girl” at school. I wasn’t sure how that would have gone for her. There’s a truth to cruelty, eh? It’s true. People can be cruel. Kids can be cruel.
Now, the laughter was reflecting back onto me, which was the real reason why I was here—to study how people become who they are. So, first, I thought, could the victim get the blame in sexual abuse? Was it even a joke Dr. J? She comes out of a terrible mentally ill home, because in this case, that’s all I saw, and then, the world would most likely encourage her. HAHA, the joke. I was trying to understand her communication.
Angelita had to assume, arms crossed at the club, that she had made love, recently, you know? Looking up at me, applying tanning oil on her legs. It was the only possible reason behind her unusual exuberance. Angelita only thought along these lines. Hard not to laugh.
“Had to be good,” she concluded, I mean, she was little troubled there, as to what that meant in her case, you know, sort of laughing, but she might have had an unusually good time, something. She shrugged her shoulders, shivered a little, as Dr. J inspired her to do, often, the Grimm’s fairytale. She could have.
She made a series of deductions at the outset based on her frame of reference and her appearance, as we all do. To delineate between Dr. J and Angelita, she couldn’t project her mind to child molesters and breasts in her face at step one, but Dr. J—pop— lives there. “Here!” Structure. My mother’s psychology fascinated me beyond my own connection to her. Where did she come from? Now, the great flaw in my investigation evidently was my age — as I would begin to wake up through it. In short, these signs were manipulated into normal shapes.
“Probably…what she meant was…”
I encountered it over and over again. It crippled me, even, didn’t help. People have ways of trying to help that do not help. People normalized abnormal behavior because they can’t see it. People make up stories based on their perception of a situation even if there isn’t one thread of reality in it. Dr. J is acting like the buffoon of all of it.
That’s how she acted, a bright shadow, you see, a bright bright shadow. A demon from up above, in fact, some mutation of the complicated if not insane perspective many of us hold, fundamentally, about light and dark, even sex. There’s a basic desire to transcend this earthly existence, in the major religions, even, as if this were dirty, base, and it’s rather tired. She’s not dark, she was a terrible actor, one of the worst, at Disney princess, the most selfless, senseless human being. In a red wig. Her eyes, really, they were otherworldly in their desperation, their clear innocence, limitlessness.
On this day, another cloudless, endless sunny day, Angelita pivoted her chair to tan her legs, the top half of her body in shadow, a stark contrast. This was a central psychological idea: light and dark. My mother brought that relationship to my attention very young.
All I knew, when I was four, looking up, coming out of my trance, was I had never seen such legs as hers. “Wow!” I ditched the barbies, stood up. “Your legs!” I was bright with compliments… going to her stems. “Wow…” I said. Angelica handled it like a dream, she laughed at my mother, even, as she was the warmest woman in the world, a truly beloved person, and kicked her stems. “100% Brazilian,” she said as if it just came with the package.
I wondered if everyone had legs like she did there…
I had seen nothing, she assured me, she wasn’t even the one, which I liked about her.