*sensitive content warning, again

In smears, the players got off to a good start, 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 in a tight corner now, at 6 and 9 o’clock at the frosted glass table, courtside, in the shade, the ball streaking back and forth.

Angelica, calmly, brought 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. “BULLSHIT,” she spat on Dr. J’s existence, Angelica was a bull — also, not just a bird. “The biggest —” Angelica could get up in my fucking face, you see, vulgar, she cursed. “Whore, piece of shit.” I’d nod, “right,” given the circumstances. She thrusted herself forward in her chair. “The fakest human being I have ever seen.” Eyes demonic over her beak, bumblebees buzzed round the flower pots, “not one REAL thread,” she pinched it, Angelica, showed it to me as if it were real. The fire blazed now, “in this bitch.” My mother’s fakeness was — enraging. Studying Angelica, right, of course, this situation would produce a violent rejection, it was the gore, and where did this come from Dr. J? What is this communicating, that this is how she feels about herself? Is that what this reflects? Her attitude towards herself was…disturbing, whether or not she was aware of it.

The few times I spoke to Dr. J after all this, she’d come on the line throwing happy daggers: I love you fourteen times. A personality of PURE WONDERMENT and POOF POWDER. “Uh,” I’d say, “how are you?” “Ohhh,” she’d sigh, breathy, “perfect now that I am talking to you…” as if she were a bad actor in a meadow… in a cartoon though. Not real life.

“The biggest,” she spat on my mother’s name, “liar on earth!”

Flipping out, quietly, but not, to sneakers squeaking—the ball hit the net, “no,” fist. Her fingers tapped her temple, her birdlike face wide under her tennis cap, a player bouncing the ball back to the service line with his racket. She tripped through this sentence in English because of her Brazilian accent. “She doesn’t even know what the truth is— Maria!”

And yet she reflected so many true things about the world, and that fascinated me.

I pondered, strange, eyes across the wet pool… thinking about the field of dreams… her eyes… how I felt she was prescient, somehow, not exactly genius, Dr. J, that she reflected a time to come…like her mirrors…when no one trusts the media, nobody. Nobody. Thinking about this hilarious Hasan Minhaj controversy, that fake news MUST have fact-checkers, MUST, but what about the, uh, real news? You see? Reflections. Ridiculous. So the fake news, well, that’s the surest source of news, the fake kind. A joke.

Angelica tipped her head down. Her hair like feathers shook as she delivered the operatic exclamation that Dr. J could fire at any time: “AH!” She popped, confetti, fireworks, Dr. J, on the phone. She called everyday, for a while, Dr. J, every day. Angelica mimed the phone to her ear. Never asked for me.

Dr. J could fire this exclamation, out of nowhere, the Jack in the Box with a beautiful balloon head, dazzling. “Ah!” An operatic “ah”—soprano. Opera, Dr. J acted as if she were in an opera, but badly, brilliantly? Like it could be brilliant? Strangely. Angelica and I could really lose it, sometimes, laughing. Dr. J was hysterical. “AH!” To go back to her original position, her prodigal pianist and organist hands coming together in a tight prayer at her stomach… with a loose, unhinged, physicality, she’d crack her commerical worthy smile. It was visible. She was not hinged in a red wig, always a different shade, real but fake. There was nothing subtle about my mother. Yet her VENEER — she had not a façade but a VENEER — masked her, somehow. People don’t usually take action around an insane person. It’s repelling. And she’s —

“DISGUSTINGLY sweet,” she let it rip. Angelica cringed, shuttered, gagged, as if it were THICK, her “sweetness.” She rejected it. Dr. J had a taste for Amaretto. A note too sweet, yeah, got that picture, too, thinking about her most dazzling feature: her smile that could sell toothpaste on TV. Angelita flicked my mother off her, her words became garbled. Spilling 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, she’d spill over— “Maria,” she whispered down low, LOOKING at ME, “Maria, look at me. Maria.” I could laugh, what a performance, you see, even from her, a real personality, Angelica. She popped garlic cloves, Dr. J, like they were candy, she could carry a bouquet of parsley, even.

“She could kill flowers!”

“Kill.”

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

“Is there a DEAD ANIMAL in there?” She got round, hollow in her delivery. “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?” Angelica described, losing words, the sneaks on the cour. 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,” resting 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 with a ghastly deathly sound. Haunted.

She opened her legs, even, by the jacuzzi once, as I remember the last section between sun and shade around the courtside table. But by the jacuzzi, she flapped open her leg, she opened her legs…at the Beverly Hills Tennis Club….to show me how my mother smelled down there with a kind of amusement on her face, almost a smile, on the crack of a joke. It was funny, to be fair, and it was also graphic, important, art, because we were at the Beverly Hills Tennis Club. It was ggrotesque. That made sense as a style, huh, I thought. It was grotesque, for real. 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, “truly,” she said.

This was my mother, you see. So, I thought, if she came from the darkest, sickest of backgrounds, why would I look away, in a sense? Shame, that one, became clear early. I don’t think there’s a darkness too dark I wouldn’t face for a child, thinking about her as one, once upon a time, though I was too young, and blown away by her, too. I couldn’t confront her, drive over to her stupid house in San Pedro, because none of these adults reacted appropriately because it required — 911, intervention, emergency protocol. I was taking a big big skate, first, regardless, around her, seeing use in it.

Dr. J was a picture-perfect grotesque. A beauty, fashionable, girlie, topical. Her wrists like flimsy hanky, “bye bye for now,” she’d say. Even the garlic cloves, “her candy,” in her words, the whole picture — even her precious hands — her whole persona was in this style. It made sense. The look, the whole package. She reflected it, Angelica. A putrid smell. Her sweetness turned inside out. Was she not bathed? I’m peering through this scenario. Was she a product of extreme neglect? Why dirty? Why are we abject? Where did this woman come from?

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

I moved to the sun lounger. A row fanned out behind me almost like a parallax. The players were congratulating 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. Dr. J led with it, and the crack of it haunted me: her smile. Plastered on her face, it was so pretty, it was hard to tell how tight it was. She wasn’t a soft or tender person. She was the Joker— next generation. Her mirrors, her eyes as blue as the sky… so clear…expansive… not a spot of darkness in her. “Tee hee,” she’s so happy to be there, getting ready for her picture to be taken. Now. My mother was a Joker. An unusual card in the deck was 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, reflections, it can be treated as such.

She even looked like a Joker. But, a beauty, you see, not a disfigured face—that came later. She ended up being a little Portrait of Dorian Grey, actually, in that, her looks faded to reflect her interior. Again, why she feels this way about herself, I do not know, and i say that more to the people who would have a hard time with how I’m describing her….

A villain is stirring, they are, can be. Breaks your heart. Today, she looks visibly twisted, bark, hard, she was always insane, really, but her ugliness is forward — her eyes, in this one picture I saw, they were always wells, even, but they look practically inhumane 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.” With thick black eyeliner around them— just like how she breaths all over you, she’s hyperreal. A tortured human being. But who knows… eternal sunshine of the spotless mind? Maybe she doesn’t really care at all. I do not know, you see.

At the sky up above on a sunny day, almost as if it were…the night sky feels so clean and cool next to her doesn’t it? A dream… “we tend to see the path of a villain as a fall from grace…” but hero hero, right? “Hero hero, another way is possible for us all,” she’d say, even, Joy gets it—smiling. Light could be dark, dark could be light, meaning, what we see as dark would be light, as in good, and some of the lightheaded reponses, if you would, to real life, could get a little dark. Regardless, the yearning for meaning prevails. Dr. J is meaningless.

The Joker today isn’t Elvira or Heath Ledger. She’s going to crack a smile without a flaw on her face. Joy. A jubilee. A spectacle. Her real but fake wigs, always a different shade of red, always a new wig, but she’s going to ACT as if she’s not wearing different wigs every day… changing it drastically daily, turning to you with a deep level of seriousness… She looked like a Joker, actually. She was even Tiktok complete with sparkles and hearts around her figure. She hovered in an ageless hue, for a while. The Joker today is surrounded by cameras, dazzling, holding up a Bible at a protest, for shits. She knows what the audience is. The smile is societal—why so serious? A buffoon, which is grostesque, but she truly was a picture-perfect grotesque. Her white fur, business suit, rushing to the IRS — it was desperate, hysterical, the IRS. 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 ying and yang, thinking about balance, light and shadow. It’s more how we qualify these ideas. The Earth is part of it — our nature, that controversial word, evil word. We’re complexed about it. That was the problem with Joy. 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, 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, is that true? 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, were not the subject at hand as she’s never been found? Do you hear what you’re saying? That some girl is locked in some Vatican dungeon…right now? Being used? Sexually? Or being sacrificed? Real, unreal, on tv, in real life, too real for real life, except through the TV, I don’t know how to describe that disconnect. Joy’s denying it, of course. She’s never had SEX, “yes, Dr. J.” Picture me turning around and facing her in the lobby of church in spiritual tones. “I hear you, never ever,” in fairytale tones, “ever had sex — practically in my goddamn face.”

We all remember.

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 to me, but Angelica didn’t see that, exactly. That 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, in a way, and why? But no one is going to take it seriously because of the delivery… when, I do not know, it’s already a state of emergency, no? Wouldn’t you expect that? Like these people are going to need health care. She saw that she was sick, but it was not an insult, it's time to get help, but she’s stoning her to death. It’s not that it was not deserved, a seductive feeling, righteousness, if not truth, be careful, of course it’s “true,” but a system of punishment was fundamental, structural. This was part of the problem. It’s a health care issue. And, well, since I always saw Dr. J as partiachal, you see, MEN — aren’t seen as “mentally ill,” when they behave in paralelled ways to her. Reflections. They aren’t considered ill if they’re dicks. She’s really just like that, you see. She’s not 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, 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.

And why did it appear so poignant to me? Her demonic, monstrous performance…Angelica’s —I thought about it later in my pink room. Her reaction. Her guttural, vulgar, performance, it was good, you see. Sure, it’s vulgar, but it’s true, like, if it’s vulgar, it’s vulgar. Onstage, take it even further, send Dr. J into mass, have her really put on a show — in thinking about it as an impacttful story, because it is. But why Angelica’s performance was… wise, meaningful, couldn’t really tell, right? Not yet. Not until later. Her demonic, but almost like shamanic, performanc: did it reflect a truly gross situation, Dr. J? Reflections. Is that true, Dr. J? Was it actually gross? Your house? She was, she could drink whipping cream out of the carton… Dr. J, not like you can’t, but it’s a strange choice… what is that? Her eating habits were….basically nonexistent, but truly. What the hell happened there?

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, but, it’s just, 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. Flying a little too high, there, and why did this appear prescient to me as some warning from up above, too? There was truth in it, you see. The TikTok filter, the “you create your own reality,” “spiritual ascent,” this desire, by “ridding one of earthly ties…” disconnection, everything is disconnected, people say, today, sort of disconnected, already, you see, because you— keep saying it. The age of disconnection? Dr. J. “Wee.”

“THE IRS,” she says, getting into the limo in a desperate rush. Step on it Michel. “Everything works,” my father said, once upon a time, “everyone shares,” he drew the connection with his hands between him and everyone else, “a reponsiblity in ensuring society works, that everything works,” basically speaking. Just picturing her as a villain, even, with a tiny tiny hat, a tiny tiny top hat… running across the street… in magazine fashions, as if she stepped off the pages… looking smashing… there’s a version of her that exists only in fantasy, right? For real, and also, there is a lot of real driving that fantasy… but what?

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 vane, so I did ot like it. I rejected it, practically. I would live to regret it obviously, but I had problems to work out, evidently, it sort of just came with the territory, unfortunately, truly. I would have preferred not having had to work out these problems — with a smile.

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 in Pittsburgh. “That’s a German town,” a refugee camp manager said to me, practically taken aback. He was from Afghanistan and Germany. I met him in Morocco, and he wanted to hear a little about her. Peoples reactions to her over the years made me laugh, especially in how they reflected one another — like, I got terrified she came from a Nazi family, something insane… truly insane, and my friends in the US didn’t get it. And then, the refugee camp amanger remarked, wondered, “is she German?” Not knowing what to do with it. He was suspicious of her home town, lol, already.

My father and I were going to the east coast to meet my “real family” now, now that he was no longer a child molester. I was going to get the only eyes I could find that had entered this home. We pulled up to a slender street of row houses up really steep steps in an old mining town in Pennsylvania. In the inky night, winter, Adele from Malta (Queens) appeared up above with her sweet 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 cackle, made cannolis constantly, wore red lipstick. They were the best. She was, in our family, the star chef. Her mother was, professionally. Gus was a carpenter and handiman, so he carved all the thresholds in the house into handsome decorative screens. It gave the house charm. He looked like a little boxer, Gus. He was comedian Fred Willard’s old comedy partner, and they appeared on the Ed Sullivan show, but Gus 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, I think, as he was at it, constantly. And then, he had a breakdown. He would, without fail, leave every family party (primetime) to prepare his stand-up routine which he delivered at the table, awkwardly interrupting us. 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 I really had a show called "The Maria Show,” I basically reported on the "show” happening before me—real life. “Gus is… “

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…” I suppose I heard a comedic note in it, so I delivered it as such— it really happened, people, yes, Brazilians. They exist. It’s not a big deal, you see, but it is funny, funny how some white people, excuse me, could get wide-eyed at the mention of some cultures. They didn’t always see it. I was open about it, but no one heard me.

And here, in this memory, as I remember it, it’s one of these new moments where my father appears as the focus of it, one of these, that makes me grain back, looking at him, all these years later. “Did you lie? Nick?” I wondered if anyone approached him in this family and inquired further into what I was talking about. 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…”

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.” “Yeah.” That’s how he would describe “what it felt like,” as I had asked the question. “Creepy.” Adele agreed. First word out of their mouths. That’s it. Just “creepy.” “Weird, yeah.” 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 it still existed in a way, the memory. If I could 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. I don’t know what to say… other than that… “alternative” folders floated around too, as a thought in my mind…energy. In a sense.

“What happened?”

They spoke of walking into the house, they had just gotten there, and remembering Gus’s face—the freeze over his eyes. Was that the temperature, for example. So it was cold, that would describe Dr. J, most definitely. Stuff like that. Could I glean a little about the space? 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.” Like, they had to leave the next day, they said. “Too creepy.” But I had to stay, you see…because I could not move. Please. They had planned to stay a few days, right? 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.

Picturing my cute baby face in a bassonet, probably feeling like mush, generally speaking, I was probably feeling like mush, at the time, as I was a newborn, I wish I didn’t spend more time here. But again, “getting beaten at two,” is too close to zero. I would not want my baby to be left here… and when I write these lines, I laugh, I do, I have to, just the relief.