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 was smashing barbie heads together, so I alerted her, and she took me home that day for four years...

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, playing a 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.

Once Upon a Time on Miracle Mile

The day the stork came to snatch a baby back, me, I was smashing barbie heads framed in the vintage TV from the film Grumpy Old Men. Angélica Liebowitz walked into my house with legs shaped by the Gods coming out of a tennis skirt. She froze upon entry. The glass panel downed her in amber waves of light like the song about America. “I am from BRAZIL,” she said, so if there’s a glacial chill, she’s going to feel it. She turned to my mother, Dr. J, a tax file in her hand, and offered to set up a playdate one day. Joy popped like a Jack in Box with confetti. “Here! Take her!” I had never seen such legs! I stood up and told her, honestly, how amazing they were, wow. Side by side in a hunter green princess dress and tennis skirt, I wondered if everyone in Brazil had legs like her there. We headed for her red Cadillac.

“The time has come for you now to pay attention,” she pointed at me. Hand on the dial, she sang love song after love song all the way back to Miracle Mile. She taught me the value of Barbara Streisand that day with intensity of a pro-coach down Pico. I had to “pay attention,” she bumped up the volume, cracked a sex joke, a driver cut her off. She turned her whole body to confront the blind spot, a dancer, stepped on it. She flipped him off like a pissed off hysterical bird. “I am a woman in love, pay attention,” she got low. “And I’d do anything, are you paying attention?” She turned it up. “Pay attention.” I laughed. She snapped, pointed at me, made a fist. “It’s a righttttt I defend.” I sign the saw: Miracle Mile. “HEY! I’m talking to YOU.”  We pulled up to a brightest patch of green grass, she was wailing, reaching the peak.

I hopped out the door before she turned off her car. I bolted across the grass to “I am a Woman in Love” because there was a world and I was in it. I pushed open her front door, wasn’t locked, not my fault. I twirled under a crystal chandelier; she tripped over her six children’s names as if she were sneezing to get to mine. I left the door open, and she wasn’t looking for a seventh child. Nicole, the youngest, appeared at the railing in ruby slippers, confused.

Angélica combusted somewhere on her lawn, POHA! She cursed at herself in Portuguese like a bull.  “Hey girl!” Green! I saw a yard — but a woman was standing in my way. So I marched right up to her and said it. “Get out of my way.” Her cousin blinked, “excuse me?!” I said it again. “Get out of my way.” Angélica grabbed onto my arm, half-laughing in shock, “what about please, thank you, sorry?” I flipped out. Her sneaks squeaked across the foyer as she backed up, looking at me, like, are you KIDDING ME? She told her cousin to BACK UP! I made a run for it through the kitchen, happier now, and pushed the screen door open.

Blades of grass so green they were real flew off my black patent leather Mary Janes. It was a time before filters, when memories impressed themselves on paper, hard to erase. A plum tree towered high into the sky, the color of my mother’s eyes. I snatched a juicy purple bum off the grass. The back door screeched open, her eyes white with terror. “DON’T EAT THAT PLUM!” “IT’S MINE!” “NO!” “YES!” “NO!” “YES it’s MINE! STAY AWAY!” I SCREAMED. “THE TREE IS SICK!!” SHE CRIED TERRIFIED. “NO IT’S NOT!” SHE TAPPED HER TEMPLE, PLEADED WITH ME. “SICK! DIE! YOU WANNA DIE?! DIE,” she said, “DIE! THE TREE IS SICK!” I couldn’t believe it, all these years later. It was almost like parable, I came from a sick tree, so the key if not the question was laid out in the beginning. Did the fruit fall far? Or did it only apply to apples?

In her paradisal backyard, the American Dream, the patch of grass was a perfect snapshot, the blades high-def, as if we really did dream the world into being. In a fit of confetti, Dr. J descended upon the scene as if the world were a stage that was really really fake with eyes the color of the sky, applied with a paint roller, flat. A demon sent from up above, she had skin whiter than snow, she glowed. In a red wig du jour and Krizia suit, she was an American myth, the brightest woman alive who spoke like an operatic tornado, whipping up sticks, sex and nonsense, “one night, 500 bucks, I’m saving a man, you don’t even know, he needs me, you’re my best friend,” scurrying into her limo. “My husband is raping Maria, please, please, protect my baby, not my baby, no, he abused me too you know. Here’s…11,000 dollars.” I convinced it to was true, artifice aside.

Across the house, I stood and watched amazed. My mother was a buffoon, the most theatrical woman in a white mink coat. But a real show unfolded before my eyes. Nicole had lost it, punching her brother with a name you cannot complete with: Jose Lieberman. Her face beet red, her teeth exposed, he winced, laughing, but she didn’t stop, and I saw it. He was about to tip into some other state, lose consciousness of what he was doing, and I wondered about Joy.

At that moment, like magic, Angélica burst onto the scene with legs shaped by the Gods and blew the fight away in Portuguese. They fled from the flames. She turned to me, a dancer. “YOU.” I tore up the house with Jose, the women holding down the perimeter, so I was used to getting a talking to. But she took her chair in her white bedroom and placed it in front of mine, different this time. I wasn’t in trouble.

In the most intimate tones, the light streaming through her window, I could never see my father again, she said. Her head hung low, her hair like feathers in a holy glow, because I wouldn’t ever see my mother again. But I wasn’t seeing her. I didn’t say that. “And you’d never see us again, do you want that,” she asked sweetly?  “No,” what else was I supposed to say? She shushed me, a finger to her lips. We weren’t going to tell him what we knew. We—were going to play a nice game with this son-of-a bitch, she spat on his name, huh? “A nice game,” she assured me like a girlfriend. We would just sit tight, the two of us, on Miracle Mile. Shush.

When the phone rang, the backyard was framed in the white windowpane like a Jasper Johns, a work of art, an American classic. She picked up. The sprinklers spit, set the beat.

“Oh…” she smiled. Just as she had predicted, looking down at me. He called. “Look who it is…” she was delighted. He wanted to play nice. He didn’t even know her.  Two can play that game, she thought. She paced the kitchen with legs shaped by the Gods seeking his balls. “How nice,” we’re pretending that we don’t know why your daughter is living with me now. “New Jersey and Italy? How nice…” She didn’t help him, she didn’t mention me, and neither did he.

I never forgot this phone call. Her performance was “out of this world,” my mother’s phrase, but the memory hovered there like a bubble in float. It never lost its clear shape, as it was singular, unique, I recorded it, even. The colors were red, green, yellow, impossible. I began to wake up to that. What am I looking at? He called her house and acted nice? He didn’t know, though, shush. He didn’t know. Why is he acting like this? In his divorce file, he wrote, I came home and Maria was living in another family, but all he had to do was pick me up. He didn’t because “I” hated him and he didn’t know why.

She wasn’t in a rush. She had all the time in the world. He really went on and on. Continuing to pace the kitchen, back and forth, loving this, really, she dropped the mask and squatted real low. She stuck her finger in her mouth at me: yuck. Popping back up to standing, she was the mother hen, her chest puffed out. “How nice…” Suddenly, desperately, she stomped, actually confused. “What?” She needed to hear to him, the warmest woman. “I did not hear you…” She needed to, “please, what?” She was so sorry, just so sorry. “Maria?!” A revelation. “Is she around?!” I was right here! She was so sorry! She blamed herself, she hadn’t brought me up, right? She laughed, she really did. She skipped over her words as if she were in a fairytale, she always keeps the babies, she said, drawing the line of sight, right where she can see them. “She’s right here,” as it were wondrous. I fiddled with my fingers. The mask dropped a little bit, “never been safer.” She meant it, you know. With her whole heart and soul, she reassured him: “don’t worry, please Nick, don’t worry…” Gazing across the grass glistening in the sun freshly watered, she spoke of wonderful times, “so many children, a dream.” She delighted at the invisible babes playing at her feet. “They love me,” she said, “…as a safe person.” Nothing but laughter these years. “Nah,” she dropped mask, she didn’t think I wanted to go.

 “Can you what? So many kids around,” none were, “I’m sorry I didn’t hear you?” She meant it, she really wanted to, hear him that is, she was so sorry. “What did you ask? Talk to her?” She pitched high, the good witch. “Of course!” She sizzled as she dug her fingers into her eyelids and shook her head—for a while. Her face rose, open, generous. “So sorry.” She was really sorry, she laughed, she was really a bull. “So many kids…” The subtext was: why wouldn’t you be able to talk to her? Not like you did anything, right????? Innocent man???? Laughing, right? She laughed for a while. “She’s right here, one moment.” She couldn’t wait.

She bent down real low and called me over with her finger. I was pinned under her beak— her eyes fell out of her face. She couldn’t even believe it, mouth agape, brows raised. He invited me to go on vacation with him. She couldn’t move, couldn’t wipe the shock off her face. No, she just shook her head no. “No,” I said—easy. I was four, five. “I love you Maria…” He reached for me. I didn’t know what to do, her face practically cartoon. I just started saying it back. “I,” she grabbed that phone—right there. She brought it to her ear. “Thank you so much for calling, really,” she said, “thank you so much, for calling…” all the way to the receiver. She hung up on him, nicely, and cursed his existence in Portuguese like a bull. “And what are you,” she pointed down at me, brightly now, “going to say to the lawyers?” “I want to live with my moder because…” I had a script, we rehearsed it, often.

“High five!” I slapped her hand. She clapped; it was time to dance! A spin on the living room dance floor. She had six kids, grandkids, so a birthday, Wednesday, soccer game, excuse, there was always a party. We switched like that. Then, he requested to visit. She wanted his dick! Maria! A chainsaw ripped open the neighborhood. She moved her finger up and down as if that’s what it did, “a dick wow,” she even said it. Up and down, up and down, she watched it full of wonder as if it were magical. A landscaper trimmed the hedges out there. She assured me with fire in her eyes. She wanted his dick! This, a child rapist, molester, abuser, struck a match within her as she danced the lambada regardless. He requested to visit.

“Sure,” she smiled, by the pitcher of Kool-Aid, “why not 8:30?”

Nicole and I looked up at the treehouse plastered against the sky side by side. “We’re not supposed to go up there.” She reminded me. Bees had taken over, but me? I saw no bees. The backyard was a picture-perfect, saturated in color, but illness lurked here, possession, invasion, in the real American dream that it was, and you wouldn’t even know it. People lied, this I knew. I snapped at her to follow me, or I would never be her friend again. In our sparkly slippers, we climbed up the ladder until we reached the top. I could see everything from up here! A map of America in plots, yards, and picket fences disappeared over the horizon under a sky like a blue eraser. My gold slippers sparkled wildly from a hyperreal land.

At the wooden door kid-sized, we were scared at a portal of a new, unknown world. You do it, no, you do it. Let’s do it together. A nightmarish creak hurt my ears as if it hadn’t been opened in years; we faced the black, the subconscious from which anything could emerge— and from the pit of despair two bees emerged as if the guardians of the colony and hovered before our faces about to scream.

When night fell, the house became the treehouse, child’s play, but the darkest vortex, so it was real and universal though not of this world and it could lurk inside some house so small in the grand scheme of things that you wouldn’t even believe it possible like the armoire that leads to Narnia where a white witch lures children with sweets. Dr. J was the sweetest, you see, which Angélica reflected back on my father.

Down dark corridors with Dorothy (Nicole), I sought to understand Joy, a woman who put mirror mirror mirrors on her tax law office walls as if she came from a fairytale inspired by Jean Baudrillard. A woman who, ran into the church “every Sunday,” according to an eye-witness I secured, and “accosted” the priest with her rapes right before his performance as a lawsuit was building behind the scenes in the Catholic Church: a billion dollars. Angélica dimmed the lights.

She diffused the play like a stage director meets sports coach with a vision. “We’re going to put on a nice show, a big big show,” her arm scanned the kingdom. “The house was ours…” We had to act happier than happy, never been happier (without you). The front door was our target. We had to be loud, very loud, laughing, screaming, playing like crazy when she gave give us the signal. “But you have to ignore him,” she said. “Pay attention,” she pointed, the good, snappy witch. Me especially. “Not one look, okay? Not one. He does not exist,” she meant it.

Her arms flew at the front door—go. Nicole and I jumped, laughed, and shrieked in glee. Hand at her ear, she couldn’t hear us, already, you see. “More,” a conductor. We unleashed our voices with nightmarish yet funny faces—ahhh!!! Her hand marked it: level one. She pointed up, we had the stars to reach. Trick or treattttt, she cracked open the door to our voices laughing and yelping in a forced jubilee. Her bird-like face appeared. She peeked over the threshold — is that you, really you? Opening the door all the way to the wall, there’s nothing to hide here, you see, I dare you even to “visit.” Like she was going to let a child molester into her house…

“Here she is Nick!”

Nicole and I flew by as if we were the roller coaster ride. AHHHHHHHH. Nicole screamed “IMMA GET YOU!!!” AHHHHHHH. AHHHHHHH. Angélica stood guard in a tennis skirt with her arms crossed. Titling her pelvis, rocking herself on her feet, she relished the sight of babes running crazy, wild, free, but most importantly, “safe.” A little bounce off her heels, oh! She popped down low and waved to us as we ran past on a thrill ride across the house. She requested that we raise our voices with her hand like a conductor and cupped her ear like a master of ceremonies. He didn’t even try to step foot into her house. He had to watch the happiest show on earth, an ecstatic nightmare. “YEAH!” Throwing fists.

And in the end, just like a show, she closed the door from the wall—in no rush. She thanked him so much for coming… what a time we had, she thanked him for “the memories we made.” It was heartfelt, even. He got the door slammed in his face more than once, nicely. Giving us her hand, we leapt to slap her palm, hard. High five!

“And what are you,” pop quiz, “going to say to the lawyers?”

“I want to live with my moder…” I blurted with fists. Another high five for me—yeah! She clapped, kicked her feet back, did a little sensual move to advance, time to dance! Legs leading the way, we were really going to get that, “asshole,” she hurled in Portuguese.

I came to on the stair one night as these “Spectacular Spectacular” performances straight out of the film Moulin Rouge had a good run, something more like years, as this show lasted four. It was the pitch of her scream. I was crawling over her legs. I had to do that. I had to keep touching these moments, like her leg. I was crawling up her legs that night, it happened. I sat up, what am I doing? I walked downstairs and stood there to take in this snapshot: a broken man at the door, that was the message he communicated, encased in the shadows of the porch and this woman standing guard. Horror.

At the time, all I could do was wonder: was it really like this, Joy? In a way? Would no one do anything even if it were real, was it that unreal? Later, I learned that families typically pretend like it didn’t happen, and that I might not have known that it was happening, so. She didn’t call the cops, she said, because she didn’t want to send me to foster care where a child is at a higher risk of being abused, even again, so was this story unbelievable? The spectacle of it?

And people poured into the house through the very same door, what a show, these sensational nights. They flocked to Miracle Mile for the music, the dancing, her rum cakes rising. The crystal chandelier cast rainbows across the foyer in a curve like the prettiest tears. I could never forget these nights. The living room became a dance floor in 1989, the year that Kaoma’s Lambada took the world by storm with a song that began in heartbreak and became a dance so close to sex it was even scandalous, and we danced it every day. It was the lambada regardless, she was dancing sexy regardless. I kicked my feet back from the hips because they were the center of the universe, to begin, laughing like a kid. I didn’t understand. Now he’s gone away the only one who made me cry. “But this is sad,” I snapped. Everyone was so happy! I didn’t understand! I was in a living room made of goo! In a forest of legs. There was always Nicole. She took my hand. Two little girls in the foyer learning to dance in sparkly slippers, sex became innocent, in a way. And in the center of it all, the sex goddess, Angélica in her kitten heels and jeans taking steps back to advance, calling everyone to dance. I couldn’t believe it, what the words meant. I had never seen such dancing.

Angelica cried under a spellbindingly blue sky. The grass so green it was so real, you know? A time before filters, hard to erase. The sprinklers spit, the beat. The sprinklers cast rainbows. I watched the misty colorful screen as she ripped open the neighborhood like a sheet and macheted it to shreds. Curse words blew like grenades. I suppose I stood there to support her. I was eight. My mother just left, bankrupt, as she paid this woman to “protect her baby.” Now, she found herself a protector. Who hung up on her face. No more money. The story spun in her mind as a woman spins on the living room dance floor in a real jubilee in my mind. “It was all a lie,” but she didn’t even know how my mother handled me, she. The sound of her chair, kicking up her sandals when she said afterward, “it wasn’t true was it?” I remembered that. The grass ripped out from under me like a real carpet. The sprinklers spit, set the beat, the sound expanded the silence, and the universe collapsed. Feeling my way through the dark, was it true? She was dancing regardless.

No matter what, I always find my way back here, these sensational nights, when we danced all night long in the living room. The unbelievable can happen to you. They were Jewish too, just a miracle. People came to watch them, dance, a real show. We honored sorrows in the next room. So one house held everything, the most unspeakable terrors, the most magical feats, an angel of death passing over doors marked in blood, and there she was, in the center of it all wearing a star of David, still lighting her Jesus and Mary candles—dancing sexy regardless. So dance, I thought. I never had an end, only that, because in the end, what was my story in the face of all that? The backyard out the back, black, a mystery. All that can happen to a person. I didn’t understand, the crystal chandelier casting rainbows in a curve. I looked up at crystal teardrops and back. How did it do that? Sweet boozy cakes in the air. Light was real. That moved me. I wasn’t sad, it’s too simple to describe the feeling of being in awe of things. She came a mother hen gawking at me to get dancing. She told me to keep my legs closed, too, at five, so there were many colors, dissonant chords, nothing but love songs. A crowd clapping. So it became about everything. A succession of images, Nicole and I twirling across that grass so green it was real… to be taken away to some magical world called home. A spin on the living room dance floor. Our fists in the air. “Love!” She cried. “The lawyers!” Clapping. “Eh-e-eh-e-ehhh!” Singing. She came to my bedside, “love.” Meaning sex. It was love to her. It’s all she talked about it, how beautiful it was. It was even spiritual. “One day, he’ll remember a love he could not care for,” the lambada predicted long ago. One day, I might be dancing upon these words laughing and crying with joy, my mother’s name.