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.