At 7am, I would take the B or D train across the Manhattan Bridge from the DeKalb Avenue station. What the trains lacked in air conditioning they made up for with a body count. The stench of stale urine in a banquet of unwashed foreigners. Jamaicans, Hispanics, Europeans, all with their strange and apparently minimal toilette. If we could have siphoned the vapor of Christian Dior’s “Poison” or Calvin Klein’s “Obsession” from the air, each one could have filled a barrel. Everything was blurry and dark around the edges even as sharp sunlight came streaming through the subway windows when the train broke out of its crypt and made its way onto the bridge. My body wanted to faint but there was no room to fall. Finally, I found myself staring into the face of a man who was sitting on the end seat hugging the metal rail and I came to the stark realization that it was he and he alone who was suffocating me. “Stop stealing my air,” I whispered through gritted teeth. In a desperate attempt to keep myself conscious, I pressed my head against the cold glass of the door and prayed that somehow the ride would be shorter than it was the day before.
The thought came that soon it would be the weekend and T. would come from Newburgh to gather me and my laundry and we would take the 90 minute ride up the New York State Thruway in his battered Honda Accord hatchback. I hated that town and the fact that it was "home" but I found a brief haven in the vision of something and someone so familiar. It provided the respite I needed until the doors opened and the sea of bodies moved to deposit me on the Times Square station platform like debris on the Jersey Shore. At last, air. Fetid, noisy, ashy and thick, but it was air.
My running shoes and wrinkled linen provided a cloak of stylish conformity I needed to make my way to 1440 Broadway. Stopping for my usual tea and chocolate croissant at the wagon outside the headquarters of Federated Department Stores, I found the sour, burning energy still in my stomach and I barely made it to the 23rd floor ladies’ room before it all broke loose. The bile propelled from my gut by fear.
At lunchtime, I would go to the Manhattan Mall and sit anonymously among the bustling crowds. It was sunny outside, but so, so hot. And the humidity made my hair look like a ball of steel wool. No one had hair like mine. I was the only person EVER born with hair so unruly. Even when the weather was “good” and the air was not too dry or not too moist – my hair was weird.
Staring at these people getting their orders of Chinese fast food, fruit smoothies and Mrs. Field's cookies, then scurrying about and waging their pedestrian wars for empty seats I couldn’t keep myself from thinking about my grandparents. And it brought tears to my eyes. They didn’t know me and yet, Barbara would write these letters in her delicately messy left-handed strokes letting me know how much she loved me. She would always write that. “I love you so much my darling. I wish that you lived closer so that we could see you more often. God bless you. Love Always, Grandma,”. The letters would come every so often usually surrounded by a birthday or holiday card and a few dollars in cash or a check. The letters always smelled like Barbara. Soft, feminine, romantic but not cloying or noxious. Maybe the smell was stronger and offensive before it started its 1735-mile journey from South Dakota and slipped through the mail slot of my Mom’s apartment. By the time the letters reached me in Brooklyn, they were the way I imagined my Grandma to be. Angelic, ethereal, warm. A saint among women. I never really bought it, but it made little difference. In our family lore, she would forever be cast in the role of epic heroine. She was invisible and inconsequential to me so there was little point to thinking anything less of her.
Behind the french twist hairdo, the floury apron and freshly baked cinnamon rolls. Under the dutiful demeanor of an American prairie wife, I knew that Barbara, like every woman, had her secrets. Profanity never passed her lips but shame, fear and loss had staked their claim on pieces of her memory and her soul. Just as they have in mine and yours and your mother's and your sister's and your best friend's. We might believe we have marked every milestone and gone over every inch of their life's ground but as sure as there is daylight, there is darkness.
