Breaking Night (3 page)

Each time I faced her, Ma motioned toward the cashier, urging me to keep an eye out. Holding her attention was tricky, a balancing act between slipping in questions and showing that I was on top of things. I always assured her that we were almost there; privately, I wished she’d have to wait as long as possible, longer than anyone else.

“I don’t know, Lizzy. You’re a nicer kid, you never cried when you were a baby. You just made this noise like
eh
,
eh
. It was the cutest thing, almost polite. Lisa would scream her head off and smash everything, rip up my magazines, but you never cried. I worried you were retarded, but they said you were all right. You were always a good kid. How many more people, pumpkin?”

Even if I was told and retold the same stories, I never tired of asking.

“What was my first word?”

“ ‘Mommy.’ You handed me your bottle and said ‘mommy,’ like you were telling me to fill ’er up. You were a riot.”

“How old was I?”

“Ten months.”

“How long have we lived in our house?”

“Years.”

“How many?”

“Lizzy, move over, my turn’s coming.”

At home, we split off into two rooms: the living room for us kids, and next to it, the kitchen for Ma and Daddy. Unlike most times, on that first day of the month, food was abundant. Lisa and I dined on Happy Meals in front of the black-and-white TV, to the sound of spoons clanking on the nearby table, chairs being pulled in—and those elongated moments of silence when we knew what they were concentrating on. Daddy had to do it for Ma because with her bad eyesight she could never find a vein.

At last, the four of us enjoyed the second-best part of the day. We sat together, all spread around the living room, facing the flickering TV. Outside, the ice cream truck rattled its loop of tinny music and children gathered, scrambled, gathered, and scrambled again in a game of tag.

The four of us together. French-fry grease on my fingertips. Lisa chewing on a cheeseburger. Ma and Daddy, twitching and shifting just behind us, euphoric.

“Between the cushions, Lizzy. Yes, I’m telling you, inside the sofa. Press your ear down hard enough, give it a few minutes, and you will hear the ocean.”

“Really?”

“Yes, Lizzy. Don’t make me say it twice. You know I don’t like that. Either you want to hear it, or you don’t.”

“But I do!”

“Then put your ear down there, press hard, and
listen
.”

“Okay.”

Being my older sister, Lisa held an air of mystery; there was a power about her that gripped and awed me as a child. Some of her talents that most impressed me then—just to name a few—ranged from braiding hair to snapping her fingers to whistling the entire
Bewitched
theme song. She seemed regal in my eyes, holding herself high by professing authority over multiple matters of no particular consistency; declarations that I, in my youth, believed without question. Even if her claims seemed abstract, I figured that she possessed knowledge the way that math teachers command arithmetic: mysteriously and unquestionably so. My blind trust left me at the mercy of more than a few of her practical jokes.

“Okay, now put this other cushion on top of your head.”

“Why?”

“You’re aggravating me. Do you or don’t you want to hear the ocean?”

Why not? I knew that you could hear the ocean inside the lowly seashells we brought home from trips to Orchard Beach with Ma, which were nowhere near the ocean, so why should a couch cushion be any less likely? And how was I to know what Lisa was going to do when she then upped and sat on my head? How could I have guessed she might blow one huge, hot fart all over me?

“Take that! Hear the ocean breeze now, Lizzy!” she shouted while I flailed wildly beneath her, my screams muffled under her weight.

Should that experience have better prepared me for the Halloween when Lisa and her friend from the first grade, Jesenia, “taste-tested” all of my candy “for safety,” leaving behind only pennies and old-lady lozenges in my trick-or-treat bag? During the whole “inspection,” I’d concealed a single stick of gum in my closed palm, truly believing that
I
was putting one over on
her
.

But as the younger sibling, I wasn’t always the one shortchanged; once in a while it was the other way around. As second in line, I could approach most of life’s curiosities with a kind of borrowed knowledge, thanks to my older sister. By watching Lisa deal with all kinds of issues in our household, I was able to maneuver similar situations with less difficulty.

This advantage helped me navigate life with our parents. Watching where Lisa made the wrong moves, I understood at least what
not
to do. I was able to figure out the exact behavior it took to gain my parents’ approval and attention—something that could prove slippery in our home.

Saturday was furniture garbage day for the people who lived in Manhattan, which Daddy said automatically meant that they were “living well.” Manhattan people threw things away that were still perfectly useable; you just needed to look hard to find the good stuff. Daddy had several regular spots where he knew to look. I had a collection going already in my room: three metal army men with only slightly chipped paint, their protruding muskets cracked in different, scarcely visible places; an old set of trick handcuffs I liked to clip on my belt loop with a plastic gun so that I could be just like a real cop; and a set of marbles in a worn, leather pouch stamped
GLEASON’S
on the side.

Always, along with the gifts, came a triumphant story of the retrieval process; tales all about how Daddy dug through bags while bystanders gawked, turning their noses up at “perfectly good stuff.” In his stories, Daddy was always the hero, underestimated by people who he managed, eventually, to dazzle with his ironic wit.

Once in a while, I’d go downtown with him. Standing there, it was hard to know how to feel when people stared and Daddy just turned his back to them and continued to dig unabashedly. I tried to see through their eyes what this man must look like, dressed in a dirty, buttoned-up flannel shirt tucked neatly into his equally filthy jeans, mumbling to himself, picking through Dumpsters—as though he had stubbornly dressed for some long-lost professional life from years ago. A serious man, dark-haired, with angular facial features that made him both handsome and stern-looking, with a young daughter, standing in the middle of garbage that everyone else walked wide circles around. I can remember feeling nakedly embarrassed, until Daddy stopped me in my tracks.

“What, you embarrassed, Lizzy?” he asked, briefly lifting his face from the rancid pile and removing his newsboy cap. “Who cares what people think?” He stared into my eyes, unblinking, leaning in. “If you know something’s good for you, go right ahead and get it, and let them go blow it out of their asses. That’s
their
hang-up.”

Staring up at Daddy in all his defiance, I felt proud, like he was sharing a secret with me: how to forget what other people thought of you. I wanted to feel the way he did, but it was something I’d have to work at. When I tried hard enough, for those moments, I could manage it, standing there beside Daddy and sneering back at the people who stared. But only if I used his voice to tell myself, over and over, that it was
their hang-up
.

Daddy took a certain pride in his treasure hunting. He never stopped telling this one story about how he’d found a brand-new keyboard at the precise moment some guy called him a “garbage-digger.” In the story, the guy had enough nerve to ask, after he saw how good it was, whether or not Daddy was keeping the keyboard for himself. Daddy enjoyed repeating his answer in an indignant tone: “Fat chance, buddy.”

“Their loss, our gain,” he would say when we delighted over our secondhand toys, hardly used, or when he presented Ma with a blouse with a loose stitch simply in need of sewing.

Sitting before us on the couch, he sang the indecipherable lyrics to an oldies song and fumbled with his bag while we waited in anticipation. Daddy had his own calculated way of doing things, such as opening a backpack or unbuttoning an eyeglass case. We weren’t supposed to interrupt him; the exact motions were a routine he didn’t like to break. If he missed a step, he became obviously flustered and had to start over again. Ma called his habits obsessive.

Lisa and I were impatient.

“What did you get, just tell us! I wanna know,” Lisa demanded.

“Yeah, please Daddy,” I said.

“Hold it a minute, guys.”

He was stuck on a zipper. It wasn’t caught, but he had a certain way of undoing it. He hummed and continued.

“Daaa, da dum, darlin’, you’re the one.”

Ma, tired from a nap, looked at us and shrugged her shoulders.

Finally, he produced a pink plastic toy hair dryer for Lisa. The creases where the plastic had been welded together were dirty. Stickers substituted for buttons; the settings were marked by a color-coded
HIGH, MEDIUM,
and . . . the lowest setting had been ripped off; only a streak of white remained. Lisa dangled the dryer by its end and rolled her eyes.

“Thanks, Daddy,” she said unenthusiastically.

“I thought you might like that,” he commented, rummaging in his bag for what he’d brought me.

“Can we eat now?” Lisa asked.

“Just a minute,” Ma replied with a raised finger.

Next, Daddy lifted up a white-and-blue toy monster truck with reflective windows and thick, grooved tires. Dirt had found its way into every crevice, darkening the white parts to gray, making the truck look truly road-worn.

Before it even left his hands, I knew just the way I would react to Daddy’s gift. Most of my behavior toward my parents was deliberate; I carefully thought out choices about my actions and exact words. This way, I didn’t leave things to chance. Instead, it was a skill I developed, knowing exactly how to get their attention. In this case, Daddy was giving me what he thought to be a “boy’s toy,” and I knew exactly how to respond. Years of listening carefully to Daddy’s comments scorning “girly” things told me so.

Whenever Ma watched TV talk shows discussing women’s issues like “feeling fat” or “standing up to your man,” Daddy drifted through the living room and sent his voice into a high-pitched wail, impersonating the women using an agonized whine.

“Oh, the world is so foul to women. Let’s have a pity party and never get over it. Oh!”

He reacted the same way to Lisa’s habit of looking in the mirror. Lisa liked to sit curled in a corner and examine her reflection, trying out different smiles and facial expressions. She could spend a whole hour looking at herself.

In response to this, Daddy rolled his eyes way back, lifted his chin, and fanned his fingers out behind his head in the rough shape of a crown. He spoke in that same voice that I grew to interpret as the way he viewed anything “female.”
“Will you just look at my face? Oh, well, I’ll just look at it then.”

Daddy always followed up his own jokes with a roar of laughter that would make Lisa hide her mirror and fidget.

“Creep,” I’d once heard her say angrily.

Early on, I decided that I would ridicule anything “girly” right along with Daddy, so he would forget I was a girl, too. I made sure never to let my voice sound meek. Dresses were an absolute joke—“girl crap” that I wasn’t interested in anyway. I knew it was working when Daddy began to bring home these boys’ toys for me, which, I noticed, made him smile and watch me far longer than he would Lisa.

I grabbed the toy truck (which I happened to sincerely like) roughly from him and exclaimed, “Wow! Thanks, Daddy!” I ran the wheels along the coffee table and made loud, throaty engine noises for him to hear.

Daddy smiled approval at me, reaching back into his bag.

“I saved the best for last,” he said, turning to Ma, who looked up curiously at him from her seat at the living room table. She’d been adjusting the table fan onto all of us, but in the humidity, it only circulated hot air.

Her gift must be special, I thought as I watched Daddy unwrap it from a careful layering of newspaper sheets.

“Here we go,” Daddy said, tonguing his cheek and holding up a thick glass jewelry box on the ends of his stiffened fingers, like a waiter presenting a delicate platter.

Ma let out a long, pleased sigh as she cupped the gift in her hands. Before, she’d seemed only mildly interested, but from her reaction, I could tell that she truly liked the box—although I couldn’t help thinking that she had no jewelry to put inside it. While Ma stared at the box, Daddy narrated.

“You should have seen this woman look at me like I was nuts, going through her neighbors’ bags. You know what I have to say to that.”

He raised his middle finger into the air and made a sour face. “Screw you, that’s what.
Nosy
.”

The jewelry box was a shallow, rounded work of carved glass. A thick, silver lid sat on the top, covered with intricate designs. The lid held a single silver rose in the corner, which bowed gracefully forward. When you twisted it, the softest music played while the rose moved in slow circles, as though dancing a sad ballet. It was beautiful. Instantly, I wanted it for myself.

“Daddy! Can
I
have it?” Lisa yelled, speaking my mind. Daddy ignored her.

“This is so nice, who could throw it away?” Ma asked.

“I don’t know, but too bad for them. Picked it up on Astor Place, under those big loft buildings,” Daddy said as he unlaced his sneakers with rough, quick jerks. He had a habit of double-, sometimes triple-knotting his laces.

“All right, can we eat now?” Lisa asked.

I was relieved that she brought it up; my stomach had begun to burn, but I was reluctant to interrupt. We hadn’t eaten since that morning, when Lisa and I had rolled-up mayonnaise sandwiches. Most days, that’s all we ever ate, eggs and mayonnaise sandwiches. Lisa and I hated them equally, but they got us through a lot of days when my empty stomach cramped and burned, and all we would have had otherwise was water. It was five days after check day by now, so the money was completely gone and the food in the fridge mostly eaten. I’d been looking forward to some dinner.