How to Cook Your Daughter (16 page)

BY SIXTEEN, I STARTED LOOKING FORWARD TO THE
times Dad was away and the loft grew quiet. My mother, Kathy, and I were able to coexist without much friction. When he was away, I felt less compelled to sneak out. But food, for Kathy and for me, remained an issue.

Kathy had grown thinner and thinner. Her beautiful face was drawn and sunken; her eyes seemed hollow. Her skin looked as though it were turning yellow, as if she were jaundiced.

A doctor that she and my mother visited urged her to eat more. She tried. I watched her stirring chocolate mousse and butter cookies, sifting flour and whipping egg whites with her rail-thin arms—and not even licking the spoon. Knowing she was cooking made me anxious. How was I ever going to resist stuffing mousse into myself? What made me ever more anxious was what happened when she was finished. Eerily, Kathy loomed over anyone willing to try her concoctions, as if watching them eating was enough to sustain her. Every time I opened the refrigerator, I'd feel her eyes on me too. I was still bingeing and
purging, and my sister made me edgy. And I made her nervous too, I could tell. We were both food watchers, interested in what everyone else was eating. I just had a harder time resisting than Kathy did. And just as she had once envied me for being my father's favorite, I now envied her for being so thin. I weighed a good forty pounds more.

But I was doing my best to catch her. I never ate meals, usually because I had either just pigged out, felt like starving myself that day, or had just thrown up after pigging out. The sibling rivalry flared whenever food was around. “Jessie, why aren't you eating?” was followed by: “Well, Kathy why aren't
you
eating?” We always had been competitive. To eat or not to eat was simply a new way of expressing ourselves. And she was winning. My dad took an interest in her unlike ever before. And even though I didn't particularly want to be the favorite anymore, I was still aware that she had taken my place. Thunder Thighs had finally been noticed.

Food aside, Kathy and I were getting along better, I suppose. I often invited her out with Iana (who had been her friend before mine), Krisztina, and me. Punk music had grown old faster than we were, and now, the really hip music was reggae, ska, and rap, which was making its way downtown from the Bronx. We hardly ever went to CBGB anymore but snuck out to the Reggae Lounge or clubs where the Sugar Hill Gang and other obscure rap artists played. Reggae and ska seemed dangerous politically and impossible not to dance to. The only bad thing about hanging out in reggae clubs was that I hated smoking pot. I turned down spliff after spliff from generous Rastafarians with heavy Jamaican accents. Their dreads bounced in piles high atop of their heads as they danced. I thought they were the coolest guys I'd ever seen—cooler even than the British punkers. And they were
happy to have us there to flirt and dance with. Most were as laid back as their look. But some were a bit more aggressive. One night, a tall, long-limbed Rasta with a red, green, and gold hat and a lion of Judah on his shirt danced up to me. He grabbed my hand, took me in his arms and declared in a thick West Indian accent: “I and I am prince. I and I man, you woman. I and I have right!” I got the gist of what he said and tried not to be completely freaked. Krisztina finally rescued me, pulling me from the prince's strong grip. The wives and girlfriends of the Rastas wanted us to get our little white-girl asses out of their clubs, something they never hesitated to tell us.

Whenever Kathy agreed to join us, I was genuinely thrilled. There was no food involved, and it gave me a sense of companionship with her that I rarely felt. I adored showing her around a scene that seemed so “me.” I wanted to share that with her, to be close to my sister, but it was hard for us to be intimate. So much remained unsaid. Part of me wanted to reach out to Kathy, to hug her, to hold her hand, to confide in her. But I just couldn't. I still felt as I had since we were kids: I wasn't sure my sister liked me. I suppose she had little reason to, really, especially when we were teenagers. I came off as self-important, ignorant, and pretentious. I fancied myself a political activist because of the music I liked and the way that I dressed, invariably in black. I said I hated Reagan when, in fact, I was too apathetic to read the newspaper or know anything about politics. In fact, I was barely making the grade at a private school where Kathy would have flourished; she slaved away at Stuyvesant. And then there was the fact that I had boyfriends. Kathy chose horses instead. After I shed my virginity, I had started dating aggressively. After all, I reasoned, I was sixteen and pretty much grown up. And what did I have to lose? Not my virginity. Not my innocence. So what the heck? Kathy must have known—not
through some sibling telepathy as much as by her ears. We had had some renovations done in the loft; but sound still traveled.

In the new and improved loft, the kitchen now looked like a real kitchen, and full walls offered us some privacy. The architect we hired was imaginative but ended up doing more cocaine with my dad than carpentry. Kathy and I now had small but fully enclosed rooms in the back. Mine, serendipitously enough, was situated so that the fire escape door now opened directly into my room. How could I resist using it now that had my own private entrance and exit?

But like everything in my life at that time, I took it one step too far. At the time, I was dating a Haitian guy, Neville—a tall boy with sharp cheekbones, brown eyes, aristocratic features, and smooth, ebony skin. Dating is a euphemism for what we
really
were doing, which was hanging out in clubs and trying to find places to have sex. Neville was a little older than me, maybe eighteen, and it was not as if we or any of our friends lived alone. Once or twice we ended up on my roof—inspired by Krisztina's example—but it hardly felt cozy. Finally I decided to sneak Neville into my room. He was game.

It must have been around two in the morning when we made it down the fire escape and into my bedroom. My bed was small and narrow, and Neville was broad shouldered and stood about six-foot-three. Not that it really mattered. It was a bed, and we were teenagers. Compared to the roof, it felt like a luxury suite at the Four Seasons. We thought we were being quiet. Then I heard the footsteps.
Dad! He must have just come home.

“Neville!” I whispered. “Oh God, it's my father!”

“Fucking hell!” Completely naked, Neville dove off the bed and looked frantically for a place to hide.

“Get in the closet!” I whispered. The footfalls sounded closer.

Neville ducked into the closet and crouched behind an old coat. I slid the door shut and threw myself back into bed, pulling the covers over me just as my father turned the door knob.

“What's going on, Jessie?” He peered into the room. “I heard something in here.”

I pretended I had just woken up, no doubt overdoing the yawning and blinking. But I was thinking fast.

“Oh,” I said and yawned again. “I just shut the window. It was getting cold.” I think I might even have pulled the blankets up a bit more. Maybe I even shivered.

“Don't leave the window open at night…. that's just fucking crazy,” he said. “Anyone could climb right up the fire escape and get in.”

Dad leaned over to the window to make sure it was shut. Then he noticed the fire escape door.

“Are you out of your mind, leaving this door unlocked? What's wrong with you? Are you trying to get us robbed? Jesus.”

Now I had to perk up. “I'm sorry, Daddy. Krisztina and I were out there this afternoon. We must have forgotten to shut it.”

“Well, don't be so fucking irresponsible.” Dad bolted the door. “Good night.”

As soon as I heard him shut the door of my parents' bedroom, I went to the closet.

“It's okay,” I whispered. “He's gone. You can come out now.”

Neville looked as though he
had
broken in. He started searching for his clothes among the twisted sheets, as if he expected my father to storm back into the room at any moment. I tried to keep my voice down. “Why are you getting dressed? I mean he's gone! He's not going to come back. Look, I'll lock the door if it really makes you nervous.” I moved toward the door.

“I'm going home.”

“Why? He's gone!”

“Jessie, you are a blonde, white girl, and I'm black. If your father finds me in here, no one will blame him for shooting me. And if he doesn't kill me himself, he'll take me down to the precinct, and the cops will do it for him.”

“Neville, this isn't the South. This is New York! What are you talking about!”

“It's all the same,” he said, still searching for his shirt. “When a white man finds a naked black kid in his house, it's all the same.”

I sat on the bed, sulking, and watched him get dressed. I didn't want him to be right, but I knew that he was. However much reggae or hip-hop I listened to, however many black kids I hung out with, I would never come close to understanding what it was to be black—not even if I had taken HR up on his offer and moved to Ethiopia. I didn't think my father would touch Neville, but he might have been pissed enough to take him to the local precinct. What we were doing might technically have been statutory rape. But I also thought how ironic it would be for Dad to turn in Neville when my father had done so much worse. I got up, unlocked the door, and watched Neville creep back out the fire escape. I thought I might never hear from him again. I was right.

After that, I didn't bring anyone else down the fire escape. But one night I woke up to soft knocking on the back door. I had made the mistake of telling a boy who had a crush on me about my system. Somehow he had managed to make his way into the building and down the fire escape to our place. I freaked out when I saw his pale face through the window and refused to open the door. I did, however, crack the window to tell him that I had no plans to let him in. He was way too
intense, even for me. A poet of the Patti Smith school, he stuffed scribbled offerings in our mail slot. Kathy must have heard some of these whispered meetings, but she never said anything. The only person who knew all the details was Krisztina. I always told her everything.

My parents might have been oblivious to my life, but I wasn't to theirs, and I had some sense of the tight finances at home. I hated asking them for cash, so I worked odd jobs to make a buck. Sometimes it was babysitting (for those families that didn't think my appearance would forever traumatize their children) or putting up street posters for a friend who worked at a club. But I wanted something more substantial and landed my first steady after-school-and-weekend gig at a clothing store around the corner. The store sold “vintage” clothing, some of which truly
were
vintage and the rest of which were the sort of crappy stuff Mrs. Kruger sold back in New Jersey. After working there a week, I learned how the racket worked.

The owners bought most of the clothes from warehouses in Queens for a dollar a pound, then sold them at an incredible profit. I came on as sales girl, something for which I neither had the experience nor the aptitude. Supposedly, my job was to wander the floor, engaging the customers and sealing the deal. “That'd look great on you,” I might say. Or, “Wow, I can't believe that's so cheap!” Instead, I'd hide in the racks straightening beaded sweaters and bowling shirts until some desperate shopper searched me out. Luckily we got paid by the hour and not on commission. I started on the main floor, but after a few weeks, the manager began to notice that I hardly ever sold anything. I was sure I was going to be fired. Instead she took pity on me. I was sent downstairs to the bargain basement, a place that was perfect for me because there were plenty of places to hide. Then the manager
suggested that I might want to train as cashier. That sounded good until I realized I had to be able to count, add, and subtract—fast. My dyslexia got in the way, and I grew flushed and sweaty each time I had to make change. My line was always the longest and slowest. But they kept me on because, for the first time in my life, I was considered reliable.

My mother also had taken a job. She had done some book editing and began helping an eminent gynecologist with a book on childbirth. Neils Lauersen (Dr. L) was Danish, a hulk with shoulder-length blond hair, piercing blue eyes, a booming voice, and an even louder laugh. He was, by all appearances, a Viking in scrubs. My mom made her office in the kitchen of the loft, poring over theories on successful conception and ways to ease birthing pains. My father was predictably condescending. He never complained about the extra cash, but he did have a fit when he first saw Dr. L and his golden curls. When Mom went to meet Dr. L at his office, Dad made suggestive remarks about her “working late.” One night, Dad actually beat her home. I had stayed in for the evening, taking refuge in P. G. Wodehouse and a summer day in the English countryside, where the worst that ever happens is Bertie Wooster mislaying his spats. Kathy was studying in her room, as usual, and when Dad came up in the elevator, I could tell he was drunk.

“You're actually here for once,” he said by way of a greeting. “And where's Ma?”

“I don't know.” I didn't really want to talk to him. “Still working with Neils I guess.”

“I doubt she's doing any ‘work' with that puffy, pompous prick.”

I shrunk behind my paperback, and Dad must have realized I wasn't going to take the bait. He dropped the subject and trudged off to the front room. I tried to get back to Bertie and Jeeves but was too
distracted.
Was Daddy jealous? But how could he be jealous of someone he doesn't really love?
I was certain that he couldn't be in love with my mother. Not anymore. Not the way he treated her. I didn't think Mom was having an affair, but even if she were, how could he blame her? I almost hoped she
was
sleeping with Dr. L. Imagining my mother doing something like that cast her in a totally different light. It made her alive in a way she never had seemed to be.