Skyscraping (2 page)

First up, Astronomy,

push in the heavy black door.

Seat by Dylan,

a game of hangman.

I guess the word,
Existentialism
,

he draws a happy face

on the dying stick figure.

Mr. Lamb projects:

slide after slide,

Earth from the moon,

blue and green swirls of beautiful.

My heart pounds:

I am inside of it.

I am part of the rotation.

Dylan passes a note,

says that he’s been reading

the Existentialists,

that Senior year, by definition,

means we are in crisis:

Questioning what, if anything, has meaning.

Asks me to join him and Chloe after school

to ponder our existence.

I tell him:

I am not in crisis.

I am part of the rotation.

Ask him if he’s thought more

about where to apply for college.

Mr. Lamb’s voice cuts through,

Constellations aren’t just pretty pictures
.

I gaze at the star map,

down at my table black as night,

make sure no one sees me

as I constellate,

dotting

Wite-Out

on the table’s edge:

Once when we were little

Mom guided us outside—

past Dad handing “little cigarettes”

to his friends from Mexico—

“Gloria” shouting from the record player—

she left us on the balcony and returned to their smoky haze.

Told us to search for stars.

Sisters in matching gold-speckled party dresses

out in the air

a thousand blinking lights

April asked where the stars were.

I moved her hand from pointing up to straight ahead and said

in New York City, April, windows are stars.

For some, Yearbook meetings

are gossip sessions.

I try and organize the staff

on copy, quotes, Senior pages—

They call me a stress-case

but they don’t know how relaxing

it is to cut and paste

draw boxes of ruler lines

glide a pen down

and around

smiling faces.

Give them a place to stay.

A memory design.

So that, years later,

we can look and see our faces,

stare into the past

as though looking into the night sky,

where stars that have already died

keep showing us their shine.

When our future might be up in the air,

not knowing where we will be next year,

this is the only way to capture time.

I tell them:

so much will change,

even us,

but this book

will stay the same.

Some nod, some roll their eyes,

but all of them draw

frames like plane windows

on blue graph paper,

the color of sky over water.

Lasagna night.

We layer

noodles, sauce, cheese,

Dad asks me

if I’ve given more thought

to touring Columbia

(where he teaches)

before I apply early admission.

Heart races as I

imagine my dorm room,

glimpsing Dad in the courtyards,

hosting April uptown for meal plan dinners.

Say, okay, sure, maybe in a few weeks.

James,

dark eye makeup, piercings, tattoos,

Dad’s Teaching Assistant and April’s tutor,

eats with us

then helps April with Spanish,

plays chess with Dad.

Mom, home later after blowing glass all day at her studio.

April and I sit, discuss her new teachers,

my new staff,

spin ice cream into a sweet soup,

watch
90210.

Dad says we should watch shows about real-life things.

Mom tries to join, asks questions about Brenda, Brandon.

I turn up the volume.

Mom eats cold lasagna alone.

I.

Later, on the phone, Chloe yawns,

she and Dylan smoked up,

says her guy is cheating on her.

Hear Chloe’s nonna screaming.

Parents gone. No siblings.

Chloe tries

to smoke it all

away.

But it’s Senior Year, the time to remember

everything.

II.

A long machine message from Adam

saying hi, hope I had a good first day

at school, leading my first Yearbook meeting.

Ever the editor,

offers to brainstorm

yearbook themes with me.

Says he’s been pretty busy,

plans to join a frat.

Lie in bed,

wonder if he’ll drink,

something we used to not do, together.

Eyes closed, listen to Dad listening to opera,

banging around the kitchen, house sounds stirred

with the whooshing cars on the Henry Hudson—

a city lullaby rushing me into easy sleep.

In the morning, Dad gives us breakfast.

Mom                  gone again,

like we’re a TV family,

there at her convenience—

she can choose

when she wants

to switch us on, tune us in.

Twenty Seniors chosen to mentor Freshmen.

April says she has me, why does she need them.

She opts out,

I opt in.

In a room on the twelfth floor I’ve never been to,

the windows here show us into

other people’s lives.

Huddled around a wooden table,

Mr. R tells us congrats on being chosen,

assigns us a partner, a group, tells us

we also have to interview our own mentors.

Something catches my eye,

I peer into the windows:

TV flickering in one.

An old woman in a turban, smoking.

Curtains. A potted plant.

And a little girl staring out,

unblinking like a doll,

too little to be alone.

I raise my hand to wave but

Mr. R calls on me to share with the group.

My mentor is my dad.

I look back to the windows:

TV still flickering in one,

the woman still smoking,

but the little girl, staring out—

gone.

September

SESSION ONE

So, this is my dad, Dr. Dale Stewart.

He’s a Spanish Literature professor at Columbia.

He’s pretty smart.

Gracias, mija.

Okay, Dad, so we are supposed to interview our mentors. I have a list of questions here.

Shoot.

Number one: What’s the most important quality of a mentor?

Well, before I answer that, do you know who the original Mentor was?

What do you mean?

From the
Odyssey.
Odysseus left Mentor in charge of his kingdom when he went away: Mentor watched over Odysseus’s son. He did this gladly. You see, a mentor teaches for the love of teaching. A mentor leads his students, sometimes indirectly, to the answer.

A mentor can be sneaky.

(Laughs, coughs)

What’s your answer to the question then?

I think the most important quality of a mentor is that they are open to following students where they want to go. Not always pushing their own agenda.

Okay, got it. Thanks. Number two: Who’s one of your mentors?

That’s easy. Your mother.

What? Why?

Because she helped me the most at a time when I needed it, and always encouraged me to dream big without telling me what to dream.

She did?

Yes, Mira, she did.

In second grade, school had us

plant flowers in pots, decorate them

for our moms for Mother’s Day.

I picked the flowers with the most buds.

Not sure which color to choose.

I painted tiny animals,

the only thing I knew Mom liked.

Chloe planted daisies for her mother, painted her pot blue.

Said her mom didn’t like strong smells.

Everyone seemed to know their moms’ favorite flowers

colors

smells.

All of them experts.

I went home, nervous,

pink carnations in my painted pot.

Dad, April and I ate dinner,

waited and waited.

Mom never showed up.

In the fall of ninth grade,

Mom left a note saying she’d gone

to Italy for a while, to study.

Mom left,

April wept,

Dad cooked,

I smashed one of her glass fish.

Buried it in the back of my closet:

mouth open,

gasping for water,

drowning in a corner, dark as sea.

Day after,

Dad held a family meeting,

April held a glass frog,

I said I didn’t care that she left—

she was hardly here anyway.

After the meeting,

April stuck next to me.

I stacked my sweaters like Pez candy:

pink, purple, gray.

Assembling order from mess.

That weekend,

Chloe and I got fake IDs,

so easy

it surprised me.

I never drank,

just followed Chloe into bars,

poured my Sprite into her vodka

while she

looked the other way.

Took fake puffs from cigs

newly sprouted from her fingertips.

Newborn stars

take millions of years to form,

billions of tons of mass to make.

But the constellation of a family

can shift shape

in seconds.

She was gone 13 months,

returned just before Halloween,

Sophomore year.

I had already found Yearbook. Adam.

When she came back,

arms full of glass,

April said welcome home,

Dad held her.

I said nothing.

She reached out for a hug

but I

turned

the other way.

Years later,

sorting mail,

bills from junk,

things Mom can’t be bothered with,

I hear her fruit earrings rattling

down the hall.

She matches our apartment:

plastic oranges and bananas drip from her ears,

her lips painted red peppers,

bright like our dining room table.

Her hair a tousled salad like

laundry left unfolded in piles.

Down the hall,

Mom’s artwork:

glass roosters and fish hijack the bookshelves,

infest the coffee table.

As many times as I try

to place them in cabinets

or line them in height order,

they march back in,

a disordered stampede,

a resurrection.

Mom’s closet:

green scarves overlapping purple purses,

scattered costume jewelry

falling on top of random shoes, socks.

Mine: jeans, hung, creased,

sweaters folded in color order.

One pair of sneakers, flats, boots, clogs.

One mom

one daughter

mis-

matched.

In Astronomy class,

formulas scatter the blackboard.

Mr. Lamb tells us

in May we’ll see

a solar eclipse as a class.

We’ll all stand

in the sun

and go dark

for a minute.

In May, seven months from now,

just a month before graduation

into college, yearbook done,

a month before we’re flung

into space,

I will be

something stellar.

Even as the world goes dark around me,

I’ll keep my shine,

I will not eclipse.

Tuesdays, out early, two frees in a row.

Sky so blue, walk past the bus stop,

skip through the park,

the reds and yellows

nip at the greens,

tell them it’s their turn to change.

Cross the bike track,

remember flying, back of Dad’s bike,

first time riding a two-wheeler,

his pushes, my breaths, how I pedaled.

Now, passing benches,

an emaciated, bearded man with a hollowed face

lies on one, propped up on full gray trash bags,

hands shaking—

I tell myself not to look.

Think of what Dad would do,

jog back, squish a dollar into the man’s cup.

His sign reads:

Homeless, starving, lost everyone.

Lesions on his scalp, his forehead—

like the skeletal men they show in health class,

unprotected sex, flashing at us, warnings.

I scurry away, eyes on the changing leaves,

Belvedere Castle, the pond,

kids chase their mom around the tire swing,

don’t look at the trash falling from bins,

don’t smell the urine on the rocks,

don’t read the SCREW YOU graffiti

sprayed on the old stone wall.

Look at the kids play,

look at the statues,

look up into the blue,

all those buildings framing the sky.

The wind picks up

as I get close to home,

it comes to me suddenly:

The yearbook theme should be New York City.

Jimmy, the doorman, says hello,

I push the elevator button, make it glow.

Breath speeding up, can’t wait to tell Dad

I’ve got my theme.

Turn the key.

Walk down the hall.

Go to his room.

But as I turn the handle on his bedroom door—

I hear a yelp.

I hear a
NO!

And then I see:

James, naked on my parents’ bed.

Dad, beet-red, naked,

hiding

his lower body behind the door.