“Where you live before?”
“My parents.”
He nodded his head and kept sweeping.
“I used to be an auto mechanic. So maybe, you know, I could help you out around the apartment.”
“Nobody has cars.” Which made a lot of sense.
“But now I’m a landscaper.”
That one we both laughed at, realizing there were as many shrubs around the building as there were cars.
Because he took in Stephanie who was probably living in some shit family situation, because desperation was probably shooting out of my voice in every direction, and because Ralphie is a good guy, he decided to tell me an apartment was opening up soon.
“…this guy, he miss his rent for seven times. He leave here this month. You go down to the office, and fill the application. The guys: you tell them you know Ralphie. And then you see.”
“That would be so great. Where’s the office?”
Turns out that deadbeat’s lease wasn’t up for another year-and-change, and they didn’t have plans to renovate. So between the letter from my boss, Frank—who I fuckin love for being cool enough to say I made a lot more money than I actually did—and Ralphie’s recommendation, I got in.
I think Ralphie likes me; he sees me leave for work every morning and knows I wasn’t lying about the job, but I understand why he’s keeping an eye on me. I’m still a shaved-headed wildcard kid who dresses like a derelict.
Now he watches me closely as I lift the slate from the wall and stand it upright. It starts to fall toward me; I brace it. Ralphie pulls off his baseball cap, which has probably been on his head for a decade now, and with his palm, smoothes back his already matted gray hair.
“You need help?”
“No, it’s OK, I got it.”
Two little kids pop their heads out of the door behind him. A girl with her finger in her mouth and a miniature boy version of Ralphie, hat and all. All three of them watch as I pick up the slate and lay it on my foot. In unison they all cringe.
“You want no help?” Ralphie asks again.
“No, I’m good.”
“You loco, you know? Crazy.”
“Yeah, I’m starting to see the full-sized picture.”
“Be careful, OK? Don’t hurt nothing.”
“I won’t.”
He turns to the kids, “Ivamos.” They scurry back inside.
My studio is part of a railroad apartment that was broken into smaller spaces. It has exposed brick on one wall, and a curtain—not a door—separating the bathroom from the rest. I get a laugh out of the wood floors. Lay a marble anywhere and in ten seconds it rolls to the south-east corner. There’s more paint on this radiator than there was in my mother’s Yonkers apartment. So many coats on the walls I think the place has lost a few square feet since it was built. A futon lies against the side wall. No frame, just a mattress with a sheet that’s got little holes worn through it where my toenails rub while I’m on my stomach. Next to the bed are two cardboard boxes. One’s got my clothes in it and the other is filled with books and paperwork—things I’m using to get my GED. There’s also an alarm clock I never have to use.
All by itself on the floor is a black spiral notebook. I write in it sometimes about things that I’d rather not get started on right now.
The milk crates are waiting for me. I guide the slate down onto them and step back for a better look. It’s … it’s a table. Dark. About a foot off the ground, covering more of the apartment than it felt like it would. I sit on the floor facing it and cross my legs. It’s perfect eating height that way. I stand up and look at it like it’s supposed to do something.
I’m hungry.
Out the front door Stephanie’s gone from the stoop. I walk across Tompkins Square Park. Low sunlight stretches tree shadows over benches and heavily pierced and tattooed squatters who set up beds in the grass. With dreads past their shoulders, they huddle behind a cardboard sign that says they need money for their dog, who also has dreads.
I sit on a bench hoping to get tired. I say no to people who ask me if I got a light. Make split-second eye contact with a few dozen people who walk by then watch them go their way. I stay put until streetlights come on, and memories of living here creep back in. My apartment isn’t great shakes, but it beats this park, and this park, as a transition to sanctuary, beat the shit out of Yonkers.
A guy and girl who may or may not have another place to sleep tonight walk by me with their arms latched like the safety pins that hold their pants together. I see Nokey putting his hand on my sister. I wonder if he hadn’t done that would anything else have even happened. I get off the bench, head to my apartment, and try to leave that thought in the park.
Rain
Yonkers is bookended by two strips of water—the Hudson River and the Bronx River—and if you stay in the middle of the city long enough, which I definitely did, you can actually feel them pulling you from both sides, wanting to take you down south past the boroughs of New York City into the Atlantic. The waters start to feel like tarmac, runways for take-off. And if you give over to the pull, let the river take you, you get a ticket to Europe and beyond. I’ve seen this done. Somebody’s brother or sister from the neighborhood just took off downstream and we never heard from them again. In some places, to gain legend status, all you have to do is leave.
The Hudson River, the bigger of the two, belongs to the downtown crowd. From their apartment windows they see the sun dip behind it, watch cargo ships and sail boats leave wakes in it, and hear trains run parallel to it before it dumps commuters onto their front lawns farther up-county.
The Bronx River, which is two blocks from my dad’s house—which until last summer was also my house—belongs to the city’s northerners. We rode our bikes on the footpath next to it when we were little and drank beer on its banks when we were a little bigger. Some nights, Nokey and me used to lay down on the damp dirt that lines it, tell stunningly and embarrassingly stupid teenage jokes, and look for faces in the stars. At night if we drank enough beer and the breeze hit just right, the tree branches looked like they were rotating, cutting spirals upward into the dotted sky. So we stayed put, let our backs get muddy wet, and fell into the sky with the help of nature and alcohol.
After a few days of rain the water would get higher, faster, and the ripples louder—I could hear them two blocks and two stories away from inside my dad’s house. And let me tell you straight up: that was a tempting sound to hear trying to fall asleep in a house I had every desire to leave.
If you wanna get away from Yonkers by riding the Hudson River it’s pretty much a straight run to the Atlantic. But if you’re taking the Bronx River you’ll have to be a strong swimmer.
You gotta cross the Westchester County line into The Bronx and swim past Hunt’s Point and the Bronx Terminal Market, where they plunk the rotten produce in the water. Past that the Bronx River becomes the Harlem or East River where if you catch a stray current you can crash into Riker’s Island or get sucked into Flushing Bay and spend the rest of your days lapping at the shore near LaGuardia Airport. But if you drift west a bit, you wind up kissing Manhattan at East Harlem which, like some first kisses, feels smooth, promising and lasts for about ten minutes, then you slide down to Hell Gate somewhere near 96th Street. Clear that and you still might get snagged by Brooklyn’s Red Hook, a piece of land that sticks out like a dockworker’s tool; it can keep you flapping there like a soggy piece of toilet paper. After the Hook you’re at the place where the East and Hudson Rivers become one. There you have to dodge the anchors of the Verrazano Bridge and make sure you don’t get thrown into the dead end of Jamaica Bay.
Understand—we didn’t swim in the