Black

The summer after third grade, at age nine, my oldest brother Matthew (aged nineteen) and I went to California for a month with our mother’s best friend Angie or Auntie Angie as I affectionately referred to her. California for a month was one of two options for my brother Anthony, who was twelve at the time, and me. The other was to go to summer camp at Lake Pompanaw in upstate New York. My mother refused to let us stay in the city that summer. Not every summer, just that particular one. This ultimatum had never been posed to us before nor after that summer but as it went, that was the deal on the table. Anthony chose to go to sleep away camp for two reasons: a) Some girl named Eileen from the other sixth grade class who was rumored to be a raging slut was going to be there and b) Matthew had decided he wanted to go and lets just say no one would ever mistake them for the kind of brothers that go to the park together and play on the same team in two on two basketball.

Auntie Angie was going to California to visit her cousin Keisha and her three kids: Sophie, Kaylin, and Aaron. They lived in what Auntie called a “really nice house in a gorgeous neighborhood” in San Francisco. I was excited just to be staying in any kind of house at all. Of all the families in my favorite T.V. shows as a kid, not one of them lived in an apartment like we did, they all lived in houses. My family used to live in a house in the Bronx when it consisted of only Mommy, Daddy and Matthew but now we live in a duplex apartment on 72^nd and Madison. I would constantly beg my mother to move us into a nice house with a backyard, a doggie door and a dog to go with it but her response was always the same, “Manhattan doesn’t have houses Sylvia.” What she didn’t understand was that I had no emotional or sentimental connection to Manhattan whatsoever and actually, I still don’t.

Anyway, I was ecstatic about the fact that I was going to be living in a house in a suburb for a month. I didn’t care that it was in California, it could’ve been in Queens for all I cared. Matthew’s reasons for accompanying me to California were kind of similar to mine. He said that since he hadn’t gone away for college this was the perfect opportunity for him to experience living outside of New York. He tried to convince his best friend Paul, who happened to be Auntie’s son, to come with us but Paul had a job as a messenger for the summer. He was saving up to buy a car. Matthew told him that he was wasting his time and money because having a car in the city was inane. I didn’t know what inane meant at the time but I did agree with my brother and I think I said something like, “Why would you wanna drive around for a half an hour looking for a parking spot when you could just take the train? You don’t have to park it or even think about it when you leave it.” I don’t really remember what Paul’s reply was but I do know that he didn’t come with us on the trip and he drove me to school on the first day that September.

My mother had her own motives for sending me all the way across the country for a month. She knew that Keisha’s oldest daughter Sophie and I were the same age and that was music to her ears. My mother was in constant fear of me becoming a tom boy ever since I started school. For some reason, as a child I always made friends with the boys in school or older girls that my brothers knew; always shying away from the girls my own age. Looking back on it now, I think it was actually more them not being so welcoming. I’ve never been, even now, the type to run up and join the group to see what was going on. I’m more of the “stay back and watch the group to see what’s going on” type and I think I was able to see the cattiness in females before I ever had to experience it. I guess my first inclinations were to join the group with the least turmoil, but once we all started puberty, between me and the boys, there was turmoil indeed. However, before that, as I was previously saying, my mother was very concerned about me only playing with boys and she desperately wanted me to spend time around some little young ladies. Of course she didn’t tell me this herself; my confidant/mentor Matthew was instructed to sit me down and have a little talk with me. We were taking the M2 bus down 5^th Avenue so I could go clothes shopping for our big trip. We sat in the back of the bus like we always did: him in the corner seat next to the window (so he could look at girls) and me in the seat in front of him, with my back to the window. After several minutes of silence he finally came out with it.

“You think you’re gonna get bored out there? You know the kid that’s your age is a girl? The boy is like six.” He was baiting me.

“What’s that supposed to mean? So what the boy is six.”

“Come on, everybody knows you don’t have any friends that are girls. I mean, I don’t have a problem with it but mommy’s pretty bothered by -”

“That’s not even true. I hang out with Melissa and Stephanie all the time.”

“Melissa and Stephanie are eight and six years older than you and you only know them because of me.” He was right. Melissa was his girlfriend and Stephanie was her sister. I had no argument so I retaliated the way any nine year old would.

“So what? And what difference does it make to mommy anyway? I don’t see why she cares so much about who my friends are as long as they’re not criminals or something.” He laughed at that. He was always laughing or yelling at me and both always drove me crazy.

“What’s funny?!”

“Nothing. Listen, it’s not that mommy wants to pick and choose your friends. She just wants you to be more like a girl, like you used to be. Like, why did you stop getting dressed up and going to the dinner parties with her? I guess maybe you were too young to realize,”

He was always saying “you were too young” when he really meant “you are too young” which was another thing he did that made me nuts,

“but that kind of stuff really makes her day. She would have this look on her face when you two came down the stairs in your dresses. Now she doesn’t get to have that. Now she’s watching you become her third son instead of her only daughter.”

“Well did anybody ever think about if I liked wearing the fancy dresses and going to the corny dinner parties?”

“I suppose not. I know you used to though. You used to run around the house in those puffy dresses smiling ear to ear.”

“Yeah but I was like four years old. I might be young but I’m still getting older. And it‘s not like I’m a tom boy so…”

“No one’s debating that. All I’m saying is that you could try a little more for mommy’s sake. I mean, I know you’re not a tom boy and it’s not like I don’t want you to be yourself… I don’t really know what I’m saying but could you just try to make friends with this girl when we get out there? And maybe you won’t even like her but at least try, for Mommy?”

“Yeah, fine.”

I agreed in a tone that said “I’m saying yes to shut you up” but that was just what I wanted him to think. The truth was, when my brother Matthew asked me to do something, and he was serious about it, I always complied or at least tried my best to. So I decided then that I would try to make friends with Keisha’s oldest daughter Sophie. My only problem was that I didn’t know exactly how one set out to “make friends” with someone. In fact, every minute I thought about it I was getting closer and closer to calling the whole thing off. I could just tell Matthew that I tried but the girl was simply impossible. That train of thought just made me feel guilty about quitting before I started; something I’m sure my father had found a way to instill in me.

That 4^th of July was on a Tuesday, three days before Auntie, Matthew and I were scheduled to leave and the day before Anthony was leaving for camp. Auntie came upstairs (she lived on the first floor of our building) that morning at about 11:30 to bring us some puzzling news. I was walking by my mother’s room on my way to the bathroom to do my hair when Auntie called out my name, “Syllie, c’mere for a second. I want you to here this.” I heard her voice come from my mother’s room so I turned around, walked back down the hall and stood at the door, instead of going in the room and sitting down. It was supposed to be a hint that I didn’t have time to talk long because I was on my way to a BBQ with Matthew, Melissa and Stephanie on their block downtown.

“Come in here and sit down like a lady please.”

“Like a lady” was my mother’s favorite phrase at that time.

“Ma, I have to finish getting ready. I haven’t even done my hair yet.”

“It’s only gonna take a minute, I promise.” Auntie said.

“Okay.” I said, with as much attitude as I could muster and plopped down on the bed next to my aunt, not my mother. I felt my mother’s glare on my face like direct sunlight, though I didn’t dare look back at her.

“So I just got off the phone with Keisha a few minutes ago and she’s on the verge of tears as soon as I say ‘Hello‘. So I ask her what’s wrong, thinking it’ll be nothing because she’s such a drama queen –“

“You never said anything about her being a drama queen.” I said.

“Oh, it’s nothing you’ll have to worry about sweetie, but let me finish so you can get outta here. So I ask her what’s wrong and she says ‘I went into Aaron’s play room’ he has his own play room, you know ‘and I saw a painting that I think he made yesterday and the painting was completely black.”

Auntie Angie was making her cousin sound like a ditz.

“From corner to corner, every inch was black!’ Now of course I tried to comfort her and I told her that it probably didn’t mean anything but…”

“But what?” I asked.

“What do you mean ‘But what?’? You don’t think that’s strange? A little boy making a painting that’s all black?” My mother said.

I wasn’t in the mood to butt heads with her so I tried to find a way to agree with her.

“Well I guess it’s a little weird. Little kids are supposed to like a lot of colors right?”

“Right, but it’s not just that. The fact that it was black of all colors… Black! It’s so grim and for a six year old? I don’t know about that Angie, that boy may need to see somebody.”

Now, even though I didn’t know this kid or anything about him I felt I had to defend him from the attacks of my mother. Actually I felt anyone and everyone needed to be protected from the attacks of my mother.

“Well what did the kid say about it?”

“I don’t know, she didn’t say actually. She may not have asked him.”

“Well gee I don’t know, don’t you think you should ask the kid before you start callin’ him crazy and everything?” I said, sarcastically.

“Don’t be a smart ass Sylvia.” My mother shot back.

“No she’s right Deena. Pass me the phone, please. I’m gonna call her right now and ask her. Who knows, maybe my nephew isn’t depressed.”

“But what could he possibly say that would justify it?”

“Jesus, Ma. You make it sound like the boy killed somebody.”

My mother shot me another look and this one caught my eyes. It said “Why do you try so hard to oppose me?” It had hurt me for a second or two; that my mother would think that I purposely or spitefully went against her, to hurt her. Then for another few seconds I thought that I might have actually been doing it without realizing. And if so, how long had I been doing it? But then I realized that I was right and she was wrong. She was persecuting this child whom she didn’t know, without any information that supported her accusations, which was something that she always did. She did it with me, my brothers, Auntie Angie, and probably my father when he was alive. And there was never any convincing her that she was wrong. I think the term most commonly used for this type of behavior is “strongly opinionated” but in this case it couldn’t apply because my dear mother truly believed that her opinions weren’t opinions at all. They were facts. Facts that people chose not to believe in.

Auntie dialed several wrong numbers before she gave up and went back downstairs to her apartment and consulted her phone book. While she was gone I went to the bathroom to finally start doing my hair so I could be ready to go when Matthew was, but I remember hoping that Auntie would be back before then so I could find out the final analysis on little Aaron’s sanity. The whole time I was in the bathroom, with the door half closed, I could hear my mother moving around in every room on the floor. Although I couldn’t see her, I knew exactly what she was doing. When I could barely hear her movements that meant she was in Anthony’s room which was all the way at the end of the hall, facing the bathroom in parallel fashion, book-ending the three other rooms between them. If anyone else had been doing the exact same thing she was doing in his room I would not have been able to hear them. But my mother was notorious for doing things very noisily when she had something on her mind. If you were what she had on her mind and within fifty feet of her then she was even noisier, so I was not surprised when I heard her move through all of our rooms in sequential order: Matthew’s after Anthony’s, then mine which was on the opposite side of the hall, and lastly, her room. I finished brushing my hair as quickly as possible because I knew for sure she was planning to trap me in the bathroom with her speech already prepared. Just as I was reaching for the door to pull it open, she was on the other side pushing it open and sitting on the closed toilet seat all in one motion.

“You can talk to me for two minutes. Matthew can wait.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You didn’t have to. Listen, I know you’re mad at me ’cause I’m making you go with - “

“I’m not mad at you,” I wasn’t expecting her to say that. “I wanna go to California.”

“You do?”

“Yeah I do. Why’d you think I was mad at you?”

“Well for one because you’re usually mad at me. And two, because for the past week you’ve been walking around here with something heavy on your mind. You don’t speak to anyone and you seem to have been cleaning your room.”

She looked up and smiled at me.

“So what’s wrong?”

“Can I ask you a question first?”

“You just did.”

“Ma!”

“Oh stop being so serious Sylvia!”

“Well when did you stop being so serious? Why are you being so… nice to me right now? I’ve never even seen you act like this before and a few minutes ago you looked at me like you were gonna slap me.”

“I’m trying with you Sylvia.” She paused and looked up at me as if she was looking for a helping hand.

“I have to try something. It seems like I keep losing you more and more every year and that’s not supposed to happen until you’re at least thirteen. A mother only gets a certain amount of time to be really close to her daughter and then… It happened to me and my mother, it happened to Angie and her mother. It just happens. You grow up and we grow apart. But you haven’t even grown up yet and it’s already started. I haven’t got my fair share of time Syl. It’s not fair.”

I had never heard her sound like this before. It wasn’t the fact that she was being emotional. She overreacted at any and every chance she got, so as to make us feel bad for daring to defy, disagree or demerit her. But she never ever would admit to defeat. I had never heard this tone in her voice before that moment and it scared me. I still remember how my body started to shake as the tears welled up all the way from my stomach. I remember clearly how I felt responsible for breaking my mother’s heart and what made it worse was that I didn’t even know how I did it. I was a horrible person and I wasn’t even trying to be. Apparently it just came naturally to me. I remember hearing, but not really hearing my mother say my name several times, trying to get some kind of response out of me when I just couldn’t take it anymore and I ran out of the bathroom. I ran down the hall while my mother called out after me. I ran down the stairs past Matthew, who also called out after me. And then I ran out the front door. To this day no one in my family knows where I went for an hour and a half that afternoon. They all insist that I went down to Auntie Angie’s apartment. My mother is convinced that her best friend is lying to her every time she tells her that I did not come down to her apartment that day. Auntie Angie doesn’t know where I went that day either. My brother Matthew knows everything about me, everything, except for where I went that day. I have never told one living soul and I never will. Nor will I write it here for you, whom I will never meet, to read. It is the one thing that I am the sole owner of and it always will be.

When I came back home Anthony was sitting on the sofa in the living room watching some Kung Fu movie. His eyes were already on me when I stepped through the door and he had a smirk on his face. He only looked at me long enough for me to notice the smirk, and then he turned back to his movie.

“Is mommy upstairs?”

“You know she is. If Matt didn’t find you and bring you home in a half hour they were gonna call the cops.”

“Gonna call the cops? Whatever.”

“We were all pretty sure you didn’t leave the building but Angie says you didn’t go to her house.”

“I didn’t.” I said as I walked toward the stairs behind him.

“So where did you go?”

I didn’t respond to him. I just continued up the stairs very slowly until I heard Anthony yell from the living room “Sylvia’s home!” What I wanted to do was run back down the stairs and choke him, but I figured I had caused enough controversy over the day. I did, however, go back a few steps and wave what I referred to in those days as my “curse finger” at him. Then I made my way back upstairs to face my fate, when it dawned on me that no one had made so much as a peep after Anthony spilled the beans. Here I was nine years old and missing for over an hour in New York City and no one even bothered to call the police. I wondered how long it took before they even sent Matthew out to look for me (If you were thinking that he ran out behind me when I first rushed out the door – don’t. It is a policy in my family that slammed doors are not to be reopened by anyone other than the slammer. Time is what a slammer needs. Time and space. That is the Farmer way.) I wondered why my mother and Auntie weren’t standing at the top of the stairs screaming at me and telling me how I almost gave them each a heart attack and a stroke. Then I remembered it was because my mother hated me and I deflated. At that point I had half a mind to walk back down the stairs with my head hanging low and leave our apartment in the opposite fashion of the way I did earlier. This time I would go to Auntie’s apartment on the first floor. I thought that maybe I should just move in with her, her husband Eric, and Paul. There was no reason for me to stick around and depress the hell out of my mother everyday when she could just take the elevator down to the first floor whenever she felt like revisiting her failures. That’s when that “never quit” attitude filled up in me again. Even at nine years old, I knew it was the right attitude to have, though I was certainly starting to resent it. But at the same time it made me feel good because I was sure that it was my father in me. I got my nerve up to finish the trek up the stairs to the second floor of our home, “Our home”, and finish the job.

The walk down the hall felt like the walk to the brick wall where you turn and face the firing squad, as you could imagine it should feel for a nine year old runaway. When I was finally standing at the door to my mothers room, where she and Auntie were sitting quietly, a few feet apart. They both looked up at me with two distinctly different faces. Have you ever looked at two people who never did look alike and all of a sudden realize how much they don’t look alike? My mother was giving me a look that everyone who knew her knew very well. It said “I’m so angry at you right now we’re just going to act like this didn’t happen – for now.” Time and Space. Auntie Angie on the other hand, looked at me with eyes wide and mouthed the words “Where were you?” very slowly and seriously to me. So seriously that it could have been the first silent sentence in the history of language to deserve an exclamation point. I didn’t know what to say, or if I should say anything at all. Was she mouthing the words because she had covered for me? I know now of course that she didn’t, that she told my mother she had no idea where I was and that my mother assessed that as a cover up (one of her “factual opinions“), that it was Auntie who sent Matthew out to look for me - which I’m sure my mother took as a ploy to trick her into believing The Lie. I remember I stood there in the doorway for what seemed to have been a solid minute, which under the circumstances was way too long for no one to have spoken, when my mother said for me to sit down. I sat in between them on the king sized bed and looked at my feet dangling off of the side. Even though my mother had already given me the look I still didn’t know what to expect next. I could feel them both looking at me while I was still very much concentrating on my shoelaces. Finally my mother said to Auntie, “Tell her what happened.”

“Oh yeah… So you remember what I was telling you about my nephew this morning?”

“Uh huh.” I had completely forgotten about that but I still didn’t know what the hell it had to do with me.

“Well I asked her what Aaron said when she asked him about the painting and of course she hadn’t even asked him, so I told her to do that and then call me back.” She looked at me as if she wanted a response. I, in turn, looked at her like she was crazy and replied, “Uh huh.”

“Well she called back a little while later and you know what she said?”

“What?”

“As if you don’t already know.” My mother mumbled.

“She said he told her that, basically, he painted ‘what the goldfish sees when the lights go out’. Can you believe that?! The things kids do and say!”

“Yeah. Crazy.” I said. “Or not crazy, I guess.”

Then my mother and I looked at each other, at the same time, but it wasn’t one of her looks that I had on file. I remember it making me nervous and I didn’t figure out what it meant until I was in my late teens.