Brooklyn Story (30 page)

Sooner came a couple of days later. Mom's friend from high school, Cynthia, her husband, Fred, and their young daughter, Justine, lived a few blocks away from where Mom planned to move. Although Mom and Cynthia hadn't always gotten along when they were growing up, Mom was grateful to her for a job minding Cynthia's baby and her loan of nine hundred dollars on short notice for the move to Bay Ridge. Mom's conviction remained unchanged that the multicultural atmosphere there, as opposed to the homogeneous Italian neighborhood where she thought I was hanging out with the wrong people, would be a chance for us to have a better life.

I was worried. I had felt a sadness about leaving and wasn't as convinced that a relocation would solve the problems of the world. There was evil everywhere, I knew. It was just a matter of who a person was … and whom she associated with, like Father Rinaldi had said. But once Mom had made up her mind, she refused to reconsider. She was determined to snatch me away from Tony, who she thought was a raging lunatic who would continue to harm her daughter. Mom wanted to take me away from the type of man she had married, the type of man who could ruin a life. We would be living in a quaint three-bedroom with a peaceful elderly
couple renting out the other side. With Cynthia close by and a nicer place to live, I tried to be hopeful about the move. If it weren't for the fact that Janice would no longer be close by and I'd have a helluva commute to school because there was no way I was going to make a switch, I might have even felt excited about the whole thing. But Janice and I weren't going to be that far away from each other and I knew we would make the effort to see each other every chance we could. No matter what our different futures might turn out to be, she and I would spend them together. We had often talked about the possibility of sharing a place after I turned eighteen. I hoped, too, that that might become a reality someday, but wondered if Janice would be living with Richie before we had a chance to do so.

It was hard for a teenager to deal with any major change, and Mom did what she could over the next few days to help me accept the upcoming move. “Just think, Sam,” she had said, “you'll have some privacy. Ya never had your own room before. Grandma's will be right next to you. And it's going to be good for me, too. Watching little Justine will give me something productive to do. I'll even stop smokin'. How does that sound?” I didn't believe Mom would, or could, change anything about herself. Regardless, I knew I couldn't change her mind.

On the day we packed for the move, I passed my hand over the wallpaper in the old bedroom I shared with Grandma. The violets had faded until you couldn't tell the difference between the leaves and the flowers. I would miss that place, but I had to admit that the previous few weeks had crushed me and maybe it would be best to get as far away from Tony as I could. I hadn't seen him since the head bashing but his words continued to echo in my mind:
Ya ain't
never
goin' ta leave me, Sam. Never. You're mine until the day ya die
.

I had gone numb right after Tony had claimed me as his personal possession—as if I were a Raggedy Ann doll. I was a
real person, an individual with likes and dislikes and feelings that could be hurt. I had dreams and goals for my future that no longer had anything to do with him. His saying those words tore at my heart. Tony wouldn't understand that. Well, maybe he'd get it when he realized that I was being swept away because my mother considered him dangerous. I knew that word traveled fast in Bensonhurst; he was bound to hear about it all soon enough.

Janice was sad when I called to tell her I was moving and why. “When did it happen?” she had asked.

“The decision to move or the head bashing?”

“Both.”

“He got me after Katrina's party and Mom made up her mind the same day.”

“It's probably the best thing for you, Sam,” Janice said. I could hear her resignation over the phone line. I assured my friend we would still see each other regularly. “No wonder ya didn't wanna meet me at Sally's.”

“I never want to run into him again,” I said.

There was a long pause before Janice continued. “Ya can hardly blame your mom. Looks like she's finally doing something right by you.”

“I don't. And you wanna know something? I'm exhausted from all this. I loved Tony but ever since he beat me up, I can't get the feelings back. I don't even want to try. I swear to God, I never saw it coming. I didn't do a damned thing and the next thing I knew …”

“It's always the same story,” Janice said. “One time Richie gave me a black eye becuz I answered the phone when he was in the shower. It was some girl callin' and when I asked him who she was, he belted me right across the face. It's so weird; I was the one who was supposeta get mad but he beat me to it.” Janice paused. “Literally.” She paused again. “And he never said he was sorry. I ended up apologizin' instead.”

“What is it with these guys?” I fumed. “What gives them the right?”

Janice lowered her voice. “
We
do.”

I went silent for a moment. I knew Janice was right. The guys continued to abuse their women because the women let them get away with it. They didn't know any other way; the women were too afraid of losing their men to defend themselves. Janice continued, “It's some kinda age-old tradition. ‘Keep the women in line
before
they do anything.' It's all about their stupid egos. They act like such wise guys, like they can do no wrong and everythin's our fault.” Janice sighed then. “What's crazy, Sam, is in his own way, Tony really loves ya.”

“What's crazy is him slammin' my face inta the dashboard.”

Janice chuckled. “Hey,” she said, “if that's not love, what is?”

I knew she was trying to lighten the mood, but that only made me more determined to get out of there, even if I preferred right then not to leave the neighborhood where I had grown up. But I had to go, and leave Tony and everything bad behind. My life was too precious, and he hadn't even made an effort to say he was sorry, even if that wouldn't have changed things. He probably didn't think he had anything to apologize for, anyway, I thought. No phone calls, no flowers, no gifts. There would be no Tony anymore, I knew.

When Janice and I hung up after swearing to meet soon, I wandered into our tiny kitchen, where everything was already packed in boxes. The empty shelves looked sad and the entire kitchen needed a fresh coat of paint. I sat on the floor a moment, inhaled the old cooking aromas that had been permanently infused into the walls, and thought about life in Bensonhurst. Was Tony's violence a part of a man that every woman had to rise above? I wondered. Or was he just an asshole, a batterer, and not good enough to buckle my Sugars, which he had bought with tainted money? Janice had always hoped Richie would change, but he never demonstrated any signs of
that in the years they'd dated. She'd probably end up marrying the guy and having a miserable life with a brood of overweight kids, I thought. That was exactly what my mother had told me time and again I needed to avoid. Why couldn't I hold out for a nice boy? She echoed Grandma's advice many times.

Having no father in the house when I was growing up was probably a good thing because he had hurt my mother so much, but I was unfamiliar with men and the ways that they thought and acted, good or bad. But I had to admit to myself that I had read about and seen good men, and was writing for the world they inhabited. I knew how a woman should be treated, no matter what the circumstance. “Nice boys don't hit girls,” my mother had told me ever since I was a little girl, confirming what had always been in my heart. The striking of a man's hand on any part of her body is abuse, plain and simple. And that was plainly wrong.

I returned to my bedroom, where I had always found my solitude with the typewriter that Grandma had given me so many years before. She had used it sometimes, too, to write her poems, and I thought she must have found a similar peace of mind when she did that. That room was where I wrote night after night with depth and honesty about growing up in Bensonhurst, and I knew I wasn't finished.

I sat down at my small wood desk and began clicking away. The typewriter was so worn that I had to hold the ribbon in place sometimes as I typed. I looked forward to the day when I would get a brand-new professional model. My words seemed to come out faster than my little fingers could move, but when the last ones were on the page and I stopped to read what I had just created, my eyes filled with delight and then melancholy touched my heart. I realized it would be the last time I fashioned words in the apartment where I grew up.

Writing would be the only priority in my life from then on, I decided. Nothing was going to get in the way. I was so fulfilled
doing it and I couldn't wait to share this joy with the world. Someday, I thought as I covered the Smith-Corona. I stood and then taped the boxes that held my few possessions and threw the last of my clothes into two suitcases.

That's when I remembered the duffel bag on the fire escape. My heart sank deep within my chest and all of that past Tony anxiety came forward like a rush of hot air. I rushed over to my bedroom window and opened it. The bag was still hidden perfectly under the planter and was completely drenched from the rain. I pulled it in and this time had no hesitation as to what the contents were. I unzipped it to find a plastic bag, and inside of that was a dried-up bloody police shirt, badge and all. I was startled. Someone must have gotten hurt from one of his unruly scores or God knows what else he may have done to this innocent person. I knew one thing, I wanted nothing to do with it. I had held on to this mess for way too long and had to release it. How dare he make me hold this; what was this, who was this, and why was there blood? I put it all back, zipped it up, and was ready to throw it in the garbage with the rest of the junk I was getting rid of when I stopped. There had to be a better place to discard this bag for good … My mind flirted with ideas and then it hit me.

I knew I was probably throwing away evidence of some kind and I couldn't have cared less. That's when I remembered the night he and the boys were out late and I had fallen asleep on my sofa, when he came honking the horn at God knows what hour and he asked me to take a ride to get burgers and shakes at the local diner. Tony, the guys, and me, all shoved in the booth with the quarter jukebox playing in my ear. I had no idea why I had to be there, but I was. They all went on and on about how they beat up this cop, knocked him out cold, took his clothes, and placed their clothes on him instead. And of course robbed some store in the process. Great, I thought to myself as I sipped my milkshake, my
stomach turning as I listened to the violence creep though their veins and out of their vulgar mouths.

I so wanted to be rid of Tony.

I knew I had about an hour of time to kill as I waited for a friend of Mom's to arrive with his old, crusty van, and for the next chapter of my life that was yet to be written.

So I did the unthinkable, even for a girl like me. I took the duffel bag from the planter on the fire escape, added some rocks to the bottom of it, jumped on the R train, did some transferring to other trains that I had never taken before, and headed to the Brooklyn Bridge. I got out and walked slowly toward it, admiring the cables in all their glory, and started my descent upon it, duffel bag in hand. I managed to get to the middle of the bridge and, with no one looking, dropped it. I never even watched it fall. Who cared? I was rid of it. That was all that mattered at this point. Rid of its history and the Tony that went along with it.

The phone rang the next day while we were unpacking in our new home. “I'm comin' over,” Janice gushed. “I gotta see ya.”

I cleared a small area on my bed and sat down. “We're up to our asses in boxes here,” I exhaled. “I just wanna get done and then crash.”

“Help is on the way,” Janice announced. “We'll talk while we work.” I didn't have the energy to argue with my best friend so I hung up. I knew there wasn't any point to it, anyway. She was going to show up no matter what I said.

I found myself looking forward to seeing her. I was already feeling the first pangs of separation from my old neighborhood, and it was reassuring that attachment to its good parts would always remain. I glanced around the first room that I would have to myself. It wasn't much, but it was mine. I looked forward to the first conversation Janice and I would have there.

I unpacked the items for my desk and took my time setting
it up, and was grateful that there was more space around it for my files and reference books. Even though there was much left to be done with Mom and Grandma to set up our new home, I couldn't resist sitting at the desk the moment my typewriter case was unzipped.

I banged away on the keys. There had been plenty to make me bitter in the recent past and my fingers struggled to keep up with my thoughts. The detachment instead of progressive closeness with Tony when we were a couple, the macho strutting instead of genuine consideration of the Brooklyn Boys, the senseless violence visited upon Richie and so many others instead of the spread of peace, the loss of my virginity that had been humiliating instead of something to be cherished—all of that spilled onto a few pages. But all of it served as a counterpoint to the gratefulness I felt in my new room, for there was a lot more than some more space to be thankful for.

I still had my best friend, there was a chance—however slim—that Mom could still salvage her life, Grandma and others, like Janice, had never stopped rooting for me, and I had hundreds of pages written, with more on the way, that validated their support and my hopes. All of that found its way onto pages as well.

Forty-five minutes later, I heard the commotion outside my room when Janice arrived. I sprang from my chair to the door with a smile on my face. I was happy about seeing her, but also pleased with the healthy chunk of my novel that I was leaving behind as I went to greet her.