When Skateboards Will Be Free (6 page)

In the warm stillness I would sometimes ask her when she thought the revolution was going to come.

“When will it come, Ma?”

“Soon,” she’d answer, quickly brightening, smiling. “It’s inevitable.”

“Will I be seven years old?” I’d ask.

“Well, no,” she’d say with the greatest of patience. “The revolution is going to take a bit longer than that.”

“Will I be ten?”

“No.”

“Will I be eleven?”

“No.”

“Will I be eighteen?”

And then she’d say, “Yes, Saïd. Yes. You’ll be eighteen.

When you’re eighteen the revolution will come.”

O
NE OF THE BENCHMARKS FOR
being a dedicated member of the Socialist Workers Party is the willingness to open your home to comrades who might be traveling to New York City to help out with a campaign, or to give a speech, or to modernize a printing press. Communists should have no sentimental attachment to their homes; they are there to provide shelter, and like any other material object—socks or spoons—they are good only as long as they are useful. “After the revolution comes,” my mother would tell me, “people will live wherever they want to live, because private property will be a thing of the past.”

And so just a few months before I turned five years old, my mother agreed to let a comrade stay with us for a few days while he was in the city from San Francisco to help renovate the party’s national office. We had my brother and sister’s spare bedroom, after all.

“I am ____,” the comrade said upon his entry into our home, shaking my mother’s hand. His face was wide and friendly, covered with a beard and topped with a huge head of hair that made him look something like a lumberjack.

“I’m Martha Harris,” my mother said. “It’s nice to meet you. Please come in. Set your bags down anywhere. I’ll show you around. This is my son Saïd.”

The man knelt down in front of me and put out his hand.

“It’s nice to meet you, Saïd,” he said.

“You look like a lumberjack,” I said forthrightly, and this made him shake with laughter.

On the first evening, in order to repay my mother for the kindness she showed in opening her home to him (although such sacrifice was of course made selflessly), he repaired a lamp of ours that had been broken for some time.

I watched him repair it.

“First I’m going to make sure it’s unplugged,” he said to me patiently. “Now I’m going to take off the lamp shade. Now I’m going to unscrew this screw.”

I was even allowed to hand him some of the tools, but my hands were so small that the tools clattered to the floor in the midst of the exchange. My mother and the guest found this adorable.

When the man had finished tinkering, he turned the switch and the room was filled with light.

“Look how wonderful,” my mother said.

On the second evening, we all sat down together for dinner. This was unusual, as no man had ever eaten with us before. I was awed by the tremendous amount that the comrade consumed, spoonful after spoonful disappearing into his mouth. The comrade was also extremely gracious, and he would ask for the salt politely, almost daintily, and he would pass the butter if you needed it and he complimented my mother’s cooking and he said that I was such a good boy.

On the third evening, the comrade offered to babysit me while my mother attended a meeting.

No. My mother couldn’t possibly ask that of the man.

It was no bother for him.

Was he sure?

Sure he was sure.

She’d be home by eleven.

Take your time.

Very nice of you.

And then my mother, happy to be free and unencumbered, kissed me on the head, told me to behave, picked up her knapsack, and closed the door behind her, shutting me inside, alone with a man whom she did not know except insofar as he was a revolutionary—and therefore a friend. A comrade.

“Let’s play,” the comrade said.

I was ecstatic, and I immediately reinvented the games my brother and I had played in the apartment.

“Look at me! I’m a monster!” I cried out.

“I’m so afraid,” the comrade cried, fleeing from me and cowering behind a chair. I was gleeful of such feigned terror.

My mother was blocks away now, descending the steps to the subway, fumbling in her bag for the token, dropping it in the turnstile, pushing through, looking down the empty tracks, wondering how long the train would take.

“The monster is coming to get me!”

My giggles filled the apartment as the subway arrived, as
my mother entered, took a seat, crossed her legs, took out something to read, rocked on the train as it hurtled underground toward Manhattan.

When I had exhausted myself with being the monster, the comrade became the monster and did what my mother could not do, stooping down to pick me up by my legs and swing me over his shoulder. His power thrilled me.

“The monster has caught you! The monster has caught you!”

“The monster has caught me!” Laughing. Laughing.

“You’re laughing too much,” the comrade said, and his false entreaties made me laugh more.

And then my mother’s stop arrived, and she exited the subway and walked outside and around the corner onto Broadway and up the elevator to the eighth floor of the Socialist Workers Party meeting hall, where she greeted everyone.

And now I was sitting on the comrade’s lap in my underwear, and his face was larger now, closer now, his hands tickling me under my arms, then beneath my shirt, and then on my calves. And I wondered how I had ended up in my underwear.

“Stop laughing,” the comrade teased. “No more laughing.”

His voice was near my ear, booming away, and I could feel his hands traveling up toward my knees, then past my knees. I squealed in his grasp.

“If you keep laughing you’re going to make yourself sick.”

Then his hands were on my thighs, then higher.

And as I squirmed to free myself from his arms, and as
my mother took her seat and waited for the speaker to take the microphone, the comrade pulled the elastic of my underpants back and put his hand inside, sending a shockwave coursing through my body.

“Comrades, thank you all for coming,” the first speaker of the night intoned.

“You’re sick,” the comrade said to me with playful banter. “You’ve made yourself sick. The doctor is now going to have to perform an important operation.”

Then he unzipped his pants.

F
OR NINE HOURS A DAY
, five days a week, I sit in a white, bright office that belongs to Martha Stewart, the billionaire empress of all things homemaking. My job is to assist in the graphic design of boxes and bags and labels and tags, which will ultimately be filled with or pasted onto things like plates and lamps and sheets and burgundy sheer voile curtains. It is a boring job, to be sure, mindless and repetitive and without thanks, but it is a supreme pleasure to immerse myself daily in the lush fantasies of pink and chartreuse, while surrounded by pretty young women and the smell of cake baking in the test kitchen. From time to time, I will catch sight of Martha, tall, blond, majestic—confoundingly the same name as my mother—as she walks briskly through the hallway en route to another meeting that will make her richer than she already is. I have worked for her for several years, but she is utterly unaware of my existence. I am positive, though, that one day she will notice me, smile at me—“Who are you?” she will say—and she will invite me to spend the weekend as a guest in one of her palatial estates in Maine or Connecticut or Westchester, where I will gladly, and without reservation, go.

In the meantime, I have been infected by her sense of style.

Just a couple months ago my coworker Karen gave me some extra pillowcases to take home. Back in my studio
apartment I happily exchanged my old gray-white pillowcases that I’d had for five years for the fresh lavender ones, picturing a girlfriend—Karen?—resting her head on them. Once the pillowcases were installed, though, I noticed how gray-white my sheets were and they, too, had to go. And once the sheets went, the blankets had to go. With each new arrival, no matter how small, I marveled at how transfigured my apartment became. And how transfigured I felt inside of my apartment. So on and so forth my purchases went, until I have reached my latest adventure of standing, staring, in the middle of the aisle at Bed Bath & Beyond trying to choose among an exhaustive array of tissue holders. I had no idea that there were so many styles.

It doesn’t matter, though. I’ve already concluded that brushed metal is by far the most attractive choice, the most sophisticated choice, and it is the one that I want.

“$24.99,” the price tag reads.

Which presents me with a quandary, because for $16.99 I can purchase the stainless-steel tissue holder, which is, when I stop to consider, pretty much the same as the brushed metal. And wouldn’t it be the sensible thing to save myself eight dollars? Of course, the sensible thing would be not to buy any tissue holder at all, as a tissue holder is a near-meaningless contrivance. When I was a child, my mother didn’t own a tissue holder, as the tissue already came in a box and what would be the need to hold something that was already being held? There were times even when we didn’t have tissue at all and instead relied on toilet paper to blow our noses. My dilemma, therefore, runs deep.

I feel the distant, nagging impulse to steal. It originates in my shoulders and extends into my hands. It would cleanly resolve the situation. I’ve stolen frequently throughout my life, from stores, people, and places of employment. Sometimes I was caught and rebuked, but often I got away. The things I took were always things I could afford but would not permit myself to buy. When I was thirteen years old I stole a stack of comic books from a 7-Eleven and was chased five blocks by the cashier. I ran for my life, barely able to breathe, my limbs swinging wildly. As I rounded the corner of my friend’s apartment building, I slipped and fell and the comic books went skittering over the pavement. I had no choice but to leave them in order to save myself. Down into my friend’s basement I ran, with the cashier on my heels. “Someone please stop him!” He had the comic books, but now he wanted justice. The first door I came to was the laundry room, and when I went inside I realized with horror that I had unwittingly cornered myself. There was no time, however, to turn and leave. In the corner was a blue wooden door, and I hurried and opened it. At first blush it was just a small dark closet, but when I stuck my head inside and looked to the right I saw a toilet bowl. I could hear the cashier coming, so I sat down on the toilet and closed the door behind me. Now that I was at rest, sweat began to drip down my chest and forehead, and the sound of my breathing was loud and labored. At the very last second I noticed a silver latch dangling from the door, but as I reached up to secure it, the footsteps entered the laundry room and I pulled my hand away. I held my breath and waited. There was silence. And then the
footsteps approached the door directly. It swung open. Light poured in. All the cashier had to do was stick his head in and look to the right, where he would find the criminal sitting on the toilet, but miraculously he did not think to do this, and the door closed as quickly as it had opened, and the footsteps receded from the laundry room, and after a sufficient amount of time had passed I stood up, brushed myself off, and went upstairs to my friend’s apartment.
Any crime against society is a good crime
.

I’m not a thief anymore. I’m too old and I’ve come too far. The impulse remains, though. It will be there forever, I’m sure. All around me in Bed Bath & Beyond customers, young and old, fill their baskets and shopping carts with all sorts of items. They find their many options delightful. And all at once, like a magnet leaping from the refrigerator of its own accord, I grasp the brushed-metal tissue holder in my hand and walk briskly, purposefully, toward the cashier.
$24.99.
The metal gleams. How nice it will look in my bathroom. I will light a candle and I will take a bath and I will look at my tissue holder. That is what I will do tonight.

And then I will come back next week and buy a shower curtain.

O
N A FRIGID AFTERNOON ONE
January, just after my seventh birthday, I stood alone in a strange neighborhood, unable to unlock a door.

“Pay attention, Saïd,” my mother had told me the day before while she had demonstrated how to use the key. There was apparently an imperfection somewhere in the key’s relationship to the lock, but if it was jiggled just so and at just the right angle, the door would pop open. It had looked easy enough when my mother had done it, yet as I stood there the following day by myself, trying to turn the key first one way and then the other, and then fitting it in upside down, and then trying to force it with brute strength—which was an act of desperation—the lock could not be unlocked. Was it the wrong door?

It was getting dark and I knew my mother would not be home for several hours. To further complicate matters, I was not dressed properly for the cold. My coat was more of a jacket than a coat, and I had no hat or hood. The mittens I wore were not conducive to such a delicate operation as unlocking a door, but when I took them off, my hands froze and the key fell to the ground. The door had been equipped with a storm door, and as I worked at the lock, the wind from the river blew, causing this extra door to flutter and bang against me. I also had to go to the bathroom.

Sitting nearby was a discarded refrigerator with its door still intact. “That’s dangerous,” my mother had told me in the middle of our lesson. “You could suffocate inside it.” Together we had tried to turn it around so that the door would face the wall and be inaccessible, but my mother was a small woman, and I was a small child, and the two of us had not been strong enough. “The landlord should be doing this,” my mother had said to me, at me, as if I might be the landlord, “but I’m sure the bastard doesn’t give a damn!”

A black woman about my mother’s age had passed by with her son, who was also about my age, and my mother had called out to her abruptly, “Say! Do you live around here? Say! Excuse me! Do you live around here?”