My daughter likes to climb into my lap even though she is already so tall and leggy that her feet are on the floor even while she’s sitting on me. I know there will be a time when this will and probably should stop. But I’m not ready for that yet. Sometimes when I think about how wonderful she is and is going to be, what a happy busy life I hope for her, I’m gripped by a panic, because to do that she’s going to have to leave. Right now she’s still so much my concern. I hold her beautiful perfect body with its softnesses and sturdy muscles and breathe in the smell of her, nuzzle her young skin. I need to know if she needs lotion, must look (like it’s no big deal) if she says her vagina is sore, I still need to press my lips to her fevered forehead when she doesn’t feel well, sit by her when she’s sick in the bathroom, argue with her over her refusal to eat the dinner I have cooked, because she’s just annoyed but I’m trying to keep her alive. I have to notice if her toenails need cutting and if she seems sad or worried and what time she went to bed. Soon, very soon, there will be other worries; the Internet, boys, grades. I’ve kept her young as long as I can. These concerns are exhausting, but they are mine. I can still remember the pain and blood of her urgency to break into the world, breathe the air. When she was very small she asked about her belly button, so I explained it as the mark that showed her she was mine.
But she’s not mine. If she’s anybody’s, she is hers.
When I opened the paper last Sunday, there was a story in the Metro section that had been on the news for a night or two; the city was rocked by the sheer violence of the crime. A fifteen-year-old girl had been beaten, raped, and then murdered by her nineteen-year-old “boyfriend,” and it had happened in the girl’s high school, not long after the end of the school day. The first time I had heard about it, I went to my little girl’s room and checked on her, softly snoring in her bed. The paper had a picture of the mother—I hadn’t seen her on the news. It was Ursula. It had been years, but through the look of frozen horror and devastation on the woman’s face I could see the girl who had been my aid and abettor in skipping Rabbi Markowitz’s class. Her hair was short, probably dyed, and her eyes were dead, sunken, circled in darkness.
Me and Ursula were fifteen, sitting in the grass on the west side of the Park, watching the boys play football. I wanted to play, too, but the boys weren’t having it, so I sat down all huffy because Ursula wanted to stay and watch. There was James out there, showing off. Ursula kept staring out the field, her eyes following him. A few feet from us Adam and this guy Hector were pretending to be Howard Cosell, calling all the plays. This was too boring for me. I didn’t like watching boys do stuff. Ursula was so boy crazy. Their game kept getting in the way of the Goya league games, so all the plays were broken up with cries of “pendejo!” and “hijo de una gran puta!” as the men tried to scare the boys away. “C’mon, Urs, can’t we do something else? That movie Tootsie is playing at the Baronet. Why don’t we go?”
“Is that the one where that ugly guy dresses like a chick?” Ursula asked, without looking at me.
“Yeah, it’s supposed to be real funny. He does it to get a part in some show.”
“Nah, I don’t got no money, and it looks stupid–feo. Besides, I wanna see the Richard Gere one. He’s so cute.”
“He’s not as cute as Harrison Ford. Gere’s eyes make him look like rat.”
“Like a rat? Don’t be so stupid. Que estupida.”
So we kept sitting. The boys were now in a huge pileup on one end of the field. I think James was under it somewhere. “Rachel, I gotta tell you something.”
“Yeah, what?” this time I didn’t take my eyes off the game. I was pissed that all she wanted to do was hang around the guys. That’s all she ever wanted to do these days.
“I think I’m pregnant.”
I knew that people had sex. I even knew that people my age had sex. But I didn’t, and I guess I never thought that Ursula was doing it. Maybe I just hadn’t thought about it. “James?” It was all I could think of to say.
“Of course, James! What kinda slut you think I am?” She was staring straight ahead, but her eyes were wet. I’d never seen her cry before. Not even when her mother slapped her right in the face for saying “Jesus!” real loud when she dropped her brother’s birthday cake on the floor on her way to the table with it. You coulda heard that slap from the next apartment. Then again, the walls were pretty thin.
Ursula was so pretty. I wished I had her smooth tan skin instead of all these dumbass freckles. This was the first time I wasn’t jealous.
Adam yelled through his nose, “And James saves his team with a Hail Mary pass into the end zone!”
I rolled my eyes and went back to plucking grass, one piece at a time, tearing each tough blade, concentrating on getting it right down the middle. “What are you going to do?”
I’m looking for the Ursula I saw in the paper. The funeral home is packed. People are milling around on the sidewalk outside, smoking, talking, leaning on the limousines, peering over at the channel 11 news van that is parked across the street. There is Spanish all around me, peppered with English. At the door, I mutter “Con permiso” to an elderly woman who is blocking the entrance with her generous frame. She is draped in black—black lace dress, black shoes, black jacket, dyed-black hair.
One look at my gringa face, and she asks, “You know la familia?”
Yo Sis,
Playin hookie in the projects!
Tsk, Tsk
Love Ya