THE UNSWEETENING OF DREAMS
You’re walking through the park, the breeze whipping your hair, shorts skimming the curve of your peach-blossom butt. I hear the tatty-tap-tap of your shoes—they give you away. Purple spidery heels, with rhinestones dressing up your toes. Even I know, with my feet jammed into beat-up Keds, that those purple shoes mean you’re looking for trouble. You think your body looks fine. Every day I watch girls clump into sections by the river, pulling at their cheap skirts, glossing their already wet lips. The ones with broken skin or with noses that don’t go straight, they make less than the ones whose faces look like Valentine’s cards ready to be opened. Mine used to make all the men get wild ideas: married ones, churchy types who grabbed their rosaries, men with tattoos of ladies inked in red, and deadbeats. There are so many other things that you could do if you would use your imagination. I bet that you’re smart.
Even though it’s already June, it’s cold in New York City. I live right off the East River, kind of hugging the FDR Drive. Despite the exhaust, the flowers are bombing the park with their perfume, getting all of us a little drunk. Birds chirping their same tune while I’m working the piece of caramel around and around my back chipped tooth. I’d give you my sweatshirt if you’d take it, but I see how proud you are. Your strut. I watch as a leaf blows into your hair, getting tangled in your sooty-colored ponytail. Your blond roots are shining in the sun; I have no idea why you dye that hair. You twitch your head like a prized pony, loosening the leaf from your hair. You catch my gaze and smile—your teeth white and showy, swinging your bag with two C’s flashing under the sun. Do you wonder who I am? This morning when you grabbed mangoes at the corner bodega, tested their ripeness, I was two steps behind; you smelled like vanilla.
“You know how to tell they’re alright to eat?” I said. I pantomimed like a fool, squeezing each one. When I pulled out the third one, the one that looked best, you looked at the screen of your fancypants phone and said, “I gotta go.” I heard the ding of your phone and saw you twist your lips into a sexy smile. I wonder who is sending you those secret notes that make you smile like that. Wish he’d leave you alone.
“Wait up,” I say but you push your hips against the door so it swings open fast, leaving me with your vanilla-wisp scent. Your friend on the other side of the street calls out, “Laila, hurry up!” I gasp as I know now that it’s your second name. You’ll always be another name to me—I’m not ready yet to share the name I call you in my heart. It hurts too much.
When I had you swimming around inside my belly like a guppy, I thought of all the names I could give to you. I started with the A’s in the giant dictionary at school and thought by the time I reached the Z’s, I would find the perfect name. But every time I would reach the B’s, the letter would switch to these P’s, and the letters would swirl around the pages and get all bossy, flipping the way they weren’t supposed to be. I never found your name that day because I was real embarrassed that I could never get those letters to listen to me, no matter what I did. I know now that I’m no dummy. Last week I couldn’t sleep, and I put on the TV to keep me company at 3 a.m. There was a special on about learning—turns out your momma has something called dyslexia. Too bad I dropped out before I could get all that sorted. I might have had some different choices than being a high school dropout.
* * *
On my way out of the store, I see you dropped your house keys. I try to say the word wait, but curiosity stops me from making a fool of myself. I see that you have a keychain that says I love Paris. I get a sudden pain in my temple, thinking about how I always wanted to see the city of lights, holding hands with a handsome stranger. Have you been there? I like to imagine that someday I will go there and meet a man who will whisper Je t’aime in my ear. Imagine! No man has ever told me he loved me in English or French.
I hold the keys in my hand, not ready to give them back to you just yet. Instead, I put them in my pocket, someplace safe. I need to think.
I walk closer to you, with your keys jangling in my jeans’ back pocket. I hear your laugh across the way and watch as you dance to some new Taylor Swift song that’s on all the damn time. You’re even prettier than she is. I bet you know that already—no need to color your heart-shaped lips in red or line your eyes dark like a cat. I decide, just like that, to walk over to you. After all, I got your house keys, so that gives me some right—otherwise how you gonna get into your house? “Laila,” I say, testing out your name on my lips. You look up, ignoring me, and mouth to one of your girls, “Let’s go.” Before I got the courage to follow you, all three of you are laughing but not really seeing me. My face to you already forgotten.
When I was a little younger than you, I never wanted children. The crying! The soured-milk smell. And oh! Never being able to finish a sentence with my friends before a little one would yell, “Momma.” Not to mention getting fat. I don’t think I was exactly selfish; instead, I was gonna be a model. All the guys in my building would smile real slow when they saw me. When I stood outside school, men would drive by and roll their windows down and yell, “Beautiful!” One day it was June and sunny. A guy with an important-looking suit walked over and handed me a card that said MODEL MOMENTS.
“Meet me after dark at the Coco Lounge on East 125,” he said. He was no scout and he lied about the chance to be big. I wish that I didn’t trust him when he said he needed pictures of me in my underwear to see if I had what it took. I still remember the magic he never gave back to me.
$47.99 is what is left in my Chase bank account. Less than twenty-four hours later, I park my butt on the same bench, and I see you smiling at those boys, the ones with dirty fingernails and man eyes. I watch as they grab the shine of your smile like dreamcatchers. They’re pretending to be interested in you. Eventually they will want something more than a smile—a payment for the purple shoes and knockoff purse. I blow smoke rings, three in a row. Everyone’s good at something. Some build houses, castles for kings, with more bedrooms than people; others are good at making pies with fresh blueberries. I’m good at blowing smoke rings, sometimes five in a row, and I used to be good at lying on my back until I got a little fat and these spiderweb lines around my eyes. Old. But I used to be good. My talent: being smoking hot.
The first time I did the dirty for cash, I pretended that it would make me a star. Mr. Model Moments promised me that if I left stars in the customer’s eyes that he would be real likely to get my face in a magazine. I believed him because he said the guy was an important photographer.
So, on a dark Thursday evening, I put on the red matching panties and bra—they were mailed to me in a manila envelope. I showed up at the Daydream Hotel. The guy was covered in ink and turned the lights off in the room. I thought maybe he didn’t like what he saw but that wasn’t it. He started unpacking these glass jars with lids. Inside there was bugs.
Kinky creep, I thought. All of a sudden these bugs started glowing, showing off a bit for us. I realized these were fireflies and that maybe he really was a photographer, caring about the setting and all that. He leaned over at me with his hands on his womanly hips and said, “I paid for you the whole hour so that we can do it until these bugs stop glowing.”
When I asked him what he meant by not glowing anymore, he turned all Cheshire cat and said, “Simple. They’ll be dead then with no air.” On the way out of the motel, the famous photographer removed a Polaroid camera from his bags and snapped a picture of me in my birthday suit. That’s as close as I got to ever being called a model. Now I am called something else.
Afterward men always asked me my real name, like we were now friends or something. Please never tell them your real name. I called myself Star, on account that my mother said I was born under a lucky star. You see, she needed to finish her shift at the Olive Garden. Her boss was a mean one and said if she left early, because there was a big party that night, then he would make sure she never worked there again. As soon as she clocked out, untying her apron strings, her water broke. Job secured.
I have been called many things before, some repeatable, some not. My favorite is witchy. I don’t look like a witch, but people always said, “Monica can always convince people to do something,” or “Her witchy ways gonna influence the guy to leave more money on the side of the bed.” So I did something impulsive this morning: I called your high school and asked for names of reading tutors, just in case you have as hard of a time reading as I do. Adam Tipleton was the name she told me—he sounded serious and all. I felt so proud.
I walk over to the pretzel-guy cart because I know your habits—this is probably the only thing you eat—such skinny little legs. After fishing tape out of my bag, I affix the card to the bench. It has the reading tutor’s phone number written across, which next to it has a cross-out, because I wrote Abam and had to concentrate to switch it to Adam. Then I leave a brochure for a community college that’s only five miles from here! There are all sorts of hotshot courses, things I hope you might want to do someday.
You walk over with that big-teethed loser guy. “What’s this?” the guy says and makes an airplane out of the card and sends it into the overfilled trash can. That card wasn’t for him—I feel like hitting him over the head with the college catalogue. Somehow I don’t feel witchy now as I watch you laugh at his stupid jokes. It takes everything in me to not brush away a dusting of salt across your painted lips.
Sixteen years ago I told a guy with green eyes (my favorite color) my real name: Monica. He looked at me like he knew me already and lined up his dusty boots on the park bench, not far from where you walk now. He said he was allergic to condoms. I said it was no bother because he looked clean from soap and doctors’ appointments. I felt the imprints of the peeling green bench on my legs, but I smiled like it was really fun. There was a dumpster in front, so no one saw, but I gagged from the smell of rotting bananas and dirty diapers. Afterward, when he buttoned up his shirt, he asked if I wanted to share his uneaten lunch: turkey sandwiches and two Cokes. He pulled out a brownie from the bag, and he fed me tiny bites. But always get the money first. He said he had to go to the bathroom, he’d be back super quick. Guess he only thought me worth the price of that sandwich. And maybe the brownie.
Three months later I made an appointment at the clinic, which was next to a salon and a Western Union. They explained about how it wouldn’t hurt much. Scraping and sucking away the baby. I cried until the nurse told me, “There were other options.” Each month I grew bigger and bigger. Everyone in the neighborhood called me Baby Momma, my friends so jealous that I would have a baby of my own. I was never happier—I felt that I had a purpose.
I lay in the hospital with the sheets scratching my legs, counting down until the doctor said, “Push, Monica, push.” Afterward I held you in my arms—I didn’t want to give you up, but I was only fifteen years old. What was I supposed to do? In my head I named you Sheila, after a girl I saw in a movie. She was real pretty and a smarty. She was a doctor! Before they pulled you away, I don’t know who was crying harder: you or me. I traced my fingers around your face so I wouldn’t ever forget. Memorized each feature. Those same green eyes as your father’s, that looked like they could light up an entire Christmas tree with just one blink.
* * *
Adoption is a funny word. I find it sticks in my mouth, makes me cough a lot when I say the word, so I don’t. I just don’t. They wouldn’t tell me who adopted you, I swear. I did something stupid—it was called a closed adoption. Those nuns. The Sisters at Lower Manhattan’s Franciscan Hospital gave me cool towels for my head. They told me it was supposed to be easier this way for everyone if it was one clean break. I can tell you forever that it was my most shameful mistake. Today when I see nuns, I turn the corner—to me they seem like the unsweetest part of my dreams.
This morning I try something new: I am ready. I place myself at the front of the line.
“Yoo-hoo,” I call when I see you marching up to the pretzel cart. You look around, your eyes all confused as you see no one you know. For a moment I am offended: How can you not remember me? Is mine the type of face people forget because it has seen too much?
“Do I know you?” you ask, pointing your finger right at me. Shot in the heart; I think I see stars!
I try to make my mouth make words, and I scrape through my bag and pull out the set of keys.
“Why do you have my boyfriend’s keys?” you ask. Your voice is accusatory and all.
“They fell out of your bag.”
I hand them to you, but you cross your arms in front of you.
“I broke up with that loser yesterday.”
Someday you may ask yourself: Did I look for you? I looked for you on the playgrounds, amongst all the girls playing jump rope. You weren’t there. I stalked the schools, paced like a wildcat. I left claw marks on the gate when I thought I saw a little girl with my same sass and your grassy-green eyes. My acrylic red nail snapped off in the gate’s lock. The cold metal bit into my palms, but I wouldn’t go, instead I was just hollering, “That’s my baby, that’s my girl.” It wasn’t you; I was just the crazy lady, blowing her nose into her cheap scarf, making a fool of herself. It reminded me of the dreams where I wake up and I’m lying alone in my bed, with my pajamas soaked through and a ring of sweat dried around my neck like a cloudy necklace, and you’re gone. Again.
Today I see you cruising with your pack; you are still the cutest, your smile beaming down on all. I want to scold you as I sit on my bench, that you need to stop biting your nails and take care of your chapped lips as that problem runs in the family. That same damn Taylor Swift song that’s been playing on every station comes out all tinny of one of your phone’s speakers. You shake your butt to some nonsense about “shake it off.” If I had the authority to do so, I would insist that you wipe off all that makeup—I know there is a real girl under there, but why you gonna listen to me.
I imagine, if I was able to be your momma, what I might have taught you when you were little: First, how to look for fairies in the park. They are real if you know when to look, always after a rainstorm but never under a mushroom. They’re too fancy for that. Next, my favorite: how to ride the purple bike I would have gotten you with silver streamers so all of your friends would be jealous. Ha! And of course, the most important: how to throw a real punch, if any boys were being fresh with you.
“Watch out,” I yell as a skateboarder misses you by an inch. The idiot! I notice him apologetic when he realizes how pretty you are. If I didn’t have work, I would sit here sending good thoughts that he would bother you no more. No. Now I got three jobs, and none of them are pretty. The newest one’s around the corner: I break down boxes. I suspect real soon they’ll fire me, as it’s breaking down my body faster than I can break down these mean boxes. My palms tell the story of my hard work. Red. Chapped. Raw. I need money, you see.
After sixteen years of looking on my own for you, no luck. Well, guess what? So two weeks ago I was watching one of my soaps, and there was a commercial for a private eye—the type that ladies go to to sneak up on their lying men or locate loved ones. I turned the TV off and immediately clicked it back on. I memorized the number because I couldn’t find my pen. Anyway, Andrej Lepovski had a smile I trusted.
I was afraid to meet him at the detective agency because I didn’t have anything that I could impress him with, so I made a detour to Dress Expres, to buy something new. Professional. I found a smarty-smart taupe skirt with a matching jacket.
“Fits you just right, not too tight,” said the bored saleslady. I twirled once, then twice, under the fluorescent lighting before realizing that it would cost me $189. Plus I needed shoes, which is partly why I took the third job, breaking down those boxes.
So after charging something else on my credit card, praying that the card wouldn’t be declined, I arrived at the detective’s office, flushed, with a run in my pantyhose, as I had to walk and then take the subway. He asked for a lot of money—more than I had, really.
When I gave him a deposit, doesn’t matter how much, he let me join his investigations if I sat quietly in his car and promised not to talk too much.
“This might be boring for you,” he said, but I told him nothing could enliven me more, heat flooding through my veins.
“Wait here,” he said after parking in front of the first house. “A lead,” he called it, but I thought it was a sad house, with windows so dirty nobody could see in. Nobody could see out. I raised up the volume of the oldies radio station to drown out my terrified cries. I saw as his hands bent into a fist and counted the three raps on the door. A turbaned woman answered the door. Even though I was inside the car, parked across the street, I scanned her face for details, clues. I saw her mouth the lonely word: no.
Over the course of that day, I watched him knock on all-different-colored doors, speak to men in suits, ones who wore too much gold jewelry. Nothing. You were a ghost.
“Sometimes people just disappear for good,” he said.
I had to control myself so that I didn’t slap the stupidity out of his head. Since he took all of my money, he can at least keep up his end of the bargain. A promise is a promise!
A week later he did keep his promise. It turned out you were living only thirty blocks away. Thirty! He left me a voicemail, real official-like, with your address and the name of the people who adopted you. The Tangones. I think they’re probably the world’s worst parents, otherwise you wouldn’t do sly things like hang around the rivers after school and wear such deep, dark lipstick. He said if I like that I could go with him—it is part of the package. I decided that I didn’t wish to share in the part where I could see you first with my own eyes.
As soon as I wrote down your address, I ran to the house, all superwoman energy, I guess, as I am not an athlete. I thought you might be there, painting on your bright-red lipstick. I went up to the front door, but my hand froze. I imagined what a proper knock might sound like, three or four raps.
I walked across the street to a park I saw while running to the house. I found only one picnic table free, on account of the bright, clear day. I sat at the picnic table so long, browning my shoulders, that I almost missed you stabbing at the lock with your key. Then, without hesitation, I knew it was you; I found you! The same green eyes. When you were born the doctor said you were just like a doll. I watched you until the morning and followed you to school and then the park. Now you know how that all came to be.
And now it is two weeks later, and I’m back here again, the same bench, but this time I’m not going away. After I squirt some hand sanitizer on my hands and face and rinse it off in the water fountain by the bench, I feel ready, at least physically. All around me people are zipping up their hoodies and popping out their umbrellas from their totes. I don’t care about the rain. Without the rain, no flowers. So fair is fair. I brush raindrops away from my eyes and I see you again. At first I don’t recognize you—the rain makes you look so tiny and small. I feel like I could arrange you under my wing like a momma duck, but I guess you don’t get bothered by the rain either. Maybe we are more alike than I thought? I hope. You only go inside for five minutes to change your clothes.
Don’t you ever stay inside? I want to scream. When do you ever sleep? I might get fired for skipping work on a Tuesday—the day the boxes are the biggest and require the most effort from our bodies.
Yesterday I bought you a cute notecard of a kitten’s nose being kissed by a tiger. I kind of related to that image because both of those cats are strangers. Just like us. Sadly, my hand is as shaky as my neighbor Bill when he runs out of his cigarettes. Not one word in the card makes sense. I am glad that I remembered yesterday to put my diary in my tote bag.
There are three pictures in my wallet that I want to give to you. The first one I am real cute, like you. My nails are painted pink and long. My face is so perfect, I look just like a Barbie, wearing a long, red dress. The second one is of me when I was pregnant with you. Each time I look at it, I am amazed: I look so young that it looks like I am pretending to be pregnant, maybe with a pillow placed under my dress. I was so happy being pregnant: everyone on my block made such a fuss about me when I was expecting. There was a song by Outcast called “Hey Ya.” Every time it came on the radio, I would dance real low and sing to you so you’d get acquainted with my voice. I could feel you kicking each time, and it felt like we were dance partners. The third photo I would like you to have is when you were born. You were all red and funny-looking with your mouth opened in a cry, but I thought you looked beautiful. In the photo I was smiling so large that you could see all my teeth.
If you want to be good at anything in your life, then you must practice. Even knocking. I will knock on the door of your apartment—I think four raps might be best. Three long. One short. A Morse code of sorts. I don’t want to sound like the police with too many knocks! Perhaps if you were home, which seems like you never are, you wouldn’t answer, wouldn’t trust my face pressed against the glass. My knuckles bang out a melody on the wood of the table until they look like I am a prize fighter.
I walk across the street to the Dollar Store and wait for fifteen minutes until the store opens, lighting cigarette after cigarette. Barely smoking any of them, instead hypnotized by the burning ends. When I step inside the lighting looks all wrong, too bright. My eyes snap shut for a while until I am asked if I needed anything.
“I need a photo album for my daughter,” I say to the girl picking her cuticles behind the counter. The way the word daughter made my lips feel, almost as if something had been loosened, my lips memorize the way it feels.
I leave the store with a red book that has a heart stamped on the front. Stupid, stupid, stupid! I think to myself. I realize that the likelihood of you having ever held a photo in your hand, gently by the corners to avoid leaving fingerprints, is unlikely. Instagram. Snapchat. I get it. At the last minute I rip out some of my diary pages and hope you can understand the rambling and forgive some of my typos as I smooth out the paper and place it in the book. If God is just, then you will have been spared from my torture of making the alphabet your friend.
When I arrive at your house, my hands sweat so much that I have no choice but to place the photo album next to the door. Will you answer the door? I arrange my face into a smile and rub my eyebrows down smooth. The song “We Will Rock You” by Queen plays in my head. Thump, thump. Clap. Thump, thump. Clap. And I realize then, as I am riding the beat, that I will knock on your door the same way. Not as a warrior. Not as a maid. But better: I will knock on the door as if I belong. As your mother.