The Bold World Read online

  Eventually, I made my way back to the apartment and waited for her to return. Hour after hour I watched for Ramona from my bedroom window. Night came, and the young moms and their babies in strollers, the joggers doing their after-work runs, and the school-age kids had all gone home, but there was still no sign of my sister.

  This became Ramona’s regular routine—jumping the wall, disappearing behind the hill and out into the night for hours, leaving me behind. Mama would pace the house, looking out her bedroom window every few minutes to see if Ramona had reappeared. Eventually she’d search the edges of the park and smoke shops nearby, trying to sniff out her daughter on the streets she may have passed along, asking if anyone had seen her child.

  After that, Mama would return home to start calling Ramona’s friends. “Gabby, have you seen Ramona? No, she hasn’t come home yet.” Short, tense pause—their answers were never quite satisfying. “Well, if you speak to her, please have her call. I’m worried.” Mama would go down the list of Ramona’s friends, one at a time, calling their houses and asking for any information they had. “When’s the last time you saw her?” “When you went home, where did she go?” Just as Mama reached her peak panic, Ramona would appear at the front door, eyes red, giggling in the way someone might do when they couldn’t care less what you think.

  Exasperated, Mama demanded answers. “Damn it, Ramona! You can’t just leave for hours unaccounted for—Where were you?”

  “With. My. Friends!” she’d bark back, then stomp to her room, slamming the door behind her.

  * * *

  —

  Where my sister wanted to disrupt, I wanted to please. This was especially true when it came to Mama. She understood my need to be anchored and never asked me to separate from the things that secured me. With her, my size was my biggest advantage. It allowed me to follow her around the house wherever she went, a happy little barnacle swept up in her current. For years, I would crawl into my mother’s bed at night and lie on her back. Burying my face in the back of her neck, I’d breathe in her scent, feeling myself get bigger with each inhale. Aligning my body with the shape of her curves, my heartbeat found the rhythm of hers, and the thump-thump of our bodies working together rocked me to sleep many nights. In those moments, I felt whole. In her calm, Mama set my tone.

  Unlike Daddy, she never barked, or spanked, or got mad and walked away. She was always and infinitely available. Whatever I wanted, she helped me get. What I lacked, she gave to me without question.

  I loved to watch her. Stretched out on top of the kitchen counter doing homework, I kept one eye trained on her as she seasoned chicken in a brown paper bag. Or, sitting cross-legged on the toilet in her bathroom, I’d study the way she leaned toward the mirror as she applied makeup at her vanity. Four slow, deft strokes and she was done—that was all she needed. There was always a dramatic red lip, an arched and defined brow, loosely blow-dried hair. My own mother was Sophia Loren in the flesh, working her magic in slow motion, and she was all mine.

  In the kitchen of our prewar apartment, she often liked to cook in just her bra and stockings. Stirring something in a bowl, she’d look at me and smile. During the summers, she’d walk over to the window at the end of the kitchen, stand on her tippy-toes, and reach one arm up high to turn on the air conditioner, her lean body stretched out like a ballerina. That little act—her moving to flick on the A/C—contained all the beauty I thought existed in the world.

  Observing Mama moving through our apartment, I was watching womanhood in action. She taught Ramona and me how to feel our beauty on our limbs, and discover how it sounded in our mouths. Too many times to count, my sister and I were instructed to stand in front of a full-length mirror in our underwear and study what we saw. I would trace the form and outline of my body—inch by inch, curve by nonexistent curve.

  I memorized my gymnastics-made muscular thighs, my Peter Pan ears, my upside-down-banana lips. On cue, Mama would then make us wrap our arms around ourselves and repeat: “I love myself. I love myself. I love myself!” until we dissolved into giggles. Though I wrestled with my less-than-ideal frame—my lips too broad, my arms too long—playing this game always felt like a reprieve.

  Mama at nineteen, a beautiful senior in college.

  Caring for our hair was also approached like some sacred ritual—every part and plait was suffused with my mother’s love. The more perfectly she parted my cornrows, the more I knew she cared. The more she redid my braids, the more active her love was. The more precisely she remembered my favorite styles, the more she understood me. It was that direct. In some families, hair was trouble, or pain, or ugliness. In my family, hair was love.

  Bathrooms and bedrooms have always been the places where our women have done the best talking—our best loving and sharing. Closing the doors to the men and to the rest of the world, we found our voices between hair strokes, stories, and thoughts while making each other feel beautiful.

  School pictures meant I could spend extra time with Mama the night before, while she braided my hair.

  And with Mama, it was all about feeling. She massaged our limbs at night to relax us into sleep. Sang us songs in the morning to make those first moments of being awake a little less disorienting. And she acted as Daddy’s benevolent interpreter—wrapping his often-harsh words in love and allowing them to sound, for a moment, as he himself had perhaps intended. “Baby, Daddy just wants you to be strong.” Mama would climb into the backseat of the car with Ramona and me during road trips to tell us stories about princesses with kinky hair and the dark-skinned princes who loved them, to make us understand there was no universe in which we didn’t belong.

  Though their methods were different, my parents both had the same aim: putting us at the center. But over time, their influence and good intentions seemed to work less and less on Ramona. My mother—who had grown up being deferential to her own mother, who had listened carefully and stayed in line—struggled to understand this wild child that had begun to emerge. This brooding daughter who greeted us each morning at the kitchen table by slumping into her chair with her arms folded tightly across her body, refusing to eat much of anything. And my father, who encouraged our freedom but demanded his control, started to feel that Ramona could not be contained.

  At the kitchen table, in her room, at the front door, I watched Ramona war with our parents, and watched our parents at a loss about what to do with her.

  Throughout middle school, Ramona’s spirit was fighting with everyone in the house so explosively that my parents decided it best that she go live with my grandma Gloria for a while. That’s when I first started to think that the South must have the power to fix things.

  During the year Ramona was gone, I started sleeping on my bedroom floor at night, wrapped tightly in my blankets. That was the year the monster invaded my dreams. I would find myself in my nightmare being chased by something so powerful that I had to conjure superhuman strength to stave off being consumed. Although it was faceless and voiceless, it was very real.

  The backdrop of my dreams was the urban maze of New York City, transformed into an obstacle course. With my extraordinary powers, I’d hurl, climb, and fling myself out of harm’s way, swimming across the choppy Hudson, climbing up and over the giant black cherry trees that lined Riverside Park, catapulting myself from the Empire State Building to the Twin Towers. I sprinted across the entire length of Manhattan, soaring from skyscraper to skyscraper. But no matter how far and fast I ran, I always felt the monster’s breath on my neck. I’d wake up exhausted, drenched in sweat—and sometimes urine—my body clenched like a fist.

  Each night, knowing the nightmare would surely return, I’d try my best to close myself around myself—hands between my knees and chin tucked to my chest—breathing in my own scent as a lullaby. Cocooning myself from the disorder all around.

  Ramona, I hoped, would return home happier. Perhaps we’
d even grow closer. But on the day she came back from Grandma Gloria’s, my sister carried the same anger she’d had with her when she’d left months earlier. She walked down the hallway to her room, quietly closing the door behind her, and crawled into her bed.

  A dry silence rose between us, and tension settled over our entire house like a thick fog.

  * * *

  —

  After Ramona came back from the South, I felt the rub between her and each of us intensify. Give Ramona a curfew and she would break it. Ground her and she would simply jump out our first-floor window. She did it dozens of times—on a school night if need be—because she had places she wanted to go and boys she needed to see, neither of which were sanctioned by Mama and Daddy.

  Daddy became more and more forceful, quicker each day to snap at us over anything—the wrong meal served by my mother at dinnertime, a spilled glass of juice in the TV room, or anything, really, that required a little patience and understanding. From my tiny corner, I witnessed the push and pull: Mama pulling for Ramona’s love. Ramona pushing back. Daddy taking turns in both directions, trying to gain control of his household, pushing back on all of us when our presence threatened to reverberate louder than his. And I existed somewhere in the middle, holding myself together while the family started to fray.

  “Mona, did you borrow my red sweater?” I tapped lightly on the outline of my sister’s shoulder one morning. She was buried from head to toe, deep under the covers—her mattress pushed, randomly, into a corner of the room. “Mona?” I tried again. She was a heavy sleeper, everyone in the family knew this; almost nothing could wake her, and you never wanted to be the one attempting the impossible. But it was already seven o’clock, and Mama was in the kitchen making breakfast. And I wanted my sweater back. “Seriously, Ramona. I gotta get dressed now.”

  “Get the hell out of here! I’m sleeping!” she yelled, snatching the covers back over her head. It was her typical response to anyone trying to wake her.

  On any other day, I would have left her alone and not made any more fuss. But for whatever reason, on this day, I was prepared to get back what was mine, by any means necessary. I sat on the edge of her bed, ready to wait it out. A few seconds passed, and then Ramona sprang out of bed like lightning, landing a hard, blunt punch to my shoulder—knocking me to the ground.

  “Get out!” she roared as she pulled back her fist, winding up for a second attack.

  “Ma-maaaa!” I screamed, running to my parents’ room for backup. I found Daddy standing by his dresser, putting on his cuff links in the mirror.

  “What are you running from, Jodie?” His question was rhetorical.

  “She won’t give me back my sweater. And then she hit me. And I need my—”

  Daddy put his cuff links down on his dresser and grabbed my shoulders, squaring them with his. “Go back in that room and deal with it.” He lowered his face to mine and looked directly into my tear-filled eyes.

  “Don’t let her bully you, Jodie. Put your hands up; defend yourself. You have to hit her harder, faster. Like this—” He jabbed with his right arm just past my ear. I tried to protest; I didn’t want to fight. But Daddy was always priming us for a battle—against the world, against each other, whatever the war might be.

  “Ma-maaaa!” I yelled for her again. She needed to step in and make this all right.

  Mama came running into the room then. She took one look at the two of us facing each other—Daddy in his boxer stance and me with tears in my eyes—and she exploded: “We can’t teach the girls to fight each other, John. This is just too much!”

  My mother had had enough—enough of Ramona sleeping through the days, acting out, talking back; enough of her overbearing husband, forcing his drill sergeant ways upon us; enough of me, I think, looking scared. She turned from us and made a beeline toward my sister’s room, Daddy and I trailing behind her.

  “Ramona, you need to wake up! Getuprightnow!” She said it as one word—fast and charged. Mama yanked back the covers, reaching down to force Ramona out of the bed. But the sudden move jump-started my sister into action—she sprang to her feet, daring Mama with her eyes to make a move like that again.

  Ramona’s room was small and shaped in a perfect square. We each took a position: Ramona and Mama facing each other, Daddy and I on either side of them.

  “You may not sleep through this day, or any day—not one more minute, Ramona. And you may not hit your sister.” Her words came shooting out like bullets, penetrating the entire room. I’d rarely heard Mama sound this way.

  “Yes, Jamelle. I will.” Mama, who was all patience to Daddy’s fire, all love to Ramona’s resistance, had reached her limit. It was Ramona’s disrespect—clear, calm, and intentional—that did it. Mama pulled back her hand and opened it wide, prepared to smack her own daughter across her mouth, for the first time in her life.

  But Ramona was faster. My sister smacked our mother across the face with such force that Mama’s tortoiseshell glasses flew off and sailed clear across the room, hitting the wall and dropping to the floor.

  After that, not one yell or curse or cry came—out of anyone. Only silence, and an acknowledgment of the shift. In that single smack, Ramona flipped the power in our home. The only movement thereafter was of Mama clutching her face, and of me scampering to the corner, frantically looking for her glasses on the floor.

  In the moments that followed, I don’t remember seeing Daddy, although he was there in that room. The world in front of my eyes dwindled down to just the three women: my mother, who had been defeated, Ramona, who had come out victorious, and me—invisible and scared. It was unclear from where I stood which of us held the better position: to be the ruler, or to be ruled.

  * * *

  —

  In phases of discord, people separate. Couples decide to go on breaks. Friends don’t speak for years. In families who live together, that separation can be more challenging—but even they can find their ways.

  In the time after Ramona and Mama’s showdown, we all retreated to our corners. Daddy went to play tennis. Ramona wandered around with her Dominican friends on the seedier streets along Amsterdam Avenue. And Mama escaped to a little duplex apartment in the West Village each week, where she and a hodgepodge group of hippie housewives sat in a circle and chanted in the dark for hours, practicing transcendental meditation.

  I rarely saw Mama and Daddy kiss anymore. Most of their time spent together consisted of just a few seconds in the morning passing each other in the kitchen, one quick pursed-lip kiss goodbye. No eye contact or warmth. They’d go about their separate days, and then at night sit silently at either end of the dinner table. Their tension became ours.

  For my part, I threw myself into routine. Three hours a day, six days a week, I trained across the state in gymnastics. I came home from practice after dark, took a bath, ate dinner, finished whatever homework I hadn’t completed in the car, then fell asleep—usually too exhausted to dream.

  Unlike the rest of my family, though, my salve was proximity. I needed to be close to them, as complex and as dangerous as they were, even if just physically. Staying close meant staying connected to my power source. So I did my best to try to avoid conflict, taking refuge in Mama, staying close to her. I remained small and good, safe and amenable—creating not one ripple or problem that might cause the family to finally, irrevocably, fall apart.

  Just thinking about being without them gave me anxiety. I started developing a series of bizarre tics. While doing homework, I’d start quickly cracking every joint in my body—snapping, cracking, popping, rolling, from neck to toes in a way that made me look like I was convulsing. Standing in line at the grocery store with Mama, I’d rub my thumbs over my other four fingers, tapping them once, then twice, in a pattern. These were little rituals I’d learned in gymnastics that many of my teammates and I would use before executing complicated tricks. On
the mat, they were for good luck. But I applied them to my everyday life to keep me calm and safe, and feeling balanced.

  When I wasn’t near my family, I carried them in my head. They took up more space in me than I owned for myself. Flooding my brain, filling the silence between my ears with sounds. Mama’s comfort, her perfection and her fragility. Daddy’s imposing presence—forcing his weight on me even when he wasn’t in the room. Ramona’s untamed spirit, her bravado—who she was that I wasn’t, what I wanted to be but couldn’t.

  I’d hear their voices turning over and over in my mind. I was always absorbing them, taking in everything they said to me, even things they didn’t know I was hearing—an argument, something my parents revealed in confidence to another adult, a plan Ramona was making to sneak out late at night after Mama and Daddy had fallen asleep. I was always recording, notating, rewinding, and playing them over again. On the outside, I was pulled together, but on the inside I was a ball of tightly clenched nerves—all rattling and shaking to get out.

  By the time I turned sixteen, I felt crowded. The power and presence I once craved from my family to make me feel complete started to suffocate me. I felt owned by my parents, by this idea of being good, owned by structure and order. Owned by the routine of home to school to gymnastics.

  I had spent the first fifteen years of my life not breaking a single rule. Being nice, staying small, simply absorbing. But by the time I was in my junior year of high school, I craved to be someone other than who I was—someone less in control.