Whenever Ma and Daddy’s fighting became too bitter, Lisa and I locked ourselves in our own rooms at opposite ends of the apartment, her with her music, and me with my books. I sat at my desk, where I could read for hours. I read very slowly through Daddy’s true crime books, his biographies and his books on random trivia. Eventually, I began reading fast enough to get through one of his books in a little over a week. And though my attendance at school remained spotty, this made the year-end exams passable. Even if I hardly showed up for class, I could make sense of most literary material put in front of me. After consistently earning high grades on my exams, I was always promoted to the next grade, whether or not I really learned anything in school.
Still, it wasn’t long before I looked for an outlet outside of school, outside of reading and our apartment. Right after the first grade, I’d begun making daily rounds throughout the neighborhood in search of something to take my mind off my family. In July 1987, this search had led me to Rick and Danny. Brothers born two years apart, they were mistaken for twins everywhere we went. Both had the same caramel skin, toothy smiles, and identical close-cropped haircuts. I was one year younger than Rick and one year older than Danny, a fact that made me feel I could have been their sister, aside from their Puerto Rican heritage.
We first met on a morning when Rick and Danny were playing on a mattress in the trash on University Avenue. The moment I saw them there, I thought that they were different-looking from the kids at school—dirty, almost wild, like myself—which made it easy to reach out to them.
“Can I get on your trampoline?” I asked Rick as he and his brother bounced up and down in front of me. “Yo, be my guest,” he answered, moving aside, smiling. The three of us spent over an hour that day playing together and talking. We were in awe of our similarities. Danny had had the same kindergarten teacher I had at P.S. 261. Kraft macaroni and cheese was their favorite snack, too. Rick also liked hide-and-seek better than freeze tag, and we had the same birthday, even if he was one year older. A few hours later that same day, I found myself in Rick and Danny’s squeaky-clean, three-bedroom apartment surrounded by their family, which consisted of their older brother John, little brother Sean, their stepfather, and their mother, whose name was also Liz. She was a kind woman who smelled of oregano and smiled warmly at me as she scooped generous servings of rice and beans onto my dinner plate. Afterward, in the boys’ room, Rick, Danny, and I competed fiercely in video games late into the night. Someone had draped a blanket over me on the bottom bunk, where I fell asleep with my sneakers still on.
In the three years since, I’d dug my own half footing into Rick and Danny’s crowded family. Through countless sleepovers and Spanish food dinners at their place, family trips headed by Liz to theme parks and to the Bronx Zoo, I’d forged my way into numerous appearances in family photo albums and home videos. It was a quiet pleasure I took, to think that any stranger or new friend of the Hernandezes who might be presented with family memorabilia could see me there, in the pages of their albums, posing naturally beside the boys at communions, or with my arm slung around their grandmother at casual family outings, Rick, Danny, John, and Sean there with me, aging together as the pages progressed. My favorite images were of Rick’s and my mutual birthday parties. Liz always remembered to have the bakery write both our names in scripted frosting along the top of the pineapple Valencia cakes. Dozens of pictures captured the two of us blowing out double the amount of candles, Liz clapping wildly over us, her hands frozen in a streak of motion, vivid and persistent as hummingbirds’ wings.
I cherished Rick and Danny’s family, yet in the time I’d known them, I had never mentioned my own family or given any real details about my home. It’s not that Rick, Danny, or Liz never asked, so much as I was good at guarding my secrets, either immediately changing the subject or touching up aspects of myself that might tip them off. I used rubber bands to make sloppy ponytails from the golf-ball-size knots dangling in my hair. For the embarrassing dirt spots along my neck, the moment I entered their apartment I made sure to use the bathroom, where I scrubbed my neck over the sink until the dirt rolled off in little threads and my skin turned bright pink from the harsh rubbing. And to cover the rank odor that rose from my rotten sneakers when I removed them for sleepovers, I always tried to stick my shoes in some far-off corner in the apartment, in the boys’ closet or behind the garbage can in the kitchen, where Liz might mistake the smell for trash. If I could hide the things that made me feel different, I could relax more and feel like I really belonged. Equally, when I returned to my own apartment, I withheld things from my family, too.
Instinctively, I knew that I should not allow Ma and Daddy a full view of my experiences with Rick and Danny, and especially with Liz. When Ma was plastered to the couch, flies buzzing over her head, cigarette butts floating in her nearby bottle of beer, it just didn’t seem right to tell her that I’d spent my day at a picnic or at the pool, playing in the sun, eating home-cooked meals with Rick and Danny’s family. The same went for Daddy and Lisa. Any joy I managed outside of our home felt, to me, like a form of betrayal. I found that I was always hiding; there wasn’t room for my full self in either my own apartment, or in Rick and Danny’s place, or in school, or anywhere I went. It all had to be kept separate. If I wanted to squeak by unnoticed in class, or be a “good” daughter at home, or a “normal” person to my friends, I needed to tuck away parts of myself.
More and more, the summer I was nine years old, I itched to be outside, to be a part of what went on in the world. The Bronx streets surrounding my building were magnetized, with their moving crowds and winding back alleys, littered from ground to sky with outdoor clotheslines flapping vivid purples, greens, and golds, like new flags. I yearned for movement, for an outlet of some sort, and my friendship with Rick and Danny—when we were not in the company of their parents—fast became a channel for these restless feelings.
The three of us roamed the Bronx, wandering until our feet ached, walking just to see how far we could walk, down the Grand Concourse, along Jerome Avenue, beneath the number 4 train tracks until they curved underground, miles away from University Avenue, near Yankee Stadium. There, the Bronx met upper Manhattan and the street signs read unfamiliar names; the red- or tan-bricked buildings became ragged auto body shops fed by traffic streaming in from the nearby highways. Then we’d turn back and take an entirely different route home, while the sun set on the Bronx and the streets took on a dangerous quality, boom boxes crackling in darkened side streets, brooding strangers clustered under street lamps. Often our play turned to mischief. Together we became troublemakers, street kids, what older people called derelicts. As time passed, our favorite kind of thing to do together became anything outrageous, anything dangerous, and especially anything we were not supposed to be doing.
There was the time that we accidentally burned down the storage shed at the old-age home. It started at Rick and Danny’s apartment, where we’d watched a movie about cave explorers. While the men climbed and maneuvered their way through the dangerous enclosures, Liz served us Kool-Aid with ham-and-cheese sandwiches for lunch. “Here we are,” she said, “for the three musketeers,” something she always called us. Later that day in Aqueduct Park, I had an idea to make exploration tools of our own with a thick tree branch and bundles of paper bags, rubber-banded to the top. I used Rick’s lighter to ignite the “torch.” Our task, I informed the boys, was to “investigate” the tool shed outside the local nursing home, which was dark and mysterious enough to qualify us as real-deal explorers.
While climbing through a hole in back of the shed and carrying our torch, we inadvertently set fire to the shed within seconds, causing the alarm in the main building to go off. I was the first to back away, while Danny stood awe-struck before the bright, spreading ball of flames, half believing his eyes.
“Yo man, it’s on fire!”
I grabbed their shirts, tugging them hard.
“Run!” I shouted, “Now!”
> We ran at top speed in silence until we reached a nearby van, large enough to conceal the three of us behind it, where we rested our palms on our knees and gasped for air. From there we watched, petrified, while firemen raced to hose off the tool shed, with a couple dozen elderly people crowding the sidewalk in their robes, stunned out of their bingo session, Rick guessed.
We explored the area beneath the 207th Street Bridge, and walked beside the Metro-North Railroad, where we could place stones along the train tracks so that they would go flying on impact. We ran clear across the Cross Bronx Expressway for the thrill of dodging speeding cars. I navigated our neighborhood rounds, sometimes directing us into supermarkets to stuff our pockets full of candy bars, making sure we exited at separate times to be discreet; I could devour three whole bars of chocolate within five blocks of leaving the store. We threw fist-size rocks clear through warehouse windows, savoring each loud burst followed by the acoustic clank of the falling shards. Laughter bonded us in these moments; courageous pranks were the highlight of our outings.
On a day early in July 1990, we spent hours dipping in and out of apartment buildings along Grand Avenue just to remove every last doormat from every last doorstep and dump each one down the elevator shaft, pausing to listen to their floppy descent. We kept the laughter to a minimum and made it to the ground floor undetected.
Standing in the lobby, eager for another thrill, Danny began popping open someone’s mailbox with a screwdriver that he kept in his back pocket. My eyes caught a metal curtain rod leaning on the wall. I picked it up and passed it to Rick.
“Test this out,” I said. He stared at it and then looked to me for clarification. I motioned to a mysterious, mousetrap-size compartment on the inside frame of the open elevator door.
“Yeah, try that,” Danny said, fanning envelopes high in the air.
Without hesitation, Rick hooked the end of the thin rod into the box. Instantly, a bright spark flashed and crackled at the point of contact. Rick stumbled backward in a way that appeared totally involuntary. He looked down at his hand and spread his fingers, which were dusted black. Danny laughed first, and then we all did, hard and hysterically. Our voices boomed up the stairs and echoed back down at us. I could smell the faint odor of smoke. Rick shrugged his shoulders.
“At least I did it,” he said, his eyes still wide with shock. There was a pause.
“Yeah, you did,” Danny said, laughing.
Unlike the guys, I had no curfew and I coaxed them to stay out too late, disregarding their mother’s rules. It’s not that I wanted them to get in trouble, so much as I didn’t want them to leave. Sometimes we would stay out until the dark sky grew light again—what we in the Bronx called “breaking night.”
On the evenings when the guys eventually did go home, I was left with nothing to do. Walking back as slowly as possible, I replayed images of our day together. Entering our building, and then 2B, I mapped out plans for the next day. Maybe we would sneak into the movie theater and movie-hop all day, or go to the Bronx Zoo on Wednesday, free admission day.
Compared to the dry summer air outside, our apartment was thick with a humid odor primarily coming from our bathroom; the tub was still clogged and more pungent than ever. Daddy even nicknamed the black substance inside “the Blob.” The house was completely dark, except for the TV, which was barely audible. I knew Lisa was in her room because I heard Debbie Gibson music coming from her cassette player, turned low. Walking to the back of the apartment, I followed the sound of Ma sniffling in the pitch-black bedroom, where all I could make out in the darkness was the orange tip of her cigarette. Her sad records were on again, something she called Cry of the Humpback Whales, which meant she’d already gone through Judy Collins.
“Hey, Ma,” I spoke to her cigarette light. There was a pause, and then I heard her draw in a deep breath, followed by the swish of her beer bottle.
“Hi, Elizabeth.” The screeching of the whales peaked, drowning out the end of her greeting. She used my full name only when she was slipping back into a schizophrenic episode, so hearing it made me nervous.
“Ma, what’s wrong?” I took just two steps into the room, feeling around for the mattress. I sat on the very corner of it, as close to the door as possible. As Ma spoke, I circled my fingers along one of the exposed mattress springs.
“Oh,” she said, half laughing. “I just . . . I don’t know, Elizabeth. I’m lonely.” The tip of her cigarette glowed brighter.
“Where’s Daddy?”
“Who knows,” she replied flatly.
“Did you guys have another fight?” Still charged up from being outside, I swung my feet back and forth.
“Your father is not a caring man. Did you know that, Elizabeth? But I guess I’ll tell you more about that one day, when you’re older,” she said. The tip became a streak of light as she waved her hands in the dark for emphasis.
“I want to know about Daddy now,” I said.
“No, you’d just defend your daddy . . . and you’d think I’m lonely. Well, I just need to be loved . . . you know, people need to be loved,” she snapped, raising her voice and taking another sip from the bottle. The record player continued to spin, filling the room with sounds of a deep, moving ocean, pierced by screeches from enormous, invisible whales.
My heart beat faster. I didn’t like it when she got this way, reclusive with a streak of meanness. All the signs of an oncoming episode were there, the same as in all her previous breakdowns. The last time she’d been completely delusional; she came across the electric bill and mistook it for her SSI check, and herself for Con Edison, the name of the electric company. I made the mistake of addressing her as Ma then. “I’m not your mother, I’m Edison, you little bitch,” she’d said. “And you are not getting any of my money. So back off!” This, while her real check sat uncashed, hopelessly lodged in her pants pocket while the fridge remained empty for weeks. A couple nights later when our stomachs finally ached from hunger, and it became too awkward to knock on 1A and ask for leftovers again, Lisa and I split a tube of toothpaste and a cherry-flavored ChapStick when we got hungry.
Sitting there, I identified her current phase in the cycle. This was the part where she was almost finished speaking to, or even recognizing, us. Soon, I thought, she would revert to near-silence, talking only to herself or to the people she believed to be there with her. We’d have to wait until she was far enough gone before she could be legally taken against her will. Then, Lisa and I would clean the house as best we could, taking down the garbage in big bags, spraying the rooms with air freshener and making sure to shut the bathroom door, tight. Daddy would call the ambulance and the police, and she’d be on her way out again. Based on her behavior now, I guessed she had less than a month.
“Well, I love you very much,” I told her, using my most caring voice.
“No, Elizabeth, I need a man to love me. Okay? Is that okay with everyone? I just need a man’s love.” She began sobbing. “I need a man’s love,” she repeated over and over.
“Daddy loves you,” I said. In the darkness there was no response. “He does love you,” I whispered, more to myself than to Ma.
One Thursday afternoon, when I was tying my sneakers on my way out, there was a sharp knock at the door. Immediately falling into the mode I devised for would-be social workers, I cautiously approached the door, tiptoeing, ready to peer out the peephole. To my horror, Ma—by this time not in her right mind, dressed only in an obviously filthy, extra-long T-shirt—had gotten there first and was already unsnapping locks. Given the extent of the mess spread everywhere—rotten garbage, old clothing, a thousand cigarette burns and butts on the matted carpet—I panicked. The door creaked open and my body went limp when I saw who Ma had let in—a twenty-something-year-old white man in a starched suit, undoubtedly a social worker obligated to report our unfit living conditions.
Unable to fix the larger mess, I ran to clear a kitchen chair for him and was wiping the surface down with a towel so he could at
least sit somewhere. Just then, Lisa emerged from her room and shocked me, greeting him by name.
“Matt, right?” she asked casually. Had Lisa called Child Welfare on us?
“You’re Lisa?” he asked, in a voice that sounded surprised.
“Yeah,” she told him. “We can go sit in the living room, the coffee table should be good.”
Baffled, I ran to throw on a long-sleeved shirt so I’d appear a little heavier, a tactic I picked up after one social worker had commented on my low weight and threatened to remove us if I didn’t show improvement. Lisa sat on the couch, on top of Ma’s jeans, tucking her long hair behind her ears. Ma joined her. I sat near the social worker, in a kitchen chair, where I felt I might best supervise the situation. The front door slammed, Daddy returning from the store. My stomach tightened into a knot.
He came whistling into the living room and stopped in his tracks, seeing the stranger who was now searching for a clean spot to set down his briefcase. I prayed he wouldn’t notice the roach crawling near his shoe. “Oh, hi,” Daddy said, his mood noticeably dropping, his tone sharp and deliberately unfriendly.
“Hello, sir, my name is Matt,” the man answered, reaching for Daddy’s hand. His manner was far too polite, nonauthoritative, I thought; something seemed off. By the look on Daddy’s face as they shook hands, I could tell that he noticed, too. I finished moving some plates over to clear room, but the man had already placed the leather case on his lap instead.
Just then, my heart sank into my stomach as I caught a glimpse of Ma, obliviously easing her legs wide open for comfort. Daddy flashed me a warning glance and pulled up a chair opposite me, filling the last remaining space around the coffee table. I realized that it was the first time in a long while that we’d all sat down together. The room was silent. We waited, staring at Matt.