“So now you’re going to start cursing at me?”
“ ‘Damn’ is not a curse word, Hannah. Could you please chill out so I can check and see if there are any seats? All of this back-and-forth might be a moot point.”
I attempted to move again but I remained stuck in place halfway to the window. I wondered if I could get to New York City with less than sixty dollars. His comment about it being cheaper to rent a car than to purchase two tickets had me concerned. Then he had mentioned something about all the seats possibly being taken. I wanted to beat them to the counter and purchase a ticket; I didn’t want them to take up the last spaces. New York was the kind of city that I needed to get lost in. From what I had seen on TV, with millions of degenerates and glamorous people mixed together on an infinitesimal island, I could undoubtedly drop off the radar. Not that anyone in particular would be searching for me. That was for sure. No one cared whether I was even breathing. Only my grandmother, and she was better off without me. I was a curse in her life, and truth be told, she was also a curse in mine. There was a generational curse in my family that needed to stop someplace, and that someplace would be with me. Bringing a child into the world was out of the question. There was no way that I would ever subject another innocent person to the insanity of our family. No damn way.
I would eat out of trash cans if I had to. Sleep in subway stations or on bus benches. I would do all of that until I inevitably starved to death, froze to death, or got up enough audacity to dive directly in front of a train one day. It did not even need to be that melodramatic. I would simply stride off the platform like I was taking the next step on a sidewalk and get it over with. Or maybe I would get a running start off the roof of a skyscraper. Maybe some lunatic would drag me into an alley, slash my throat from ear to ear, and save me the trouble. I would be a mention on the local evening news, might even be a featured scroll on the bottom of the screen on CNN, and would be in a small story on the police blotter and listed on the murder-victim list for the year—and that would be the end of it. “An unidentified black female was discovered in an alley in Manhattan with her throat slashed. She had a preexisting scar on her face, which leads officials to believe she had been disfigured for some time. If you have any information, please call the NYPD at blah, blah, blah, blah . . .”
Somehow I managed to walk to the counter. The couple was behind me, right on my tail. Shawn and Hannah. Hannah and Cheapskate Shawn.
“Can I help you?” the man with the salt-and-pepper beard asked from the other side of the bulletproof glass. I always wondered what they thought could prevent a true maniac from putting the tip of his gun through the transaction slot and pulling the trigger.
“Um, yes,” I muttered. “How much is a ticket to NYC on the three-fifteen bus?”
He started typing and suddenly I started shivering like I was in the middle of a snowstorm.
“That will be . . .” The man took one look at me and acted like he had seen a ghost. “Young lady, are you all right?”
“I’m . . . I’m . . .”
I felt someone touch me on my shoulder and then materialize next to me. It was the woman: Hannah. She was striking. She had skin the color of buttermilk, blond hair, blue eyes, and high cheekbones. She reminded me of a model who I had seen one time in a commercial for shampoo. Her hair was fluffed out and big, too.
“Are you okay, sweetie?” she asked, but I could not respond. I was shaking like a leaf and my vision was going in and out. The throbbing between my legs was indescribable. She looked at the man at the counter. “What’s wrong with her?”
He shrugged. “Beats me. She asked for a ticket to NYC, and when I looked up, she was looking all sick and crazy.”
“Hannah, maybe you shouldn’t touch her,” Shawn suggested.
I did not even turn around to see what he looked like. I couldn’t move.
“Fuck you, Shawn!” Hannah stated with aloofness. “This baby’s hurt.”
“All I’m saying is—”
Before Shawn could finish his statement, Hannah was gasping at the sight of blood gushing down my legs and onto the floor.
“Oh my Jesus!” Hannah exclaimed. “Call an ambulance!” she instructed the counter man. She looked into my eyes. “Baby, baby, we’re going to get you some help!”
“This is insane!” Shawn said. “We’re going to miss our bus. Now we won’t get back until Monday.”
I could not see Hannah, but I heard her curse Shawn the hell out. “Shawn, what part of fuck you did you not understand? I’m not leaving this baby here like this. Help me get her to a bench.”
“I’m not touching her,” Shawn said.
“And you’re not touching me, either, never, ever again, you bastard!”
Hannah tried her best to guide me to a bench across the lobby. My eyes were like slits and I could see the three young guys from outside rushing in, toward us, and could hear the man on the phone calling 911. Then everything faded to black.
11:12 a.m.
My eyes flickered at first and then I managed to keep them open for a few seconds. All I saw was a bright light and wondered if all the rumors were true about death. Was I seeing “the light”? Was God going to allow me to go to heaven even though I was tainted, scarred, and worthless? I shut my eyes and prayed for Him to take me instead of sending me to hell. I had lived there for fifteen years already and I desperately needed a break. As I got to the part about walking through the valley of death, I heard Hannah’s voice.
“You okay, baby girl?”
I opened my eyes and saw her getting up from the chair beside my hospital bed. Ah, an overhead light? Now I could make things out more clearly.
“Let me go get the nurse.” She started toward the door. “I’ll be right back.”
“Wait!” I exclaimed in a panic.
Hannah turned to look at me. “They need to check you out, ask you some questions.” She dropped her eyes to the floor. “They did a rape kit on you. It was kind of obvious; a lot of tearing.”
“I don’t want to answer any questions. I want to leave this place.”
“The hospital? They’re not going to let you out of here until you’ve improved. Not a chance.”
I stared at her and fought back tears. “I don’t want to be here, in Atlanta. That’s why I was at the bus station. I’m not answering any questions and I’m not pressing any charges.”
“So you were raped?”
I fell silent and then attempted to sit up, searching the room for my clothes. “Where are my clothes?”
“They were ruined, covered with blood. They disposed of them.” She walked back over to the bed. “Look, we’ve yet to even be formally introduced. I’m Hannah.”
“Yes, I know. I heard Shawn say your name.”
She grinned. “Did you hear me call him a cheapskate?”
I smiled. “Yes.”
“We’ve established that I’m Hannah—and you are?”
“Nobody.”
“Seriously, you didn’t have any ID on you. They gave me your money, though. I put it in the side pocket of my purse.”
“Thank you.” I lay back down. It was too painful to sit up. “Thanks for everything.”
“Can I go get the nurse now? I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
It felt strange to have someone care about my welfare. Until the night before, I thought that two of my so-called friends had my back. Instead, they had set me up to be brutalized. I couldn’t understand why they would do such a thing. I had never done anything to them.
“Before you go out there, can I ask you a favor?”
Hannah looked uncertain. “And what might that be?”
“If I let them check me out one time, will you help me sneak out of here?”
She frowned. “Are you crazy? I already gave them my name and information. I lied and said that I was your aunt . . . by marriage. I started to say that I was your mother but being that I’m white, not to mention my other issue, I knew they wouldn’t
buy it.”
I was curious. “What did you tell them my name was?”
What other issue?
She smirked. “Rose Cleveland. First name that popped into my head.”
“Rose is an old-fashioned name.”
“You don’t know who Rose Cleveland was?” She chuckled. “Apparently the person at the registration desk didn’t pick up on it, either.”
“Pick up on what?”
Hannah sighed. “Rose Cleveland was the first lady of the United States for two years during her brother, Grover’s, first term.”
“Oh.” I felt like such a dummy. Studying was not my strong point, due to all the stress, and I definitely was lacking in my knowledge of history. “Okay.”
“Grover Cleveland was the twenty-second president. He served two terms and got married halfway through the first one. So Rose resigned and started a lesbian relationship with a chick named Evangeline who was married to a bishop.”
Even though I felt horrible, I had to giggle a little. “Wow, they were getting it on back then.”
“And then some. Freakiness was not invented in the twenty-first century.” She paused and picked at one of her manicured nails, dislodging something from it. “After he died, Rose and Evangeline moved to Italy to shack up and she ended up dying during the 1918 flu pandemic.”
I wanted to ask what a “pandemic” was but opted out of that. “This is fascinating and all, but can we get back to you sneaking me out of here? If you let me go with you, you can teach me anything you want.”
Watching a lot of crime shows on TV kicked in. I was a Miami Vice addict. Pain or not, I started getting up out of the bed.
“What are you doing?” Hannah’s reflexes had her assisting me instead of letting me struggle. “Let me go get the nurse.”
“No, that’s not happening. I just realized that once they realize that I’m awake, the next thing will be a sex crimes detective in my face asking a bunch of questions.”
“They called the police when we arrived in the ambulance, but I told them the truth. That I didn’t know anything. I said that we were here on vacation and that you were a mess when you met me at the Greyhound station to head back.”
“You’re good at mixing fiction with fact.” I managed to get up but I only had on the hospital gown. I noticed Hannah’s coat strewn across a chair in the corner and confiscated it. “We have to get out of here.”
Hannah helped me put the coat on, again so I wouldn’t hurt myself, but I could tell she was conflicted about it. “Where are we going?”
“Auntie Hannah, where we both were going in the first place. New York. I promise you that once we get there, I’ll get out of your way. I won’t even sit beside you on the bus if you don’t want me to, but please help me.” I fought back tears again. “I’m begging you. I’ll do anything you want.”
“How old are you?” she inquired. “And don’t lie.”
I glanced down at the floor and back up into her blues eyes. “I’m fifteen, but I’ve lived three of your lifetimes.”
She stared at me. “Somehow, I believe you. But what about your parents? You’re a minor. I can’t just—”
“My mother’s locked up in an asylum—she’s fucking nuts—and my father is dead.”
She appeared stunned. “And you’re sure you don’t want to tell the police what happened?”
“No, I can’t deal with that right now. Please. I’ll do anything.”
“Stop saying you’ll do anything. Some of these predators out here will only take you up on that. I speak from vast experience.”
I walked over to the door and peeked out. The nurses’ station was on the other end of the hallway. Good! “The coast is clear. Let’s go.”
Hannah seemed frozen in place at first but then jumped into action. “This is not a good idea, but I guess that I’m in. Goodness knows that I’ve done worse.” She paused. “I hope you’re being honest about your parents. I don’t want to end up facing a kidnapping charge. That would be a new one for me.”
“You’re not kidnapping me. And they’re not going to come to New York looking for me anyway. They don’t even know my name.”
“Neither do I.”
I hated telling people my name because of the meaning behind it. I blurted it out. “Caprice. My name is Caprice.”
Hannah grinned. “What a pretty name. Much better than Rose.”
I didn’t respond. My name was all part of the generational curse.
We snuck out the room, out the exit door at the stairwell, and then caught a cab to the bus station. New York City, I was on my way.
Thursday, November 26, 1987
Thanksgiving Day
The Bronx
“Every day, I want you to look into this mirror and say to yourself, ‘I’m that chick.’ ”
I frowned as Hannah stood behind me, holding my shoulders as we made eye contact in the floor-length mirror on the back of her bedroom door.
“But how can I say that when I have this hideous scar on my face?” I asked, not convinced at all by the constant empowerment speeches she had been laying on me since we had arrived in New York a month earlier.
“Baby girl, fuck anyone who thinks they’re better than you.” She turned me around to face her. “Do you know what I see when I look at you?”
I shrugged. “An unattractive, anorexic-looking teenager?”
Hannah guided me to her whitewashed, wooden, king-size bed and we sat down. “Listen, Caprice, we’ve talked about your life and all the things people did to you, but the past is the past.” She ran her fingers through my hair. “I mean, look at me. All the shit I’ve endured within thirty-six years. And all I have to show for it is this dump that we live in and a hundred and eighty-two dollars hidden under this old-ass mattress.”
“I like this place. It has character.”
That it did. Not that I had been anywhere outside Atlanta in my life, and I rarely was in anyone else’s residence, but Hannah’s one-bedroom apartment in The Bronx had the most interesting decor that I had ever seen. She was a collector of novelty items and was seemingly addicted to loud, vibrant colors. She had her lamps covered with red, green, and purple lace throughout the cramped place and had these huge, flowery floor pillows in various colors in the living room, for guests. She often had company and she was expecting a few friends over for Thanksgiving that day.
We had spent the morning stuffing a turkey, snapping the ends off string beans, and attempting to make an apple pie from scratch. It was currently in the oven for another half hour or so and we were keeping our fingers crossed on that one. Neither one of us counted cooking as one of our best traits; we had that in common.
Hannah had a closet overflowing with fancy outfits, but most were stolen. Hannah was a “booster,” a fancy term for an organized shoplifter. She left several times a week and came back with items crammed into her big purses and hidden all over her body as well. She had a tool that she used to remove alarm sensors off items and told me that she had been doing it for over a decade. She would keep what she liked and then sell the rest to other people in the neighborhood.
The Bronx was an interesting place, but it was also scary——especially at night. They were still rebuilding the area after all the fires from times past. Hannah was born and raised there, a fourth-generation member of a Jewish family that had migrated to New York in the 1930s, when the majority of The Bronx was composed of Jews. She said that after rent control was established, landlords stopped taking care of their properties because there was no incentive for them to do otherwise. What resulted was a lot of poor minorities moving in, gangs being created, landlords burning down their own buildings to get the insurance money. Rumor had it that there were so many fires daily that the trucks rarely got a chance to return to the fire stations. Rumor also had it that a lot of tenants were committing the arsons because they could get some money from HUD, no questions asked, for their belongings.
Even though the area was like something out of a
World War II movie in some spots, I still enjoyed a lot of the people. The Bronx, specifically 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, an apartment building in Morris Heights, was credited with being the birthplace of hip-hop. DJ Kool Herc referred to the building as “the Bethlehem of hip-hop culture.” All throughout the project building where we lived, you could hear “Paid in Full” by Eric B. and Rakim, “The Bridge Is Over” by BDP from their Criminal Minded album, and “Rock the House” by DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince. I had always loved music, but listening to it all day and night blasting out of windows and in the courtyard gave me a new appreciation of it.
When Hannah’s friends came over, we used to have dance competitions and she would dress me older and sneak me into some of the clubs she frequented. No one really cared about my being underage when we were together. She was so popular and cool. The blond, confident, transgender male-to-female booster with the hot clothing items and shoes on deck that everyone craved but couldn’t afford to get from a store.
As it turned out, Hannah’s “other issue” in the hospital that day was that everyone was clued in to the fact that she had been born a man except for naïve, sedated, and too-traumatized-to-realize-it me. That was why she had told them that she was my aunt and not my mother, even though the race was another dilemma. She had been completely transparent with me on the bus ride to NYC. I was fascinated with the entire story.
Hannah had been born Amram, after the father of Moses, the leader of the Jewish people in the generation preceding the exodus from Egypt. She knew early on that she did not identify with her assigned sex. Inside, she was a girl, and therefore loved little girl things. Her father, Chanan, was wrought with guilt that he had done something wrong, and up until his death, in a car accident when Hannah was twelve, he could never accept the fact that she wanted to wear dresses and heels and play with makeup.
Upon Chanan’s death, her mother, Nava, allowed Hannah to do as she wished. The rest of their extended family shamed and ridiculed her until she left home at eighteen to make it on her own. Nava still lived in The Bronx, but they did not speak. I asked Hannah often why she was shunning her mother when she had been supportive of her desires. Hannah would express that she didn’t want to bring her mother any more pain by being around and allowing other family members to badger her with nasty comments. She hoped that being out of their sight would also mean being out of their minds. I could relate to that, because I was hoping the same for my own grandmother. I had burdened her enough, and my mother’s mental instability had destroyed any chance of a normal existence.