Mohammed, my cab driver, pulled over. I shifted in the back seat, my breath wavering between politeness and terror. The mace my father had given me was buried in a suitcase in the trunk. He’d given me every reason not to do this. Not to abandon his protection. There were videos he’d sent on how to release my wrists from zip ties, what semaphore meant I was being kidnapped, how to carry my keys like brass knuckles. There were no videos, however, on how to trust my own intuition.
I’ve written down my number, the driver said shyly and asked me out on a date. I had been in New York City for less than two hours. I’d been awake for 24. On the West Coast, the compulsion to evangelize to a stranger was usually met with friendly indifference. Here, it was as good as a strip tease. Terracotta mountain dirt. Pine sap. Quiet. Home, and naïveté, clung to my clothes like a scent. I had escaped, yet I was sick for it. And where there was bravery, punishment was never far behind.
The streets of Washington Heights looked blurry in the heat. The air was still. Not even the heaps of trash moved.
This was not the New York of His Girl Friday. It blew smoke in my face. It spit on my shoes. It jeered at my romanticism.
Flushed, I dashed out of the cab and lugged my suitcases, each the size of a twin mattress, the remaining distance. Adrenaline got me to her stoop.
She was still asleep. When she finally let me in, she looked as though she’d forgotten I’d be there. I wanted to kiss her. I couldn’t.
This was ten years ago.
Ten years ago, on July third, I moved to a city I’d never been to. My parents, my pastors, even my own self-predation tried to dissuade me. They told me I’d be swallowed alive. Torn to shreds. One pastor said this was my Vanity Fair: a place where all the lusts of the flesh were massed together for easy access to the wicked. Even though I’d been accepted to Columbia for a masters program, I was told it was a superfluous pursuit for a woman and a colossal waste of money. Concerned Christians seemed to materialize everywhere I turned, hovering over the scent of my queerness, my discontent, my aching, like carrion beetles. I had an undergraduate degree that felt as if it had vaporized when I’d returned to the deathly silence of my childhood home. I was treated as if I'd never left. My body was reassimilated by the backwoods church we attended where my mother signed me up to teach Sunday school and clean the men’s urinals.
I drove a small, used car where I used an auxiliary cord and tape cassette to play Sylvia Plath and Murakami to remind myself of the world outside of this one. I felt defeated on all fronts.
Worse still, I was in love with the friend who had invited me to room with her in New York. The center could not hold. I was pulled to the point of breaking.
When Columbia offered me a sizable grant, I convinced my dad I could foot the rest of the money and would find a job to pay my way through an already accelerated course in Early Childhood Education. This too, I had chosen, because it was the closest thing to motherhood. The closest thing to an argument for leaving. Of course, not even I knew I was escaping. It was as subconscious as metabolism. When I missed my flight (a frayed-nerves misreading of the departure time as 12PM instead of AM) my mother tried to tell me it was god’s will speaking. Undaunted, I booked another.
At the Reno airport, by a stuffed mountain lion, I was told my suitcase was 20 pounds too heavy. I unzipped it. I kept my King James Bible, and handed my mother, who was liquifying in tears, my Spode tea set, two sweaters, and the candle holder she’d gifted me. As I left, I turned to see her, small as a child, turning her head away into my father’s shoulder. And then I was alone.
On the flight, I felt the strings between me and the only place I knew grow taut, threaten to pull out my still-beating heart, then snap as painfully as tendons. By the time we landed, I was emptied of all the anticipation that had kept me buoyant in front of my despondent parents. I vomited in the LaGuardia bathroom.
K had assured me if I shared her room with her, I would be spending no more than $450 a month on rent. This, and the prospect of sleeping beside her, was exhilarating. I have to tell you something, she said, eating peanut butter out of the jar with her index finger as I sat on the edge of her unmade bed, trying to believe that my body was really 3000 miles from its origins. That there was no turning back.
Sam wants me to move in with him. We’re looking at a place tomorrow. I’ll make it up to you, I promise.
She’d already found me a roommate. She promised me it would be even better this way. Do you want to, like, see the Empire State Building? she asked, pulling on a bra.
Sweet Jesus, I thought, they were right.
(To be continued next week!)