My little sister’s chalk-drawing on the sidewalk, runs inside crying because Marjie from up the street prayed Jesus into her heart, “Get him out?” Mom manages a Jesus-ectomy, later says Marjie asked my brother why he killed Jesus.
“Ignorant,” she says, shaking her head, “Never heard of Pontius Pilate, no idea Jesus was Jewish,” glad they’re not burning crosses or aiming guns.
No Asians in my high school, one African American boy cheered on the football field who dates a Jamaican girl from the next town. My classmate Sandra’s dad is Jewish, but her mom’s Catholic, so they have some sort of compromise tree. Locals are mostly Protestant, afloat in a bigoted bubble as if theirs is the only true path.
Dining at Spring Moon we get to know the Moys, and I babysit their girls. Ruth gives me a cheongsam, green silk, which I wear to a party, friends squinting as if I’ve turned into multiple kinds of ‘other.’
One evening four year old Denise is poking her rice, two year old Debbie’s too sleepy to eat. I hear buzzing, notice the liter bottle of Coke on the fridge jiggling, then it explodes spraying soda and bits of glass. I carry screaming kids from the room, glad no one’s hurt, call Ruth,“We’re okay, but the kitchen’s a mess.”
“Read stories, put them to bed. I’ll clean up later.”
George drives me to Riverview, as I’ve got a license but no car, over-explaining what I’ve already figured out, “Refrigerator vibration shook the bottle, carbon dioxide bubbles blew it up like a volcano in chemistry class.” He’s a freshman at Harvard, planning to be a doctor like his father who died of a heart attack when he was nine. My pharmacist dad studies George’s thick glasses, his lanky frame, watches him sneeze into his handkerchief, later says, “He’s not a good specimen,” as if rejecting a dubious lab sample.
I’m reading about the Holocaust, concentration camp photos, skeletal survivors, Auschwitz. Mom says, “Auntie lived in Warsaw with cousins, but letters stopped coming, meaning Nazis murdered them.
I have college acceptances, but money’s tight so choose the piano scholarship at Boston Conservatory. The front desk provides keys to practice rooms, usually a cranky spinet in an airless basement cubicle, walls so thin there’s no way to avoid hearing violins sawing away, voices crawling up and down scales. By November playing piano five hours a day feels like classical music prison, my wrists stiff and aching. My friend Dee says ‘hang in there,’ but the doctor labels it ‘tendonitis, overuse syndrome,’ and orders rest. My teacher, Anton Moeldner, student of Paderewski, encourages me, but the pain’s worse. I love piano, hate disappointing him and giving up my scholarship, but have to accept that whatever I’m supposed to be doing, this isn’t it.
“Sometime things happen we can’t understand,” Mom says, as she’s loved hearing me play since I was six.
I meet a friend for coffee, fine until he starts discussing Freud. No idea who that is, and too embarrassed to admit ignorance, I say, “Getting late,” and leave. At the conservatory I studied classical piano, ballet, Italian, English composition taught by a charming actor, music history and theory, no composers named Freud. That spring I work at a department store wearing the required ugly turquoise blouse, only excitement a robbery in ‘fine jewelry,’ security guards knocking over displays, alarms blaring, police blowing whistles.
September, lucky to receive a full scholarship at Simmons, I start reading George Eliot, Gertrude Stein, Alfred North Whitehead, Jane Austen, T. S. Eliot, Dostoevsky, Freud and all the rest. Can’t afford a dorm, so take the bus until invited to live with my friend Heather and her mom in Cambridge.
In high school George’s big hands poked under my sweater, but now the guideline’s ‘don’t get pregnant.’ Virginity lasts until Sam, tall, brown-eyed Harvard Law, eager to elope. Why do I agree, repeat words that mean nothing in front of a justice of the peace, move to DC with him after graduation?
It’s about being horribly young, afraid no one more exciting will ask, soon sorry because Sam’s emotionally blank, bossy and boring, the sex dismal. I don’t love him, he doesn’t love me. One night he admits he was in love with a Harvard law student, black, from South Africa, but his parents threatened to cut him off financially unless he ended it, so he did, then finds me, a white, parent-acceptable female. “Still in love with her?” No answer, says it’s my problem if I feel used.
I try a psychotherapist, an owlish type with round glasses and argyle socks who jots notes on green-lined paper, but says nothing, even when I announce I’m leaving Sam and DC, just his usual,’See you next time.’ Did he hear anything? Hell, no.
I’ve saved money for a plane ticket, grateful to crash on my friend Heather’s couch in Cambridge, depart without telling Sam, no goodbyes, as I’ve given up on him, glad he’s busy at his Securities and Exchange Commission office. Later he blames my ‘emotional issues,’ easier than looking in the mirror.
Divorced by twenty-two, I’m angry at myself for legalizing this stupid episode. Why didn’t I see through the situation sooner? I watch other friends marry, figure they made better decisions, seem happy with their cute babies, until they confide about counseling sessions and break ups. My best friend Heather gets divorced and moves to Australia with her six year old. My brother Carl stays married, and my friend Jane, but my sister calls a lawyer when her husband declares himself ‘out’ and joins a gay chorus. It’s a relief that it wasn’t just me who didn’t know what in hell I was doing.
I find an attic flat in a Cambridge three-decker, lucky to have a grad school fellowship at Brandeis and a Mom who helps with groceries. At Cafe Pamplona I meet Fernando, born in Argentina, who says his family fled Peron when he was seven, settled in the states where he spent school days playing pick up sticks as he knew no English. When I can’t get my VW Bug going, he gives me a ride in his old rust-cracked Chevy. I tell him everything, even what felt stultifying, painful and wrong, struggling to accept that’s just what it was.
He’s the first man I’ve met who listens, doesn’t criticize, doesn’t judge, doesn’t comment on how I dress, doesn’t tell me what to do, doesn’t pressure me, doesn’t have an invasive ego agenda, the first time I feel safe.
His touch is gentle and sensitive, though it’s a while before we call it love, no single star-shine moment, more like a seed taking time to grow. We live together, feel no need to change ourselves or each other because, somehow, we’re okay as we are.
- © Nina Alonso Hathaway 2022
Nina's work has appeared in The New Yorker, Ploughshares, U. Mass. Review, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, Black Poppy Review, Bluepepper, Peacock Journal, Ibbetson Street, Bagel Bards Anthology, Constant Remembrance, MomEgg, New Boston Review, Cambridge Artists Cooperative, Muddy River Poetry Review, Wilderness House Literary Review, Tears and Laughter, Southern Women’s Review, Broadkill Review etc. David Godine Press published my book This Body, Cervena Barva Press published Riot Wake, and a story collection and novel are in the works.
