Category: Reflections

Reflections from the still places of life, where recovery and resilience meet the quiet astonishment of being here at all.

Reflections

The Girl Who Drew Women Who Floated

MyFathersMirror

At the Salaverry house, Mila was sometimes allowed to share Mercedes’s room, though Mercedes made her dissatisfaction known. She had misgivings about the child.

Rock music would blast from Mercedes’s room. Then she’d appear nonchalantly where Mila was minding her own business.

“You can come in, if you want.”

Those rare invitations into Mercedes’s private space felt almost unguarded. The Beatles played loud as she flipped through her prized collection of fan magazines.

The nostalgia of dusk brings those moments back now, their significance only recently understood.

Mercedes had an innate ability to draw women whose forms seemed almost ethereal. She would spend hours alone with all sorts of pencils, charcoal, ordinary pencils, whatever she had, always drawing women’s faces with a variety of expressions, women in flowing gowns that seemed to move, on sketch pads, notebooks.

One afternoon, right after coming home from school, Mila heard a terrifying scream followed by a terrible crashing sound.

It was the first and only time Mila ever saw Juana sob.

Julia had taken Mercedes’s entire collection of magazines and thrown them all out.

Mercedes crashed every dinner dish in the bathtub.

Of course, the story was revised afterward. Then it became that Mercedes had gone off in a rampage. The magazines, supposedly, had taken up too much space.

After that dramatic episode, Mercedes was observed rather than seen.

Mercedes and Mila were never close. There were a few years between them, and by the time Mila was placed at Salaverry, Mercedes was almost a teenager.

Still, they both existed in the same sick environment where Julia ruled, and where girls were treated as more of a nuisance than anything else.

***

Years passed. In time, Julia rented an apartment in Queens and allowed both Mercedes and Stuardo to move in with her, apparently on the premise that they would eventually split expenses with her.

Stuardo seemed absent. He began speaking of delusions. He often smoked, drank to excess, and had started acting erratically in the community.

Mila offered to take him to a local psychiatrist, chosen right out of the Yellow Pages.

“What did the doctor say?” Julia asked anxiously.

“That Stuardo has schizophrenia. He’s got to be on medication from now on.”

As dry as it sounds, that was the extent of it.

***

Jobs didn’t always come easily for Mercedes, whether factory work or part-time hours at the mall. She held on to the Alexander’s job the longest.

She became Stuardo’s caretaker.

After a few years of watching over him, Mercedes sought mental health services. What no one spoke of was the tremendous toll that sitting all day in the apartment with Stuardo had taken on her.

The story got edited to shame Mercedes for seeking help.

And wasn’t she lucky to have a place to live?

Mercedes was used by Julia as a caretaker for Stuardo for about twenty years, then discarded when she was no longer needed, just when Mercedes herself needed a hand.

Not that anyone ever admitted it.

That is how Mercedes’s whole persona disappeared into one billable psychiatric label and endless medications.

“Yeah, I told you, she’s always been weird,” Julia would comment to whoever asked.

Mila was in her own turmoil by then, descending further into addiction. In between binges, she clipped a few classified ads to encourage Mercedes to look for her own space.

“Listen, Mila, we buy The New York Times here, so don’t send me any more clippings,” Mercedes said hastily, almost offended.

And not long after came Julia’s warning:

“Stop telling her she could rent an apartment on her own. She might end up believing you!”

Two decades went by. Julia retired, got a mortgage, and moved them all into a house in Hartford.

The Apophis-approved tenants didn’t pan out. Julia grew desperate.

In short order, Julia sold the house, made a financial agreement, and moved to New Jersey.

The agreement did not include Mercedes.

Julia told her to leave.

Next thing she knew, after twenty years as an unpaid caretaker, Mercedes was on her own.

Her mental health began to spiral, yet she still managed to find services. She rented rooms at the Y. Eventually, she was referred to a subsidized housing program, which led to a studio.

A relapse led to conservatorship and, subsequently, placement in a facility.

***

Years later, Mila understood something she could not have known as a child: not being invited into Julia’s household may have saved her.

As a young woman, she had wished to belong there, or at least to be allowed to stay. But looking back at Mercedes and Stuardo, she saw the bargain more clearly.

Julia did not offer shelter.

She assigned roles.

Stuardo was protected.

Mercedes was used to protect him.

And when Mercedes herself needed protection, there was no role left for her.

The girl who drew women who seemed to float right off the paper.

Julia made sure she went nowhere.

Reflections

The Lounge Singer

MyFathersMirror

Mila’s hiring at the Sheraton Hotel bar broadened her world.

At barely eighteen, after years under Julia’s seething wrath, Mila mistook that widening for freedom.

Maybe it was, at first.

The music. The polished glasses. The hotel guests, mostly from the United States, came and went with offers of fun and money, secrets and grief.

Mila had no idea how unprepared she was.

She soon befriended the lounge singer, Zaida, who became flirtatious first with her eyes, then with small gestures Mila did not know how to name. Secret glances turned into something neither of them dared call a romance.

It was Zaida who planted the first kiss ever on Mila’s lips, as they parted discreetly one late afternoon.

Mila had secretly wondered why her father had been so vocal against the job.

It meant nothing to Julia.

“Of course your father would say that. He doesn’t even look for steady work.”

To his credit, her father never once showed up at the Sheraton to ask Mila for even a dollar.

Apophis sure did.

It didn’t take him long to ask for a loan. Mila, who by then felt nothing but revulsion at the sight of him, turned him down.

The next day, Julia showed up with Apophis. The usual head slant. The bright red forced smile. Her hair no longer coiffed.

It worked.

Apophis never paid her back.

It didn’t take long for Mila to start dating, hanging out after work with the rest of the crew, drinking until dawn.

She knew when to push the booze aside and sip water.

She felt invincible.

Uplifted by Zaida.

Dates that lasted until the moment they both had to return to the lounge.

Discreet glances across the room.

A certain gaze that meant: this song is for you.

Mila began to imagine not leaving after all.

And if she did leave, maybe she would be the one waiting for Zaida in Miami by next year.

Then, suddenly, Zaida became ill. Hours after a dental appointment, she was rushed to the hospital.

Mila went back and forth as often as she could.

One night, it was just the two of them. Mila sat beside her on the hospital bed, close enough for their hands to find each other under the sheet.

Out of the corner of her eye, Mila caught Zaida trying to fix her hair, smiling almost sheepishly.

“Te ves linda así, natural…”

In the wee hours of a Thursday in April, Zaida managed to get out of bed. She took a few tentative steps toward the place where she was sure to find Mila.

When they embraced, Mila’s hands slid, uncertainly, to the small of her back.

The allure of intimacy.

Even if neither of them had a word for it.

Zaida was Mila’s first kiss.

Her first shared secret.

Her first moment of being wanted.

They stood locked in a silent embrace, hiding tears, desire, fear, and everything they did not yet know how to say.

As if they could disappear into each other.

Zaida died the next day.

That was one of the doors.

Not the only one.

But one of the first to close behind her.

Beer came easily, scotch followed. 

Her father had told her not to take the job.

Reflections

Apophis

MyFathersMirror

You’ve met men like him. Maybe only once. Maybe just long enough to feel the air change.

They enter rooms already convinced of their own importance, head high, chest lifted, reading every face as if the world were a mirror. Apophis was that kind of boy. He grew into the kind of man people excuse too easily and remember too late.

From early on, he worshipped one thing: himself. He mistook being male for being superior. He handed down little pronouncements as if they were law: “men wear T-shirts like this!” to girls half his size. To him, women existed mainly as proof that he was not one.

There was always something foul beneath the swagger.

Indulged for no better reason than having been born male, Apophis learned early that he could move through a room and leave no trace but the damage. He slipped through back doors, grinned through lies, stole from the very people who fed him, and treated shame as something for other people to carry.

Some of his “games” were not games at all.

He used to grab me and place me on top of his narrow frame, bouncing me up and down while he lay flat beneath me. I was too young to understand what I was feeling, only that it was wrong. Uncomfortable. Strange. I would stare at the ceiling, as if there might be something written there I was supposed to understand.

There was nothing written there.

One afternoon we heard my mother’s heels striking the parquet floor. Apophis froze, then flung me onto the other bed so fast I barely had time to register it. I landed quietly. He straightened himself. By the time she entered, nothing had happened. At least nothing that could be named.

That was his gift.

To do what he did and leave silence holding the bag.

Later he stole from his father, passed out in a room that always seemed stained by drink and neglect. He stole his mother’s cheap jewelry to impress whichever girl he was after. He took money from the same woman who defended him, spinning talk of “investment,” then shrugged when it vanished.

Years passed. Apophis married. Cheated. Married again. A daughter was born along the way, though he always seemed more interested in sons he could imagine as extensions of himself.

Now he is older, stiffer, better dressed. He stops by the rest home where his mother sits and spends more time on his phone than in her presence. He leaves before her tea cools.

Age has changed the angles of his face, but not the nature underneath.

Apophis is still Apophis.

Reflections

It Wasn’t a Start

MyFathersMirror

I had not been in a classroom in years. It was the fall of 1996, and there I was, bright and early for some free short term course that was supposed to lead to a job.

The crowd was exactly what I’d expected: older, unemployed Latina women. One requirement for admission was fluency in Spanish. I sat in the front beside an older woman named Miledys.

We exchanged the usual pleasantries: had either of us worked as aides before, where were we from, that sort of thing.

Then came the standard speeches about caring for people with disabilities and all the rest.

A couple of weeks later, I overheard one of the women say:

“She’s gotta speak Spanish. It’s required to get into the course.”

Miledys and I mostly kept to ourselves, swapping stories in Spanglish. Then one day at lunch, a woman called out:

“You do speak Spanish, right?”

She was talking to me.

She was heavyset, with a forceful way about her. I was drawn in by her obvious interest, her kind hazel eyes and yes, by her nice ass too. What can I tell you?

“We were just talkin’ about you in the back,” she said. “I was tellin’ them you gotta speak Spanish to be here, right?” Then she added, by way of introduction, “Regina.”

Not long after that, I got thrown out.

In a drunken stupor, I made some dramatic confession when my live-in girlfriend asked about Regina. From there, my life tipped fully into chaos.

Regina told her father about me, and he graciously agreed to let me stay with them for a while. That didn’t last.

By then I had started seeing my ex-girlfriend again, if only to spend hours snorting cocaine together. Regina saw things differently. Still angry, still hurt, she nevertheless found us a room and even bought decorations for it.

I can still see her pretty face, beaming as she said,
“It’s a start. Our first little place together.”

I am ashamed to admit I lied to her too.

A few months later, she dumped me.

One of the best things that happened to me.

After that came a couple of rooms, a couple of evictions, and then the truth stood there plain: it was down to a park bench or rehab.

I’ll never know exactly where the idea of rehab came from.

But I chose recovery.

Reflections

In Each Other’s Way

MyFathersMirror

I had been living with Manzoor for a handful of years.

Not the kind of living people imagine when they hear that. He had a place, and he had found a couple of roommates to help pay the bills. A generous if frugal man, Manzoor had never asked me to contribute a dime. He saved every penny, cooked for both of us on weekends. Meanwhile, my days were spent drinking alcohol, smoking and watching reruns on the portable black-and-white screen. Kindly put, mine was a numb existence. 

“You know the electronics store on 96th and Broadway? I got a job there,” I told him.

He was getting ready to leave for a month-long trip back to his country of birth. I was annoyed by it, though I couldn’t say exactly why. I had always known he was married. That he had children there. None of it had mattered to me.

If anything, it felt oddly flattering when he told me he wanted to take me as his second wife.

At the interview, I sat across from two managers and told them, without hesitation, I was there for the assistant manager position.

Looking back, one of them must have mistaken my naivete for chutzpah. They gave me a job behind the Walkman counter.

It definitely wasn’t chutzpah.

Soon after Manzoor left, I met Joe. And Rita.

That’s when things began to tilt.

A couple of months in, Joe called me one night to declare his undying devotion, insisting he was done with Claire. As in completely done.

Claire, however, had not received that update and firmly believed she was about to become his wife. She didn’t take kindly to me moving into his apartment, just a few blocks from where I still technically lived with Manzoor.

It was wrong, but I did not even pause to question it.

Around that same time, Rita started working the register.

I remember the first time she looked at me, it was not in passing, not the way coworkers do, but with a kind of quiet insistence, like she had already decided something. 

She didn’t rush it. I pretended not to notice her subtle approaches, building a kind of anticipation I hadn’t felt in years.I was flattered. 

And little by little, she made her way into my days, and then into my thoughts, until there was barely a moment she didn’t occupy. 

The day came when I saw Manzoor off at the airport and, as we embraced goodbye, I cried uncontrollably. I remember his face, the way he looked at me. I think he believed it meant I loved him.

As I write this now, I hope he didn’t.

Because what followed doesn’t match that kind of love.

By the time he called me, as he promised he would, I felt… nothing I could name. I spoke to him easily, kindly, but without longing. Like speaking to someone just a few doors down. 

I cried when he left. I didn’t miss him when he was gone.

What unsettles me now is not that I left. It’s that I had already left before he ever boarded the plane.

So while Manzoor was away, impulsively, I packed my few belongings, met Joe downstairs and off we went to look at hues of sunset off the brick wall out his kitchen window. 

Joe, to his credit, not even once tried to force things between us; we just settled in like two old beer guzzling buddies while I fantasized of Rita’s fragrance and how it would all be like. 

We found a rhythm. It didn’t last.

Rita got fired for theft and I made an ass of myself by staging a ridiculous, pompous exit, right there in front of everyone. And within minutes, there was Joe running down Broadway: 

“Hey, hey, wait for mee!” as though unhinged.

What can I say, three clueless people just going about aimlessly. 

Not long after, we were behind.

Claire was ecstatic.

Rita soon asked me to move into her small apartment, much to the displeasure of her teenage son whose opinion was never even asked. 

We lasted ten years. 

Reflections

It Wasn’t Free

MyFathersMirror

“I’ve got work with Mathew tomorrow, but we’ll get busy right after,” Rita said, smiling in anticipation.

I knew what “busy” meant.

Her gig was as an interpreter for a small legal firm, specifically for Mathew.
Mathew liked early mornings and clients before sunrise in Lower Manhattan.
The kind of cases that didn’t need to be mentioned at home.

Mathew had an overt interest in Rita, who was decades younger.
She was, at best, a tentative, often unintelligible, interpreter.

Deep in the throes of addiction, I pretended to believe the story. I regret that now.

“So… are we busy today?”

That was the code for I’m buying coke.

Ours was a daily kind of “busy,” to the exclusion of almost everything else, even whatever we once called a relationship.

Every now and then, we’d talk about looking for work, and she insisted Mathew would always be there, which made sense since he owned the building.

I convinced myself she lived there rent-free, a single mom and all…

It wasn’t free.

She paid for it in trade.

I’m not certain knowing would’ve made a difference.

Ten years went like that.
Blurred.
Wasted.
Hard to believe now.

It was a time when internet cafés and Video Professor were still a thing. Rita enrolled in free computer classes. At my suggestion, she recorded the lectures for me to transcribe.

One day she came in, animated, telling me about a job training program working with people with disabilities.

We’d been living together for almost ten years and, by then, I needed something to change.

Within days, I was sitting in a classroom.

That’s when Regina walked in.

Reflections

Tap-Tap on the DL

MyFathersMirror

Three taps meant: I’m here. I’m thinking of you.

It was the middle of August in New York City, I’d never been to the Bronx, let alone that far uptown on the 2 line.

Buzzer.

“Hi, I have an appointment to see Brenda,” I said in my best voice to the few women in the management office. 

“That’s me, come sit down,” a pleasant, older woman gestured to her work area. 

And within the hour, I had been accepted into their program for women with addiction problems. 

I went into what someone later termed transition shock at the noise level, in between people chatting, music blasting from the dining room while someone played a different playlist in the backyard. But right after rushing up three flights of stairs to put away the plastic bag with the stuff, there I was, in that very room from where the deafening sounds came. 

I detest plastic bags to this day, the cheap, flimsy NYC bodega kind. That one. Everything I owned fit inside it.

Deafening to me. 

In time it almost grew on me, especially a handful of the women who, for different reasons now contribute to this story. 

“Hey, you want one?” offering an open pack of Newports, from the door to the backyard. 

That was Myrna, the young woman with whom I shared the room. Her story was of abandonment, neglect even of self as addiction had swallowed whatever plans she once had.

And Esther who, as someone “confidentially” shared, relapsed and either left or was removed from the program. She and I would’ve made great friends. 

There was Ramos who, true to the old lesbian stereotype, comported herself with a theatrical  level of masculinity. She once gifted me a pair of black Jordache sneakers. 

Full stop. 

Then there was Diana. She took an interest in me and, I, in turn, let myself be flattered by her admiration of me. We soon became “an item,” as she enjoyed saying, much to the chagrin of an admirer I had inadvertently encouraged. I had become reclusive, venturing downstairs only for a quick cigarette and a meal, I felt utterly uncomfortable, and spent most days in the room. 

Diana’s interest, her gentle coaxing, got me out of that room, and out of my head.

It felt good to be asked: “Hey, where were you all day?” No one had asked me that in years. We got to the point of late night conversations, her feet discreetly on my lap, going over old VHS tapes. A Field of Dreams was the very first of many movies she shared with me. 

In the evenings, we felt a certain intimacy to my tapping on the ceiling to let her know I was back, much to the amusement of Myrna. Three taps, code for “im here, im thinking of you.” 

And Darlene, the go- between, carrying love notes back and forth in her ever present wicker purse. And also the CD player left on my bed. “Play track 14” discreetly tucked in. 

The one day when things got intense between Diana and me while my roommate was out. A nice, slow burn, fewer and fewer pauses. 

The door burst open. I felt my stomach drop. 

My admirer screeched in horror and ran to the management office. 

I was given a week to move out, a magnanimous act from a director who prided herself in having removed a pregnant girl from the program despite the girl’s kneeled supplication. 

In my optimism, I took the embarrassment as a clue to pursue a deeper involvement with Diana. 

It did lead further into my renewed life in sobriety although not in ways I had expected. And for the first time in over two decades I was not disappearing into a bottle of whisky.

Reflections

Anyone from New York?

MyFathersMirror

It had been a couple of years since I’d seen Carlos, an old acquaintance from my days of daze.

“Here, use my screen name, someone will reply!” Carlos insisted, confident that his idea was the solution to my solitude. I had told him that yes, I’d been looking to meet someone, although not necessarily for romance—more along the lines of companionship.

Not a single reply.

We soon parted after the minor disappointment, Carlos assuring me no one replied because I was online under his screen name. “Next time you come over, we’ll set you up with your own,” he said warmly. I never saw him again.

This was in the early 2000s, when AOL chat rooms were still a thing.

Life went on with its frequent struggles and detours until I had the funds to buy myself a desktop. A used one, refurbished by Per Scholas. After a lifetime in the stupor of addiction, this was among the first significant choices I made for myself.

The desktop turned out fine for my purposes, which were essentially to stare at it after work and figure out how to do things. One evening I remembered Carlos and his much-touted AOL chat rooms, though not his screen name.

I eventually got bold enough to go from lurker to occasional chatter, and while there were a few fun conversations, most people seemed interested in casual encounters.

Many chats later, I’d grown tired of them, mostly for that reason. Things were gradually improving for me. I’d started looking for an apartment, still worked for a well-known nonprofit, and had begun college as an adult student.

My sobriety date came around—no one with whom to share the suffocating July heat. It was still just me in that basement room with the small rectangular window that looked out onto gravel and the feet going in and out of the driveway.

“Let’s take a look at the chat room,” I told myself, looking to lighten the day.

The chat was much as it had been in prior weeks: the regulars, their childish cliques, their conversations peppered with the same old obscenities. Shortly after, I turned the desktop off, in a weird mix of disgust and loneliness. In retrospect, the mix of emotions was more than I could explain even today: I found myself covering my face with both hands, sobbing, asking Spirit for someone for me. The intensity of that moment surprises me to this day.

In late July, I typed: “Anyone from New York?” in a cute blue font, no less. The old refurbished desktop wobbled on the box it had come in. Maybe good things do feel fuller when shared. 

“Hi.”
“I’m in New York.”

After a few pleasantries, I cut to the point.

“Do you have children?”

“Yes, they live with their father and they’re big… is this a problem, sweetie?”

“No. They’re not that small, and they don’t live with you.”

“I have a second question: do you cook?”

“What? I can make you a meat stew that’ll rattle your bones, the best pork chops you ever tasted,” her excitement practically jumped off the screen.

Wouldn’t you know it? We met just a couple of weeks later, and not long after that, she showed up with a tray of the most delicious baked ziti. She brought it to our spot in the nearby park.

That was part fun, part embarrassment, because I lived in a basement room, but it really turned out to be a lovely afternoon. She even let me keep the leftovers. In retrospect, that day, her gesture, us sharing a homemade meal for the first time, right there on a bench in Bronx River Park, was a gem of a moment.

We’ve been together for over twenty years, not only each other’s spouse but each other’s person.

in that basement room, I had asked Spirit for someone for me. I still wonder if that blue-font question into an AOL chat room was only me reaching out or if something had already started reaching back.

Reflections

Lumpy Beds and Other Luxuries

MyFathersMirror

Last night I must’ve been half asleep when I started muttering about our bed, how that old, lumpy mattress would soon just kill my back dead. How is it that I still have this thing here?

The truth? I could’ve replaced it long ago. I could’ve upgraded the furniture, bought the better things. But I’ve never cared much for that kind of new. I’ve always preferred what’s stayed with me, the things that have weathered time alongside me.

And yes, the bed could use replacing. But here’s what I remembered, somewhere between half-sleep and gratitude: it wasn’t all that long ago that I was dozing off in laundromats, trying to stay warm in the dead of winter, or in emergency rooms, pretending to be someone’s family.

A spot on a lumpy bed, a blanket like the one my wife gave me, would’ve been heaven.

I don’t ever want to forget the long road that led me here, to the comforts of home and, yes, our old bed and the tender lives that came to rest beside it.

Remember where you came from.
And be gentle with where you are.

Reflections

The Nitwitzes

MyFathersMirror

“I want a baby,” Meera announced.
Randolph blinked. “Now? Meera, we got bills. I’m still in school, remember?”

A month later, he strode into work, grinning like he’d won the Pick 5.
“Yo, imma be a dad!”

Silence. Stares.
Then, from the back of the office:
“Uh… congrats, man,” someone mumbled, the enthusiasm flatter than a DMV clerk’s stare.

At some point, Meera called her mother to inform she’d be moving upstate for the rest of the pregnancy for “support.” That lasted five weeks, which exceeded everyone’s expectations. By mid-trimester, she was back in the Bronx.

She and Randolph headed straight to his mother’s housing project apartment, where his older brother had been scrounging off their mother for years. The guy somehow got partial custody of his kids on weekends, so the place was already bursting. Randolph—the only wage earner in the whole setup—was crashing there too. Now Meera sat like a queen on the couch, either unwilling or unable to navigate social services for assistance.

Randolph’s grin was long gone. He seemed equally unwilling or unable to grasp what was really coming.

Much could be said about how society romanticizes childbirth and motherhood. And yes, indescribable admiration goes to women who choose to become mothers. But honestly, some of what goes into the process can be flat-out traumatic. Maybe both things are true. Maybe it can be both, traumatic and beautiful.

Still, here they are, the two nitwits in over their heads and at the center of it all, a baby.

Randolph’s latest mission? Buy a couple dozen cupcakes from the bakery down the street. The kind with blue and white filling revealed when bitten into, an ultra low-budget gender reveal.

Meanwhile, Meera, still in a kind of stupor, struggles to navigate even state medical coverage, let alone housing or other basic resources.

And yet, somehow, the baby’s coming anyway.

The baby is coming.