november colors

inside this rotting grapefruit are seeds that hope for a future, to become trees.
the beat of my heart, the workings of my mind, the air in my lungs, the tissue of my aching muscles feel like this rotten fruit.
i should listen to wise voices, some asking me to check where the rot attacked the fruit, make its autopsy, remember that i created the conditions for this disintegration, i placed the grapefruits in a plastic bag, and instead of storing them into the fridge, i forgot them in a corner in the hot kitchen.
i should listen to kind, scared voices, my eighty-years-old mother begging me to say nothing. ‘don't get involved, listen to me, daughter, the phone lines have ears. stop talking about him.’ ‘but how can i? this is not your totalitarian romania, mother. i came here to be safe.’ ‘you are safe,’ mother snaps. ‘you are millions of people. it's gonna be alright.’
people are in the street, protesting. he barricaded himself in his tower, built a wall of sacks of sand. i don't have strength to join them. i've been through enough civil unrest at the fall of communism. i can't i can't i can't live through four years of shame, disgrace, the president hurled on us the laughing stock of nations, war monger bigot.
i ask mother tips about baking a traditional romanian cake, cozonac. she applauds my interest. this is what we should be conversing about over skype, not elections.
so, woman go back to your kitchen, oven of life you are.
the rotten grapefruit goes to the compost pile. i still have two healthy glowing yellows. i zip them up separately and send them to the fridge hibernation. can't i do that too? wake me up in four years? no, i can't. rot would eat my entire pantry.
must stay vigilant.

My Pretty Place: Inside Geranium Blooms

Daniela and the Hypnotist. She sits on a couch and flowers her dress over her folded legs. 

Hypnotist: Look at it this way… [Overlap] Daniela: I want erotic dreams.
Daniela: [To the audience] My life coach, a certified hypnotist, offers The MythoSelf Workshop for Personal Transformational Change Work.
[To the Hypnotist] I dreamed that hair grows on my hands, like corn silk, like bird down, but a lot, a lot. I pull out fistfuls and it immediately grows back. As if I’m at an exhibition opening, people chatting with wine glasses in hand while I pull all that hair. Then I’m at my parents’ home, and it’s dark, the house is full of some animals also covered with feather down though they aren’t supposed to have feathers, they are like small puppies. My sister shrugs her shoulders, ‘This is how it happens.’ [Desperately] ‘Since when?’ ‘Since our parents travel.’ ‘When do they return?’ ‘Soon.’ ‘What will they say about these animals covered in down? Look at my hands. You’re a family doctor!’ She shrugs again. I can’t keep up with the corn silk down, pulling fistfuls! It still grows, still grows...
Hypnotist: Relax. Follow my pen with your eyes. Now close your eyes, you’re unable to open them. Go deeper and deeper into your subconscious. Count backwards from 10. Let your arms go limp. Breathe deeply. Feel tingling in your body.
Daniela: [To the audience] What if he starts masturbating?! I barely know this guy. [Closes her eyes] I dreamed that patches of grass and barnacles grow on my soles and I keep on pulling them out and they grow even faster. I run through the village, where I grew up, on a path down into the valley and a woman stops me, ‘I can heal you.’ She pulls the entire grass from my feet. I’m so ashamed I have grass on my soles. She rubs medicinal alcohol on them, snuggles me under a down comforter. She gets into the bed too, but I jump out repulsed. She mocks me, ‘Come now, don’t be afraid, I won’t touch you.’ I run away but that makes my feet stop healing.
Hypnotist: Hands, makers of things, not controlled by your will. Instead of pulling out the corn silk why not put fertilizer on it, be welcoming to it? What are feet? Locomotion, move away, move forward, immigration.
Daniela: Maybe my feet are trying to become roots, rooted. What if I let the roots grow? Get rooted? [Ironical] Come on…
Hypnotist: Instead of resisting, yield to it, even encourage it, find joy in your immigration. Focus on the future, dwell not on the past.
Daniela: Oh, I’m stuck in my perpetual dream in which I’m stuck back in Transylvania, wanting to escape to America with my son at a young age, and my mother puts obstacles in my way, either she's the one with the money, or she withholds our airplane tickets, or there is no one to drive us to the airport, but the dream always ends in the same way: gasping, we get into the airplane, and I wake up, my heart boom! boom! booming! If I get to live as long as my granny, I’ll have this dream for 40x365=14,600 times. Can you help me? It's dreary. I want erotic dreams, not nightmares.
Hypnotist: We’ll work on unblocking you.
Daniela: I’m blocked in so many ways. I’ve made lots of lovely cushions. I pile them up in the living room and can’t manage to sell them. I’ve blocked my hallway with the bag full of polyester fluffy pillow stuffing, which seems to grow, the more I take out of it, the more the fluff expands, so my home is barricaded. But from whom?
Hypnotist: I want your arms to become totally relaxed.
[He holds her hand. He drops it on her thigh.]
Hypnotist: One, two, three, four, go deeper and deeper into your relaxation. Your body becomes heavier and heavier.
Daniela: It’s so heavy, my muscles peel off the bones! [Giggles] They’ll drop to the floor in a mound!
Hypnotist: Go to the place where you feel best and you like yourself most. What will you call it? Let’s create a trigger so you can hypnotize yourself on the subway.
Daniela: The pretty place. I’m in a grass field in my hometown, by the woods edge. It’s sunny summer, light wind, wild flower fragrance. I slumber in the grass perfecting my suntan. I’m 17. My hair is huge, it flutters in the wind.
Hypnotist: You’re growing younger and younger, a child now, curious about things, curious about yourself.
Daniela: I’m 4 or 5 in my prim little girl cotton dress picking wild flowers in the grass field by the train canton. The grass is taller than I am.
Hypnotist: Become even younger, before you were even born.
Daniela: [Grumbles] Forget about it. My hands are so very heavy, my feet are so very very heavy, like cast iron, really heavy.
Hypnotist: Observe when the inhalation turns into exhalation. The place where being turns into not-being, where not-being turns into being.
Let your creations take off, like baby birds flee the nest, respect your creations. They were given to you, they pass thru you but have to go to others. Let them have their own life, go away, be they pillows or your son, who will soon go to college. Trust that they will father themselves, even if some only after you’re dead, just let them fly away like birds.
Daniela: I see pelicans that can’t find fish anymore, pray on another colony of birds, the parents are out fishing, while the pelicans steal the baby birds, the fledglings disappear in their enormous, sagging beaks, skinny baby legs convulse out of the pelicans' closed beaks. I see little baby flamingos, stuck in the mud and dying, or baby elephants trampled upon by stupid mommy elephants. [To the Hypnotist] Please, scramble me out of this monstrous pretty place! I need erotic dreams. My pretty places, my paradises, always get smeared, invaded by some ugly nutty monstrosity. When I was 17 I’d go every day into the woods. The fragrance, the quiet, the light and shadows, the thick bed of dry leaves and twigs and fir tree needles, the forest tall above me. One day a stupid pimply boy on my street followed me. He tried to rape me but I kicked his ass and I ran away.
I stopped going to my forest.
I don’t want any more dreams with my mom. I dreamed about my potted flowers. The Christmas cactus has grown a bushy branch but it is the color of cabbage and the leaves are small and many, but it’s as big as my geranium. Suddenly it grows limp. I search frightened to see why, when a nasty Limax snail slug comes out from a hole in the ground, darts like lightning and flees. Mother fucker Limax, you’ve destroyed my flower! I hope it will recover now, but it doesn’t. I pour water into the hole and a second disgusting slimy Limax purplish brown darts out running. [She takes again the hypnosis position.]
Hypnotist: [Drones] Your eyelids get relaxed and you can't open them.
Daniela: [She does open them] I know how I’ll call my hypnosis pretty place: I want to go into my geranium blooms, on the kitchen windowsill my red fresh geranium so red, red and profuse, that's where I want to go always, into my geranium blooms.
Hypnotist: Very well, then. Relax your face muscles and chest and arms. Become yourself, for the geranium is but a geranium, when the sugar and sap travels in the stem to make her bloom, she won't turn into a tulip, she won't turn into a lilac, no, the geranium blooms into a geranium. Like the acorn is an acorn and gives birth to an oak tree, and all it can turn into or do is be an acorn in all its acorness, and an oak in all its oakness...
Daniela: [Opens one eye.] God, give me a break! It's not quite working. Your droning is like an assembly-line guru voice. Maybe you could use your deeper tones instead of this mechanized, conveyor belt, I’m-hypnotizing-an-entire-factory droning? Should I go back to my acorness?
Hypnotist: [In a baritone voice] No. At the count of 3 you’ll feel a surge of rejuvenation and wake up filled with energy.
Daniela: A baritone in all its baritonness.
Hypnotist: 1, 2, 3! Wake up.
Daniela: This won't happen! My feet and hands are made of heavy clods and I can't move them, will you prod me? Will you poke me? Pretty please.
Hypnotist: No, at the count of 3 you will wake up by yourself. 1, 2, 3.
Daniela: Man, my feet are nailed to the floor! My hands are nailed to my thighs.
[His phone alarm rings. She moves awaken.]
Hypnotist: Each time you talk about what you don’t like, you lean your neck and head to my left. But when you talk about things you like you change your posture, look to my right and you straighten up, and brighten up. I want you to keep to my right.
Daniela: Well, then move to the right.
Hypnotist: It’s not about me moving to the right. It’s on you to stay to the right, in that desired life, in the things you love, the life you want. Just be, don’t construct scenarios, just be, knowing that you are very attractive.
Daniela: [To the audience] Hear, hear.
Hypnotist: In a few days, perhaps over the weekend, you’ll come to an understanding of what has just happened and you will regain your balance, allow yourself to become yourself.
Daniela: I want poise and balance.
Hypnotist: We’ll get you there, even if you’re on a New York subway. You can reset yourself, go to the pretty place and reboot yourself like a computer. I want you to make that good life for yourself. [Exits.]
Daniela: [To the audience] When I go home there are profuse pink blossoms in the trees by my building. Two years ago they planted one million trees, and today they’ve bloomed for the first time. I tell each of them I love you, so they know they are loved.
Over the weekend I had my first erotic dream in ages. Well, close enough. I never had such a dream before. I slept 13 hours and I woke up with a back-pain.
I was in a hotel elevator trying to catch up with my employer's group in a conference room. I was not eager. I felt ill equipped for the job, didn't know exactly my job description, I was like a gofer Friday girl, they were bossing me around and it was a boring job. Anyway, I caught up with them, they were taking places at the conference table, my boss was in a suit and the other team was Donald Sutherland and his entourage, he wore an elegant suit and a white shirt, unbuttoned. His hair was longish, white. I enjoyed looking at him. I don't know what were they negotiating, but then somehow the situation shifted, Donald Sutherland was holding me in his arms like in a slow dance and he was soft and caring and wistful and he said, “I can't keep up with your delicious, extraordinary wit, Ella,” and I smiled and I felt in my body something I never felt before, and I was startled and I said to myself perhaps this is what the hypnotist is talking about I am to feel when I am with a man. Weird.
Then things got hectic, the conference broke up, I was to go, fetch, arrange, while my heart was filled with Donald Sutherland, and how I must tell him, I must keep in touch with him, I must relocate! And as if I was in front of an entire theater audience in London performing a one-woman show and oh, was I fantastic. And I was wondering how would my life with Donald Sutherland be? Like slow dancing? And then things got even more hectic. I was trying to track him down to pass him a letter written in pencil on a school copy book page! In it was my number and email, and I was asking some of the hotel personnel where did he go. A woman said he had enough of conferencing and went for a walk. Anyway, I didn't manage to give him my note.
Then I woke up in my dream at my parents' home because a beige hand-phone was shouting my mother's distressed voice, how my father needed help because she was away drowned in snow, so much snow had fallen on the villages where she was, and my father's cable wires will melt because the phone or something hot fell on the wires and that was a major tragedy for my family, and I said, “Alright, alright.” I went into the other room and my father was under a feather duvet and he was crying that a young guy from his work place at the collective farm died and he was so young, and he was crying my father. My sister, or my son, young kids, were under the other duvet wanting to play with me. I said to my father harshly, “What can one do, tragedies happen, may the man rest in peace, we have to take care of his TV cable wires, that will be a major tragedy not to have TV service!” So I urged him to get out of bed and look for his wires because I was busy with my own quest for Donald Sutherland. As if I met him at his hotel room and he hold me again or I was just remembering how he hold me while slow dancing.
Then I went to my mom uphill on snowy village roads and I told her, “Mom, have you seen the movie last night on TV?” “No,” she says, she was busy with rescuing people in the village from the deluge. “Well, Mom, I was in the entire movie several times, and I had a smasher scene with Donald Sutherland, and Mom he is the most kind and poetic gentleman ever.” Mom says, “Oh, I know him. We were at the cinema and I sat behind him and I asked him if Constantin Niţu was dead or what had happened to him?” Niţu was a Romanian actor movie star who ran away under communism but his acting career didn't work out abroad. His talent useless abroad.
Anyway, I was saying, “Mom, you don't understand, I like Donald Sutherland.”
Mom was prattling away, so frustrated I woke up with a back-pain.
I don't know what's all this about. I have some pointers: I watched recently a DVD with Donald Sutherland having back-pain and no penis, like in that Hemingway book, and he had a massage therapist who eased his back-pain.
When I met in real life Donald Sutherland on a movie set in Budapest, we were in the makeup trailer. He made fun of my Russian whore make up, the film was about Chikatilo, a serial killer in the USSR, and he was a commissar and I was a Russian whore, a possible victim. The film was Citizen X for HBO shot in Hungary. And Donald Sutherland saw his joke didn't go down well with me, and he came back promptly to apologize, with an earnest face, that he meant no harm.
But that was 17 years ago! And I didn't feel anything in my body for Donald Sutherland back then!

[Blackout.]

Sunday, June 20, 2010

Dear Commander in Chief

Please forgive me if my language skills will fail me at times and cause merriment in you. It is not intended, but I come from a faraway land and I am a stranger to your customs and fancies. I write to you hoping you will find a way of solving my matter positively in a win-win situation and not cause further damage and puzzlement.
I am one of your humble subjects of inquestitation. Way back in early March my eyeglass was knocked from me, stomped upon, lenses broken, its brackets all twisted by my ex-paramour gone again berserk at the Armory Show Pavilion. I was myself demolished and defrayed nervously, emotionally and psychiatrically that I was put in a wheel chair to make my entrance at the ER hospital room. There two of your employees came and wrote my bad situation down and then life took me on the path to recovery out of my domestic violence residue and I waited to see about my eyeglass but nothing happened for quite a while, so I bought new.
Then a detective called! A Hamlet Aberdeen left a message saying to call the precinct! At last, help is on its way! At last, someone listens! I was very much impressed as I told him my gratitude he denied it completely. Before talking to this detective, I made many complaints at the precinct in my immigrant infested neighborhood but all I got was sniggerings and biggerings. They never did squat about my situation. I showered them with complaints but never ever one showed up ever never ever ever! Left me thinking I was still in the old country where justice is dead under a pile of musty dung.
When Detective Aberdeen Shining Armor came! I was impressed from the minute I stepped in your precinct! I told him I never met a detective. He smiled and said well, now I saw four. I do not have enough words to describe you and commend you since we have an ancestral saying and it is true here too in America it is true, that De la cap se-mpute peştele which roughly is: “The fish gets funky from the head!” I can’t wait to meet you! I am sure if your fine employees were so courteous and polite, what about you, the mind behind this fine team? I have never seen such fine speciments. All mussellar in tight T-shirts with their long American legs, like in the movies, on the table! Sergeants, like in the movies, were typing diligently at their carbon copies. That was amazing how it was and it was not like in the movies! In the movies, the detectives always jump in cars and drive away in a rush. At your precinct, when Detective Aberdeen gave me the Precinct Grand Tour pointed out one lonesome car key up on the billboard. It is a miracle that anything gets done! Dousens of detectives and one car!
Commander in Chief, you need a fundraiser! Make a calling for bikes and scooters, roller blades and skateboards! If the city’s millionaires won’t throw in money for enough cars, ask the poor population to pitch in! My rescuer should get to the rescue full speed! I called him to go and get my perpetrator from the other borough he was arrested for other maltratreatments he bestowed on me, but by the time, four hours later, that Detective Aberdeen arrived on his roller blades, he already bounded and fleed!
This will not do, I said to myself. This has to be brought to the public attention! These brave courteous men need help! Me, a humble immigrant, I can do only so much! In addition, my head was abuzz with ideas.
Commander in Chief, your staff changed my life. Especially Detective Aberdeen. He gave me back hope. He gave me backspine; he gave me pride in humanity. I wrote very exquisite erotic literature thanks to this man, Commander in Chief! I had such erotic daydreams that I said, America at last!
It was a grand feeling mutual.
Alas, Commander in Chief, all fine things end in shingles!
Detective Aberdeen succumbed under the large load of suitcases and bickering of his detective partner and I wonder who else?—Maybe you gave him the evil eye since he spent too many long days on my suitcase instead of catching heavier perpetrators and violators? But Detective Aberdeen, I vouch with my heart, is a man of vision and, may I say, television. Television! He saw the core problem in my suitcase and extricated it and hold it up as a flasklight of Statue of Liberty shining thru the darkness! Detective Aberdeen is my hero. He saw in my suitcase the malaise of the entire Nation. He identified it! He pinpointed: Here is a small woman of grand will who escaped dying of AIDS thru condom slippage and condom brokage and condom peelage off the HIV positive dripping faucet prick and she could have been infested, she could have been dying! but life protected her to bear witness! And here she is now bearing witness that there’s no finer man than Detective Aberdeen in all the precincts in the world!
Buy him a scooter!
I do not know what is appropriate and fraternal because I am all mixed up in America you have to be professional; you cannot fraternize and buddyrize when you go to the precincts. Therefore, I do not know, can I offer my tax returns to you to buy Detective Aberdeen a super-scooter and a voice mail while my suitcase is still open?
It is a distressful situation.
Voice mail is not in the precinct. The phones are from the James Bond Series. But we are not. It is hard to watch how fellow detectives scribble down my erotic messages for Detective Aberdeen. How they report courteously over the phone that Detective Aberdeen is taking a leek! Detective Aberdeen is coming only on Friday! Detective Aberdeen actually is on vacation scootering in Bahamas; comes back next Saturday. Detective Aberdeen has been seen a minute ago! But where is Detective Aberdeen? At times, it looks like he is hostage in his own precinct, all gagged up and tied with ropes, and cannot talk on the phone. A fine situation! A man who fought the terrorists is afraid of my anxious self, wanting to know about her suitcase!
Commander in Chief, here is a hundred check from my tax returns! Buy the voice mail! Let him screen his calls. Don’t let this situation fester! I can see him running away down the stairs in the basement when the phone rings: Here is the dear old lady calling again about her eyeglass! Alternatively, picking up the phone, pretending he can’t hear my squeaking voice asking about my suitcase! Dropping the receiver!
Buy the voicemail and then he effortlessly can think about other suitcases and delete my annoying messages efficiently without losing any brainpower.
We, as a Nation, will be much better served!
Otherwise, I fell in love with your precinct, as I said. I feel like I could move in. Needs badly a woman’s hand. Some curtains here and there, dusting, mopping, some flower bushes to play cops and robbers with the victims more efficiently. If I may suggest you need larger badges and shinier ones. In my old country, though the militia was vehiculing on donkeys, their uniform was more splendors: lots and lots of tassels and pompons, golden, red and emerald green! And they’d salute their superiors!
Please consider implementing this healthy attitude! They should all salute! Snap the heels and up goes the arm to the hat! What is this nonsense with public service? Order and discipline! You are the Commander in Chief!
And the hats are unimpressive here! Ostrich plumes would look smashing! Or peacock feathers! The Elton John style! It can be done very cheaply, I assure you!
But let me not get carried away!
Therefore, in these few words I mean to say how keep up the good work, Commander in Chief, father of such brave terrorist hunters and domestic violence victim protectors.
Please let me know if the check bounces so that I can pay in food stamps, and don’t let Detective Aberdeen hide-and-seek each time the phone rings.
The Nation needs him for a new detective series and bless my heart if I come sane out of this bedlam of a suitcase I will be the one to write it with your help and guidance, Commander in Chief, with your help and abbreviations.
May you be in good health and close retirement!

All our love with you and yours and Detective Aberdeen’s above all,

Ludmila Popovics,
Old Sexy Biddy Ex- Brighton Beach Sunbather [Now Bahamas Islands Cruiser—perhaps I bump into Detective Aberdeen and his scooter dressed as a palm or coconut tree!
Shush!]

P.S. We could have a rummage sale, Commander in Chief: with all the typerighters we can sell at a high price antiques. Please consider me to organizer it!
Let’s have a banner: Befriend Your Precinct! Community Gives Back to Precinct Rummage Sale!
Let me know!!!

10/25/2006

New York City

Welcome to Our Neighborhood!

FLORINA CERCEL, 35 years old, an impoverished, though overly-educated, freshly-immigrated Romanian, life still in disarray.
Late September, 2001. Evening, around 8:00 P.M.
Bloomfield, New Jersey, a staircase in front of FLORINA's apartment, second floor.
FLORINA has a purple beauty mask on her face and a bandana that makes her hair stick up. She wears an apron and slippers. She's embarrassed by the way she looks, is defensive, scared. A TIRED AFRICAN-AMERICAN WOMAN and her four kids stand in front of her on the staircase. FLORINA’s son, MIRCEA, 11 year old, listens quietly to the outpouring of the AFRICAN-AMERICAN WOMAN. After listening, FLORINA takes over and becomes unstoppable.

FLORINA
[Starts slowly.] Let me get this straight, please. I am a foreigner and have trouble with New Jersey accents. I'm also dead tired; I've just arrived half an hour ago, I had a hard day and I hoped for a quiet evening, reading beautiful plays, and have funny talks with my son. Instead you've interrupted my dishwashing and radio listening, and this mask itches to death.
Never mind.

[Casual, but speeding up.] So, you were saying that your son who suffers from asthma was almost killed by my son, and you've just come from the emergency room because he had a bump on the back of his neck and he could have been dead by now, killed by my son, an 11-year-old murderer and now you'll have to stay home all week and take care of him. Is that so? Please don't talk, you've talked enough, let me understand, because we won't get anywhere. Just nod. Yes? Yes.

[Lecturing.] Okay, now let me tell you this: I know my son and I have never seen him being unjust to anyone, or hurting anyone. If he hit your son, I am sure that your son hit him first. Yes, you are right, maybe your son could be dead by now but so could my son, both of them lying bleeding on the cement while Mr. San Giovanni, the principal, doesn't give a shit about it. Now, when I came home I saw my son had a scratch on his eyelid, but I thought it was a sty again, because he doesn't have health insurance, so when he had a sty I had to cure him myself, so I thought it's the sty again, but when I asked him, he said he got that scratch from a tree, okay? [To MIRCEA.] But now it comes out it was not a tree, and I don't want this to happen again, do you hear me? Go and switch off the stove. It smells of burnt milk.

[To the AFRICAN-AMERICAN WOMAN, smiling.] You know what I think? It was your son, who lies to us both, it was your son, Madam. If my child said that your son took from him the blue plastic knife he found in the school yard, he took it though it was not his, and bullied my child, then my son did the right thing hitting him back! Look, Madam, don't interrupt me, okay!

[Slightly threatening. Faster, building up to a huff.] I am a single mother, so he has to look after himself, no bully will mess with him. My son is an orange belt, if you saw him on Harvest Day Festival demonstrating in front of the Recreational Civic Center and saw his photo in the papers, you'd know he is an athlete, he goes three times a week to Tae Kwon Do training, at the Universal Martial Arts, because he has to learn the art of kicking and punching and self-defense, until he gets a black belt. That's why I pay $75 a month, okay? Master Walter teaches him self-defense and no one will mess with my son, and with me for that matter.

[Relaxing, switching to a nicer tone.] Now, if you came here with kind thoughts, trying to find out the truth and try to make these immature boys understand that now we have to stick together because hard times will come for us people on Orange Street, when we won't have what to eat and whom to marry because men will go to war against terrorists, then I am with you, Madam. But if you came here to make me say I'm sorry that this happened to your son, and then use my words of sympathy to get money out of me, you are very wrong. Therefore, though I am sorry, I can't tell you I'm sorry, because this is not Romania, where kids are kids and people don't sue left and right out of the blue—[In disbelief, shares this small gossip.] I hear you here in Bloomfield have burglars who sue the burglarized victim that they over-waxed their floor and they slipped on it and broke a leg, and the burglar wins. Well, if that's the case with you, I am very sorry to say that I can't shake hands with you, and have no penny to give you. All I can give you is a book about friendship that I got from church. [To MIRCEA.] Go and bring it. From now on, Mircea you won't go outside and play with kids that afterwards come and lie about you, okay?

[To the AFRICAN-AMERICAN WOMAN. Earnest.] I am sorry if I sound too harsh, but I am at a loss here. Perhaps you are a nice lady, single mother yourself, regrettably we meet under such circumstances that make me fear you are a sue monger. [Winning smile.] Whichever the case, my landlord is a cop and he said I should tell anyone to [Daintily. Must be a lady!] bugger off.
Good night. Go inside, Mircea.

[She shuts the door gently, as the group of kids and the other mother walk down the squeaking old wooden staircase.]

While the Hurricane Rages

Written a year ago during Hurricane Sandy...

We sit in cozy apartments. We have our flashlights prepared. The water gallons grabbed from the store shelves. We watch the news. We listen to the howling wind. We’re on the seventh floor, our building is safe, but poor those in Long Island, their houses will be flooded. We pray to God Almighty the storm won’t touch us, the winds won’t blow us away like leaves in a deserted autumn park. We are tremulous, humble victims of nature’s blind workings. We feel pity for ourselves. We make international phone calls. Our mothers are worried.
And yet, we did this to ourselves. We grab what isn’t ours to grab. We attire ourselves in lies. We prey and devour, veiled in nice lies. We’re hungry for food, for sex, for money, for power, and we’ll say whatever it takes to grab and gobble and fuel our wicked vital urge, we must look at each other as food we must get, as much as we can get, we must stay alive and multiply, so anything goes.
I am not nature so in my wrath I could topple houses, raise walls of ocean waves, crash old tree branches on the wicked Jeeps and Hummers that took over the city’s streets, guzzling the planet. I am not nature to shake the earth, crack it open and swallow us all, accursed vermin. I am but the prisoner of memory tossed and washed away in its furious waves. When the wind shrieks, I dare not go into my empty apartment, sit next to my phone that doesn’t ring. I sit on a park bench, choked by the ghost of past earthquakes. I hear again the roosters croaking, the dogs barking, the donkeys braying the end of the world, I see chandeliers swinging, the townspeople running in their pajamas and nightgowns running to hide away from the earth shaking its back, the buildings falling, high rises across boulevards, dead people in the rubble, searching for them for weeks, the grave robbers who stole the gold jewelry from the dead on trial and shot by the death squad. I see again poor people jumping from the windows of the Twin Towers, poor people, tiny bugs flying down to their undeserved death, and I tremble it’s gonna be all over again now. Now. Now. Now.
I am but the witless woman who begged God for someone to love, and God bitterly joked sending you, a hungry deceiver, taught by your nation crumbling under corruption, taught by your male friends, taught by your father and brother that no harm is done, and if any, oh, well, she deserved it. Nothing to fear. There will be no consequences. Grab, gobble, run. And again, talk smoothly until the bird lands in your hand, grab its neck, wring it, devour it, run.
For one day I’d like to blow God off His Mighty Throne and strip Him of His Celestial Robes and clad in them with His Crown on my head and His Scepter in my hand I’d thunder my wrath with a lightning on the world’s wickedness and on your young wickedness and wrench it out of you all. When you were in my arms, my warmth, my lips, my tongue made you kind and you feared its sweet weakness.
Your deceit feared its sweetness. Were I to be God I’d do just that, suck out the evilness venom out of you.
But this can’t be done, no, it can’t be done. For all I know God has left us. The Devil tosses and tumbles us about. The Devil has crept into my heart as you cracked it open with your sweet lies.
You sit in my kitchen eating my food I offered out of kindness. You ask me, ‘Why are you so nice to me? I haven’t been nice to you.’ But instead of hearing the guilt in your voice and ask you for the truth you hide, I tell you, ‘Other people were kind to me when I came here destitute, when I sought refuge. You are deserving of me giving back.’
But you’re not.
I give you a clean white shirt and soft brown socks, so you can work and fulfill your dreams, because you tell me lies I don’t know yet are lies.
I give you myself, because you tell me lies I don’t know yet are lies, because you didn’t tell yet the one that like a magnet will pull them together, like the last piece in a puzzle laid on a kitchen table, in a compact surface of an undeniable undeniable undeniable betrayal.
If I’d let myself be wicked I’d make the food you stole from me preying on my kindness, to eat your insides, like strong acid to dissolve your stomach and intestines, and blood veins and muscles and brain and eyes and hair and fingers, till just a fizzling foam is left of you. If I’d let myself be wicked I’d make the shirt I gave you in love turn into flames of fire, burn your skin and flesh and bones to ashes. If I’d let myself be wicked I’d make the soft kisses and tender caresses I gave you in love linger hidden in you and when you’re sweet asleep come out roaring, deafening you, and strangle you, choke you.
If I’d let myself be wicked I’d curse you: may you never know true love, for mine was the beginning of that, may you meet but treachery, and if one fine day your heart will sing like mine did for you, the same venom you gave me should flood it. If I’d let myself be wicked I’d make sure when your dreams almost come true, to crumble them to dust in one sweep, your sports car crashing in a river, and drown, fish eat your flesh. If I’d let myself be wicked I’d curse you: may you never have children, or may they be crippled from birth, may your life be brief and end in torturous disease.
But I am not wicked, am I? I am not contaminated by you. I am not infected by you.
I’m drained, frail with sadness and devastation, upon devastation, you’re but the last one in a line of predators, each with his own disguise. You reopened my wounds aided by the roar of the hurricane.
When the dust shall settle I shall find a way and teach you this lesson for life:
Never, never, never lie again. Never, never, never steal from giving people. Never, never, never think there’re no consequences and there’ll be no blistery pay back, bonehead.
So I swear.

October 29, 2013

 
 
Well, here you have it: If you’d like to throw a bit of money my way to keep my endeavors going, and also enable me to spread the money to my various causes, witnessing democracy, freedom of speech and faith, and engineering social change thru art being some of them, I’d be grateful.

Swimming Upstream

These two related pieces are part of 'Swimming Upstream', a collection of monologues I've written in 2004 while living in New Jersey.

OFFICE BOY
[SORIN, a 14-year-old boy talks to IRINA, his mom.]
No, I didn’t steal any twenty dollar bill! They just fired me because they were cheap. They were crazy! I did all they asked me to do. Well, basically, I would just come in and see what was to be done. Usually they would have this shelf full of folders and then they would give you these papers, for insurance, when someone died; all over the world. And you would look at the name and match it with the folder. Just put it in. In alphabetical order. Simple.
Either that or just help clean up the desk, you know. Nothing really much. Once we had to address envelopes. They would send out X-mas cards saying Happy X-mas! or whatever. I’d say about a hundred or so. It was simple. The other secretary was supervising me.
Don’t remember her name. Abita. Nope. Hanifa. [Laughs.] She was crazy. She had braids, her hair was dyed red and yellow, and she’d always have on something with different colors.
But she was kind. She didn’t like the job either. She needed to finish school and get a car. Yeah.
She didn’t do much. I would ask for her help and she’d do it. Well, once I didn’t know where one folder was and she’d find it, because she had been there for a while, she personally organized it. And she would just find it. She did that a lot. Finding things around there. Yep. They were misplacing things all the time. Everyone. Because she was the one that organized it. So they didn’t really know what was going on. So they’re screwed now. She's gone. They don’t know where anything is!
Rachel was always on the computer. She was always typing something, she was fast. She wasn’t that exciting. She talked a lot, about nothing. Like Seinfeld. Seinfeld talks a lot about nothing. Well, you know, [Imitates her.] This chocolate! This is expensive chocolate! They don’t sell these chocolates everywhere! Only in California is where they sell the chocolate! Mmmmmmmm!--It was good chocolate. Bags of chocolate on the front desk. Anybody could just get one. Yeah.--She’d start singing to herself at times. Yeah. I'm just making that up. But she did talk to herself. I think she was jus reading the papers; she was typing. She was like, Mmmmmmm! And she was typing, Mmmmm! Shrapnel in the ass! Mmmmm! I made that up. She always had to write what kind of deaths were there. What they thought was suspicious.
It was weird. I read in one of the reports they thought it was a fake marriage. At the wedding ceremony the bride is supposed to do a little dance with a flower or a coconut. But she didn’t do that so it was suspicious. The groom died. So they suspected she married to kill him, to get his insurance. They don’t know. That’s why it’s suspicious.
Sheila was just loud. She was just loud for no reason. She'd always have the food channel on, like she's learning how to cook while she was organizing. And the guy was exactly the opposite. You couldn’t understand anything he said, both of them. One was too loud. Like cover your ears to hear her! The other one was just sitting there, all day long. [He sounds kind of Asian.] Hanifa, come here! Bring me my papers! Hanifa, come here! She was just loud and greedy, very much so. Can I trust you with the mail? she said one day. She was like, Okay, I don’t know if I should trust you with this mail, it needs to go to the mail box. I don’t want you to open it, because then you’re fired. She never said that, I just made that up. I found that weird. She asked me if “I could trust you with the mail.” What the hell am I supposed to do with insurance? Stupid.
In the end they fired everyone.
Because they were greedy; they were stingy. They didn’t buy office supplies. Which showed they were cheap. They wanted to keep the money. They didn’t want to keep paying us, so they fired us. Then hired more people. It really didn’t make a lot of sense. I don’t know, they were just bad people.
They’d pay me about seven dollars an hour.
I came in an extra day once. So instead of twenty bucks I made thirty. But they didn’t want to pay me. Oh, no!
The loud lady paid me. Sheila. Come here! I have your pay check! Yeah, little boy! I don’t know… Hanifa was always giving options. You know what you could do with your money? Take the bus uptown, have some fun, spend it all. Or you could go to the computers and play some games. I would like to keep my money, and, you know, save it.
So when they told me I was fired…. Well, at first I thought they said they didn’t need me for the week. Like I was supposed to come in Friday, and I thought that they didn’t need me for that day. So I just went to pick up my check, and I was like, Oh, I’m fired! Oh, well...
And then I found out I wasn't the only one.
Yeah. Well, they were cheap, what did you expect?
Rachel was like, Oh, my God I didn’t do anything! It’s not my fault if you’re a cheap bastard. No, she didn’t tell them like that. I’m sure that’s what she was thinking though. Well, it’s not my fault if your computer sucks, ass. Maybe if you updated from a 95! Like she would mess up typing, and he got mad. It wasn’t her fault, because half the stuff the guy wrote you couldn’t understand!
It was just weird. Hanifa would always give options. One talks a lot, and the other didn’t. You could tell that the woman wore the pants in the family. And he was like, Okay, just don’t hit me!
They were cheap, they wanted to save money. Yeah. That was the whole story. Yeah.
Well, there isn't much to say. Yeah.
[Blackout.]

THAT WAS THAT
[RACHEL talks to IRINA.]
I initially said, “I will work for 12 dollars.” Sheila said, “We can only pay you 10,” so I said, “It’s okay, if you pay me cash,” and Sheila said, “Fine.”
Hanifa sometimes would be out sick for herself or her daughter who has chronic kidney problems and they’d ask me to do extra hours and they were a little strange. The man, Israel, just stayed in his office and worked. He never went out to lunch or anything, and as a result he developed high blood pressure and diabetes and, you know, he needed a lot of medical attention. I would point out the food he was eating was not very healthy, a lot of diet soda and take out, chicken and fries. I suggested he might have some other food and Sheila started taking offence because it was her husband, okay? So, there was some tension.
He couldn’t drive ‘cause he wasn’t long enough in the country, whatever it was, [yadda, yadda, and yadda] he didn’t get a license, so it was only Sheila driving. In fact, I had offered to walk Israel to the bus and ride with him to their house, but he said “What would a man like me do on the bus? I’m a foreigner,” this and that… He was really scared! And Sheila didn’t appreciate it at all! All I’m saying is it’s a very short trip and I’d demonstrate! So!
One time they had a traffic ticket in the snow in Verona and it’s a straight line on Bloomfield Avenue to the Verona Court House, but they were terrified so they gave me ten dollars and I rode up with them, and then I just turned around and I took the bus home, so that’s the way they are.
But they are highly educated. She had written a thesis on the plays of Athol Fugard! She was terribly impressed because I had read them, or seen them, right? And then he, ‘cause he’s a lawyer,--although what they are doing is legal investigations, you don’t have to be a lawyer to do what he’s doing. They were investigating fraud all over the world! They are the American office! People collect insurance in Africa, in Haiti and, you know, funny things happen, like the body in the coffin is alive and it winks or moves in the picture, when it’s supposed to be dead! If you think about it, if you’re in Africa you could say anything about a person! So, they’re investigators who actually find out if they are alive! [Laughs.] It’s very interesting!
But I found their personalities so haughty, so important. Oh, my goodness! They all were like upper class, the Igbo People of Nigeria! You usually see it spelled I-B-O, but they forced you to pronounce it the way they do! They are the wealthy class there. They just think they ought to be in charge of everything! But they are very cheap with their pay checks and they are very dislikeable, so that’s it. She talks very loud with a peculiar accent. I actually couldn’t even understand them for the first week I worked there.
Sheila had a three-cut tribal marking over here, [Brushes lightly with her fingers over her cheeks.] which would have been very nice with her hair up, you know, to display it, but of course, she covered it up with makeup. She is at least five foot eight and pretty bulky, not fat, just solid. She didn’t look too bad. She wears heels, and Israel might have been her height, just a shave shorter, ‘cause he was usually barefoot, he never left the office. He would get up to go down the hall to the bathroom, that’s all he did! He had darker skin and glasses and he was maybe 50 years old. He was always writing at his desk and he would not type, so I’d do it for him. They were these reports from investigators, in very poor English. I had to make it into something clear that would be presentable to insurance companies. 10 bucks an hour. Period.
They wanted to hire a woman for 5 dollars an hour! It was my idea that a woman won’t work for it, but a kid would, so they hired your son. Then let him go! Hanifa liked him, and actually after they let him go they said maybe he took 20 dollars from Israel’s pocket, but Hanifa said Israel has more than one coat that’s identical and she thinks that he simply changed coats, okay? We never believed that for a second. I never said it to Sorin; it would have hurt his feelings! He was already gone from the job, anyway. It was awful.
I was sort of a fond of them, you know, and Sheila was a little shallow but, you know, you could get used to her. She couldn’t have a baby, and by now she was too old anyway. It’s all sad, but you know, you don’t have to take it out on the people that work for you!
Well, Hanifa started missing work and they would say very unkind things about her. Oh, they’d say, “All these young black girls just have babies with no man!” this and that; and, honestly, Hanifa was not only in touch with the baby’s father and the kid was already four and they were really being terrible responsible about the baby and she was in college, which was another reason she couldn’t always work. Why sometimes I’d help her write her papers, and she didn’t have a car and she lived in Newark so she was getting around by bus. She is a kid with her belly button showing, you know, like all the stuff my daughter wears!
But what ultimately happened was she was out for a couple of weeks, right after Christmas, when I came in with Christmas cards and a present for her child!--It’s amazing! I actually got these cheap Africans to give me a 50 dollar check that said Merry Christmas on it; and they were not planning that at all! [Laughs.] I embarrassed them by giving them the cards and wishes!
But meanwhile Hanifa was out. Right after New Year’s I was there for a day when she was out and the two of them, Sheila and Israel, they just started saying terrible things! They said, “How could she be out ten days for her daughter because of a kidney problem?” Because a big basketball player, Alonzo Mourning, had gotten a transplant and he was home in four days. It was in the news. And about how they hate American blacks and they were asking me to find someone else.
And here I am trying to work and getting a stomach ache. They went on and on that the blacks are all lazy and miserable and they don’t know how to work and, you know, all they do is drugs and sex, the usual, you know. If you could imagine, I’m trapped there because I’m working! And what’s even worse, I like Hanifa, you know! I couldn’t listen to this drivel! Oh, my gosh, anyway, here we are and they are asking me to find them a white person to hire. And needless to say I don’t believe in this nonsense. This is like fifty years ago! But I’m trapped here in this little room, I’m working and I have a stomach ache and a headache!
So, before I go home I call Hanifa and tell her parts of what they say. I really left out the racist stuff, ‘cause I figured Hanifa was hurt enough that they thought she was lying about her daughter, so SHE got upset and she called Sheila and cried to her and then Sheila called ME and yelled at me, “How could you talk to Hanifa? Why did you do that for? You shouldn’t have said anything!” And I was only talking about the child and sickness and being out part! So when I came in that Monday, they were waiting for me, and then Israel says to me, “You are disengaged,” right? Disengaged! It was hopeless.
So, Hanifa was there trying to work, the two of them towered over her while I’m clearing out my desk, Israel yelling at me. “You’ve betrayed us! If we see you on the street we’ll cross on the other side and never talk to you!” and Sheila said that I was trying to steal her husband ‘cause I talked to him the day before when she was out.
Israel kept his mouth shut, ‘cause she runs the show anyway. I just talked about his food and health and suggested, you know, that he take a walk, you know, not even with me! Though I think I said, “Well, let’s walk around the block together. What are you afraid of?”
He’s afraid ‘cause it’s a foreign country to them! Anyway, she yelled at me and it was too hard for me to talk, so I took my stuff and I left and they didn’t pay me for the work I did at home, for the three hours. They said they didn’t ask me to do it. So… They said they’d come after me for the taxes for the past year, but they never did!
Hanifa only worked another day or two that week and, we were talking on the phone, she told me she couldn’t stand them anymore, ‘cause of the way they talked to me. It really hurt her, ‘cause I was her big old friend, you know, in the office and otherwise there were no windows in that room, you saw that room, and she mailed the key back!
I had just never seen two people carrying on about poor Hanifa, this and that! You know, you don’t pay me enough to hear this! I knew Hanifa had a soft spot for them, but I wanted, you know… It was none of my business, but I really felt that I had a responsibility to tell Hanifa that these people had a terribly low opinion of her! And that’s what I did! And the next thing they’re firing me and then she refused to go back, so that was that!
I see the mailman sometimes in Bloomfield, he says, “Yeah, they got someone else in there.” So... [Laughs.] That was that.
[Blackout.]

 
 
Well, here you have it: If you’d like to throw a bit of money my way to keep my endeavors going, and also enable me to spread the money to my various causes, witnessing democracy, freedom of speech and faith, and engineering social change thru art being some of them, I’d be grateful.

New York
October 24, 2013

Experiences of the Milky Way, Born-Again Christians, Indian Princesses, and Peacocks

I've written this text in 2003. I was reminded of it last night as I watched a documentary about African people.

[CLAUDIA, a petite Kenyan woman with funky, ‘tossed-salad’ hairdo sorts through several plastic bags containing children clothing donations. Her voice is mellifluous.]

1. Show Me a Way Out!

I’ll tell you, this! I’ll tell you this! That God’s love has followed me all my life in the most awful situations, even in the darkness of my life God has always followed me. Right! He was always there, whether or not I felt it, it was something different, but I tell you the first time my eyes really opened and I knew that there must be a God who is pursuing me, and that’s what I really believe, I really believe that God pursues us, okay? Is like it says in the Bible, you draw near Him and He’ll draw near to you, okay? First, you have to have that disposition of the heart, that’s my point. I just told you earlier on how, you know, I came here from Africa and I was pregnant with my second child, I was alone, I was going through a very, very hard time, I didn’t have any money, I didn’t have any job, it was just horrible, horrible time, and it was such a horrible time, that I actually considered giving up my child for adoption, because I didn’t know how else to take care of him and I could not go back to the relationship that I had before, it was not an option, so I was in a situation where I could not have that child, I didn’t have the emotional energy, the spiritual willingness, I didn’t have the financial, I didn’t even have a place to live, I told you I was living with people, moving from one place to another, so one day, [Beat.] still he wasn’t born, I had decided with the hospital staff that after he’s born, they gonna take him away, and just take him away because I didn’t need to see him, because I was gonna give him up. Everything had been prepared, all the documents were signed, and the people from the agency were gonna come and take him, so the Sunday that I was gonna be discharged from the hospital, I had never seen him. He was born two days before, I had not seen him, there was no need to see him, because he was going to be given up for adoption, and the people from the agency came to take him and I packed up my bags to leave and to go home. Then, inside my heart, I had a desperate need to see him for the last time, actually the first time, because I never seen him, I said to myself, Look, I will never see him again, let me at least see his face for the first time, for the last time, and then say goodbye; so I went up to the nursery where all the other babies were and there he was, and then, you know, say goodbye, so I went there, and as I was walking towards him, the first thing that came to my mind,--because it was time for feeding so all the mothers were there, nursing their babies,--the first thing that hit my heart and I felt my heart break was the fact that mine was the only child that was not being nursed by his mother. Every other baby that was born in the last two days had his mother nursing them and they were in the mother’s room and only my child was in the nursery by himself, because there was no mother to nurse him, so I walked into the nursery alone to say goodbye to my child who was alone because all the other children were with their mothers, and as I sat there to look at him and to hold him and somebody who… He will never know me! He will never know me, because I’m about to walk out the door and leave him, and I said, Oh, my God! How can I do this? But what else can I do? What choice do I have? And my heart broke and I fell on the floor and I was crying and I wasn’t even praying because there was no prayer, there was no strength in my heart, my heart broke, but the Holy Spirit knows what we feel and He intercedes on our behalf, even when we do not know how to pray, He prays because I know I was on my knees crying because I didn’t know what to do, it was very distracting, but what happened was that I sat there on my knees and I cried like I never cried before. The lady from the agency came and she said to me, It’s time to take him [Beat.] away. It’s time for you to go! [Beat.] So I held that child in my arms and I said to God, God, if You can show me what to do, I will keep my child, if You will help me raise him and show me how to do and give me a way to keep him, I will keep him and I will dedicate my life to You. ‘Cause I thought it was so impossible, how was I gonna do it? How was I gonna do it? I didn’t have anything! I didn’t even have a diaper! I didn’t even have a dollar in the bank account to buy a diaper! So I said to Him, Lord, I don’t wanna do this, this is my child, and if You show me how to just keep him, how to raise him, I will turn my life to You. And the lady who came to take him, who was from the adoption agency who saw me when I was on my knees, I was holding him and crying, and she shut the door and said to me, Listen, I’m not supposed to do this, if they found out that I’m doing this, I will get into a lot of trouble, they would fire me, but I have seen you and I can see how your heart is breaking and I know that if you leave this child here your life will never be again the same, so I’m going to say this to you: if you want, you can come and stay with me. I will give you two months of my life, you come and stay with me and figure out what to do and you will not have to pay for anything, I will buy everything that you need, you just come and rest for awhile, and—she’s not a Christian, actually, she was actually recovering from a thirteen year drug addiction, she didn’t even know Christ, but God uses whoever he wants to, He doesn’t need you to be a Christian.--And she said, Don’t tell anybody and if you want you can move in tonight, you can take your baby and you can move in tonight!
You tell me if ever I doubted God’s provision, God’s love, you tell me what that was! You tell me what that was?! If that was not God directly answering a prayer. That night I moved into her house with my child, she bought a crib, she had gone to K-Mart, she bought clothes, she bought diapers, she bought Baby Formula, she bought baby food, she bought everything that I needed, even a crib, to sleep on and I stayed with her for the next 2 months while I rested, 'cause I needed to rest. I was physically tired and I rested and I made arrangements to come to New Jersey and live with some people that I knew here. So… That has definitely been the most dramatic ways in which God has shown Himself. And every time I’m in a situation that causes me to doubt a little bit, God reminds me, Are you forgetting three years ago? In the hospital nursery what happen? Are you forgetting that? And then I have to remind myself, Don’t be silly, woman, look how far God has brought you. How can you doubt that He will put food on your table, or that He will find you a place to stay and how can you doubt that He will take care of this little need? Look at where you were! Even if you came to America pregnant and alone.--I came to this country with 600 dollars in my pocket, that is all I had.--So, God’ faithfulness I had never questioned. God’s provision, never for one minute!

2. Dear-God Letters

I always wanted to be a writer but I didn’t have the knowledge to write, but what I did by myself, in my own personal time, I wrote Dear-God letters. Every night I wrote Dear-God letters. Put them in an envelope, I sealed them and I put them away. Two weeks ago I was opening up all my old letters, all my Dear-God letters, three years ago, two years ago, reading them, I came across this one letter that I had written October 21^st, 2000, that was a few months after my child was born, and a few months after I moved to New Jersey, and I was praying in that letter, Oh, God, I’m so desperate, I don’t know what to do. I miss my son,--my oldest son whom I haven’t seen for two years or something, 'cause I had left him back home hoping that things will get better and then send for him,--don’t know what to do, Lord, my child, he stopped asking me when he’s gonna come, Mommy when am I gonna come? He must think that I’m lying to him or that I don’t want him anymore because I always tell him, Soon! Soon! but soon never comes so I don’t even know if he’s loving me. My heart is breaking because I want him to come here with me, Lord, I don’t have enough money, how am I gonna take care of two children?! But despite all these things, I know, Lord, and I’m believing that one of these days my oldest son Paul will come here and that You will open the door and he will join me and everything will be okay and I will have a job, a good job to take care of them and not only that, Lord, I’m trusting that You’ll find me a good place to live and I said, I like Montclair, I’d like to live in Montclair [Laughter.] I would like to live in Montclair, I’ve been driving around the neighborhoods in New Jersey and I like Montclair, Lord, I’d like to live there. Won’t you, please, find me a place to stay in Montclair? [Laughter.] And Lord, if I am at it, just stretch it a little more, something else too: I don’t just want that, because after all You’re not just My Father, You’re the Almighty King of the Universe, You created everything that we see with our naked eye belongs to You, so I’m not gonna ask You for the least, I’m gonna ask You for the most, so I don’t want just that, I want more, I want my son to come here, I want a good job with benefits, and I wanna be able to live in a nice place, and I like Montclair, so could you find me a place to live in Montclair? Also, while you’re working at that, [Laughter.] I need a good car so that I can drive my children up and down, because we can not always be taking the bus in the snow and the winters are harsh, and the baby is little and I have to bundle him like seven layers of clothes before we can go to the park! So you need to find me a good car, God, that works and I can travel around, different places? And I prayed for the car and guess what? I didn’t stop there, and I said, And I want a good man! I want a Christian man and you know how I know he’ll be a good man, Lord? Because he would love my children as if they were his own and he would not judge me for whatever mistakes that I made before, he will take me as I am and he will love me and my children and we shall be a family. That’s what I want.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand! It is now June 8^th 2003 and I’m happy to report that every one of those things that I cried out to God for, each single one of them even the, not just the apartment in Montclair, the house in Montclair, He wrapped it up in a wonderful gift box and a ribbon and gave it to me. And the man is wonderful. Sometimes I say to him, Are you sure you don’t want to leave? [Laughter.] I had said to him, you know, you could,-- ‘cause sometimes God’s goodness is so overwhelming, sometimes even I’m afraid, I’m like, Whyyyyy? I forget that I’m the one that I’ve asked God to give me this and then when God gives me, I’m so overwhelmed that I’m like Oh, my goodness! And I say to my man, You can have any wonderful girl, single girl with no children, no burdens, you don’t feel… He says, I don’t have to be where I don’t want to be, I’m here because I want to be here. I’m free to do what I want, and I want to be here. So again I go back to God, never shift the focus from God to the person or the situation and say, Oh, this is so wonderful! No, God is so wonderful, 'cause He is the one who so richly provided everything that He has given you, everything that we have, everything that we are, are God’s gift to us.
He is so wonderful.

3. The God Of Bouncing Checks

I don’t know how other people pray, but I’m a very demanding person.
When God allows you to go through a hard time, you think it’s getting even worse, because sometimes you can’t bear it anymore and you think, Oh, Lord, what are You doing? Can’t You see? Can’t You see I have no money? Even to feed the children, can’t You see? But He can see! He needs for you to see, how can I say… I guess He just needs you to trust Him to a point where He can trust you with the things that He’s gonna give you, or the experience He’s gonna share with you, whatever it is. I think sometimes we are too self-centered. We focus very much on the problem or whatever it is we’re going through, it could never, ever, ever! compared with what Christ went through for us on the cross! [Beat.]
I fight with God! I do! I sit and talk to Him as if He was right here with me and I tell Him, Look! God, I will not allow You not to do this or whatever, I fight with Him a lot and I tell Him, God, my bank account is, is over drafted, what You gonna do about it? What You expect me to? And I tell Him, These children are Your children! Why have You given them to me? What are You thinking about that? There is no food in the fridge!--I make it very personal.--I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna accept this God! I don’t know what are You trying to show me, but I need some food in the fridge, can You make available some food in the fridge right now? I don’t want; I don’t want to deal with this! I don’t!
I give you an example: three weeks ago, or four weeks ago, I was so financially struck, I had no money and I had written checks I knew they gonna bounce, I knew they gonna bounce! But I knew! I knew! Because if I didn’t write them at that time, because I was gonna see the doctor and if I didn’t write the check, the doctor wouldn’t see me. But I didn’t have any money, but I said to myself, okay, I’ll write the check and then I’ll figure out how the money is gonna get into the bank account, but for now I’ll just write the check so that I can see the doctor. So I wrote checks and there was no money, and I knew they gonna bounce, I knew, so now, when Monday came, 'cause this was the week before, so Monday came and I said, Oh, my goodness what am I gonna do? Let me call the bank manager, let me talk to her, maybe she will let these checks pass if I tell her that I’m paid on Thursday so she can take the money right back. I call the bank manager, she said, No, we can’t do that. So when she said no, I went to the ladies’ room, in the bathroom and I said, God, Lord, You are not gonna leave me on my own! Every one of those checks that I wrote, I wrote them because there was need. I didn’t write them to go shopping, to buy shoes or clothes or make-up or anything silly. I bought beds,--that was when I was moving to Montclair,--I bought beds for my children to sleep on; I bought food for them to eat; I went to see the doctor and I paid the doctor’s fees; there was real need! And I don’t know what You gonna do Lord, but You gonna fix this problem, You have to! Because I need the money and these are Your children and You gave them to me, so You figure out how You gonna, You can’t leave me on my own! And if You gonna tell me in the Bible to be anxious over nothing but thanksgiving and whatever, make your requests known to God, I’m making these requests known to You! So You better fix it! Because if You don’t fix it, how You gonna tell me not to be anxious, or not to worry, if I come to You, and You don’t fix it? So You better fix it! And I don’t know, I don’t care! But I’m not gonna think about it because I can’t fix it, so You fix it!
And I dried my tears and I went back to work.
And I said to myself, I’m gonna go to the bank and I’m gonna see the bank manager, she wouldn’t talk to me on the phone, I’m gonna see her! Maybe she sees my face and I sit down and I try to reason with her, and maybe she’ll have a heart, so at lunch time I go to the bank, and I sit down and I talk to the lady and she said, You know what? That’s not my department, let me refer you to my boss. So she refers me to her boss and I go and see the operational manager and she sits and she tells me, You know, Claudia, we can’t do that, we can’t let your checks go through, that’s not the bank policy, but you know what? Hold on, one second, there might me something I might be able to do, hold on one second, just let me figure out, just hold on one second. Sit right here and I’ll be back. She goes, she does and she’s busy, she’s busy, she comes back, she says Okay, I have a solution: the bank is gonna give you a permanent overdraft line of credit,--so much money, she tells me,--so from now on, even if you overdraw your account, we gonna give you an overdraft facility protection of so much money, so you never have to worry about overwriting your account ‘cause the bank will pay for you and then when you get paid, you just put it right back, but we’ll charge you interest for it.
So not only did He sort out those checks but it has been helping me even till now, because even now the overdraft facility is permanent, so even if in future I ever overwrite my account, so God not only took care of that need for those checks, but He saw that this might happen again, or whatever, I don’t know, but it is a solution that He has provided in a most unexpected way that I was not expecting for Him to. I was only asking for the bank to allow $80 and they gave me hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dollars in overdraft protection. So, who says God is not interested in every detail?
The way I pray, the way I talk to God, I’m very specific with Him. I tell Him, Lord, this is what I want, not blue, not green, orange, you know? Other people say, Oh, Lord, whatever you want. I say that too, but I also say, I want him to be six foot two inches, I want him to be like this, but it’s oooookaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay! if Your will, but I would prefer, you know, but whatever You want, but I would prefer, and I tell Him my preferences.
I tell you what: there are times that I thought, my goodness, I prayed for so long, God doesn’t listen to me anymore, but God is never late. He is never early, but He is never late, He’s always on time, so when His timing is right, He will give you your heart’s desire, but you first must look to Him, you must first… I guess He wants us first to need Him for Himself, not for the things that He can give us, this has been my experience. So.

 
 
Well, here you have it: If you’d like to throw a bit of money my way to keep my endeavors going, and also enable me to spread the money to my various causes, witnessing democracy, freedom of speech and faith, and engineering social change thru art being some of them, I’d be grateful.

New York
October 22, 2013

Bathroom Stories: Attending

Originally written on 10/02/2005 this piece is the transcript of a recording made during a stand-up comedy performance at Raw Meat, a show produced by Tamar Kummel.

I understand I'm supposed to entertain you with sad stories about immigrants, and the more miserable the story the more you laugh?! 

Well, when I go home with my boyfriend, on the M line, towards Ridgewood, my Eastern European enclave, my life doesn’t feel that miserable. Especially now after Katrina hit New Orleans. I went to graduate school there, then moved to New York City.

On the subway I look to the left, I look to the right, everywhere miserable Eastern European ladies with a smirk of superiority on their faces. Indignant hisses, “Oh, my God! Is he nibbling on her neck?! Look! Is he putting his hand between her thighs?! Why isn’t she like us, bedraggled, respectable, middle-age mothers, daughters of saintly mothers who under communism hauled shopping bags, stayed in line all day long for a chicken, a bottle of milk and three toilet paper rolls! We go home tired, make dinner for our grumpy Borises who ravish young girls behind our backs and we’re getting none! We sacrifice ourselves, wash old folks' behinds all day long, clean apartments and send money home. We didn’t come here to have a good time! We came here to sacrifice!”

Well then, sacrifice!

I have two graduate degrees, yet I work as a bathroom attendant at Copacabana, the famous night club, you know, like in the song, “Her name is Lola, she was a show girl… Music and passion were always in fashion at the Copa, Copa Cabana, the hottest bar in Havana…” Regrettably now has gone downhill. Still New Yorkers throw $50,000 private parties at Copa, as if even more lavish since Katrina. Bar mitzvahs, birthday parties, prom parties, engagement parties, employee-appreciation parties, divorce parties, Emmy Awards after-parties.

Yesterday we had seven-tier cascading chocolate fountains, think historical monument size, Fontana di Trevi if you please, a three-foot wide, infinitely-tiered, Empire Building birthday cake, a clown squad, and an amusement arcade for some kids who in the end ran around in socks on the huge dance floor chasing each other. The beaming parents and adult guests don’t tip in the bathroom. I froze for five hours, bathrooms at Copa are freezers, summer, winter, it doesn’t matter. The management couldn’t care less. I wear my winter clothes in the summer too. I bundle up with woolen shawls, Cossack fur caps and boots. Teeth chattering, I hand out paper towels. Patrons could get them from the wall dispenser, but my boss told me to show guests utmost consideration, thus deserving a tip.

In my four-stall bathroom, water springs from the tile floor. This is a world-renowned institution, but every night I have to fight with the kitchen boys over mops. The bathroom is a marsh. If I can’t get a mop, it’s a nightmare. Water bubbles up in the first stall, then spreads into the second, then reaches out to the third. I sweep it into the floor drain weep hole, dry the floor with paper towels galore, but I can’t keep up with the flooding. Patrons are insulted, thinking they step in urine not water, and so they don’t tip the lazy bathroom attendant.

In despair I give up. I sit on my chair and read Love and Longing in Bombay. I want to write a best-seller mystery book. If I do, I’m out of the bathroom. I’m on a mystery-research binge. I watch DVDs with Cadfel and Mrs. Bradley, Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Mrs. Jessica Fletcher, Inspector Morse and read Hannibal Lectern, Good Cop Bad Cop, and police blotters in the papers. On the subway I see suspects everywhere. A woman forcing a pacifier in a crying baby’s mouth is a kidnapper. A mousy accountant calculating on her phone, an undercover cop. The guy in shorts over there ogling a young blonde, a prowling sex offender.

But at work I can’t read for long. I have my merchandise displayed around the two sinks: bobby pins, scrunches, hair mousse spray, hand lotion, lipstick, mascara, candy, mints, slippers, tampons. If you want to borrow my hair spray, or need a safety pin, or a Band-Aid, place a dollar in my tip jar. Some find the $1 tip outrageous and haggle. "What? One dolla’? One dolla’ fo’ a lollipop? Gina, listen to dis: one dolla’ fo’ da lollipop! At da dolla’ store you get a bag o’ dem fo’ one dolla’!” “Honey,” you get away with a lot if you throw a honey in, “Honey, if you don’t like it, beat it. Get your lollipop at the dollar store, okay. It’s 2 a.m. and you’re at Copa.” Some slam the candy back in the basket, some belligerently hand in the dollar. Entitled skunks.

One self-righteous woman, after she realized she wouldn’t get my candy for free, moaned, “It’s not fair!” She took out her wad of hundreds and twenties. She said uppity, “Do you have change?” “Yes, honey, I have change.”

Some even steal. I sell plastic slippers for $5. By midnight glammed-up girls stagger into the bathroom, “Give me slippers! I can’t bear these high heels anymore! My feet are killing me.” and I sell my slippers. Last night a girl passed out in the stall and I had to go on the dance floor to get the bouncer. As I was walking out a woman asked me if I had slippers size 7. “Yes, just a minute.” I keep a stash of slippers under my chair, the popular sizes, 7, 8, 9. When I came back with the bouncer, I leaned under the chair to give the woman the slippers. The size 7 was gone! Only its empty plastic bag and a pair of broken high heels! I turned around and saw in the first stall two feet with my slippers on. When the woman came out, “Hey, where’s my money?! You took my slippers!” “I left you those in return!” “Are you kidding me?!” She ran before I could catch her. Thief. She didn’t come back, shook her bootie on the dance floor.

I have to work while people dance. Actually they don’t dance, they’re grinding all night long. The girl’s butt rubs up and down the guy’s crotch. I’m so disgusted when I crash to sleep that I tell my boyfriend to stop his sexual overtures. I slap his fingers when he tries to play radio buttons with my nipples. Then I get depressed that I can’t leave work at work. It’s not his fault that I’m sick of people. But how could I be otherwise? I watch them getting drunk, taking drugs, smoking cigarettes, weed, pouring chemicals in their bodies, having fun… Some fun. I’ll have fun if I get to write my mystery book. But I need a crime idea. I have no experience with crime.

Have you stolen a cell phone? Or not returned the ones you found?

Well, they always forget their cell phones in the bathroom, being drunk. Some look for them in despair, some don’t. At the beginning I’d make sure they got their phones back. I had one stolen myself and I’d lost several, so I’d sympathize. I’d call them, go out of my way to deliver their devices, but after awhile, since the dames wouldn’t offer a coffee or a tip, when I found a phone in the stall I put it in my bag and ran with it to the kitchen. I looked at its pictures. It was a camera phone like the one a padlock peddler had stolen from me while I was working as a bar tender at a watering hole in Ridgewood. I was perusing his merchandise while he vanished my phone. After he left I realized he’d stolen it. I cried but the phone was gone. I paid a week’s wage for a new one, without a camera.

Anyway, I looked and I saw a bottle blonde with two fatso girls, then same blonde showing off her boobs, then her buttocks, various angles, then she with an equally naked booby girlfriend, then her happy guy, a fatso trucker, and more buttocks. This was not a bedraggled mom, gone on a night on the town for the first time in a year. I decided not to give her phone back, but sell it. I had to pay steep fees for my Romanian passport renewal at the embassy.

When desperate Booby came staggering to look for it I said, “I don’t know. I was on my coffee break. Check the stalls.” I was glad I’d turned off her phone, in case someone called her number.

For a few days we laughed at her porn with my boyfriend, but then we realized we couldn’t sell it, didn’t have the criminal connections, the device was worthless, and it just got forgotten in a corner. At times I wanted to call Booby, return her phone, but I was ashamed. Might be crime isn’t in my nature. I’ll never write a crime novel...

Now I give lost phones back. Still, they don’t tip.

Anyway, by the end of the night I’m to deal with more drunk women vomiting on the floor, spilling their beer cups around, and still no mop. If I tell the floor managers—assorted distraught females who scurry about like under bombardment, as if they haven’t been doing this mighty strenuous floor management work since 1975!—they half listen to my complaining about the flooding and scarcity of mops, but don’t help me. Why should they? It’s Copa! We don’t need quality service. Revelers flock from all over the world, each night a new wave of suckers. We don’t need repeat customers.

A Polish friend, Milos the mechanic, calls to tell me his sorrows. His boss used to play the trombone. But once, tired after playing at a wedding, his trombone fell out of the back of his truck and another car ran over it. He opened an auto repair shop and hung his flattened trombone on the wall.

So now he sold an old car, promising he’d replace the engine. But he got carried away and sold the engine to another customer, telling the first one, “Oh, don't worry, Milos will get you another one.” How?! That car model was discontinued 20 years ago!

Milos lost many friends because of his boss' lies. The boss said, “This is how you sell in America.” Milos said, “At least I sell my expertise and time, but you sell lies.” His boss turned red as a brick.

I say quickly good-bye to Milos, hide my phone. My own boss, Miss Voica, another sour Eastern European, has descended upon me. Miss Voica, the sinful Copa’s bathroom chieftain is a dedicated church-goer. At closing time workers grab the costly flower decorations before they’re thrown to the garbage. We take them home. I always get Miss Voica a bouquet too, still she constantly plucks the best stems out of my own bouquet, for her church altar.

She’s a small woman, in her black and white uniform resembles a penguin, walks like one. She checks herself in the mirror, “I’m a slob! Look at all these rolls upon rolls of belly fat I’ve acquired since I came to America! I used to be like a stick! 60 kilos! Now I’m 99! They mess up the food with growth hormones. I read in Aura… excellent magazine! I started their diet yesterday. I ate only three apples. I feel so light. Today I can eat a bit of cheese. I had to start the diet all over again.”

Alas, I’ve heard her story of crushed hopes ten times already.

“Last Sunday I went to a birthday party, the priest’s little one turned five, and I ate fish. Look at all these layers of lard! Slob! Aura forbids coffee, but I can’t! I work twenty hours a day, I sleep only four.”

Greedy Miss Voica. During day she is a full-time accountant at a nursing home. Instead of letting others to work more, like myself, I need the money, she grabs the prime time slots, since she’s the boss.

Anyway, my tribulations compared to Katrina victims’ misery stories are nothing.

New York

October 11th, 2013