Six Naked Old Women on a Running Machine

A Scrambled Chronicle of my Family Bondage

I know  how people in my family grew up together as I watched them while imagining that all families are quite the same; though I didn’t have any idea how other families live and change in time as they expand or get smaller.

When I was little I used to think that my family was  going to live in the same house for ever. Grandpa owned at that time a two family house on 10th Street in Manhattan.

My grandparents lived on the ground floor; my parents, my sister and I lived on the second floor. When grandpa got older and paranoiac he began complaining of getting bitten by mosquitos, flies and bats at night. “How they dare, those spineless creatures with a brain smaller than the tip of a pin, to zero in one of my pores and suck my blood?”

He thought that by moving to the second floor would be better. As grandpa and grandma moved for a short while to live upstairs grandpa realized that mosquitos could fly high enough to reach the second floor. He began using a lollipop that he’d lick and leave on the night table to catch the tiny invaders.

The house had also a basement on which we stored junk. There was a billiard table there, a tennis table and some musical instruments that nobody learned ever to play except my sister Heather that at a very small age was called “the family virtuoso”.

My gran-grandparents from mom’s side were still alive then and lived in Los Pessos. I remember the deserted town that at midday seemed endless. I used to see all the time a few donkeys galloping away on the dusty roads whenever they saw coyotes approaching.

Definitely, when I was a child there were things that I didn’t know or understand. Like for instance why my grand-grandpa was mean and tempered. He’d give me to eat bitter apples to see me getting hook-nosed. He almost threw me out of the house when I called him “an old wrench”.

He was as bad as a rabid mule. Don’t get discouraged because of these unflattering remarks. My family was an honorable family claiming on official documents “respectable roots that originated on 1765, when the first Irish families got deported to the New Land. Those roots were pure Irish, with no recorded mixed blood until 1901 when an Irish woman from the clan married a Hollandaise merchant named Van Dam.

Those roots had nothing to do with Los Pessos. My grand-grandparents bought a house there during the depression.  Grand-grandpa joked that the price of the house was at those times on a par with a good bottle of whiskey price.

The house was sited next to a pub. At night you could see dozen of cowboys cleaning their throat with cold beer stirred together with tequila shots.

Sometimes before I went to sleep I could see a beautiful woman that grand-grandpa would call “the Blond Harlot” getting in and out of the pub. Most of the time she was dressed in black, with a low cut silk blouse and a short skirt - so short that I could see her panties - and wearing high hills shoes that made her look like she was stepping on hot coals.

The warm breeze in the evening made me feel better than the midday hot wind. Then the warm breeze faded away to get replaced by a sandy wind. Within minutes the town got deserted. It was like the whole thing that used to move around would retire to rest. No more voices or laughs or curses: lights of the pub and houses around would gently go to sleep under blinds and rags.

I forgot to tell you that the reason mom would bring me there to live with my grand-grandparents for a month or so was to learn Spanish: “Not many people on Earth are lucky to have grand-grandparents” she’d say. ”Also your grand-grandpa saw plenty of gallant happenings in his life and knew how to steer clear of danger. He could tell you interesting stories. People that are ninety years old know two times more stories than people that are forty five years old”.  

Very soon as I got there I realized that grand-grandpa had an advanced rheumatoid arthritis. He could barely walk ten steps using his silver cane he bought from Britain in 1930. The housekeeper would clean it every day to keep it shiny. The handgrip was emblazoned with a crown encircling an airplane. “I was born a pilot” he’d say. “I’m now a relic emblazoned on this cane”.

Whenever a talked to him about my life he’d laugh at everything I said and stroke gently my shoulder with his cane. As I grew up mom used to show me the pictures she took of me at that small age – I was probably four years old – until she’d get to show me the last album photo of my grand-grandparents when she’d always keep a minute of silence contemplating the void.

My grand-grandparents had in their house a servant they brought long time before from Mexico. Her name was Freda. She had a big overflowing breast. Before she would put me to bed she’d take me in her arms and set my nose between her tits. I’ll take a plunge there and get asleep very fast against my will. She smelled always like cayenne pepper mixed with basil.

When I was fifteen, dad used to tease me by showing me the picture in which Freda was holding my head between her tits: “For sure, you’d love to rest your nose between Freda’s tits now that some desires woke up in your body. Or maybe I am wrong! Are you just dozing when you waste twenty minutes in the bathroom?”

I wouldn’t say a thing when dad made such remarks. I would just blush and feel a thin layer of sweat breaking out on my forehead.

What I didn’t like when I stayed at grand-grandparents’ house was that Freda used to cover my bed with a plastic foil. It was kind of uncomfortable. If I woke up during the night that plastic sheet would spoil my sleep. If I cried she’d tell me that I’d better sleep on it or she’d move me to sleep with Kirby, which was the old dog living with us.

Kirby must have been one hundred years old; she was so old that she used to eat everything from the garbage container like cabbage and jelly paper and chocolate pudding mixed with potato skin.

I remember her yawning the whole day. She would come to sniff at my food and lick it. Sometimes when she went to take a nap behind the house in the courtyard an old coyote would show up and sleep by her. Grand-grandpa would say that the coyote was not driven by hunger but by his love for Kirby. He knew that the coyote would come around so he’d leave a bowl of macaroni and cheese around.

“Dogs are coyotes the same way chickens are turkeys”, grand-grandpa would explain.

I cannot remember the first time I had this thought that families evolve as a living organism in a space of their own. Some new people come in, being welcome or not, others die or leave the family unexpectedly and forever, like Aunt Emily that divorced Uncle Bill and never came to see us again.

Nobody saw it happen, though, as mom explained, Uncle Bill was pure Irish while Aunt Emily had Italian ancestors. “Though nowadays to be married to an Italian woman is not relevant”, she used to say.

I remember when Aunt Emily talked to mom about a silly contest for all to see like “who was holding a Gucci bag on her shoulder in the most elegant way”. “Of course, if you have to be a good actress you should know how to carry a bag”, mom would retort, agitated a little bit and flushed.

Uncle Bill told us long time ago that Aunt Emily wanted to go to Hollywood and become an actress. Obviously, mom didn’t forget it.  

”I used to let Aunt Emily read my homework. One of my compositions that she liked most was the one I wrote when I was in the second grade: “Most of the dogs are kind. They have big ears and big noses. When I walk on the sidewalk I try not to concentrate on their noses. I have to remember that barking is not made for a nose to look at”. Aunt Emily liked that. She said that it didn’t make sense and that was why she liked it.

“At this moment in life” the composition went on, “I feel discouraged about my lack of ability to have a dog friend. I mean a dog like Kirby was, to sleep in my bedroom next to my bed and chew my shoes…” “You are a genius”, Aunt Emily told me after reading it.

She also told me one day that it is not interesting to be a good boy and that I should rush to become a man: “Try to be a man after you finish your homework. Thinking like a man sets you free from being a boy”. Mom called her “the weird Auntie”.

I remember when she came to see us at Christmas time; she’d sit next to Uncle Bill and defend him when grandpa would call him names like “philander to the marrow” or “man in a blushing suit”.

Then one day Uncle Bill crossed the line with our neighbor’s wife. Mom saw him sneaking out from the neighbor’s house. Aunt would never find out a thing if mom would not have told her. “What do you get from telling me that?” Aunt Emily asked mom. I heard Aunt Emily crying. It kind of made me feel uneasy. Naturally I’d have not betrayed Uncle Bill.

Why people betray each other? The truth is that mom never liked Aunt Emily. She was too beautiful and a little narcissistic. Also one could smell her refined perfume all over the place when she came for a visit. Mom pretended to be allergic to it. She wanted to get rid of her.

Uncle never fathomed the “stinky link” between mom and Aunt Emily. He thought that mom and Aunt Emily have lot of things in common. “Like what?” dad would ask. “Like going to see the same gynecologist” Uncle Bill would respond. I didn’t know what a gynecologist is at those times. I thought that a doctor would always prescribed drops to build up the immune system.   

After Aunt Emily left, Uncle Bill didn’t feel well for weeks. “He has a broken heart”, grandma would say. One could tell it by looking at Uncle’s graying hair. Also he began complaining of excruciating migraines and insomnia. “Especially when the weather changed abruptly from hot to cool he’d remember how Aunt Emily used to cover his feet before going to sleep and how she’d read him short paragraphs from a Faulkner story to put him to sleep.

When Aunt left Uncle Bill’s house she forgot one of her suitcases behind. Uncle Bill emptied it and pinned on his bedroom walls her intimate stuff. For months he couldn’t bear to think that his marriage was over until one day when he gathered together her stuff and burned it on the backyard. Then he searched the drawers for her documents and other papers belonging to her including her tax returns and burned them also. He kept one of her picture though, from their honeymoon, taken on the terrace of the Holiday Inn hotel in Kansas City. She looks a little bit drunk in it and displays that “idiotic smile” that she used to complain about: “Whenever I drink I cannot exhibit my best smile. We went through two rehearsals and yet…”    

For a while we all thought that Aunt Emily would eventually come back to get her stuff. The neighbor stayed married and looked always happy though he must have heard about the scandal. Some men like to know that their wife got pleasure in bed from another man. It helps their piece of equipment get up. I knew a woman that confessed to me that her husband would have liked if she was a hooker. It is not simple stuff to be a hooker. Life is not as simple as it looks. It’s like an actress repeating the same roll in a play with different partners that she meets in a hotel lobby. And that’s sure enough not all that a hooker is.

Anyway, shot time after that Uncle Bill grew visibly older. The cause, Uncle Bill would say, was that he didn’t eat any more rich dinners like those cooked by Aunt Emily and that he lost his appetite for beefsteaks.

I remember those times when Aunt Emily would prepare for me “Two duck eggs and apples…” for breakfast. That was Aunt Emily’s preferred meal. Same menu for the dinner… Everybody missed that.

In the midst of his suffering from being single Uncle Bill met Ann-Marie Bancroft, a woman that mom thought was dealing illegally in gold and diamonds. Nobody was welcomed in Ann-Marie store without appointment. It was like you had to have a pass. I was never allowed to get in. Uncle got from her as a birthday present a huge diamond bracelet, a necklet and a Rose Gold Bracelet Watch. He didn’t like to wear them. He hanged them on the wall in front of his desk and let them gather dust.

Ann-Marie’s voice was like a cat whine, as she was raising her voice after each sentence and rotating her eyes like a thief caught lying while being quizzed. Uncle was always amused by her furtive manners. Mom was not invidious of her. Ann-Marie wasn’t beautiful and her attires looked like dust cloth. I remember Uncle’s Bill mom and dad. They lived most of the time in their swimming pool or clothed in their bathrobes. That is the only recollection that comes back to my memory right away.

I don’t remember mom’s folks except her grandparents from Los Pessos. Her mom and dad died in a car accident before I was three years old. Mom kept showing me the small guitar they bought for me when I was two. The guitar was still hanging on in the basement when I went to college.

Every year we’d go to visit their grave in a cemetery in Queens. Mom would ask me to do her a favor and go with her there. She’d go down on her knees, whisper a prayer and make a cross sign before depositing a small basket filled with roses on their grave.

Dad never came with us there. He always wanted to stay cheerful. It’s that those that live that count, he’d say. It is though clear in my memory the day when the ruined car was toiled and left to rust in our backyard until the day when it was brought to the repair shop and got fixed. Dad still drove it for a while

I remember thinking one day that dad was kind of heartless. He was slow to respond to other people needs; he kept his privacy by being very quiet and withdrawn. Also he was slim and had this mania not to eat bread or sweet stuff. When we went to vacation he’d sleep on a lounger most of the day. You had to pinch him to wake him up for dinner.

Dad thought that I resembled mom. He wanted to imply that I was weak and sentimental. No doubt about it. For people that didn’t know me I looked perfectly all right. In reality I was supersensitive and had to pretend mot to listen to hostilities and barking and treat unfriendliness with indifference. There were so many times when I felt that I had it. I’d ask myself to wait another year for some miraculous opening in my tedious life.

If I look at my whole family and see them marching like shadows and then if I look at myself and see how shockingly old I am, old and tired, that I am almost at the point at which Iexhausted what I wanted in order to please my living - I ask myself what were those real events that gave me the energy to go on, to look forward and live another year crowned with empty hopes, wishes and expectations?

When I was in the elementary school I wanted to be a hero. In the middle school I wanted to be a tenor and sing at the Metropolitan opera. In College I wanted to be a famous baseball player. I wandered how was possible that other people could be all of that in a natural way; it seemed to me like they didn’t make any effort to get there.

I wish the past would come back to me to get another chance to become what desired to be most. To get back to those years when I used to get dressed in a school uniform on which mom embroidered my name with a silver thread… It caused so much envy and jealousy and hatred that mom decided to remove it from my uniform.

It seems that everything special that happened in my life was accompanied by envy, that my success got complemented by jealousy and bitterness. Though the jealousy would do nothing to harm my determination to do my best, I never fought to get hold of my achievements. In my eyes I remained always as good as anybody else.

For my good grades mom would give me a surprise present. After my high school graduation for instance we went to a safari. I remember that when we landed on the gleaming grassland what I spotted first was the huge pine forest described in the travel guide. The trees looked like pines though their leaves-needles were ending in a yellowish flower. The landscape was striking. Also what looked like a grass was flowery, covered here and there with pink vines. If you closed your eyes like squinting the ground looked like a dream-painting.

Dad was driving around in his prudent way while mom would scream when she saw a giraffe or a rhinoceros moving towards our car. Then when we got back to the safari base we saw the caged big birds. They were flying away from us and landing on the top of the exotic dwarf trees.

I remember that I liked that trip but also that I had some moments of confusion. They were short; let’s say a couple of minute short and repeating two or more times every day. As with any other things in life, I tried to adjust to them the best I could and control my fear. I felt that my life would roll forward slowly than usual waiting for those weird moments to come back. I didn’t have any idea how I could resolve those moments, to clean up myself of malaise.

Mom would say that I think too much. Kind of strange… I would follow mom and dad in their exploration and all of a sudden I’d feel sort of fear and anxiety popping up into my head. I knew that mom and dad’s love for me would detect whatever bed thoughts or ghosts moved around me and help me resolve them.

Last night I woke up before midnight with the thought that I didn’t understand where I was. People from my dream were telling me stuff that seemed strange like “the line of thinking is as thin as a tear”. I decided to stop asking what was that, what they meant, etc. One of those people stole my watch. In the dream thoughts like “that belongs to me”, “that is mine” seemed strange. Then another thought popped up: “If you hear somebody telling you stories about flowers and feelings you’d better ask them to sing a song for you”. 

My dad’s advice was very dry: “You need help” he would say. “You need somebody that knows how to deal with children’s minds that go astray”. I’d talk to my sister about that and she’d ask me to get deeper into what I was saying. What I felt was that I couldn’t get anywhere deeper. I understood that she couldn’t know what those feelings were. She gave me an advice that I will never forget: “Let it be. Don’t fight it. After a while your mind will clear by itself”.

Easy for her to say: her mind was clear like crystal and her reasoning was sharp like a diamond edge. I didn’t envy her. She was so healthy and wholesome. If we watched a boring TV movie I could hear her breath getting slower and monotonous as she fell asleep. I used to get restless waiting for the movie to get better. She also had a phenomenal will and energy to do absurd stuff like learning to play piano. Two hours per day of piano instruction would put even a boxer to sleep. Then she’d spend another hour doing work outs at the gym. I mean this effort of her was really strange, stranger than my malaise.

But also she was a good sister and watch over me all the time. I couldn’t start smoking in high school like anybody else because she’d smell my mouth and threaten me that she’d inform mom and the school principal if she sniffed tobacco in my mouth.

There was in my class that boy Roqios, an Eskimo. He was always wearing heavy coats. His eyes were semicircular and closed upward. It made me doubt that he could see me clearly. He told me one day something funny about jazz music being “like rap music wrapped in wax paper”. We used to go together to the school cafeteria during the lunch break. He’d always eat smoked bacon and he’d crash ice cubes when he got thirsty. I refused politely to taste his bacon because I was afraid that Heather might take the smoked bacon smell for a cigar smoke.

I thought of my sister as my guardian angel not to mention that she was also my coach. I remember that I wrote a composition about her and our family for the English class. I called it “My family bondage”. I was watching my teacher’s expression while reading it. He looked like taken aback. He asked me to sit down and write it again under his eyes. “You’ll have to shake it a little bit” he told me, “the writing seems to be a little too mature for a boy your age”.

I couldn’t figure out what he wanted to say. “I hope when this lesson is over you‘ll be able to rewrite it in a more simple way. Life and family is also about childhood, about happiness, like a sigh of hope. Write something that comes right out of your heart”. I didn’t understand why the theme that he gave us “Write about your family”, was supposed to be about something else, like about happiness. He sounded like he wasn’t interested in my family.

When I got home my sis told me that my composition was too serious, and too dramatic, like a scientific essay meant to educate adults how to behave. “You should rearrange it and make it sound entertaining and humorous”. Sis used to read funny books like “The catcher in the Rye” and pass them to me. I couldn’t imitate it in my writing. The style was pretty funny but it had in my opinion too many repetitions and all.

I remember the day when I got back from the summer camp and mom discovered that I have been infected with lice.

I went to the bathroom with sis who stood on top of my head and cleansed it of lice. Two hours of work. I loved her patience. Also sis would give me money from her alimony. Grandma used to say that “money doesn’t buy you happiness”. My sis would give me money and say “buy for you some happiness”.

What I didn’t like at sis was that creepy idea of hers that she’d never want to get married. The marriage was for her like wearing a nun uniform to hide her woman condition. I think I heard her saying just that much about marriage. Anyway that was my sister and I loved her.

Getting back to my unresolved state of mind: I couldn’t fake my appearance, like showing that everything was ok when it wasn’t. My sister couldn’t see anything wrong with me. She would give me the same advice that “I should try to straighten out my mind by been less creative. Your imagination goes too far. Try to control it. Let it go; don’t force it to drift in a direction that you want, like forcing yourself to get somewhere, because this is not a matter of thinking”.

My sister was so wise! She would have had, in my opinion, a better carrier as a psychologist; though she was also good – I heard - as a music teacher at Julliard. She liked to say that one day she’d be famous.

I never desired to be famous, not even wanting to know what fame was. Of course this is a blatant lie. My grandma had a way to put it: “If you don’t have any desire to achieve fame you’ll never get it. You have to get addicted to any desire, like wishing to get fame or get wealth in order to get it. It should be sown in your heart and your mind. Small-time fame, small-time fortune is better than one achieved one century after you’re gone. Think that you’re going to get it soon”. “If you want to be modest at least eat well. Eating well is a free-for-all ambition”. She’d always have those thoughts about food. She was such a vigorous woman, heavy like a little elephant, and yet full of life and happiness, and always in pursuit of “big food” ideas! I remember though that after she got a kidney failure she lost most of her weight. She’d look at her wedding picture and laugh: “One can get used to her weight easily. If you are heavy you don’t desire to take dancing lessons. If you are slim you could easily cry watching a vintage drama, like the one with Boggart Humphrey…”  

Her brother seemed to have been like her also. He was a pilot. Everybody seemed to have been pilot during the war. He wrote a small book called “Cooking for all ages”. If you visit the aeronautic museum and look at the framed portraits on the wall, grandma’s brother Mark is shown there smiling; he is positioned in the middle of the picture surrounded by other pilots. They are all smiling. You could read in their eyes so much intelligence, so much bravery. “He was a darling” grandma says.

On the wall above the table showing Mark’s personal effects, you could distinguish the two loudspeakers used on the airdrome during the war. No voices were ever recorded. Nowadays the wars are fancy, very well supplied with safety alarm bells and very well planned protocols. And still pilots could get into trouble. Airplanes still get knocked down. Mark wanted to fly among stars. He got what he wanted. There were hundred pilots when the war started. There was no statistics posted on the wall as the war ended. But you could feel the statistic numbers in your heart. If there were no published numbers the reason was not because of some decency. The photos were the only “statistical numbers” you got.

People look back at their happy moments when there is no more room left for happiness. What would be the memorable moments from the past without photos? As grandma and I passed the aligned photos she squeezed my hand when she said: “I got a copy of that photo. I keep it in the spinet little drawer. I cannot look at it every day. It makes me cry”.

Grandpa didn’t want to show any emotion when a discussion about Mark would take place. “I told him not to get enlisted. He didn’t get crippled. He just got thrashed with his plane and all. Wars treat humans as dust. There are already forty years and it seems like it happened yesterday. My dear Mark… When I think of him an image of a bird that lost its feathers hitting the sky comes into my mind…”

Before Mark went to war he left his sweetheart – Teresina – alone. She thought that a miracle could happen to see Mark coming back. She told Mark before leaving that the right time for a man to show responsibility was when he runs away from trouble before it is too late. But war meant always to throw men deep into trouble.

Sometimes grandma would cry and call his name. She told Teresina to run away from any remembrance and never look back. Teresina didn’t understand that. She was still talking about future as if Mark was alive and around. Why not? Demise doesn’t’ mean what it used to. It is the end to people that are prejudicial; the unkind people… “I come home and I feel that Mark is still there, with me…” Teresina used to say.

Grandma would say that the name Teresina reminds her always of raisins. All women in my family had unmanageable names: I am talking about grandma’s name – Eleanor (though grandpa would always call her Lilies), mom’s name - Bridget, my sister’s name – Harper Heather and also my wife’s name - Katherine. The only names that I liked were those of my aunt’s Emily, and my daughter’s Kitty.

The funny thing was that grandpa and dad had the same first name: George.  The other funny thing was that my grandma’s name Lilies came from grandma’s big boobs. My mom

Impressum

Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Texte: Boris Musteata, Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 05.05.2012
ISBN: 978-3-86479-646-3

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Widmung:
To my wife Weiyi Zeng