From the Outside in

Cheryl Comeau-Kirschner

Queens, New York, Late 70’s

“That’s about right,” her father muttered to himself as he crouched down to check the length of his burgundy suit pants in relation to his brown platform shoes. It was exceedingly important that he achieved a stature befitting the occasion.

“What’s right?” her mother paused on her way to get the hairbrush. “Yeah, it looks good, hon.”

This easy banter between her parents was sometimes puzzling to Emily, and she listened for clues as to why they spoke to each other more kindly at times like these.  She was snuggled up in the tan and mustard yellow bedspread just listening. Suddenly, Emily felt her mother tapping her shoulder with a rushed impatience. “The babysitter is on her way—off the bed!”

Emily’s intent to listen to the goings on around her had become white noise that lulled her to sleep, and when she groggily opened her eyes, she couldn’t help thinking that her mother looked unlike herself. It was apparent that her mother had exerted some effort to style her long brown hair into voluminous waves along with a heavy coating of mascara on her pale eyelashes and glossy lipstick to make her thin lips appear a little bit bigger. Her mother’s usual t-shirt and jeans were replaced with a flouncy blue dress that must have been uncomfortable because she kept adjusting various parts of it. She was wearing a gold necklace with a small diamond heart, and Emily wondered why she had never seen it in the jewelry box. On those many days that she entertained herself as an only child, Emily often dug around the jewelry box, layered all of her grandmother’s passed-down fancy costume earrings, necklaces, and bracelets, and posed in the long mirror to admire her own splendor as a costumed mini-version of her mother. 

“Did you hear me? Off the bed!”

Emily hopped down and ran into her father who was admiring himself in that same mirror. “Daddy, is your foot hurt?” she inquired and pointed at the shiny black cane with a silver tip.

“Huh? Oh, the cane. That’s called style. Weddings are the time to wear your best. I got ruby cuff links too.”

“Are those real?” said Emily excitedly. She couldn’t believe that her mother had a genuine diamond necklace on her neck, and now, her father had rubies on his wrists! 

“They’re real if I act like they are,” he said with a wink. 

“We gotta go!” he shouted so that her mother would hear him in the other room.

Her mother’s latest addition to the outfit put a grimace on her father’s face. Linda walked across the room a bit unsteadily and stopped in front of him. She slightly bit her lip and peered down on him through her spider-leg eyelashes. The grimace didn’t leave her father’s face.

“Come on, you gotta wear those?” he almost spat out.

Now, Emily saw it. Her mother at 5’8” with stacked high heel shoes made her much taller than her barely 5’5” father in his platform shoes that made him, maybe 5’7” if he stood rigidly upright. Linda sighed and kicked them off. Standing barefoot and still not quite eye-to-eye, she shot back, “Is this better, Little Bobby?” 

“Use that name with respect. Let’s go,” he brushed past her and picked up his car keys and a can of Budweiser. The name Little Bobby came from his teenage years as proud member of the Jamaica Assassins, a profitable local gang that pulled jobs all across Queens and into a smattering of Brooklyn. He was regarded as a solid housebreaker and dependable fence who mixed business and pleasure by the graffiti-filled handball courts in Rufus King Park. Getting married and having a kid may have slowed down some of his more flagrant under-the-table activities, but his old crew still called him Little Bobby when they hung out at their beloved neighborhood dive bar called “The Monument” on most weeknights and every Saturday without fail. 

It was a weirdly family type of place that had fraying checkered tablecloths with yellowed lace curtains drooping along the dusty windows. The regulars with kids brought them around sometimes, so Emily would have a couple of playmates if they didn’t ignore her. For the most part, those kids hung out near the dumpster at the back door and threw rocks toward the opening to earn points: two points for going straight in but only one point if it hit any part of the dumpster. 

One boy, who always seemed to have stained clothes and greasy hair, usually upped the ante by throwing rocks at scurrying mice, and Emily really hated it. He thankfully had bad aim, but one time, Emily swore that she heard a pained squeak. Before she even knew what she was doing, she grabbed a broomstick and hit his boney back. His shocked expression quickly morphed into a menacing scowl that made her run back inside the bar to hide behind the liquor crates. It slowly began to dawn on Emily that most of the boys were becoming too rough or mean, but the other girls seemed to want their attention anyway. 

Nowadays, Emily stationed herself at a creaky, old red vinyl booth with a wall mounted juke box that stopped working a long time ago and a dim overhead light that flickered on a whim.  She usually tried to read her book or play with her dolls until her harried mother showed up, but she mostly listened to her daddy and his buddies tell increasingly slurry stories and jokes in between ribbing each other about being “soft” or some other semi-personal jab. But her father’s diminutive height was never, ever part of any real insults.   

“Goddamn it! The babysitter’s late, and now I gotta find some other shoes.” 

“Stop bitchin’ already.”

By now, Emily knew that her parents were back to their usual way of talking to each other. She walked through the dining room, opened the French doors leading to the living room, and sat by the open window. This apartment was a serious step up from their roach-infested, one-bedroom apartment near rundown Mary Immaculate Hospital across the street from the park. Emily didn’t pay attention to her address or the actual street because she was never allowed to go outside. She often sat by the window looking into the park, but there weren’t many kids playing there. It was usually full of adults who didn’t look like they had much to do or loud groups of gangly teenagers. Emily’s father once told her about seeing his first probably-murder there when he was around her age. She wanted to know if that person died from the stabbing, but her father didn’t seem to mind not knowing how it turned out. 

    Emily figured that she would live in their dingy apartment forever because her parents didn’t have money to go anywhere else. She had often heard angry whispers about not being able to pay for things from the other side of their shared bedroom or bouncing off the walls of their dank little kitchen. She couldn’t exactly tell who was saying what, but “don’t worry ‘bout it” and “criss cross” were repeated a lot. Then, Charlie Cross rolled up in a Cadillac to meet her anxious father one day. When they drove off laughing and patting each other’s backs, Emily realized that Criss Cross was definitely a big part of how things did get paid in the end. 

They finally got out of their part of broke-down Jamaica, Queens after all. Emily didn’t know exactly how they were able scrape up enough money, but she was glad for it. Maybe it was because her father had finally found a steady job at a transmission shop in another part of Queens called Whitestone. When her mom was the only one working as an office clerk in downtown Brooklyn, she shuffled the bills around based on which ones had to be paid first. Now, she bought Emily a vanilla cone with rainbow sprinkles from the Softee truck at least once a week. And if Emily did well on a school exam, she’d get a sweet treat from the candy shop too. To make it even better, the shop owner always gave Emily free Charleston Chews while bantering with her mom. Emily started to notice that her mom blushed and played with her hair while they spoke, but she just happily scarfed the candy down before her mom made her save some of it for later. Their conversation always ended with the shop owner sending his regards to Little Bobby.

Still, the urgency of the move came from something more than having extra cash. Her father had taken to picking her mother up at the Parsons Boulevard train station and walking back to the apartment with his chest all puffed up. While Emily waited for them to come back, the routine went like this almost every night: she waited by the door with the billy club that her father kept behind their cracked leather recliner, and Mr. Alvarez would yell at the door, “You good, Emily?” on his way to the garbage chute. Emily would always yell back “Yes, Mister Alvarez!” and hold onto the club tighter. This went on for several weeks until her parents told her that they were moving to another part of Queens called Rego Park because it was too dangerous to walk around their part of Jamaica at night. 

Since it was already too dangerous for Emily to walk around during the day, this proclamation wasn’t surprising to her. Yet they presented the case for Rego Park as if she wouldn’t be okay with moving out of the neighborhood. They explained in one long sentence that it was really only a few miles away…they could get there just by switching from the Hillside Avenue train to Forest Hills, then get off at 63rd Drive…there was this big department store on Queens Boulevard called Alexander’s and she could get her school clothes there…and she would get to go to a better school too—but maybe they were just scared for themselves. They had both lived in the neighborhood since they were born, and it was their whole universe even if she thought it was a pretty sad place. Before they had the chance to finish explaining, Emily had already dashed to the hall closet to root around for an empty box and began taking a mental inventory of the toys and books that she wanted to pack in it.

When the move to 99th Street and 62nd Drive finally happened (she remembered the exact street this time!), it felt like a world away rather than just a few miles. Their entire block had neat single and two-family homes with trees, bushes, and flowers in front yards, backyards, and little grassy squares cut into the sidewalk. Some of the neighbors stopped to talk to each other near or in front of the houses, and they waved to Jimmy the mailman when they saw him. Oodles of kids walked around on both sides of the block too. Sometimes they were accompanied by adults, but also by themselves or with other kids. If they were on their own, some of the old stoop ladies asked what they were up to or told them to say hello to their parents. Emily wanted to believe that it was genuine interest, but she really knew that it was just to let all the kids know that an adult was always watching what they were doing.

Emily still sat by the window in Rego Park much of the time. She examined the carefully planted flower bed in the front yard that Mrs. Marzoni, the middle-aged Italian lady who owned the house, had planted many years ago. There were red, white, and pink violets organized into separate rows. Mrs. Marzoni lamented that there was no such thing as a green violet because she would have loved to plant rows of green, white, and red like the Italian flag. Instead, Mrs. Marzoni had Mr. Marzoni paint the second floor of the house a deep green, the first floor where Emily lived a bright white and the crooked stoop a passionate red that became dull gray in certain spots after being walked on so much. Emily marked time by that red paint; Mr. Marzoni had to paint at least one new red patch on the stoop every two weeks. 

When Emily first moved to the house at the age of eight, she asked to help in the garden whenever she saw Mrs. Marzoni digging weeds or planting new flowers. Mrs. Marzoni always brought an array of shiny gardening tools, a little tin bucket, and thick gloves that remained off to the side because she seemed to enjoy digging into the earth with her bare, calloused hands. Emily’s attempts to become an eager apprentice felt flat though as Mrs. Marzoni put the matter to rest once and for all by saying she had a particular way of doing it. Although Emily finally stopped asking, here she was nearly three years later and still wishing she could help out even just a little bit. 

Looking beyond Mrs. Marzoni’s tidy flower garden, Emily frequently peaked in on the life of her neighbor Kathy across the street. Kathy lived in a big house, but the action always seemed to happen in their driveway or on their stoop. Her family was Italian like Mrs. Marzoni, and she had a bunch of older brothers, a burly dad who usually had a toothpick dangling from his mouth, and an overworked mother who practically lived in the kitchen churning out meals for her constantly hungry family. Emily decided that Kathy must be a tough girl if she hung out with such a rowdy pack of brothers. Almost every time that Emily peered out of the window, Kathy was there laughing and cursing right along with them and family friends who dropped by. 

But come to think of it, Emily realized that her mother and father cursed a lot too whether they were in Jamaica or Rego Park. They cursed about almost everything. When they asked a question about where to find something, “Where the fuck are my keys?” When they talked about friends or relatives, “She/he’s such a fuckin’ pain.” or if something was delicious, “This is fuckin’ good!” Naturally, Emily took the word to school and used it enthusiastically during lunch and recess until her mortified teacher informed her parents that a child in the gifted class should not be so familiar using that kind of language, and how did she become so comfortable with using that four-letter word anyway? Emily’s parents squirmed in their seats, and for once, had nothing slick or sarcastic to say. After a few awkward moments of silence, Linda assured the teacher that no such language was used or tolerated in their home, but Little Bobby guffawed under his breath just loud enough to make the teacher raise an incredulous eyebrow. The meeting ended quickly after that, and Little Bobby barely made it out of the classroom before proclaiming that there would be no more cursing for Emily in the house since her teacher was such a “fuckin’ pris.”

While the no-cursing mandate seriously limited Emily’s input into almost any family conversation, Kathy-from-across-the-street continued to revel in her freedom to do and say almost anything she wanted as long as one of her brothers was around. Supposedly, an older brother was there to protect Kathy from the various sins a 14-year-old girl should not commit, but Sal, Tommy, and Anthony were largely protective co-conspirators. Sal, who had been stabbed for petty drug dealing near Corona, made sure that Kathy tried her first joint with pot he secured; DJ Tommy took Kathy to her first unsupervised house party in Woodhaven; and Anthony accompanied her to the late-night bodega a few blocks away for Push-up Pops and cigarettes. 

Outside of the house, Kathy had the naughty schoolgirl routine down pat at Our Lady of Angelus Catholic Academy. She emerged from the school bathroom after every dismissal bell with a partially unbuttoned shirt knotted in the front, a hiked-up tartan patterned skirt, and a liberal application of the cherry lip gloss hidden in her pencil case. She usually stood next to the schoolyard bleachers waiting for something or someone. Whenever Kathy saw Emily walking up the block from the local public school, she’d nod her head in acknowledgement and Emily would look up from her book, nod back, and continue walking home. Kathy always went back to scanning the schoolyard scene after their wordless exchanges.

All the after-school sightings eventually led to a friendship of sorts, but their first official meeting set the tone. Still relatively new to the block and excited to play outside in a place with actual living trees, Emily donned her Wonder Woman Underoos under a raincoat, and grabbed her golden lasso and Snuggles doll. She burst from the house and wildly threw Snuggles up into one of the tree branches. She launched into an impassioned monologue about saving poor Snuggles, but what could she do with a toy rope? If only she had Lynda Carter’s lasso, then Snuggles would surely be saved! Undeterred by the reality of her predicament, Emily repeatedly swung the little lasso toward the tree. She hadn’t noticed that the teenagers who were standing across the street with bemused looks on their faces. It was Kathy who shouted, “Hey Wonder Woman, are you retarded?”   

Emily figured that the answer was “no” being in the gifted class and all, but she just blankly stared at them. When Kathy started to cross the street, Emily almost wanted to turn and run inside the house, but she managed to stay put. 

“We’re playing basketball.”

“Where?” Emily asked hesitantly.

“In the driveway. Don’t you see the hoop?”

“Oh, yeah…” Emily trailed off as a flash of white-hot pink almost seared her cheeks.

“Come over if you want, but not in that underwear ‘cause that’s retarded.”

“Okay, I will,” Emily may have stammered but a little grin started to spread across her face.

Kathy rolled her eyes as she dribbled the ball back to her driveway.

    Before the offer disappeared, Emily ran inside and got dressed as fast as she possibly could to join the big kids across the street. She made sure to tuck her golden lasso into the elastic band of her terry cloth shorts after squeezing into her barely-used tennis sneakers and bolted out the front door past Linda, who had grown accustomed to seeing Emily perched at yet another apartment window.

    “Where the fuck is she running to?” Linda shouted at the slammed door.

    Her father muttered, “Who knows, but it’s better than sitting by the fuckin’ window all day,” while continuing to divide his week’s cut from Criss Cross into sizable piles.

    The doorbell finally rang. Linda looked disapprovingly at the clock, and then at the babysitter. She adjusted her dress while Little Bobby grabbed his fancy walking stick and grandly bowed as he exclaimed, “After you, my lady!” They sashayed toward the sidewalk with Linda holding onto his arm and Little Bobby’s cuff links sparkling under the streetlight. Emily ran to the living room window to watch her father open the car door for her giggly mother. 

When Emily turned to let the curtain go, she remembered an important slip of paper in her backpack. Her brand-new friend from class had written down her home number with a little pink flower next to it. Little Bobby took a final swig of his beer and tapped the horn twice while Linda stretched toward the rearview mirror to apply a touch more mascara. Emily nestled the phone receiver between her ear and shoulder for a long moment. Just as she began dialing, her father triumphantly revved the engine and raced toward Queens Boulevard into the night.