My Beloved World (16 page)

Mostly, I felt like everybody’s second choice, which is why a compliment could catch me off guard, especially an unconventional one. For instance, according to Chiqui, I had “baseball bat legs.” Thanks a lot, Chiqui.

“No, that’s good! You see how your ankles are small and the calves curve? You’ve got good legs.”

I would hear worse: Kevin told me that Scully’s dad said I was “built like a brick shit-house.”

“It’s a compliment, Sonia.”

“What kind of compliment is that?”

“It’s just an expression,” Kevin insisted. “It means you’re well built. Not like some flimsy wooden job.” I couldn’t believe my ears. Was that what they meant by Irish wit?

Apart from dubious flattery, the truth was that Kevin Noonan made me feel attractive in a way that was new to me and not unwelcome. I, in turn, was entranced by his blue-gray eyes. I found myself scanning the hallway on the far side of Cardinal Spellman’s divisive crack to catch a glimpse of that frizzy halo of sandy curls that made his slight figure stand out in the uniformed crowd.

On our first date, we took the train down to Manhattan. We walked the entire city, walked for hours, talking as he showed me his favorite spots. The first place he took me was a tiny park on East Fifty-Third Street where a curtain of water still runs down a stone wall. The sound
of the fountain makes the city seem far away and turns the vest-pocket park into a private cove.

From that first date, we were inseparable. For the first month that I knew Kevin, he brought me a rose every single day. One time after school I was walking with him to the stop where he caught the bus home to Yonkers. We passed by Titi Gloria’s house, and I dragged Kevin in to meet her and Tío Tonio. Really, I just wanted to postpone our parting, but as soon as we got there, Kevin turned pale and clammed up. I thought maybe he was put off because Titi Gloria and Tío Tonio kept switching to Spanish, even though they were making quite an effort, welcoming us with cake and cookies and sodas. But Kevin remained stony, and I was more than a little upset by this.

The next day when I got to school, there was no rose. I was getting seriously worried that things were over between us. But finally Kevin confessed: he had been stealing my daily roses from Tío Tonio’s garden! He looked at me with a hangdog expression that didn’t go with his sparkling eyes and said, “There’s a lot of them, Sonia.” It was true: Tío Tonio’s rosebushes were magnificent. I laughed so hard I almost choked. I was happy to accept that the rose-colored phase of our romance was over. Now we were just a couple.

Kevin practically moved in with us except, of course, that my mother made him go home at night. We couldn’t afford much dating beyond the local pizzeria. Instead, we hung out at home, studying together or watching TV. He loved reading as much as I did, and we might silently turn the pages side by side for hours at a time. We went for walks, or visited my family, or worked on Kevin’s car. And we talked constantly about everything imaginable.

We didn’t go over to his house much, because his mother had a hard time accepting me. She wouldn’t say it to my face, but the message came through with a tightening of the lips, a slant of the eyebrow, a slam of the door. She would have been happier if I were Irish, or at least not Puerto Rican. I’d seen this before. One guy I’d dated before Kevin had ducked a teacup thrown at his head when his mother found out I was Puerto Rican. Kevin’s mom was not so kinetic about her distress, seeking the counsel of her priest. He either shared her opinion of my people or else lacked the backbone to tell her that it was not a very Christian
view. Kevin defended him. The parish in Yonkers was 100 percent Irish, he rationalized, and the priest had no choice but to affirm his community’s values. I disagreed. Bigotry is not a value.

At some point I introduced Kevin to Abuelita, which made the relationship official. From then on it was taken for granted that we would get married. Whatever the differences between Puerto Ricans and Irish, among our friends and families a common expectation prevailed: you married your first sweetheart. The only question was whether we would do it right after high school or wait till we finished college.

I REMEMBER STANDING
at the bedroom window. Beyond the parking structure, at the corner of the empty lot where junk was strewn among the weeds, I could see Kevin’s Dodge, his skinny legs stretching from under the chassis. An assortment of parts and tools were laid out carefully on the sidewalk beside him. The engine had recently taken its last gasp, and he was swapping it out for one that he’d bought at a salvage shop. Much closer, on the basketball court below, there was Junior alone with the ball, doing his endless private dance.

Mami came into the room and stood beside me. She saw what I saw and laid a hand gently on my shoulder. “My two sons,” she said.

C
erveza Schaefer es la mejor cuando se toma más de una …
^*

Kenny Moy was sitting next to Titi Aurora in front of the TV, belting out the beer jingle. That was pretty much the extent of his Spanish, but it didn’t prevent him from bonding with Titi Aurora. They conducted bizarrely bilingual conversations while watching pro wrestling together. Titi would be bobbing up and down, screaming at the referee, cheering on her favorite of the day. I loved to watch her: wrestling was the only thing that made her loosen up and enjoy herself. It reminded me of Papi’s periodic emergence from his mournful silence to root for the Yankees on Abuelita’s little black-and-white TV. But the Sheik? The Crusher? Killer Kowalski? Gorilla Monsoon? How could Titi believe this was for real?

Ken Moy was the student coach of the girls’ team of the Forensics Club at Cardinal Spellman. I signed up as part of my self-imposed preprofessional program in public speaking, which advanced whenever an opportunity presented itself. The dozen or so girls on the team were an especially interesting bunch of self-selected high-functioning nerds, and Kenny coached us in debate and extemporaneous speech. He was brilliant at debate. His mind was an analytic machine that could dismantle an opponent’s position, step by inexorable step. His affirmative arguments would make a concrete bunker look like a house of cards. And he
was utterly untainted by emotion. I aspired to Ken’s unflappable, rational cool, though I feared that I came across more like Titi Gloria in the usual nervous tizzy that accompanied her every mundane decision—red dress or blue?

“Sonia, I don’t care if you have to cut off your hands, get that gesture out of your goddamn repertoire!” That was Kenny ringside. Tell a Puerto Rican not to talk with her hands? Ask a bird not to fly.

Ken should have gone to Bronx Science, but his mother made him come to Cardinal Spellman to keep an eye on his sister. Janet was a radical individualist with a completely uncensored approach to the world, a ticking time bomb in a Catholic school. She even cursed the principal to his face in the cafeteria when he caught her holding hands with her boyfriend. Ken had to tax his mighty rhetorical powers to win her a reprieve. But the truth was that if Janet had been expelled, Ken would have left too, and the school would have lost a star pupil.

They lived in East Harlem, where their parents ran a Chinese hand laundry. I never visited Ken’s home or met his parents. His dad was trouble three ways, he said—heroin, gambling, and a violent temper—and since they lived almost an hour away by subway, we hung out at my place. Ken claimed they were the only Chinese family in the barrio, and he was a barrio kid through and through, slamming down dominoes with the best of them. He was skinny as a knife blade, but he could eat more of Mami’s rice and beans and
chuletas
in one sitting than the rest of us together.

In philosophy class, we were studying logic. I’m not sure what I expected of philosophy, but formal logic took me by surprise. I loved it. I perceived beauty in it, the idea of an order that held under any circumstances. What excited me most was how I could immediately apply it down the hall in debate practice. I was amazed that something so mathematically pure and abstract could transform into human persuasion, into words with the power to change people’s minds.

Forensics Club was good training for a lawyer in ways that I barely understood at the time. You got handed a topic, as well as the side you had to argue, pro or con. It didn’t matter what you believed about the issue; what mattered was how well you argued. You not only had to see both sides; you had to prepare as if you were arguing both in order to
anticipate your opponent’s moves. In your allotted five minutes, you had to use language carefully to paint a picture for those who would decide the match. Then you had to listen. “Half a debate is listening to what the other person says,” Ken advised. It was easy to present your own points, much harder to listen well enough to respond effectively to your opponent.

Listening was second nature to me. My friends confided in me, unloaded their problems, and leaned on me for advice, the same way my mother’s friends leaned on her. When I was little, listening and watching for cues had seemed like the key to survival in a precarious world. I notice when people hesitate or get defensive, when they care more about what they’re saying than they’ll admit, or when they’re too quick about brushing something off. So much is communicated in tone of voice, in subtleties of expression, and in body language.

What Ken taught us was a different way of listening, more formal than my own intuitive skill. He taught us to pay attention for the vulnerable links in a chain of logic, the faulty assumptions and the supposed facts that you know you can challenge when your turn comes. But even as I absorbed Ken’s logical strategies, I knew instinctively that emotion doesn’t disappear. Much as you had to keep your own in check, there was still that of your listeners to consider. A line of reasoning could persuade, but so could a sequence of feelings. Constructing a chain of logic was one thing; building a chain of emotions required a different understanding.

I
’
VE MADE IT
to the finals of the extemporaneous speech competition. The timer starts, and I pick a slip of paper blindly. Three topics based on current events: choose one. I have fifteen minutes to brainstorm and organize a five- to seven-minute speech. Two of the three are so loud with the din of the nightly news—outrage at My Lai, the killings at Kent State, the war spreading across borders, the protests spreading across campuses—that it’s hard to hear myself think. The third topic catches my eye: the cold-blooded murder of Kitty Genovese and the neighbors who witnessed it but did nothing. Closer to home—Queens instead of Cambodia—and it touches a nerve.

The clock is running. What can I recall of the news reports? Where do I want to take this? What’s my purpose? What’s the best point of entry? I’ll start by painting a picture … and remember to keep my hands still.

“On a cold night in early spring, six years ago, a young woman drove home from the bar where she was working to her apartment in Queens. It was around 3:00 a.m. She parked her car in a nearby parking lot and was walking up the alley toward her building when a stranger appeared out of the shadows and approached her. Frightened, she ran, but he caught up with her. He stabbed her in the back. She screamed and cried for help. Several neighbors heard her cries and the struggle that ensued as Winston Moseley assaulted Kitty Genovese.”

I look out and observe a rapt stillness in the room. I’ve got them.

“But the night was cold, and windows were closed. Those who heard thought it was probably just a lovers’ quarrel or a couple of drunks getting rowdy. Kitty Genovese screamed and screamed for help as her assailant punched her and beat her over the head, stabbed her repeatedly, and bruised her all over her body. Finally, he raped her as she lay dying. When it was all over, one of the neighbors called the police. They arrived within minutes, but Kitty Genovese died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.

“Winston Moseley got away that night. He was apprehended later on a burglary charge and confessed to the murder. He’s locked up for life. That’s not what I’m concerned with today. No, what concerns me is this: Thirty-eight neighbors also confessed. Each one of them heard or witnessed some part of the attack, which lasted over half an hour. Thirty-eight neighbors did nothing to intervene. They looked on and let this young woman die a horrible death.”

When I pause to look at the faces before me, I see an opening: These are the bystanders, I imagine, sitting right here in the auditorium. How do I get past whatever it is that paralyzes them? How do I get them to step up and take responsibility?

“Thirty-eight neighbors did nothing. How does this happen? It happens when we become apathetic about our roles in society. It happens when we forget that we are a community, that we are connected to one another and have an obligation to engage with other human
beings.” Okay, I have to unpack this a bit, cover the bases, then circle back. “A crime like what happened to Kitty Genovese may be the act of a deranged individual. Other crimes may be different in their causes, pointing to broader failures of society. But in the moment of opportunity, when a criminal grabs his chance and a victim is suffering, our own responsibility is the same. When the criminal finds his victim in a dark alley, an observer too has a moment of opportunity. Will you see the victim not as a stranger or a statistic but as another human being like yourself? Will you be fully human in that moment and feel the obligation to care, to act, to get involved? Will you be fully a citizen and rise to the responsibility?”

They’re still with me, every one of them. So I start to sum up and come in for a landing … “There was a young woman at the threshold of her life, a budding flower ready to open.” And there’s my hand, almost as if it doesn’t belong to me, the fingers cupped and opening in bloom, then closing to a hard fist: “We destroyed that flower.”

The applause carries me down the steps. Ken is grinning broadly, proudly. They announce that I’ve won first prize! A little cocky, I tell Ken that sometimes talking with your hands is fine. It’s who I am, where I come from.