Take Me Back to Brooklyn, Take Me Home (An Essay)

Here's me turning back the clock to 1980s Brooklyn

Coney Island, taken by me in 2010

The train shook and soared above ground. Summer swathed us in sweat; we peeled our sticky thighs off the subway seats and fanned our faces with the Daily News, Penthouse tear-outs, or whatever piece of paper we pinched off the ground. It was the kind of August where we’d sneak into movie theaters to feel the chill of the dark room and the smell of butter and popcorn we couldn’t afford to eat. We huddled close, posing as one another’s blankets and feigned the sleep of children even though we were adults fresh out of the womb. But there go our eyes in an hour and fifteen, blinded by the sunlight. Hands were curtains shielding us from the burn, the forever heat.

We were children who never slept with our mouths open. We rested on top of the sheets, one foot off the bed. Ready to run.

Sometimes, we’d shuffle to Sunset Park and feel the cut grass between our toes or the wet pavement from the pool water streaming through. Our eyes bloodshot from the chlorine. Our ears good and clogged, saving us from the nonsense everyone was spewing. Peddling their sad comeback stories, we wondered how could you have a comeback when you’d never leave?

Us girls had a pool going, a dollar, maybe two—quarters we nipped from our mother’s pockets, dimes dropped to the ground, the loosies we hustled out of our father’s cigarette packs. Back then, everyone smoked Kools or Virginia Slims because you’ve come a long way, baby. Everyone snuck sips of Bacardi into their grape juice bottles. Our piggy banks were the tiny pockets in our shorts, the small stack of change we could hold in one hand, and we regarded every cent with care.

Coney Island, 2010. Taken by me

We split hot dogs slathered in mustard and chewed that bun slowly, slowly, not sure when we’d feast that well again. Our foods were tinned and canned as if we were ready for war. Our chicken legs were wrapped in butcher paper at the bodega. When we were flush, we’d devour whole cartons of Little Debbie Cakes, feeling rich, gluttonous to the nines. And then we’d spend the next six months dreaming of licking chocolate from our teeth. We’d clutch our memories of Little Debbie close—remember the time when—because it was a moment, briefly, where we felt free of worry. We had our light, our phone, our gas. We had our deadbolts on the door and $1.99 for packaged cakes.

We had all the bodies in our house accounted for.

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We wiped the dirt off our legs and shook the rocks out of our sandals. Theresa wore the sunglasses with the plastic white rims and I sported baby blue jelly shoes. It was 1986, the summer before junior high school and I spent hours swimming from one edge of the sixteen foot pool to the other. My once chubby frame whittled down to muscle and bone. My stomach ached from hunger, but it felt good to have pain only I could control.

I had a towel wrapped around my waist and Theresa talked about going back into the pool because the boys had arrived. The boys with their honey skin, slippery hands, and puckered lips. They reminded me of silver fish and I said I already swam my laps but this wasn’t about swimming, of no, she wouldn’t even deign to get her hair wet—this was about hooking up. French kissing, which I found the idea of navigating the cavern of someone else’s mouth revolting. What if my tongue touched their teeth? What if their spit coated my lips? (Shiver; Quiver) The horror was too much to contain or consider and I shook my head no as Theresa dragged me back into the pool nodding her head yes.

Luis splashed water and me and asked for tongue, to which I replied, will I get it back? Theresa was already getting mauled at the edge of the pool while the boys gawked and wolf-whistled and elbowed one another underwater. I stood there in mint green terry shorts when Luis said I’d be beautiful, really beautiful if Theresa’s head were affixed on my body. I could feel my mother folding my hands into hers.

I could hear her telling me that one minute you’re kissing and the next you’re pregnant and do you want to ruin your life, Lisa? I was ten and not entirely certain how a kiss was responsible for reproduction but I took her word for it and I climbed out of the pool because I knew, at twelve, I was going to college and no way was I going to be a parent when I’d spent the last few years parenting my mother.

I climbed out of the pool and sat on a bench in the park until night fell and Theresa, breathless in my ear, asked me where I went. Here, I said. I’ve been here all this time. We walked home in silence and she wondered aloud if everything was okay. Did I do something? I shook my head.

But part of me wanted to say, why can’t it just be us? Why does it always have to be about the boys? Why did everything have to be strange and scary and ugly? Why couldn’t we be two girls chowing down on hot dogs and splashing in the pool? Why couldn’t we keep it simple and easy and quiet? Why did I always feel unsafe in my own skin?

All the while Theresa pressed Wet ‘N Wild lipstick to her lips and talked about the new Madonna album—do you even believe “Like a Virgin?” She prattled on about the boys we should see on the weekend, the house parties she (and ostensibly, me) were invited to and have you thought about maybe wearing a little makeup, Felicia?

Last summer, we built a makeshift shack in the back of King Cullen and pretended it was our house. We ate Gino’s Pizza and snuck into movies and rode the subways and pored over our competing sticker collections and talked about the friendship books we made and the pen pals we wrote to, and the summer before junior high school was about the tongues and fucks we were willing to give and the blush we’d paint on our cheeks.

Had I thought about makeup? I had. I also thought about all the clocks I wanted to hurl into the water because time was slippery like the skin on the back of the boys’ necks. It moved entirely too quickly. Here I was pressing pause on the tape, lifting the needle off the record for a breath, a rest, while the world was intent to fast-forward, bulldozer our way into our teens.

We parted ways at Ft. Hamilton Parkway and I stood under the elevated train to feel the quake of metal above me. My body registered on the Richter. Darkness fell and the men shuffled past and mothers clutched their children and grocery bags and yelled out, don’t you even think about crossing that street!

And it occurred to me that I always knew when to cross the street. No crossing guard held me back. No parent spouted their threats. I just knew. Like how I knew how my body was changing and how that shift would alter things. And I wrapped my arms around my chest, ran across the street under the lights of the elevated train and ran all the way home.