Black Rainbow Read online

  The Washington Bridge bus station was quiet at this hour. And for the first time that afternoon, I was afraid. I was no longer just passing through. My stomach clenched and unclenched with a sensation I labeled hunger. I bought myself two packages of M & M’s with peanuts. Then I went to the bookstore at the far end of the terminal. I looked at all the New Directions books against one wall, searching for something that would tell me about sex. It was mostly translations from the Chinese. I hesitated at Henry Miller, but it looked too hard. I wanted something by a woman, but there wasn’t anything, except for the diaries of Anais Nin, which I had already read. Finally in the poetry section I selected Ferlingetti’s A Coney Island of the Mind. It seemed to be about the New York subway system. It was always good to have something to read.

  I paid for the book and stashed it in my pack. The boy at the cash register was cute but too old for me, probably a Columbia student. He smiled at me, though, a redhead’s smile, and told me to enjoy the book. I hadn’t played my game of getting boys to notice me since Monique had left. But there was another reason for that. It was because of Michael.

  I headed for the nearest pay phone. I dialed Michael’s number, which by now I had memorized. With any luck, he should be home from school right now. I prayed that he didn’t have track or something.

  He answered the phone on the second ring. “Hiya.”

  “You’re home! I didn’t know what time…”

  “Who is this?” he asked, as if girls called him all the time.

  “This is Rania. You know…from the rally.”

  “Rania! Rania!”

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Where are you? It sounds kind of noisy.”

  “At the George Washington Bridge.”

  “The George Washington Bridge?”

  “You know. 179th Street.”

  “I know where it is. But why are you there on a school day?”

  “You sound like my mother. Aren’t you glad to hear from me? Why didn’t you call?”

  “I’m really glad to hear from you. Really glad. I was going to call but I got kind of, sort of shy, and we were at my grandparents’ and stuff on the weekends. But I was going to call. So I’m glad you called. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “So why are you at the bus station?”

  “Monique has run away,” I said. “And I’ve come to find her.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah.”

  “She didn’t come home?”

  “No.”

  “And no one knows where she is?”

  “No.”

  “But you think you can find her?”

  “Sure. I’m her best friend, aren’t I?”

  “Look,” said Michael, “meet me at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in forty-five minutes. Will that work?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “That would be great.”

  “Good.” He hung up the phone.

  As I went down the steps to the A train I smelled damp, piss, old roses from the florist’s stand. I was in the subway now and so I had no way of knowing that it was raining again.

  CHAPTER 16

  Mary Rose

  MARY ROSE WAS UNABLE TO DEFEND HERSELF. Before she knew it, the police arrived and then a young, completely distraught man who was the dead woman’s husband and the father of the baby.

  “She’s mine,” said Mary Rose. “She’s mine. I was pregnant and just had her up in the mountains.” She said it, but no one believed her. The policeman tried to lift the child out of her arms, but the child wailed and the pale young father’s eyes became two dark luminous suns burning in his face. He wept and wept and drank a glass of whiskey the store owner offered.

  Bud was also there, but she hadn’t noticed until he said, “Goddamn it all to fucking hell. Mary Rose, give them the baby.”

  “Bud, we have to talk,” said Mary Rose.

  “It’s too late for that,” he said. “Give them the baby.”

  “No.”

  “Bitch, I’ll…”

  But the policeman held him back. The store owner, who could not believe this was happening among his shelves of canned peas and cooler of beer, tossed back his own shot of whiskey.

  “Give them the baby,” Bud said again.

  “Faggot,” said Mary Rose. That was the last thing she ever said to Bud. The policeman took the baby out of her arms, and the tiny girl lay in his arms, surrounded by men.

  Mary Rose didn’t say anything else. She fell to the floor and lay curled in a fetal position. For a while, she panted rhythmically. Then she became completely still. The longer she remained silent, the heavier she became. Neither Bud nor the policemen could lift her. Finally, they called an ambulance.

  It took four attendants to raise her on the stretcher.

  Mary Rose knew she must not speak. If she did not speak she would remain heavy, as heavy as liquid mercury, or the whole world. She did not speak in the hospital, not even when her own mother came and fed her with a spoon. She did not speak to the detectives or the psychiatrists.

  Only once did she break her silence. The father of the child came to the hospital bed to make a positive identification. Mary Rose said, “Sir, your daughter’s name is Rania. Her mother told me that right before she died, with her last breath. She wanted her daughter named Rania.”

  Mary Rose was crazy now, but not so crazy that she did not want the child named properly with the name that she, Mary Rose, had picked out. It had just come to her. Rania. It was the child’s right name.

  Satisfied, Mary Rose sank deeper into her autism of refusal. She no longer ate. She was fed through a tube. She lay curled. She had gone from killer to fetus, from murderer to embryo. Tubes in and out of her body provided nourishment, removed the waste. She had an umbilical cord, but no mother. She was floating in space. She was a stone sitting in the middle of the river. Sometimes the river rose, uprooted cottonwoods, drowned cattle, carried off an unlucky truck. Sometimes the river sank, smelled of mud flats, pulled away from the fields of beans and chiles. Men in straw hats cursed. The stone did not care. It was large and gray. Summer and winter were all the same to it.

  Rania would grow up. She would become a little girl, a girl with a pair of bright red rain boots. She would step in every puddle, kick every wet leaf. She would scorn an umbrella. Drops of rain would fall off the brim of her hat and onto her nose. It would keep on raining.

  Mary Rose was declared incompetent to stand trial. She was committed to the state mental hospital in Las Vegas, New Mexico, for an indefinite period of time.

  CHAPTER 17

  RAIN TURNED TO SNOW. I turned up the collar of my coat when I got out of the subway at mid-town. The wind had the stink of the sea in it, the garbage barges of the East River, and the eels and old boots of the Hudson to the west. The snow was falling thick and white, crystal form tainted by fall-out. I wanted to stick out my tongue and catch a flake, furry and wet, but I felt too self-conscious and young in the crowd of pedestrians. The neon flashed WALK in green, and then in red, DON’T WALK. Not only were no two snowflakes alike, no two people were either. I was not the one who had run away first. I was the one who would rather be safe and warm at home, eating lamb chops and green peas and watching TV.

  Fifth Avenue ran from the top of this world to its bottom. It streamed with dark overcoats and chic women in maxis. New York, the least curious of cities, with its indifferent bustle, still had places to be intimately alone. I turned and went into the side entrance of the cathedral, a door weighted equally with angels and gargoyles. Warmth hit me the instant I left the street, a warmth that smelled of candle wax and prayer, despair and longing. The cathedral was like a dark mushroom of stone, all fluted undersides, gills, and columns. The rose window, that kaleidoscope turned by the Mother of God, gleamed ruby and darkening blue in the afternoon light.

  Side altars sat off the main nave, crammed with marble saints and crucifixes. I stopped in front of a statue of the Virgin and knelt down. Her face was lit by a bank of flicker
ing candles. I closed my eyes and I began to pray. I prayed that Michael would really meet me. I prayed that my parents would not hate me. I prayed that I would find Monique so that I could go home immediately. I prayed that Michael would kiss me, and maybe more. I prayed that I would not get mugged for all the money I had stolen from Grace’s wallet just after she cashed her paycheck.

  I prayed for my real mother, who was dead. I prayed that she knew I had turned out all right. I prayed that all her tender worry for me, when I floated only the size of a lima bean in her womb, was eased. I prayed that she did not care if I was a virgin or not, or that my hair was stringy. I prayed that she was in a heaven full of animals—zebras, pussycats, lizards, like Noah’s ark. I prayed too for the woman who killed my mother and delivered me. I prayed that being in a mental prison hadn’t messed her up too much. I prayed that she too wondered how I was. I prayed that she wanted to meet me.

  I got up and lit a candle with a wooden taper. I dipped the taper into the flame of someone else’s burning candle—lit for love or money or recovery from some terrible injury—and lit my own. Then I extinguished the taper in a box of sand. I got up and left the altar, but I did not put a coin in the slot.

  In the main transepts of the cathedral, tired-looking people, bundled up in scarves and hats, were praying on their knees, or just resting for a moment in the pews. There were shoppers, bag ladies, women in sensible coats, off-duty policemen, a lady in a hat that bobbed with cherries, a young girl who looked pregnant, a guy in fatigues with only one leg.

  I saw Michael from a distance. He was kneeling in the center aisle. His small bent figure was framed by the glory of the main altar with its stained glass in stone gothic frames. I came around sideways so as not to startle him.

  “Hiya.”

  “Oh. Well hi.”

  “I thought you were Jewish,” I said.

  “I am. So what?”

  “You were praying.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Praying is praying, isn’t it? It’s all the same.”

  “What were you praying for?”

  “Peace,” he said.

  “That’s nice. I was praying, too.”

  “For what?”

  “To find Monique.”

  “Right,” he said. “Good.”

  “Can we?”

  “Of course. Absolutely. That’s what I came for, isn’t it, to help you find her?”

  “Are you finished praying?”

  “Yup.”

  “Michael…”

  “Yeah?”

  “I am really glad to see you. Really, really glad to see you. Is this okay? You don’t mind?”

  “I came, didn’t I? And I’m really glad to see you too.”

  “Good,” I said.

  We walked out together into the street. Our shoulders grazed each other as we leaned inward from the cold. The avenue was starting to blur in the snow, except for the lights of cars, buses, and taxis. The taxis in particular looked inviting, so warm and yellow. In no time at all one could take me up-town to the George Washington Bridge and even, for a few dollars more, across the bridge and back to Jersey.

  Michael and I paused together, against a niche in the building. It was so cold. Then he leaned over and kissed me on the mouth. His lips went hard, then soft. He tasted of cinnamon gum. He slipped his tongue into my mouth in a way that was neither wise nor innocent. I put both my hands on his shoulders to steady myself. I did it! I did it! Then we stepped back out into the snow.

  “Monique’s gone.” I said. “She just disappeared. She didn’t call or leave a note, nothing, nothing at all. Her parents really gave me the third degree. But what could I tell them? I didn’t know any more than they did. But everyone was making me feel responsible, as if it was my fault that Monique had just up and vanished! And now nobody knows where to find her. Shit. But I felt I had to do something, but now that I’m in the city I still don’t…”

  “I have an idea, Rania.”

  “Really? What?”

  “Well, the last time that we actually saw Monique was right after the rally and she was…”

  “She was going off to that commune house with the bomber types.”

  “Those guys were creeps.”

  “God, I wish I could remember the address.”

  “I’ve got it,” he said.

  “No kidding! Where is it? That’s really great.”

  “I’ve got it in my head,” said Michael, tapping his dark curly hair with one finger.

  “Wow. I’m impressed. Are you sure?”

  “It’s easy for me. I’m good at remembering things. Sometimes I can see them just once and I’ll remember.”

  “School must be easy for you.”

  “School is easy. It’s the other things…”

  “Yeah.”

  “So I think we should go over to the Lower East Side and try and find the house.”

  “Good.” I said. “Thank you.”

  “No problem,” said Michael.

  We headed back into the subway. Rush hour was over. It was evening, almost night. I had never been alone in New York City after dark. Night was a one-way tunnel—we had to go through to get out.

  I followed Michael. The back of his pea coat reassured me. If he was afraid, he didn’t know it. His shoulders were narrow, but set firm and low. I followed him across a grid of deserted snowy streets. He crossed Avenue B where the neighborhood was burnt out, black alleys with broken street lights. We left behind the bakeries smelling of yeasty rye bread, the Ukrainian restaurants with soup full of dumplings, the little political bookstores, the secondhand clothing stores locked behind iron grills. This was the end of someplace, without another place beginning.

  “This is it.”

  “It is?”

  “Yes,” said Michael, as if double checking it against something in his head. “This is the place.”

  The peeling doorway was painted the color of old blood. Michael put out his hand and the heavy door swung open under a light touch. There was no need to knock. There was no buzzer or bell. This warehouse of a building smelled of wood gone bad and cat piss and old smoke.

  We climbed a long flight of narrow stairs. The banister was rotten to the touch. The stairs opened directly into a kitchen, wide and drafty, with speckled linoleum in the same blood red.

  A dozen people sat around two redwood picnic tables in the middle of the room. They looked up, blank or hostile. No one smiled. They all looked older than us, like at the rally, still wearing their black berets at the table. There was a scattering of girls among them, pale, in long granny dresses, looking raggedy and proud of it.

  “Uh,” said Michael. He and I stole a look at each other, a look that asked what next?

  “Excuse me,” I addressed the room. “Excuse me, but we’re looking for a friend of ours. I’m looking for a friend, a girl called Monique. Last time I saw her was at this rally, an antiwar rally, downtown, and afterwards some people from this house, I think, invited us over here for dinner. But I couldn’t go and Michael had to go home, and so Monique came by herself. She’s fifteen, pretty and blond. She’s from New Jersey, she wears her hair kind of up on her head, and sometimes she has bangs only she was growing them out.”

  One guy shook his head. No, he hadn’t seen her, and no, no one like that had come to dinner.

  “What’s her name?” asked one of the young women, a brunette in a purple shirt.

  “Monique.”

  “Monique. Well, it sounds familiar. Hey, yes, wait a sec, was someone here who…that little blond girl, don’t you remember, the one who was…”

  “She’s gone,” said one of the guys. His beret was brown wool, sporting a red star and a button with the face of Che.

  “Where? Where did she go?” My voice was shaking. I’d suddenly remembered how sometimes Monique’s neck smelled like vanilla.

  “She’s gone,” he said again.

  “Come on,” said the woman. “Can’t you see this chick is worried?
Your friend did stay here for a few days, but then…”

  “But then what?”

  “She left,” the woman admitted.

  “Do you have any idea where she went?”

  “She went to Babylon,” piped up a very skinny guy at the end of the table. He had terrible posture and looked about eleven years old, except for the beard.

  “And where the fuck is that?” It seemed as if the whole table was laughing at me. Michael touched my shoulder reassuringly.

  “Okay,” I started again. “What is this Babylon place? Where has Monique gone? I don’t think you all understand, but I’m worried about her. She just disappeared and didn’t tell me where she was going. Her parents are worried, too, and I need all the help I can get to find her.”

  “Look, honey,” said the woman, “you can’t get there tonight. It’s much too far and it’s much too late. Besides, as you may have noticed on your way over, this isn’t exactly the best neighborhood in America.”

  “Which is why we choose to live here,” someone interrupted in a strident tone, “and to sink down revolutionary roots in a neighborhood destroyed by capitalistic greed and a class system which is as heartless as it is…”

  “Anyway,” she continued, “you might as well just crash here tonight. There is plenty of room. And tomorrow morning, someone can give you clear directions about how to get there and go find your friend. You look hungry. Do you want some dinner?”

  Michael nodded. “I’m starving,” he croaked and with an apologetic shrug sat down in the nearest empty chair at the table. For a moment I thought I would refuse to join them until somebody told me how to find Monique that very minute; then I gave in and sat down next to Michael.

  From a quiet seat, that kitchen looked anything but cozy. Everything from the silverware to the linoleum was covered in a thin layer of grime. Dinner was brown rice and a mass of indistinguishable stir-fried vegetables. I thought I recognized a carrot and a mushroom.