When I Ran Away by Ilona Bannister (best books to read now .TXT) 📗

who ask me exceedingly personal questions every day that I’m pumping. When he was in the hospital I used their industrial pump, which wasn’t so bad, and they kept saying that I had to keep going, it’s the antibodies, he needs the antibodies. So ever since we got home, I just keep thinking, Well, I did nothing else right; at least I can do this. Only thing is I hate giving it to him. This should be the time of warm honey but all I have to give is bile. And he knows it. He prefers the chemical sweetness of formula.

I’m up because Johnny’s been sick for two days and Rocky has reflux so if one’s not screaming and shitting and puking then the other one is. And every morning I open the shutters downstairs and there’s a new pile of fox shit on the windowsill saying, “Oh, good morning, Mrs. Harrison, have a shitty day!” Bastards. Nobody told me about the foxes until we moved here, and when I was like, “Um, why are there rabid dogs running the streets and should we call the police maybe?” everybody just said, “Oh, those are the urban foxes.” As if that explained it. As if they’re just a local breakdancing crew practicing on the corner with a boom box.

There’s pigeons the size of turkeys flying around here too. Wood pigeons, Harry said. One of them shit right on Johnny’s face the other day on the way to school. I’m not kidding. I couldn’t help myself, I was so tired from not sleeping, so tired of shit everywhere, that I just yelled, “You motherfucker!” I felt bad, I thought I embarrassed Johnny. I’ve learned to suppress most of my New York reactions to things but then Johnny said, “Dammit, Jeej, can I get some help here?” with the bird shit stuck to his face. I almost cried because that was the New York still left in him. It has a British accent now, but it’s still there.

Anyway, I’m flipping through the channels and feeding Rocky and there’s these crazy Italian women with big hair walking in slow motion along the water right by the ferry terminal. The orange boats in the background, the skyline, the Verrazzano Bridge—it’s all there. They’re wearing fur coats and tight dresses with killer heels and I think I’ve really lost it now. I mean, that’s definitely Staten Island on my TV in London in the middle of the night.

I text Stacy:

I can’t believe they’re here?

Stacy:

Who? What are you talking about?

Me:

Mob Wives!!!

Stacy:

They’re showing that shit over there?

Me:

Me and Rocky are watching it right now

Stacy:

What season is it?

Me:

I don’t know, 2 or 3? Early ones. It’s amazing

Stacy:

Jesus you guys are so far behind. It’s the last season over here now. I thought Europe was advanced and shit. What time is it there? Go to sleep

Me:

I don’t know. Time has no meaning. I got to go, you’re interrupting my show

I watch the women behind the men of the mob talk about their incarcerated husbands and fathers, meet for coffee, get their nails done and walk around the streets of New York City’s underdog, the most underestimated borough, Staten Island. I pause the TV in the credits to see if I can spot my parents’ house or my high school. I watch the orange ferry pull away from the dock.

Pieces of home. The blast of the ferry leaving the dock every half-hour, Little League games, hot dogs and pushing through the crowd on Bay Street to watch the Fourth of July fireworks over the City. The Thanksgiving Day Parade on TV. Pizza by the slice. Christenings and bar mitzvahs and sweet sixteens and getting caught buying liquor from the bodega with fake IDs. Hanging out in a used car that somebody’s dad bought off one of their friends and listening to the radio turned up making too much noise in a parking lot in South Beach. Late-night coffee and cheese fries in the diner on Victory Boulevard. New York City heat in the summertime when you can see the air bounce off the sidewalk in waves. Handsome boys from shitty homes who carry their cigarette packs rolled up in their T-shirt sleeves. Sharon, Danielle and Stacy and people I love with hearts of gold who live in houses of sand fighting every day to keep it all from falling down around them. The goodness that comes with toughness. The grit it takes to make a pearl.

My boys won’t know about the grind of fighting for a dollar that’s only half your worth. They’re going to have a different life. The lucky, privileged children of an average middle-class family, the product of a stable two-parent home. Someday they’ll realize that they’re not like me at all, the person they should be closest to. Or maybe they won’t notice our lack of shared references and histories and people and they’ll run off and be happy while I mourn the loss of our connection alone. Sad that we’re so different, but also relieved. Lonely but grateful that their lives never resembled my own. And who I was before them, the place that made me, it won’t matter.

But what do I know? Johnny’s pissing the bed every night because I’m stressing him out. Rocky and I have a relationship of mutual tolerance. I feed him. I hold him when he cries and eventually he stops. There’s not much more between us than that. It’s not his fault. There’s no one else to do this. I feel like he knows that so neither of us has a choice but to put up with the other one. I don’t want to hurt him. I’m trying to love him.

Rocky finally falls asleep and I put him down on the sofa bed in slow motion, trying not to wake him. I put a cushion on one side of him so he doesn’t roll off, not that he can, but that’s what you’re supposed to do. I lie down carefully