Dark Room

I Tingle when we Mingle

In 1974, 3 years after Dad died, and after a string of losers spent days, weeks or years in our already cramped apartment, Mom hooked up with a guy named Yale, who claimed a spurious connection to Dad through the Newspaper and Mail Deliverers union, asserting that he and Dad “shaped up” together, though there was no evidence to prove this one way or the other.

Shaping up was a method of hiring drivers, in which they appeared daily at the garage and waited to be chosen by a hiring boss to work for one or more shifts. Guys needing some extra dough frequently shaped up between their regular shifts, or on days off, and as a little girl, it seemed to me that Dad worked all the time. Yale had never visited our home, and his name was never mentioned at the supper table.

Yale was an anal, tyrannical, five foot five, cantankerous bully. I wondered how he hefted newspaper bundles on and off a truck at all. He wore his few thinning hairs in an awful combover, and his face often gleamed with sweat – his radiator ran hot, like his beloved old car, Bertha, a 1961 Oldsmobile. He weaseled his way into our broken lives through the cracks in Mom’s alcoholic fog, and I never learned why he contacted Mom when he did, or what the hell the two of them saw in each other.

Is there anywhere in the universe two mega-narcissists can co-exist peacefully?

Mom couldn’t deal with her new role as head of the household, she hadn’t worked since before she got married in March, 1954, 6 months after meeting the man who would be my father. She had hated being a secretary, and re-entering the workplace in this new decade, filled with so many smart, bright young women, was not something she especially wanted to do. Instead, she chose to obliterate the voices of fear and doubt by drowning them in Valium and vodka until they were silent and dark.

Her strategy became to find a man, who might not happen to notice that she had 4 children, aged 12-18, to provide financial support for. There had been many men, but        search for a husband, father and bankroll, had been unsuccessful. Until Yale showed up.

I can only surmise that Mom handed over the reins to Yale because he seemed willing to shoulder the crushing weight of her single parent responsibilities. It wasn’t easy being a woman in 1971, the year Dad’s death left her and us, unprepared and ill equipped to make enough money to support all 5 of us. Dad did illegal and awful things to bring home that kind of cash. What could any of us do to make that?

I think she would have sold us four kids to the highest bidder for a month’s supply of booze, and in Yale she found a willing disciplinarian for her increasingly restless and rebellious brood of teenagers, and a drinking buddy who did his best to take care of her. He tried to be a father to us. She was an alcoholic in a downward, desperate spiral.

I remember coming home from the beach one day while the other kids were in sleepaway camp, just weeks after Dad passed, and finding Mom rummaging through cabinets and closets like a mad woman. She muttered maniacally as she threw open cabinet doors, swept away their contents, then slammed the doors shut, her head bobbling on her neck, her face a strained mask of terror.

“Can’t be, put it here, where is it, can’t be, has to be, motherfucker!”

She was so deep into whatever this was, that she didn’t notice that I was standing there. I was dumbstruck watching her as she took a long pull from a bottle of purple cough syrup sitting on the counter, even though I hadn’t noticed her coughing. Right next to it was the bottle of rubbing alcohol she only used when she’d taken our temperature, and disinfected the thermometer. Was she sick?

She opened the fridge and plucked a lemon from the hydrator. She sliced it in half with shaking hands, then reached for a coffee mug from the dish rack on the counter. She held the lemon over the mug and poured the alcohol over the lemon, squeezing       lemon to wring its juice. The isopropyl and lemon cocktail dribbled into the mug, and she downed the few drops through a grimace. I tiptoed past her, but she was pretty intent on the whole lemon alcohol thing. I went to my room, hoping I wouldn’t have to call an ambulance because Mom poisoned herself.

It was my first look at an addict in withdrawal. It wouldn’t be my last. Unlike many substances, alcohol withdrawal can be lethal. It makes you beg to die. I couldn’t understand it then. The utter desperation, and depths to which addiction to alcohol would cause someone to stoop. Nor could I understand the soul deep sickness of a person who attempts suicide by vodka. The need to make the pain stop. Anesthesia. Until I experienced them myself, many years later- it’s unlikely that a child of two alcoholics escapes unscathed from battles with the bottle. Amongst other things I survived was the 80’s!

Yale took things personally- dust, burnt toast, humidity, traffic- as if these inconveniences existed solely to annoy him. His pale face turned a scary shade of get-your-blood-pressure-checked red when something as innocent as a misplaced fork nestled among the teaspoons in the kitchen utensil drawer. He’d blow a gasket if the four corners of freshly laundered sheets didn’t match up perfectly when folded, or if the bath towels happened to hang askew on their bar in the bathroom.

If, after I cleaned the house, a Saturday morning chore ritual, it failed his white glove inspection, I’d be relegated inside all weekend, just me and a fistful of rags, spray can of Pledge and bottle of Windex, until every surface sparkled, and every last iota of dust had been vanquished. Every book had to be dusted and replaced in perfect alignment with the ones on either side of it, and every tchotchke had to be wiped down and precisely replaced on its shelf. I’d have to collect all the stray clothing items, regardless of whether they were clean, or to whom they belonged, and put them on hangers.      Wire hangers.

The closets bulged from the excess of apparel they already contained – six of us shared four small closets filled with four seasons worth of clothing and outerwear.

He’d pull      blankets off the freshly made up beds to check if they sported precise hospital corners. Even though we all hated having our blankets tucked in at the bottom, he decreed it be so. It seemed easier to sleep like little hot dogs in our buns, than to incite Yale into neurotic rage.

Yale owned a commercial photography studio, and took black and white glossy catalogue pics. I liked to scroll through the offerings at the back of magazines, and see which products Yale took photos for, like Dove soap, or motor oil. His biggest client was B Shackman miniatures, which had a retail store filled with really tiny houses, miniature people to inhabit them, furniture, cars, pets. The store was located a few blocks from the 5th Avenue studio. Knowing someone who did something important made me feel a little important too.

At night he drove the newspaper delivery truck, needing the extra income to pay alimony to his ex, child support for his college bound daughters, and now us. His girls were roughly the same ages as my younger sister Susan and me, and coincidentally,

Susan had attended summer camp a few years prior with Yale’s youngest daughter Alyssa, at Camp Kinder Ring, in Tuxedo, NY. Yale never spoke about his estrangement from his family, only how much he missed his kids.

As a girl who still missed her dearly departed daddy daily, I couldn’t imagine what had transpired to cause such animosity on the part of his daughters, and it didn’t occur to me then that maybe their Mom didn’t want Yale to see the girls, or that the girls were pawns in some sort of marital miasma. To me, Yale was just another dog with a boner looking for some place to bury it. Mom seemed not to care who she fucked, as long as they kept her plied with 80 proof comfort.

Before Dad’s body even got cold in the ground, 2 months after the funeral, an army of bedraggled one night stands schlepped through our apartment, and after the black widow had sucked her victims dry, she disposed of their spent carcasses on the living room couch. In the morning, upon waking, the four of us kids would stare at the unwitting victim like he was a circus freak, which had the intended result of

hastening his departure. We never saw the same fucker twice, and in most instances, Mom never learned the dude’s name, or had been too drunk to remember

it.

All that ever mattered to Mom was finding some poor schmuck to pick up her bar tab for the night so she could drown the woes widowhood had wrought upon her. I wondered why men wanted to fuck a pathetic, passed out drunk woman, though, my experiences with men up until that point gave me the answer I didn’t want to know.  Since the time I was 8, “uncles” had been asking me if I wanted to sit in their laps. How many times had I heard what beautiful eyes I had when a man’s were riveted to my breasts. Yale happened to be the schmuck du jour.

My last shreds of respect for my mother drowned in reeking piles of vomit the morning after, which I had to clean up while she verbally berated me.          “You will not leave this house until I say so! Just do what I say and keep your trap shut. I AM the priority, not you, not your friends, not paddleball, ME! Now get to work or else.”

She liked to poke her finger at me, right in my face, and if I dared to disagree with her, or protested, she slapped me hard across the cheek, leaving an angry, red, hand shaped welt to remind me to be obedient. I wanted to bite that finger right off her hand every time she taunted me with it.

Even after we’d all become teenagers, Mom still reminded us that “children are to be seen and not heard,” and continued to treat us as her personal, silent servants. She seemed not to notice that we were not little kids anymore, and I already had one foot out the door as soon as I could get a job and make some money.

My home was like an insane asylum without medication, attendants or

restraints.

All day, all night, my mother shrieked at us, her default volume was set to high. She was cruel, mean and hurtful: you’re useless. My sister Susan, the family scapegoat, was never the same after our mother blurted out, “I hate you. I never wanted you and that’s still true.”

And when her soap box alter ego, Preacha Weena showed up, watch out, she was gonna give you the lecture of your life. Preacha knew everything, and kept reminding you of that. She knew everything, and nobody else knew anything. It never mattered what we thought, or said, or felt or what the circumstances were.      My mother in Preacha mode seethed with contempt, you will never know anything. That voice, dripping with scorn and derision. That tone.

She was not gentle and was not kind. Life revolved around her, and that was that. She was textbook narcissist. We all hated the self righteous, smug, Preacha, and Susan once shouted “Why can’t you be a normal mother, like Donna Reed?” She was the perfect, TV mom, who always looked pretty, spoke softly, cooked with love, and greeted her husband at the door wearing lipstick and an apron. .

(For those born too late to remember

There existed a constant state of noisy chaos and disruption: yelling and screaming, door slamming, wall punching, cursing, fist fights, episodes with knives. Our needs were not being met, and our mother didn’t care. We didn’t know how to help ourselves, we needed guidance, and emotional support, and our mother was incapable of providing those.

There was no privacy for anyone.

Depending if Yale was going to grace us with his presence, we existed as 1 or 2 adults and 4 teens, including the youngest, a pre-pubescent male adolescent. Our apartment had 3 bedrooms, one half bath, and 1 bathroom with a shower. I felt claustrophobic, and stayed with friends when and where I could. I was suffocating. We were the children of a mother incapable of love or real human connection, someone who couldn’t fill a black hole within herself, and blamed the world for her self perceived and created hellish existence.

Fear of Yale’s temper and punishments kept us all in line, even Mom, to a minor extent. Not having to worry about money let her soften a bit, but my mother was a frozen stick of butter that would never melt. The last time I saw my mother smile, a genuine smile, I was 6, just before my brother was born.

Yale had a keen intelligence, and I think he had good intentions when he took on our burden. Discipline was the glue that held him together, and he clearly believed in doing things precisely, perfectly, in an austere military fashion. Well, he had met the challenge of a lifetime with our totally undisciplined, completely dysfunctional, wild, noisy, boundaryless bunch.

I knew he missed his daughters, he spoke of them often, and was quite honest about how hurt he’d be when he called and they couldn’t, didn’t or wouldn’t come to the phone. We didn’t have cell phones then, so you had to either find a public telephone, which took coins to connect you to a line, so you could rotary dial your number, using a handset used by hundreds and thousands of other people. Or, you waited til you went home and called from the lone, rotary dial telephone in your house, attached to your kitchen wall, or you got to your office. With the difference in their schedules, there were not lots of opportunities for him to connect with the girls, and he would try at least twice a week to no avail.

Maybe Yale wanted to be a hero, save our family, where he had failed with his own. Maybe he was the king of second chances, who knows. Yale and Mom were the oddest couple, and I don’t understand their relationship even now.

Yale eventually helped Mom become sober, though, and I don’t know how or why he succeeded in getting her to an AA meeting when dozens of concerned neighbors, friends and relatives had failed for so long. Maybe the timing was just right, a cosmic confluence of sobriety factors.

Mom told me, years later, that she knew she had hit her bottom after a shouting match over shoes with Joy, the third and youngest sister, 14 years old.

“My shoes don’t fit me anymore Ma. I need new ones.” Joy said this calmly while she held up one of her holey sneakers to prove her point. She never asked for anything. Joy had been a calm and sweet baby, and had become a calm and sweet adolescent. She self soothed herself in our tumultuous household by rocking, and gently bumping her head against a pillow, or a schmata she rolled up under her forehead, or against the sofa, or back of a chair.

“I don’t have any money, now leave me alone.”

“But Ma, they’re too small and squish my toes. And they’re messed up, look!” Joy poked her finger through the hole in her sole. “I need new shoes. How can I go out without shoes?”

“I said, I. Don’t. Have. Any. Money. Now drop it. Scram.”

“But MA!!!”

“SHUT THE HELL UP, GODDAM YOU! Just SHUT UP OR ELSE!”

Joy’s lower lip trembled as she fought not to cry.         “Then how come you always have money for vodka?” Boom! Joy landed a knockout.

Mom gasped as if someone had kicked her in the gut. her hazel eyes bored into her youngest daughter, an old soul in her still boyish body, then looked at her own trembling hand, poised mid-air, ready to smack the girl, suddenly unsure if the shakes were from rage or because she needed a drink. Her hand dropped, and she slumped over the kitchen sink and began to sob.          All this time Mom believed her children had been clueless about her drinking; now it was time to face the music.

On New Year’s Eve 1970, a few months before Dad died, my mother did a strip tease on the dining room table, after she and dad had a major blowout, and returned home early from a party.

They had been in good moods when they left for the “affair” with the higher ups in the Newspaper and Mail Deliverers Union that Dad belonged to, and was a business agent for. He was being groomed for bigger things. Dad had worked his way up the ranks of the union, from driver to Shop Steward, Business Agent, and was somehow also now a member of the Teamsters Union, and connected to one

Jimmy Hoffa.          Also some of the good folks of the Gallo family, not the wine makers.

Apparently mom had done it again, embarrassed the crap out of dad, and he removed her from the scene before the damage to his reputation escalated. They blew into the house like a n’oreaster, Dad’s facial tic working overtime, the vein in his forehead pulsating as if Hera was springing from it, He left her in the living room and slammed shut their bedroom door. I could feel him breathing through the walls, a raging bull.

I had been given permission to have a boy girl party that night, with the stipulation I take care of the younger sibs. Many of my friends were several years older, already in their 2nd or 3rd year of College, and they brought Cold Duck and Mateus Rose, even though most of us were underage. I didn’t care about that. There was so much more lethal booze in our home, right in the middle of the living room, on a coffee table that had become a bar. A gallon of some brown booze, in a cradle that rocked and made pouring exceptionally effortless, sat at the center. Mom thought nobody noticed how low the contents got each week, or how she added some water to extend the appearance of fullness in the bottle. Everyone noticed, it was the centerpiece in our living room, in our lives. every minute of every day revolved around mom’s moods and state of sobriety or drunkenness.

Mom climbed atop the dining table and commenced her strip, singing “Let me entertain you” from the movie Gypsy. She danced her saggy ass around and around, fumbling for the zipper of the emerald colored sheath she’d bought for the special occasion. Once she found and unzipped it, the dress puddled around her ankles, and she stood in bra, slip, panties and pantyhose. She began removing the remaining garments and tossing them at us. She giggled.

The hair she had spent hours at the beauty parlor to coif, freshly dyed jet black, stiff from hairspray, now sprouted from her head in spikes. She poured Cold Duck into one of her dyed-to-match, emerald green, satin, low heel shoes, with a big brass buckle, and invited the handsome young boy-men in my crowd, my boyfriend included, to sip from it. Her spidery false lashes seemed to devour her eyes, and her smeared lipstick punctuated her profanity spewing mouth.

“Who wants to fuck? Which one of you boys has big enough balls to fuck?”

There was no avoiding the tortured performance. Eyes averted, jaws hung open, then snapped shut. My mother’s pathetic cry for attention caused my friends to get up silently and leave the party that an hour ago had been fun and relaxed. The real party had not yet started, as fireworks were sure to explode when mom finally returned to her bedroom.

I had been painfully aware of the drunken knock down drag outs she’d had with Dad while they were both inebriated, since the time I was 6 ish. The months of violent silence that ensued. What about that time she chased Susan with a frying pan, intent on bashing her skull with it? Or the time she dumped an overflowing bag of wet garbage into Susan’s bed because Sue hadn’t done her chores and disposed

of it.

With Yale’s help and support, and ours too, our mother attended 90 meetings in 90 days, and became abstemious, one day at a time. Unfortunately, sobriety did not make her a nicer person. She was a dry drunk. From that day, whenever she saw someone on TV drink, she’d become Preacha, and start spouting AA at the set. When at a festive, family gathering, and people were drinking, she called them all closet alcoholics. She begrudged everyone what she couldn’t have.

I did babysitting jobs, but needed to make money. I had needs, I wanted blue eyeshadow, and Ambush perfume. I wanted my own place. I had a boyfriend. In true Yale fashion, when I asked for an increase in my allowance, which was contingent on chore completion and Yale’s satisfaction with my work, he gave me a job in his photo studio instead. I liked getting a paycheck, even though it wasn’t much. At least I covered my own expenses, and I didn’t further burden the family budget.

I answered the phone, did filing and client billing, and fetched Yale coffee. I learned how to develop film under a red light in a darkroom that reeked of caustic chemicals that burned my nose and throat. Yale was a thorough teacher, and explained the whole chemical process carefully as I stood by his side and learned.

The only time I ever saw him completely calm was when he worked in his darkroom. Sometimes he hummed, and seemed even jovial.   I thought maybe I’d explore a career in photography. Hell, if I couldn’t be the next Barbra Walters, maybe I could shoot photos for National Geographic. Gloria Steinem and the Feminists told me that I could do anything I wanted.

Before long he let me develop film on my own for smaller jobs. I loved watching the latent images take on form and shape while soaking in developer. A timer alerted me when to move the prints to a stop bath of citric acid, and then again when it was time to move the film into a fixer, which made the images permanent and no longer light reactive. It took many hours to process the film, soak and dry. Yale had strung lines of laundry rope above the sinks, and around the perimeter of the small lab, where we attached wet prints with clothespins to drip dry before a tumble in the big, noisy drum dryer.

On the nights Yale drove the newstruck, he often slept on a futon in the dryer room of the studio when he finished work. When I arrived in the morning, I tiptoed around to avoid disturbing him. When we had no jobs pending, when Yale awoke, he schooled me in the history of cameras and lenses, F stops, and lighting. He let me take practice photos with his old Brownie box camera, his first and favorite piece of equipment. He wouldn’t let me use the Hasselblad or Rolleiflex quite yet. But I was fascinated watching him work.

Occasionally I modeled for him when he did catalogue ads for face soap, shampoo or hand cream, and I felt special seeing my face covered in lather in the back of magazines, almost famous! He had meticulous habits, and kept his workspace, cameras, and lenses spotless and orderly, everything in its place. Just like at home.

He once asked, “Imagine if a surgeon left his tools scattered haphazardly around an operating room. If he couldn’t locate the #10 scalpel when he needed it, what do you suppose the outcome of that operation would be?”

I give him credit for, and appreciate that, he was responsible for me changing my untidy and haphazard, sloppy ways of not organizing anything. My clothes grew in a pile on my desk as the week progressed, I didn’t put things away at all. That was my first real adult lesson that was actually helpful!

I was very grateful for the work, the education, and money, but always felt a little anxious when Yale and I were alone and we had no work to do. I kept waiting for him to fly off the handle, or yell at me, or pick on me because I didn’t perform some task to his perfectionistic standards. Something in his eyes made me wonder if he had a screw or two loose, and even though I kinda-sorta trusted him, being with him made me uneasy.

One evening after I got home from work, and Yale had gone to his night job, I found a box in my desk drawer when I sat down to write in my journal. I opened the box and found a little statuette of 2 people hugging, with a plaque inscribed with, I tingle when we mingle. I dropped the thing as if it had burned my hand, and my stomach did a flip. No card, no name on the box. I tingle when we mingle? What the?

A dark cloud of panic surrounded me. I had my suspicions, but if they held any truth, life was about to blow up. I couldn’t tell Mom. She wouldn’t believe me if I verbalized my hunch, and if she did, I couldn’t imagine the shitstorm that would rain down on me. If I was correct, and Yale fessed up to it, the tenuous calm our family had begun to enjoy, would shatter. Would it drive Mom to drink again? Would she throw me out of the house?

She would blame me, of course. She blamed me for everything, including her marital dysfunction with Dad. When I was just a girl, she‘d hiss, “You’re father loves you more than he loves me” every time they had a fight.    Was a father’s love for his daughter the same as a man’s love for his wife? Somehow I didn’t understand how that could be.

And so began a life of me not speaking up and taking a stand for myself, preferring to remain passive and silent so as not to upset the status quo. Children should be seen and not heard, her favorite mantra, sometimes still sneaks into my consciousness. every time I put pen to paper, still, to this day, a voice in the back of my mind asks, who cares what you think? Who do you think you are?

A few days after I found the statue, as I slept in my upper bunk bed, I awoke with a start in the wee hours of the morning to find Yale standing on the ladder of the bed, staring at me, his hazel eyes almost glowing in the dark. He was stroking my hair. I gasped and bolted upright.

“What are you doing? What’s wrong? What do you want? ”

“I just got in from work and wanted to check on you. Go back to sleep, everything is fine.” His voice was soothing, but my instincts screamed danger Will Robinson, danger, danger. My heart began to beat a crazy tattoo, and I pulled my nightie down, scooched away from him, and drew my knees into my chest, pulling my blanket up to my chin.

“I’m fine. Go away,” I whispered a little too loudly, secretly hoping Mom would witness this situation.

“Shh, you’ll wake someone.”

“You woke me! Leave me alone. What’s wrong with you? Go away before I

scream.”

“I’m just checking on all you kids. Everything is fine.” He stepped down from the ladder, leaned over the lower bunk bed and pretended to look at Susan, then walked to the door, lingering to look back a moment before joining Mom in the bedroom next door.        I was afraid to breathe.

When we saw each other at breakfast, he seemed his usual self, chatting

breezily with the others, not paying any undue attention to me. “Toast?” he asked.he was totally non chalant, as if he hadn’t scared the life out of me just a few hours ago.

Even though my gut said otherwise, I convinced myself the nighttime encounter had been nothing more than a wannabe Dad checking on his kid. I tried not to think about the statue, but It’s all I could think about. I skipped going to work for a few days, saying I didn’t feel well, which was the truth. But what sickened me was not

physical.

About a week later, I went to work as usual around ten, and found Yale sleeping on the futon. He had spent most of the week sleeping in the studio, saying he had work every night. I went about my business, sorting mail, checking on which jobs had deadlines, if any negatives were bathing, or if any prints had dripped and were ready for the drum. The panic of the bunk bed episode had faded slightly.

After an hour Yale called to me in a sleepy voice from the darkened dryer room.

His voice was hoarse and thin.

“Lori, please come in here for a minute.”

“Just a sec, let me finish the invoice I’m working on.” I was not then, and am not now, a capable multi tasker. I like to start one thing and see it through to the finish before beginning something new. I completed the task and trepidatiously entered the barely lit room.

Yale sat on the edge of the futon, wearing a crew neck white t-shirt and pale blue boxer shorts. His lone lock of hair, four strands thick, hung in his beady little eye. He had several days worth of stubble on his face, salt and pepper.

“Hi. What’s up? Coffee?”” I asked.

“Come here please. Come stand in front of me.” Uh oh. Danger. I stepped a bit closer to the futon, but kept an arm’s distance between us. Proceed with caution.

“Come closer to me, c’mon, don’t be shy. I wont bite you.” I thought a bite would be pretty innocent compared to what I thought was coming. I inched closer and he reached out and lightly gripped my wrist. “Lori, you’re doing a great job, I’m very pleased.” Whew. Dad like. “You’re a beautiful girl. Do you know that? Does that boyfriend of yours, what’s his name, treat you like a lady?”

“Uh, thanks. Howie treats me ok I guess. What do you want? Do you want a cup of coffee?” My gut was screaming Danger danger danger. In my mind I saw Robot from Lost in Space, head spinning, eyes flashing, slinky arms with pincer hands flapping wildly up and down. Danger, Will Robinson, danger!

Yale didn’t speak so I turned away to leave the room, and his grip on my arm

tightened.

“Put your hand here.” He pulled my arm and hand toward him, yanking the rest of me along with it. Big bad wolf gonna eat you. He placed my trembling hand on his chest, over his heart. “Do you feel that? Do you feel how fast my heart is beating?”

“Do you need an ambulance? Are you having a heart attack? Should I call… “

“I’m fine. Happens whenever I see you.” Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit. Here it comes…“I love you Lori, I want to be with you. I can’t stop thinking about you. Did you get my little gift?” I knew it! “We’ll have to tell your mom of course.”

“Tell my mom what? That you’re a fucking pervert? Let me go. You’re

disgusting.” I tried to pull my hand away, and then everything seemed to happen in hyperspeed.

He pulled me closer to him, until both his arms formed a vise around my waist. He closed his eyes and pressed his face against my breasts and I thought I would puke. Why did I wear this top today? Freakin’ halter top, no bra, dammit! I squirmed and strained to get away from him, but he was a strong little fucker. Hurling bundles of newspapers on and off a truck did wonders for his biceps, and belied his ineffectual appearance.

“Let me go. Please.” I pushed his face away from me and stepped backwards, but he held on tighter. “Yale, let me go right now!” I smacked him on the ear, which momentarily stunned him, and he loosened his grip.

I don’t remember where I read it, that a fast, hard slap to the ear would liberate a victim from an attacker, and though it was a small, weak slap, it bought me enough time to break free. I ran into the darkroom because the door was closest, and ajar, the main door was located thirty feet away. Yale jumped to his feet, charging after me, groping, grabbing.

“Leave me alone you fucking perv! What’s wrong with you? How can you do this to my mother?” Ah, poor girl, therein lies the rub. My mother’s sanity and well being mattered more to me than my own safety. How codependent of me.

Yale would not relent. Now we were in the cramped darkroom together, and he pushed me against the small refrigerator in which he stored cartons of film and bottles of chemicals. He grabbed my chin and smashed his mouth against mine. I thrashed, tossing my head from side to side to avoid that mouth, his hot, stale breath and serpentine tongue. His eyes bulged and he panted like a dog. He looked quite mad indeed. He thrust his crotch at me, ground it hard against mine, and I felt his pinky sized dick poking me. One of my breasts had slipped out of my top, and he harshly grabbed it with a calloused paw, and I just couldn’t find a way out of his grasp no matter how much I wriggled.

The red light cast an eerie pall over Yale’s sweating pigface. The clothes lines had what must have been yesterday’s films hanging from them, and I wondered if I could make a deep enough cut across his jugular if I managed to get my hands on one of them and pull it off the line. I spotted some photos sitting in developer, and managed to finally slip one arm free. Yale’s face was on my neck, his breath hot, and he pushed my thighs apart with his knee. My flailing hand groped blindly behind me, until I found the light switch and bright fluorescent light pierced the darkness.

That stopped him cold.

“Wha, what did you do? You’ve ruined all that work! Why did you do that?” He seemed to have forgotten that he was raping me, now completely fixated on the film.

He turned and lurched to the sink, picked up a tong and poked at the pictures.

I seized the opportunity to flee. I bolted from the darkroom, through the office, and flew down the 3 flights of steep, stone stairs, losing a sandal on one of the landings. I kept moving until I burst out of the front door of 150 5^th avenue, into blinding daylight, panting, shaking, heart hammering in my chest faster than Yale’s had been beating when all this started a few minutes ago. Holy shit, what the hell just happened? I wanted to yell, Get him! Hey, there’s a rapist here!

I looked behind me to see if he had followed, then shuffle-hopped across Fifth avenue to the east side. The concrete sidewalk hurt my bare foot, but I hurried south to 16th street, away from the scene of the crime, and ducked into the B. Shackman Company store to collect myself. I wished I could shrink myself and become a figure in one of the dollhouses. Wondered if I should tell Mr B Shackman, hey, your fotog is a fucking rapist.

“Are you alright miss?” a woman asked me, and I didn’t know if she worked there, or was a customer. I couldn’t imagine what I looked like, one shoed, hair flying, breathing hard, shaking like a junkie. I could tell her everything. Or nothing.

“I’m OK. Had a fight with my boyfriend.”

“Dearie, you should dump that guy.” And she walked to another part of the store. Her question interrupted my panic, and brought up a lot of questions.

Would Yale hunt me like prey in the urban jungle, disfigure my face with fixative if he found me? How far was he willing to go to keep me quiet? Did he secretly hope I would tell Mom, and he could just slip away and out of our lives without trouble? Had he attacked one of his daughters, or one of their friends, causing their mother to banish him from their kingdom? SHould I report him to the police? Holy crap. What a mess. What the fuck was I supposed to do now? Where could I go? How could I tell Mom?

Raped or not, I was fucked.

I walked west on 16^th street toward 6^th avenue to get the F train, and veered south, to 14th street, to find a cheap pair of foot coverings. I bought a pair of zorries, now known as flip flops, from a discount store for less than a buck. I dumped my lone shoe in a trash can on the corner, and spent the train ride home thinking about what to say, what to do. I had a revenge fantasy of cutting Yale’s gherkin off with a rusty Exacto knife and leaving it in developer.

I had very limited options, no adult to advise or guide me. Much as my instincts told me to file a police report, I knew a rape charge could ruin Yale’s life, and possibly besmirch my own character. It would be his word against mine, and who would take my word, a slightly rambunctious teenager, dressed in provocative clothing, over Yale’s, a respected business man in his community?

But what if he tried that again, with one of my sisters next? Then it would be my fault for not speaking up. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. What to do, what to do.

Mom was not in the apartment when I got home, but Joy was. I needed a shower, had to scrub every last rapist molecule off me. Would I ever feel clean again? Did Yale think he was still welcome, did he have the nerve to show his face here?

But wait, what if he was in some sort of dissociative state, and didn’t even remember what he did?  When I had flipped on the light, it was as if he’d broken out of a trance. If he said I was lying, Mom would believe him. if he told her it was my fault, she’d believe him.

Joy followed me back to my room, and sat on Sue’s lower bunk while I stripped off my defiled clothes and pulled on an oversized t-shirt. I needed a distraction, and turned on the radio, and Maureen McGovern’s The Morning After, from the movie The Poseidon Adventure seemed to mock me. Tomorrow there would indeed be a morning after to end all others.

“You know that little statue that said ‘I tingle when we mingle?” Joy asked. “Did Yale give that to you?” I gasped and turned to face her. My youngest sister was quiet, but nothing escaped her watchful eyes.

“What made you say that?”

“I just have a feeling,” she said. “I bet it was him.”

“Why?”

“I can’t explain it. I just know.”

“I have to tell you something. I need help and don’t know what to do. You have to swear you won’t tell anyone.” She listened attentively as I told her about Yale’s attack on me.

“I knew it!” she said. “What are you going to tell mommy?”

“I don’t know what to tell her. I’m scared. He should be reported to the police.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“I can’t. I know I should. But I can’t. Shit.”

“You better tell Mommy before he comes back. She’s next door at Gussies. I’ll go get her.”

“No no. Don’t. It’ll wait till she gets back.” Avoidance, my M.O.

Mom came back about half an hour after Joy and I discussed the dilemma.

“Ma, I have to tell you something. You won’t like it. Don’t be mad. Please. I swear it’s not my fault.”

“What did you do now?”

“Nothing Ma. I didn’t do anything. Yale tried to rape me in the studio today.”

“What…did you just say?”

“You heard me. Fucking Yale, your boyfriend, attacked me in his studio. He tried to stick his tongue down my throat, and ram his dick up my vagina. He’s crazy. You have to call the cops and report it.”

“You lying little bitch, why would you make up a story like that? You’ll say anything to get back at me wouldn’t you? Am I such a terrible mother?” Yes, Ma, you are such a terrible mother. And no, Ma, I am not that kind of daughter.

“Who makes up a story like that? Who takes the side of a fucking pervert raper and maniac over her own daughter? Right here, under your nose, the asshole has

been planning this. I’ll prove it.”

I decided to show my mother the tingle-mingle statue. I don’t even know why I kept it. I ran into my room and opened the drawer where I’d hidden it, and upon touching it, felt filthy. I handed the box to Mom when I re-entered the kitchen.

“He put that in my desk,” I thrust it at her.

She snatched the box, and removed its vile contents. After a cursory glance, she hurled it across the room.

“You just have to fuck up everything good that comes my way, don’t you? You little whore, you seduced him. This isn’t the first time either. Always running around here without a bra on, shaking your tits all over the place. You’re a tease and a bitch. Get away from me. You make me sick! You wrecked my marriage. Now you’ve wrecked this too. Get out of my sight before I kill you!” Her nostrils flared and the veins in her neck stood up.

“I live here, I’m supposed to be braless at home. He’s not supposed to be obsessing over my tits. Or even noticing them. He’s a fucking rapist, and you brought him here. You brought the fox into the henhouse, and now you’re blaming me for your stupid, desperate choice in losers?’ I can’t believe you. It fucking figures. You’ll never change. I don’t want your disgusting little boyfriend, not this one or any others. You were just an easy to fuck drunk. All they wanted was to fuck you and run. Maybe I’ll just call his ex wife and ask her if he raped either of his daughters.

Maybe she’ll believe me.”

“Don’t. You. Dare ” her voice was deep, guttural, and she punctuated her words by poking the finger an inch from my face. I turned my back and walked away while she continued ranting..

I couldn’t breathe. Flee, Will Robinson. Run away. Danger, danger, danger! I hurried to my room and hastily jumped into a pair of jeans. I strapped myself into my bra, and threw on the t shirt. Joy climbed into her bed in the top bunk of her bedroom, and began to bump her head softly against her pillow. My mother continued to scream at the empty room, and I wished that she would drink a bottle of vodka and shut the fuck up.

I slammed the door behind me and left the apartment. I had no idea where I was going, I just needed to be out of there. What the fuck was I supposed to do now?

I love you Lori. I want to be with you. we’ll have to tell your mother.