7. Crossings

Some people traverse boundaries every day. A few of them lived on this block, though not for long. They worked, they conducted business—or did other things nobody tells you about when you’re a kid—on the other side of the boulevard, the intersection and the cemeteries. The had resumes, plans and other collections of abstract data in other parts of the community, or even in other towns.

Such people—when I was young, they were almost always men—cross neighborhood, city, county or state lines every day. You see them in Penn Station, or any other large terminal in any city, at the same hours every weekday. They ascend escalators to the places where they work. According to Mrs. Littington, her husband never set foot on the streets surrounding the place where he worked during the time he stayed—actually, slept and clipped his hedges—on this block.

I wonder what he—or she—felt whenever they stepped off a bus, train or plane and saw a sign that read, “Welcome to” some town, state or country. Was it relief or despair—or some strange, desperate combination of the two?

Whenever I entered the state in which this block is situated—especially when I came in on a particular rusty bridge that transverses a creek separating the acidic swampland on the other side of the creek from the gnarled bark and vines the side on which this block is located—I could feel late-fall afternoon air through slits of windows and bricks simmering bubbles from the heat within and the cold outside. I could feel the days growing colder and shorter; and knew there was nothing to do but move ahead, to shelter—which is to say, light—or some place where I know how to find and take it.

Any time I saw the “Welcome to” sign at the end of the bridge, I knew that for the time being, I could stay. But I also knew that I never knew how long I’d remain. I knew only that I’d come and that I’d go. Of course, for a long time, I didn’t know that one day I wouldn’t be able to come back, not for a very long time.

But after my most recent crossing I didn’t expect to stay forever. Long enough to bury mother, certainly. But beyond that, I had no expectations. I didn’t think I’d see anybody I remembered or who remembered me: as far as I knew, they were all gone, like Mrs. Littington, or dead, like Adam. I certainly hadn’t expected her, or any of our onetime, sometime neighbors. I felt, at first, like some émigré who returns, not for business, not for pleasure, to the land where he or she began—which is not necessarily the land of one’s birth. For I could never be sure that mother’d given me life here: She never talked about that, or anything that included the man who fathered me.

His identity, or that of wherever we might’ve lived before we ended up on this block, was like so many other things on this block: You didn’t ask about it. And if mother wouldn’t tell, nobody would. At least, nobody on this block, where I knew only women.

In any group of women, if one won’t tell, nor will any of the others. Sure, they’ll gossip among themselves, one to another, sometimes in the presence of others in their group. But not with anybody else—certainly not with a man.

Mother’d never talk about him. But, when we stayed in touch only by phone, she began to answer some of the questions I wouldn’t have dared to ask and others that hadn’t occurred to me—on the unspoken condition that I’d never tell anyone else. But by that time there was nobody else for me to tell. In any event, she stopped wanting sex a long time ago, she said. It’s nothing but gymnastiques—She, who never knew any language but what she spoke, used one of Mrs. Littington’s words and a very good approximation of her accent!—and you could get hurt very, very badly in the hands of a careless partner. Which, she said as if to warn me, is what a man is: a careless partner.

And the children forget about you, she said. Once, I tried to console with an apology—for what, I forget—but she short-circuited a declaration of my intention to be more attentive and not to forget her efforts. “You’re doing what you know how to do,” she said.

I’m still not sure of what she meant. Sometimes, I can tell you what I’ve done, and on rare occasions, why. But I still don’t know what, if anything, I know or have ever known how to do. I’m not talking only about a trade or profession, though I’ve practiced a few, legal and otherwise. Growing up, I wasn’t a particularly obedient child or attentive student. Nor was I an athlete, musician or anything else one becomes through various combinations of talent and practice. And I couldn’t tell anybody how to do anything more complex than unwrapping a candy bar.

Perhaps the one and only thing I’ve ever known how to do is take flight, to absent myself from situations. I can sit somewhere, and the time of day, the locality or even my own name don’t matter. Sometimes, of course, such information doesn’t matter. Who came to her funeral or what kind of service or ceremony was held for her wasn’t going to bring mother back from the dead, or more accurately, bring her back into this world. But some parts of my life—for that matter, maybe my life itself—may be allowed on one side of the bridge but not the other. And once I complete this stage of my journey—my transformation—I won’t be able to stay on either shore. Or on this block.

But that one skill—absenting myself—I’m still not sure how, or if, it relates to anything else in my life, or anyone else’s. Maybe it’s the reason why the people I’ve met in passing since I’ve left this block have told me about their families, partners, friends. People who had no identifiable reason to trust me have expressed their frustration with husbands or dissatisfaction with boys who wouldn’t become men.

Even before I began my transformation, I’d hear the stories. Like the beautician who showed me the cuts, bruises and cigarette burns her boyfriend inflicted on her the night before, before he started fucking her.

She revealed those marks just above the hemline of her skirt and the caps of her sleeves—during my second session in her chair, when she fitted and styled the first wig I bought in her shop. At that time I couldn’t’ve, and wouldn’t’ve, told anyone else her story, any more than I’d’ve repeated what my mother told me. There were only two other people—one of whom owned the shop—who knew that I’d been going there. My mother wasn’t one of them. And nobody—from this block, or anywhere—knew, or could’ve known both my mother’s confession and the beautician’s revelation. Or anything I told either, or both, of them.

One thing I know: I never called my mother from that shop, or the neighborhood around it.