Waiting in the foyer

I can remember the hallway. It was a tiny foyer in that Bronx apartment. It was large enough for two steps and an umbrella stand, which there wasn't. There was a glass paned door which led into the apartment. I had come home from being at the park and was locked out of the apartment.

I sat in that foyer and waited. I thought about myself. I thought about running away and tried to envision living in the streets. I thought about my father, living in California. I remember going from one parent to the next and the rage may have been different but the level of sickness always one upping the other. I thought about my grandfather, dead now for a few years and how things were spiraling out of control.

I thought about what would happen if, when she finally unlocked the door, she would do if I wasn't there. If I just disappeared......never to be heard from again. The fear of leaving what I knew was overwhelming and completely like being on a planet where I was the only one. There was in that foyer only me and the fear that surrounded and permeated me. How could the neighbors not smell the fear? How could the people walking by on the street not know what was happening behind this door?

A stranger would only see a 13 year old girl sitting in a small vestibule, looking so unhappy and forlorn. I wasn't being beat, or berated. Being shut out wasn't a crime was it? The silence of the hours ticking off wasn't heineous. I told myself this as a quarter hour turned into two hours and two hours turned into four and four hours turned into six.

What would I do and where would I go? I rationalized. I bargained with G-d. Please just take me out of this and put me somewhere that I could be free. I wasn't bad, I didn't mean any harm....I only wanted to love, be loved and listen to music.

Finally she came to the glass door and unlocked it and went back into her room and locked her bedroom door. I used the rest room and went into the kitchen to eat. The silence in the apartment was like a fortress in itself. There was only her and myself but the silence filled it as if there was another person.

I knew deep within my soul something was wrong this time. Something had broke, was fractured, was so beyond repair that I had to THINK. What to do?

This was the Friday of Memorial Day weekend and all those days she never came out of her bedroom. She didn't answer her bedroom door. But I wasn't being hurt, no one was beating me, there was NO visable threat to me. And yet I was slowly convincing myself that the silence was somehow ok and that soon, very soon, it would pass and all would be better.

I remember calling the social worker in charge of our case. I remember the feel of the phone in my hand as I lifted it to my ear. I remember depositing the coins. I remember dialing and leaving a detailed message telling on her. Speaking of being alone with someone not responding to the knocks on the door. The hours passing.

I told how she must wish for me to just disappear and never return and how I didn't know where to go or what to do. I didn't collude with my captor, I told how terrified I was that no one would ever come for me. I remember blurting it all out.

I was taken the next day to a foster home. I remember feeling so strong..so righteous, so clear about her being wrong and me being right. I remember taking my precious am/fm cassette player that I had got for my birthday. I remember taking my clothes, most the colour blue. I remember never wanting to see her again, to worry about what she was doing on the other side of the door, and being free.

The foster family had given me the upstairs converted attic bedroom that had once belonged to their now married daughter. The walls were lined with the most amazing cedar wood, and the panels of wood went sideways...long blonde planks shot through with red.

After I was there for a week I feel sick. I had a fever that went on for three days. My fever was high and I remember being delirious. The foster mom was close by. I was seeing things that weren't there. What I remember most about that fever was that when it broke it was as if that chapter of my life and who I had been in the Bronx was now closed. I would never again be her vulnerable daughter. I would never again have to come last or not at all. I would never again be told or do anything that didn't make sense to me even if it was for my own good.

I remember the foyer and the waiting and the pleading for something else to happen cause that wasn't fair. And it wasn't. I know that I didn't do anything to deserve it. I don't want to feel like I am locked out of anything and I don't want to ever forget how strong I was to tell and leave and trust that nothing worse could possibly happen.