Chapter 1

People say my mom was no good, but I don't agree. People say she was a bad mother, but I don't know. I only have one, so I got nothing to compare. Being a mother is one thing. People are a lot of things. My mother was more.

I'm staying on Twenty-Third Street. Not the street itself, even if I look that way. I stay four floors up in the George Washington Hotel. There are a lot of tales there, a lot of stories in my multi-storey hotel, mostly told to no one by the people riding elevators. I don't know who they're talking to, and I'm not sure they know either. They're interesting stories, though. Stories never told in books and magazines, so they carry a peculiar weight. I catch them somewhere in the middle. If there are beginnings or endings, I don't know. I feel they might not.

My mother is the opposite. She is too quiet. I read a story about a scribe who stopped talking and it annoyed people. There is a lot of talk when not much is needed, and it's babble mostly. The funny part of the story, what they call irony, is the scribe is a scribe. He's copying words. Are those words any more important than what he's not saying? I guess I'm a scribe copying my thoughts. Perhaps I'm just the same as the storytellers on the elevator. I don't know who I'm talking to. But I'm different from Bartelby, the aforementioned scribe and my mother now, because I've been known to talk. Not so much but sometimes I talk.

The trouble with my mom is she thinks she needs to talk but she can't. She's not dumb or anything because she used to talk. Like me, she didn't talk a lot. When she did, she came to the point. She's not dumb in she can talk and she's not dumb in she's smart. So being smart and not being able to talk has made her mad. She's restrained at Bellevue, a jail within a jail. She's trapped in her mind because she can't let it out and her body is trapped to make sure there's no harm done to herself or others. I'm staying here because Bellevue is nearby. The elevator storytellers are here for the same reason. They're outpatients.

My first memory begins in a grassy field like a pasture except a pasture feeds grass grazers. The only animal eating grass was a big brown horse weighed down by a big policeman. Like the sky, the policeman's uniform was blue. He sat up high on his horse while it bent its great neck down to reach the grass. Squirrels darted about, but mostly people occupied the field grazing on food extracted from bags or baskets. Some even covered the grass with blankets.

I had been scared until I noticed the horse and the policeman. I had been crying until they distracted me. The man got off the horse and knelt down to talk. I wished he hadn't because seeing the horse was really neat and seeing the man with his shiny leather boots over his shins and his navy blue pants and his big belt holding tools of his trade, a small bat and a big pistol and a round silver ring that wasn't stretched out to the two rings of handcuffs and the blue shirt not quite sky blue with patches and a badge and his cornered cap with the shiny dark bill astride the horse made them together the most interesting thing to see. Somehow him kneeling down to my size just wasn't the same. And then he got me crying again.

In those days I was innocent because now when I see a cop I wonder if there's anything on me or in me interesting to him. When the cop knelt down I felt safe. I didn't worry about those cuffs stretched out and encircling my wrists even if they fit. They wouldn't. I cried because he asked where Mom was and it reminded me why I was crying. Then through a curtain of tears the badge caught my eye and I reached out to touch it, releasing the balloon my mom bought me. Temporarily fascinated by the badge, I halted my outpour only to have it return two fold. The balloon the gift from Mom I let go losing it in the eternal sky.

Whether the screams of my discontent or the released balloon signaled her I don't know, but I saw my mom running across the field. She held her purse under her arm like a football. Her breasts, large for her frame, unrestrained in her white buttoned down man's shirt bounced with each stride. Her wavy long brunette hair bounced too. Her long legs flayed out in her slacks. As graceful as she moved normally, having been a ballerina student until she grew tits and still tried and then conceived me, running was not her forte. She arrived out of breath with the three of us staring at her: the policeman, the horse and me. She was a sight.

A moment after she arrived the policeman scolded her. It took a moment to recover. Dressed like a man including a tie tied loosely around her neck, not completely unique during the mid-thirties in New York's Central Park, but unique enough, her femininity in contrast to her clothes stunned. Her beauty stunned more. Her milky white skin covered high cheekbones narrowing to a small rounded chin. Her eyes were large and turquoise. Her mouth was small and expressive. Her upturned nose made her look elfin.

After receiving the scolding with downcast guilt, she led me across the field, glancing back to see if the policeman watched. He did for awhile. Her pace kept slow, matching the small gait of a five year old until the cop left. She walked fast as soon as the horse tromped away. When I trailed behind she told me to hurry.

"Archie," she yelled, and a man walking away from her turned around. Despite the broiling late summer, he dressed elegantly in suit and tie. When I tugged on his pants, annoying the overfed paunchy middle aged gentleman, I discovered their light weight. His hat made of straw was also light and elegant.

Except for my annoyance, he looked happy to be in my mom's company. He glanced around from time to time though looking for spies.

Some said Mom was a whore. Jealous women said it most. Angry men used it. Of course she wasn't. A professional mistress, an artist's model, a muse for creative people, and she sewed like nobody's business, she was the best in my biased opinion at what she did, single minded like a genius. When she spotted Archie, she set the hook and reeled him in. No distractions interfered, including me. Had she abandoned me? Maybe at the moment she had, but not in the scheme of things. Her work kept us alive, fed, clothed and housed and together. She never abandoned me.

My mother conceived me in the back of a Ford truck on a cold late fall evening in Northern Minnesota. She was the daughter of an iron miner and he was the son of her father's boss visiting his family for the weekend from the university in Duluth. Five years her senior, he hadn't noticed her before she bloomed. She found him cute since before puberty started and made her find him more desirable. The dance when he finally noticed her highlighted her life up until then. They danced and talked and fell in love. The next evening I was conceived. Though quick and painful during the act of conception, they spent an hour preparing for it. She gave him her virginity and respectability because she thought they shared true love. He thought her too easy, too young, and too low class. The next day at church he shunned her. At first confused, she figured it out. His parents' presence necessitated discretion. But when he returned during Christmas and they bumped into each other, he treated her the same. She kept at him until he told her what he thought. Then he got drunk at a party and came to her, pleading his pleasure, apologizing, regretting his foolishness passing up the most desirable girl in town, trying to worm his way back inside her. After she let him kiss her for a last taste of love, she shoved him away. Her mother witnessed it.

Mom was sixteen. By the end of winter she couldn't hide her pregnancy. Her father hated the surprise. Her mother, also beautiful, conceived Mom at the same age. She understood. She suspected the culprit and Mom confirmed it. Unlike her mom and dad marrying, the young man and his family refused. Grandmother preferred it that way. Grandmother blackmailed them.

Expelled from the house by her father, he planned to send her to the farm of her father's father. She never liked her grandfather and wanted nothing to do with rural life.

What little culture available in town she soaked in. She had a friend with a rich uncle, and when he invited her friend to New York City, my mom made a list of what magazines she wanted and insisted her friend get her art gallery catalogs. Luckily her friend's uncle's interest in bringing culture to his niece enabled the requests to happen. Even better she brought back two programs from Broadway shows. As they perused the programs, her friend described everything about the shows. My mom had only one place she wanted to be. With the blackmail money, she could afford it. My grandmother put her on the bus taking her daughter away.

A miser's tight grasp of money, Mom feared every escaped cent. A lot of cash for the depression, she sewed it into her cloak in the dreary Terminal Hotel next to the bus station in New York City. Then she found her place, a home for unwed mothers.

The lady in charge, an old progressive reformer losing her grip on her cause and on her life, Mother kept alive. She begged to be brought up to the woman's class and dignity and intelligence and the matron proudly provided. In the four months before my birth at Bellevue and six months afterwards, my mother absorbed everything from the respectable woman. Then suspicion, gossip, shame, guilt and rejection ended it.

Mom sought guidance and tutelage from the minister attending to the fold of young wayward women unaware of the spell she cast on men because of her beauty and her intelligence. An experienced soul saver and good on the pulpit, the minister in his mid thirties, small and frail and plain faced, presented a rigid man of morals. His rigidity hid a forgiving nature. He understood the powerful temptations of sin that had brought about his flock of unwed mothers. Like the matron, he sought to uplift them to a higher place in society, showing them respect. Unlike the matron, gonads and a penis hung off him like balls and a chain. He understood temptation firsthand, though only in his mind and heart and genitals until he met my mom. Fighting temptation succeeded because no girl pursued him. His preaching excited them, but in private his timidity made him plain. They lost interest.

Not bothered by his meekness and interested in his sermons Mom initiated private consultations to learn his view of the world. What did the moral and respectable woman look and act like in New York City? Who better to ask than the man cloaked in religious morality and respectability?

An avid pupil, more than her looks impressed him. Mom reassured her matron the minister's relationship copied theirs after being spotted walking the nearby streets with him. Waiting until others finished, she claimed the last and longest consultations. He brought her articles and books. Discussing them often resulted in disagreement, but the minister didn't mind. Her debates made him smile. The more they talked the more she liked him.

He visited the home and sermonized on Thursdays. He had his own parish. She attended a couple of his Sunday services. On the second visit she stopped by his rectory. The minister's wife was a cold woman, his age and as plain. Her jealousy of her husband with the bad women of the home existed from the beginning. Her faith in his faithfulness suspended on a fragile thread. It broke when she opened the door to my beautiful pregnant mother. The minister looked afraid and unsteady when he introduced Mom to his wife. Then he tugged her to the door and told her never to consult him there and never to come to his church.

Humiliated, she stopped seeing him. After my birth, upon returning to the home, the minister asked to meet. The teaching and debating began again. It took time for the warmth to return after the humiliation. When it did, it felt warmer. He began touching. At first the touches seemed accidental. His finger touched her hand. She didn't mind. She hadn't been touched in a long time. The touches became more common and purposeful. He stood behind her and leaned against her reading over her shoulder. Her never shying from his touch emboldened him. She felt his hardness push against her shoulder. It stirred her. She blushed. Tilting her head back until it rested above his penis, she showed him her blush. He kissed her lips.

Whispering into her ear, "You are so beautiful," he said. "I love you," he said. "The first time I saw you, I loved you," he said. They shared brief kisses. Anyone could interrupt.

They walked outside silently instead of continuing discussions like before. Instead of parting at the subway they kept walking. At a strange place where women paraded in gaudy garb, he took her hand for the first time and pulled her into a narrow alley.

Opening a creaky door, the minister led my mom inside. In the open apartment to the right a large blonde woman in flouncy lace undergarments sat heavily in an overstuffed chair facing the door. He bent down to whisper to the old broad. She laughed and coughed and scolded him jokingly. Pointing to a board with nails with keys dangling from some and numbers and letters over each nail, the Madame let him choose a room for us. After he whispered again in her ear, she laughed and coughed and pointed high and to the side. He grabbed a key from the top corner.

Four floors up he unlocked a door revealing a room filled by a bed and a table holding a large ceramic bowl. Apologizing for the surroundings and explaining his reason for bringing her, the minister moved through his shame and embarrassment slowly towards calm. He knew a few of the prostitutes but not biblically. A couple of them formerly resided at the home. They needed his counsel. Since he eased their minds but didn't make them leave, the Madame let him continue, and other girls sought his counsel. He made it clear he never used their services. My mom accepted his reason and believed him, helping him restore his calm. While they talked, a young and pretty prostitute not much older than Mom knocked on the door. She carried a large heavy pitcher of vaporous hot water, poured it into the bowl and left. The prostitute and the minister avoided visual or verbal contact.