Gradually my explorations fanned out to Southern Boulevard and to the Hunts Point Palace, which in its heyday hosted bands from all over the city, but was now a dance studio. Up from there, I found the Five and Ten Cent store where I practiced petty thievery, strolled past fish tanks filled with darting slivers of color, past an aisle of pencils, papers, and notebooks, things I coveted and stole. After I exited through the doors and slunk back home, I shouted to myself “Safe!” like in our tag game of ring-a-levio.
Several boys lived on the block including Eddy, next door to me, and also Bobby and Brian, Dodie’s twins, plus Melvin, a boy who’d just moved into the building with his parents who’d escaped from the Nazis and wore clothing that never fit. People said that was because the family got their clothes from the welfare department. Then there was Ronny, Yetta’s son who later became a heroin addict and stole from his mother, plus the superintendent’s son, Karl, who was younger than me so that didn’t count, and whose mother once told me that “boys put out fires and girls water plants.” But there was no one like Donny who moved through the neighborhood like a clean knife cuts through cheesecake.
I became aware of him the same time I started to feel a soft and warm sensation that sent waves throughout my body. At the end of the block stood the bookends of Mr. Kurtz’s grocery store on one side of the street, and Nate’s candy store on the other. Our apartment building served as a billboard for John’s Bargain Store, red and white letters stenciled to the brick siding. Within this world I discovered Donny.
For weeks we’d watched each other. I wasn’t sure in which building he lived. He had dark hair and green eyes. I sat on the stonewall that bordered the lot and saw him cross the street. I heard him ask, “Can I sit here?”
“Sure.”
Warmth radiated from my thighs, a preparation for something I couldn’t imagine, but at the same time, knew everything about. In one moment, my thighs became sweaty and stuck together. Donny’s complexion was smooth and he was close enough to my face so I could see a fine network of hair on his cheek and also above his mouth.
“How are you?”
I looked at the stupid Buster Brown oxford shoes that my parents made me wear.
“Can I kiss you?” I nodded. He kissed my cheek. I wanted him to do it again. He held my hand. Then the streetlamps came on.
I watched him get up and cross the street. I remained sitting there and felt the stinging outline of where he had kissed me. I wanted him to come back. For weeks, I waited for him to appear again. One evening my sister announced at the dinner table, “Donny’s moved away.”
“Do you know where?”
They looked at me. “Lenore has a cru-ush. Lenore has a cru-ush,”
“I do not!” What I felt was bigger than the Empire State Building. I denied everything.
“So where did he move?” Elaine asked.
“Nobody knows.” I didn’t know what to do with that news. Donny had startled something inside me. My heart rattled inside my chest for weeks. I walked quietly so no one would hear the noise. I didn’t know how to make it stop. In school, my teachers said to write what you know. I wrote about Donny’s kiss and never showed it to anyone. But after he disappeared, something happened to me.
–to be continued