Is She Dead?
One chilly, post-Christmas weekday Miami morning (Florida’s southernmost regions do occasionally experience crisp weather) during our winter school break, my 8 year-old sister and 7 year-old self were contentedly engaging in our standard 1980s latchkey kid activities: absently viewing pre-cable television offerings and gobbling through our fast-dwindling weekly snack supply, the existence of which was due largely in part to our mom’s avid coupon clipping (coupled with the local grocery chains’ generous offers to double and sometimes even triple the paper $.15 and $.25 discounts). We lived in a rented three-bedroom single family house located in the curiously monikered Lemon City, a small mid-Miami neighborhood edged in on its eastern boundary by storied Biscayne Boulevard. The home sported outdated décor featuring seedy 1970s porn-esque wood-paneling and nearly threadbare wall-to-wall tangerine-hued carpeting– unattractive, for sure, but useful in that it drew the eye away from our mismatched, secondhand furnishings.
While we enjoyed the comfortable embrace of school-less slumber, our mom had departed earlier that morning with our two younger sisters (a toddler and an infant) in tow. She’d first drive several miles to the west, her destination a decidedly dubious slice of the oft-gritty Miami demographics pie, to deposit the mewling brats within the confines of the unadorned duplex belonging to Abuela, our elderly Cuban babysitter (I’d failed to commit Abuela’s actual name to memory). The drab exterior belied an interior cluttered with colorful, local bodega-purchased religious paraphernalia, interspersed with plastic, vibrant bouquets depicting species of flowers perhaps imagined and not yet classified, housed in vases of varying sizes and placed throughout the compact quarters. She’d then head in the direction of a downtown Miami office building, to commence her daily eight-hour performance as an administrative assistant pandering to a pompous accountant. Once said eight hours had expired, she’d reverse course, eventually capping off her day at the starting line.
If you’re wondering which activities our dad performed in order to contribute to the household coffers, well, the inquisitive 7 year-old I was did, too, once I began to become aware of worldly matters. The only data I’d managed to obtain was that our father currently worked as a bartender at the Take One Lounge, a diminutive hut of a structure situated on traffic-clogged 79th Street.
79th Street serves as a continuous, mid-Miami artery. Its eastern tip lies firmly ensconced within a heady mosaic of Miami Beach whimsy: tranquility-inducing wafts of slathered-on coconut-infused suntan oil emanate from glistening physiques, Art Deco pastels — simultaneously glamorous and whimsical — swirl past, palms lend lush, towering flora, while the briny teal glory of the adjacent Atlantic lies but a few flip-flopped footfalls eastward.
A drive along the span bridging Miami Beach to the mainland affords a sweepingly picturesque snapshot of a vast Biscayne Bay dotted with various vessels, its seawalls bracing mansion-laden waterfront real estate. As it stabs its way westward, though, 79th Street buckles and undulates, yawning potholes raking unsuspecting undercarriages with increasing frequency, the abutting neighborhoods and storefronts deteriorating in sync, morphing from starry prosperity, to dusty disrepair and abandonment. Here sat the Take One Lounge.
Situated on a too-expansive lot, given the square footage of its housing, the Take One Lounge was approximately fifty feet removed from the bustling thoroughfare. A pole-mounted sign positioned near the sidewalk adjacent to the street announced to passing motorists what I surmised was its main draw: ADULT REVIEW. I had no idea what this meant and, for some reason, I never inquired within.
On that particular morning, I recall vaguely assuming our dad was asleep in our parents’ bedroom at the end of the hallway, which was customary after he’d worked a night shift. Awakening midday, he’d prepare our lunch, then maybe take us somewhere to break up the monotony of the day (there are only so many I Love Lucy re-runs one can consume in succession). Should we had bothered to peer through the curtain-less living room picture window directly above our heads (the main TV-viewing sofa was positioned along the wall beneath the window), however, we would have noted the empty circular driveway, directly out front.
It was only at the sound of a car pulling into the driveway that we tore our gazes away from the television, twisting around and rising to our knees in order to peer out. From our vantage point, we could see that our dad had parked his goldenrod Ford Pinto in the driveway — closer to the front door than was normal for him. He stepped from the driver’s seat, rounded the rear of the car, and opened the rear passenger door. Leaning into the backseat, he appeared to be struggling to pull something large and unwieldy from the car.
This scene had suddenly become decidedly more intriguing than what was occurring on the television; my sister and I jostled for better positioning at the window. As we watched, our dad — a rather petite male specimen whose physique was structured not unlike that of the late, great musician Prince — straining and huffing, staggering backward in measured but labored steps, hauled what appeared to be an unconscious, Brunhilde-sized woman from the Pinto’s backseat.
The breadth of her full form revealing itself in stages synchronized with our dad’s heaves, I first noted that she sported a mussed, choppy blonde haircut punctuated by soot-tinged roots. He grasped her beneath the armpits and dragged her toward the front door, her interminable legs stretched out before her, her splayed feet unappealingly directing east-west traffic, her strappy black stilettos scraping along the asphalt as my dad continued his so close, but oh so far away trek to the front door. The short, lacy black dress she wore had gathered about her broad upper thighs, threatening to expose her groin area. Once he reached the front door, directly to our left, not wanting to miss even a moment of the incredibly bizarre action, we moved as far to the right as the sofa would allow, our faces smashed into the glass.
Although my view was now angled, my closest -to-the-door vantage point remained quite clear. Her sturdy body sagged down and to the right as my dad released one armpit in order to fish his keys from his pants pocket. Unlocking the door and twisting the knob with one hand, while still grasping her beneath a single armpit, he repositioned his free hand beneath the other once the door swung open, dragging her over the small step-up leading directly into the living room (the house didn’t have a foyer), grunting loudly as the final leg of the journey seemed to expend the remainder of his vim.
Once inside, he continued the journey only until her stiletto heels had cleared the threshold. Once they had, he released his hold and began to lower her upper half onto the tangerine carpet. Just as he did so, the bodice of the lacy black number she was sheathed in relented, allowing one plump udder, featuring a saucer-sized, mauve-hued areola with matching nipple set to spring free. Upon viewing the nipple, my mind immediately likened it to that of the eraser affixed to the end of a gigantic, glittery novelty pencil I had recently received as a gift.
Our eyes round and huge as that areola, my sister and I stood inert, unable to process that which we were witness to. So surreal was the presence of this strange woman a mere few feet away, sans the perceived safety provided by the window, I curiously fixated on her closed eyelids, smudged unevenly with faded blue eye shadow punctuated with tiny glints of silvery glitter, her lashes clumped with thick black mascara.
Finally breaking from my trance-like state, I turned toward my sister, for a thought had just occurred to me. “We gotta go get Stacy!”, I excitedly announced. Stacy, our shared best neighborhood friend, lived about two blocks away. In silent agreement, we hurried to our rooms. Not wanting to waste time changing into my play clothes, I pulled on a pair of jeans, shoving the hem of my nightgown into the waistband. A sweater and my worn pink sneakers with Velcro closures rounded out my impromptu fashion selections. My sister readied herself in equally record time, and raced from the house, making a wide berth around the tucked-in mound occupying our living room floor, discernible as human thanks to spiky tufts of over-processed blonde hair whose blonde-to-black color gradient had skipped several stops, and down the street, our breath forming visible puffs in the chilly morning air.
Once we reached Stacy’s house, we pounded on the door, yelling her name. She answered sleepily, utterly confused as we talked over one another, nearly hysterically launching into the reasons she just had to get dressed IMMEDIATELY and hurriedly follow us back home. Stacy understood none of this, of course.
TO BE CONTINUED…
