The Wounds We Carry

A few weeks back, I took LPP to the East Village for lunch and a playground visit.  Since LPP is obsessed with Happy Meal toys (and thankfully not the actual food), I gave in and took him to McDonald's so he could add to his "Puss In Boots" action figure collection.  Before I go any further, I have to admit that I do like some McDonald's fare and interestingly, I find myself often wanting to go to the nearest McDonald's when I have a particularly rough day (but I have resisted...mostly).  McDonald's holds some psychological comfort for me that probably dates back to something in my childhood.  I know, Fast Food Nation and all that, I know.  This is why I don't like taking LPP there, but blame marketing and blockbuster-movie-making Hollywood, my kid thinks McDonald's is a TOY STORE.  That happens to have cheeseburgers. Okay, I am done self-flagellating.  Get me some fries, NOW!

Anyway, I mention the East Village and McDonald's so that I can properly set the scene.  I've watched the East Village go through several changes as I've grown up in New York.  When I was a kid, it was always an artsy scene. The Public Theater was a mainstay, La Mama's championed avant-garde productions, there were bars and diners and punk rockers and mom-and-pop establishments.  When I was right out of college, poor struggling graduates, new to the city, would sacrifice their safety and notions of space to bunk up with fellow graduates in small apartments far from the subway in the East Village. There were squatters and heroin addicts and punk rockers and bars and NYU students and a youthful vibe bouncing off everything, along with the sense that you might want to avoid walking along certain blocks at certain hours of the day or night.  Transitioning from my 20s into my 30s, I saw the East Village, like everywhere in NY, become more sanitized.  The rough edges were trimmed and Kmart and Starbuck's and Duane Reade moved in. Gone were the smaller establishments.  Squatters and "real" punk rockers, no longer appropriate in the East Village, seemed to fade into oblivion. Rent was a hit on Broadway and all of a sudden squatting was super chic; there was even squatting-influenced fashion at Bloomingdales (!) and everyone wanted to jump on board - except, of course, the true squatters who, needing real food and housing, couldn't afford to celebrate this cultural tribute, and were eventually forced to "move" by a boom in building development.  Because in the end, squatters are more palatable when they are onstage belting songs.  In my late 30s, I moved away from NY for a few years and now, having returned in my 40s, I see that the East Village has come full circle, and back are the heroin addicts, the runaways with their dusty backpacks and skinny dogs (why do they always have dogs and where do the dogs come from?). However, the people these backpacking runaways rub elbows with in the East Village aren't exactly the same as they were before, and the East Villagers really don't want to be touching elbows, let alone any body part, with the runaways. Starving artists starve like never before paying the new rent prices.  Newly-graduated students pine for the luxury of sharing a dorm room with only two other students.  In fact, I doubt starving artists and new grads even live down there anymore; they live in more exotic sounding locales like Greenpoint, Bushwick and Jersey City (listen to how it trips off the tongue).  There is still the community of people who have lived in the East Village for years, but the energy, the pace of the Village seems to be generated more and more from a young, cool, chic, international crowd with access to funds.  Or maybe I am just getting old and so the distance between me and the heartbeat of the East Village has grown.  Or maybe I am jaded.  Sometimes the dichotomy between the runaways and the new East Village hipsters is comforting in that it reminds me that this is still New York - the raw, rough, close-to-the-earth New York of my childhood that can't truly be erased.  But most times, it is just sad.

Okay. So...a few weeks back, LPP and I were sitting in a McDonald's in the East Village.  This is not a chic McD's, this is a small, cheaply decorated, old McD's, serviceable but not stylish.  The clientele is comprised mostly of locals - and by "local" I mean the residents protected by rent-control, the old and young, singles and families, the blue-collars and the downtrodden alike.  And they come to get cheap eats among the oasis of the Zagat rated restaurants that dot the blocks with their DOH "report card" grade posted in the window.  I was guiltily trying to get LPP to eat the Chicken McNuggets that came with his Happy Meal (and have you tasted these lately?  There is a reason why McDonald's is known for its burgers) and was debating whether my pleasure at his eating only his apple slices outweighed my fear that he wasn't getting enough to eat for the afternoon.

In the distance, I heard a voice say, "He's so cute!"  I looked to my right, and saw that the voice belonged to an older woman with a youthful glint her eyes wearing a modest house dress and a colorful kerchief over her shoulder-length, whitish-gray hair, sitting two single tables away.  Her coat was off and she was nursing a hot cup of coffee.  She wore eyeliner and rouge and probably a little bit of lipstick. She appeared to be in her 70s.  She seemed tired, like she was taking a respite.  I said, "Thank you," and she noted that LPP looked just like me, which made me smile because I always love hearing that.  She had a noticeable accent, my guess would be Eastern European. Polish maybe?  Russian perhaps? Anyway, she bantered with LPP, "You love your Mommy! Yes you do! You look like Mommy!" and his response was, "What did she say Mommy?" He kept shaking his head at her and perhaps he showed her his new Happy Meal toy.  At any rate, she leaned over to me and said with a heavy sigh of regret, "I never had children.  I was married, because I was young once, you know.  And my husband told me..." and here she broke off and motioned with her hand as if she was violently pushing something away.  She clarified by saying, "He told me to get rid of it.  And I listened.  And I was so stupid.  I was so stupid.  I got rid of it.  And I never had child."  And I could see an entire ocean of sorrow and regret and anger and embarrassment well up in her youthful eyes.  It was like she was back there again, faced with the dilemma of who to please, herself and her baby or her husband.  She continued, "He told me there would be something wrong with the baby. So I listened to him.  But if I see him today, I'd..." and instead of finishing the sentence with words, she again motioned with a fist and knocked out an invisible opponent.  "I was so stupid," she repeated, hands up in the air and landing on either side of her face. I was so taken by this woman's honest disclosure of such a personal memory, but I wasn't sure how to comfort her.  I said, "Oh, no, but you were young!" And she smiled sadly and said, "Yes, but I shouldn't have done that."  And then we just let the silence sit there between us and returned our attention back to our respective tables.

About 15 minutes later, she leaned over to me again.  It was apparent that the story had continued to play in her head and she let me back in with, "What people can do!  My husband was a good man.  But then there was the war, World War II.  And I had a friend.  It was she who tell my husband this.  She told him these things about me, that there was something wrong with me.  She made him think this.  So he told me to get rid of the baby.  This is what people can do!" She looked me right in the eyes, searching for affirmation, which I gave with an exasperated shake of my head in agreement.  And then she was no longer seeing me but looking past me, and she was no longer in that McDonald's. She was in her old apartment after the war, cursing her back-stabbing friend who probably had a thing for her husband, wondering how she could continue to love a man who would demand such a thing of her and force her to give up her dream of motherhood over such lies, her youth preventing her from standing up to him, even making her believe that the lies were true.   She apologized for telling me this story, and I immediately told her it was completely okay.  It broke my heart because her story happened so long ago, but it was as if I were watching the whole saga unfold in this woman's eyes.  LPP and I stayed just a few minutes longer before wishing her well.  And she was back at McDonald's, again with a glint in her eye, thankful for the opportunity to unload physically and emotionally.

On our way out, I happened to lock eyes with a youngish woman who had the look of the wild about her.  She was with a grungy looking man and was desperately picking out leftover food from the trash can in front of McDonald's and eating it.  She said to me and to no one in particular and to everyone, "What?! I am hungry!" and went back to eating.  And I remembered where we were and what times we are living in.  And sometimes you can see the suffering very clearly, like when people are literally eating garbage and lost kids are bumming these streets with dusty backpacks and skinny dogs.  And sometimes it's the old woman quietly sipping a hot coffee in McDonald's who is suffering just as much.  Maybe more.