Shopping Carts

“Lex, why is there so much shit in this apartment?” I imagine that’s what Kenny said when I had the brilliant plan to light it on fire. We were finally moving from a 2 bedroom to a 3 bedroom so my brother and I could have our own bedrooms. As you know my Mom is, was and will remain a disaster. This left me in charge, leaving her to not have to worry about me and my brother. I did laundry, bought food, signed permission slips all on my own. So when we were given a few days to move to a building around the corner I went to Caldor, got some shopping carts, enlisted my friends and began the move. The last room was the 2nd bedroom- the one no one had ever slept in. That bedroom held secrets I have not been able to get to- my therapist, Liza, believes the spirits protect me. What happened there belongs in the mysterious atmosphere that I can’t access.

I am not sure when a teenage girl’s mind is supposed to mature but I can guarantee you on this day mine had not. Not the kind of maturity that has to do with reasoning at least. I was more of a make it happen by any means necessary kind of kid.

I was exhausted by the time I was nine. I mean like nervous breakdown exhausted- If I were rich I would have been sent to Silver Hill but I was poor so no one noticed.

A few days after I was born one of the “fringe” Kennedys killed a 15 year old girl down the street, Martha Moxley. He beat her to death with a golf club, so very Greenwich of him. The case stayed unsolved until I was in High School when a couple of books about that frightful Halloween Eve were written. I remember walking down the Ave and Waldenbooks having the hardcovers in the window- it was so scandalous. Greenwich breeds two kinds of people, the haves and the have nots. There is no inbetween. There is no modicum. These kids, the one who was the killer and the one killed were the haves.

Growing up in a proximity to wealth that is unattainable is dreadful. When I was left to make the move from 56 Bertolf Rd to 34 Reed Lane, still within the same housing projects with stolen shopping carts, I was 15 years old, the same age as the girl who had been killed.

We piled everything into the center of the room and I set it on fire. There were no expectations other than there would be less shit than when we started.