The Kingdom of Brooklyn by Merrill Joan Gerber Read Free Book Online Page B

both forget me when he has his big hand on her hip. I feel the thing between them; his powerful interest and her pleasure in capturing it. I know these things without thinking about them—she doesn’t enjoy his hand on her hip, but she loves how she has his full attention when she lets him do it.
    The truth is, I will never get him to love me best, not while she is around. It’s too bad, things like this. They are facts of life, like Gilda’s skin, Bingo’s bad smell.

    While the new baby is growing, my father works in a defense plant. He makes wings for airplanes with machines that stamp them out like cookie-cutters make cookies. I know how sharp a cookie-cutter is, I know how hard you have to press on the dough and how careful you have to be while knocking the cookie out. “Be careful,” I warn him. That’s what all the women in this house say all the time: “Be careful,” as if being careful is some kind of guarantee that nothing bad will happen.
    I have to be careful petting Bingo, I have to be careful not to slip in the bathtub, I have to be careful eating fish because of bones. Little needles of “careful” are always sticking in my ears and my eyes—what if I forget for one second to be careful, what will happen then? If I am always thinking “careful,” I can hardly enjoy playing with the dog, or splashing in the bath water. (I never enjoy eating fish, whose bones can give you an injection in your throat at any moment.)
    â€œBe careful you don’t choke on your food,” Gilda tells me, as if swallowing isn’t bad enough. What if, while I am swallowing, I choke? How can it be that the food I eat to keep myself alive could also kill me? These are dilemmas that fill my days—dying seems to be at the heart of all my private imaginings. Why did the old baby die and will the new baby die? Will I die? Will my grandmother die? What if everyone dies, my mother and father, my aunt and my grandmother, Bingo and the new baby, and just I am left alone in the house with the furnace? I don’t even know how to turn it on and off. I will freeze to death in the winter. Who will find me in my bed, stiff as an ice cube, and when will I be found?
    There is no one I can talk to about these matters. Even Gilda, lately, has been harping on food, and on a specific type of food. Crusts. It seems that when my mother goes to the hospital to have the new baby, Gilda wants me to astonish everyone by eating the crusts of my bread. I don’t have to do it yet, but only when she goes to the hospital. “Then we can tell her she’s crazy—that you do eat your crusts.” I don’t see why it’s so important that this be done: crust is hard, it cuts my gums. But Gilda adds this information: “Issa, no man will marry you if you leave the crusts of your bread all over your plate.” This stirs up many questions: why wouldn’t a man marry me if I did that? Do I want a man to marry me? If I’m married, does it mean I will have to vomit and have headaches and carry around babies, like coconuts, in my stomach? But because it seems important to Gilda, I practice eating crusts. I hold them in my mouth till they get soft, I suck them, I grind them, I wet them, I strain them against my teeth. Crusts are a challenge. Crusts will help us prove to my mother that she is crazy and that Gilda understands me best and can make me do anything.
    The day comes that my mother leaves the house, leaking water from her body. I don’t even say goodbye to her, worrying about crusts. For ten days I practice eating them.
    On the day the baby is to come home, I hold my triumph like a trophy in my mouth: “I ate my crusts.” I am waiting to tell it to my mother, who has been gone all this time without contacting me. They are getting ready for her as if for a queen—my grandmother is shining the windows, Gilda is baking cookies, the bed sheets of the