ONE
Now I know what invisible feels like. Yolanda’s been in Lexington Hospital for more than two weeks, and I’ve been walking big as life through its huge, squeaky glass doors, marching along the main hall past the gift shop to the elevator that takes me—no questions asked—to the third floor. No one wants to know where I’m going, who I am.
At least two of the orderlies can see me just fine, though, because they smile and give me a nod. The older one is reading the Daily News from two days ago: Saturday, October 26, 1963. I’ve seen it already. There’s a picture of the president and Jackie Kennedy again, welcoming Marshal Tito and Mrs. Tito of Yugoslavia to the White House. The younger orderly, the one with the head that shines like a new black bowling ball, is the one who showed me how to find Yolanda’s room the first day.
Yolanda’s got a broken rib and a dislocated shoulder. Well, not anymore. I mean the shoulder’s been relocated, and the whole business sounds a lot worse than it is. In fact, the doctors may not know it yet, but she’s fine. She’s so fine that she has her escape all planned. It wasn’t my idea. I swear. All I did was tell her yesterday that you can walk around this place and nobody gives you a second look. That’s when she told me to bring her some clothes to wear. I told her I couldn’t do that, that she shouldn’t just leave the hospital without permission and go wandering through the Bronx again. She gave me a look, like I should have figured out already that she’s got her own rules about what she does.
So here I am with stolen clothes in a paper bag—my cousin Bea’s peddle pushers and a pink sweatshirt. Bea is only eleven, but she’s about Yolanda’s size. Yolanda’s small for thirteen, I guess. But really she’s almost fourteen, like me. I hope Yolanda won’t get mad when she sees that the shirt’s pink. She doesn’t seem like the girlie type to me, but that’s the best I could do. Most of my own clothes are still in storage or at my father’s place. My mother and me and my sister, Cait, and my little brother, Owen, are living with my aunt Maggie now. So’s my big brother, Liam, at least when he’s around. We got evicted from our apartment on Mapes Avenue on October 11, more than two weeks ago, and we couldn’t take all our clothes with us. Aunt Maggie’s got five kids of her own. So it’s a sardine can of a life.
Yolanda’s asleep when I get to the room. The white sheet is tucked under her chin, and with her nose in the air and her head so small and dark on the pillowcase, she looks like a chocolate kiss in vanilla ice cream. American Bandstand is on the television, the show Yolanda claims she never watches. She says the kids on the show dance like they learned from mannequins on speed and that Dick Clark, the host, is barely a notch cooler than Lawrence Welk, the band leader on Channel 7 that even my mother calls an old fart. Yolanda likes the Temptations and Chuck Berry. She didn’t think I liked them, but I do. Liam has their records.
I don’t know if it’s okay to wake Yolanda, so I put the bag of clothes on the floor and sit down in the chair near the bed. The room is quiet. I can hear the nurses’ voices from down the hall and a humming noise from somewhere, maybe the room next door where that old woman is, the one with her bed covered in Saran Wrap. Already I’m getting warm, so I take my coat off. Yolanda isn’t snoring, but she’s making funny sounds, a nervous breathing that comes and goes. I wonder if she’s dreaming. She turns on her side and her arm comes out from under the covers. I’m struck by how dark her skin is, and now I can look as long as I like without her seeing. I hardly ever notice anymore what color she is, so I don’t know why it has my attention today. It’s just that there is so much that’s forbidden about Yolanda. Because she’s colored, I’m not supposed to visit her in the hospital, I’m not supposed to want to hang out with her, I’m not supposed to want to be in her house. All the fuss gives her color a life of its own, as if it’s something separate from Yolanda her¬self.
I stand and move closer to the bed. Up close, I see that her eyes are moving, like when Aunt Maggie’s dog, Little Feather, is sleeping. I wonder what Yolanda’s skin feels like. I turn and look at the doorway to make sure no one’s there. I’m not sure it’s normal to want to, but I do. I touch her skin, her forearm, the place below where her elbow starts. It’s soft. It feels just like mine, just like anybody’s.
