And so began our stay in Florida. That first night, we called Dad and told him we had arrived safely. His voice sounded so small and far away over the phone. I swallowed the lump sitting in my throat.
"When're you gonna have the money for us to come home?" I whispered.
"Soon. Soon."
That was his mantra for the next month.
We quickly adjusted to the lazy pace of Florida. We awoke early and ate cereal out of the box while watching cartoons and game shows. As soon as Mom was up, we'd cannonball into the pool as she and Aunt Bernie watched us from the shade. At 11 am precisely, we'd jump out of the pool and watch The Price is Right while eating bologna sandwiches. By noon we were back to splashing in the water.
Uncle Frank was right. The storms were amazing. They would form miles away, slowly creeping up the canal towards us. The sky would turn a deep blue, almost purple. Low black clouds would gather, and lightning would cut veins through the sky. Chris and I would climb out of the pool at that point, but Uncle Frank would push us back in.
"Nothin to worry about yet. Storm's still too far off. You kids stay in. Enjoy!" It sounded more like a death sentence than an invitation to fun. We would bob on the surface of the pool, never taking our eyes off the encroaching storm. The sky would get darker and lower. The air would become thick with electricity. The humidity would press down like a hand over our faces.
"Now?" We would ask hopefully.
"Wait. Wait. Wait." Uncle Frank would repeat every few minutes until our hair was standing on end. And then.... A tremendous clap of thunder squeezed the air out of my lungs and shook the ground.
"That's it kids! Get outta that pool now! It's gonna be a bad one!" We levitated out of the pool and wrapped towels around our ears, running for shelter in my cousin's walk-in closet. I would crawl to the back and say the Hail Mary repeatedly, hoping the roof wouldn't get torn from the house. Twenty minutes later, the storm would pass, the concrete would steam and we'd be back in the pool.
On the Fourth of July, we stood in the driveway holding sparklers and waving to other neighbors holding sparkers. There were no fireworks for miles around. I missed the decadent display over the New York skyline so badly that my chest ached.
There were no children in the circular community. We had only each other, and the wildlife around us, for entertainment. Chris and I chased down lizards and stepped on their tails, tearing them from their bodies. We reasoned that this was not cruel, because Uncle Frank had told us that their tails would grow back in time. We were conducting a science experiment, in our eyes.
Our ever-present neighbors, the alligators, terrorized us and a family on ducks that lived on the canal. There were two alligators, each about eight feet long, that lived in the canal right below our house. We didn't see them at first. A family of ducks, mother, father and six little duck babies, held all of our attention. Uncle Frank never let us near the canal, but he would stand outside our cage of a backyard and throw bread to the ducks at our request. One day, as he was throwing bread down to the family, there were a series of sharp splashes and a fury of feathers in the air. When the commotion subsided, we only counted the mom and five little ducks. Uncle Frank came to us, head hung down.
"Gators gotta eat too, kids." We cried for the daddy duck and the baby. Every day after that, there was one less duck. I couldn't bear to watch the carnage, but Chris followed it with rapt attention.
That night, when everyone was asleep, I snuck a secret call to Dad. I told him all about the alligators and the storms and all the many ways one could get killed in Florida. He laughed.
"When will you have the money to send us home?" I pleaded.
"Soon. Soon."
While Chris and I found ways to entertain ourselves, Erin was left to her own devices. Her main source of entertainment was upsetting Uncle Frank. She took every opportunity to touch the various knobs and dials of his electronics. She loved to turn the volume on the stereo all the way up while the stereo was off. Uncle Frank would later switch the stereo on, and Tony Bennett would blast loud enough to shake the blinds off the windows.
"Owwww!" Uncle Frank would jump and smack at the stereo until he finally managed to shut it off. He would then collapse into his recliner, sweating and shaking, mumbling under his breath. Aunt Bernie would have to give him ice water and fan him with a newspaper to calm him down.
Erin was still in diapers and hated to wear a stitch of clothing. Her diaper was the only thing we could keep on her. Unfortunately, there were things we couldn't keep in the diaper. Erin mastered a phenomenon known as "poopie balls". When she pooped, it came out as several perfectly rounded balls, similar to miniature donut holes. Not liking the feel of the poopie balls in her diaper, and liking her diaper being changed even less, Erin would simply tug at the diaper and liberate the poopie balls. There would often be a trail of poopie balls wherever you walked. Since there seemed to be no way to stop Erin from dropping these poopie balls, we adjusted to them and watched where we walked. Although we were used to this inconvenience, Uncle Frank wasn't. We would be in the pool, or watching television, and we would hear him bellow as his bare foot inevitibly made contact with a poopie ball.
"Jesuschristgoddamnsonofabitchkid! Goddamnedinmyowngoddamnedhouse!"
This sent us into spasms of laughter, and somehow encouraged Erin to increase her production of poopie balls.
The days turned into weeks, and it felt like we would never get home. We became bored of swimming and mutilating reptiles. Chris and I convinced our cousin Kathy to take us to the movies twice. This was no easy feat, as the nearest movie theater was over an hour away. We begged and pleaded and Kathy finally gave in. We drove out to the Rocking Horse Theater, whose seats rocked back and forth. The seats were comfortable, but it was difficult to see over all the cowboy hats in the theater. On our first trip, we saw Gremlins, which thrilled me to no end. On the drive home, Chris and I discussed whether or not Erin could be a gremlin. Then he puked in Kathy's back seat after eating too much candy. Fortunately, this did not turn her off of another trip to the movies. The second time out, we saw The Karate Kid. I spent the rest of the summer dreaming of Daniel LaRusso and the many ways he would defend me from bullies.
Television was also a big deal for us. Aside from our steady diet of cartoons and game shows, we watched any and all movies on HBO. On a rainy afternoon, Chris and I sprawled out on the floor watching On Golden Pond. I loved Katharine Hepburn and her incredulous tremors. And I said silent prayers that I would one day wake up and find Jane Fonda's boobs transplanted onto my flat chest.
As we were watching the movie, Uncle Frank walked into the living room and gasped. We stared at him with mild curiosity as his face went from a ghostly pale to a crimson red. His head shook not unlike Katharine Hepburn's and his middle finger pointed straight up at the ceiling. He stammered and spit, finally exploding into the most histrionic fit we had yet to witness.
"GET THAT COMMIE BITCH OFF MY TELEVISION SET!" he railed at Jane Fonda as she was diving off a pier on the television screen.
Chris and I looked at each other, both confused and annoyed. This was my favorite part of the movie, where Jane Fonda finally flips off the edge of her father's boat, making him proud. (I also wanted to study this for practical purposes. Aunt Bernie had been trying in vain to teach me to dive all summer. The only thing I had perfected, however, was a belly flop that scalded the entire front of my body a frightening red.) Uncle Frank then stalked over to the television and shut it off, slamming the entertainment system closed with finality. For years after, I puzzled over the meaning of "commie bitch". No adult could or would answer me. When I finally figured it out in college, I had something else to admire about Jane Fonda besides her boobs.
That outburst prompted another secret call to Dad. I was desperate with want to go home, and Uncle Frank had offered to pay our way back at that point. Even a day trip to Disney had done nothing to warm any of us to each other. Uncle Frank came home with a backache and sunburn. We came home with Mickey Mouse ears and a sharp disappointment in all things Disney.
"Dad, could you just send enough money for me to come home? Everyone else can stay forever for all I care. But I gotta get outta here!"
"Next week baby. You're all comin’ home."
I danced around the telephone cord in the dark, knowing that I would soon be safe back in the midst of the drugs and the guns and the gangs. I couldn't wait.
The tickets came in the mail a few days later as Dad had promised. Somehow, knowing that I would be home soon, I was able to relax and enjoy Florida a little more. After dinner, Aunt Bernie taught me how to stitch delicate cross stitches on a pillow she was making. Sometimes Uncle Frank would gather us all around the dining table for a game of Rummy Cube. On those nights, we would all eat ice cream out of the carton and the mood would be light and fun.
On the morning that we were to leave, I stood in the backyard and said good-bye to the alligators, asking them to please leave the baby ducks alone in the future. I said good-bye to the clouds and thanked the lightning for not hitting our house. I said good-bye to the lizards and apologized for ripping their tails off. I looked down into the canal and felt a rush of excitement, knowing that the next body of water I would see would be the Hudson River, right down the block from my house.
We stood gathered at the gate, waiting to board the plane. Uncle Frank looked balder and thinner. Aunt Bernie hugged us all tightly, crying and telling us to come back again soon. Uncle Frank looked faint at the mention of another visit. Aunt Bernie gave him another well-placed poke in his belly.
Dad was waiting at the gate as we ran off the plane to him. He looked tired, as always, but glad to have us back. On the drive home, he told us about a burglary down the block, two houses that had burned down and a woman that had been mugged. I leaned back comfortably in the car as the Empire State Building came into view from the New Jersey Turnpike. I felt safe and relaxed, knowing no bridge would fall out from below me, no lightning would strike my house and no gator would swim off with my arm. I was happy to be home.
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