What I wanted to know had both nothing and everything to do with the natural world.
I wished to know love.
I began to sneak off to Dreamland in the summer months, though my father had told me often enough that the owners of that park were our enemies. He said we were like nations at war. All wars must be won or lost, he told me, and in time we would go to battle. I didn’t want battle, however, just lovely summer nights. I knew Coney Island could be dangerous, and it was definitely changing. There was the Brighton Beach Racetrack near an area called the Gut and two others in Sheepshead Bay and Gravesend. The sport had begun on Coney Island, with the Brighton Beach Fairgrounds and the Brooklyn Jockey Club. But racetracks brought in a criminal element, and the clientele that frequented them could be rowdy. That thuggish group of horsemen and gamblers mixed with men and women looking for a good time at Dreamland and Luna Park in a world made of steel and papier-mâché. I began to climb out my window after I had finished my chores and bade my father good night. The evenings were inky, with banks of clouds and a pink-tinted fog that rolled in from the Atlantic. At first I merely sat on the roof gazing down at the rush of life on Surf Avenue, but I soon wanted more. My father had always told me that my heart and lungs were larger than an average person’s, and this was the reason I could remain underwater for so long without air. Perhaps my desires were larger as well. What I wanted haunted me and wouldn’t let me go. At night I tossed and turned, and usually rose from my bed without the benefit of sleep. I yearned for a different life.
I always made certain to pile clothes beneath my quilt in the form of a sleeping body when I crept out of our house, so that my absence wouldn’t be noticed if my father decided to check on me. Not that he ever would. He was busy in his workroom after supper, and when he was done he went out on his own to the taverns of Brooklyn, of which there were more than a dozen on Surf Avenue alone. I was not uppermost in his mind.
“Men will be men,” Maureen told me when I wondered aloud where my father went in the evenings. “Don’t complain,” she advised. “That’s how women find their freedom. When there’s no one else at home.”
Maureen’s words rang true enough. With my father gone I could read whatever I wanted, making myself comfortable in the overstuffed horsehair chair he most preferred. The cereus plant loomed on the oak side table, but I ignored it. I didn’t believe that it would ever bloom, and that on some magical night it would change before my eyes. To me, it was a malevolent specimen, more likely to swallow spiders and flies than to flower miraculously. I immersed myself in Poe’s chilling tales, though my father had often called Poe a perverted individual, a drunkard and a deviant. I dared to look through volumes from the East in which men and women performed sexual acts I tried my best to understand. I ate buttered toast and rice pudding for dinner rather than the daily routine of fish my father insisted upon, and tasted red wine for the first time. I unbraided my hair and stared at myself in the mirror so that I could consider who I might be when I became a woman. Someone with long dark hair who possessed a pale complexion and a quiet nature, who let no emotion show, yet was inwardly excited by the idea of the future, whose eyes burned with desire.
Before long, I was so sure of myself I stopped climbing out the window and simply walked out the front door. As soon as I left the museum, I felt myself become another person. If anyone had asked my name, I would have called myself Jane, the name of the character in the novel Raymond Morris had always spoken of with such reverence, the book that had set him free. It was a common enough name, yet somehow stately and independent. I was impressed by the character’s statement: I am not an angel, and I will not be one till I die. Those words made me feel I was not the only one who was at odds with who I was expected to be, and that angels were meant for another world, not for ours.
The night watchman at the park’s gate grew to know me so well he allowed me to sneak in without payment. The watchman seemed kindly, and he always told me to enjoy myself and stay out of trouble, but he once asked for a kiss in exchange for this favor.
“Come on, Jane,” he urged, for that was the name I’d given him. His job was not to be the guardian of wayward girls but to ensure that the crowds did not get too unruly. At night, after the gates were locked, he circled the eastern arena, where the animals were kept, watching over the leopards and tigers, alongside the horses and Shetland ponies children paid to ride, keeping a special eye on the pride of lions, which included a great creature called Black Prince, who was said to behave like a dog when around his trainer and like a beast from hell should anyone else dare to approach his cage. “I’ve got to have my fair share,” the watchman told me. When I grew flustered and tears sprung to my eyes, he waved me on. I thought it over, then went back to him. Perhaps there was a part of me that still felt I had to do as I was told, or perhaps I wanted to test myself and see what I was worth. I stood on tiptoes and pecked the watchman’s cheek. In that instant I knew the power a young girl can have over a man, although I did not yet know that ability could also be a curse. The watchman always let me into the park after that. Sometimes he gave me a few dimes to spend on myself. All for the sake of a kiss.