I dreamed of M----- and
Yachad and
Queens geography…
It was a Friday afternoon. I was babysitting my little sister Blima (10 years old) and my brother Kivi (5). I think Kivi was sick, or he had a
dirty diaper. We were all outside of my apartment building. I decided to get the kids ice cream, but to take them in shifts. So I left Blima to stand by the mailbox at the corner of
Wexford Terrace and
Dalny Street and wait for my Mother to come in her car and pick us up, and I went into the apartment building with Kivi. Inside, the building was a big
cafeteria, with a high ceiling and mirrors on the walls. Opposite the front door was a ramp that people were climbing to get ice cream, "make your own sundae" style. So I took Kivi to climb the ramp but as we were, my mother came in with Blima. She was mad because when she saw Blima alone she thought that I had abandoned the kids. But then when she saw me, and saw that I hadn’t left, she wasn’t mad anymore.
We left in her car to go to her house for Sabbath. We were driving along
Union Turnpike, in the area of
188th Street (by the bank and the
Hillcrest library). I saw Harry, Noam and Dave, some guys I know from this past summer, and I think they were with Avi, a Yachad member. I remembered that the Hillcrest
Yachad Shabbaton was this week. (Yachad is an organization for the mentally retarded; they hold shabbatons, which are sort of like weekend retreats, to integrate disabled people with non-disabled people.) And I was really pissed off at myself for not signing up to go. The car pulled over at the curb so I could say hi to the guys, which I did, but I didn’t think they really wanted to talk to me.
My 14-year-old brother Yaacov and I were in front of a synagogue, probably the
Young Israel of Hillcrest. There were a bunch of guys, including some “black hat” (very
religious) types, going inside. One of these black hatters was apparently a bicycle
thief; he had about seven bicycles, including Yaacov’s and mine. So I told him we were taking our bikes back (this was all very congenial), but the one that I took wasn’t mine, even though I saw mine nearby. This one was green (mine is blue). He was going into the synagogue and I figured that later I’d have to give this bike back to him and take the right one. So I called out to him to ask him his name, so that I could come to the
synagogue and find him. He was walking away, and called over his shoulder to tell me his name, but reluctantly, because he didn’t want anyone to know he had been talking to a girl. (Talking to members of the opposite sex can be limited in extremely religious groups.)
Yaacov and I biked home. Now it was dark. We were biking up
190th Street (in the
West Cuningham Park area, near my friend Tali’s house), and we passed an Asian man and his girlfriend. The man might have been short, but at some point he was really miniature. He had tan skin, and looked a bit like the actor
Garrett Wang. He told me to go to
Cuningham Park to check out a mural that he had made of the ground there, before the
police erased it. Then some cops in police cars came to get him. He and his girlfriend ran in the front door of a random house, then down into its basement. The cops also ran into the house, but they stayed upstairs. They started doing this ritual, or maybe it was a game, to show they hated each other so much. Each
police officer had a can (like a soda can) and he/she would spray something edible on top and then spray something
poisonous on the sides. I was standing in the doorway of the house. One policeman was really proud of his can, so he showed it to me as he made it. He sprayed whip cream on the top, and then some sort of corrosive shaving gel in the shape of a smiley face on the side. Then each cop would offer another a can, in all seeming generosity. I thought, does each one really think the other will take the can and just lick the poison off? But they really did think so.
I backed out of the doorway and went into the house’s basement through its garage. In the basement were the
artist and his girlfriend. I told them they could make a run for it because the police were all busy upstairs with whatever it was that they were doing. It started to pour. Yaacov and I biked down 190th Street (even though beforehand we had been biking in the opposite direction). I didn’t turn right to go see the
mural in Cuningham Park because I figured it would have been made of
chalk, in which case it would be all washed away by the rain by now. Also, I wondered how big it would be, because the artist was so tiny.
I was at home, in my dad’s apartment, sitting on my bed with M-----. He
kissed me, but only with a little
tongue. I wanted to kiss him again, but he was gone.
The next day I went to the Young Israel of Hillcrest to visit the shabbaton (even though I hadn’t registered). I passed some people from my school, good girls (well, not girls hated by the administration like I am), including Rebecca K., Rivka M., and Tova. Rivka said, “Congratulations! I heard M----- kissed you.” I said, “How’d you hear that?” She said, “He told us.” I said, “Oh, good,” because I thought that if he was telling people that we had kissed then it mean that he was serious about us being together. I was looking for him. While doing so I passed the other people at the shabbaton, including this one guy who looked familiar, although don’t know from where. He looked slightly like
Tobey McGuire, and he was talking to some girl. Then I saw M-----. He was in a sort of alcove which was raised by a few steps, surrounded by a bunch of girls. I was climbing the stairs going up to where he was…