Our apartment is wonderful. It is practically perfect. Sure, I could do without the two flights of stairs and I would KILL for some outdoor space. But, come on, it’s New York City. That’s how it goes.
The thing that is a real bummer. And, one that I think I’m justified in bringing up here, is the fact that we stare straight into our neighbors’ house from a distance of about five feet. Some architect had the brilliant idea to extract a few square feet of brick in between adjoining duplexes in order to provide more natural light. Now, this is wonderful in theory, don’t get me wrong. We get bright beams streaming through our kitchen glasses on the sun’s rise to noon. An eastern-facing apartment is a thing of beauty in Brooklyn.
However, an eastern-facing apartment with a large kitchen window that looks directly into our neighbors western-facing kitchen window is awkward at best.
Why haven’t we put up blinds? Well, it’s become somewhat of a stand-off. You want privacy? You pay for curtains. They’re giant panes and they didn’t come equipped with pre-installed blinds like the rest of our windows.
The problem isn’t that we see straight into their world and vice versa — though that is, admittedly, regrettable. The problem is that their lives are too dissimilar from ours for it to be ignorable. They are four, twenty-something women living the single life in New York City. If they were just, you know, another Park Slope family of three making dinner and listening to Raffi while ignoring their mirror images, it would be fine.
I’ve gotten amazingly good at not looking up, just pretending they’re not there. I can stand at my sink and wash an entire basin of dishes without even batting an eye when I hear their girly screeching from a few feet away. I couldn’t describe what these women look like if I had to. If the police came knocking on my door requesting a missing persons sketch I would literally have nothing to offer. “There’s, like, maybe four of them, I think.” How awkward would that conversation be? “Ma’am, your window stares straight into their apartment. You’re telling me you have no idea what they look like? You can’t possibly be serious.” And, I’d be all up on my high horse like, “Hey, man, it’s New York. This is how we live. I don’t get into their business, and they don’t get into mine.” Anyway, I don’t think there is such a thing as a missing persons sketch. At least not for middle-class women living in the city. I’m sure their images are all over the internets. But, you know, if there was…
So, anyway. I had a story I was trying to tell. It required this preamble but perhaps could have done without the whole police-knocking-on-my-door tangent. Anyhow, here we are. So, my kid is in her high chair eating her dinner. And it takes her forever to eat. So, I’ve already finished and I’m at the window, washing dishes. Staring down, into my steely sink when I hear her say, “Mama, you wanna take a bath with me?” And I think, ugh, it is so much more difficult to bathe with her than to just plop her in, real quick-like, and be done with the whole ordeal. Bedtime is already running late, we stayed on those damn swings too long (as usual) and now everything is about twenty minutes behind where I’d like them to be. And then I think, what is wrong with me? Yes, of course you should take a bath with your two-year-old. She is asking you to and there will not be many of these days left. They will pass quickly and without notice. One day very soon she will be a surly teenager screaming that I’ve once again used her special shampoo and when will we get a second bathroom because, uhhhhhggg, life is so hard!!
“Yes,” I quip. “Of course I will bathe with you, honey” As I push the image of her hating me (though, of course it is inevitable) out of my head.
To which she replies, in her most emphatic voice. Voice really being an understatement here. For whatever reason, she decides that these next words should be shouted. Screamed at the top of her lungs for all, near and far, to hear: “Mama, you have a VAGINA?!”
“Yes, sweetheart. That’s right,” I say calmly without looking up, without even turning around. We talk about parts. All our parts. It’s no big deal. I mean, I could do without the snickering of twenty-somethings from across the way but, whatever.
“You got a vagina just like meee?”
“Mmm hmm.”
“And, papa got a PENIS, right?! And, me and you we got VAGINAS?” Her inflection on questions is like an exaggerated slide whistle on it’s way up.
“Yep, that’s it. That’s how it goes,” I say, turning around to look at her like it’s just a regular conversation. Which it is. It just happens to be in front of an audience.
“Except you got a HAIRY vagina and mine’s NOT hairy, riiiiiiiiiiiiight?” she asks, holding onto the last word like a multi-syllabic lyric.
“That is true,” I say, whirling around and swooping her up out of her chair, escorting us both out of the kitchen and into the solitude of our bathroom. Where we can pick up this scintillating dialogue about our genitalia without our poor, horrified and most likely very traumatized neighbors listening in.