Disgusted by cooking in a kitchen with roaches, I frequently opt to order out. In Brooklyn, everything comes via bicycle or car delivery: prepared food, groceries, pet supplies, wine (when ordered by the case), pot, and other sinful distractions. In fact, after September 11th, Brooklynite potheads rejoiced when marijuana bicycle delivery boys couldn’t make it past security on the Brooklyn Bridge to meet their eager Manhattanite customers. I actually had a friend in Manhattan ask if they could use my address – the nerve! Who needs Manahattan anyway, that’s what I say, though I hear it’s exceedingly well exterminated.

Chinese food arrives, I pay the guy, and he coughs at the bug spray cloud in my apartment. As he leaves, he tucks paper menus under all of my neighbors’ doors. My neighbors will all know that I ordered cheap Chinese food, again.

I’ve taken a few bites, and I spot a couple of flies buzzing around by the light. “Fuckin’ shit!” They must have snuck in through the unscreened, slightly cracked window that was venting the Raid spray. Light attracts bugs. So, I turn the light off, and give the room one more spritz of Raid. I sigh, and finish my Kung Pao Chicken, while deeply inhaling bug poison. It’s really hard to eat with chopsticks in the dark.

My building’s exterminator comes once a month to do the common areas, and you can sign up in the lobby if you want him to visit your unit – at no extra cost. This list is very revealing; it tells you which of your neighbors have roaches, and more importantly, which are choosing to take action. I usually sign up at the last minute so that people don’t see my name on the list for weeks in advance. This particular month, I sign up the night before extermination day, and I see my neighbor’s unit also on the list. They are a couple living in a studio apartment. I mean, that must get really dirty. Imagine the trash that they must produce. Surely their roaches are the root of my problems.

The exterminator arrives usually at 8 am on Saturdays. If I’ve been out late the night before I wear a presentable pair of shorts and a t-shirt to bed, and simply let him wake me. The bell rings. “Exterminator, doll.” In my dreamlike state I greet this guy who slicks back thick gray hair and looks like he eats dinner in one of those diners with an awning that says “chops, seafood, steaks” in cursive writing. As if summoned to a crime scene, he enters wearing gloves and not wanting to touch anything, so I open and close doors for him, as we’re accustomed.

I can only imagine the highly toxic bug chemicals at this lucky guy’s disposal. Although I know it makes me a hypocrite, all of my tree-hugger environmentalist sensibilities are out the window when it comes to extermination. I am definitely open to bringing in the big guns. Hell, what about a nuclear solution? Actually, that wouldn’t work either. A documentary on New York public television once traced a day in the life of a Manhattan exterminator. He showed viewers what roach eggs look like, and the various extermination strategies he employs. He also delved into the evolution of roaches, and their surprising resilience. Furthermore, he cited a study in which roaches are predicted to survive us all should things come to a nuclear annihilation. For days I was haunted by the thought of roaches ruling the earth. I concluded that their heyday would only last so long without us there to eat take-out, create smelly garbage, and leave dirty dishes in the sink.

My exterminator looks me straight in the eyes and inquires how it’s been since his last visit. He wants me to tell the truth. As if unloading my problems to a therapist, I recount frequent escapades with Raid and roach motels. He listens patiently, and then diagnoses my problem, “It’s the water that drives them.” He continues, “You need to dry the entire sink area after you use it.” This was not what I wanted to hear. Keeping a dry sink may be well and good, but then why have running water? Why not simply pour bottled water into whatever I’m cooking and learn to clean with hand sanitizer? What can I say? I’m old-fashioned; I get the sink wet. And so my problems continue, according to my exterminator. Looking to pass the blame, I casually ask how bad the situation is in neighboring units, whether that could be contributing to my problem. He refuses to take the bait, and gives me his best poker face. Clearly, he knows better than to break the confidence of neighbors. My building has 200 apartments, and he’d like to keep us as a client. The last thing he plans to do is spark a civil war. He wishes me well, grabs his contraptions, and moves on to the next unit.

I’m alone again, and it’s coffee time. I turn on the water to rinse out yesterday’s mug, and a mug from earlier in the week with moldy coffee chunks floating in it. How does coffee create mold so quickly? As water splashes around the sink, I try to regain some perspective on the situation. After all, this apartment is a million times better than the previous one. Back on Nassau Avenue, I had a certain mice infestation that nearly drove me to a real therapist, not just an exterminator who acts like one. That exterminator said I had to find the “holes”. How is it that exterminators always send us on a mission impossible? Where are the exterminators for lazy working girls who don’t want to get anywhere near the actual problem? A husband would be convenient, but I was left to deal with matters myself instead.

As recommended, I procured the necessary implements at the hardware store: steel wool, old-fashioned mouse traps, and some modern chemicals that were supposed to make the vermin thirsty, thereby driving them outside. Like purchasing condoms, there’s something very embarrassing about buying this stuff. People definitely know what you’re up to. In this case, they know I have a mouse or rat problem. In the city there is no way it’s for your garage or some sort of garden shed either. We’re talking about our apartments: where we bathe, sleep and prepare food. I was tempted to clarify to the clerk that it was really just a few very small mice, but decided I’d rather just get out of there as quickly as possible. Back home, I set out with steel wool in hand and began to inspect the place from top to bottom, moving appliances, and plugging every nook and cranny. I felt like I could have flooded the place, and it wouldn’t have leaked a drop. But the mice were already in, so the remaining ones had to be found and removed. In the meanwhile I chose to sleep at night with a blanket stuffed into the crack at the bottom of my door. This at least allowed me to pretend that mice wouldn’t crawl on me while I slept.

I continued to find food that the mice had gotten into, such as my box of cereal. Sometimes I would see them scurry when I came home. Friends and coworkers would tell me things like, “You know, they say there are ten for every one you actually see.” Thanks! I tried the glue traps, spring traps, and the poison, but in the end, got the most action from the cup and saucer method. I mapped their most common paths, and learned to wait. It was like fishing for city folk. Empty spaghetti sauce jar in hand, I knelt, silently in position and waited. The first one came after only about 20 minutes of stillness. It poked its little head out and made a run for it, but I was faster. I cupped it in the blink of an eye, surprising and startling myself. Where did I ever find the skill or courage to catch a mouse by hand? It must be that “power of adrenaline” stuff that brave mothers who save their children from fires talk about. But now what happens? There is a live mouse under this jar that I’m holding. I imagine my hand slipping and the mouse jumping out and biting my hand, after which I get rabies.

Quickly, I decide to improvise with the jar lid and slip it underneath, forcing the mouse further into the jar and eventually turning it over to seal it. I sit and stare at the mouse in my sauce jar. It’s sort of cute, even though I hate it for invading my apartment and ripping into food. Once again, I found myself stuck, “Now what?” I slipped on my shoes and took it outside to the corner trash can. I left and wondered if someone would let it out before it suffocated. Over the next several days I caught a few more mice the same way, until gradually, they seemed to be finally gone. Maybe they somehow communicated to each other that there’s a crazy lady who is going to trap you with a jar that still smells like basil and olives. I often think to myself that home extermination is a whole realm not really adequately covered by the home improvement magazines. What works, what doesn’t, what would Martha Stewart do with the carcasses?

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Dulling all of my senses, and pulling the essential human core of my being so deep inside me that no one can touch it,” he said.

“Oh,” I said. This was not Frank’s first time at the Target. “Did you look at the list? You don’t want to get in there and then not be able to read the list.”

He opened his eyes and scanned the ragged chunk of envelope I’d written the list on. “What’s this?” he asked, jabbing his finger at one of my scribbles. “Does that say Hitler?”

“Litter,” I said. “Like for the cat.”

He nodded gravely. We reached the entrance. “Vaya con dios,” I said, and squeezed his hand. He nodded gravely again, squeezed my hand, and went in.

In Texas, where I grew up, going to the big box store was a pleasant experience. They were bright, clean, and empty. Walking in, the crisp kiss of air conditioning cooled the sweat on your brow, and the ambient hum soothed your frazzled nerves. Rows of identical, reasonably priced objects glittered under the fluorescents, reassuring in their plenty.

This is not so at the Brooklyn Target. The first time I visited, only days after it had opened, I was greeted by screaming packs of feral children ramming carts into the seasonal displays. The aisles were littered with products that had been knocked off the shelves, and the employees’ stares were the looks of a broken people. I was checking out this neat little dealie next to the escalator— a conveyer belt outfitted with metal pegs that hauled customers’ carts up the escalator next to them—when I heard a man scream. I looked up, and the back end of a full cart was careening back down the conveyor belt toward me. I jumped out of the way—inches from being cart kill—as it did a back flip over the entrance bars and crashed spectacularly into the floor. Shampoo, toilet paper, Peanut M&Ms, and ladies foundation garments were flung into the air, pelting the express line customers with discount consumer goods.

“Sorry,” the owner of the cart called from the second floor, smiling and waving. “I can never that thing to work right.” She laughed. I got the hell out of there.

It wasn’t that Brooklyn Target shoppers were inherently disorderly. It was a question of density—the store squatted on the biggest subway hub in Brooklyn, and was the only Target for miles. People from all over the city were drawn there for the same reason I was: it was cheaper than cheap.

Frank and I developed strategies to get our shopping done with the least possible amount of psychological scarring. We tried splitting up—he went upstairs for the light bulbs and batteries while I grabbed the coffee, toothpaste, and hair dye downstairs. We met at the checkout, both of us looking shaken.

“I saw something horrible,” he said.

“Me too,” I said. “I went to the bathroom and it looked like someone had miscarried a hedgehog in the bowl. I couldn’t even place exactly what kind of waste I was looking at.”

“Mine’s worse,” he said. “I was upstairs perusing the action figures, and I saw a kid cry so hard he threw up all over himself. The kid’s dad looked around, didn’t think anyone was looking, and used the cardboard backing of a Boba Fett to clean the kid off.” He looked me in the eyes. I knew how much Boba Fett meant to him. He swallowed hard. “He put the figure back on the rack,” he said.

Friends—fellow suburban transplants, mostly—think of Target as a guilty pleasure at best. “Big box stores are changing the urban landscape and driving out small businesses,” they say. “Chain stores are what I moved here to get away from.”

But they don’t live near the Target, so they don’t understand—Brooklyn Target doesn’t make us more like the suburbs; it is what separates us from them. In an era where you can get nice tapas on Avenue D and French fusion in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn Target is untamed, chaotic, rude. It takes sharp elbows, a strong stomach, and an iron will to survive in that big box jungle.

Middle-aged Topekans might feel perfectly comfortable strolling around Times Square after dark, but our Target would scare them shitless.

“It’s the invasion of the Caucasian,” I say to her, half in jest. I had heard the term used recently on a radio talk show during a discussion about the gentrification taking place in Fort Greene/Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. The changing demographics in Fort Greene first caught my attention while riding the number 54 bus. The 54, or Myrtle Avenue bus as it is called by some, starts out on Jay Street at the Metro Tech Center, loops around Tillary onto Flatbush Avenue and turns onto Myrtle Avenue. It stops at Prince Street, the second stop on its route, in front of a check cashing establishment and across the street from Ingersoll Houses. As the 54 proceeds along Myrtle Avenue, it stops in front of several New York City housing projects—Whitman Houses, Tompkins Houses, and Marcy Houses. So one can understand why, until recently, white people were a rare sight on the 54 bus. As rare as they once were on the A train traveling from Rockaway Queens to Harlem. But Caucasian sightings are being reported in Bedford Stuyvesant and Harlem. And the A train gets them there.

I recall my teen years growing up in Sheepshead Bay. I used to take the Flatbush Avenue train. I thought nothing of being among the few black people who stayed on past the Franklin Avenue stop. By the time the train arrived at Flatbush Avenue, the last stop, the passengers would be almost all white. This was an anomaly that was lost on my youthful naivetŽ and would only have meaning years later. Indeed, some years later as white flight transformed Flatbush, Brooklyn into a black neighborhood, I always found it amusing when some unknowing white person stayed on the Flatbush train beyond Atlantic Avenue. I always felt compelled to tell them that they should have gotten off at the stop where all the whites made their exodus, and that they were headed into strictly black territory. I never said anything though, reckoning they would figure it out on their own. And if they did not panic and remained clear thinking, they could get off at the next stop and reverse the course of their personal histories. Watching the whitening of Fort Greene, it is interesting to note that it is not black flight that is at the root of the changing demographics there.

White people are accounting for about a large number of the riding passengers on the 54 bus. I find myself making mental notes of the stops they get off at. In so doing, I am able to pinpoint those enclaves in Fort Greene that the new homesteaders have made their home. Seeing them against the backdrop of graffiti marred walls is arresting. So is standing beside them in the neighborhood bodegas. Trying to figure out who they are and where they hail from is intriguing. They’re in the twenty to thirty something age group. It’s hard to pinpoint their socio-economic status. I think some of them take great pains to dress down. I’ve heard South Africans number largely among them. So now I’m thinking they are newly arrived immigrants. Appearing comfortable in these environs, they don’t seem half as curious about me as I am about them.

“I don’t like it,” my daughter whines. “This is where I grew up, and it doesn’t feel the same.” There is little I can say to soothe her. I have my own concerns. For the past six years I have sub-letted an apartment and was told by the owner that she wants to sell the apartment when my lease is up. Reality set in rather quickly. I know I will not be able to afford another apartment in Fort Greene, the neighborhood that I have grown jealously attached to. The willingness of the new homesteaders to pay exorbitant rents for closet-size apartments had pushed already rising rents in Fort Greene even higher. It’s over and out for me.

My world-travelled daughter had already sworn off Fort Greene and Brooklyn and even New York City. She talked excitedly about moving to New Jersey or Maryland. Quite frankly she informed me she had outgrown life in the hood. In the back of my mind, the thought of relocating to another state is starting to take hold. Too many times I’ve said there is no other neighborhood in New York City I would want to live if I were to move out of Fort Greene. Will I be forced to eat my words?

“Maybe white people are integrating into black neighborhoods because they want to relate to us,” I said to my daughter.

“They’re not trying to relate to me when they’re paying $850 for a studio” she responded. We broke up laughing trying to find the humor in a situation that made us uncomfortable. We allowed that there was very little relating going on. An invisible wall stood between the races. There is no eye contact, no words spoken, just quiet politeness. Beneath the silence, though, grumblings can be heard.

My daughter and I are walking to Sol, a stylish bar-restaurant on Dekalb Avenue. Two years ago, Sol used to be Claremont Lounge, a neighborhood bar. The conversation easily lead back to the changing neighborhood as we past a newly constructed apartment building. A warehouse had been turned into a 40-unit four-story structure. It’s not clear whether these units are rentals or coops. But I don’t even entertain the thought of getting an apartment in there, even though it’s right around the corner from where I now live and pending homelessness looms in my immediate future.

“They act like they were here first and we’re the intruders,” my daughter comments.

“And they don’t have any humility,” I chime in. “Not even when they walk by the projects.”

I’m even humble when I walk by the projects,” my daughter says.

The presence of white people in Fort Greene can only be a good thing I’m beginning to tell myself. Neighborhood businesses are investing in making their property more visually appealing. The New York Times is more readily available. Well-stocked green grocers are replacing broke-down fruit and vegetable stands. But best of all, I don’t have to wait forever for the 54 bus anymore. There appears to be more of them on that line now.

After being permitted to enter by a large man that looked closely at us three, we walked up to the wooden bar where Heather grabbed three warm glasses of water that had been sitting precariously alongside many others. The bouncer watched as Heather handed me a half empty glass, her baggy shorts hung below her tiny hips, her belt clasped loosely around her small body, she wore a thin white tank that revealed the outline of her tender breasts. Adam kept a bleak expression on his face as we found a table in the back room.

I reached into my pocket and took out all of my money, a few crinkled dollar bills and a handful of change. I flattened the cash and slid it over to Adam across the card table.

I sat nervously, Heather’s hand clutched inside my inner thigh. We were junkies, or at least in a room filled with them, we became them as we walked through the metal door into the back room, and yet I wondered who ‘them’ represented. Adam guarded our shabby table while Heather and I waited to enter the backroom that was again guarded. I could feel her warm breath as she dipped her house key into the white powdery substance from the small bag that we had just purchased. I leaned back against the wall in the small confined quarters, her soft body pressed against mine, the guard watched. Heather looked at me and slowly held the key up to my nose; I tried not to exhale so that nothing would be lost.

I watched the people around me, but I remember their faces as one might remember any other stranger that you quickly pass on a crowded street. I watched a well-dressed couple buying coke for their night out, a man sitting alone at a table, so many empty faces and so many with the same story as mine.

We sat one week later in Heather’s apartment with the leftover coke in a small plastic bag and the addition of Bob. We all lived next to one another on the fifth floor of and old warehouse in Brooklyn. Wooden floors, high ceilings and the added atmosphere of rats, gunshots, sixteen-year-old mothers and kids without enough to eat made my loft apartment affordable.

Bob directed a cooking show on some cable channel that I didn’t have. Bob didn’t have cable either. Adam and Heather had dated each other for years, moved to New York from Washington State with only a few bags. Bob sat to my left. I liked Bob in the way that an old woman gets dressed everyday just to spend the day watching soaps on the television. I never watch television.

I pushed lightly on the gray door to Bob’s apartment to find him standing in a pool of his own blood. He had stabbed himself in the leg with a knife as he was doing Karate moves in his apartment. It wasn’t called Karate, he always corrected me when I said Karate, but I never listened. It was almost impossible for me to stop laughing as I looked at the homemade bloody bandage wrapped around his hairy legs, his faded tattoo that I could never make out and my white pillows covered in black cat fur as he swayed back and forth on top of me.

It might have been a Sunday or even a Tuesday, I wasn’t sure. We sat at one of the card tables provided in the backroom with two guys that were like us. They invited us to a dance party, the one that Wilson would go to on weekends in downtown Brooklyn, but we would never go. I am not sure that I could hear what they were saying. I examined their hands motioning as they spoke and watched as their mouths open and shut. One guy was black and the other was white like Othello or some other Shakespearian tragedy, and something must have been in my pocket because I could feel Heather’s hand moving up my inner thigh although I had already given Adam all of my money.

The water rushed against my body, I stood behind Wilson but could hardly recognize him. He looked so different when the water straightened his hair against his face.

In bed I thought how strange he seemed. I always stared at the clock tower outside his window, it never mattered what time it was to me, I just liked the way that the big hand would go around and around as Wilson and I stayed in the same place. Jim told me once that if I ever got lost to look for the tower and I would know that I was home. Wilson kissed me as I walked away too the subway. The rain was pouring and I had on sandals, so I tried not to fall.

I looked at Wilson lying on top of me, “Why do you suddenly seem like someone else?”

It was one of those questions that I really didn’t think anything about when asking. I watched as the minute hand moved.

His voice sounded uneasy as he told me about the coke that he had just snorted in the bathroom. My heart quickly sank. This was the first time that he had not offered me to do it with him. That was all I had to hear to know it was over, but nothing was over yet.

It was Bob’s turn first; Adam had already separated the coke into four equal lines. My part was last. I was never one to snort twice, get it all in one go. It’s like writing your name in the fresh cement poured by the workmen in their yellow suits. I wasn’t looking for happiness in drugs, I wasn’t trying to be cool, I wasn’t trying to find a deeper meaning in life as I snorted from a rolled up dollar bill on the kitchen table. I wasn’t even writing my name in the cement.

Sometimes I did drugs everyday, but coke was always a special occasion. Mat did too many drugs. We would get fucked up and have sex until the time I passed out and ended up in the hospital. That’s when I started dating the doctor.

Dag, the Jewish doctor, was cute and would make up stories about paintings, “It looks like an airplane.”

I found his naiveté to be sweet. That was the only Jewish doctor that I ever dated. Later that summer I found out that I had had a stroke that night at the party, I was only twenty.

The rain was pouring as we sat around the table one more time. I sat in the yellow designer fiberglass chair made by that famous architect whose name I can never remember. Heather had the window open. We laughed. I had a beer in one hand. Bob was to my left. Adam sat to my right.

Heather stood, “Have you seen Ghost Dog?”

Heather listened to the cat meowing for days until the super let her up to the roof. That’s when Heather found her. The cat was halfway dead by then, but you have to understand that in our Puerto Rican neighborhood raising pigeons and flying them from the roof is more than a hobby, but our roof, being the tallest building in the neighborhood, was primarily used as a lookout, so when it got shut down Ghost Dog was the solitary survivor. Her job was to keep the pigeons away, but she was given no food or water so she cried out from rooftop as one last attempt at survival.

Heather had managed to turn Ghost Dog into a cat, a real cat the kind that cuddles with you at night and waits for you to get home. In many ways she belonged to all of us in the way that we shared bread or butter.

I think I heard her calling Ghost Dog’s name but it was as if the subway was passing outside, not knowing if it was coming or going. Heather was gone for maybe a minute or an hour I do not know. I heard her screaming. The rain was pouring. Heather just kept screaming.

I am not sure how long it took us to realize where she was or what had happened until we saw her, until I saw her eyes.

I am not sure what she said or how long it took us to find the towel to wrap Ghost Dog’s body in. The limp cat’s eyes were open, mouth open, blood pouring out of them. Heather kept screaming.

“She is going to be alright, isn’t she?” she yelped.

I am not sure what my reply was, but she was still alive maybe even more than I was at that moment. My heart pounded quickly as Heather held the unconscious cat and screamed, “She is not dead, is she?”

I am not sure if she was dead or alive at that moment.

The screaming didn’t stop.

Sometimes our lives become the long walk. Sometimes I see myself hanging from the trees, my face is blue and my legs dangle in the wind alongside the street. At first we may not realize why we keep walking or why the crowds keep cheering, but we keep walking.

Bob never got cable. Heather flew back to Washington State that next day to visit her sick father that died that summer. And for everyone on the fifth floor, I made margaritas. All the veterinarian had to say was, “We only take cash.”

My own limited experience in sewing began when I was ten, when my Nana taught me how to sew tubular shifts for my Barbie dolls on her Singer sewing machine. Nana used it to perform her “miracles,” as she referred to them, on clothing the neighborhood women brought to her for alterations.

“You see this?” I remember her saying one time as she held up a fully lined, size 10 wool dress. “Mrs. Goodman thinks she’s still a size 10. So what does she do? She buys the dress that’s too small for her and comes to me and says it’s a little snug. Snug? How about small? So you see what I did?” She turned the dress inside out to illustrate her point. “I performed a miracle. I let out all the seams and restitched them to give her extra room. You wouldn’t know it in a million years.”

I looked up at her face while she admired her own handiwork and thought, when it came to miracle workers, Anne Sullivan had nothing on Nana.

While I may have inherited an interest in sewing from Nana, it didn’t take long for me to realize that I possessed none of her patience. I was prone to taking shortcuts and sewing freeform rather than following the step by step instructions listed on the store-bought pattern. My few feeble attempts always resulted in lopsided garments that would have been rejected by the Salvation Army. By the time I reached college, it had been years since I’d used the sewing machine for anything other than patching my jeans. The last time I’d used a needle and thread had been in high school, when I embroidered a Hot Tuna logo on the denim jacket of a cute guy I thought would be my boyfriend. But that didn’t pan out and neither did my sewing skills. Clearly I needed some emergency remedial instruction since I could no longer put off the basic classes like Pattern Making and Draping 101 that were required for my major.

So the summer after my freshman year, home for the break, I enrolled in a sewing class. It was held in the Singer sewing store, in the King’s Plaza Mall, a ride over the Marine Park Bridge that linked my hometown of Belle Harbor with the rest of the world. It was 1977 and I was eighteen, much older than the eleven-to-thirteen-year olds whose mothers had signed them up for what was undoubtedly considered a fundamental prerequisite to womanhood. I was old enough to feel incredibly out of place, but also to recognize that this was inescapable. I had to learn how to sew. My degree depended on it.

I chose a smart little zip-front hooded jumpsuit pattern (remember, it was 1977) with a drawstring tie waist. There weren’t many pieces to the pattern and no tricky two-piece collars. If I had learned anything from my first year in college, it was to stay away from designing anything that called for constructing a collar.

The fabric I selected was a chocolate-brown stretch terry. I was starting to get psyched. I tried not to think of the “fashion show” scheduled at the end of the six-week session, where the class members would model their creations. Unlike some other eighteen-year-olds, I had no dreams of becoming a model. The thought of the show was horrifying but I figured I’d cross that runway when I came to it.

Thursday evenings I showed up at the mall carrying my sewing kit: tracing paper, tracing wheel, pins, needles, tape measure, chalk, and matching chocolate-brown thread. I spent two excruciating hours tracing the pattern, cutting the fabric and making idle chit chat with some of the other students. “Hey Debbie, when did you say you were getting those braces off?” “Yes, Lisa, I think in another year or two you will definitely be able to score a babysitting job, no problem.”

I’d complete the evening’s project, then say goodnight to my pals and go out to the mall, where my twenty-four-year-old boyfriend, Rob, would be waiting. I’d met him a week after arriving home for the summer and become captivated by his rebellious nature. He was everything I wasn’t, and that was part of the allure. While my classmates met their moms or dads for rides home, I always headed to the parking garage with Rob, his beat up Mustang in the No Standing zone. I threw my sewing kit in the back seat, lit up a joint, and we raced off with the windows down as Bruce Springsteen blared from the tape deck, “Baby, we born to run.”

As we neared the last few classes and our outfits began to take form, I learned another important lesson. Never design anything with a zipper stitching. It requires skill. With a seventeen-inch zipper running the length of the front of my jumpsuit, I had a problem on my hands. After three attempts, followed by three ripping sessions, the front of my terry outfit was starting to scream “amateur.” All the other Susie Homemakers were busy sewing cheerfully. No cursing under their breath, no machine needle nearly going through a finger, no huffing and puffing with exasperation for this crowd. I was alone with my misery and as my frustration built, I began to get some nervous looks from Buffy and Susie. The instructor must have sensed the impending explosion of nerves because she cautiously approached me to survey the danger.

“Having a bit of a problem, are we?” she asked smiling.

“Yes, as a matter of fact we are,” I told her. “This is a fucking nightmare.”

I heard a gasp from someone close by and lowered my voice. “Sorry,” I said. “Maybe I’ll just have to forgo the zipper and change it to a plunging neckline that stops below the belly button.” She looked in my eyes to see if I was kidding. I stared back at her. I wasn’t smiling.

“Here, scoot over and I’ll see if I can give you hand,” she said. In less than ten minutes she had the zipper inserted flawlessly. I was impressed. This was more like it. I thanked her and muttered something about learning a valuable lesson.

The remaining weeks passed uneventfully as we completed hems and applied finishing touches to our creations. I had plenty of time to concentrate on my jumpsuit as the other girls steered clear of me, huddling together giggling and tittering, having lots of fun, sewing away as if they were actually enjoying themselves.

Finally, the dreaded day arrived. I made Rob swear that he would not go to the fashion show. A space was cleared in the middle of the store where they set up a makeshift runway, with folding chairs on either side to accommodate the parents. I was in a back room changing into my jumpsuit, feeling anxious that the stretch terry was clinging to my thighs, emphasizing the extra weight I had put on during my freshman year at college. I had no regrets about neglecting to tell my parents about the show, not that they were apt to attend. Their parental duty to show up for such functions had long since expired. The next and last requirement for them would be my college graduation and after that we were all home free. But for now I’d just walk quickly down the damn runway, then lose myself in the crowd, change into my street clothes, grab my certificate for completing the course, and get the hell out of there.

One by one the girls sashayed down the runway, mugging for their family members who sat clapping politely. Then the instructor announced my name. “. . . and here’s Fran modeling a stretch terry hooded jumpsuit!”

I began to walk down the runway, my face hot with embarrassment. Then I saw Rob in the back of the store, standing behind the parents. He was clapping loudly. He called out, “Let’s see the hood!” Taking his cue, the instructor said, “Fran, show us how the hood looks.” I took the hood and draped it over my head while I glared in Rob’s direction. He was still clapping, appearing genuinely proud of my accomplishment, not caring that the parents were swiveling in their seats to see who the tall guy was with the long curly hair making a scene in the back.

That was the last time I wore that jumpsuit. I keep it in the back of my closet with the clothes I think I’ll wear but never do. I had it with me through my three remaining years at Cornell. A trendy clothing store called Wet Seal has replaced the Singer Sewing Store. The jumpsuit inspired me to continue sewing and perform at least enough miracles to allow me to graduate. And that seemed a miracle in itself.