of the city long enough, which I definitely did, you can actually feel them pulling you from both sides, wanting to take you down south past the boroughs of New York City into the Atlantic. The waters start to feel like tarmac, runways for take-off. And if you give over to the pull, let the river take you, you get a ticket to Europe and beyond. I’ve seen this done. Somebody’s brother or sister from the neighborhood just took off downstream and we never heard from them again. In some places, to gain legend status, all you have to do is leave.
The Hudson River, the bigger of the two, belongs to the downtown crowd. From their apartment windows they see the sun dip behind it, watch cargo ships and sail boats leave wakes in it, and hear trains run parallel to it before it dumps commuters onto their front lawns farther up-county.
The Bronx River, which is two blocks from my dad’s house—which until last summer was also my house—belongs to the city’s northerners. We rode our bikes on the footpath next to it when we were little and drank beer on its banks when we were a little bigger. Some nights, Nokey and me used to lay down on the damp dirt that lines it, tell stunningly and embarrassingly stupid teenage jokes, and look for faces in the stars. At night if we drank enough beer and the breeze hit just right, the tree branches looked like they were rotating, cutting spirals upward into the dotted sky. So we stayed put, let our backs get muddy wet, and fell into the sky with the help of nature and alcohol.
After a few days of rain the water would get higher, faster, and the ripples louder—I could hear them two blocks and two stories away from inside my dad’s house. And let me tell you straight up: that was a tempting sound to hear trying to fall asleep in a house I had every desire to leave.
If you wanna get away from Yonkers by riding the Hudson River it’s pretty much a straight run to the Atlantic. But if you’re taking the Bronx River you’ll have to be a strong swimmer.
You gotta cross the Westchester County line into The Bronx and swim past Hunt’s Point and the Bronx Terminal Market, where they plunk the rotten produce in the water. Past that the Bronx River becomes the Harlem or East River where if you catch a stray current you can crash into Riker’s Island or get sucked into Flushing Bay and spend the rest of your days lapping at the shore near LaGuardia Airport. But if you drift west a bit, you wind up kissing Manhattan at East Harlem which, like some first kisses, feels smooth, promising and lasts for about ten minutes, then you slide down to Hell Gate somewhere near 96th Street. Clear that and you still might get snagged by Brooklyn’s Red Hook, a piece of land that sticks out like a dockworker’s tool; it can keep you flapping there like a soggy piece of toilet paper. After the Hook you’re at the place where the East and Hudson Rivers become one. There you have to dodge the anchors of the Verrazano Bridge and make sure you don’t get thrown into the dead end of Jamaica Bay.
Understand—we didn’t swim in the Bronx River. The geese didn’t even go for a dip. They only came to shit. Sometimes you couldn’t tell if it was a big piece of water with a little shit in it or a big piece of shit with a little water in it. But there was a highlight. About a half mile south of my dad’s house the river stretches fifty feet wide, and a wooden footbridge connects the banks. Fifteen feet below the bridge is a waterfall—if we can call it a waterfall. The water crashes from about a foot and a half up. And give me a break, this is Yonkers I’m talking about, not Canada or South America, we run a deficit in the claim-to-fame department, so I’m calling the little shittin thing a falls. Thank you.
In the hot season the sun stayed around longer and the clothes came off quicker. I don’t think the girls in the neighborhood knew they’d been helping me mark time by stripping down to their bathing suits. Their bodies differentiated the identical school years. Between sixth and seventh grade Colleen Burke grew boobs and Lanie Raniolo started shaving her legs. Between ninth and tenth grade Katie Ryan’s thighs got big and Julie DiMatteo started lifting weights.
Below the footbridge, just past the base of the falls, rocks scatter like grey turtle shells spaced so that someone with long enough legs, like my sister, could step from bank to bank without getting their feet wet. But Dani didn’t usually cross the river. Mostly she hopped herself to the middle, sat down and hugged her knees to her chest while the rest of us got drunk and loud, while couples sat with their legs dangled over the side of the bridge, backs to chests. The water split apart at the back of Dani’s stone island and came together again at her toes, swirling up a little force field around her.
Dani had been on the swim team since she was small. It was weird looking at her surrounded by all that unswimmable water—like an actor in an empty theater—you’d think she’d have wanted to go in, but she was a quiet kid, you know? And quiet people, it’s hard to know what’s in their head.
We were hanging out on the bridge over the falls—the whole crew of us—we tied our six-packs to the bridge on a rope long enough to reach the river, to keep them cold and out of view. That day on the footbridge, Nokey was scoping Dani’s just-turned-thirteen-year-old chest and body that really did look like a woman’s. Being my younger sister or being someone Nokey’s known since before birth didn’t mean she was out of the game.
(Nokey’s not his real name, by the way. It’s short for Gnocchi, which still isn’t his real name. It’s Eugene Cervella. But since the third grade, people have been calling him Gnocchi Cervella—in English it roughly translates to Potato Head. He hates the name, but he always acts like he’s got something else in his head besides brains, so he can’t shake it.)
He went up to my sister and started with: “Listen, Danielle. I don’t want to be a rock in your shoe …” and followed with a hand on her shoulder.
Whether he’s hitting on girls or not, he’s always working his hands. They’re big and heavy enough to separate at the wrists. His pinky is the only finger thin enough to fit in the neck of a beer bottle, and his nails are too thick to bite through—he has to use a scissor. His hands are smart, and make him a good mechanic. His father only had to show him how a torque wrench worked once like three years ago and it stuck—he never stripped a thread. It’s like his fingers memorize things on contact. When we worked at his father’s garage together, he’d handle customers and in the prints of his fingers record where and how they could be touched. This practice made repeats out of first-time customers and kept the regulars revolving. Some guys he’d give the one-hand shake with a matching slap on the shoulder. Or the classic two-hand shake, grabbing their entire hand—or just tapping the tips of his fingers on the back of theirs. For the ladies it’s a hand on the back when he’d lead her to the office to pay her bill. With the older ladies, he would link his right arm with their left and lay his free hand on their wrist.
He wore his mechanic’s coveralls cut off at the shoulders and below the knees, so all the married rich chicks could get a good look at his arms and cobra-tattooed-calf busting through the ragged edges. He was good for his dad’s garage business and swears that’s why his dad bought him the weight set. And this kid is a great wide receiver; he catches long passes like his palms are made of flypaper. He might even be scholarship worthy if he’d join the friggin football team already, but he has no time for organized anything; he’d rather set records hardly anyone will ever hear about.
Two summers ago he decided to jump in the river from the footbridge, which nobody ever did before because at about fifteen feet high and with no running start it looks like you could never clear the rocks to the water—which is maybe five feet deep on rainy days. Well, he almost cleared the rocks. He fucked up his ankle pretty good, bruised his back and got seven stitches on his ass. You would think that might have been a sign, but he didn’t see it that way. When the cast came off his ankle and the stitches out his ass, he tried again. This time he didn’t do it on a whim. He told people he was gonna do it on a particular day so we could all see him jump off the bridge again and possibly bust his head or slice his butt open. Thankfully, that time, he cleared the rocks. He came out of the river wet wearing only a pair of cut-off denim shorts with not so much as a scratch or
