Full Disclosure

Comments Form Full Disclosure by Lynne Sharon Schwartz It was a warm June day maybe four o'clock, four-thirty I was wearing a navy blue and white striped sleeveless mini dress, more like a long tank top actuaUy, and in my right hand I held a vegetable spoon, and in a smaU room offthe haU was my eighteen-month-old baby standing up and rattfing the bars of her crib the way they do at that age. I was stirring chicken and chunks of pineapple in the electric frying pan—sweet and sour chicken, which I didn't particularly like but it seemed festive—when I heard footsteps . I went to look. Approaching from the end ofthe long haU was a thin, sallow kid in droopy jeans and a windbreaker and a porkpie hat. My first thought was what a long reach it was from the fire escape to the bedroom window, and what a long drop. He had taken quite a risk. Next I thought he would rape me because ofthe mini dress, or kill me, or maybe both, and ifnot for the baby in the crib I would have preferred, at that moment, just to be kflled. I was preparing the sweet and sour chicken for the parents of a Barnard student from Cleveland for whom I was acting as a big sister. They were visiting their daughter in the big city for the first time; I was not much older than the student myself and I wanted to do everything just right. Months earlier, before I met the student who was to be my little sister, a friend in the alumnae office had called to say, I just want to let you know your sister is black, so when she appears at your door you don't look surprised. Her warning was unsettling, even offensive, to me as weU as to the student. But things were in such turmoil then, thirty-odd years ago, that people ofgood wiU often behaved with astounding clumsiness. No doubt my friend was trying to protect the student from my possible surprise. That was unnecessary , I thought; I wouldn't have shown any surprise, or so I hoped. I would never know for sure. Anyway, I was determined to make the evening go smoothly. 227 228Fourth Genre I said to the kid,What do you want? and he said, I came to teU you your house is on fire, the haU is fuU of smoke. I didn't beUeve him but I had to be sure, so I walked toward him with the vegetable spoon raised like a weapon, and past his skinny tense body to open the door and see. Those two seconds when I passed him, when we were inches apart, I thought, Goodbye, life. He didn't touch me, but now he was closer than I was to the room with the baby. The haU was not fuU of smoke. I stood at the open door, and if I'd been alone I would have run out, but I couldn't leave the baby. He came toward me, a shuffling, arrogant walk; again we would be inches apart but I could see he wanted to get out now. Once he was past me and out the door he started to run. Up the stairs to the roof. I knocked on the doors of two of my neighbors for help. The first was the anthropology professor next door, the flirt, to put it politely; his field was Mayan culture and he and his wife were always going to Mexico. I knew he owned a machete, something to do with his archeological digs among the ruins, and he had once said to me jokingly, Ifyou ever need help just bang on the door and I'U come with my machete. Many ofhis remarks had a double entendre, but at this moment I UteraUy wanted him with his machete and said so, and he rose to the occasion, wearing his usual plaid bathrobe and carrying the machete as promised. The other neighbor was an actor who would later appear on Sesame Street, the father of four children. My own children—the...