When He Faces Forward
Whitestone, Queens, New York City
Once upon a time in a place called Malba, Danelaw Strong lives in a magnificent house under the Whitestone Bridge.
It’s an enviable place of wealth and ease, but isolated and insular.
No ferry service touches that north shore of Queens, no subway station services its affluence.
Only bus service and most residents wouldn’t be caught dead traveling by bus.
These elite people would never say they live in Queens or Whitestone or even, God forbid, Long Island.
They grudgingly acknowledge being part of New York City, but it’s made abundantly clear: They live in Malba.
Dane lives with his mother and father and a group of people known only as the staff or the help. Dane has a beautiful older sister with a name like music: Marie Elisavette. It’s a lot of syllables for a four-year-old, and the V is especially tricky. Dane mashes it up into Marizabet.
Most of the time, Marizabet lives in a mysterious, elusive place called Away at School.
Her bedroom door is shut but not locked, and Dane often sneaks into this sun-filled palace with its big windows, creamy pink walls and soft white pillows.
Books and stuffed animals, makeup and perfume, and gorgeous clothes hanging in the closet.
Sometimes Marizabet comes home when Dane’s father has boarded his big helicopter and gone someplace called Away on Business. These are wonderful times when Dane summons himself to his sister’s palace, as if by royal decree: Marizabet, I come your room. I come stay your room, Marizabet.
His sister’s room isn’t just a place. It’s a state of mind.
It’s also off-limits. If Dane’s mother or the Help find him sitting at Marizabet’s sparkly dressing table, napping in her empty bathtub or perusing her cavernous closet, he’s quickly shooed out.
If his father finds him, Dane will have to take his pants off and lie on his bed or kneel on the couch, and his father will whip him with a belt.
Dane mustn’t cry during these beatings. And he must never, never tell about them.
This is the law.
Dane is a child, and most of a child’s brain is wired only with on-off switches, not dials of nuance.
He is aware something is not quite right at home, not quite right with his mother, and something is entirely wrong with his father, who is not so much a man as a weather system.
He need only walk into a room to change its barometer, wreak destruction, and displace everyone present. Often with no warning.
Dane’s father is not Dad, Daddy, Papa or Father. He is Sir.
Yes, Sir.
No, Sir.
You’re right and I’m wrong, Sir.
I’m sorry, Sir.
One forgotten Sir upon coming, going, asking, answering or obeying, is one stroke of the belt, which must be acknowledged with Thank you, Sir.
This is also the law.
Sir’s first name is Ivelaw, for all the men in the Strong family have law in their names: Morelaw. Whitlaw. Wardlaw. Renlaw. Ivelaw. Their portraits line a long hallway which leads to Ivelaw’s office.
There is no portrait of Danelaw Strong. Perhaps because he’s a child.
Perhaps because in his developing brain, little switches are flipping on and off in ever-adapting, sophisticated combinations, and the data output is telling him he’s not a law.
He’s a mistake. A button flashes on indicating something is extremely wrong with himself, and it’s he who is the cause of all the not-rightness inside this beautiful house in Malba. The button has a name: cancer.
Dane grows up believing he’s chronically ill. Cancer is a perpetual cloud cover in his life story. It’s the word that explains everything. Why he feels so bad all the time. Why he looks the way he does. Why things are done to him. Cancer never moves into past tense, but always stays present.
Because you have cancer.
Dane has two different-colored eyes because of cancer. The blue one is weaker, damaged by cancer, so he has to wear a contact lens in that eye, tinted brown so it matches the other one.
Cancer causes the skin discoloration on his torso and dark, spiraling lines on his left side. His blue-eyed side.
(My girl side.)
When he discovers his own goodies and the uproariously funny words for them, he studies the birds-and-bees picture books on his shelves and demands to know why the illustrated boys have two tessicles but Dane only has one.
When his body is the question, cancer is the answer.
But it hasn’t always been that way.
He has memories. Secret memories from a year he later labels 4 BC: When I was four years old, before cancer.
In the year 4 BC, he takes his mother’s hand and pulls her into the little bathroom off the kitchen, where he clambers onto a stepstool so he can see himself in the mirror.
“This is my boy eye,” he says solemnly, touching the skin beneath his brown iris. “And this is my girl eye,” he says, touching beneath the blue.
“Really,” Helen said. “How do you know?”
“I just do.” Dane shows how he can turn his head just enough to the left so only the brown (boy) eye shows in the mirror. “See, that’s one me.”
He swivels his chin to the right, keeping his gaze on his reflection. “That’s other me.”
He turns his head front and looks at his blue and brown double gaze. “That’s all me.” He laughs. He’s so funny looking when he faces forward.
“Do you want to be one or the other?” Helen asks. “Boy or girl?”
“Both.”
“Boy and girl.”
“Yes.”
“A boy sometimes and a girl other times?”
Dane thinks. “No, both.”
“But everyone calls you a boy,” Helen says. “We use he and him when we talk about you. Is that all right?”
“Mmhm,” Dane says, leaning forward until his nose touches the mirror and his two eyes merge into one. “Now I’m sy-blocks,” he says.
“Cyclops,” Helen says.
Still giggling, Dane tilts his head back and forth, making his eyes see-saw crazily, then settle back into one eye in the middle of his face.
He loves the optical illusion of his gaze, loves the blue and brown mixed together.
At preschool, other kids mix red and yellow, yellow and blue, blue and red.
Dane mixes blue and brown. They’re the best colors.
“I have one eye and one tessicle,” he says.
“Testicle,” Helen says.
“Why?”
“Sometimes funny things happen. Your body forgot to make the other one. But that’s okay. The one you have is just fine.”
“It’s blue and brown,” Dane says softly, watching his breath fog the glass, then clear.
Helen leans a hip on the sink. “Hey,” she says. “You sure it’s okay if people call you a boy?”
“Uh-huh,” Dane says, exhaling hard to make a big foggy patch. “That’s me most of the time.” With a fingertip, he makes the letter D in the condensation. The best letter.
“Ah,” Helen says. “You’re not always both.”
“Both live in the me-house,” Dane says. “But boy-me likes to live outside. Girl-me likes to be inside.”
“Is she afraid to come outside?”
“No. She just likes it better inside.”
He jumps off the stepstool, launching himself at Helen’s crossed arms. He startles her, but she catches him.
She’s always there. Always believing Dane means what he does and says.
Dane wraps arms and legs around her body, buries his face in her hair and loves her terribly, thinking it will always be like this.
But in 5 BC, Helen goes to jail and Marizabet disappears. She’s not Away at School—the school part also disappears and now she’s simply Away. She ran to this incomprehensible place and all Dane needs to know is she will never come back. If he asks why, the answer is the belt.
From 5 BC onward, it’s Dane alone in the house with a man he calls Sir.
Dane is a mistake that can’t be fixed. A portrait that will never be painted.
A frightened boy taking refuge in a girl’s space.
A childish mind frantically flipping switches on and off and calculating how much pain is worth the risk of being found in Marizabet’s room, where love still lives.
He can no more stay out of this room than he can stop breathing.
He summons himself to the pink walls as if by royal decree.
Marizabet, I come your room.
I come stay your room, Marizabet…