It’s 3 p.m. at…the Home of a Childhood Friend Years Later
Welcome to “It’s 3 p.m. at…” a new column here at Very Famous Inc. where we report on that late afternoon hour when the day has been determined in one way or another. It’s sort of the opposite of the witching hour, a hazy limbo where you just want to sit and stare somewhere. We’re doing just that — sitting and staring somewhere. This week, it’s 3 in the afternoon and Very Famous contributor Jasmine Ledesma is visiting a childhood friend years later…
Every 15 minutes, the train rolls by with her huge swells of thunderous music. And most of the time you’re able to sleep through it, able to tune out the ongoings of the world, the same world that has no issue going on without you. But sometimes you sit up from bed, upright with a pulse that seems to splinter through you. Rapid, urgent flashes. When you realize what the noise is, you lay back down again as you had been. The rhythms of your heartbeat assume into tranquil, steady marches again, winding down.
Last time I saw you, we were 20 and ate towering plates of fast food and sipped gossip beneath the gloating eyes of old men in corners as the sun went down in streaks of blinding orange and fresh red. When we said our goodbyes, standing on the plaza of First Avenue, you said you were going to go buy a dress for a friend’s party and head to the party afterward. Something that glittered in every angle. Perhaps something purple.
But now everything moans with ambivalence, the chance of violence haunting each corner. Disasters seem to wait in limbo. Anything can happen. Gone are afternoons of sweeping boredom and nights of cheap drinks and cat-fights and cataclysmic dance floors.
Gone are the parties.
Next to you, a baby sleeps — your son. Next week, he will officially be two months old. Boy of late summer. I marvel at the smallness of his fingernails, those miniature crescent moons. I rub his belly until he laughs as Kim Kardashian speaks from the glossy television mounted onto the wall behind us.
His mere existence still surprises you, still leaves you in starry awe.
Where you used to throw yourself into the plush backseats of strangers, your protection of him is methodical, each hour scheduled. Mostly, he sleeps. When he awakes, you feed him a bottle of powdered formula from a glass bottle and pat his back until he burps. You hold him so he feels the warmth rolling off of you. As I watch, this process seems automatic. You have gone lucid with care. Motherhood urges you as much as it frightens you.
He does not know most things. He will have to learn about rush hour and carousels and religion and friendship and heartbreak and how to build a chair and what words mean what and fairy tales. How will you teach him how to live? I cannot tell you. But I can say that you will, sometimes without even realizing it. Life happens to you.
In the kitchen, your mother has prepared rice and beans for us to eat, wealthy portions set onto wide, white plates. As she pours lemonade from a pitcher into an awaiting glass, I look at the scene outside. Down the street, a neighborhood basketball game goes on in sirens of applause and blaring scores. Girls call to one another from opposing sides of the street. Men sip at cups, towels wrapped around their necks. As you get up to put him to sleep, I notice a giant, superfluous cloud hanging above the train station. It stands still as though it were painted onto the sky by God. Impenetrable and luminous.
Jasmine Ledesma lives in Brooklyn. Her work has appeared or is set to appear in places like Borderlands, Vice, Rattle and [PANK] among others. Her work was also nominated for both Best of The Net and the Pushcart Prize in 2020. She was recently awarded a fellowship with Brooklyn Poets.
