Vertigo

Gabrielle Beck, United States

Donna Summer’s ethereal voice melted on the record player’s rusting needle while she rolled each body of flour and sugar, water and yeast. She twisted until the two ends touched in harmony. I sat cross-legged as she sculpted the challah with calloused palms, embedding love within every crevice of the dough. 

Taste, Bubbe pleaded as the clamor of Queens, New York, crescendoed. Echoes of police sirens and teenagers beatboxing around the corner, mixed with the slam of basketballs colliding with concrete writhed through the hollow apartment walls. I can't hear ya, but I know what ya saying. My Bubbe only reads lips. She refused to wear a hearing aid. She said she'd earned her right not to listen to people's shenanigans. I ate and pulled apart bits of challah like Legos after a colossal collapse, while sitting on the floor watching 21 Jump Street thinking Tom Hanson was cute. Bubbe, grasping a handheld dustbuster, swooshed me away to clean the already spotless kitchen. 

After pretending to wipe away stray crumbs and dough remnants, I pulled out her scrapbook albums from the armoire and laid them out on the floor. I admired the photographs from her youth, the ones that time managed to filter out everything but her. Cheekbones slathered in bubblegum pink rouge and lashes drenched in the tar of Maybelline, hair permed and teased to maximum height—all immortalized in the haze of pixels. I'd sit on her couch on weekends as she told her stories of what young motherhood was like, living in the boroughs the same time as Walkmans hung on Bubbe’s widening hips and Madonna graced magazine covers. I found the corresponding photograph of each narrative and traced its origin. I longed to be embedded within them. I wanted to escape my bleak reality, to live without the constant friction of latex gloves between my hands and feel human connection beyond the clash of dots from my computer, like a failed Chuck Close painting. 

Bubbe made up for the confiscated challah by taking me for a pastrami on rye at Ragtime Deli, right on Cross Bay Boulevard. Beads of sweat trickled along thick gold rope chains and deft hands pressed the ends of calzones. 

“I miss all a youse,” she declared to the deli men. Her thick Queens accent was ever-so comforting to my ears. I spied Bubbe reaching for a box of Lorna Doones despite kvetching about going on a diet. It wasn't the quantity in question. It was quality. Bubbe liked old things. 

“Antony, get me some hamburgah meat and a poundah peppah loaf.” She stood adorned in an Iris Apfel carcanet, goggles, and a zebra print mask. This was the one day a week she could venture past the confines of her apartment. While Bubbe’s attention was leaning toward the specialty breads, I walked to the window staring at Cross Bay Boulevard that no longer vibrated with its bustling spirit: boarded up diners, barren avenues, independently-owned-turned-fast-food chains. My mind blurred the lines between past and present, hope and despair. Closing restaurants effervesced into the Silver Street Disco blaring “Stayin Alive” while girls pranced around with crimped hair in Jordache Jeans, and boys sat under fluorescent light with Members Only jackets—oblivious to the perils of 2020. 

I remained tethered to a romanticised version of the past as we walked out of RagTime. As Bubbe drove past the boulevard, I saw flickering street lights illuminating this desolate strip of the city. I ignored the darkness that pervaded Queens’ history. Instead, my time capsule took me to Crossbay Lanes as “Celebration” roared from the speakers, and swift feet in Reebok sneakers shifted towards bowling pins. Bubbe stood with her waist cinched by Gitanos while my grandpa grabbed his compact to check his pompadour hair. He’d bought her an Orange Julius and a box of Chuckles.

Bubble continued driving down Cross Bay Boulevard to Ozone Park to Woodhaven to Rego Park. My nostalgic daze couldn’t withstand the chronic honks that reverberated through the potholed roads. Wading in and out of 2020 and the 1980s, I entered a state of vertigo. There was a strong sense of dizziness that caught me off guard and I was grasping for balance. Disillusioned by global warming, a devastating pandemic, and the inheritance of a fragmented nation, it was easier to surrender to a false reality. 

Hiding from the side-view mirrors, I held my eyes to the sky.

When Gabrielle Beck is not writing or photographing, she can be found repurposing vintage denim. She is a finalist for New York Times “Coming of Age in 2020: A Special Multimedia Contest for Teenagers,” and recognized by the National Council of Teacher's of English.