De Ce Monde Secret de l’ Amelie Americaine

She handed me twenty dollars back from my deposit and told me to go buy myself a bouquet of fresh flowers. “Make sure you replace them at least once a week. A woman should always have fresh cut flowers to cheer her up on dreary winter days.”

It was February, snowy and gray. She was leaving for two months to travel in India with her significant other and I was subletting her studio apartment in the East Village. She made it clear that this small expression of beauty was important to her. Perhaps she thought that if I was the type of person who’d promise to keep fresh flowers in a vase, that I also might be someone who’d take care of her home in her absence.

Hours later I sat alone and stared at the colorful tulips I had found at a deli for $6. They were beautiful and dignified, especially under the soft tangerine light that was absorbed by her pink walls. She was right. This was beautiful, in that flower grows out of a crack in the sidewalk kind of way.

I hadn’t realized how exhausted I felt until now. The room was silent except for the slow hiss of the radiator. I couldn’t move. Instead I sat in her wooden chair next to the small kitchenette table and took in every feature of her modest but heartfelt home. Her costumes were in the closet, and large glamorous hats were dangling from hooks that were haphazardly placed on the beam that held up her loft bed.

She also kept a twin bed on the main floor next to two eight foot windows that had long rot-iron bars on the outside to keep intruders out. And next to this bed were a couple of cases, decorated with black and white photo collages of her in full clown face paint performing musicals she had written. One case was oddly shaped and very old. I walked over, opened it up and laughed. It was an accordion. It was a little hokey, but I didn’t have it in my heart to judge her.

Twenty years in one studio apartment that was decorated like little girl’s bedroom. She had lived here during the East Village’s hey day in the eighties. Stayed when it was a war zone and when it became an overprice bohemian enclave. She had little in the way of possessions, but this was her small slice of home, a world safe from everything outside of it.

New York, the city of second chances. There is a certain subculture of women who have made the journey alone to this city and have stayed when others would have moved on or given up. They’ve held onto their dreams and not much else. And they did it for one reason: there was no other choice. There was no other home to run to. It was either make it here, or give up on life itself. We had to be a little stronger, because the dream is all we have.

I’m one of those women. Seven years ago I packed two suitcases, two cats, and took a red-eye flight into JFK. I had no permanent place to stay, no friends in the city, just an idea that the dream was all that was left to try after many many failures.

There are some girls that grow up with relative freedom and happiness like well looked after princesses. They have satin duvets, pink pillows, ballerina slippers and a world that adores them. They grow up to be fabulous and talented on many levels. And then there are those who want a chance to be just like them. Most of us are just gambling. We need to believe there is a world waiting for us too.

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