Book

Prologue

Some people believe we pick our parents. The first time I heard this, I thought: How absurd! Who would choose mine? 

My father was a gun-toting, drug dealer who dropped out of school in the ninth grade. My mother was a fifteen-year-old Catholic schoolgirl who found him exciting and worldly. By sixteen she was pregnant with me. At seventeen, her mother, my Nana, sent her to a Catholic home for unwed mothers in the Bronx, where she finished high school and waited for me to arrive. 

Surely, I had not chosen this. Who would?

One of my earliest memories is of the circus. I must have been three or four. It was the first time I saw trapeze artists and I was mesmerized. 

I loved nothing more than swinging as high as I could at the playground. Nana would shout that I was too high and to slow down before I got hurt. But as soon as she turned away I’d kick my little body back into flight. I loved the feeling at the very top where I couldn’t go any higher. I loved that brief moment where I’d lift off the seat a bit and I’d have to hold tight to the chains or I might fall off. 

But these trapeze artists didn’t hold tight. When their swings couldn’t go any higher, they let go! 

I watched, breathless, as they flipped through the air and caught each other at the exact right moment. I was in awe. And terrified. Each time someone landed safely, I exhaled.

Then one of them missed. 

He flipped and fell, faster and faster, my whole body tightening as he dropped toward the ground—into a wide, bouncy net. One by one, the others followed, flipping, falling and bouncing safely into the net. They lined up, holding hands, and took a bow, all smiles. They’d just had the most fun ever!

“They have a net,” I said to my mother, disappointed. 

“Of course they have a net,” she snapped. 

“But then they can’t get hurt.”

“Why would you want them to get hurt?” My mother was angry.

It wasn’t that I wanted them to get hurt. It was that everything I’d just seen suddenly seemed less impressive. They were never in any real danger. They were never going to “break their bones,” the way Nana was always warning me I would. 

If I had a net at the playground, I could swing really high too. I could let go and fly. I’d have something to catch me. I wouldn’t have to be afraid. I could just have fun. 

My mother stood over me, silent. Then she grabbed my hand; it was time to go. She didn’t understand. And there was no point trying to explain things to grownups anyway. So I kept my mouth shut. 

Some people believe we pick our parents because they force us to learn our soul’s specific life lessons. I guess that could be true. Whenever I’ve come to a fork in the road, I’ve never chosen safety. I’ve chosen autonomy.

Maybe I did choose my parents. Because long before I understood anything about money, power or sex, I understood this: I would rather fly without a net than live safely on the ground.

I would become my own net.

And I accidentally became a bridge too—a bridge between two very different worlds. I grew up with the wives. Then I talked honestly with the men.