Excerpt from ‘The Sparrow Choir’

It’s 2005 and Stephanie Adler, 34, finally moves away from the toxic misogyny that pervades her family to claim the independence she has long sought. To cease becoming and start being. Almost immediately she realizes that she hasn't really stepped away from the patriarchy . . .

*

Trains aren’t running, someone says.

People are heading to the corner of 57th and 6th, jousting with their arms out for the kiss of a cab. Stephanie lingers for a moment, feels bewildered and wants to go home, then finds herself, crosses with the lights and moves further down 6th Avenue. She might be able to flag down a taxi before the intersection.

She likes the way her arm looks, thrust strong and bold into the sky. Neatly dressed in a crisp white shirt, a petite woman with a thick dark fringe and tidy ponytail, she stands in the late afternoon glow. She’s here in New York, with a PhD after her name, having secured a competitive three-year postdoc. She is starting out on her life, finally, across the other side of the world and on track for an academic career, tucked away in plain sight fourteen time zones from home.

Three town cars drive straight past her in quick succession only to pull up and stop for men in suits at the corner.

This morning someone in her building asked if she was a new tenant. Not knowing how to condense the long and complicated story of why she was there, living in that Upper West Side building, in the apartment of her grandmother who had died two years ago, she’d simply said, “Yes, I’ve just arrived in New York,” and the woman replied “Congratulations,” as if moving to New York was a special achievement in itself.

After a while a yellow cab pulls up a little way ahead to let out a customer. Stephanie moves towards it. Its numbers light up as she proceeds with flailing arm trying to lock eyes with the driver and claim the cab as hers.

Eventually the driver lifts his chin in micro-acknowledgement of her presence.

Waiting for the previous passenger to pay and get out, she suddenly feels very hot, fearful of stepping into a taxi alone with a driver she knows nothing about.

A man in a black leather jacket dripping with chains, the last remaining Frank-N-Furter, slides out of the cab and throws the crust of a pizza slice onto the curb. A throng of pigeons, thugs with similarly bad manners, swoop down. Then a few bold little sparrows appear, as if by magic, scattering like pennies amongst the bigger ruder pigeons.

A couple is approaching the cab from the other side of the street, so Stephanie snaps to, steels her stomach, and steps through the flock of ratty birds.

Sliding into the cab and across the black, ripped vinyl seat, she settles into the stale air, the lingering molecules of pizza, the noise of the blaring TV screen.

The driver looks at her in his rear view mirror.

“Pless Hall, please,” she says.

He raises an eyebrow.

“The corner of Washington Square East, and University Place,” she says. “Please,” she adds.

He takes off quickly and almost immediately brakes at the intersection. Stephanie reaches for the seat belt and stretches it across her body. She gropes around for quite a while; can’t find the clasp between the backrest and the seat.

“Umm, is there a clasp for this seatbelt?”

“Get out if you want.”

She looks out the window to get away from his eyes and feels the humiliation rise through her face. How exhausting it is to live in New York City.

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