Life with My Sister Madonna by Christopher Ciccone

there is no space for me, but I don’t voice my thoughts.
    Madonna’s bedroom is the third on the right. I later discover that she is only renting her bedroom from an unidentified landlord, and that the apartment isn’t hers at all. The bedroom doesn’t have any furniture in it, except a mattress with dirty pale blue sheets on it on the floor in the middle of the room. A sink is in one corner; a naked lightbulb swings from the ceiling. The only other light comes in through a window without shades or drapes, boasting a gloomy view of the brick wall opposite.
    Piles of punk-style clothes are all over the floor. The cracked plaster walls are all white. There is no art, except for a tattered Sid Vicious poster taped to one of them.
    Madonna gives me a faded old blanket and a pillow, leads me into the living room, then leaves me alone. I throw the blanket on the floor, and to my surprise, it moves. Literally. I pick it up again and realize that my sister’s announcement has so dazed me that I haven’t noticed that I have company, about 5 million cockroaches crawling all over the floor.
    Right now, though, I am far too tired and dispirited to care. I put the blanket down again and try to sleep. Meanwhile, the cockroaches crawl all over me.
    If the insects don’t keep me awake, the various people arriving and departing throughout the night do. Madonna looks in on me, then promptly disappears. What am I doing here?
    I am both shell-shocked and angry. My sister initially seemed to be looking out for me, inviting me to stay with her in Manhattan, but now clearly doesn’t want me here at all. I simmer with hurt and rejection: Glinda the Good Witch suddenly seems more like Glinda the Bad.
    Early the next morning, I knock on Madonna’s bedroom door.
    After a few minutes, she opens it, bleary-eyed.
    â€œI can’t stay here because of the bugs, Madonna. You gotta help me—I’ve got nowhere else to go.”
    She thinks for a second, then makes a call.
    â€œHi, Janice, my little brother Christopher needs a place to stay. Can he stay with you for a couple of weeks?”
    I hold my breath while Madonna waits for an answer.
    Then she adds, “No, he can’t stay here, Janice. I thought he could, but the guy that owns the apartment found out and says he can’t.”
    Now, at least, I know why she changed her mind.
    And while I am still a little irritated that she couldn’t be bothered to explain that to me in the first place, I am relieved that at least she isn’t just throwing me out on the street. And living with Janice Galloway, a dancer from Michigan who went to college with Madonna, turns out to be fun. And I am happy that her one-bedroom, sixth-floor walk-up on First and Ninth is completely bug-free.
    Together, Janice and I subsist on canned tuna and crackers. At night, dressed in our jazz pants and leg warmers, we hang out in the gay bar across the street and, during the day, race from audition to audition, surviving from hope to hope.
    I live with Janice for about three months in her two-room apartment. Now and again, I hang out with Madonna, and we see Martha Graham’s dance company together. Although Madonna has clearly jettisoned her dance career and is set on becoming a pop star, she still loves to see proper dance performances. I love spending time with her, but I am in survival mode, and landing a paying dancing job is all that matters to me.
    Finally, to my relief, I am offered a job dancing with an Ottawa-based dance company, Le Groupe de La Place Royale. I call Madonna and give her the news.
    â€œYou really think you should take it?” she says. “I mean, it’s not New York. It’s not where you need to be if you want to be a dancer.”
    Imitating her blunt manner, which I’ll eventually permanently make my own, I inform her that she has been less than helpful to me, that I don’t have any money, and that the company has offered