I spent my summer being mauled by the mini terrors that are mosquitos.

Not much else about that summer was worth remembering.

Certainly not the unbearable heat, making me feel like I was standing in a compression chamber with hot air pressing into me from all sides.

Nor the fetid stink of the subway, a mixture of what smelled like boiling garbage, armpits neglected by deoderant and general human funk.

I'll tell you, only at night is the Bronx bearable, and even then barely so. A weekday night. When the beat of the street dies down to a dulled murmur and the twinkling streetlamps illuminate blissfully empty sidewalks.

New York summertimes have got to be the worst there is. There are no nearby beaches worth visiting; in the Bronx, Orchard Beach is often closed due to sewage spills. The only relief for me in a New York summer comes from the cool breeze of an air conditioner blowing from an store's open door, where I'll occasionally stop about for 5 minutes or so. Just long enough for me to pretend a conversation on my cell and to tie my burning hair into a knot on top of my head.

My mother waits for the truly blistering days before she'll turn on the AC. Too expensive, she says. At which point I'll remind her of how much more the doctor bill for my heat stroke will be, but she simply shakes her head. She knows I'm made of tougher stuff than that. As her daughter, I'd have to be.