“Hey, now — that’s what I call ‘Takin’ the bull by the horns!’” shouted one of the workmen.
“Bull, hell. That there’s a cow,” another one corrected him.
They all went back to snickering and whistling.
The girl had suddenly grown serious. She felt a hot cramp in her stomach. And an intense emotion. When Bill let go of her she turned over and looked at him. “What’s your name?” she asked him.
“Cochrann.”
A shy weak-looking workman came up to them. “That’s enough, Liv,” he told the girl. Almost like a prayer.
“Get lost, Brad,” the girl said, still staring into Bill’s eyes.
“Liv,” he implored.
“It’s over, Brad,” the girl said. “Beat it.”
Bill turned to him. “Are you deaf or somethin’?”
The young man looked down, and then he went away.
That same night Liv and Bill became lovers. They made love in a field. Violently. And if Bill began to soften, Liv dug her nails into his back, hard enough to wound him. Then, as soon as Bill began to hurt her again, Liv loosened her grip. As if she couldn’t imagine anything but pain in the sexual act.
With Liv, Bill’s nightmares ceased. Ruth stopped tormenting him at night.
Liv let him hit her, tie her up, bite her. She howled with pleasure when Bill grabbed her hair hard enough to rip it out. And when Bill was tired, Liv would hurt him. She tied him up, hit him, bit him. And Bill too learned to shriek with pain. And to discover the pleasure of pain. He left his rented room and went to stay with Liv in her shack. Until New Year’s Eve, he thought maybe he loved her. He thought he could sell the gems, build them a better house, and stay with her. He might even marry her.
But on New Year’s Eve Liv told him: “I’m gonna have a baby. I’m pregnant.”
That night, making love, Bill struck her savagely in the face. He sodomized her so violently that she almost fainted. Then in the middle of the night Bill woke up, sweating. Ruth had come back to visit him. She had come back to kill him. He got out of bed in silence, and sat in the kitchen, his elbows on the gimpy table, and he held his head in his hands. He closed his eyes and saw his father ripping the belt out of his pants and beating his mother and him. He opened his eyes. There was half a bottle of coco-whiskey, booze fermented for three weeks in a coconut shell, and he drank it all down. When the alcohol made his head spin he closed his eyes again. Again, he saw his drunken father from behind, beating his mother and him. But it wasn’t his father any more, he realized after a moment, when he could no longer open his eyes. It was himself. He was the one who was beating Liv and their son. The son that was going to be born.
Then he opened the tin box where Liv kept her money, and took it. He took his own savings and the precious stones, put his clothes into a suitcase, quietly, not waking Liv, and he fled the shack.
He got to Detroit at dawn and rented a room. He spent the day studying the various jewelry stores in the city, until he found the one that was right for him. It was at the edge of the city. He’d seen two sinister-looking thugs go inside. He’d watched them through the plate glass window. And understood. The next day, when he saw another guy who looked like a gangster go into the shop, he slipped in behind him. A fat woman behind the counter was polishing little crap made out of crystal and porcelain.
“The Monk sent you a couple o’ presents,” the gangster said to the jeweler sitting next to her.
Before anyone noticed him Bill left the shop. He crouched behind the corner of the building, and when he saw the gangster leave, he waited another ten minutes before going back inside.
“The Monk forgot the best part,” he said to the jeweler.
The jeweler looked at him suspiciously, a cigarette dangling from his lip. “Who are you?” he asked.
“It don’t matter who I am. What’s important is: Is the Monk gonna get mad, right?” Bill said softly, leaning across the counter.
The jeweler moved toward the back of the shop. “Come,” he said greedily, opening a door behind a curtain.
Bill glanced at the fat woman and followed him.
“A thousand,” said the jeweler, looking up from his lens. The stones glittered underneath the light. The jeweler’s cigarette was burning itself out in a heavy bronze ashtray.
“A thousand for the diamonds? Okay,” said Bill. “Now gimme a price on the emerald, because the Monk wants t’ know if you think like him. He says he wants at least two thousand for the lot.”
“Two thousand?” the jeweler exclaimed, shaking his head.
But Bill knew he was going to give it to him.
“So what do I get out of it?” whined the jeweler.
“Good health, buddy.”
The jeweler scooped up the stones and turned towards the safe. He opened it and began to count the money. Bill struck him in the head with the bronze ashtray. The jeweler sank to the floor with a whimper. The bundle of money rustled in the air. While a splotch of red from the jeweler’s neck began to spread across the floor, Bill gathered up all the bills, stuffed them into his pocket and ran out of the shop, knocking aside the fat woman.
He went to a used car lot and bought one of the best Model Ts around, with removable wheels and a self-starter, for $590 in cash. He drove to the boarding house where he’d been staying, picked up his suitcase and got out of Detroit. Once he was in the open countryside he pulled over and counted the money. Four thousand five hundred bucks. He laughed. He listened to his laugh float through the air and die. I’m rich, he thought. And then, when everything went quiet, he laughed again and put the car in gear.
He knew where to go. Liv had always talked about it. She said the climate was great and the water in the ocean was always warm. All she wanted to talk about was palm trees, immaculate sand, sunshine.
“Hold on, California! I’m comin’,” he shouted out the side window as the Tin Lizzie bobbed along the road.
29
Manhattan, 1924
“Happy New Year, Miss Isaacson,” said the boy who ran the elevator, closing the doors.
Ruth kept her gaze steadily in front of her, but it was as if she wasn’t there. She didn’t answer. The boy in his uniform and stiff cap moved the levers, and the cabin began to descend. Ruth was holding something tightly in her hand: a charm strung on a leather cord. A shiny red heart, the size of an apricot pit. Awful.
“Happy New Year, Miss Isaacson,” said the doorman, opening the massive door for her.
Ruth didn’t answer. She walked past him with her head down, not even noticing the sharp wind that was blowing outside. She rubbed the ball of her thumb on the heart’s shiny surface. It had arrived on Christmas Eve. She’d found it in the mailbox. “Goodbye then,” was written on the card that came with it. Nothing else. Not even a signature.
“Happy New Year, Miss Ruth,” said Fred as he closed the door of the Silver Ghost.
But Ruth didn’t even answer him. She sat back in the soft leather seat that no longer smelled of cigars and brandy, which no longer reminded her of her grandfather. Meanwhile she kept rubbing her thumb over the red heart. Almost angrily, as though she wanted to rub off that vulgar lacquer. A week had passed since she’d received it. It was New Year’s now.
“Do you know where Christmas lives?” she asked Fred suddenly, without looking up.
“Yes, Miss Ruth.”
“Take me there.”
“Miss Ruth, your mother expects you for lunch at–”
“Please, Fred.”
The chauffeur slowed, indecisive.
“Haven’t they already fired you?” said Ruth.
“Yes, Miss.”
“So what else can they do to you?”
Fred looked at her in the rearview mirror. He smiled at her. “Quite so, Miss Ruth.” He turned down a cross street and headed for the Lower East Side.
“Have you found another job yet, Fred?” Ruth asked after a few blocks.
“No, Miss.”
“Wha
t will you do?”
“I’m looking into driving trucks for whiskey smugglers.” He laughed.
Ruth looked at him. She had known him forever. “My father fucked us all up, didn’t he?”
Fred gave her an amused glance. “Miss Ruth, I believe your association with that young man has not improved your language.”
Ruth stroked the lacquered heart with her fingertips again. “You like Christmas, don’t you?”
Fred didn’t answer, but Ruth could see that he was smiling.
“My grandfather liked him, too,” she said. She looked out of the car window. They were passing under the BMT tracks. Where the kingdom of the Lower East Side began. “They were alike,” softly, almost to herself.
“Yes,” said Fred, even more softly. He turned off Market Street to Monroe and stopped in front of 320. “Second floor,” he said, getting out of the car and opening the door for Ruth. “I’ll go with you.”
“No, I’m going by myself.”
“That would be unwise, Miss Ruth.”
The stairs were narrow and steep. They reeked of garlic and other odors Ruth couldn’t identify. Body odors. From many bodies. The plaster walls were flaking and covered with graffiti, some of them obscene. The stair treads were filthy and slippery. Ruth put the annoying red heart into her coat pocket. The most beautiful Christmas present she’d had this year. As she was climbing the stairs, escorted by Fred, she felt a tightness in her chest. “Goodbye then,” Christmas had written her. She hadn’t seen him for ten days. And Christmas didn’t know. He didn’t know she had pilfered her mother’s makeup to make her lips redder. He didn’t know that that was the day she’d wanted to kiss him.
“Wait, Fred,” she said when they were outside the apartment door.
Christmas didn’t know why she hadn’t met him that day. He didn’t know what her parents had told her that same day. He didn’t know why it was over. Ruth felt her eyes brim with tears.
“Wait, Fred,” she said again, and turned her back to the door.
Voices rang through the building. Voices of people shouting, laughing, arguing. Speaking a foreign language. The sound of crockery, someone braying out a song, babies crying. And that awful smell. That odor of people. Feeling that she was irreparably excluded from that world, the tears dried in her eyes, her breath grew labored, and a helpless rage made her muscles contract. She turned around and knocked furiously at the door.
When Christmas opened it and found himself facing Ruth he stiffened. His eyes narrowed. He flung a quick reproving look at Fred. Then he stared coldly at Ruth again. Without speaking.
“Who is it?” came a woman’s voice from inside.
An ugly man with a stained napkin tucked in his shirtfront peered out from inside the apartment.
Christmas didn’t say anything.
The woman who had spoken a moment earlier also came out to see. She was small and dark. Her hair was cut like a flapper’s. She didn’t look like a prostitute, thought Ruth.
“Mamma … this is Ruth, remember?” Christmas said.
Ruth saw that the woman glanced quickly at her hand.
“I’m sorry,” said Ruth. “It was wrong of me to come.” She turned away and started towards the stairs.
“Why did you bring her here?” Christmas asked Fred angrily, brushing past him and running down the stairs behind Ruth. He caught up with her in the narrow front hallway and took her by the arm, making her turn towards him. “Who do you think you are?” he shouted into her face.
Fred was at the foot of the stairs.
“Who do you think you are?” Christmas shouted again.
Fred took a step towards them.
“Wait for me in the car,” Ruth told him, her eyes chilly and her voice hard. “I’ll just be a minute.”
Fred lingered, looking at the two of them.
“Take it easy, Fred,” said Christmas. “We’ll just be a minute, really.”
Fred went outside. Christmas and Ruth looked at each other in silence.
“Have you seen enough?” said Christmas, in a low dark voice. He breathed in dramatically, arms outspread. “Take a deep breath, Ruth. This is the air in my lungs. Your grandpa was right; this is shit you can’t get rid of. You can’t just shake it off. Have you seen who we are? Now you can go.”
Ruth slapped his face. Christmas grabbed her shoulders and pushed her against the wall, panting. His eyes blazed. Lips clenched. And then he saw the fear in Ruth’s eyes. The fear she must have felt with Bill. He let go of her and stepped back. Frightened by Ruth’s fear.
“Forgive me,” he said.
Ruth didn’t speak as the fear in her eyes dissolved. She only shook her head.
Christmas took another step back. “Now you can go,” he said again.
Christmas didn’t know why Ruth hadn’t come to meet him in Central Park, or why she’d written that note telling him goodbye. He didn’t know she’d put lipstick on. He didn’t know that, for a moment, Ruth had been ready to be a girl like all the others. For him.
“I’m going to California,” Ruth said all at once, and an angry chill vibrated in her voice. “My father sold the factory. He wants to produce films. We’re moving to Los Angeles.” She’d thought it would be hard to tell him that. But now she was feeling something like relief. She looked at him with her eyes narrowed to slits. She hated him. She hated him with all her heart. Because Christmas was all that still remained to her. And she had to leave him. Forever. For a new life. She hated him for those clear eyes that showed everything he felt. Because she had seen in his gaze his fear of the violence that had marked their meeting. Because now he was looking at her like a whipped dog. Because in his gaze she could read his desperation at losing her. “Goodbye,” she told him quickly, before he could read the despair in her own eyes. She turned away from him and went to the car. “Leave now,” she told Fred as he closed her door.
Christmas shook himself a second too late. He reached the street just as the car pulled away. “I don’t give a fuck!” he shouted with all the breath he had.
But Ruth didn’t look back.
30
Manhattan, 1917-1921
Nothing Cetta said made him change his mind: Christmas was never going back to school. Finally Cetta gave up. She watched her son growing and she asked herself worriedly what he would do as a man. When she saw him come home with some small change in his pocket, after shouting newspaper headlines for a whole afternoon, it broke her heart. She wanted something else for Christmas, something better; but she didn’t know what. More than once she’d found herself thinking that neither one of them would ever become an American, with the same chances Americans had. Because the Lower East Side was like a maximum security prison. You couldn’t escape. And anyone inside was serving out a life sentence.
But quickly her natural optimism came back and gave her hope. And then she took hold of her son’s shoulders and told him: “We wait for right moment. Important thing is, not miss it. But every one of us, we have our moment. You not forget that. Never.”
Christmas didn’t always understand what his mother was telling him. He’d learned to nod and to recite everything Cetta wanted him to repeat back to her. It was the quickest way of being left in peace and escaping back into his own games.
He was almost ten years old and he had built a world that was all his own, made up of imaginary friends and imaginary enemies. He didn’t much like being with the other boys from the apartment building. They made him think about something he’d rather not remember. They reminded him of school and the boy who had carved “P” for prostitute on his chest. Whenever he played with them, he was afraid someone would make a joke about Cetta and the kind of work she did. And all of them had a father. Even if he was a drunk, or violent, or coarse — even if he was an animal, he was still a father.
One day, Christmas was playing by himself on the stairs when he heard Sal’s heavy steps coming out of the office. He hid in a dark corner, wooden pistol in hand. Just as Sal come within
a step of him, Christmas jumped out of his hiding place, pointed the gun at him, and shouted “Bang!”
Sal took it well. “Don’t never do that again,” he said in his voice deep as a belch. Then he continued down the stairs.
Christmas laughed until he heard Sal’s car leaving. Then he went back to playing alone.
The next week, Christmas again heard Sal’s footsteps on the stairs. He hid and then jumped out suddenly with his little gun. “Bang! I gotcha, bastard!” he shouted.
Sal, still expressionless, slapped him across the face so hard he fell on the floor. “I told you not to do that no more,” he told him. “I don’t like havin’ to repeat stuff.” He went into his office.
Christmas went home with his cheek bright red.
“Who hit you?” Cetta cried.
Christmas didn’t answer and went to sit on the sofa with a happy look on his face.
“Who do this to you?” Cetta asked him again.
My father, Christmas thought, smiling. But he didn’t say anything.
Cetta put on her coat and said she had to go out to do some errands.
As soon as Cetta had closed the door, Christmas got up laughing from the divan, ran into his mother’s room and pressed his ear against the wall next to Sal’s office.
Cetta slipped into Sal’s apartment, embraced him and threw herself on the bed. Sal lifted her skirt, pulled off her panties and knelt in front of her. He opened her legs and buried his head between them. And Cetta yielded to Sal’s tongue and gave herself up to pleasure.
Christmas still had his ear pressed against the wall. He was laughing. As all children laugh when they hear the voices of love. As if it was something funny.
“The boss says it’s too soon to quit,” said Sal darkly.
“How long I have to work here?” asked Cetta.