World's Fair

  ROSE

  Only now do I see that our lives could have gone in an entirely different direction. We were young and energetic. But little by little the two families were accepting us. The shock was wearing off. This began when Donald was born. Another generation! Donald was born at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Rockaway Beach. A Catholic hospital. The nurses there were lovely to me, the nuns. It was a wonderful hospital and they took everyone in, it didn’t matter to them. The only thing was the nurses wore habits and in the front lobby on the wall was an enormous gold cross, and in each room was a crucifix that was quite specific, with a painted Jesus on the cross. Well, you can imagine, when it was time for the birth my whole family traveled all the way from the Bronx, and for them the occasion was to be celebrated in the traditional way, with cake and wine and a little whiskey, so there were, in addition to my mother and father and sister Bessie and my brothers Harry and Billy, my aunts and uncles and cousins. Here they came dragging all the way from the Bronx, which was quite a trip then, nobody had cars, nobody could afford them, you took buses and the elevated train and then the real train, it took hours. And they had bags and shopping bags and gifts. And when they walked into St. Joseph’s and saw that big cross on the wall, they were stunned. One of my uncles, an extremely religious man, a ridiculous pompous man, took one look and turned around and walked out and went right home—Aunt Minnie’s husband, Uncle Tony, he was English, he wore homburgs, he had a very high regard for himself. Then Minnie followed him, of course, she always let him lead her around, and one or two of the others, but my mother, a blessed dear woman, she and my father stayed, they were no less religious than Uncle Tony. The crosses on the walls were a profound offense to them, but they didn’t let it faze them, they knew what was important, and what was important was that they had a new grandson and that their daughter wanted them there.

  The circumcision was done by a regular doctor in an operating room, that was the way we wanted it, we didn’t want a mohel; and the Sisters had set aside a room where we could all gather and have our cake and wine. They were what they were, and we were what we were, and it all worked out fine. Even the Mother Superior came in and had a sip of whiskey. I had gotten along very well with all the Sisters and I liked her very much and I was honored that she came.

  Your father was very funny. He was in the city working when Donald was ready to be born. Donald was not expected for another week or two. I went to the hospital alone, and by the time they called Dave I had given birth. He came rushing out and the first thing he said to me was “Why didn’t you wait!” Can you imagine? He was so excited, so solicitous. Donald was a tiny baby and had jaundice the first few weeks of his life and we were very worried about him, Dave was worried. When we brought him home, all wrapped up, a tiny little face peering out of his blankets, you should have seen how proud his father was, how excited!

  But that was the beginning of the return to the families. With the baby we were respectable in their eyes. Or it seemed that way. My mother-in-law in particular kept urging Dave to bring us back to the Bronx. “You’re so far away,” she said, “we’re all here, it’s not right both families so close to each other in the Bronx and you and Rose and the baby so far away.” Then too it was a matter of having help, of being able to call on someone; Dave had a good job, but we couldn’t immediately afford nurses or live-in maids, I needed my mother. I needed her to tell me how to do things, I didn’t want to make mistakes. It was so much work, washing and boiling diapers, sewing clothes, our old family doctor Dr. Gross was in the Bronx, and so on. These were all considerations. But I think I would have stuck it out in Rockaway if Dave had wanted that. He seemed to give in, maybe he was scared by the responsibility, maybe he felt it would be easier commuting to Manhattan from the Bronx than from Rockaway; he could leave later and be home earlier; but who knows what he thought, in many ways he was very mysterious, very secretive, your father; and in those days husbands didn’t help out particularly, the division of labor was very clear-cut and everyone abided by it, so who knows what he felt. But somehow the decision was made. We found an apartment on Weeks Avenue and Mt. Eden Avenue next to Claremont Park, it was right back in our old neighborhood. So back we went, and my heart sank, I had loved it so in Rockaway. I loved the salt air, I loved the sea and the sky. Everything was so bright and fresh. It wasn’t till we were ensconced in our new apartment that I realized how sorry I was.

  SEVEN

  You learned the world through its dark signs and also from its evil devices, such as slingshots, punchboards and scumbags. I found a slingshot one day that was beautifully made. Someone had taken great pains with it. The Y-shaped frame was a shaved piece of tree branch with close to symmetrical arms. The sling was a heavy band of rubber in the absolute center of which was strung a pouch of soft leather. The key stress points were tightly and evenly wound with kite string. I immediately placed a small round stone in the pouch and let fly. It didn’t go very far. I tried again, this time pulling back on the rubber as hard as I could with my right hand and holding my left arm stiff, my hand clenching the frame handle. The stone went like a bullet, pinged a car door, leaving a dent, and then bounced off the carriage of a child sitting in the sun next to my house.

  The mother was furious. She went up the steps of my house and rang the doorbell. But even before my mother came to the door I had dumped the slingshot in the ash can. It was powerful magic, it had some animating force of its own, well beyond the strength in my child’s arms. No wonder it was, with the spring-blade knife, the weapon of choice of the swastika youths.

  One day I was sitting with Pinky on the steps and an older boy stopped and offered me a chance on a punchboard, a cardboard packet with a grid of little holes fitted with white paper plugs. At the top was a cartoon of a girl in harem pants dancing with her arms over her head. For a nickel I might win a dime, fifty cents, or even five dollars. The nickel in my pocket was for ice cream, but I turned it over to him. Punchboards were made in Japan, a country specifically known to all children as the source of cheap toys and novelties that broke very quickly. With the punch key, a miniature version of the kind of key used to open a sardine tin, I pushed out my chance, a tightly folded accordion-pleated piece of paper a half-inch long. I unfolded it with the seller looking over my shoulder. I felt his hot breath on my ear. The chance was blank. I experienced the loss of my nickel.

  Later Donald questioned me. “Was the punchboard full?”

  “Yes, I was the first.”

  “If the punchboard is honest,” Donald said, “and you have only the kid’s word on that, then when you buy your chance affects the odds. Do you know what odds are?”

  “No.”

  “Well, look, if the board is half punched and the kid tells you the prize money is still unclaimed, then you have a better chance of winning. Do you get it? Your odds are better.”

  I strove to understand.

  “Well, you’d better forget it anyway,” Donald said. “It’s gambling. Gambling is illegal. You can get caught. Mayor La Guardia took the slot machines out of the candy stores and now he’s after the punchboards. It’s in all the papers. So you might as well forget the whole thing, if you know what’s good for you.”

  I was prepared to do that. A couple of years later I would overhear some boys in school describing an older girl as a punchboard. I was unable to make the metaphorical leap, though understanding something bad was being said.

  But the scumbag, ah the scumbag, here was an item so loathsome, so evil, that the very word itself was too terrible to pronounce. There was a seemingly endless depth of dark meaning attached to this word, with intimations of filth, and degradation, touching on such dark secrets as the young prince of life that I was would live in eternal heavenly sunlight not to know. In order to learn what a scumbag specifically and precisely was, beyond the foul malevolence of the sound of the word, you had to acquire knowledge of sick and menacing excitements to a degree that would inflict permanent damage to your soul. Yet of
course I did learn, finally, one summer at the great raucous beach of crashing waves and sand-caked bodies known as Rockaway.

  The beach was something my mother and father could agree on. Why they favored Far Rockaway at the sea edge of Brooklyn I did not quite understand. It was an enormous journey getting there. Perhaps my memory is faulty, perhaps we never made a day trip to Far Rockaway but rented a bungalow there for a week, in the summer, in the years when my father was doing comparatively well. But I remember, after a subway ride downtown, standing in the cavernous waiting room of Penn Station. We had with us bundles and blankets, newspapers and picnic baskets. High above was the vaulted roof of steel and translucent glass. The steel ribs that buttressed the roof were curved as delicately as scrollwork. Holding everything up were slender black-steel open columns taller than the columns that supported the elevated tracks on Jerome Avenue. The sun came through the roof on planes of dust, giving everything a pale greenish color and hushing the vast babble of all the people waiting for their trains, and the redcaps with their baggage dollies, and the echoing public address system announcements.

  Yet even after the train trip to the seaside there was a long walk in the sun through blocks of one-story bungalows and across streets half filled with sand.

  Rockaway might be overrun with sunbathers, the boardwalks jammed, not a place to lie down, but with my father leading the way we encamped miraculously enough in a space that hadn’t been seen as possible by anyone except us. And there we were on a ridge of wet sand, facing the Atlantic Ocean.

  My mother grew happy, the characteristic expression of concern lifted from her face, which now shone with a blissful contemplation as she tugged on her rubber swim cap and waded into the surf. It was as if she was alone, and not another human being around her. My father, who was more accustomed to relaxing and enjoying himself, reclined on the blanket and read his newspapers, interrupting himself every now and then to lie back on one elbow and point his face into the sun.

  The trouble was, I had difficulty with the idea of changing into or out of a bathing suit in public. My father swam way out past the breakers, and when he came back he thought nothing of letting his black wool tank suit dry right on him in the sun. Donald too wore his belted bathing trunks through many swims. But my mother insisted that when I was wet, if I wasn’t going into the water again, I had to change out of my suit into a pair of dry shorts.

  I didn’t understand the logic of this—that it was all right to be wet in the water but not on land. My father tried to arbitrate. “Why be uncomfortable,” he said. “You put this blanket around you and slip off your suit underneath, and put your pants on. Nothing to it, one two three.”

  I was not persuaded. I saw other children changing this way and I knew their shame when they saw me watching. My mother thought I was being ridiculous. Yet I had never seen her change her clothes in public, nor my father, nor anyone but another child. I had heard it said of a little girl I knew how silly she was to refuse to wear a simple pair of cotton briefs for a bathing suit. “You have nothing up there to hide,” her mother told her, pointing at her chest. “Nobody cares.” What could she have possibly revealed to the world but that she lacked what she was supposed to have? We were not equipped as adults; we were small and without hair. That was the reason for modesty. Yet our dreams and desires were great shadows on the sun, enormous looming fearful attacks of unnamed chaos of the heart. To be undressed was to seem to be a child, a degrading state.

  So I was taken to the public bathhouse behind the boardwalks—I suppose our bungalow was too many blocks away—and in the hot still air of a box of dark wood, a rented key for ten cents on an elastic loop attached to my wrist, I hurriedly changed. The air was motionless, woodsmoked. I had latched the door but someone could get down on his knees and peek underneath because the door did not reach the ground. People were changing in the other cubicles. I heard voices from all directions. I peeked through the cracks to make sure no one on either side was watching me: I was looking at monumental square inches of naked flesh. I heard the snap of elastic. I heard distant giggling. I heard a slap. I heard an urgent female demand to be let alone.

  And then I found, stuck to my big toe, a flattened tube of whitish rubber. Instinctively repelled, I flicked it off with a shake of my foot.

  The beach at Rockaway in 1936: Monoplanes with enormous wings slowly pulled banners of the alphabet through the sky. Washed in on the surf were dead jellyfish and the shells of horseshoe crabs, upside down, like shallow bowls. In the cold dark sand under the boardwalk I came upon a veritable garden of those flattened rubber things. They were stiff, not pleasant to touch, they lay pasted together and they smelled bad. Everything from the sea smelled bad—bulbous oily pods of green weed, jellyfish, half-eaten shellfish and those white rubber things under the boardwalk. I picked one up. “Don’t touch it!” my brother said. “Don’t you know what that is, you dope?”

  Oh what a roaring sun-blasted life on the beach! Tiny piping holes bubbling in the sand. Birds with legs like toothpicks scurrying in front of the wavelap. Gulls hovering in windplanes off the sandbank. Donald and I ran to the shaded precinct of the boardwalk arcades. Sea winds blew through the open game rooms. We stood in our bare feet and bowled wooden balls down chutes, we spun the wheel to make the miniature steam shovel in the glass case clutch the prize. We wanted the real penknife, the silver cigarette lighter. We got only the gumballs.

  Sand is in my crotch. I am turning red, the sun is inflating me. I eat sandwiches on the blanket, I drink cherry Kool-Aid, which is like liquid Jell-O. All speech is shouted, the surf crashes, I fear only two things, the water crashing up at my feet and the desert hordes of human beings among whom I may get lost. Crying children are walked by fully dressed policemen among the families on their blankets. Life is raw here; more policemen in their dark shirts and trousers and garrison caps, and with their heavy belts and guns, stand on the boardwalk overlooking the masses of bare bodies. Behind them big clown faces smile down from the false front of the amusement park. They are not fooled. Bad things are happening everywhere. Lifeguards bring in an exhausted child. An ambulance backs up to the steps of the boardwalk leading to the beach. I dig banks of sand around me. I create structures to support me, I bury my own leg to the knee. I am in the salt and the sun and the sea of voices. It all crashes over me, but I am not drowned.

  It seems to me now that in this elemental place, these packed public beaches in the brightest rawest light of day, I learned the enlightening fear of the planet. Everywhere I looked men stood on their hands or climbed to other men’s shoulders. Women of flesh slept ground into the sand. Beyond any name’s recognition, under the shouting and teeming life of the world’s public on their tribal Sunday of half-nude ceremony, was some quiet revelation in me of unutterable life. I was inspired in this state of clarity to whisper the word scumbag. It was as if all the sound had stopped, the voices, the reedy cry of gulls, the sirens and the thunderous surf, for that one word to be articulated to illumination. I felt through my fingers the sand pour of bones, like some futile archaeologist of a ground-up mineral past. I recognized the heat in the sand as some invisible power of distant light. And from the glittering blue water I took its endless motion and unimaginably frigid depth. All of this astonishingly was; and I on my knees in my bodying perception, worldlessly primeval, at home, fearful, joyous.

  EIGHT

  It must have been that summer or not long after that my little grandma’s mental condition worsened. She took to running away. I was outside the house one afternoon when the front door opened and down the steps she came. She cursed and shook her fist at me. Her hair was uncombed. I backed away, but when she reached the bottom of the stoop she wandered off in the opposite direction, giving me the distinct impression that she had cursed me only because I was in her line of sight. She turned the corner at 173rd Street and was gone.

  I ran and got my mother, who was at the laundry sink scrubbing clothes. She hadn’t even known Grandma ha
d left. Wiping her hands on her apron, my mother ran after her. She found the old woman and brought her back, but that was only the first of several episodes in which Grandma, crying and calling curses down on our house, wrapped a shawl around her shoulders and ran off.

  In her curses she suggested that it would be a good thing if cholera were to kill us all. My mother numbly translated for me when I asked her what was being said. Another eventuality Grandma hoped for was that a company of Cossacks on their horses would ride us down. My mother cautioned me not to take these remarks at face value. “Grandma loves us,” she said. “Poor Grandma doesn’t know what she’s saying. She’s remembering her life as a little girl in her village in Russia, when these things happened. Cholera killed people when they drank water that was contaminated. The Cossacks were horse soldiers of the Czar, who mounted pogroms against Jewish settlements. She never forgot, poor thing.”

  I understood and did not take Grandma’s madness personally. In fact, I tried to be friendlier to her when she was sane, to show her I loved her. I took to bringing her her tea in the morning when she got up. She liked that. My mother might look in on her to see that she was all right and then in the kitchen pour her tea for her in a glass, and put the glass in a saucer, with two cubes of sugar next to it, and in my two hands I would carry the glass of tea down the hall.