Mitla Pass (53 page)

After being raised by my stepmother Hannah, whom I considered my real mother, and after living with my three half sisters, what did we go and do? Simone and I had three daughters, Priscilla, Tracey, and Laurie. My lovely wife made our daughters into a rose, a diamond, and a pearl. We had a lively, beautiful home on Belle Avenue, a few blocks’ walk from my store.

When I married Simone in France during the war, she was a widow with a small son, Pierre. I adopted the boy and he grew into a fine young man. He was away at college, MIT no less, studying engineering.

I was always happy to see Gideon. He came over often to work in the store and bum a dinner from Simone, who was God’s gift to the culinary art. Gideon was a gifted boy. Everyone in my house loved him and I offered to take him into our home. Leah refused, stating that Gideon would be better off living in Monroe Street with her and Bubba Hannah. Well, the truth of the matter was that Leah did not like Simone, and in her warped thinking, Simone posed as some kind of threat to steal her son. What could I do?

We had a lot of very bright kids among my nieces and nephews and my own children. They would set the world on fire, some of them. We were going to be an American family this country would be proud of. But it was Gideon who had always borne a burden, even a curse. He was expected to be the miracle child.

When he returned to Baltimore he was a troubled lad. It didn’t take long for him to become a leader. Not in school, where he struggled to make passing grades, but out on the streets. When little guys get tough, watch out. Gideon started smoking cigarettes, ran with a gang, and generally flirted with trouble.

There was a street called Herbert Street, which ran off Monroe. It was not much more than an alleyway lined with tiny, tiny row houses mostly inhabited by poor Irish and poorer Portuguese fishermen. It was a mean street with mean kids and there were nightly brawls between neighbors and inside the homes.

Gideon Zadok was able to control his gang and lead them with his sharp little mind. They heisted stuff out of neighborhood stores, prowled for other gangs to fight, stole bicycles and sold them for spare parts, and otherwise spoiled for trouble.

The kid was on his own. His father, Nathan, was in Philly. Molly was in Norfolk and Leah was gone from the house most of the time. Bubba Hannah did most of the raising. She loved Gideon powerfully, but she had grown old. When we had a matriarch as strong as Hannah, we thought she’d never age, but each Sunday now, we saw it happen.

Bubba would darn his socks, keep his clothing clean, and feed him, but that was it. She could not cope with a wild teenager who had fast turned into a street fighter.

Dominick Abruzzi had worked his way up to detective sergeant and we had become close, over the years.

“I’m worried about Gideon,” he said.

“Me too, Dom.”

“Up to now I’ve been able to talk the juvenile officers into keeping the kid’s name off the blotter. He’s got no record, but Uncle Dom can only do so much.”

“I think we’ve got to bring his father in on it. Maybe he can take the kid in Philly a little more, give him something to look forward to.”

Dom and I agreed to give it our best try, even though we didn’t like Nathan Zadok or his Communist shit. We phoned him.

“I’m in the neighbor’s apartment, I can’t talk, and he needs the phone,” Nathan said.

“The boy is getting into trouble,” I answered.

“It would be very hard to have him in Philadelphia. We barely have room to breathe in now. Look, I’ll write you a letter.”

Dom had his ear against mine so he could hear. He snatched the phone from my hand. “Listen, Zadok, your son is one step away from going to the detention home. How are the comrades on the Central Committee going to take that one?”

“All right, all right, calm down, Abruzzi. You Mussolini Fascist,” he hissed under his breath.

“Now, you get him to Philly as often as you can and spend some time with him.”

“I’ll get things arranged, no matter what the cost, the extra train fares, the extra cooking, laundry, clothing. You do know that I send him support money, without fail,” Nathan whined.

When we signed off, both Dom and I shook our heads. “He’s not going to help. Jesus ... Jesus ...”

We took it upon ourselves to wean him away from his gang as carefully as we could. As a detective sergeant, Dom had free entry to all the sporting and cultural events. If it had anything to do with baseball or music, Dom took care of him.

I encouraged Gideon to come and see us anytime he wanted. With Pierre away at college and three nonathletic daughters, it was fun to have somebody to shoot baskets with. We both liked to run and we’d spend many an early evening trotting around the neighborhood. We would pass Garrison Junior High School and Forest Park High, modern schools set in lawns and trees and serenity. It wasn’t difficult to see how much Gideon wanted to attend these schools.

So I went into a little conspiracy with him. He’d use my Belle Avenue address as his own and get a transfer out of his inner-city school. It worked, and the boy became very attached to Garrison. After-school activities, particularly the drama club, did a lot to keep him off the streets.

In the evening, we’d sit on the porch swing and rock, and as we got closer and closer, he told me about what it was like to go to Philly.

I’d be pretty much asleep when the conductor called out, “Chester, Chester, next stop Chester.” The train pulled into an open-air elevated platform station. There were red brick factories all around from the turn of the century and, on a corner down the block, the flashing neon lights of the Colorado Cafe. Funny name for a diner. Outside the window I saw the big sign painted across a building:
WHAT
C
HESTER MAKES MAKES
C
HESTER
. Philly was the next stop. Christ, I hoped I’d never see that sign again. Sometimes my dad met me, but most of the time I’d take a streetcar.

Dad moved quite often, but every place looked alike. They all seemed to be second- or third-story apartments and they were spooky because they were usually in the rear of the building and the halls were never lit. There was a lot of dark mahogany paneling and a uniform mustiness and gloom. When I entered, the first thing that got to me was the smell of mothballs from the front hall closet where Dad’s only good suit hung.

Dad had married a Party member with two sons older than me. They weren’t bad guys. We’d all sneak off to the ball games together, and when I was able to see major leaguers, Dizzy Dean and those guys, it was almost worth the trip. Dad was always on his stepsons with his temper and I stood up for them against him. All pleasures were forbidden, even the funny papers.

Dad’s wife, Lena, was a
kvetch,
a complainer and nagger. Every sentence she spoke started out negatively, to put you on the defensive. “What’s the matter, you don’t like Philadelphia?” The big joy of her life was stuffing food down everyone’s throat. “Eat, eat, eat, eat” ... like she was getting sexual satisfaction out of cramming your belly; or, if you didn’t eat until you burst, she’d take it as an insult: “Jewish cooking is not good enough for you?”

Little varied between me and Dad. Almost every conversation turned out to be a lecture. “Do better in school,” “Don’t hang out with hoodlums,” “Read important works by Party members,” “Pay honor to the Soviet Union.”

The Second World War had started and France had fallen and England stood alone. At first the Communists had been ordered to berate and denounce the war as an imperialistic war. Then Stalin made a pact with Hitler. I heard that members quit the Party in droves over this, but Dad justified the pact. Then, later, Russia was attacked and
overnight
the bad war became a good war, according to the Communists.

I had reached puberty and the whole new world of masturbation was a wonderment, really fantastic. I read a lot of books and could even talk to Aunt Simone, who was a lot different than Bubba and Momma. She taught me not to feel guilt and shame and that stuff. Also, not to seek answers to my curiosity with her daughters. I’d never touch my cousins. I loved them.

One night in Philly I was in the bathtub and I started jerking off. Dad came home from a Party meeting in a fury. I could hear by the way he slammed the door. He always kept a key to the bathroom door so my stepbrothers and I couldn’t lock ourselves in. He broke in and caught me and beat the hell out of me. I was slipping and sliding all over the tub, unable to stand, and he just kept pounding me with both fists. I could have whipped him, but a guy doesn’t hit his father, no matter what.

“Filthy, rotten, dirty little pig!” he screamed.

I swore I was going to get even, and I did. As summer came to an end, Dad’s temper got worse and worse. One night, out of the blue, I came home to see the kitchen filled with a half-dozen comrades. One of them was on the Central Committee.

“Sonny boy, I have a big surprise for you,” Dad told me. “The Central Committee has decided, due to my faithful years as a Party member, to waive your age requirements and swear you into the Young Communist League, now ... before you go back to Baltimore.”

...
So there I was holding up my fist in the Communist salute and repeating an oath after the comrade from the Central Committee. ... I don’t know what happened, exactly, maybe Miss Abigail’s voice came from the beyond but ... I couldn’t help it ... I started reciting the Pledge of Allegiance: “I PLEDGE ALLEGIANCE TO THE FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND TO THE REPUBLIC FOR WHICH IT STANDS, ONE NATION, INDIVISIBLE, WITH LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL.”

The comrades like to shit their pants.

My dad screamed and slapped me in the face in front of everybody. I went to the door. “I’m an American! I’m an American!” I shouted.

“Come back here,” my dad demanded.

“Go fuck yourself,” I said and ran for it. I ran all the way to the train yard and jumped a freight part of the way back to Baltimore and hitched the rest of the way.

Well, the next week Dad was expelled from the Party and wrote me that he’d never forgive me. Two weeks later he was all over me to start writing him letters again. He never admitted it, but I had done him the biggest favor of his life.

My brother-in-law, Al Singer, had always had a struggle. Al had painted many houses so well that he finally got an opening to buy out a retiring contractor.

“Lazar, I need your help,” he petitioned.

Al was no go-getter, but he was honest. I loaned him the money he needed to buy the business. I had to wait a little too long, we had a lot of fights, but he paid me back every dime. Al and Fanny and their children finally moved out of the second-floor flat on Monroe Street to a place of their own.

With space now available in Bubba’s house, Molly and her husband, Danny, moved from Norfolk, mainly so she could take care of Gideon. What that boy needed more than anything else was something of his own. I gave him a little dog as a present. Gideon worshipped that animal. Dinky he called it. A mutt, but, like Gideon, he was a street fighter. He rode in Gideon’s bicycle basket and slept on Gideon’s chest. The tricks that dog would do for that boy.

For a brief moment, with Molly now in Baltimore, life looked a little better for Gideon. Then disaster struck, bang, bang, bang.

Leah returned from one of her affairs and just moved right into the boy’s bedroom, so he had to sleep on a couch in the kitchen. Gideon went on a weekend field trip with his schoolmates, and while he was gone, Leah had the animal shelter people pick up Dinky and put him to sleep.

Leah didn’t tell Gideon about it and he was certain the dog was stolen, because Dinky would never have run away from him. For a month the boy searched high and low, walking through all the adjoining neighborhoods and shouting for his puppy. It was pathetic.

One night he heard his mother speaking in Yiddish to Bubba and confiding that she had sent the dog to the pound.

“He was filled with fleas. Gideon was terribly allergic. I only did what I thought best. I didn’t know he would carry on like this.”

I don’t know if he ever fully forgave his mother for that, but it was as though a part of him had died, and what came back in its place was anger.

A few weeks after Gideon learned Dinky had been put to sleep, Danny Shapiro was hit by a truck and hospitalized for an indefinite period, with a fractured skull and several broken bones. Molly was a poorly paid secretary and her salary couldn’t cover the medical bills, much less support herself, her husband, her mother, and her brother. Dom and I dug into our pockets again.

But, thank God for small favors, there was one less mouth to feed because Leah was soon gone again. This time it was to Washington, where she married a little shoe clerk who worked in Sears, Roebuck and did nice things with women’s feet and got to steal a quick glimpse up the leg sometimes, when offered. It actually appeared that she would settle down with this guy for a while.

Then came the third blow, the terrible blow, the death of Bubba Hannah, God rest her soul. She went in her sleep, thank God, from a heart attack. The impact on the family was shattering, the most terrible event of our lives. Gideon, already weakened from blow after blow, seemed to be the one hurt the most.

Bubba always loved him a little extra-special. For years she had taken pennies and nickels from the food money and put it away, so when she died each of her grandchildren received ... eighteen dollars. For Gideon, she left fifty dollars. “That boy is a genius,” she always said. “Someday he will make us proud.”

Dom and I had to clean up Hannah’s affairs and had no choice but to sell the Monroe Street house to pay off a large accumulation of debts. Who should take in Zayde Moses but Al and Fanny.

Gideon passed his sixteenth birthday, but his heart was not in high school. He always managed to be pleasant as a member of my family and sometimes he’d put on a hilarious skit with one of my daughters. But mostly the boy was very sad and depressed. To read his stories had once been a joy, but now the pages were filled with an overwhelming sense of despair. Sometimes I got a terrible feeling that he was searching for death. Simone and Molly also picked up on this.