The Book of Daniel (24 page)

We were on the third floor of the Shelter. The girls’ section was on the second floor. Sometimes at night I lay after Lights Out and in the dark quiet heard the screams of rage of my sister coming up through the walls.

Once a week we had Fire Drill. Once a week we had Bomb Drill. For Fire Drill you went out on the sidewalk. For Bomb Drill you stayed in.

The first floor was for the offices of the staff, the lunchroom and the kitchen. The fourth and top floor was completely taken up by the indoor gym. The name of the place was East Bronx Children’s Welfare Shelter, City of New York (Hon. William O’Dwyer, Mayor. Hon. Edward J. Flynn, Bronx Borough President). It is located off Tremont Avenue near Crotona Park in a cluster of municipal buildings.

A bus took the hardcores to school everyday. I don’t know why we were taken to one public school rather than another. There was one within walking distance to which we did not go. The big purple school we did go to was as far away, although in a different direction, as what I thought of as my real purple school, P.S. 70. It made little impression on me and I don’t remember the number of it today. Nobody cared whether you did the work or not. It was an old school with tired, grim teachers and a lot of black kids.

At the Shelter the big game was softball. The quality of athletics was very high. Kids played intensely and they played well. The best games were on Sunday. In the morning we’d all sit on our beds in our best clothes and wait for relatives or guardians or whatever to take us out for the day. By noon it was clear who was not going to be taken out. There would be a choose-up game in the yard or, if it was cold, in the gym, and usually it was unsupervised. The Sunday games were played fiercely. Everyone played like hell. I learned the game on Sundays. Someone always ripped up his best pants sliding on the concrete, or tore the sole off his shoe. The girls watched and taunted and it was a completely self-contained, totally populated society with nobody of any importance missing.

Most of the children wore clothes that didn’t fit. Socks bunched up around the ankles. Flowered dresses of older sisters. Pants from Goodwill that had to be folded at the waist and stuffed under the belt.

In the lunchroom they served lukewarm frankfurters from big pots of water covered with an amber slick. They served vegetable soup. They served half-pint containers of milk. They served creamed corn and mashed potatoes. I will never forget the smell of that lunchroom: it was a warm good smell, far better than the food. I suppose it was the smell of the vegetable soup which, since it eventually incorporated everything else, out-smelled everything else. I connect that smell with impoverishment. I think of vegetable soup as disenfranchisement. When Phyllis makes vegetable soup she keeps adding things in hopes of recapturing that smell for me. She’s never touched it. I think you need tile walls. You need high ceilings with lights hanging down on chains and cafeteria trays of maroon-colored plastic.

The other big smell in the Shelter was the smell of vomit. There was always a lot of vomiting. Kids were always getting sick and throwing up. The janitor came around with his cart, a big broom, a shovel, and a bucket of sawdust. He covered the vomit with sawdust, and when it was all soaked up, swept up the gloppy mess with his broom and shovel. Then he’d mop around with a solution of ammonia. The ammonia smell would drown out the vomit smell for five minutes or so. But for the rest of the day the area smelled faintly of vomit. In its fainter
essence it was mysterious and frightening. The smell of the insides of bodies.

Maybe it was the smell of vomit which did something for the vegetable soup.

Some of the older boys were into puberty and had hair. There was a lot of homo wrestling. One kid liked to jerk off in the middle of the room where everyone could see him. Once there was an attempted sodomizing. There were always violent confrontations and some kid or other would be discovered with a knife he shouldn’t have had. Punishment was an instantaneous clout on the head. Mr. Levinson, the boys’ supervisor, didn’t stand for any crap. At night his assistant came on, an older man named Clancy, a flabby dried-out alcoholic with no teeth for whom this job was reclamation. Clancy went to sleep when we did.

Whenever I saw Susan it was on the way somewhere, on the run, usually, when the boys and girls brushed past each other’s schedules. She always clung to me. One day I realized it was her birthday and I told Mr. Levinson, who wrote a note to the girls’ supervisor. At supper they had a cupcake in her place with one candle on it, and the girls at her table sang Happy Birthday. But she had no present that day. Two days later a card came from jail. Both of them had signed it. In my mother’s handwriting it said Happy Birthday to our blessed little girl. Next birthday we’ll make up for this one. Love, Mommy and Daddy. Susan was five. Because she was small you would expect her to have been popular—like a pet for everyone. But she did not ingratiate herself. She was not cute. She was terrified. Her hair was black and dirty and her blue eyes had sunk into her cheeks. She looked like a D.P. She bit the girls’ supervisor’s hand one day and was slapped. Then she kicked the supervisor. She was a problem down there. Whenever we saw each other she clung to me.

One day Mr. Levinson told me to go downstairs to the Psychologist’s Office. The psychologist was Mr. Guglielmi. He was younger than Mr. Levinson. He worked in the Shelter part-time. He wore a jacket and a tie and Mr. Levinson wore only a shirt. He wore shiny brown shoes with thick soles. He talked to each kid once a month for ten or fifteen minutes.

“Come in, Dan, have a seat.”

The psychologist lit a cigarette and leaned back in a wooden swivel chair that squeaked. “Dan,” he said, “I need your help.”

Daniel stared at him.

“I don’t know what to do about your kid sister. We’re trying to make her feel at home. We’re trying to make friends with her. But she’s giving us a very hard time. Let me ask you: Did she throw tantrums when you still lived at home?”

Daniel shook his head.

“She doesn’t eat properly. She keeps the other kids awake. If someone says something to her or even looks at her the wrong way she starts in to scream. She won’t cooperate with anyone.”

Daniel smiled. He couldn’t help it.

Mr. Guglielmi said, “I’m asking you what you think we ought to do.”

“She thinks this is jail,” Daniel said.

The psychologist wrote something down. Then he leaned forward. “But that’s foolish,” he said softly. “There are no bars on the windows. No locks on the doors. She can go out to the play yard at playtime.”

“You won’t let her sleep in the bed with me,” Daniel said.

The psychologist wrote something down. Then he said, “And that makes her think she’s in jail?”

“In jail people are kept apart. Then they’re killed.” Daniel couldn’t help smiling.

“Oh now, hold on a minute. That’s not what happens in jail. People do something wrong, they have a trial. If they’re found guilty they go to jail for a certain time and then they’re released. They’re not killed. Very few people do something serious enough for that.”

“My mother and father are in jail and they haven’t had a trial.”

“Well, that’s just a technicality. They’re waiting for their trial.”

“Why can’t they wait home with us?”

“I don’t know, Dan, I’m not a lawyer. Maybe the government is afraid they would try to run away.”

“Well, they wouldn’t feel afraid if they weren’t going to kill them.”

The psychologist shook his head. He put out his cigarette. “Have you discussed this with Susan?”

“No, it would make her cry.”

“Would you like to sleep with her, too?”

“No, she wets the bed.”

The psychologist wrote something down. He said, “Well, what are we going to do? Supposing we gave you more time with her during the day. Would that help?”

Daniel shrugged.

“You see, we have rules here. We have a certain way of doing things. The boys are in one section, and the girls are in another section. Those are the rules.”

“So that’s like jail,” Daniel said smiling.

“Daniel, this is the East Bronx Children’s Shelter. This is not jail! Hey, look at me when I talk to you: did I tell you you had to come here?”

“No.”

“No. Did I tell Susan she had to come here?”

“No.”

“No! Well, then how can it be jail? Your parents asked the City if you could stay here. They asked their lawyer to put your names in application. Are you saying then that your own parents would put you in jail?”

Daniel shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“I don’t know! Would a mother and father put their own children in jail?”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t know! Well, they wouldn’t. You know they wouldn’t.”

Daniel ran his finger along the edge of the desk. Supposing the letters he got from his mother and father were really written by the FBI imitating their handwriting. Or supposing the FBI made them say they wanted the children put in the Shelter. He didn’t really believe it, but if it happened to be true he must be on guard. Because if they did put him and Susan in here they would have a reason, and the reason would be to make them hate their mother and father and then maybe to make up lies about them.

violin spiders

Mr. Guglielmi had come around to the front of the desk and sat one leg down upon it. “Besides,” he said, “if this was a jail you wouldn’t be allowed to have any fun. And you do have fun, don’t you, Dan?”

Daniel shrugged. “Yes.”

“Are you making friends?”

Daniel shrugged. He nodded.

“Good. Is there anything bothering you that you’d like to talk to me about?”

“No.”

“OK. I think what we’ll do is let Susan eat with you. And maybe at bedtime we’ll let you sit with her a few minutes while she gets sleepy. Let’s try that, OK?”

“OK,” Daniel said.

“If we didn’t have rules, Dan,” the psychologist said, “then we couldn’t get our work done. You can see that, can’t you? There are just too many of us to get by without rules.”

(when we first walked in there and sat with our things in the office downstairs everyone on the staff checked us out. Surreptitiously, of course. Quite a stir. Celebrities. Took the edge off that soon enough, didn’t we, Susy. Made them rue the day)

TREASON the only crime defined in the Constitution. Tyranny as under the Stuart and Tudor kings characterized by the elimination of political dissent under the laws of treason. Treason statutes which were many and unending, the instrument by which the monarch eliminated his opposition and also added to his wealth. The property of the executed traitor forfeited by his heirs because of the loathsomeness of his crime. The prosecution of treason, like witchcraft, an industry. Founding Fathers extremely sensitive to the establishment of a tyranny in this country by means of ambiguous treason law. Themselves traitors under British law. Under their formulation it became possible to be guilty of treason only against the nation, not the individual ruler or party. Treason was defined as an action rather than thought or speech. “Treason against the U.S. shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid & Comfort…. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same
Overt Act, or on Confession in Open Court.” This definition, by members of the constitutional convention, intended that T. could not be otherwise defined short of constitutional amendment. “The decision to impose constitutional safeguards on treason prosecutions formed part of a broad emerging American tradition of liberalism…. No American has ever been executed for treason against his country,” says Nathaniel Weyl,
TREASON: THE STORY OF DISLOYALTY AND BETRAYAL IN AMERICAN HISTORY
, published in the year 1950. I say IF THIS BE TREASON MAKE THE MOST OF IT!

If this bee is tristante make the mort of it

If this be the reason make a mulch of it

If this brie is in season drink some milk with it

If this bitch is teasing make her post on it

If this boy is breathing make a ghost of him

My wife came back while I was ill with the flu and she took care of me. I wanted to cry when I heard the front door open. I fought down my urge to show gratitude. My helplessness released in her the tenderest passions, as the novelists used to say. Since I was incapacitated she and her baby had nothing to fear from me. Foul-smelling and stale and unshaven, yellowishly weak, I stared at her from the bedclothes as she went about cleaning the bedroom. I was waiting for her to make one false move of solicitation, but she fed me and changed the bed.

The timing of her return relieved us of the dreary rituals of reconciliation. Forgiving me turns her on, I have no other explanation for the fact that she keeps returning. Phyllis likes to forgive me. Small premature age lines have appeared at the corners of her eyes. Her face has thinned out and her thighs have got slimmer. Suffering does fine work with the chisel. I am finding her admirable, which disturbs me.

Today, as I left the apartment for the first time in two weeks, I noticed that she was way down. There is a gesture she has with her long light hair, taking the loose strands falling past her cheek and tucking them behind her ear. This morning, while
feeding the baby, she did that with such deliberation that I felt she had to concentrate to get it done. To make it all perfect, from where I stood her head was just under the poster of the Isaacsons which is pasted on the kitchen wall. Yet since she’s come back I have not worked on her. And our life has been friendly.

In our last reconciliation I did something that I thought did not take. I wish I knew how education works. I wish I knew the secret workings in the soul of education. It has nothing to do with time as we measure it. Small secret chemical switches are thrown in the dark. Tiny courses are hung through the electric passages of the tissues. Silken sequences of atoms which have no property other than self-knowledge.