by Chaim Potok
The school day was divided in half: Hebrew and religious studies in the morning, English and secular studies in the afternoon. I was in my regular fourth-grade class in the afternoon; but, because my Hebrew was so poor, I had been placed in the second grade for the morning hours. Ruthie, who was in my afternoon class, and Mr. Helfman, who taught sixth grade, tutored me after school hours in Hebrew. I felt myself floating and gliding and flying through this school, where no one whispered about you as you went through the corridors and no one put his hands on your chest and squeezed and yelled, “Grapes!” and no one called you a Commie Jew shit to your face.
I was busy with my studies, and my mother was busy with her work. She seemed always to be doing something: reading, cleaning, washing, cooking, writing, attending meetings, talking with Mr. Dinn, studying with the two men and the woman who continued coming to our apartment on Sunday afternoons. She went to bed long after I did and woke long before. In all the months of that fall and early winter I do not remember ever seeing her rest during the day.
We would leave the apartment together in the morning and walk to Eastern Parkway and then go our separate ways, she to work and I to school. The mail arrived after we left and I would hurry home from school and use the duplicate mailbox key my mother had given me. But the letters we waited for did not come. Nothing from Jakob Daw. Nothing from Aunt Sarah. Jakob Daw had not written us in weeks. Where was he? And was Aunt Sarah back in Spain?
In December there was a Chanukkah assembly in the school in the same large room where people prayed on Saturdays and holidays. The dividing ninon wall had been removed. A tall plywood wall stood before the ark, separating it from the room. Boys and girls sat together and one of the boys in the eighth grade chanted the blessings and lit the first candle. Another boy delivered a brief talk about the courage of the Maccabees and the miracle of the lights. “The few prevailed against the many,” he said, “because they had faith in the Ribbono Shel Olom.”
During supper that night I asked my mother if we could light Chanukkah candles in our house. She said no, she didn’t believe in it.
“But they’re so pretty, Mama. And they remind me of when Papa was here last year.”
“No,” she said, after a moment. “I have enough trouble on my hands sending you to the yeshiva. All I need is for someone in my section to pass by our window and see Chanukkah candles burning.”
I had not realized that by going to a religious school I was endangering her position in the party.
Yes, she said. There had been a hearing. She had been given the opportunity to offer a lengthy explanation. She had reminded them of the price our family had already paid for the cause. They had listened courteously. There had been a few sarcastic remarks. The hearing had ended with no official action being taken.
I did not ask my mother again. Instead I would walk down to Ruthie’s apartment just before supper and watch Mr. Helfman light the candles. Then I would go upstairs and have supper with my mother.
I knew little of what was happening now in Spain. I no longer read newspapers and only occasionally glanced at a headline. I knew the Fascists were winning the war. I did not want to hear anything more about it.
One evening my mother came back from work carrying a carton filled with house plants. She distributed the plants throughout the apartment, placing them on windowsills and tables where they could catch the sunlight. “We need some green life in this apartment,” she said. “How did we go all these years without plants in the house? Aren’t they pretty? And inexpensive. Would you like one for your room, Ilana?”
She attended rallies in Manhattan and party meetings in Brooklyn. On occasion groups of people would come to our apartment, quiet, serious men and women about my mother’s age, and they would sit for hours in the living room and have long discussions and listen to her lectures. There was no drinking at those meetings, no rowdiness. How the door harp played to the comings and goings of those people on those nights!
I asked my mother who the people were.
They were writers and artists and theater people, she said.
“Don’t they sing?”
“I promised Mrs. Helfman there would be no singing or drinking.”
“I miss the singing.”
“So do I,” she said. “There are many things I miss now, Ilana. What can we do?”
One night after a long meeting of that group I woke and came out of my room and went along the hallway. The apartment was dark, the air rancid with tobacco smoke. I wanted a glass of water and started into the kitchen, when I noticed that the door to my mother’s room was slightly ajar. Light streaming out of her room cut a sharp wedge into the hallway darkness. I moved toward the door and put my hand on the knob. Then I stopped and remained very still, peering into the room through the narrow opening of the door.
My mother stood naked before the full-length mirror that was attached to the door of her closet. I had never seen her entirely naked before. The mirror magnified the ceiling light and sent it cascading upon her as she turned her body slowly this way and that, keeping her eyes fixed upon her reflection. I saw the lovely smooth white nakedness of her, saw her slender arms and curving shoulders and the flat planes of her shoulder blades and the curving indentation of her spinal column and the deep cleavage between the rounded buttocks. I glimpsed from the side the round firm fleshiness of her left breast and, in the long mirror, saw all the golden fullness of her body, breasts and nipples and belly and the clump of triangular darkness that sent a shiver through me. She was fondling her breasts, stroking the nipples with the palms of her hands, slowly, an expression of rapt concentration on her pale and lovely face, her eyes nearly shut, her mouth open and her tongue pressing tightly upon her upper lip; then rubbing the nipples, gently, with her index fingers and thumbs, gently and slowly, rubbing. The nipples were dark and hard, her body rigid, her back slightly arched. She stood there in front of the mirror, rocking slowly back and forth. Then, slightly parting her legs, she raised herself on tiptoe. “Michael,” I heard her say, in a long drawn-out whisper and in a voice I barely recognized. “Michael …”
I took a silent step back and then another and was in the dark hallway. I turned slowly and put my hand on the wall and went carefully back to my room. I lay on my bed in the darkness and kept seeing my mother naked before the mirror in her room. I knew that image would always remain with me, deep inside me, and return to my eyes at odd and unexpected times; like the image of the gang leader offering protection to a little girl with a penny in her hand; like the image of the boy with the cigarette asking, You Jewish?; like my father’s face when he threw back his head and laughed; like the veiled look in my mother’s eyes when she drifted into the past; like Jakob Daw bent over his desk, writing; like the sadness in the dark eyes of the little girl named Teresa; like the dunes and the beach and the sand castles of Sea Gate; like the birds that called hoo hoo hoo hoo; like Aunt Sarah on her knees in our spare room; like the candles of Chanukkah in the Helfman apartment; like the black bird and the gray horse and Baba Yaga. Images of a childhood. My mother naked. Would my body look like that one day? Ripe and round and lovely, the boniness and angularity smooth and soft, and the forest of darkness between my legs?
I barely slept that night and in the morning could not look directly into my mother’s eyes when she spoke to me. “Are you feeling all right?” she asked. I nodded. I kept imagining her naked body beneath her dress. In school I fell asleep in class and was gently wakened by my teacher, who put his hand on my forehead and wanted to know if I felt ill.
The weather turned cruel. Frozen snow lay crystal white upon the trees and grimy upon the sidewalks and streets. Cars moved cautiously across the ice, chains rattling. I began to wake in the night to the creaks and groans of the ice-laden trees that lined our street: eerie sounds that came through my window and seemed to inhabit the shadows in my room.
One Saturday afternoon in January my mother and I walked to Prospect Park. It was a cold blue wind
less day. The lake was frozen. Skaters glided across its smooth white surface. I stood at its edge with my mother and imagined myself stepping out of the rowboat into the water. Why had I done that? I could not imagine ever feeling bad enough to want to do that. And what if I had drowned? What if I had not been found? How deep was the lake? Would I now be somewhere in its depths, frozen to ice?
Walking with me along the frozen paths beneath the bare trees, my mother said the lake reminded her of the river where she had lived as a child. In the winters they had to break the ice to keep a channel open for the barges and ferries. She had learned to ice-skate on that river. But she had not ice-skated for a long time and probably could no longer do it.
I asked her where she had gone to school.
“In Vienna.”
“No, before Vienna.”
“In a little Jewish school near where I was born. It was run by a cruel old teacher who didn’t like teaching girls. He taught us to read the prayerbook.”
“Did your father study with you?”
“My father didn’t do anything with me. My grandfather taught me Bible and Mishnah and a little Gemora, and my mother taught me Polish and German.”
“Would your father be angry if he was alive and knew I was going to a yeshiva?”
“I don’t know how my father would feel about that,” my mother said. “I don’t know very much about my father. He was almost never home. Probably he would be angry. Yes, I think he would be very angry. He didn’t believe girls should be educated.”
“Was your mother very lonely because your father wasn’t home?”
“Yes. So was I. My mother once told me that terrible mistakes are sometimes made in the name of loneliness. If not for my grandfather—” She broke off, suddenly lost in some memory.
“I wish your grandfather was still alive.”
“So do I,” my mother said. “But he’s not. Shall we start back? I’m beginning to feel cold.”
On Eastern Parkway, a block from our street, we met David and his father. They had been visiting a friend and were on their way to the synagogue for the afternoon and evening services. I walked with David. My mother and Mr. Dinn walked on ahead.
“It’s really cold,” David said. “Aren’t you cold?” His face was red and he spoke through stiffened lips. “I hate this weather.”
“David, did you study the Mishnah Brochos?”
“Sure.”
“There’s something we learned in class this week that I don’t understand.”
“What?”
We walked carefully on the icy streets beneath the black frozen trees, talking. Long shadows of buildings and trees lay upon the parkway. I listened to David, watched the dancing of his hands as he talked about words and ideas, listened to the high eagerness in his voice, saw the dark fires in his eyes. He was a little taller than I, and very thin. I wondered if he and his father had a housekeeper who cared for them. How did they live?
We continued along the street behind my mother and his father, talking about some problems I was having with Hebrew. After a while I began to invent problems; I liked watching him talk.
My mother took me to a neighborhood movie theater that evening and we saw a detective story and a love story. The love story seemed very long. More and more my mother went to such movies, either with me or alone. I liked the detective story and thought the love story boring. No one I knew talked so ponderously or breathed so heavily as the actors in those love stories.
Sometimes we took the subway into Manhattan to see a Russian movie, but my mother seemed increasingly uneasy about traveling to Manhattan. Manhattan reminded her too much of my father; certain streets caused searing pain. She would travel on party business to rallies and meetings; but that was all. By the middle of that winter, less than ten months after my father’s death, we were no longer going together to Manhattan.
Yet she seemed tenaciously loyal to my father’s memory. Often in the evenings I would see her at the desk in her room carefully going through the carton of my father’s special writing: magazine articles, newspapers, journals, typescripts. My father had become a hero of sorts to a certain segment of the political world and, at the invitation of a small New York publisher, my mother was preparing a book-length collection of his serious work. And she was, at the same time, translating into English one of the stories Jakob Daw had written during the time he had lived with us. He had left those stories with my mother.
One cold Saturday night in February we saw a movie in which a young woman was attacked and badly hurt by two men. Nothing of the brutality was shown; the gaps were left to the imagination. Afterward my mother came out of the theater and hurried away as if I were not there. I had to run to keep up with her.
Later in our warm kitchen she said to me, as I sat over milk and cookies, “I had no idea it was such a movie. I’m sorry, Ilana.”
“I liked it, Mama.”
“Didn’t it frighten you?”
“Yes. But it was a good story.”
“They show movies like that to make money,” she said. “They are capitalist exploiters of the working class. They should tell people in advance if such things are in a movie. Please finish your milk, Ilana, and go to sleep. It’s late.”
She sat staring into her cup of coffee, a dark brooding in her eyes.
Very late that night, as I lay on the edge of sleep, she came into my room and stood near my bed. She placed the palm of her hand on my cheek. I felt her caressing me, her fingers smooth and hot. Then she bent to kiss me. Her face was wet. I heard the beating of my heart and was certain she heard it too. After a moment she straightened and went silently from the room.
On occasion Mr. Dinn would come to visit, always at night and always remaining after I went to bed. From my room I could hear them talking in the kitchen. He never ate or drank anything in our house, save a glass of water or soda, because we did not observe the laws of kashruth. I didn’t like that: it was strange having a guest in your house who refused to eat or drink there.
Once I heard him raise his voice and say clearly, “For God’s sake, Channah, open your eyes and look at what he’s doing. Those trials aren’t a travesty? The country is drenched in blood. Their constitution is a mockery and their laws are a joke. The man is a murderous barbarian!”
And I heard too my mother’s querulous reply. “He is transforming a backward country overnight, Ezra. I trust him. Whom do you want me to trust? DuPont? General Motors? John D. Rockefeller? You know how they treat their workers. You know how they are all tied to I. G. Farben and the Fascists. Talk about barbarians! The capitalist is the true barbarian, but in a fancy suit!”
“Why do you judge socialism by its dreams and capitalism by its deeds? Is that fair, Channah? Is it logical?”
“Ezra, I judge both by their deeds. Fascism is the dictatorship of finance capitalism. If I must choose between the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and the dictatorship of the proletariat, I will choose for the proletariat.”
One night in the kitchen Mr. Dinn helped me with my Hebrew homework and seemed surprised at how quickly I was learning the language. “My mother was like that,” he said.
“So was mine,” said my mother.
“Did your father also never stay at home?” I asked.
He gave my mother a quick glance and looked back at me. “My father was home.”
“What did your father do?”
“He owned a clothing factory.”
“Is he alive?”
“No. He died when I was nineteen.”
“You had ten more years of your father than I did.” The two of them glanced at each other and said nothing. “Did you hate your father for dying?”
He looked surprised. “No. I was angry. But I didn’t hate him.”
“Sometimes I think I hate my father.”
“Ilana,” my mother said softly.
“He didn’t have to try to save that nun. He didn’t even believe in religion. Why did he try to save that nun?”
“He shouldn’t have,” I said.
They looked at me and were quiet.
“I’m tired,” I said, after a moment. “I think I’ll go to bed now.”
I felt them looking at me as I collected my books and went from the kitchen.
Ruthie told me the next evening that she was having trouble with the composition our class had been assigned to write. I helped her with it; she helped me with my Hebrew homework. She was a serious but poor student and seemed to have difficulty remembering things.
“I wish I had your memory,” she said. “You remember everything.”
“Sometimes that’s not so good, Ruthie.”
“How far back can you remember? Can you remember to the age of five or six?”
“I remember when I was three my parents came home from a demonstration. They were all bloody. Policemen on horses hit them with sticks. My mother kept screaming about Cossacks. I remember that.”
“You remember to the age of three?”
“I wish I could forget that. I wish I could forget all the different times we moved until we moved here. Have you lived here all your life?”
“Yes.”
“You’re lucky. This is a nice house. It looks a little like a castle.”
“It does?”
“And you have a backyard with grass and flowers and a porch, and there’s even a park and a museum nearby.”
“My father won’t let me go to the museum. He says it has pictures that aren’t decent. Mr. Dinn likes our house. He once wanted to live upstairs where you live now, but his wife liked the other apartment better, so they didn’t move. You know, Mr. Dinn and your mother knew each other before they were married. I heard Mama tell Papa they once were in love, but he wouldn’t marry your mother because she didn’t believe in religion and was a Communist. Why did your mother become a Communist?”