About the B'nai Bagels

by E. L. Konigsburg

  Although Mother didn’t like to have both hostessing and baseball on her mind at the same time, she put out a nice meal. Pot roast and cheese cake. Mother is great with cheese cake; she tops it with strawberries.

  Aunt Thelma was dieting; dieting is part of Aunt Thelma’s character. Dieters annoy Mother. When she was pot roasting and cheese caking, she expected everyone to eat a lot. Because of the braces I let her down, too.

  Mother commented as she was clearing up, “I’m putting away more than I put out.” She always said that when we had company.

  Aunt Thelma and I made an effort to help Mother clean up, but when Mother is aggravated, she is very difficult to help. Like when I asked, “Where should I put the leftover roast?” Mother didn’t answer. She sighed, wiped her hands on her apron, and took it from me. Looking straight at me, she wrapped it in aluminum foil, and then with movements like a ballet dancer, put it in the refrigerator. As she closed the refrig, she said, “I started keeping leftover roast in a refrigerator five minutes after it got invented.” Aunt Thelma never looked comfortable in a kitchen; she perspired. And I wasn’t comfortable; my whole face felt on the verge of pain except when I chewed, and then it felt in actual pain.

  By the time we arrived at the practice field, Mother was exhausted, and Spencer was irritated. Dad had decided to stay home and read; he always went on a reading jag after tax season. Uncle Ben chose to keep him company. As soon as we got there, Aunt Thelma ran out onto the field full of dignified enthusiasm until her heels sank into the ground and she began tilting backwards. After that she sat on the bench and observed.

  The team arrived in dribs and drabs after we did. They came in carloads driven by mothers who were all dressed like Aunt Thelma in stretch pants and ski jackets with their hair all pasted together. The trouble with the way Aunt Thelma looked was that when she walked, nothing moved but her legs. When Mother walks, it’s like she carries a private breeze with her, and that’s much nicer.

  Mother herded all the kids into the dugout and began by introducing herself and Spencer. “My name is Mrs. Setzer. Here is Spencer who is your coach.” There was dead silence. Mother smiled and cleared her throat. “I’m your manager.”

  There followed one loud snort from the left end of the dugout. Mother ignored it and continued, “I think we can be a winning team if you listen to me and to Spencer and work hard and train hard.” The snort was louder and longer this time. Mother ignored it again. “After this we’ll practice every Tuesday afternoon and Friday before sundown unless there is rain.” Again the snort. Everyone began to laugh. Mother cocked her ear this time and listened. “Would you please repeat that?” she requested. Her head remained tilted, but she kept her eyes from the left side of the dugout. There followed a double snort. Everyone laughed again. Louder. “Does someone here have trouble with adenoids?” she asked. Spencer was getting nervous; he began picking imaginary lint off his pants, a sure sign that he was nervous.

  Hal Burser pointed to Botts and said, “Botts wants to know why we have to have a lady manager. Like why can’t we have a man?”

  “If Botts wants to know, let Botts ask,” Mother said.

  Botts asked. “Why do we have to have a lady manager?” His voice kind of trailed off at the end of the question.

  Mother said, “The question has been asked and seconded, ‘Why do we have to have a lady manager?’ There is only one possible explanation.” She paused, took a deep breath, and with her hands straight down at her sides, said, “The reason why you have a lady manager is because chlorophyll is a catalyst that enables a plant to use the energy of the sun to convert carbon dioxide and water into sugar and oxygen.”

  Long, long pause. No snorts. Nothing. We all waited, but Mother said nothing more. She just folded her arms across her chest and tapped her foot and smiled at the whole dugout, her audience. We were all puzzled.

  Finally, Hersch said, “But, Mrs. Setzer, that about chlorophyll is just a fact of life.”

  Mother didn’t give his sentence a chance to cool off before she pressed in hers. “And so is your having a lady manager! It’s just a fact of life, and you have to face it. You have to face facts.” Then she took her arms from her chest and raised them outward. She shrugged her shoulders and smiled at the boys. “Now that we have that over with, can we play ball?”

  Spencer laughed first. I was second. We gave everyone the cue that it was all right to laugh, and they did. When the laughter died down, naturally died down, I started it again by making out that I had an uncontrollable urge that I tried to stifle behind my hand. Finally, the second laughter died, too. It wasn’t as long or as hard as the first. I wasn’t tempted to start it again because I caught a certain look from Spencer.

  Sidney Polsky raised his hand and said, “Mrs. Setzer, would you mind repeating that so that I can tell my mother?”

  Mother responded, “All right, you guys, now when someone, anyone, asks you why you have a lady manager, you tell them. Now repeat after me: The reason why you have a lady manager is because chlorophyll is a catalyst.…”

  And we all repeated after Mother; that was our first lesson in baseball that season. As the kids left the dugout for the playing field, they chanted it to themselves. After the last of the team was on the field I saw Mother look up to where the light fixture should have been but there was only sky, and I heard her mutter, “That was a good idea about the chlorophyll. Left over from the herb garden, but good.” She kissed the tips of one set of fingers and then the other and held them upward for the breeze to send those kisses to the Deity who had moved with her to the ball park.

  After those introductions, we began calisthenics; every time I leaned down to touch my toes, I felt rivers of pain leap up in my head. And when we ran around the bases to loosen up, the vibrations set my whole head to quaking each time I put my foot down. After doing awful two times at bat, I retired. Spencer was pitching batting practice, and he could have fed them to me a bit softer. He being my brother and all. Besides, he knew about the braces. As I walked to the bench, I said to myself, “Think of Sandy Koufax.” And then I answered myself, “Sandy Koufax had a much more dramatic ailment than just crooked teeth. Great pains make great heroes, but toothaches just make lousy batting averages.” So I sat out and watched.

  The twins were terrific. They were like two pros among us. Simon and Sylvester looked as if they were looking in a mirror when they faced each other. Completely identical except that one was right-handed and the other was a lefty. They parted their hair on opposite sides, too. There’s a word for twins like that; they’re called mirror-image twins. They were both great at pitching as well as batting. But if you’re looking at narrow differences, the lefty was a little bit better. A tiny bit. Not enough to hurt the other’s feelings. Both of them were good-natured and kind to the other kids.

  Barry Jacobs was also good at batting, but he wasn’t so kind to other kids. I guess it’s easier to be kind when you’re as superior as Simon and Sylvester than when you’re just working-at-it good like Barry. Simon and Sylvester giving out smiles and helpful hints to the others was like a gift from the Ford Foundation; there was still lots there, and they didn’t do it for profit.

  Aunt Thelma helped measure the boys for uniforms, and I helped give them out. Sidney cried when he found out that he wouldn’t have his baseball pants right away. His mother mentioned to Aunt Thelma that he was a little overweight. Actually, Sidney was fat. His pants would have to be ordered. Sidney was wiping the tears from his eyes with his fists the way that infants do, when his mother came swooping down onto the field looking like a jagged streak of yellow lightning in her yellow stretch pants with knees going at forty-five degree angles.

  Mother was standing behind Hersch telling him to choke up a bit more on the bat.

  “Mrs. Setzer,” Mrs. Polsky began.

  Mother waved a hand impatiently. She wanted to finish with Hersch.

  “Mrs. Setzer,” Mrs. Polsky repeated.

  Mother finished wit
h Hersch and then said, “Yes, Mrs. Polsky?”

  “Isn’t there some way Sidney can get into a pair of pants?”

  Mother glanced from Mrs. Polsky to Sidney and then back again. “Sure,” she said, “tell him to lose about ten pounds.” She looked over at Sidney again and added, “Around the hips would be best.”

  Spencer came over and added that he had a new training rule: all the boys were to walk to practice and to the games. They all needed the leg work.

  Mrs. Polsky sputtered, “But my Sidney doesn’t get home until 3:15. By the time he gets a little snack and changes his clothes, how can he have time to walk to practice?”

  Spencer thought a minute and answered, “He can skip his snack and ride his bike.”

  Mother looked at Spencer and said, “That’s a great idea, Spence.”

  Sidney tugged at his mother’s slacks and said, “Can I, Mom? Can I?”

  Mrs. Polsky answered, “I’ll have to think about it, son.”

  Aunt Thelma chimed in, “I think, Mrs. Polsky, that it would be a very good experience for Sidney to ride his bike to the games.”

  Mother said, “What’s this about a good experience? It’s a training rule; Spencer just said so.”

  Sidney kept asking, “Can I? Can I?” and Mrs. Polsky kept saying, “We’ll see. We’ll see.” She glared at Mother quite a lot.

  After calisthenics and measuring for uniforms, we had a practice game. It was hardly that, though. Sidney was in right field, and the only time that a ball came his way was when Sylvester hit one. Sidney was scratching at the time, and Sylvester ran all the bases. Other things like that happened, too. For example, Barry hit a low grounder on which he easily made it to second because the ball kept rolling out of the first baseman’s hand. I happened to be playing first base at the time. When I finally got enough hand on the ball, Barry had just rounded second. I threw it to Louis LaRosa on third. He caught it surprisingly enough—the first, firm catch of the afternoon. But when he caught it, he was so pleased with himself that he stepped off base to look around and see if his mother was watching (she was), and he neglected to tag Barry out. Barry made it to home even before the throw.

  Spencer continued not giving me any special breaks. He kept referring to himself as let’s and to me as kid. “Let’s beef up that swing, kid.” “Let’s run as if it counts, kid.” “Let’s get that bat off your shoulder, kid.”

  Mother said, “That’s all for today, boys.” As they were leaving the field, she addressed You-Know-Who and said, “For all of Egypt You sent down ten plagues. For me, Bessie Setzer, you send just one. Frogs. A whole field of leap frogs. I tell You, Lord, one is enough.” I could see Mother calculating that she had one month of hard work to whip our team into shape. Only Mother wouldn’t whip; she’d nag, and rage and coax.

  Spencer threw all the equipment into the back seat and sat in front next to Mother. That would have left Aunt Thelma and me as roommates in the back seat. Except that Aunt Thelma never took a back seat to anyone, and she crowded up front with Mother and Spence.

  I leaned over the front seat and asked my brother, my coach, “How did I do?”

  He said, “You act as if you’re afraid of the ball, kid.”

  We had all of six players out of fifteen who didn’t act afraid of the ball. Maybe I was afraid because I was conscious of the fact that if the ball hit anywhere near my mouth, I’d be swallowing about $950.00 worth of braces and fillings. I don’t know what reasons the others had.

  I decided not to mention my reasons. Instead I asked, “How do you become unafraid?”

  “Mostly by becoming more sure of yourself,” he answered.

  That’s like telling a poor man he would stop being poor if he had more money! I figured that I didn’t even have to answer Spencer, my brother, my coach, if that was the way he was going to be bighearted about giving me advice.

  As we came back into the house, I realized that my mouth had stopped hurting. “What’s to eat?” I yelled.

  Mother let loose. “What’s to eat? What’s to eat? Now you ask what’s to eat! What’s the matter, your stomach can’t run on Eastern Daylight Savings Time? Right now, putting away all the equipment and washing up. That’s to eat.”

  Aunt Thelma left for home even before our car was emptied. She almost forgot Uncle Ben.

  We had leftover pot roast. I shouldn’t have asked.

  Being nonchalant and getting your braces tightened don’t make you terrific on the field. You have to practice in between regular times. So the Saturday after our first two team practices I skipped Sabbath services at the synagogue. It was an easy caper, men. I dressed as usual in my good clothes befitting the Sabbath. I left the house, hair parted and combed. On the way out of my residence, I deposited my prayer book and prayer cap in the mailbox, and at the same time I removed my mitt and sneakers from the mailbox. I had wisely deposited mitt and sneakers in the mailbox the night before. Calculating that Sabbath services are normally over at 11:00, I thought that I could return to my house by 11:15, a safe half hour before the mail would be delivered.

  As soon as I left the house, I began walking in the direction of my family’s house of worship, known as the synagogue, but I circled back and walked toward Water Street downtown. I successfully avoided detection and arrived at three large brick buildings erected by the U.S. Government.

  Five years ago when they were being built, a huge sign in front of the buildings had said that they were LOW INCOME HOUSING. And that’s what they had been called before anyone moved into them. Now everyone called them the projects. Two of the buildings faced each other but not the street, and the tallest faced the street but not the other two. All were set well back from the sidewalk, and all the land in front of and around them was done to in one way or another. Patches of grass and walks and a small playground with swings whose seats were low and made of tough leather, which was probably some kind of plastic. Steel mesh wastepaper baskets were chained to trees. There was also a part surrounded by a Cyclone steel fence, which was surrounded by shrubs. That was where the voices came from.

  I walked over. The gate was open. There were four undressed basketball hoops, two at each end, but the shouts were baseball shouts. I knew there would be a baseball game there. Botts and the twins had talked about it at practice the day before, and I had listened in. I hoped they would let me in and that if they did, I could play and be lousy and not have to worry about being lousy. When a guy’s mother manages and his brother coaches, a guy feels that he loses his right to be awful. A guy feels like he’s Exhibit A. Permanent Exhibit A. In Gimbels’ downtown window. I spotted Simon and Sylvester and cautiously waved hi.

  One twin yelled to the other, “Hey, look who’s here.”

  I loosened my tie and waited over by the gate. One twin approached and said, “You can play as soon as we get one more kid to even up the teams. I always make an even number.” He looked me over, and at first said nothing about the way I was dressed, but I could tell that he was thinking it. Finally, he pointed to my sneaks and said, “Why don’t you put those on while you’re waiting.”

  Fortune walked in a few minutes later. Fortune was Simon and Sylvester’s twelve-year-old sister, whom everyone called Cookie. She wore cut-off blue jeans and was small. Small-boned, you’d call it, I guess. It was as if Simon and Sylvester were the originals and Cookie was a model of them—like those miniature statues of Venus or The Thinker that you see in bookstores. Her hair was medium long, and the blunt bottom ends stuck out. Her eyes were as black as but bigger than Simon’s and Sylvester’s. That is, when you could see them. Her hair covered them as well as her ears. When she pushed her hair back, you could see that her ears were rather large and had tiny gold earrings going through small holes in the lobe part. Also her mouth was too big for her face. But she acted as if she was beautiful. She was.

  She walked with one hand on her hip over to one twin and said, “I’ll take your team today.”

  The other one yelled, “O.K., Setz
er, I’ve got you. Take third.”

  No introductions. No directions. I didn’t even know where third was. I casually draped my jacket over the fence, to show that I was not cold and that I was ready. I put on my mitt and looked around. Casually.

  Cookie glanced at me and then pointed to a faint chalk mark on the blacktop. I mounted my base. Fortune swung and missed three times before leaving the plate. That was the third out for that side, and she acted so nonchalant, looking down at her nails and pulling a piece of cuticle. She sighed and walked to first base, hands on hips, one leg slightly in front of the other, pointed elbows in back. In profile she looked like a pointy capital R.

  I was shocked. From the way she had acted and knowing whose sister she was, and considering the fact that she was a girl, and that they still let her play, I had expected her to be great. She wasn’t even good, and they had let her in so easily.

  Simon pitched to me next; I saw the ball would be low, so I let it pass. “Ball one,” I called. No argument. They knew it was a ball. I took the next pitch, swung and missed, but I connected on the third. I looked around to see if everyone was ready to admire me, but they acted about the same as they did when Cookie struck out. And that was the main thing I liked about playing at the Projects; no one performed… everyone just played and tried to win. Sylvester followed me; he took the first pitch and hit the ball close to the fence, but the kid on third who looked at least fourteen years old, having the beginnings of a beard and all, caught it with one hand scraping the fence. It went that way all the time. Their fielding was terrific. Even Fortune was good at that.

  “How come you guys never miss a ball?” I asked.

  “Necessity,” laughed the kid with the beginnings of a beard.

  Sylvester explained. “Windows.”

  They all laughed together. Then the twin continued, “Windows means no hard balls allowed. The super has a fit when he finds us using one, but he don’t find out unless we miss and break a window. So we see to it that he don’t find out. Ever. We don’t miss. Ever.”