The Martin Luther King Mitzvah

by Tekulsky, Mathew;

  Sitting down together on a bench, Honey said, “I like to come out here from time to time. It makes me forget all my worries. You kids have to remember to stay young as long as you can.” Then, after a pause in which we all gazed out at the ocean, she added, “You’ve done your mitzvah, Adam. Now it’s time for you to have some fun. And that goes for you too, Sally. Now you kids leave an old woman alone to think about things.”

  On the way home, I suddenly realized that I knew almost nothing about Honey’s family. I knew that she had a daughter who was a lot older than we were, and I knew that her husband was a traveling salesman, who was away much of the year, but that was about it. To me, she was just Honey, and that was all that mattered.

  The next day in English class, Mr. Roberts assigned The Diary of Anne Frank as our final book for the year. It was the story of a girl our age who lived in Amsterdam during the Second World War; how she hid out with her family in an attic for two years, and was finally discovered by the Nazis and taken away to a concentration camp called Bergen-Belsen where she died.

  When I brought the book home and showed it to my father, he sighed and said, “Those were awful times, Adam. I hope and pray that nothing like that ever happens again.”

  The following day, as we were leaving English class, Mr. Roberts asked me to wait behind.

  “Adam,” he said, when everyone else had left, “I was wondering if your father would be willing to visit the class and talk about what happened to him and the other Jews during the war.”

  When I asked my father that night if he would visit our class, he said he’d think about it. After the article about my bar mitzvah had appeared in the Beachmont Times, my father’s dry cleaning business had really picked up. Maybe it was the mention of my grandfather’s yarmulke from Germany; maybe it was people agreeing with me about the war in Vietnam; or maybe it was because of Martin Luther King. I didn’t know, but for once in his life, my father saw that sticking your head out of a hole wasn’t all that bad.

  The following week, my father visited Mr. Roberts’ English class. Dad was dressed up in a suit and tie—one of the few times I had seen him like this outside of my bar mitzvah and our visits to Beachmont Temple—and as I sat at my desk, it was hard for me to believe that he was my dad. It was as if I were watching him on television or something. Mr. Roberts introduced him and then my father started speaking.

  “I’d like to thank Mr. Roberts for asking me to talk to the class today,” he began, in his thick German accent. “At first, I didn’t want to do it. What does an old German have to say to a bunch of American kids?.”

  A few of my classmates started to chuckle and Mr. Roberts shushed them.

  “You see,” my father went on, “by the time I was your age, I thought of myself as German, just as you now think of yourselves as Americans. Then my country was taken away from me, and I lost my family, and now I am here.

  “You children are the future of this country. I know that us old folks have messed things up pretty badly, but you can help to put it back together again. Just never give up hope and work hard to be all that you can be. Now, my son has been teaching me about this man Martin Luther King, and I think Dr. King has a lot to say to all of us. Who knows, maybe someday there will be a black President of the United States!”

  My father answered a few questions, like Do you have a number on your arm?—“No, I escaped before they put one on me.” And Did you have to wear a patch that said you were Jewish?—“Yes, but my father told me to wear the yellow star with pride.” As my father explained these things, I was a little embarrassed to hear his German accent, but I was also proud of him. There was no fanfare, just an adult talking to the kids in his town. That day, my dad became my hero. I had my camera with me, so I took a photograph of Dad with the whole class and brought it over to Grappa’s to make a print. Mr. Williams published it a few days later in the Beachmont Times.

  Suddenly, my father was a celebrity around town. People would wave at him from their cars, calling out his name, and I basked in his glory. I began to think that maybe you didn’t have to be famous to be a great man; you just had to be real with the people around you. That was the key to it, and I think that is what Martin Luther King was trying to say the whole time. If everybody acted lovingly with their neighbors in their own hometowns, then we really would have a world of brotherhood.

  That Saturday Gladys called me and Sally and asked us to come over to her house. She had something special for us, she said. It was a warm day and Gladys poured each of us a root beer over ice, which we drank on the porch.

  “This is Dr. King’s new book,” she said. Three copies of Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? were stacked on the coffee table. “One for you,” Gladys handed a copy to me and another to Sally. “Read what it says inside.”

  Flipping open the book, I saw a business card paper-clipped to the flyleaf. Compliments of the Author, it read, and underneath that, Harper & Row, Publishers, Incorporated. And an inscription in Martin Luther King’s own hand. To Adam Jacobs, with appreciation for your great support. He signed it, Martin Luther King, Jr. I turned the book to show Sally.

  “He said the same thing to me,” Sally beamed. Gladys showed us his inscription in her book.

  To my dear friend Gladys, for whom I have great respect and admiration and whose consistent support is a great source of inspiration. It was signed the same as ours.

  The front cover of the book depicted civil rights activists carrying American flags, marching from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in 1965. The back cover had a photograph of Martin Luther King in his office, standing at his desk, with a framed photograph of Mahatma Gandhi on the wall behind him. Holding Dr. King’s book in my hands, I thought to myself, This is what I want to do—I want to write books!

  I wondered if I’d ever see Martin Luther King again. We only had a couple of weeks left of school, after which I was going up to Camp Mohawk in the Adirondacks. I would be climbing the High Peaks and listening to Indian stories around the campfire. I wondered what Beachmont would be like when I got back at the end of August, and if Sally would still feel the same way about me. A lot could happen over the course of a summer and, even for a kid, time kept marching forward.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  That week, Aretha Franklin’s “Respect” had knocked “Groovin’” off the top spot on the radio. On Sunday, I walked to Willow Park with my transistor radio held up to my ear. I was listening to WABC, as usual, and Aretha spelling out the word R-E-S-P-E-C-T in her song. I knew the guys would be at the basketball court, so I didn’t worry about bringing my own ball. When I arrived, I saw Jimmy, Arnold, and Barney playing H-O-R-S-E.

  We played two-on-two, until Peter and Billy showed up, and then we played three-on-three with a big kid on each team. The creek behind the court was high, and water rushed onward between the reeds; it did not seem so long ago that it had been frozen, when we had fished Peter Fletcher out of the ice. Ducks flew out over the rushes in the direction of the Sound, their quacks getting fainter as they got smaller in the sky. I wondered what the future held, if I’d ever move away from Beachmont, or if I’d ever want to. After all, everything I wanted was right here—my parents, my friends, Sally, Gladys, Honey, and Grappa. While most kids wanted to grow up really fast, I was thinking that it wouldn’t be too bad to stay a kid for a while.

  It was seventy degrees and the sky was so blue and the air so mild that it was a perfect spring day in Beachmont. I kept glancing toward Sally’s house, hoping she might come out, but there was no sign of her.

  Arnold hollered, “Hey, Jacobs, watch the ball!” and I realized that I had missed his pass. Jimmy had picked up the ball and gotten a layup. “Good going, Jacobs!” Arnold snapped at me.

  “Sorry.” I picked up the basketball and passed it back to Arnold. Bobby Taylor appeared at Willow Park and strolled over, taking up a position on the sidelines, watching us
play. I thought he might start trouble, but when we ended a game and were about to select sides for the next game, he said, “Hey, Jacobs, I read about your father. That’s pretty cool, what he did.”

  I smiled and said, “Yeah, thanks.” To my surprise, Bobby patted me on the back, somewhat tentatively, but it was the gesture that counted.

  “I’d like to play, if you guys don’t mind, and I want Adam on my team,” Bobby said. “I want some Jewish power!” We all laughed.

  I guess Bobby Taylor wasn’t so bad after all. After we had had enough basketball, Jimmy and I went down to our clubhouse to have a smoke and look through his latest Playboy. The May issue had a centerfold holding a yellow kite in the sunshine.

  “Miss June is more stacked,” Jimmy said, “but my father is still reading that issue.” Jimmy always managed to get the Playboys back to his house without his father noticing, which was quite an impressive feat.

  On Monday, Sally and I brought Martin Luther King’s signed books to English class. Mr. Roberts explained that Martin Luther King was now embarking on a war against poverty in America and a struggle for political and economic equality for blacks that went far beyond the battle to end segregation.

  “Do you think white America is ready for real equality for blacks?” Mr. Roberts asked us. “This is the question Martin Luther King is asking today. But in addition to that,” Mr. Roberts continued, “he points out in his book that there are twice as many white people in poverty as there are blacks, so the challenge for society is to provide decent jobs, housing, and education so that all of our people can have a good life. But this will require a sacrifice by the rich in order to provide for the poor. I don’t know if America is ready for that today, or if it ever will be.” The class finished with Mr. Roberts reminding us that our reports on The Diary of Ann Frank were due that Friday.

  After riding my bicycle home from school that day, my father took me to see a baseball game. We drove south until we saw the white facade of Yankee Stadium, parked in a gravel lot, and climbed up to the stadium’s mezzanine level on the first-base side. I saw a sea of green in front of me and could imagine a player hitting a home run. I’d watch the ball go past the pillars into right field, where the ball would disappear and then appear and disappear again until it went into the stands.

  This was the old Yankee Stadium and down in the basement, I knew, you could get the best hot dog in the world; down where the concrete floor was covered with cigars, and the air was thick with smoke. Dad had let me go down there on my own ever since I was seven, when we used to come to see Mantle and Maris hit home runs all day long. And then I saw the Mick himself, playing first base instead of center field, and Al Downing, the first black pitcher for the Yankees.

  Since Dad loved underdogs, he adored Al Downing, and that’s why we were at the game that night. Downing pitched a scoreless game until the top of the ninth, when he let up a run, but in the end, the Yankees beat the Chicago White Sox two to one, so Dad and I were happy. On the drive back, we listened to the radio and I looked out at the city lights that were reflected in the Harlem River.

  “This week, climbing the charts at number thirty-three is a song by Frankie Valli of the Four Seasons,” said Cousin Louie, “and it’s called ‘Can’t Take My Eyes Off You.’ I’m pretty sure we’ll be hearing this one for a long time.” While the song played, I thought about how I couldn’t take my eyes off Sally Fletcher and how I always tried to keep a vision of her in my mind when we were apart. And here was Frankie Valli singing a song about just what I was feeling! When the song was over, an advertisement for Schick Super Stainless Steel razor blades with the Krona Comfort Edge started.

  Dad said, “I like that song,” as we headed back over the Cross Bronx Expressway and back up the New England Thruway to the safety and comfort of our house in Beachmont.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  That Sunday morning, as I was coming down for breakfast, my father shouted, before I even got into the kitchen, “Hey, your friend Martin Luther King is in the paper today!” As I took my seat at the table, my father added, “He’s in The New York Times Magazine,” and he turned the paper toward me so I could see the two-page opening spread with a photograph of Dr. King alongside photographs of three civil rights demonstrations. The title, “Martin Luther King Defines ‘Black Power,’” was printed on the left page of the spread in bold black letters.

  My mother put scrambled eggs and waffles in front of me and said, “Eat up before you get into politics.” But I couldn’t wait to read the article, and grabbed the magazine out of my father’s hands.

  “Guess what he says about the Jews?” my father asked. Then he continued, without giving me a chance to answer, “He says that blacks should educate their kids the way we do, so they can go on to become lawyers and businessmen and doctors. He thinks they should take after us.”

  The article was adapted from Martin Luther King’s new book, which I had already read, but I was eager to read again what Dr. King had to say about black power, which was not a violent message but a call for blacks as employees to be more involved in the union movement; as consumers to support those businesses that gave an equitable number of jobs to blacks; and as voters to organize and make their voices heard in the large cities of the North and throughout the South.

  “Dad,” I said as I ate my breakfast, “do you think a black man will ever be President of the United States?”

  “I doubt it, son,” my father answered, “but if anybody can make it happen, it’s your friend Martin Luther King.”

  My thoughts wandered to the nice weather outside, and the basketball court, and my friends. I couldn’t believe there were only two more weeks left of school and then I’d be off to Camp Mohawk. After breakfast, I picked up my camera and went down to the clubhouse by the creek. There was a mild wind, and the air was light and cool. Crawling into the clubhouse, I turned on my transistor radio. A new song by The Hollies called “Carrie-Anne” was playing on WABC. I watched the sunlight filter through the holes in the reed roof and, as my eyes drifted over to the entrance to the clubhouse, I saw a mallard waddle up to the opening and look over at me. I managed to get a quick photograph before the duck, seeing there was no food to be had, turned on his heels. I followed him as he waddled back to the creek, and I walked along the shore and continued to take photographs as he swam away. At that moment, it dawned on me that the world was so much more than just politics, that there was the natural world where animals needed our protection. Maybe I could take pictures of animals with my camera too? A noise in the rushes announced the arrival of a mother mallard with five ducklings behind her. I snapped a few photographs as they waddled by me and entered the water, just as the male had done a few minutes before. This was a family, just like any other family in this world.

  My thoughts were interrupted by Sally calling my name. She came and stood by my side as together we watched the ducks swim out toward the Sound. I took more photographs as several Canada geese descended in a series of squawks, landing with a splash on the creek.

  In the clubhouse, Sally pulled a yellow flower out of her hair and handed it to me.

  “I’m going to miss you this summer,” she said. Then she kissed me on the cheek.

  “We can write to each other,” I told her as I leaned over and gave her a tender kiss on the mouth. Just then, I heard Jimmy call from outside.

  “Hey, what’s going on in there?” he asked as he crawled through the entrance. Then he noticed Sally and said, “Oh.” He hid his brown paper bag behind his back and sat down, hoping Sally wouldn’t notice. I knew it contained a Playboy, probably Miss June. Jimmy took out a pack of his mother’s cigarettes and we each lit one up. We puffed away without inhaling, as we always did, and the sweet smell of the smoke gave me a feeling of warm intoxication.

  “Hold down the fort this summer, won’t you?” I said to Jimmy. WABC was now playing “Sunday Will Never Be the Same�
�� by Spanky and Our Gang. “Do you think we’ll still know each other when we get to be our parents’ age?”

  “Of course we will,” Jimmy said. “We’ll always know each other. Right, Sally?”

  “Right,” Sally confirmed, and then she put out her cigarette and crawled out of the clubhouse. “I’ve got to get ready for church,” she said, and then she was gone and Jimmy and I were left alone. Jimmy pulled the June Playboy out of his bag and we looked at the Playmate of the Month making a sandcastle on the beach.

  “Are we playing basketball today?” I asked Jimmy.

  “Of course,” he said. “Why wouldn’t we?”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  During the next two weeks, I spent a lot of time riding my bicycle around Beachmont and listening to Cousin Louie on the radio. I took pictures of Sally at Manor Park and we played around on the pig, the toaster, and the whale. There was a new song on the radio about going to San Francisco and putting flowers in your hair; when Sally heard it, she said, “Maybe I’ll go out to San Francisco someday, but I’ve already got flowers in my hair.”

  There was a television show on WABC called Issues and Answers, and on the last Sunday before the end of school, Sally and I went over to Gladys’ house and watched Martin Luther King being interviewed by reporters. He explained the new phase of the civil rights movement, about how the federal government should put billions of dollars into programs to address poverty and get rid of slums. Dr. King said that the whole nation had to take responsibility for the war in Vietnam, not just President Johnson. When the interview was over, Gladys took Sally and me out onto the porch and gave us each a tall glass of lemonade. It was a glorious spring day, with a bright blue sky and a slight breeze blowing through the leaves of the chestnut tree. Gladys said, “I’m going to miss you kids this summer.”