Our grandmother’s name is Yetta. She never says anything in English because English isn’t easy for her. She speaks Yiddish and Russian, and my mother translates for us kids. When Yetta doesn’t want any of us to understand what she’s saying, she speaks Polish to my grandfather.
After I finish my Shirley Temple I watch Moses and David play another game. Moses bites his lip and concentrates hard on David’s shots.
One of these days, when he can lift the stick high enough to practice, I bet he’s gonna wipe David’s butt. David hardly talks to anyone, and when he does it’s like he’s sure no one cares what he says because he repeats himself or speaks nonsense. He’s nine now, and he’s got hyperaction.
I know he’s the one who broke the crystal plate the other day. Moses would of told when they said we were all gonna be in trouble if someone didn’t tell who did it. David let us all get the horsewhip. He didn’t even care. I wish he’d show he’s mad or do something when Dad hits Mom, but he pretends he can’t hear it.
I pull my glass to the edge of the bar and lower myself off the stool. I stretch up to lift the glass off the edge when one of the Little Corporal’s green doors flies open and bangs against the wall. The noise makes me drop the glass.
“Where the fuck’s the ginger-haired midget?” a huge man with a weather-puckered face yells at me. He stands in the door making fists.
“Ah … I-I think he’s outside t-t-talking with my grandfather.” I try not to wince at the angry roughness of his words.
Sometimes when you don’t act afraid of them they calm down.
He throws me a dirty look. I frown at the broken pieces of glass scattered on the waxed wooden floor. It’s all mixed up with the leftover ice cubes, and it sparkles in the light that floods in from the sidewalk.
You can blame it on the man.
I glance over to the other side of the bar. My brothers have stopped playing. Moses and David stand frozen, pool cues braced against their chests like fishing spears.
“Who’s tending bar?” The man growls and stomps over to me. He’s standing right in front of me now.
Turpentine and poop.
I decide not to tell him the bar is still closed.
Breathe. Say it like Mary Poppins. Breathe.
“I can make a hundred different drinks.”
The man smiles a nasty thin line of lip, and I can see he’s missing teeth between the brown, beany ones he’s got left.
“You wanna be a barmaid? You wanna job? I’m the one who owns this joint now.” He shouts this loud enough for the people passing by on the sidewalk to hear.
My father comes out of his office and shouts back at the man. “Shut up, Pratt. These’re my kids you’re screaming at. If you wanna have a civilized conversation, come back in the office. If you wanna act like an animal, go do it where there aren’t any youngsters around.”
“I don’t give a shit who’s listening. This is my bar now,” the man, Pratt, shouts back.
“You’re an asshole. I can pay you what I owe. I’m not giving you the bar.”
I step behind the bar and duck. Then I peek over the edge where the sink and the silver mixing glasses are.
“What? Who do you think you’re dealing with? I’m not some pansy you can two-bit hustle. I won last night. You owe me, you fucking bastard, and if you don’t pay up I’ll fucking …” He stops when the door to the office swings open.
Both men stop shouting and scowl over at my grandfather, who ignores them and marches over to where my brothers are. He drags them back into the office. He’s looking around, but can’t see me peeking over the edge of the bar, and I’m afraid to run out.
“You’ll fucking what? Don’t be an asshole, Pratt. I’ll pay you what I owe, but I’m keeping the bar.”
My grandfather closes the door to the office with my brothers inside. He doesn’t know I’m out here. He must think I’m outside playing. My hands start to shake so bad I make the glasses on the bar counter rattle. I duck down so they don’t see me, but I can’t help peeking my head over the edge again. I want to see what’s going to happen next.
“I don’t want your money. I want the bar. You shouldn’t have put it up if you didn’t have the 50K. You’re gonna give me the keys or I’m gonna blow your fucking head off.”
I watch as he reaches into his coat, pulls out a gun, and aims at my father.
“Put that fucking thing away.” My father takes a few steps away and puts his hands out in front of him. Like his hands could stop bullets.
Holding my breath, my body goes numb and my stomach goes hollow.
I don’t know why, but I start to sing: “Raindrops on roses and whiskers on …”
Two things happen.
One: both men stop shouting and turn to see me behind the bar. Two: the gun goes off.
I think it must’ve scared the man when I started to sing because he swung the gun away from my father’s head and toward me, then pulled the trigger.
The bullet hits the mirror behind the bar, followed by a thousand crashes of glass. The next second my neck is stinging like someone stabbed me. I put my hand up to touch it. Something warm and sticky is oozing on my skin and down across my chest. I glance down. My blouse, which is powder blue, turns a deep, magenta-purple.
My father stands in front of me. “Oh Christ! You shot my kid! You shot her! Somebody call an ambulance!”
The man, Pratt, is standing next to him.
“Oh Fuck No! Oh Sweet Jesus!” he repeats over and over.
I can barely hear them. I see their mouths moving, but the sound is muffled like they’ve got pillows over their mouths or something. Everything around their heads looks swimmy and my eyes narrow down to just them. Like a camera’s eye, only all blurry like on Star Trek when they use the transporter.
I’m feeling awfully dizzy.
The only thing I see is the wooden woman. I’m lying on the floor behind the bar right under her. She turns her head and stares right at me and says,
Think of me as an angel. Everything will be all right. You are loved and I’ll always be with you.
I wake up in an ambulance, my father lying on a bench on the other side of the truck.
“Is—is my father dead?” I ask the ambulance guy, who sits on my bench and wraps up my arm where he stuck a needle in. “Did he get shot too?”
The ambulance guy smiles down at me. “Nobody got shot, hon. Your dad passed out is all. I guess he don’t like the sight of blood much.”
“I didn’t get shot?”
“Nope. You got a piece of glass cuttin’ your neck, though. We’re taking you in so’s the doc can take a peek at you.”
“Am I gonna die?”
“Nope. A few stitches is what you’ll need. You’re gonna be fine.”
I wonder how long my father will be asleep and if he’ll be mad at me when he wakes up.
The ambulance guy sticks a plastic cup on my face and tells me it will help me breathe easier. It smells like new Barbies.
“Did you clean her up?” my father asks from his bench across from me.
I look over at him. He has his head turned away from me.
“Hi Dad.”
“Is she wrapped up?”
The ambulance guy winks at me and says, “We have a bandage on her wound, Mr. Finn. How’s your dizzy?”
My father turns his head to me. He smiles. I figure he’s not mad at me.
“It wasn’t a bullet, Dad. Just glass.”
He smiles a weak smile at me, frowns at my neck and down at my arm where the needle is. He makes a long sigh, “Oooooohhhhh.”
“You doin’ all right, Mr. Finn? Don’t you be passin’ out on us again.”
“I don’t think I’m gonna pass out. I think I’m gonna be sick.”
“Here you go.” The ambulance guy hands him a plastic bowl. He holds it on his stomach until we get to the hospital.
At the hospital they take me to a chilly room and give me stitches, which hurt a lot. They put a big bandage
on my neck. They wrap up the piece of glass that got stuck in my neck in a wad of gauze and give it to me as a souvenir.
While the doctor stitches me up my father sits in a chair across the room. He won’t look at the stitches ’cause they make him sick to his stomach. When the doctor asks me what happened, my father tells him that someone threw a rock at the mirror behind the bar and that’s how it got broken and hurt me. I guess he doesn’t want to tell the truth about the gun.
The nurse asks if I’m hungry and brings me a bowl of Sugar Pops, which is neat because we never get good cereal at our house. My mother only lets us eat Wheaties. She says the other stuff rots your teeth.
“Okay, time to go home,” my father says as the doctor leaves, pushing through the double doors of my hospital room. He seems better and doesn’t look the same sick greenish color he looked in the ambulance.
“Can you bring her another blouse?” he asks the nurse.
I try to wolf down the Sugar Pops.
She gives him a glare and says, “I’m sorry, we don’t store clothing here. If you like we can send her home in a gown?”
“Whatever.”
The nurse grabs a peach-colored thingy. Way big for me. She pins and ties it so I can walk around in it. She gives me my bloody blouse in a paper bag that says Children’s Hospital. I didn’t know they took me to a hospital just for children. No wonder they had the Sugar Pops.
When I jump in the car my father tells me I shouldn’t have been hiding behind the bar and it serves me right I got cut. I’m mad he doesn’t see he could’ve gotten killed from a gun. I probably saved his life better than Mighty Mouse.
“Are you gonna lose the bar?” I ask.
“None of your business. It’s not polite to eavesdrop on other people’s conversations.”
“You were swearing. Everybody could hear you,” I say, not meaning to be sassy.
He raises his fist and I flinch over against the door.
“Do you need a smack? Because I’d be happy to smack you if you do. This ER visit is gonna cost us. You better hope your grandfather will pay for it.”
My father looks at me with the dead eyes. Sometimes his eyes go dead like the cat we found in the shed, and I know I better not say anything else or I’ll get a beating.
I don’t say one word the whole way back.
I remember the wooden woman at the bar and how she spoke to me and how it made me real peaceful inside.
But I worry. If someone else ran the bar they might take the woman away. Where would she end up if they did? Would she still be able to protect me?
Three
Jules, 6 years | Late August, 1967
THE HOUSE AT 18 ALETHEA ROAD
“I’VE BEEN TALKING with a developer and he says we can earn a fortune for the land. His company is planning more building in this neighborhood. We could sell the land around the house to pay it off.”
I hear my father say this to my grandfather in his oily voice. He always uses this voice when he talks to my grandfather and the neighbors.
My father and I got back from the hospital about an hour ago and I got sent up to my room. I’m supposed to be resting, but I’m not tired. I’m sitting on my floor by the heat register, painting watercolors with the new Paint Rite set I got for my birthday. I’m listening to my father and my grandfather downstairs in the den. The den is filled with turquoise Naugahyde furniture. My father always takes people there to talk private. I can eavesdrop ’cause the sound comes up real clear through the holes in my radiator.
My grandfather’s upset because of the stitches and stuff that happened at the bar and because my mother’s not here and my father won’t say where she is. She’s probably at her friend Natasha’s place. My father doesn’t like Natasha. He says she’s a bad influencer and calls her a bitch. My mother smokes smelly herb cigarettes when she hangs out at Natasha’s. I like to go there because I like to play the drum set in the garage and my brothers don’t know about it yet.
“You should count your blessings the kind will heal from this. Almost killed by a crazy man with a gun. Still you want to ask me for more money. This home is my wedding gift.”
“If it’s a gift why don’t you transfer the title to us? It should be ours to do whatever we want with.”
“This way it never becomes lost in maybe a poker game.”
My father doesn’t say anything, but I’m thinking he’s real mad. He doesn’t like it when he doesn’t get his way. I imagine my grandfather sitting in the den. He probably thinks it looks silly because my father lets the people who come to visit him write their names on the walls with black magic markers, even though we’re not allowed. Plus there’s a moose head stuck over the TV and he put a pair of sunglasses on its eyes so it looks like Miles Davis. That’s my father’s favorite singer.
“We could make more money on the land than you paid for the entire house. It’s a temporary situation though. This man could change his mind about where he wants to build and pay someone else if we wait too long,” my father finally says.
“Yes. There’s always a time limit with these golden opportunities. I give you the money to start businesses before this. The ad business, the fish and chips store. All have failed. After you purchased the bar, you told me you needed more money to expand. But, I see no expansion. The one thing that has expanded, as far as I can tell, is your wallet for brief times. I saw the beyz man who came into your bar to collect his money. I don’t know what kind of trouble you found, but this kind of trouble doesn’t go away when you throw money at it. Maybe you should call police.”
“I’m not going to call the police. You don’t understand, old man. The police can’t do anything. I borrowed money and I have to pay it back.”
“You borrowed? You lost bets? Which is? Borrow or lose? Never mind with the answer. You receive no more money.”
My father says, “They might try to hurt Wendy or the kids. To teach me a lesson. You don’t want anything bad to happen to them, do you?”
“Now you threaten with the kinder?. I know you’re mixed up in meshugener business. Money buys everything but good sense, my brother Oizer says. He warned me not to give more money to you, but I wanted you to succeed for the kinder’s sake, for Wendy’s sake. I thought you would make a good husband. Now I see you’re a criminal. You’re going to drag my daughter and the kinder into it. Maybe it’s good they kill you.”
I suck my breath in. I’ve never heard my grandfather talk like that to anyone. My father gets mad when anyone talks back to him, and I worry he might try to hit my grandfather.
“Why don’t you ask your family? Maybe your sister will help this time?”
“Listen. I can’t ask my sister. She’s got too many expenses. My family doesn’t have the money, or I’d ask them.”
“Maybe you ask too many times to them? Maybe they decide like I do. Enough is enough.”
My father doesn’t answer. I can hear him moving the big bottles on the bar, opening the small refrigerator in the den, then the tinkle of ice cubes in a glass.
“Chivas?” he asks my grandfather.
“No. No thank you.”
The only thing I’ve ever seen my grandfather drink is the berry-colored wine at holidays, the man-of-chivas wine my mother hates.
“You have no money for paying your debts, but I see you still have money for alcohol and expensive furniture and televisions.”
My grandfather sounds really angry now. His voice shakes and he’s shouting.
“All the money. All the money I give to you. You waste on these things instead of making a good future for Wendy, for the kinder—your family. Wasteful things. All bought with my money. Never again.”
“Calm down, old man. Sit down.”
“I won’t sit in this home; I won’t talk with you again until you pay me back. Every cent of what you waste. Pay me back and pay your shyster friends back. I want nothing to do you with you. I am wrong to try to help you. I see now this vas not good, not best for Wendy or for you.
This vas a mistake in the beginning. I will transfer the deed into Wendy’s name. She can decide what to do with the home and the land. I’ll not be involved in your business any longer. You are children when you started together, but you are adults now. No more money from me. Find your own money.”
I hear my grandfather’s steps already climbing the den stairs.
I’m afraid he’s going to leave without coming upstairs to see me. I run out of my room and down the long hallway to the landing on the living room stairwell to try and catch him.
He’s not coming to the front door. I run the rest of the way down the stairs to the living room. I can see him standing in the kitchen. He’s staring around the room at everything.
“Hi Grandpa.”
“Hello, Chavalah.”
My grandfather calls me by my Hebrew name.
“Are you going now, Grandpa?”
“Yes, Chavalah, I’m going home now. Is your neck feeling better?”
“Yes.”
My grandfather looks around the kitchen again and says, “You know, when I am a young boy we had a home that had two stories. Our entire home vas as big as this kitchen on the bottom and half this size on the top.”
“Like in Little Women? Wow. That’s a tiny house.”
“It didn’t seem tiny to me.” He smiles.
We walk out to the living room and he walks over to the two big pictures of my great-grandparents that hang on the wall. They don’t smile in the pictures, and whenever I notice it I want to behave better because it seems like they might be happier if I do.
“Grandpa, how come they’re not smiling? Are they mad?”
“Oy, oy,” my grandfather says and shakes his head. He does this all the time when he’s playing with us. “They should be.”
He starts to laugh. I’m glad he’s laughing now.
The Belief in Angels Page 2