But didn’t Hitler kill a lot of people?
He didn’t kill as many as they said. That Holocaust is overrated.
What’s a hollow cost?
Hitler killed a few Jews. Boo hoo hoo. He also killed a bunch of Lithuanians, Russians, and Poles. Hell, a lot of goddamn Greeks died too, but they’re tough and don’t go around bellyaching about it all the time like the Jews. The Jews, they’re weak people. Look at them. Most of them wear glasses. They wouldn’t even see the enemy until it was too late. You need good eyesight to be able to defend yourself. Like me. I got better than 20/20 and that’s why I’m a goddamn crack shot and nobody’s ever gonna mess with me.
Virginia wears glasses, I said. Does that mean she’s weaker? I didn’t let on that my own eyesight wasn’t so hot lately and that I often found myself squinting at the blackboard in school.
Yeah, Virginia’s weaker than you even though she’s older. She don’t have your moxie.
He took a hit off a cancer stick and then said, the Jews are smart though, I’ll give ’em that. If anybody’s gonna come up with a cure for the Big C, it’ll be a goddamn Jew.
Maybe Hitler killed the Jew who was gonna come up with a cure for the Big C, I said.
Jesus, leave it to you to come up with that. I hope you’re not turning into a bleeding heart.
I’m not, I said, I’m not. But really, I wasn’t sure.
“So, what about Doris?” I heard Jimmy ask Hank, and that snapped me right out of thinking about Nazis.
Jimmy was peering around Shirley to get a better look at Hank.
“How’re ya doin’ with all that? You got your head on straight?”
Hank took a slug of booze and turned toward Jimmy. With his face in profile, I could only see half a smile.
“All my troubles are six feet under,” he said, sounding pretty carefree.
Jimmy grinned.
Pretty soon Hank slipped the bottle of vodka in his pocket and said he hadda get going. A whole lotta other people were coming to see him.
Jimmy offered to bring him a bottle anytime, but Hank said he had it covered. The attendants would get him whatever he wanted.
Hank gave Shirley a good-bye kiss. She smiled with gritted teeth.
As we drove away from the hospital, Jimmy was high as a kite.
“He’s crazy, my ass,” he said. “Crazy like a fox.”
Then he sang the theme song to Zorro.
Zorro, the fox so cunning and free . . .
Usually, I sang along with him. But that day I just didn’t feel like it.
Paint It Black
After that, hunting season rolled around and something wasn’t right with Jimmy’s rifle. He really needed Hank to take a look at it. He just didn’t trust anybody else not to screw it up. So, Jimmy drove the rifle up to the nuthouse with me riding shotgun. When we arrived, Jimmy went to get Hank and I moved from the front seat to the back to make room for him. I wasn’t so nervous about seeing him this time.
Hank didn’t too look happy to see us or to be messing around with Jimmy’s gun. He told Jimmy the gun was shot and said Jimmy was too much of a cheap Greek to buy a new one. Jimmy told him he was a stupid Polack, the gun was a sweetheart, and he better not mess it up. They had a few drinks and Hank fixed the gun up almost as good as new. Word got around that Hank was back in business, and other hunters brought their guns up to the nuthouse.
Hank kept seeing the headshrinkers and they thought he was almost as good as new too.
Jimmy, on the other hand, was not doing so hot.
He began seeing a headshrinker of his own. He didn’t let on to Hank or his hunting buddies or even to Dr. C, his Greek doctor. It was a big secret and we had to keep it on a stone wall.
A Yankee doctor had been the one to tell Jimmy to see the headshrinker. Jimmy had gotten friendly with the guy while trimming his arborvitaes. Before long, Jimmy was showing up at the doctor’s office all the time, certain he was dying of the Big C. The doctor thought a headshrinker might be able to convince Jimmy of what he kept telling him—that he was as strong as an ox except in the noggin department.
At first Jimmy said he wouldn’t be caught dead going to a headshrinker.
I’m not crazy, he insisted. I’m sick.
The Yankee doctor said he didn’t think Jimmy was crazy or sick. He just thought Jimmy was reading too damn many medical books from the library. He said Jimmy knew more about the Big C than most doctors and that it was a shame he wasn’t cutting out tumors instead of clipping hedges.
Finally Jimmy agreed to give it a shot. He started going to a headshrinker in Massachusetts so nobody would find out about it. Sometimes he took me along to keep him company during the long ride.
On the way home after one of his appointments I asked him what went on with the headshrinker. He said he talked about what a raw deal life was. And about how YaYa had made him less of a man by not giving him a rifle when he was eight. And about how Papou had made him a goddamn hypochondriac by letting his appendix burst, which nearly killed him.
Your goddamn parents screw you up, he said. They screw you up good. But you still gotta respect them. Remember that the next time you feel like sticking a shank in my breadbasket.
I said I would. I’d respect my parents. I knew that’s what the Greeks believed and the Catholics too. It’s what Susan had to do. She had to respect Hank even though he had stabbed her mother in the breadbasket. She had to keep going to visit him and act like nothing had happened.
Jimmy kept going to the headshrinker, week after week, and it seemed that, like Hank, he was getting better too. Christmas season of 1965 rolled around and he didn’t complain about it nearly as much. He even bought Shirley a present. A ladies’ Timex from Uncle Barney that I hoped wouldn’t stop ticking and end up in the bottom of a drawer like mine had the previous year.
Unfortunately, Jimmy’s good mood didn’t rub off on Virginia. She got even more down in the dumps after Christmas than usual. She started cleaning our room constantly and washed her hands all the time. She walked around with soapsuds on her hands, rubbing them until the skin cracked and bled.
Jimmy said she took after YaYa, who was so clean she washed every can of goddamn corn that came in the house. He said YaYa had screwed Virginia up when she took care of her when she was little just the way she had screwed him up.
He told Virginia to quit washing her mitts or he’d chop ’em off and feed ’em to Fuad Ramses.
So Virginia stopped hand washing and started shoplifting.
And it turned out she had a real knack for it. She filled our bedroom closet with stolen loot. Rolling Stones records. British rock magazines. Black stockings. Black boots. Black miniskirts. More black stockings.
One day Virginia came home from school looking big as a house. Under her baggy, black, Greek-lady coat she was wearing several layers of S-E-X-Y black clothes with the tags chewed off.
“He’s never gonna let you wear any of that stuff,” I choked.
“I change on my way to school, dummkopf,” she said. “Hitler doesn’t have a clue what I’m wearing. And if you don’t wanna be the laughingstock of sixth grade, you’ll do the same thing.”
She was older and knew the score so I did what she said. I changed in doorways, behind bushes, between cars. Virginia let me borrow anything that she didn’t have first dibs on.
We were the two grooviest-looking birds in the projects.
Then it all came crashing down. Like a numbskull, Virginia wrote a note to her best friend, Carol, explaining why she was swiping all those black stockings. The reason being she’d read in one of those British magazines that Mick Jagger fancied birds in black stockings.
Carol’s mother found the note and gave it to Jimmy. The old lady was getting back at Virginia. The week before, Virginia had told Carol she thought her mom and Jimmy were jumping each other’s bones and Carol had gone and repeated it to her old lady. Carol’s mother denied it, but, of course, we found out later that Virginia was right.<
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After Jimmy got that note, he came barreling into the house. It was pretty late. Shirley had already left for work. I was in the top bunk, reading a Nancy Drew. Virginia was rolling her hair up in OJ cans. Sylvester was batting one of the cans around on the floor.
We knew by the pounding of Jimmy’s footsteps on the stairs that something bad was about to happen. He charged into the room and lunged for Virginia. He yanked an OJ can out of her hair, taking some hair with it.
She screamed and Sylvester dove under the bed.
“You know who wears black stockings?” he bellowed at her. “Goddamn whores! Goddamn whores!”
He began to pull all our clothes out of the closet. Not just the stuff Virginia had stolen. Everything. He spat on the clothes. He ripped up the black stockings. He tore the magazines to shreds. He snapped the Rolling Stones albums like they were potato chips. He decapitated my Ringo doll.
“Daddy don’t Daddy don’t Daddy don’t,” I wailed. But he just kept destroying everything he could get his hands on.
The whole time Virginia didn’t say a word and that enraged him even more.
He grabbed her hair and dragged her down the stairs.
I followed, whimpering.
“Daddy don’t Daddy don’t Daddy don’t.”
“What do you have to say for yourself?” he screamed at Virginia.
She was as silent as the Mummy. She didn’t cry. She just glared at him. I was used to seeing her crumple when Jimmy got mad. But now she was sixteen going on seventeen and he could go to hell.
The more defiant Virginia got, the angrier Jimmy became.
“Say something, you little bitch!” he yelled.
She didn’t say a word. She just kept staring at him like she wanted to stick a shank in his breadbasket.
Jimmy pushed her to the floor and grabbed her bare feet.
“Goddamn black stockings! Goddamn whore!” he kept shouting, and began to yank her around by her feet.
“Leave her alone! Leave her alone!” I begged him.
“Shut up! Your sister’s a goddamn whore and a goddamn thief!”
He kept dragging her around, but she still didn’t say a word.
Finally, he dropped her feet like they were napalm.
“Get on your knees,” he told her. “Get on your goddamn knees.”
She didn’t move.
“Do what he says,” I cried. “Just do what he says.”
Virginia struggled to sit up and got on her knees like she was about to start praying.
He stood over her.
“Say you respect me.”
She didn’t say a word.
He slapped her face.
“Say it. Say you respect me.”
She didn’t say it.
He slapped her again.
“Say you respect me. Say it or I’ll put a bullet through your goddamn head.”
“Say it!” I screamed.
She glared up at him.
“I respect you,” she said, her voice dripping with insincerity.
“Say it again.”
“I respect you.”
“Say it again.”
“I respect you.”
Each time she said it she sounded more disrespectful. I thought he was gonna plug her for sure. But just her saying it seemed to satisfy him.
“Now get your ass upstairs and clean up that mess. I want you to throw all that crap in the garbage.”
Virginia got off her knees and we both went back upstairs.
“My own daughter’s a goddamn whore,” he called after us.
“He’s the one who’s fooling around, not me,” Virginia said under her breath.
We salvaged what we could and threw out the rest. I kept Ringo’s head. Virginia kept a pair of black stockings.
Free at Last
After that, Virginia became even more sullen.
“I’m just counting the days,” she told me. “Counting the days till I’m eighteen and out of this hellhole.”
“Where will you go?” I asked.
“England. Where else, dummkopf?”
“How will you get there, dummkopf? It costs a lotta dough.”
“I’ll take a bus to New York and then stow away on a boat,” she said.
We knew where the boats to Europe left from because we’d gone there to see YaYa and Papou off. Every few years they went back to Greece to lord it over the relatives who still lived in the old country.
Virginia’s plan got me to thinking. She had only one year and three months to go until she was eighteen, the age when kids were free to tell their parents to screw off. But I’d just turned twelve. I didn’t think I could make it six years without ending up six feet under.
So I hatched a plan with Tina. We’d run away to England too. We’d become go-go dancers. I’d marry Ringo. She’d marry Paul.
I packed some supplies—Skippy peanut butter, Ritz crackers, Chuckles, and Lipton tea bags ’cause I’d heard English people guzzled tea like Pepsi.
One day after school I stole a double sawbuck from Shirley’s purse while she was sleeping. Then I snuck out the back door with my suitcase.
Tina was waiting for me. She held a pillowcase filled with Fig Newtons, Twinkies, Lorna Doones, and a Bible. We began to trudge toward the downtown bus station a few miles away.
It was freezing cold and I was hungry and the suitcase was heavy. I kept shifting it from one hand to the other. Tina was dragging her pillowcase on the ground.
The truth was the whole thing was doomed from the start, but neither of us wanted to admit it.
After getting about halfway there, I turned to Tina.
“We started too late,” I said. “It’ll be dark by the time we get there.”
Tina looked relieved.
“We shouldn’t have left before dinner,” she said.
“Maybe we should go back,” I suggested.
Tina was already turning around.
The trip back seemed harder and longer. I could see my dream of freedom receding with every step.
Tina and I said good-bye, vowing to try another day.
I snuck the suitcase back into the house and the money back into Shirley’s purse.
It would be a long time until I gained my freedom.
Hank, on the other hand, looked like he might be going free any day.
His lawyer, Stanley Brown, filed a motion for him to be released from the hospital. Brown presented reports from three headshrinkers saying Hank was now as sane as anybody and should be let out.
It had been less than two and a half years since the murders.
The newspaper was once again filled with stories about Hank and I pored over each one.
Dr. Harry Kozol, the big-shot headshrinker who had helped convince the grand jury that Hank was nuts, now said Hank was “a very sober man.”
“I am certain that this man, out in society . . . will not do something weird or twisted or harmful,” he testified.
In fact, the big shot had changed his mind about what had caused Hank to stab two people in the first place. He’d originally thought Hank was a paranoid schizophrenic—a term I had to get Jimmy to explain. But now he just felt Hank had had a lousy, rotten marriage.
“He reacted to a long stress, causing him to crack. I doubt very many men could stand this so long.”
It didn’t seem to matter that Hank was no longer under the homicide-inducing stress of being married to Doris when he killed her. Apparently just having been married to her all those years was enough. But now that she was out of the way he was hunky-dory.
When Hank appeared before the hospital staff to discuss his possible release he said the main thing he had been guilty of in the past was putting his wife on a pedestal. His manner was described as aggressive and hostile, and he even talked about the county attorney being out to get him.
Nobody seemed to hold any of that against him.
Of course there were still some people who didn’t want Hank to go free. The assistant attor
ney general. The family of John Betley. And the do-gooders who thought Hank shoulda fried in the first place.
But the law was clear. If the headshrinkers said Hank was OK there was nothing anyone could do to keep him locked up.
On August 3, 1966, Hank was paroled from the nuthouse. He had to see a headshrinker and a probation officer for a little while, but that was it.
“Doris must be turning over in her goddamn grave,” said Shirley, and I knew she was really PO’d ’cause usually she didn’t curse.
“Am I gonna have to call Hank Uncle Hank now?” I sulked.
I was sitting crouched by the TV. We were watching the Red Sox and I was all set to switch the channel bingo bango if Jimmy came home.
“Over my dead body,” Shirley said.
Before long, Hank came over to have a drink with Jimmy. I kept my distance and eavesdropped on them from the kitchen.
“You dodged a bullet, you sonofabitch,” said Jimmy. “I hope you gave Stanley Brown a big frickin’ tip.”
“He got paid good. He didn’t need a goddamn tip.”
“You didn’t throw him a little extra, you cheap Polack?”
“Don’t start bugging me, Greek. I gotta keep my nose clean. I can’t get into any goddamn fights.”
“You’re too old to fight me now, Polack. You’re almost fifty. You’re an old buck. Hell, my kid could take you. That’s right, a skinny little girl could take you.”
“Shut up. I’m warning you.”
“I can ride you like crazy. I can ride you like goddamn Seabiscuit,” Jimmy laughed, “and you can’t do a goddamn thing about it.”
“Screw you, Greek,” Hank snapped, and walked out the door.
“Whatsa matter? They take away your sense of humor in the cracker factory?” Jimmy called after him.
Hank didn’t answer. He didn’t look back. He just drove away.
“Maybe he won’t come back,” I said hopefully.
“He’ll be back. He’s just gotta cool down like a racehorse,” Jimmy said.
Jimmy was right. Hank cooled down and they were still buddies.
But for a guy used to getting into fights all the time, not being able to get into one was gonna be a tall order.
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