“Aren’t you going to put your party clothes on?” Her voice was so gentle, and, suddenly, I wasn’t angry anymore. I only wanted to cry.
“Why’d she have to do that?” I asked. I sounded like a little kid, like I was six and not thirteen, not officially an adult. “Why’d she have to make me sound like such a freak? I’m okay now, I haven’t even been in the hospital since sixth grade, and now all my friends are going to think I’m a huge weirdo.” My voice was wobbling just like my mother’s had, but there was no way I was going to cry.
“I’m not going to argue with you. That was not ideal.” Nana’s voice was dry. “Your friends will still be your friends, if they’re good friends. But I think that maybe your first act of Jewish womanhood is going to be forgiving your mother.”
That made me finally sit up and look at her. In my experience, parents were the ones who forgave kids—for leaving wet towels on the floor or leaving lunchboxes in our backpacks over the weekend, for forgetting to take in our homework or bring home permission slips, for the hundred ways, large and small, that we messed up and disappointed them. Children did not forgive their parents. But Nana was looking at me, her expression serious. “Parents aren’t perfect,” said Nana. “I wasn’t, and your mother isn’t, and if you have children you probably won’t be, either.” I liked her a lot then, for saying if, not when, the way my other grandmother, my father’s mother, always did. “Your mother loves you very much, and it hasn’t been easy for her. I know you don’t like thinking about it, and I certainly can understand that you don’t want to make a big deal about it, but, Rachel, she really did suffer.”
I shut my eyes again. I knew that Nana was right and that my mother had suffered, but all I could think about was how she’d give this exact speech, this exact same performance, at my graduation, and my wedding, and when—if—I had my first kid, and how everywhere I’d go and with everyone I’d meet, my mother would be there to remind them about how I might look normal but I wasn’t; how I was really sick and fragile, how I almost died and could almost die, that I would never be like them.
Outside the door, I heard people laughing, the sound of running feet, probably girls on their way to the bathroom. The appetizers were probably being served by now, the little hot dogs wrapped in pastry that were my favorites, and the egg rolls with the apricot dipping sauce.
“Did you hear what the rabbi said about being a woman of valor?” Nana asked.
I shrugged. I didn’t want to admit that I hadn’t exactly been listening to the rabbi, that I’d been thinking about the party, and how great it was that I had new friends who were pretty and popular and had never known me as sick or strange or broken.
Nana shook her head, smiling. “That man does love the sound of his own voice. But he wasn’t bad today. Eshet chayil,” she said in Hebrew. “There’s a poem about it, from Proverbs. I used to know the whole thing, but the part I remember best—the part that made me think of you—says, ‘She opens her hand to those in need, and offers her help to the poor.’ ”
“My mom isn’t poor,” I mumbled.
Nana sighed. “No, but she’s needy. She needs to believe that you’re going to be all right, and that’s something no doctor can tell her for sure. Can you imagine how hard that’s been?”
I couldn’t. But I thought that I could at least be kind to my mother, even if I didn’t understand her, even if she embarrassed me.
Nana pulled herself up straighter, adjusting her hat, then recited, “ ‘Charm is deceptive and beauty short-lived, but a woman loyal to God has truly earned praise.’ ”
“I don’t know if I believe in God,” I blurted. I’d been thinking about that a lot, but I hadn’t planned on saying anything, especially not on the day of my bat mitzvah. But what kind of god would let six million people die in ovens in the Holocaust? What god would let little kids get kidnapped, or die in their car seats on hot days after their parents forgot that they were in the car? What god would let a baby be born with a defective heart, or let her mother embarrass her to death at her bat mitzvah? Why would God have let Alice die?
Nana surprised me. “I’m not sure I do, either,” she said. “But I do believe in people being good to each other.” She squeezed me again. The top of my head rested against the softness of her cheek. “That’s what I’ve always loved best about you, Rachel,” she said. “You have a kind heart.”
“Yeah, a kind, messed-up heart that doesn’t work right and is probably going to kill me, like, tomorrow, so my mom better wrap me up in bubble wrap and never let me out of the house.”
Nana pulled me close and kissed my forehead. “You make me proud,” she said, which, as far as I was concerned, was a lot better than I love you. “Now get dressed. You’re missing your own party.” I went to the changing room, slipped into my miniskirt, and ran down the hallway, feeling, still, not like a woman but like a little girl.
Andy
1990
Hey there, Flash!” called Mr. Sills. His front tires bumped up over the curb onto the sidewalk. He muttered something, threw the truck into reverse, and succeeded in backing it into the spot, then opened the passenger’s-side door so that Andy could climb inside. It was a steamy August morning, eighty degrees already with highs in the nineties. Andy wore shorts, sneakers, his lucky ’Sixers jersey, and carried a soda bottle that he’d filled with water and left in the freezer overnight.
“You ready?” asked Mr. Sills, putting the truck back into gear. Andy nodded. “Nervous?”
Andy shrugged.
“Talkative as ever,” Mr. Sills observed, and drove them off toward the freeway, which would take them eventually to Franklin Field.
On that terrible day before Christmas when Andy had thrown the new coat away and had smashed someone’s windshield and gotten picked up by the police, Mr. Sills had been the one to come down to the station and called Andy’s mom. For the second day in a row, Lori had left work early and had come down to get him. In her tight black shirt and bright-red lipstick and a Santa hat perched on her head, she’d charmed the desk sergeant and even the cop who’d picked Andy up. As soon as that guy, Officer Nash, had learned that Andy was just ten—a lie that Lori told while she’d rested her hand on his forearm and let her breasts just brush his shoulder—he’d agreed to let Andy off with a warning. “But he can’t get in trouble again,” he’d said, and Lori had smiled sweetly and promised that he wouldn’t.
Sitting in the passenger’s seat of her old Nissan, Andy had been ready for anger or even for her terrible, silent, helpless tears. But Lori had surprised him.
“This can go one of two ways,” she’d said. Her voice was very calm, and her hands were steady on the wheel. “Either you keep getting angry and you keep getting in trouble and you end up in juvenile detention or reform school or jail, or you figure out something to do so you don’t keep getting in trouble. My suggestion is that you run.”
He wanted to ask her how that was supposed to work, how running was going to keep him from fighting, when she said, “If you want to hit someone or you want to throw something, I want you to run first. I want you to run until you can hardly lift your legs and your arms. Run until you’re exhausted, and then, if you still want to hit someone or throw something, you just wait ’til you’ve caught your breath again and then go for it. Try it,” she’d said, holding up her hand and stopping his “But, Mom” before it had gotten out of his mouth. “Try it for one month, and if it doesn’t work we’ll think of something else.”
Maybe it was her advice that had helped him, or maybe it had been the paper route he got that spring, the one he’d taken so he could pay back his mother, who’d paid for the windshield’s repairs.
Mr. Sills had been there the first Sunday morning that spring when the Examiner truck had dropped four bundles of papers on the sidewalk in front of Andy’s house. Andy was leaning over the bundles when Mr. Sills emerged from his house on the corner, puf
fing fragrant smoke from his pipe. Andy wondered if the noise from the rumbling delivery truck had woken him up.
“Lot of papers there,” Mr. Sills said, crossing the street.
Andy nodded.
“Don’t suppose you’ve got a bike?”
Andy shook his head. He was still saving, even though some days he didn’t think he’d ever get enough money for even a used tricycle.
“Talkative fella.” Mr. Sills reached into the pocket of his loose khaki pants, pulled out a short, curving knife, and popped the twine that held one of the bundles of papers. “So you’re just gonna what, exactly?” he asked.
Andy indicated his backpack, emptied of schoolbooks, plus the two canvas totes the Examiner had given him. He’d worked it all out, in bed the night before, how he’d do two runs, carrying a dozen papers in the bag on his left, keeping as many more as he could fit in his backpack and the bag on his right, so that he’d be able to reach across his body to grab and throw the papers while he was on the move. “I’m going to run.”
As Mr. Sills puffed his pipe, looking amused and a little worried, Andy loaded up. After memorizing his first three stops, he tucked his route map in his front pocket, then started running up the street to the house two up from his own, then across the street to hit three houses in a row, and that was it for Rand Street. He hooked right on Ontario, dropping off two more papers, then turned on Argyle with his wrist cocked. A stray cat hissed and scrambled out of his way. An old car belched greasy gray smoke. The ground was clotted with trash, cat shit and crumpled newspapers, shreds of the wax-paper stamp bags that dope came bundled in, even, sometimes, a needle or syringe. There were runners on every corner, some of them no older than he was, keeping their eyes open for customers or cops.
Andy ran down Argyle Street, then two left turns and he was on Malta, and his right-hand bag was empty. He reached into his backpack for another bundle, moved it into his left-hand bag, did Malta Street, then raced back up Ontario to his house. In his head, he heard the voice of Jim McKay, the ABC’s Wide World of Sports announcer. Young Andy Landis is in position to shatter the world record for the mile . . . I’ve never seen anything like this kind of speed and determination. This young man is surely one to watch.
He sprinted across Kensington, where the sidewalks were still mostly empty and the stores still hid behind metal grates. Past the Spanish restaurant with the Dumpster, the one where he’d found the chunk of brick, but they didn’t take a paper, so Andy didn’t have to look. Down Willard. Up Madison. Down Jasper Street to East Hilton, up Kensington again to Allegheny, then Wishart. Even here, where everything was asphalt and concrete, with a damp breeze blowing from the Delaware River. He could smell spring and see patches of green grass growing in the abandoned lots, weeds pushing up through the cracks in the sidewalks, and he felt like he’d found what he was meant to do with his life—to run along streets, throwing the elastic-banded rectangles of newsprint so they landed in the center of the stoops, moving faster than the guys on bikes, faster than the cops cruising by in their cop car. This was the thing he’d been born for, meant for, made for. Sweat streamed down his cheeks; his blood hummed in his veins; his heart beat hard, steady, and strong. He wanted to run forever.
“Easy there!” called Mr. Sills, who was sitting in his truck with the windows open, sipping from a coffee cup, when Andy came back for the last bundle. “Don’t want to give yourself a rupture!”
Andy waved, grinning, and then he was off again, the air warm on his cheeks, past a bunch of girls whose bare legs flashed in their denim shorts, feeling like with every step he was slipping out from underneath something—his fight with Ryan Peterman, who hadn’t spoken to him since what Andy had come to think of as the Day of the Coat; his mother not letting him see his grandparents; the way the lunch ladies would look when they gave him an extra scoop of spaghetti or mashed potatoes; the fact that his Toughskin corduroys were already too short, exposing a few inches of ankle. The way it felt on the playground, where the kids had started splitting into groups, black on one side, white on the other, and Andy wasn’t ever sure where he should be. The way it felt when every other kid at the father-son Sunday-morning Mass and pancake breakfast had a father except him.
Up Allegheny, over on F Street, down Westmoreland, almost bumping into an old guy walking a poodle. “Sorry!” he called over his shoulder, and the guy said, “Watch it, Roger Bannister,” and Andy knew without being told that Roger Bannister was a runner, just like him.
He was almost sorry when he delivered his last paper, on Clearfield Street, near McPherson Square, which was allegedly a park but actually an open-air drug market where his mom had warned him to never ever go. He saw more dope-trash and needles on the street, plastic bags blowing by, bundled-up homeless people lying on the benches or in the round concrete tunnel that was meant for little kids to climb through. He stood with his head down, hands on his knees, sweat pattering onto the pavement, catching his breath, and then he heard a car behind him toot its horn, and it was Mr. Sills in his blue truck. “Come on, Flash,” he said. “How about I treat a working man to breakfast?”
Normally Andy would have just shaken his head. Even though Mr. Sills was allowed in their house—he’d actually been the one who’d found them their new place, a row house in a different part of Kensington, right down the street from where he lived—Andy spoke to him as little as possible. Once, at school, a teacher had asked if he’d be interested in the Big Brother program, where he’d be paired with a man who would take him places, movies and museums, things like that. Andy had said, “No, thank you”—he knew what Lori would have to say about him spending time with, and maybe telling their business to, a stranger. But he thought sometimes that his mom let Mr. Sills hang around to be a kind of Big Brother, a man he was supposed to respect and look up to, a role model, quote-unquote. He didn’t want that, didn’t want some strange man telling him what to do or, worse, acting as if he was Andy’s father, so he was polite to Mr. Sills and never anything more than that.
But that morning he was starving, and he knew they were out of both cereal and bread for toast. “Let me check,” he said, and before he could lose his nerve he raced back to the row house with Mr. Sills’s truck rumbling behind him.
“Hey, Mom!” he called.
“Hey is for horses,” she called back, the way she always did.
“Can I go get breakfast with Mr. Sills?”
He heard her sigh and got ready for her refusal, but she said, “If you aren’t back in an hour I’m calling the police.”
He washed his hands and face and changed his shirt. Mr. Sills was parked out front in his old blue truck, and Andy climbed into the passenger’s seat, which had been cleared off. There were four or five mugs rattling around underneath his feet, along with old copies of National Geographic.
He’d been worried about conversation, but Mr. Sills talked enough for both of them—about why the new washing machines broke down so often, about his niece, who’d just had a baby. “Nine pounds, nine ounces. A bruiser!” Andy didn’t say much, but he didn’t mind listening. The cab of the truck was fragrant with tobacco and coffee. The empty mugs on the floor rolled around and clinked softly whenever they came to a red light.
At the Country Club Diner, they settled into a booth. “I’ll have the usual, sweetheart,” Mr. Sills said to the waitress, who seemed to know him and filled his coffee cup without being asked.
“How about you, hon?” she asked Andy, her hip cocked and her pen hovering over her pad.
“Just some toast.” Andy swallowed hard. He could smell eggs and bacon, and he could see a pile of French toast as a waiter carried a platter to the next table.
“That’s it? Anything to drink?”
Andy looked at the menu. Orange juice was $1.25 for a small cup, which was ridiculous when an entire half gallon only cost $1.99. “Just some water,” he said.
“He
’ll have the Hungry Man,” Mr. Sills said, then looked at Andy. “How do you like your eggs?”
The Hungry Man was so much food that it came on two plates, with a dish of grits on the side: a stack of pancakes, two eggs over easy, bacon and sausage, and crisp white toast cut in triangles. Andy dumped syrup on his pancakes, slathered butter and jam on his toast, sprinkled hot sauce on his eggs, and ate all of it, remembering to say “Thank you” when Mr. Sills added a large orange juice and a hot chocolate to the order. He ate and ate and ate, and when he stopped he thought he’d never been so full, not even after Christmas dinners at his grandparents’ house.
Mr. Sills, who’d had only poached eggs and rye toast, had kept up his steady patter throughout the meal. Andy was happy to learn that he, too, liked the 76ers, especially Charles Barkley. “The Round Mound of Rebound,” said Mr. Sills, patting his belly. Mr. Sills was round himself—round face, round stomach, and big, thick fingers. He wore gold-rimmed glasses, and his skin was medium-brown, not as dark as Mr. Stratton’s, but not as light as Andy’s. Andy’s dad had been medium-brown, too, and sometimes Andy wondered how he’d ended up looking so much like his mother, at least in terms of color. Lots of times, when he was with his mother, white people thought he was white. Sometimes they’d even say bad things about black people to his face, like once when Andy had said where he lived to a lady who worked at the shoe store, and she’d crinkled her face and said, “Why would you want to live in that neighborhood with all of them? You aren’t black.”
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