In fact, as I climbed upwards I tried to get ahead of those in front of me in order to be able to catch the train that was coming in. However, there was a sudden blockage. Several of those in front were coming to a halt momentarily and delaying my passage. As I struggled impatiently to get past them, I saw the reason for it. There was a landing just before the last flight of steps, and seated on the landing was a blind beggar wearing blue glasses. He was holding out a tin cup and people paused to fish in their pockets and toss some coins into the cup.
I was a bit annoyed and would have managed to get past them if the beard hadn’t caught my attention. It was a scraggly grey beard that the beggar wore and reminded me of someone I knew, and then I saw the weather-beaten face fully behind the blue glasses, and with a violent shock I realised that this old beggar was my grandfather. Nor could I mistake the croaking voice that was singing.
I came to an abrupt halt and this time it was others behind me who fought to get past me. I stood and stared, incredulous. There was no mistaking it. This, then, was the mystery that they had been keeping from us.
He saw me as I stood there, not wanting to believe what I saw, and it seemed to amuse him. I heard the familiar chuckle escape from him. He waited for two more people to go by, one of them tossing a coin into his cup, and then he spoke to me. ‘Hello, Harry,’ he said.
‘Hello,’ I said.
‘Are you surprised?’ he asked.
I nodded.
‘What could I do?’ he said. ‘American roofs are not like English roofs. I didn’t know that. So I slipped and fell off one. I hurt a leg. That meant I could never fix roofs again. But I could sing. And so I sing to make a living. It’s not so terrible.’
I didn’t say anything. More people came and went. More coins were tossed into the cup. The train had come and gone. It didn’t matter.
‘Are you going to tell them?’ he asked.
I still didn’t say anything.
‘About your father I don’t care,’ he said. ‘But I like your mother. She is a very nice woman.’
‘Grandpa,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to go.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘Just for a ride on the L.’
‘Then go and enjoy yourself.’
I went up the last flight of steps and got on the next train that came in, but I didn’t enjoy myself.
It was a week before I told my mother. I could no longer keep it to myself. She was terribly upset. She wanted to know if I was absolutely sure that it was my grandfather. I said I was quite sure. I told her we had talked a bit and he knew my name, so there couldn’t be any doubt. She didn’t want to believe it. I knew that. I knew how she felt about things like begging and taking charity. Even in the worst of times she would not have accepted any kind of help from anyone.
I remember one time when things were very bad for us and the shop was not making any money, she inadvertently overcharged a customer by a halfpenny. It was night and it was raining and blustery outside, but she put on her shawl and took an umbrella and ran to where the woman lived a goodly distance away to return the halfpenny. She was that way about money, and to find now that her own father-in-law was a common street beggar must have been a terrible blow to her.
But to make matters worse, while we were still talking about it, my father came in. He had just returned from job hunting yet again and was in a mood that showed the empty results. It was a dangerous mood. It should have been a warning to my mother, but in her disturbed state she felt she had to tell him. As he listened his face darkened still more. Then, after she had finished, without a word he swung round and walked out of the room.
Instantly my mother followed him, crying, ‘Where are you going?’
He didn’t answer her but kept on walking straight to the kitchen. She followed him, knowing what he was about to do now and begging him not to. I ran after her.
My grandmother was sweeping a floor in the kitchen and she looked up startled as we all came in. Even when she did housework my grandmother wore her jewellery. She had on a brilliant necklace and a thick gold bracelet. My father pointed to them and through gritted teeth demanded, ‘Where did you get that jewellery?’
She was obviously taken aback by the question. She stared at him for a moment, then, recovering a little, snapped, ‘I bought it. What business is it of yours?’
‘And where did you get the money from?’ he demanded, his teeth so tightly locked that the words came out with difficulty.
She didn’t answer him. She simply stared.
‘I’ll tell you where you got it from,’ he continued. ‘You got it from a beggar, from a street beggar who pretends to be blind and will be blind when I get done with him. So that’s the respectable business he’s got in New York. Or is that just a branch of the business he’s got here? I’m surprised you didn’t send me out to beg for you when I was five years old instead of to a slaughterhouse when we were in Poland. I’d have made more money for you, and then you wouldn’t have had to run away and leave me all by myself when I was still a boy. Now you send out an old man to beg for you so you can buy yourself all that fine jewellery and bring shame on the rest of us.’
He was breathing hard and the spittle was coming from his mouth as he spoke, and she, she was fully recovered now from the surprise attack he’d launched on her, and the fury was mounting inside her massive bosom, and she struck back and struck hard, shouting, ‘Shame? Is that all you get from it? What about the money? When anybody’s short of money – for the rent, for a new pair of shoes, for a set of teeth from the dentist, for a doctor’s bill, or for steamship tickets to come to America – where do they come? They come to me and when I give them the money they need they don’t feel any shame. They know where it comes from and they take it and they’re glad of it. And you? How do you think you got here? Where did that money come from? I’ll tell you one thing. I didn’t want it. I didn’t need a madman like you on my hands again. I’d had enough of you. In my old age I wanted a bit of peace. But your father wanted it. He wanted to make up to you, he said, for leaving you in Poland. So he sent you the tickets.’
I heard my mother give a little cry. She knew now where the tickets had come from and my father knew also. He threw a look of fury at my mother and said, ‘Good for you! This is what you deserve. England wasn’t good enough for you.’ But he wasn’t done yet with my grandmother. ‘If you think I wanted to come to America you’re mistaken. As far as I was concerned, you could have taken those tickets and shoved them up your big fat arse. I came here because she wanted to come, not because I wanted to see you or the blind beggar, and I’ll tell you right now nothing can make up for what you did when you left me in Poland to be by myself, and as far as I’m concerned you and him too can both go straight to hell.’
‘Then get out,’ my grandmother shouted. ‘Go back to England. Go wherever you want. But get out of my house, all of you. Pack your things and go.’
My father strode ahead of us, his face murderous. I had to help my mother out. She was stunned. The very worst that she had feared had happened. On top of everything else, we were being kicked out of my grandmother’s house. And where could we go?
Chapter Seven
IT WAS JOE who saved the day for us, my oldest brother Joe, whose handsome face with its winning smile and large brown eyes, whose touching plea that he was working his way through college, charmed the housewives who answered his knock or ring on the doorbell, and got them to buy annual subscriptions to such leading magazines as Colliers, Liberty, the Saturday Evening Post and, yes, Popular Mechanics too, that they did not read or want.
Joe was starting to make money, and all of this thanks to his mentor Uncle Saul, whose face grinned with glee as he told us of his pupil’s success. He was simply crazy about Joe. They were together day and night, they went to dances together at the Rover Boys Club, they double dated together. Joe was sixteen and, thanks to Uncle Saul, already had a string of girls that he took out.
He gave my mothe
r enough now for us to get a place of our own and we lost no time doing it. It was not a great deal of money for a whole family and my mother still had to pinch pennies, and she had to find the cheapest place possible for us to live in. She found it only a short distance away from my grandmother’s house, on the same street in fact. And, both ironically and sadly, a place that was pervaded by the smell of rotting fruits and vegetables, exactly like the one we had come from.
This must have struck her immediately when she stumbled on it, wandering blindly the very next few moments after my grandmother had ordered us out. My father himself had gone to seek consolation with Uncle Abe and his barrel of moonshine. My mother went alone, half frantic with fear that we might all have to sleep out on the street.
There, only a few doors away, was this old frame house that had somehow been overlooked when the developers came to build their tenements and those balloon-like brick houses with three floors whose fronts swelled out like pregnant women, one of which my grandmother lived in.
This house that my mother saw probably should have been knocked down years ago. It leaned so badly to one side that we could never fill a bowl of soup to the brim or even a cup of coffee or tea either, or the liquid would spill over. But there was a ‘For Rent’ sign in the landlord’s window and my mother went in to enquire.
She caught the smell immediately and it reminded her of her little shop back there in England. But she did not know quite where it came from at first. All she knew was that the bearded, hoarse-voiced landlord made it cheap enough for us to be able to live off Joe’s earnings.
It was only after we had moved in, after borrowing some furnishings from relatives and buying some on tick at payments of a dollar a week, that on our first morning we were awakened at dawn by the rattling of chains and the sound of a horse snorting, and we discovered then that the landlord was a pedlar of fruits and vegetables. He had a stable in the backyard where he kept his horse and also stored his produce, some of it rotting before he could sell it and giving off the odour that was so familiar to us.
It was almost like going back to where we had come from, as if we were starting all over again, as if our dream had never come true. My mother was not happy. None of us was. But my mother especially must have had a heavy heart through that whole time we were there and especially when she was awakened early in the morning by the rattling of chains as the pedlar harnessed his horse to a cart filled with fruits and vegetables whose smell rose up and came through the cracked windows to taunt her.
Yet, I don’t think she ever gave up. Whatever feelings she might have had she kept to herself, but to us she was as optimistic as ever, still promising better things, still making up dreams for us.
‘Things’ll get better, you’ll see. Everybody will get a job. It’s just a matter of time. As soon as everybody is working we’ll look for another place to live, and it’ll be nicer than this one and in a better neighbourhood. Barney, who lives on the north-west side, tells me there are lots of apartments there for rent.’
My father was listening to her along with the rest of us and when she had finished he said, ‘What about him? Will he get a job too?’
His gaze was directed at me and it was filled with hatred. But this was something he had been harping on before and my mother was prepared for him. ‘Harry is going to school,’ she said.
‘School? What for? He’s twelve already. He looks like sixteen. What’s wrong if he goes out and looks for a job like the rest of us? Who is he around here, Lord Muck?’
‘I want one, at least, to have an education and become something.’ Her tone was firm. This was one issue that had been brought up several times before and she would never budge. It meant so much to her. It was part of the dream that had brought us here to America.
And despite the hostility she had to contend with from my father, when autumn came I went to school.
It was a late autumn that year. The heat did not want to give up the deadly grip it had on the city and it continued well into September when school had already started. This made it easier for me as far as comfort was concerned, because I was wearing the short trousers that all English schoolboys wore, with bare knees and long stockings. A white flannel cricket shirt went with my outfit, one that my mother had been proud of when she bought it in England for our going-away trip to America.
However, it drew stares from both pupils and teachers when I first appeared at the grimy red-brick building of the grade school that was just round the corner from where we lived. And some laughter too. Boys then wore knickerbockers with the bottoms tucked into long woollen stockings. No bare knees showing. And in addition I was tall, taller than any of the other pupils, taller than some of the teachers, and that added to the ridicule that came in those stares and laughter.
But there was worse yet in store for me. Nobody seemed to understand what I was saying. As soon as I entered the yard filled with yelling, screaming kids racing about prior to the ringing of the bell, a large number of them gathered around me, astonished at my dress and my height. The neighbourhood on Chicago’s west side was made up of recent immigrants from Russia and Poland, and many of these kids spoke with a strong foreign accent. But mine was different from theirs and one that had them puzzled.
‘From vere you come?’ one boy asked.
‘England,’ I said, and it seemed to me there was only one way to pronounce England and I had done it.
But the boy said, ‘Vere?’ and others echoed it.
‘England,’ I repeated.
‘Aingland? Vere is Aingland?’
Where was England? I knew very little of the globe, so I said what I knew. ‘It’s near Manchester.’
‘Vere?’ They were getting more and more puzzled, and the crowd around me was increasing. None of them had heard a Lancashire accent before. Nor had they ever seen any boy wearing short trousers. The questions came one after the other. A teacher finally rescued me. She led me off to the principal’s office, asking a few questions on the way and seeming just as puzzled as had my inquisitors before by my answers.
The principal was a tall, frowning woman with grey hair piled thickly on her head. She sat at a desk and looked me over with the frown deepening.
The teacher who had brought me in spoke. ‘I can’t make out much of what he says,’ she said. ‘It does and it doesn’t sound like English, and his name he says is Arry or something like that, I’m not sure where he’s from. I asked him and I thought he said England, but his speech can’t possibly be English. I think he might be from Egypt. We had an Egyptian boy who talked a bit like that.’
‘Well, then,’ said the principal, ‘let’s put him in the foreign-speaking class to learn English. How old is he?’
‘He claims he’s only twelve.’
‘Twelve?’ She stared. ‘He can’t be any less than fifteen.’
‘That’s what I thought.’
‘Well, he’ll have to bring a birth certificate next time he comes. There’s something very strange about all this. Why is he wearing such short pants? I think his parents are trying to make him look younger than he is for some reason. I don’t like this at all.’ She was very annoyed, very irritated and very busy. It was the first day of school and there were many things she had to do. ‘In the meantime,’ she snapped, ‘take him to Miss Richards’s class. Let her get started on his English.’
Miss Richards was the teacher in charge of the foreign students, and I entered her room objecting inwardly to what was happening to me and ready at any moment to rebel openly. The room was filled with children of all ages who had only recently come to the United States with their parents from countries mostly in Europe. On the blackboard were such carefully lettered words as ‘Cat’, ‘Dog’, ‘Stick’, ‘Man’, ‘Woman’.
The class had been reciting these words as I entered, but immediately they halted and all eyes turned to me. Miss Richards too stared. But I would have better luck with her than the principal or the teacher who had escorted me here. She was younger and
she could smile. She averted her eyes from my short trousers and bare knees and said, ‘What country are you from?’ pronouncing each word carefully, as if I might not know the English language too well.
And when I said ‘England’ she had no difficulty understanding me and seemed startled. ‘Then what are you doing here?’ she asked.
‘They said I couldn’t speak English.’
‘Oh, what nonsense!’ she exclaimed. ‘Of course you speak English. It’s just your accent they don’t understand. I’ve travelled through England and I’ve heard lots of people speak like you do, especially up in the north. Are you from Yorkshire?’
‘No, Lancashire.’
‘Lancashire. That’s right. That’s near Manchester isn’t it?’
I nodded.
‘They speak a bit differently from one another in every area you go to and sometimes they don’t understand one another. It’s no wonder the principal was puzzled. But I’ll straighten it out with her, and in the meantime you stay here for today and help me teach these other children the English language. Is that all right with you?’
‘Yis,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ she corrected. ‘Can you say it that way?’
‘Yes,’ I said, for the first time in my life.
So, thanks to Miss Richards, I was spared the humiliation of having to join the foreign-speaking class and learn the English language all over again, and eventually, thanks to Miss Richards again, I got rid of some of my Lancashire accent and began to speak in a more American way. My short pants and bare knees still brought stares and remarks, and there was no money for knickerbockers. Nor could there be any hand-me-downs from my older brothers. They had both been wearing long trousers since they left school to go to work, always a sign on our street that you were grown up and ready for work.
We tried asking my grandmother if there weren’t any leftovers from my uncles – things that had been patched up a bit since we had moved to our own place – and she did a little searching in her closets but came up with nothing.
The Dream Page 6