Catherine came into the room with the rent money, and handed it to the man called Hennington. He extracted nine dollars and handed the rest back to her. “We’ll be around every Friday.” He closed the door quietly behind him.
A few seconds later the Banciks heard a knock on the door across the hall.
“Mr. Fitzsimmons? My name is Cyril Hennington. I represent the new owners of this building. My card …”
Alexander Bancik had been sitting at the kitchen table. From where he sat the old man could see to the front of the railroad apartment, through the two bedrooms into the living room. He witnessed everything from over his plate of beans and fried pork roll. He understood none of it.
Joey was half a block away when he spotted the LaSalle turning onto High from Morton. The big, black car idled past Joey, headed south toward Baldwin.
Joey sensed something was wrong when he stepped into the kitchen. The depression that had become standard mealtime fare at the Banciks seemed deeper than usual.
“Ya shudda seen the big ol’ LaSalle that just cruised down the block. The guy drivin’ it was big and mean-lookin’. Dressed real good though. That car, man, it was really—”
Josef Bancik was on his son like a flash, his open right hand coming down with great force across the boy’s face. The blow knocked Joey against the corner of the coal stove. As he tried to regain his balance, his father was on him, raining at least a dozen blows on his son’s arms and shoulders.
Joey covered his head with his arms and hands as he stumbled sobbing into a cupboard.
“Impressed by the guy, were ya? His big car. His clothes. How big he was. My son telling me this.” The words spilled out of Bancik’s livid, tear-stained face. The ache in his gut pushed the words out, the bile of frustration. “Ungrateful little bastard.”
“Josef! Josef! God’s sake, stop! It’s enough. He didn’t know,” his mother screamed.
The beating stopped, but Joey wasn’t sure, wouldn’t move until he had some word from his father. He cringed in the corner, his head pressed against the cupboard.
“Git yer ass in yer room. No eats. No nothin’. Don’t want t’ hear or see ya all night.”
Like a dog that had been beaten by its master, Joey slinked into his room, his eyes on the floor. Catherine Bancik stared at her plate. She sobbed. Alexander Bancik watched Joey leave the kitchen, then went back to his dinner.
“I ain’t hungry no more,” Josef said and walked to the living room.
Joey threw himself on his bed in the corner of the bedroom he shared with his grandfather. He hurt like hell. He didn’t understand what made his father so mad at him. He was just talking about that guy with the big car.
Still awake three hours later, Joey watched as his grandfather went through his nightly ritual. He avoided it like the plague, staying up as long as he was allowed until the old man was asleep. It had been months since Joey had witnessed his grandfather’s devotion. He took off his old work clothes and hernia truss, compliments of Pennsy, and got into his pajamas. The old man lit two candles on top of a bureau completely covered with old-time religion pictures and other crudely made religious objects, mostly cheap plaster-of-Paris statues of saints Joey never learned about in catechism. Crucifixes hung on the dirty wall above the table. The candles cast an eerie glow about the room. Throughout the weird half-hour ceremony, the old man continued a low, guttural chant. His eyes rolled from whatever object he was holding to the largest of the crucifixes directly in front of him, then to the ceiling above the pitiful shrine. The old man kissed the pictures as he passed from one to the next, crossing himself three times for each. When it was over, he blew out the candles, got in bed, and within a few minutes was snoring.
It was well into early morning before Joey dozed off.
A month after Hennington’s first visit to the Criolas, their downstairs neighbor called it quits. They had to leave because of the higher rent. At least that’s what Joey’s dad said. They were middle-aged with two grown children—a son in the Coast Guard and a daughter in the WACs. Joey was sad to see them go.
The Criolas were still moving their furniture out when the carpenters arrived. First a hole was knocked in the wall for a second door into the hall. The wall between the two bedrooms was closed up. A sink was installed in what had been the Criolas’ parlor. An old stove was dragged over from Simon’s.
It was an instant apartment, and cheap too, only nine bucks a week for each of the one-bedroom cages. The Lujacks were the first to arrive, taking the rear apartment. A few days later, the Johnsons, a black family, arrived.
“Hear ya got two nigger families on yer floor,” Bob Wysnoski taunted Joey at Milt’s.
“Real jigaboos too, from what I hear,” Stan chimed in. “Like they can’t even talk American. Hear they talk real coon, like there’s still pig shit on their feet.”
“Ya know it all, why the fuck ya askin’ me?”
“Movin’ out? Guess not; father’s still lookin’ fer work, ain’t he?” Bob drilled the words home like a pink high bouncer to the throat.
Joey reddened. Some of the older guys were sitting in the booths. He knew they were looking at him. He could feel their eyes burning into the back of his head.
“Kiss my ass. Fer all ya know, my old man’s got an interview downtown somewhere today. He got another one tomorrow. In fact, fer all yer s’posed to know, he’s been offered a whole lot of jobs. Turned them all down. He cudda been workin’ for months now, but he ain’t taken’ jes anything.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, real sorry. I didn’t know yer ol’ man was in such demand,” Stan kept boring in.
Joey wanted to smash the twins’ ugly faces, turn them into bloody hamburger.
“You fuckers are gonna eat your words, you’ll see.”
Joey ran from the store. He didn’t stop running until he got to the end of the block. Stan’s final words were like a knife in his back: “Don’t the stupid kid know he and his folks are nuthin’ but white niggers?”
Joey ran most of the way downtown. He was furious. The tears didn’t start until he passed the Hall of Records and turned down Market. He had to fight back, but how and with what? He couldn’t dare the Wysnoskis to shut their god damn mouths or else. They’d kill him in a fight. Joey knew what he was looking for, something small but expensive. He tried Woolworth’s and then Kresge’s. In Grant’s he found it.
Joey walked past the toys. He was now playing an adult game, it was payback time. He idled from one display to another, then peered past the cash register. The Negro woman was still alone at the other counter. She was changing prices on some items and had her back to his target area. Joey casually circled the store.
He approached the display, reached across the counter, and grabbed a tube of Petulant Rose Petals lipstick and a small bottle of Evening in the Casbah perfume. They were safely in his pocket when he walked past the nigger saleslady to the front door.
“Can I help you, young man?”
“No, just lookin’ around.”
She smiled and turned back to her work.
Outside on the sidewalk, he tossed the two objects into the first trash can he came to. “I ain’t no white nigger,” he mumbled to himself.
Some dough in his pocket could be the clincher. The loose change he got every week for helping Sister Joan at St. Mark’s wasn’t doing it. So instead of heading home, he detoured to Frank Marsucci’s dump at Broome and Kinney to check where he was on the Beacon carrier waiting list.
“You back again, not giving up are you kid,” the circulation manager looked up from the paperwork he had spread across the desk. “Nothin’s changed since the last time. You’re getting close.”
“How close? It’s been months since I’ve put my name in.”
“Keep poking your head in here and who knows …. Someone might be quitting on me next week. Ain’t likely, but it could happen.”
Joey shrugged and walked out of the office. He’d be back again next week.
He
didn’t notice Eight-Ten standing in the shade of a doorway on the opposite side of the street. The man-child had tailed Joey from Morton Street. It was one of several times in the past few weeks that he had shadowed some of the gang from Milt’s. He knew something was going on that wasn’t good. Whenever this happened, it made his head hurt. They didn’t look at his pretty pictures so much anymore. Richie even pushed them off the table at Milt’s and when he stooped to get them, everyone laughed. When he looked up, Richie and Joey were laughing the loudest. And today, he had once again tailed Joey all the way to the same place he had followed Richie not too long ago.
Richie was the one to blame, Eight-Ten thought, but for what. He goes to that nigger barber shop too many times for it to be good. And to that cheap Jew to get a bike. Everyone loves that bike more than my beautiful pictures. It don’t look good that Joey is coming here, too. Does he want a bike like Richie? If he gets one, will they love it as much as Richie’s?
Eight-Ten rubbed both temples in an attempt to make the hurt go away. The throbbing only increased. If they love two bikes, then what happens to my beautiful pictures?
Stan Wysnoski’s “white nigger” taunt hung like a heavy stone between Joey’s shoulder blades as he headed home from Marsucci’s. There was no way he would let them know at Milt’s that nothing much had changed for more than a month, and it looked as though it would only get worse. There were more changes in the building, but after the initial shock, they were expected. The Kusliks moved out of their first-floor apartment. It was just like the Criolas. Another colored family moved into one of the subdivides. A white family took the second apartment.
Joey couldn’t understand it. He wondered about it and was troubled by the fact that he was pissed off that niggers hadn’t taken both units. They should have. Shit, that’s all the apartments were good for anymore—niggers.
The former Rogovin tenements weren’t the only ones the big man in the shiny car visited each week. Nor were they the only ones to know the carpenter’s hammer, as lodgings were readied for newly arrived urban immigrants.
One Friday when Joey was walking up his stoop, he nearly bumped into a tall, well dressed black guy leaving the building.
“You got to look where you’re goin’, son.”
Joey just ignored him and pushed right by him.
He had no way of knowing that ten minutes earlier the same black man had introduced himself to his mother at their apartment door.
“Hello, I guess you might say I’m Cyril Hennington the Second. And, I guess you know why I’m here,” the man was as easily as big as Hennington. He never stopped smiling.
Catherine called her husband to the door and retreated to the kitchen.
“Like I told your wife, I’m here for the rent money.”
Catherine strained to hear what her husband would say. Nothing.
“Well, thank you, Mr. Bancik. That wasn’t too hard now, getting used to a new man. Well, until next Friday then, and you have a good week now. Give my regards to the missus.”
Catherine peered from the kitchen. Josef hadn’t said a word. He quietly closed the door and then stood with his head pressed against the jamb. His eyes were closed. He was still standing there when the big black man introduced himself across the hall.
Everyday Catherine and Josef checked the Want Ads in the newspapers, “Skilled” and “Unskilled Labor.” They seemed to be running out of opportunities until one day Josef informed them that out of nowhere they had caught a break. He waited until the family was well into supper before he casually broke the news. As he spoke, hope, fear, anxiety, perhaps love peered at him from over spoonfuls of lentil-and-ham-hock soup.
“I gotta chance for a job in the mornin’.” Josef let the words drop into the middle of the table and lay there. He spooned some soup into his mouth. He savored it. A stringy piece of ham hock caught between his upper left molars. He loudly sucked it out, the only sound in the room.
He waited until he was sure everyone, including the old man, was listening before going on. Josef Bancik, except for an odd job here and there, never more than a week or two at a time, had been unemployed for thirteen months, nine days.
“Jim Palic told me about it this mornin’. A janitor’s job downtown at Prudential. He gave me the guy’s name. Now let me see.” Josef pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his shirt pocket. The note had been folded and unfolded, read and reread many times during that day. Josef placed it on the table, and then smoothed it down flat.
“Mike Callahan, building custodian, room one-oh-one. Eight sharp.”
Josef sat back and breathed deeply. He was excited. Hell yes he was excited, almost enough to be taken in again by hope, that eternal charlatan.
Catherine fingered the paper. She studied each word, moving her lips. “It’s all jest like I read it,” said Josef.
“What kind of job?” his wife asked.
“Janitor’s. Pays seventy cents per. But Jim sez I can move up. That’s where he started. Now he runs the building’s supply office. Makes eighty-five cents after only three years.”
“Jim thinks you’ll get it?” said Catherine, sliding the paper across the table to Joey.
“The job opened up yesterday. Jim sez the guy who had it got promoted to the boiler room startin’ next week. Only a few guys know ’bout it. He’s already talked to Callahan ’bout me. So I’ll jest be there at eight sharp. I’ll get it, you’ll see.”
Catherine smiled. “I’ll iron your good shirt.”
Joey was up at six in the morning. He found his father, mother, and grandfather drinking coffee at the kitchen table. They were silent. Joey grabbed a cup from the cupboard, filled it with coffee, and added a squirt of Carnation evaporated. He watched his father. Josef Bancik stared into his cup. He wore his only pair of dress pants, brown gabardines with deep hanger creases across the knees. Dark brown suspenders cut across his open collared white shirt. His high-top black work shoes were newly shined.
“Gotta go,” Josef said. He arose and lifted his Army surplus Eisenhower jacket from the back of his chair. Josef kissed his wife on the forehead and nodded to his father. “See ya later, boy,” he said to Joey without looking at his son.
“Good luck, Pop. You’ll get it.”
Catherine Bancik hurried out of the kitchen after her husband. She caught him as he was about to close the door to the hall behind him. Joey could just barely hear their whispered conversation.
“Ya got any money?”
“Nope. Walkin’ down and walkin’ back. It won’t cost nuthin’.”
“It ain’t right. Yur gonna see that guy Callahan like a man, with money in the pocket. Here take this. ’N after ya see him, after he gives ya the job, ya buy a paper, a coffee, and mebbe even a hot dog at Nedick’s. Then come back ’n tell us. We’ll be waitin’.” She took a five dollar bill out of the pocket of her apron.
“I don’t need this much.”
“Take it. You don’t need to spend it. At least you have it.”
Joey ran home that afternoon, raced up the stairs, and plunged into the kitchen. His mother was alone. “He ain’t home yet,” she said without looking up from the potato she was peeling.
“Wonder why? He shudda had it all wrapped up this mornin’. Mebbe he’s celebratin’. Mebbe he’s started already. Ya know, learnin’ the ropes before he starts for real next week. What d’ya think?”
“I don’t know,” she said. She knew her husband. She knew what to expect when he returned. “Why don’t ya go out and play. First change your clothes.”
Josef Bancik returned shortly before midnight. He reeked of cheap muscatel. Catherine and Joey woke up and joined him in the kitchen. The old man was asleep. Josef’s jacket was open. There was a stain on his shirt where the wine had dribbled from his chin. His fly was partly unzipped. He staggered a bit, then plopped down into a chair. “What ya doin’ up?” Josef took off his jacket and threw it across the kitchen.
“We were worried. What happened?” Catherin
e asked in a dull voice.
Josef’s fist came down on the table hard. “I didn’t get the damn job. That’s what happened. I’m there at eight sharp. I mean eight sharp. This guy Mike Callahan’s waitin’ fer me in his office. Sort of like a storeroom. A big Mick, I mean a real big red-faced bastard. But a nice guy, mebbe too nice. We shake hands and talk. He hands me an application. I fill it out ’n give it back to ’im. He looks it over and sez, ‘I see yer thirty-nine.’ But he’s smilin’ so I know it ain’t gonna go against me. Then he sez, ‘Palic tells me ya got some back trouble, lost a job ’count of it. That right?’ He ain’t smilin’ now. ‘Watch,’ I sez to ’im. ‘Jest watch, I’ll show ya.’ So I take this big barrel in the corner, half filled with soap powder. It’s gotta weigh a hundred pounds at least. I picked it up. I mean I picked that god damned barrel up real good, easy as shit. I carried it ’round his desk, not once, but two times. The first time he don’t want to look up from his desk. The second time he’s really lookin’ me over.
“Then, real casual like, I put the barrel back in the corner and sit down in front of his desk. I ain’t even breathin’ hard. ‘Ya see, that’s how my back is botherin’ me,’ I say.
“Callahan’s smilin’ again. He sez, ‘I gotta be impressed. Looks like ya don’t even need the doctor’s exam we give t’ all the new guys. Tell ya what, ya come back ’bout eleven. See, this ain’t my decision, I gotta boss too. But it looks good, I’ll tell ya that. Be back ’bout eleven, okay?’ He shakes my hand, but somethin’ don’t sit right.”
By this time Joey had taken a chair at the table. His mother sat opposite him. She had one hand on her lap, the other on the table.
“Sonofabitch bastard, my head hurts.” Josef walked to the sink and held his head under the cold water. His shirt quickly became soaked and the water seeped down to his pants. He turned from the sink.
“No doctor’s exam. Who the fuck did Callahan think he was foolin’? I had a hunch. So I jes waited down at the end of the hall. Sure ’nuff, not ten minutes later the biggest, blackest fuckin’ nigger ya ever saw walks into Callahan’s office. Ain’t in there long either, before he came out with a paper in his hand. They ain’t pullin’ no wool over Josef Bancik’s eyes. I follow him. Know where he goes? I’ll tell ya where he goes, to Doctor S.L. Brady over in the Kearny Building on Broad. He’s so god damned stupid he had to run his finger down the list of names in the lobby, then check it with the name he had on that fuckin’ paper. Bet the bastard couldn’t even read. I got in the same elevator, to the twelfth floor. No mistake, it was right there on the door, sign says Doctor S.L. Brady, em-dee.
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