by Sam Ross
He tripped as he rushed to him, but he felt no pain from the fall, only his throat hurt. His uncle smiled, caught him in his arms, lifted him up, and sat him on his shoulder.
“Yo, man, look at that soldier.”
“Look at that Hershy. That lucky Hershy.”
“That your uncle, Hershy? Your uncle, for real?”
But Hershy couldn’t answer. There was a big, hard pain in his throat.
In the house, however, everybody acted differently. Rachel flung her arms about Uncle Yussel and kissed him, then she backed away to admire him.
“You’re so handsome, Uncle, so, so handsome.” She threw her arms around him again and began to cry.
Hershy’s mother and father looked stunned at first. Then tears began to seep out of his mother’s eyes, and his father felt the sleeve of the uniform as though he were appraising the material.
“Now I’m a regular Yankee,” Uncle Yussel exploded.
“You’re the most beautiful Yank in the world,” Rachel said.
“The hat, Uncle Yussel, let me wear the hat,” Hershy shouted.
Uncle Yussel whirled the boy-scout-looking field hat to Hershy. At the sight of the hat covering Hershy’s whole face, everybody smiled, timidly at first, and then laughed; the tension was gone.
“How?” Hershy’s father managed to say. “Why?”
“I was on my way home,” Uncle Yussel said. “Suddenly, that ugly Yankee with the goat’s beard pointed his finger at me and said: I want you. So go carry on a fight with that rawboned Yankee.”
“Yussel, Yussel,” Hershy’s mother sighed. “What’s going to happen to you?”
“Nothing,” Uncle Yussel said. “Ever since I’ve been in this land I’ve wanted to go to Europe. Now I can go free, at the government’s expense. Maybe I’ll find a wife there.”
Hershy’s father shook his head sadly. Uncle Yussel slapped his back.
“It’s a lively world, David,” he said. “Things happening all the time. Things always changing. Yesterday a tailor; today a soldier; tomorrow, maybe, a general. Who can predict the future?”
His eyes began to wander. When he looked at Rachel he shook his head and suddenly seemed to remember something. “Fool,” he called himself. “How could I have forgotten to bring something? Come, Hershel, take a walk with me.”
Hershy walked down the street with him, swollen with pride. He gripped his hand hard as the people stared at them. His voice was tight when he spoke.
“When you going away to fight, Uncle Yussel?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow? Wow!”
“Early in the morning.”
“Wow! Pa going with you?”
“No. One soldier in the family is enough.”
“Will you bring me back a German helmet?”
“Certainly.”
“And a gun?”
“A great big one.”
“A gas mask, too?”
“Of course.”
“How about a medal, a pile of medals?”
“If I become a hero.”
“Gee, Uncle Yussel. Gee.”
“What’s to cry about?”
He couldn’t help it.
“Take me with, Uncle Yussel. I’ll be your mascot. I’ll load your rifle and bring you water when you’re thirsty and I’ll never get in your way and I’ll go to sleep early and I’ll eat a lot and everything.”
“Don’t cry, baby. Don’t.”
They stopped in front of a sporting goods store.
“What would you like, Hershel?”
He swallowed hard and said: “A bat.”
“That’s all?”
“A glove, too.”
Then, with bat and glove in hand, choked with gratitude and pride, he went into a jewelry shop with his uncle and watched him buy a lavalier for Rachel, a cameo ring for his mother, and an Elgin watch for his father.
That night, when everyone was asleep, Hershy woke up and stared at his uncle a long time as he slept on the front-room couch. He tried on his coat, which hung to the floor; he put on his hat and practiced saluting. Then he kissed him softly and went back to sleep. When he woke up, Uncle Yussel was gone.
7.
Soon afterward, Hershy’s father left also, to help build barracks at southern army camps. The war, then, seemed to have caught up his whole family, except himself and his mother. Uncle Yussel was overseas. His father was working for the army. Even Rachel was helping out: going to dances at canteens to help make the lonely boys from faraway places a little happier, she said, with his mother warning her: “But don’t make them too happy, Rachel. Remember, a woman has only one precious thing to give a man. Taking care of a house, cooking, bringing up children, all that comes later. But a man will die if he gets a piece of damaged goods. So remember, Rachel, don’t make them too happy.”
But Hershy felt that he was out of everything. It seemed to him that he was among a gang of guys who were choosing up sides, and he was praying and begging to be picked, but nobody even looked at him, and finally everybody moved away and began to play, and he was left alone. He felt even worse when the airplane became firmly established as an instrument of war. Oh, if he was only old enough. Oh, would he fly, like an eagle. Oh, would he be a pilot. Why did it take so long to be old enough? Why did it take so long to grow up and be big enough? Why couldn’t a guy jump into the world, bang, and be a big fighting man who could do anything?
“Thank God you aren’t grown up,” his mother said. “You have plenty of time to do the things you have to. There will be many things for you to do, don’t worry, when you do grow up, and I hope it won’t be fighting. Before you know it, you’ll be grown up, you’ll be a man, and then you’ll be wishing you’re a child again. You will see.”
But Hershy couldn’t see. How could anybody wish he was a little kid?
His mother, for whom worrying was not only an occupation but also a luxury, seemed to exhaust herself with all her worries. She fretted about his father and Uncle Yussel, about her two brothers in the Russian army and her parents in Russia, from whom she hadn’t heard since the war began. She even worried about Rachel.
“Rachel, why don’t you stay home sometime?” she nagged.
“What will I do home?”
“Keep me company a little.”
“Aw, Ma.” (She always called her aunt and uncle ma and pa.)
“But what do you do night after night?”
“I told you. A million times I told you.”
“You’re selfish.”
“Why am I selfish? All day long I work, I’m a dog. At night I want to breathe. I go to my dancing class and I feel like a fairy tale. Or I go to a dance and meet a boy. I feel important. Everybody wants to dance with me. Everybody is nice. They make me feel like I got a big place in the world. I learn all men aren’t bosses, pushing you around. I learn men got hearts, too. They want to do things for you, turn worlds upside down. You feel like a queen. All I want is a little fun, a little pleasure. Is that selfish?”
“Yes.”
“Aw, Ma.”
“Do I have fun? What pleasure do I have?”
“But you’ve got everything.”
“Yes, I have everything, including a cold bed and a crazy pain in my belly. Go, go dance, but be careful.”
Her worries, it seemed, shifted to him. It got so that he could hardly do anything. If he was a minute late to a meal or bedtime or anything, thunder from her face crashed down on him. She kissed him more often, stared at him longer, held him tighter when she hugged him, wanted him with her even when he was in the way; sometimes he didn’t know what was coming over her and what she wanted from him. It made him wish with all his might that his father was home; then she wouldn’t make him stay in the house so much, it would be easier to get out at night, and he could stay up later. He also wished his father was home because he would get into fewer fights, or he would feel stronger when he did get into them; and he wouldn’t always be hearing: “Remember, Papa sai
d you should be a good boy.” It felt funny to be aware of his father about the streets and in the house, even though he was nowhere to be seen. Sometimes it seemed to him that his father was never coming back, and it frightened him.
The only time he felt good about his father not being home was at night, especially if he was afraid, when his mother would let him sleep with her. That was better than sleeping alone on the daybed in the dining room, where it was cold and ghosty. In bed with her it was always warm, he was always protected, he was afraid of nothing, he never got bad dreams, and he didn’t even mind it when she sometimes put her arms around him in her sleep. That was the only time he didn’t mind being a little boy, and he didn’t care what the old people from the old country said about it being a sin to sleep with his mother. He was always sure to go to sleep on his father’s side of the bed when a landsman was visiting at night, especially the one who had been a suitor of his mother’s in the old country and who was now a successful customer peddler and who was still, according to his mother, in love with her. Hershy hated him, the way he looked with his tobacco-stained mustache, hairy nose, and fierce eyes, so unlike the clean face of his father; he hated the way the landsman would sit heavily and sigh and transport his mother back to Russia, to mysterious days he knew nothing about; he hated the way they sometimes spoke in Russian so that he wouldn’t know what they were saying; and he hated the way his mother looked, so warm, glowing, and excited at times. And always, when he was told to go to sleep, he backed away, glaring, to her bed. Once she asked him why he did that.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m afraid.”
“Why, suddenly, are you afraid?”
“I don’t know.”
Then he heard the man say: “I thought he was a big boy.”
“On the streets he’s a giant, a hero,” his mother explained. “But at night, in the house, he shrivels into a baby.”
“Shame on him. When I was his age I wandered over the countryside; I was getting ready to start working for a living.”
“In America they’re different. Men are babies, and babies are frightened mice.”
“You spoil him, Sonya.”
But he wasn’t spoiled, he told himself. He’d grow up someday. He’d show them who was spoiled. He never fell asleep until the man left, his body tight, his heart hammering, especially when they spoke in whispers or when they were silent.
But his father made himself felt often enough to prevent anything from happening. He seemed to come home in person, announced by a shrill, marble-like whistle, which the mailman blew before delivering his letters.
At first, the letters came with a laborious, sprawling handwriting on the envelope, but inside was a strange, tiny, compact handwriting in Yiddish, which neither he nor his mother could read. Then they’d walk across the park to visit Uncle Hymie and Aunt Reva to get the letter read. Afterwards, he’d play outside with his cousin Manny, or they’d go for a ride in his uncle’s car, or he’d watch his aunt make his mother gasp with envy in showing off a new dress, a new jewel, a new piece of furniture.
“Live, sister, live,” his mother would say.
And on the way home, she’d say: “Papa slaves for a piece of bread. And my sister lives like a baroness. Oh, how people with a dollar can live.”
“But we ain’t poor, are we, Ma?”
“No, we’re not poor. We eat well, we have a flat and a stove to heat it, and we sleep well. But other people live.”
“How come Pa ain’t rich like Uncle Hymie?”
“How come?”
“But maybe Pa’ll come home with a lot of money. Then you’ll have things like Aunt Reva, and Pa’ll have a car, and I’ll have a million things like that punk Manny.”
“Maybe, maybe. But maybe is such a long time. Anyhow, Papa doesn’t have ulcers, nobody hates him, he has no sins on his head.”
“Is that what’s the matter with Uncle Hymie? Is that why he wants to bring a rabbi from Russia over here after the war?”
“Shah, it has nothing to do with you.”
“Okay, I was just talking.”
But usually, after a reading, they talked about his father. And afterward, until the next letter came, his mother would take the blue-lined paper with the peculiar script on it from the cut-glass bowl in the china closet and stare at it, then mutter the phrases she remembered from Uncle Hymie’s reading.
In one letter, his father wrote part of it in Russian, which he couldn’t understand but which embarrassed his mother. She smiled awkwardly through Uncle Hymie’s reading and the loud laughter, sly talk, and knowing elbow-pokes that followed. And when they got home, she said: “Hershel, from now on you write the letters to Papa, and you tell him to write us in English. Everybody doesn’t have to know everything.”
“Why, what’d Pa write, you know, where it was in Russian?”
Her cheeks turned red and she said: “You’re too young to know.”
What could his father have written? he wondered. But he never found out, for his father, apparently, never repeated the secret after he began to write in English. The letters were brief and simple, sprawled over three and four pages, which was done purposely, his father explained, so that Hershy would find them easier to read. And he wrote back what his mother told him, but he always added his own postscript: “I am a good boy, Pa. Ma told me to tell you.” Once he added: “Ma told me to tell you she wants you should say to her again what you once said to her in Russian on a letter.” But his father ignored the postscript.
Sometimes he protested and wanted Rachel to answer his father’s letters, but she was too busy.
“That’s all I got to do, write letters,” she said.
Actually, Rachel couldn’t write much better than himself. She was nine years old before his parents learned that she had to go to school and how to go about getting her into one. In classes with children three and four years younger than herself, she suffered horribly through five years of school, flunking twice, before she quit. Hershy’s father had to lie about her age, saying she was sixteen, when the truant officer came to the house. But since there was no record of her birth and since she did look mature, she was allowed to leave school and go to work. Hershy’s father hoped his dead sister would forgive him. God knew he had tried his best. Besides, she seemed better equipped to become a dancer. Her soul yearned so hard to become one, especially after the first excitement of going to work in a dress factory wore off. Besides, women didn’t need too much education to fulfill their role in life. Also, he argued, a woman didn’t necessarily have to know the sum of two and two, or who discovered what, in order to be a good wife and mother, which, despite her dancing, he knew she was going to be.
So Hershy, during his father’s absence, was the official letter-writer and reader of the family, the bridge between his father and mother. Once, however, a letter wasn’t received in over two weeks. His mother sat up late worrying. When it was time for the postman to arrive, she trembled for the sound of his whistle. And every day she made him read the last letter over and over, trying to interpret some sign from it to relieve her fears, until they both knew it by heart. Then a letter finally came, and some of the writing was blurred:
“Yussel is dead. He was killed in France. The Germans killed him. All week I sat shiva (in mourning). Bitter tears are in my heart. They run down my face. Now all I have is you, dear Sonya. My dearest son, Hershel. My precious Rachel. You are my life now. Do not let anything happen to you. Be a good boy, Hershel. Be a good girl, Rachel. Take care of them, Sonya. Take care of yourself. My whole heart loves you.”
His mother burst into tears. She drew the shades and told him to run out and buy a glassful of tallow with a wick in it. She lit it when he came back. And then she took off her shoes and stockings and sat down on the floor and began to rock back and forth. His legs began to tremble; then he, too, began to cry, and he sat down beside his mother.
“Me, too, Ma? Should I do it, too?”
“No, dearest, you don’t h
ave to.”
“Why don’t I have to, if you have to?”
“I don’t have to, either. I don’t know what else to do. I just don’t know what else to do.”
She flung her arms around him and drew him onto her lap and rocked him back and forth, and he felt her hot tears drop on his face.
8.
Soon afterward, all the whistles and horns in the world began to blow. People went crazy. The war was over. And then his father wrote that he was coming home.
CHAPTER THREE
1.
It was almost as Herhsy had imagined, only his father didn’t have on a miner’s cap, nor was he in short sleeves and overalls, nor was he made of granite, nor was he carrying a lunch pail. Instead, he was wearing a gray hat and a black coat; and his thin, hollow-cheeked, bony face seemed lost under the hat and crunched within the high stiff collar.
Hershy wouldn’t have recognized him as he turned the corner onto his street but for the chest of tools he was carrying on his shoulder and the old cardboard suitcase he was holding in his other hand. And, as he watched with his mouth open, unable to move, his father called: “Hershele. Hershele.”
“Pa. Pa.”
Like a shot he was in front of his father. He flung his arms around him. His father dropped the suitcase and embraced him, then stooped down and kissed him. His face was grimy with sweat and his greenish-gray eyes were wider and shinier than Hershy had ever seen them, and for a moment both their lips were stiff with emotion.
Hershy released him as his father bent to one knee and eased the chest of tools to the ground; then he grabbed Hershy’s shoulders and looked at him steadily, his eyes flooding with tears, and crushed him to his chest, just like the miner in the park with the child in his arms, but the feeling Hershy had was bigger than the whole world and it was harder in him than the granite of the statue. He couldn’t talk. He had a million things to say, a million things to ask. But he couldn’t talk. Then his father released him and lifted the chest of tools to his shoulders. Hershy grabbed the suitcase and, in the wake of his father’s sharp familiar smell of wood and sweat, followed him to the house.