by Sam Ross
Suddenly, like a deep sigh, everybody relaxed. Hershy felt a dry thump when he swallowed.
“You know,” Red Doyle said. “I like you, Joey. You don’t say much, but you talk a mile a minute when you move. You got style. You got the kind of style I like. Let me feel the arm.”
Red Doyle felt Joey’s shoulder and bicep and pursed his lips.
“You push plenty of muscle, Joey.”
“I do okay with it,” Joey admitted.
“I could use you, Joey. A brain needs plenty of muscle around it. Maybe I could use Louie, too, with that angle he’s got on prohibition.”
Louie found his tongue. “Yah, Red. The way I look at it, a law ain’t going to stop a man from drinking. A man, he puts in a hard day’s work, he needs a place to relax, a place to get away from his ball and chain, his kids, his troubles; he needs a drink, a man does. And who are we to say no to a man? Like I said before, Red, live and let live, that’s my motto.”
“See me tomorrow,” Red said. “We’ll talk about it. Bring Joey.”
Hershy tried hard to remember every word, every action. He never wanted to forget this scene. He wanted to report it as accurately as possible. This had the movies beat a mile. He watched Red Doyle drive off, then Louie slapped Joey’s back and said: “We’re in, kid.” Just like that. That was exactly how he was going to end the story when he told it to the guys: “We’re in, kid.”
But he wouldn’t be able to tell anyone what happened afterward. He’d have to remember it for himself, a delicate secret, as a private victory. For afterward, Joey didn’t go back into the restaurant with Louie. He began to wait for Rachel.
This time he didn’t whistle when she got off the streetcar. She fluffed her hair and glanced his way and lingered a second before crossing the street. Joey crushed the springs that he had been working on in his hands and stepped over to her. She glanced at him and turned her head away, then hurried along with Joey chasing after her.
“Where’s the fire?”
She didn’t answer, just jerked her head and shoulders, as though a fly had disturbed her.
“Where you going?”
“Home.”
“Okay, I’ll take you home.”
“Thanks. I can find my way.”
“I said I’ll take you home.”
“You get away from me. I’ll call the cop on the corner.”
He seemed to suddenly loosen up in his tight coat. He put the handsprings in his pockets, and, as he laughed, he placed one of his big hands on her shoulder and turned her to face the cop on the corner.
“Call him,” he said.
“Don’t. Get your dirty hands off of me.”
“Call the cop. Go ahead, call the cop.”
She hesitated.
“What’s a cop?” he said. “A tin button you can smash like that.” He tore a button off his coat and crushed it to bits on the ground with his heel. He tore another button off his coat and put it in his pocket and jingled the money there. “I got him in my pocket, see. Loose change.”
“So you got him in your pocket.”
“But you, I got you here.” He pointed to his head. “It’s got me walking in circles. And I got you here.” He punched his heart. “Big as a basketball.”
He put his arm through hers. And, in the powerful bulk of his muscle moving like a life force against her as they walked, she felt her throat grow hot and dry, kindled by fear and fascination.
Hershy, in seeing them finally together, leaped high in the air and wrapped his arms about himself.
Afterward, through Rachel, as she was seen again and again with Joey, Hershy became the link between his pals and the bold, powerful, heroic lives of Joey and his gang. His favor was always sought. No game was played unless he led it. No stunt was done until he could view it and approve it. And whenever a kid got in trouble, or was hit, or was threatened with a fight, he’d say: “I’ll tell Hershy on you.”
Perhaps for the first time in the lives of his pals they wished they had a big sister. Those who did have a big sister sometimes stopped Joey on the street.
“Hey, Joey. I got a big sister. A beaut.” Then they’d roll their eyes and describe her curves with their hands. “Want to meet her?”
Joey’d pretend to slug them with the back of his hand “Go on, beat it, punk.”
Hershy, the kids said secretly, must have put a hex on Joey. They said, when Hershy wasn’t around, that Rachel must be a whore. Sure, they argued. She was a dancer, wasn’t she? All dancers were whores. Sure, once Cyclops had seen her practicing in Hershy’s house. Man, did she have legs, like a whore. And tits, with beads on them, like a whore. She was bow-legged, too. And that wasn’t from riding horses. Then, whop, he had seen her jump way up in the air, and she came down, kerflop, in a full split, right on it, whoppo, right on it. A contortionist, she was, too. And everybody knew what a contortionist was. Nobody had to tell them. And was she zoftig. With beads on them, yah.
No wonder, then. Hershy could have her for a sister, then.
But still they approached Joey: “I got a sister, Joey. An acrobat. Zoftig, too. Want to meet her?”
All this bewildered Joey. What the hell was happening to these kids? he wondered.
But still they paid tribute to Hershy. After all, you couldn’t afford to let a guy like Hershy get mad on you now. He might tell Joey. It wouldn’t be healthy. Besides, Joey might become Hershy’s big brother for real. That lucky Hershy. It called for tribute.
3.
Though Hershy was overjoyed at the prospect of having a big brother like Joey Gans, he didn’t quite know how to feel about the prospect of having a baby brother or sister. For one was surely on the way, and it was hard to admit the truth of it to himself, especially since nothing definite had been announced.
His father suddenly began to sit prouder at the supper table. He ate heartier, had a stronger light in his eye, seemed to swell as he flexed his muscles, and was more tender to Hershy’s mother than Hershy had ever known. His mother seemed to grow softer and fleshier. Something happened to her posture; she seemed to stand taller, with her chin tilted up and her shoulders arched back. Something happened to her eyes; they seemed to glow inward, as though they were searching for something within herself, and, as though finding something pleasant, they became soft and warm.
Men felt his father’s arms and slapped his back and poked him slyly, and looked with wonder at his mother. Women admired his father, made his eyes shine, gave him a kind of glowing manhood, and groaned and sighed and looked pleased with his mother. Everybody was a part of what was going on with his mother except himself: the child, until his time came, was cast out of the universal social experience of conception and impending birth, and it confused Hershy.
There were peculiar allusions to the food they were eating. What kind of spice had his mother discovered suddenly, after all these barren years, that radiated the pure, necessary heat to thicken the blood and make it pound with a life force? It was a wonder that Rachel hadn’t been affected, and if they weren’t careful Hershel might become a man before his time. Perhaps his mother had changed icemen lately, or surely milkmen, or the coalman for certain. Or perhaps his father, in his travels down South, had done some strange things to change his luck. Or perhaps it was her powerful prayers over the Friday night candles, combined with the wonders of her baked choles, whose braids were the finest anybody had ever seen.
Hershy knew about the braids. He had heard Aunt Bronya, his mother’s oldest sister, talk about them once. In olden days, before Moses and before there was One God, women offered their hair to the goddess of fertility. Later the Jewish women adopted the pagan custom, but instead of hair the braids on the Sabbath bread were offered. Maybe it was a foolish thing to do, Aunt Bronya said, but who could it hurt? He remembered then how his mother, just before putting the chole into the oven, pinched off a piece of dough from the braid and threw it quickly into the oven and muttered something mysterious. And he remembered recently the charr
ed crusts of dough that came out of the oven when he watched her clean it. Sometimes he dreamed afterward that her long black hair caught fire and she went up in a screaming flame and then drifted down through a cloud of smoke all charred and as big as two people, and the dream woke him up choking and trembling.
In a few months, however, the cruel truth struck him on the street.
“Hey, Hershy. Your ma’s getting fat.”
“So what? When you get older you get fatter.”
“She ain’t getting fatter from getting older.”
“Then what’s she getting fatter from, wise guy?”
“You know.”
“You sonofabitch. She’s getting fatter because my pa’s home.”
“Sure she is. Ha, ha, ha.”
“Because we’re eating more to get him fatter, see. My ma eats a lot, that’s all, to show my pa how good she cooks, see.”
“Yah, yah.”
“My pa didn’t eat good for over a year, that’s why. So to make him eat like a horse she’s eating like a horse.”
“Yah, yah.”
“I’ll kill you if you don’t believe me.”
“Okay, okay.”
A shocking image, gained from the dark alleys and the basements and the streets, over which he had reveled and laughed in other cases, formed in his mind. He tried to hide from it. In doing so, he felt himself cringing from his mother and father, Rachel and Joey, and his pals. They changed suddenly, seemed to rise as enemies. He dreaded being with his pals for fear of their talking about it. He tried to avoid thinking about his mother and father, and Joey and Rachel, for fear of the grotesque things they did in his mind. Nobody, somehow, knew what was happening to him. And, helpless before the fact, he brooded.
“Why don’t you go out and play?” his mother wanted to know one Friday.
“I don’t want to.”
“Why, is somebody after you?”
“No.”
“You sick?”
“No.”
“Then what’s the matter with you?”
“Nothing, see.”
“Go turn a somersault, then. Let what’s bothering you fall out.”
The kitchen smelt of the boiling chicken and the gefüllte fish that was cooling off and the baked chole that rested on a clean dish towel. As the light dimmed, his mother lit the white candles, which rested in brass holders. Then, with her hands almost touching the flames, she made strange symbols while muttering a prayer over them. Her bulkier back and broader hips were facing him, and the flickering candles gave her shadow a grotesque look on the wall and ceiling. He began to mimic her mumbling and from the shadow of his hands he made an eagle fly on the wall; but to his mother it looked like a bat. She stopped her prayers suddenly and looked at the flickering wings in terror, then gasped as she saw the bat quickly jab its beak into the shadow of her throat. She reeled back and then saw that it was he who had made the shadowed bat. She rushed over and slapped his face and swore at him.
“Ah, what’d I do?” he yelled. “What’d I do?”
She paid no attention to him and went back to her prayers. He formed a hopping rabbit on the wall from the shadow of his hands. His mother saw it just as it took a bite out of the shadow of her nose. She stumbled back, cursing him, but he rushed past her and dived under the bed in Rachel’s room and crawled into a corner. He lay there awhile, the dark like a hand pressing him against the wall and crushing out all thought. When he thought it safe, he came back into the kitchen.
“Dybbuk, you.”
She was sitting at the table, huge in the dim light, and he glared at her.
“What kind of a devil are you?”
He didn’t answer.
“Why do you twist your face like that? What are you mad about?”
“For nothing, see.”
“I’ll give you, for nothing.”
“Yah?”
“I’ll hit you so hard you’ll turn over three times if you’re not careful.”
“Yah?”
“Yah.”
“Why, what’d I do?”
“You almost frightened me to death, you black cholera, you.”
“What’d I do? I only made some magic on the wall, that’s all. For that you got to hit me?”
“It’s a sin to do it when I’m praying over the candles. Do you want something bad should happen to us?”
“I don’t care.”
“I’ll give you an I don’t care.”
“Why do you have to bench licht?”
“Because I have to.”
“You didn’t always.”
“I have to now.”
“Why?”
“So you won’t get sick, so Papa will be in good health and keep working, so nothing will happen to Rachel, so I might be strong enough to care for all of you.”
“It ain’t not why.”
“All right, you tell me why.”
“You do it to make you fat.”
“Who told you?”
“You eat like a horse, too, to get fat.”
She stared at him with her mouth fumbling for something to say. “What do they tell you on the streets?” she said finally.
“Nothing.”
“Snots, and already they know the secret of life.”
“Why’d you do it, Ma?” He felt his throat get fuzzy.
“What?” Her eyes opened wide, horrified.
“Get fatter.”
“It’s nature.”
“Can’t you get skinny again?”
“No.”
“All the guys on the street, they know.”
“Let them know. I don’t know what they say on the street, but let them know I’m proud. Let them know Papa’s proud. Let them know I am carrying a gift from God. Let them know you’re proud, too, Hershele.” She leaned toward him. “Maybe you’ll have a brother. A little brother, who will grow up and play with you and be your best friend. A little brother, who will be to you what Uncle Yussel was to Papa. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a brother like Uncle Yussel?”
“Yes,” he had to admit. “But what if it’s a girl?”
“Then she’ll be like Rachel, the blood of your blood, who will be like your own life. I don’t know what they tell you on the streets, but remember this: life comes from God, and no matter how life comes into this world it has to be good because God made it. Remember that.”
The talking subdued his tension. She reached for him, and, in finding himself being drawn to her, he felt his whole being flood over with a need for her. It was nature, he told himself. It came from God. It couldn’t be dirty. It came like a present. It came from magic, like he could suddenly form an eagle or a rabbit, from out of nothing.
In a few days, he accepted the fact and then ignored it. The coming of the baby was something ordered. It might just as well have been ordered at the Boston Store.
4.
In the midst of all this, the spirit of Uncle Yussel appeared on a Saturday morning, heralded by a shrill whistle and hidden in a thick official-looking envelope. Hershy rushed to the front door, with his mother behind him, and the mailman handed her a piece of paper and a pencil.
“Sign here,” said the mailman, pointing to an x.…
Hershy watched his mother stare blankly at the small print.
“Here, where the x is. Sign.”
“What does he want from me?” she asked Hershy in Yiddish.
“He wants you to sign the paper,” Hershy said.
“Why?”
Hershy turned to the mailman and said: “My ma wants to know why she got to sign.”
“Tell her it’s a registered letter. Say it’s an important letter, see. If it’s an important letter you’ve got to sign that paper so the other party knows it was delivered to the right party.”
Hershy translated but she couldn’t understand why this letter was so different from all others. A letter was a letter, she wanted him to tell the mailman. All of them were important. What was so special about this one?
The talk and the insistence upon a signature got her suspicious and frightened. With all that importance attached to that letter there could only be one meaning: bad news, perhaps tragic. Was the mailman sure the letter was for them? Yes, the mailman was sure. Perhaps he had made a mistake. No, he hadn’t made a mistake. He was sure the letter was for them. Was she going to sign or was he going to take the letter back to the post office?
“He wants you to sign, Ma,” said Hershy.
“Tell her there’s nothing to be scared of,” the mailman said to Hershy. “Tell her the post office is like the United States government. Tell her the government don’t pull no phony tricks. Tell her it’s safe to sign. Tell her, for Christ’s sake, to sign.”
Hershy translated. She nodded her head, punctuating: “Yah, yah, yah, yah.” She understood, but she wanted him to tell the mailman that it was Saturday, it was a holy day, and that she couldn’t write on a Saturday, it would be a sin to do it.
“It’s Saturday,” Hershy said to the mailman. “My ma can’t write on Saturday. It’s a Jewish rule, see.”
“Holy Jesus,” said the mailman.
“A rule’s a rule,” Hershy said appeasingly.
‘Then you sign. Just write your father’s name, David Melov, and take the goddam letter from me, will you?”
“The man,” said Hershy to his mother, “wants me to sign for Pa.”
She thought about it a moment.
“All right,” she said. “If you sign, nothing bad can happen then. If it’s a trick they can’t hold us responsible. We’ll prove an infant signed it. Go ahead, sign, Hershele.”
“But, Ma,” he said. “Won’t I get a sin if I write on Saturday?”
“Don’t worry about it, Hershele. Until your thirteenth birthday you’re forgiven everything. God keeps you pure. It’s after barmitzvah that you have to be careful and thoughtful. Sign.”
“Well—” the mailman said.
“I’m signing,” Hershy said. “My ma said it’s all right.”
“Thank Christ,” the mailman said.