“MB No. 118. Wood Carving,” my father signed to me, with an optimism I was sure was misguided.
That evening we sat, my father, brother, and I, where we always sat when there was a project at hand—at the kitchen table. And as usual my mother was doing the dinner dishes, her back turned to us, but a definite smile on her face; a smile that threatened, I thought, to break into a belly laugh.
The X-Acto knife set sat squarely in the middle of the table, on a sheet of the day’s newspaper. Alongside the open case were three bars of Ivory soap.
“We’ll break in these knives by carving the bars of soap. That way we won’t dull the blades, and you’ll get practice in carving.”
That made sense to me, and picking up one of the knives, I proceeded to slice a bar of soap neatly in two, along with the web of skin between my thumb and forefinger.
My brother, who had been eyeing the box of blades enviously, left the table in a precipitous rush at the sight of the blood spurting from my hand. He was always complaining to my father that I always got new things first, never shared them, and passed them on to him only when they got old and worn or even broken. But this time he lost interest in my latest acquisition almost immediately.
Once the flow of blood was stemmed and the cut was bandaged, we tried again.
“Gently, softly,” my father signed. I was frankly getting tired of these signs.
But slowly, gently, softly, I learned to use the knives and succeeded in carving out of the soft, yielding soap an approximation of an antelope. Sure, it looked as if its horns were growing out of its tail—actually, it looked remarkably like the stamp I had mangled. But what the heck, it wasn’t half bad. I can do this, I thought.
“Practice,” my father signed. I did. Every afternoon I carved an animal from a bar of soap, some strictly from my imagination, and every evening I would display the result to my mother and father, as my brother stared skeptically at my latest effort.
“WONDERFUL,” my mother would sign expansively, exploding her open hands from the sides of her face in admiration.
“Practice,” my father’s more subdued sign suggested. I did. In time the bathroom was filled to overflowing with grotesque soap animals of every imaginable description. We washed with elephants with one ear missing. My brother and I bathed with mice and rats missing tails and ears. My father shaved with short-necked giraffes. And my mother did the dishes with soap nightmares that no one, not even myself, could explain. However, the scabs that formed on both of my hands, the result of countless nicks and cuts, were easily identifiable.
After about a hundred bars of Ivory soap—and a pint of blood, spilled drop by drop—we abandoned the project known as “MB No. 118. Wood Carving.” And about a week after that my Boy Scout uniform was gently wrapped in tissue paper, mothballs, and cedar shavings and put away in the bottom drawer of my dresser. What was the use of being a Boy Scout, my father and I agreed, if I couldn’t get even one darn merit badge?
My brother was thrilled. Here was something of mine, he realized, that would one day be passed down to him in virtually pristine condition. But by the time that day finally arrived, he had lost all interest. No one on our block was a Boy Scout, and for that matter, no one had ever been a Boy Scout. And my brother had no more interest than I did in being known as the first Boy Scout on West Ninth Street.
Memorabilia
A Chip Off the Old Block
Although my father’s quest for a Boy Scout merit badge for me ultimately met with no more success than did the Brooklyn Dodgers’ annual quest for the World Series, he was nonetheless determined that I follow in his footsteps and develop a passion for a hobby—any hobby.
My father had many hobbies, which was typical for the deaf of that time and place, as they had nothing like the breadth of entertainment available for the deaf today (most notably, captioned television and captioned DVDs). And my father became an expert in every hobby he ever tried.
My father was also a great believer in heredity. Thus, he reasoned, not only would I enjoy having a hobby, but like him I would excel at it. And so began a steady accumulation of “sets” brought home by my eager father, on which I was to hone my hobby skills.
My A.C. Gilbert Chemistry Set was housed in a cunning wooden case, secured by a brass catch. Inside the hinged double case were shelves containing an impressive array of chemicals in glass jars, many with cork stoppers, and trays of glass test tubes and tiny measuring spoons, litmus paper, and a spatula. There was even a small but effective balance and an alcohol lamp.
Each jar of chemicals had a label affixed to its side, with an exotic, often indecipherable name: phenolphthalein; ammonium chloride; sodium carbonate; sodium ferrocyanide; cobalt chloride (a beautiful color); calcium oxide; ferric ammonium sulfate. On and on marched the jaw-dropping names across the rows of jars, neatly stacked in their wooden racks.
Accompanying this impressive collection of chemicals was a manual titled Fun with Chemistry. The cover displayed a young boy holding a lightning bolt.
My father instructed me to read the manual before I attempted any experiment. Then he left me to enjoy my new hobby, signing, “Have fun. Experiment.”
I was a fast reader and soon scanned the two hundred–odd experiments that the manual promised were possible with the judicious use of the chemicals contained in this set.
The very next afternoon, with my mother’s grudging permission, I set up my “lab” in our bathroom.
Closing the bathroom door behind me, imagining myself the mad scientist I had seen in last week’s movie, I proceeded to do “experiments.”
I turned water into “wine”—actually, clear water into rose-colored water.
I made writing ink, which was invisible until heated over my alcohol flame.
I exhausted the supply of litmus paper, transforming the various strips into a variety of stunning colors after dipping them in assorted toxic brews.
I was even able to create smoke, after mixing four different chemicals in a test tube, which rose to our bathroom ceiling and hung there like fog until I dispersed it with bathroom towels.
Then I got bored—until I recalled the boy holding the lightning bolt.
Impatiently putting aside the manual, I wondered what would happen if I mixed certain chemicals, based just on their color and the sound of their names.
Mixing no fewer than twelve chemicals together, I applied the resulting mixture to the heat of my alcohol lamp. Standing in the tub, I watched from behind the shower curtain as the flame licked at the bottom of the test tube, held in its metal rack. Slowly but surely the mixture began to bubble—then boil. Then it exploded!
The paint peeled from the ceiling of our bathroom. The sound of exploding glass was deafening. But I had no problem in that respect, as I knew my mother had heard not a thing.
The smell was something else again. The stink was all-enveloping, the sulfurous odor of Hades itself.
One whiff of that scalding odor as it wafted from beneath the bathroom door, and my mother was at the door, yanking it open. Whereupon a huge cloud of smoke drifted into the living room, covering every piece of furniture, seeping into the fabric covering the couch, and eventually dying in the folds of the drapes hanging in front of our windows.
“What in God’s name,” my father signed as he came through our front door that evening, “is that horrible smell?”
My mother quietly informed her husband that “his son” had been “experimenting.” She couldn’t help adding, “Just as you told him to.”
A week after disposing of my A.C. Gilbert Chemistry Set, my father brought home an A.C. Gilbert Erector Set.
Opening it, I examined the multitude of metal girders in varying lengths, and assorted colored perforated metal pieces in all shapes and sizes, along with a multitude of nuts and bolts and washers. And there, held in a special slot, was an electric motor.
Accompanying all of it was, as usual, a detailed instruction manual. On the cover of the manual was a
picture of a boy standing next to a huge Ferris wheel that stood well over his head, with swinging multicolored cars, the whole thing powered by an electric motor.
Holding that image firmly in mind—but not deigning to refer to any instructions contained inside the manual—I furiously began to assemble the girders and metal plates.
“God help me,” my mother signed to me, as she watched me attaching girder to girder, every which way, never once looking at any instructions. “You remind me of my father, Max.”
Now that was a surprise. I knew my mother’s feelings for her father were, to say the least, complicated. And by now Celia, his long-suffering wife, had shown him the door for the last time. Having been taken in by Anne, the wife of my mother’s youngest brother, Milton, he lived in Stony Creek, Connecticut—as different a place from Coney Island as the forests of Hungary were from the tenements of Manhattan Island. What on earth my mother saw in me that could even remotely make her think of him was beyond my grasp.
Apparently, however, my last escapade had opened the flood-gates of memory for my mother, prompting another story about her foolish father, Max the Gypsy, and his ever-practical wife, Celia, the thin-nosed, tight-lipped Russian beauty who hated him with undiluted passion.
My mother’s mother, Celia, circa 1902
“My father, Max, had only one job in his entire life,” she signed to me. “And that job lasted but one day and ended with my father going to jail for a week.” The sign for jail is quite explicit and would be understood by anyone: the two hands overlap in front of the face, fingers extended to form small openings; the eyes peek through the “bars.” My impressionable young mind easily pictured my grandfather, Max, staring indignantly through the iron bars of his cell, while Celia stared back at him with the condemnatory look she reserved just for him. “Someone he knew got him a job as a pig-iron worker; pig iron was used in those days in the manufacturing of fire escapes, an item in great demand, as apartment buildings were sprouting up all over Brooklyn. Of course, Max knew nothing about the making of pig iron, but not knowing something was not the end of the matter for my father, only the beginning. And by beginning, I don’t mean of the learning process but the bullshitting process.”
My mother got her propensity for using the occasional scatological sign from my father, who not only loved them but in our home was the proud inventor of many.
“Max had no patience for instruction of any kind,” my mother signed. “He preferred his native, forest-bred Gypsy intuitiveness. So with only a bare minimum of information, he began, with great energy and imagination, to mix his first batch of pig iron.
“Unfortunately, at that moment the owner of this modest Brooklyn version of a Pittsburgh steel mill strolled through the door, observed this ragged stranger mixing a brew unlike any he had ever seen, and promptly asked what the hell he thought he was doing.
“‘Making pig iron, and who the hell are you?’ my father answered.
“The owner called over the foreman and demanded an explanation.
“The foreman, not knowing much about my father and his Hungarian temper, denied any responsibility; whereupon my father picked up a lead pipe and smashed it over his head. Max would never tolerate injustice of any kind. As the unconscious foreman lay at his feet, and the owner stood staring at my father slack-jawed, Max said, with great dignity—as he later told Celia—‘I quit!’ And he added, ‘Do your worst.’ One week in the clink was what the state demanded as repayment from my father. A week he seemed proud to pay, in the cause of justice.
“My father never worked for anyone ever again. Instead he began a long career as a self-designated professional expert craftsman. His imagination far outstripped any skills he may have had, which in any case he lacked the patience to stop and acquire.” My mother paused. “You remind me of him in that way.
“By turns my father was a roofer, then a plumber,” she continued. “As a roofer, he walked backward off a roof while measuring it. As a plumber, he turned a gas valve on, rather than off, and almost gassed the entire neighborhood.”
By now it was quite late in the afternoon. My father would be coming home from work within the hour. It was time for my mother to begin preparing the evening meal. My mother’s hands stopped abruptly in midsentence and hung suspended in the gray light, thinking.
“Yes, in a way, you’re a chip off the old block.”
16
Brooklyn Bully
Freddy was the bully of our block and the bane of my existence. He was the angriest kid in our neighborhood, maybe the angriest kid in all of Brooklyn. He was mad from sunup to sundown. Every kid in the neighborhood was his natural enemy. We sometimes wondered about this. What the heck was Freddy so angry about? What did we ever do to him?
If not for my speed, Freddy would have caught me during our weekly early-evening footraces across the grass and down the pathways of Seth Low Park, in the brief period when my father was still making me go to Boy Scout meetings. With the hated yellow scarf flying over my shoulder as he gained on me, I wished I were four inches taller and thirty pounds heavier. But I wasn’t, and with that knowledge I increased my speed a notch, leaving him, gasping, behind. Safe again!
Freddy’s goal, thus far unrealized, was to come upon me unawares and administer his infamous “Indian burn.” Whenever Freddy caught a kid, always one smaller than himself, he would grab the boy’s arm in his ham-hock hands, at its most tender part, and then twist, so that each fat hand went in the opposite direction from the other. The result was always the same: a mighty howl of pain from the unfortunate boy and a forearm as red as if it had been exposed to a Bunsen burner.
If the Indian burn failed to motivate the boy to sue for peace, Freddy administered his knuckle rap: a short, sharp pang on the head with his pointed knuckle, which was, unlike his hand, fat free and thus quite pointy. For the unfortunate boy who had a crewcut, this procedure raised an interestingly shaped knot on his head, often the size of an egg. Such was the outcome of Freddy catching you.
As I was the only kid on our block who had so far escaped Freddy’s ministrations, I held a special place in his malignant heart. He could not catch me, as I easily outran him. And when trapped, as in an alley, I was agile enough that I could squirm my way to safety. This drove him crazy. Especially when, just out of his reach, I would laugh and taunt him. This proved to be my undoing.
Freddy was not a stupid boy. He was a bit fat and clumsy perhaps, and slow-footed for sure, but he was not slow-witted. I could outrun him, but there was always the possibility that he could outthink me. Freddy developed a plan—a plan to silence my jeering insults and end my humiliating escapes, perhaps forever.
The tar-paper roof of our apartment house, accessed through a heavy metal door, was my private park, as I’ve said, the one place on our busy Brooklyn block where I could go and be completely by myself. I had obtained a copy of the primitive key that secured the door. It was my most precious possession. With it I could remove myself from the incessant noise and activity that permeated my block. I could sit, my back to the low perimeter of the brick roof wall, and read a book, or wonder about my life, or just look at the clouds sailing by in the blue sky over Brooklyn. And from my roof, on a really clear day, I could catch glimpses of the Atlantic Ocean reflecting the early-morning light, lying off Coney Island, just a few miles away.
Needless to say, I sometimes let my guard down during these reveries, and one fateful afternoon that almost led to my undoing.
Unbeknownst to me, Freddy had studied my movements over the course of a typical week, the better to plan my eventual capture. Having made careful note of my sudden and inexplicable disappearances, he followed silently behind as I took myself to the roof one day.
Usually I used my secret key to relock the metal roof door behind me as soon as I got there. But on this particular afternoon, in my haste to read a new book, I forgot.
Deeply engrossed in the predicament of the main character, I failed to hear Freddy creeping up on
me. When I finally heard his sneakered feet sliding over the graveled roof, it was almost too late.
Leaping to my feet, I threw my book at his head and ran past him, as he reflexively ducked. It was a thick book. It contained many chapters, many adventures. Had I been reading a thin, in-substantial comic book, my fate would have been sealed.
But my reprieve was brief. I dashed to the roof door, only to discover that Freddy had jammed it shut. I then ran, like a demented rat in a maze, all around the roof. Through and around the sheets hanging from the clotheslines on the roof, around the twin chimney stacks, and around the many protruding air vents that jutted up from the roof, I raced, with Freddy in close pursuit.
Slowly but surely Freddy herded me into a corner. I was trapped.
The next thing I knew, I was dangling, head down, held only by my ankles, over the edge of the roof.
Strangely, I was not afraid. Instead I was fascinated, in an odd way, to observe the ground six floors below my head. I had, literally, a bird’s-eye view of the clotheslines extending from each apartment window. Now, I thought, if Freddy were to let me go, I would bounce off the clotheslines, as a steel ball bounces off the many bumpers on a pinball machine before ending its journey—in the slot at the bottom of the machine—without a scratch.
I couldn’t help wondering where I would end up if dropped. But since I was not a steel ball and was unlikely to end without a scratch, I dismissed that question from my mind.
As I had a wonderful imagination, a new image, unbidden, came clearly to mind: on the way down I would be trapped in one of the giant brassieres hanging from Mrs. Abromovitz’s line.
Hands of My Father: A Hearing Boy, His Deaf Parents, and the Language of Love Page 14