by Ka Newborrn
They turned their heads at the familiar sound of the garage door opening and the engine of a sedan turning off. Her father entered the back door adjoined to the kitchen, carrying a weathered briefcase in one hand and a Mc Donald’s bag in the other.
His voice faltered at the sight of the empty table. “You didn’t wait for me, did you, girls? Bobbie Jean? Maggie Mag?” He opened the bag and stuffed a French fry into his mouth, crumpling the bag shut hurriedly and retreated up the stairs to the shelter of his office.
“It’s Margaret, asshole.” Margaret replied calmly to the sound of the office door slamming above.
“Temper, young lady. Temper!” Bobbie Jean sang. She followed her husband up the staircase, leaving her daughter alone, fuming, and shredding her sandwich to bits with her fingers.
✽✽✽
Three weeks after she turned eighteen, Margaret’s parent drove to Pensacola High School to attend their daughter’s college counseling session. During the drive, they practiced aloud the profuse apologies and futile excuses that they would offer the guidance counselor on behalf of their daughter’s putrid attitude and volatile behavior. They entered the principal’s office with a painful air of deference and humility, and scrambled desperately to recall the carefully rehearsed performances that had coursed through their minds only moments before.
The guidance counselor seemed undaunted by Margaret’s personality. After all, he said, she had earned the highest SAT scores in her school district and had aced all of her classes with a seemingly minimal show of effort. He told her parents to be patient with her. They thanked him bleakly and retreated to their Buick with a stack of college catalogs.
Later on that afternoon, after her parents had driven away and she was fucking him in his office, Margaret told the guidance counselor that she planned to major in biology because she needed further insight into how she could have possibly been conceived from such mutant and substandard parents.
Four years later, while working as a laboratory assistant during her senior year at the University of Florida, Margaret examined the sandpapery status of her cuticles and ragged, unpolished fingernails, and decided in that instant to become a prostitute. She set her sights upon moving to Toronto after graduation, with the rationalization that the Canadian tax structure and emphasis on independent business would enable her to seek out a living with minimal legal interference.
She decided to take a vacation before relocating to Canada and decided on Philadelphia. She was interested in visiting the College of Physicians and wanted to tour the Mütter Museum.
After arriving by Amtrak into Market East Station, she checked into a hotel in Rittenhouse Square. She spent the next two weeks exploring the Mütter Museum, Franklin Institute, and other attractions of interest before realizing that she had overspent her stipend and was almost out of money. She purchased a newspaper and settled into a diner for a breakfast dinner and a quick perusal of the want ads.
Within an hour she was standing in front of a brothel adjacent to Independence Mall. Rats frolicked openly around the overflowing trash dumpster that marked its address. The numbers painted on the door were barely visible in the absence of streetlamps. She took a deep breath, carefully tossed back her hair, and brazenly walked inside.
When she took a cab back to the motel six hours later with fifteen hundred dollars, a bottle of Dom Perignon and an established cult following throughout the entire Delaware Valley, she took a hot bath, toasted her newfound success and reconsidered her travel plans.
Within three weeks, three quarters of the Independence Mall clients had followed her to the three bedroom row home that she rented in Rittenhouse Square. Within a month, half of the Independence Hall prostitutes were within her employ. Within six months, her advertisement in the trades had tripled her business. She hired a staff to book appointments, keep house, do laundry, and purchase sheets, condoms and antiseptic.
One afternoon, when she was alone in the house reading approximately three hours before her first appointment was due, the doorbell rang. She walked over to the intercom to answer it. A professional and courteous male voice responded. He told her that a friend had recommended the place and asked permission to come upstairs to see her. She asked him to recall the name of the friend, but he couldn’t remember offhand. Her suspicions were piqued. She began to explain to him that hers was a strictly by-appointment establishment but rashly brushed aside her intuition in lieu of greed, secure in the fact that the vast majority of the Philly mob, a greater portion of the City Council, and the Camden, New Jersey Chief of Police were all regular customers–giving her a heightened sense of immunity.
He was disarmingly agreeable and offered no resistance to her rules. He complimented the décor of the house, addressed her as “ma’am,” and graciously obliged to pay the ridiculous price that she demanded, adding an additional fifty to what they agreed upon.
He was an easy lay: diminutively endowed, conservative and relatively quick. It was only after he had been thoroughly satisfied that he withdrew a pair of handcuffs from his jacket and cuffed her to the bedposts, read her rights and used her telephone to call for backup. Seven officers came to assist. Bolstered by the sight of her naked body rendered powerless by the handcuffs, they took turns raping her as they burst about the townhouse opening cabinets, cutting up mattresses and overturning bookcases in search of money, drugs, and anything else of interest.
They found a bag of marijuana and a sheet of rolling papers in the top drawer of her filing cabinet. They rolled a joint and smoked it in front of her, passing it around jovially and urging it towards her lips although she pursed them carefully shut. They found one thousand dollars hidden in a tin of crackers and thanked her raucously for the generous donation to the Policeman’s Ball Fund. They allowed her ten minutes to use the phone before taking her to the station. She called her lawyer and her gynecologist.
The following morning after her secretary had posted her bail and picked her up from her gynecologist’s appointment, Margaret summoned the remainder of her staff to pick up their belongings. She relocated to an apartment in West Philadelphia and went into seclusion.
She cut her waist length blonde hair and dyed it black. For the sake of anonymity she avoided Center City altogether, opting to meld unnoticed among the Penn students that lived in her new neighborhood.
Having one hundred thousand dollars secured in investments made it unnecessary to seek employment. She spent the majority of her days at the University of Pennsylvania Archaeology Museum and evenings at the University of Pennsylvania Biomedical Library.
By 1970, she had graduated from University of Pennsylvania Medical School, completed an internship at Hahnemann University, and secured employment as a psychiatrist for the City of Philadelphia. Her arrest record had been overlooked due to her unmitigated success in rehabilitating prostitutes, drug addicts, runaways, and the homeless in the service programs she’d completed during medical school. Her good name had been restored, but she was anxious to make more money.
The abortion side business had begun as a result of a phone conversation with Lasse Eriksen, a former john with a struggling podiatry practice in Anaheim, California.
“The Grass Roots movement is really fucking me over,” she had confided to Lasse over a bottle of scotch and pack of cigarettes. “Who can maintain a decent psychiatry practice with the city taking all of my money and self-help books popping up all over the place? I’m OK-You’re OK, The Power of Your Subconscious Mind - can you believe such shit?” She exhaled smoke through her nostrils.
“You think you have problems,” Lasse had grumbled. “It’s hard enough to get patients because I’m a dwarf, but podiatrists are a dying breed. Back in the age of Joan Crawford and spike heels, I had a customer base I could rely on. Now all the dames are wearing earth shoes. My practice is in the toilet.”
“I feel so sorry for you,” she chided, “and your long days filled with crooked toes and fallen arches. I deal with broads who were stupi
d enough to get knocked up. One of them tried to give herself an abortion with a coat hanger.”
Lasse paused. “You know, you may be on to something.”
“What? Coat hangers?”
“Don’t be coarse," he admonished. “It would be easy to do, not to mention a steady supply and demand with very few competitors.”
Margaret tossed the idea around in her head for a while. “It would be easy enough to get a space and equipment, but no. You wouldn’t dare. Any decent doctor could do it but not a junkie like you.”
“Is that a challenge? Decent doctor my ass! I could do it with one arm tied behind my back.”
“Well then, Lasse, want to put that talent where your mouth is?”
“Fine. I will.”
A partnership was forged and an enterprise was born. Margaret purchased a small building in Orange County with a pseudonym and overseas bank funds. For IRS purposes, Lasse continued his podiatry practice in the building, collecting a forty percent cut for every abortion that he performed. Margaret continued her psychiatry practice in Philadelphia. Within a year, she met Magyar.
Magyar was born on Csepel Island. His parents were steelworkers, but the theater was their true passion. Despite a lack of money, their home was a constant refuge of social gaiety and entertainment. They put on skits with marionette puppets that Magyar’s mother made out of homemade plaster, wax drippings, scraps of material, and artful paint jobs. His father would lead the neighbors in their reenactments: generally raunchy, drunken rants about the demoralization of culture as they knew it due to the infiltration of Stalin and the Red Army.
His family immigrated to Philadelphia after Stalin’s death. His father took a job in the naval shipyards and moved the family to a small apartment on the southwest side. His mother took a job as a seamstress. Magyar began school immediately, adapting to the English language with ease, mimicking his speech patterns after his classmates.
On the morning of his ninth birthday, his parents met him in the kitchen with a frosted birthday pastry and word of a surprise waiting for him. He was instructed to get dressed quickly. When he had scrubbed until his ears were raw and yanked on a pair of pressed pants and a sweater, he was told to be on his best behavior, or the usher at the cinema might turn him away.
Cabin in the Sky was the first talking picture that Magyar had ever seen. He was impressed by the performances of Ethel Waters and Eddie Anderson, and enchanted by the ebony smoothness of Louis Armstrong’s skin and voice. He fell in love with Lena Horne on the spot. It was the turning point that incited his lifelong interest in black cinema and jazz music. It influenced his decision to pursue an acting career.
With the support of his parents, he moved to New York after graduating from high school. He secured bit parts in small features and saved enough money with his work as a part-time entertainment feature editor for Look Magazine to enroll in Uta Hagen’s acting class at the Herbert Berghof Studio. After being enrolled in class for a few weeks, Hagen told him that his acting style and stage presence were lacking in charisma, and his talents were misdirected. He was devastated. On that same day he received a phone call from his father. He told Magyar that his mother was terminally ill with cancer and wouldn’t survive the year.
Magyar quit his job, packed his bags and returned to Philadelphia to remain by his mother’s side during her final days. After her death, he worked for the Philadelphia Inquirer as a jazz and film critic, spending the majority of his time frequenting clubs and becoming a permanent fixture of Philadelphia’s jazz and blues scene.
It was during this time that he was first introduced to Paul Robeson. They became fast friends. Paul introduced him to many actors and musicians who had been arrested and monitored by the government under the Smith Act. Magyar empathized and adopted their cause as his own.
He joined Robeson in organizing a relief fund for the families of the actors and writers rendered unemployable by the Hollywood Ten, still reeling from aftermath of the House of Un-American Activities Committee more than a decade later.
Magyar’s father was infuriated by his son’s political leanings, telling him that he had not risked the lives and future security of his family and established himself as a success story in the land of the free and the home of the brave to have his ungrateful, traitor son scratching the back of the very same regime from which they had so narrowly escaped. Magyar openly shunned his father’s capitalist dreams and newfound Republican affiliations by calling him a marionette man. His father berated Magyar’s affiliations with the Smith Act dodgers and budding Civil Rights Congress by calling him a red darky.
One morning, a member of the House of Un-American Activities Committee came to the naval shipyard and subpoenaed Magyar’s father to testify about his son’s involvement in an anti-government demonstration that had resulted in mass violence, the death of a police officer and the hospitalization of several others. Magyar’s father clasped the crucifix around his neck, blinked back tears and dutifully obliged.
Magyar was arrested for murder, sentenced to life in prison, and ordered to undergo weekly psychiatric evaluations due to his political prisoner status. Margaret was appointed as his therapist.
After one session with Magyar, Margaret was convinced that their mutual attraction was much stronger than the ethical boundaries of a doctor-patient relationship. They quickly developed an inseparable bond. Despite her cast iron exterior and rational sentiment, Margaret overstepped the boundaries carefully delineated in her mind by falling in love.
Discovering that she was pregnant complicated the matter further. Margaret wanted to terminate the pregnancy but decided against it. She sullenly carried the pregnancy to term and delivered a healthy baby boy after two hours of labor. Bela’s umbilical cord was cut and he was immediately placed into her arms. Fighting back tears, Margaret stared into all of his wrinkled hideousness and resisted the urge to hand him back to the obstetrician.
PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA
1991
Bela
“Who else was a working performer during the McCarthy scare besides Butterfly McQueen and Hazel Scott?” he called from the bathroom.
Margaret exhaled her cigarette smoke and shifted in her chair at the kitchen table without looking up from her patient files. “The microwave beeped.”
“I asked you a question. Harry Belafonte?”
“Get in here and remove your food. Now.”
The toilet flushed. “You’re my mother. Aren’t you obligated to help me out?”
“Obligated?”
She set her papers aside, stubbed out her cigarette and walked to the microwave. She removed Bela’s breakfast burrito and threw it out of the window as he entered the kitchen.
“Hey! What did you do that for?”
“You’re running late. Aren’t I obligated to help you out?”
A long pause followed.
“I really don’t need this abuse.”
A solitary wry snort ensued. “Then call the cops.”
“I only have morning classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, remember? Drying out before noon certainly hasn’t made you smarter.”
“Well aren’t we fastidious.” She reached for the coffeepot on the counter, refilled her mug and glanced out the window. Bela’s breakfast had landed on the gas meter in front of the neighboring house. “Canada Lee,” she added smugly. “That’s checkmate to you. Oh, yeah, and you got a letter.” She motioned vaguely in the direction of the next room.
The envelope waited for him on top of the television in the den. He picked it up and admired the antiquated penmanship before he opened it. Inside was a meticulously hand-crafted map of the theater district in Prague, a yellowed newspaper clipping commemorating the Oscar win of Hattie McDaniel, and a brief note describing the current political climate in Eastern Europe. He blinked back tears and vowed to meet his father someday. Then he gathered up his backpack and slipped out the front door without acknowledging his mother.
The majority of Temple st
udents rode the train to Columbia Station, but he preferred to exit at Girard and purchase his lunch from the SuperFresh Market on the corner. From there, he walked past the Catholic school for girls at the corner of Broad and Oxford.
He watched them with rapt fascination. He was intrigued by the coltish grace of their scabbed, ashen knees peeking out from tartan plaid skirts and the starchy contrast of their white cotton socks. Their gravity-defying hairdos glistened in the sunshine as they played hopscotch and skipped Double Dutch rope during morning recess.
When he was done with classes for the day he spent an hour or two at Paley Library, then took the Broad Street Line to South Street and walked to his dilapidated apartment above the defunct dry cleaners at 13th Street. He unlocked the four deadbolts on his front door and was instantly greeted by the smell of dust settling and a pile of unwashed laundry.
He closed the door, locked the four deadbolts, and threw his backpack down. Two messages waited for him on the answering machine. His name had been randomly drawn in a contest and the prize was two tickets to the Academy of Music. Harold, a boy from his acting class, was having a party later on that evening.
Minutes later, he scrubbed himself in the shower with a bar of Ivory soap and hummed along to a Royal Opera House recording of Madama Butterfly. He followed up his careless shave job with a dab of styptic powder.
He selected a pair of faded grey corduroys and a JC Penney polo shirt from his closet’s meager contents, but the image in the mirror triggered memories of high school beratement. Changing quickly, he pulled on a pair of Levi’s jeans and a plain white cotton undershirt. He laced his brown leather shoes tightly and hoped that no one would notice their pitifully worn condition.
Outside, he bought a pretzel from the food truck at the corner and covered it with an obscene amount of mustard. He munched peacefully, humming the melody to Amore o Grillo as he walked to South Street Station. He exited at Columbia and headed north. He placed his ID into the drawer of the plexiglass security barrier and waited for the guard to acknowledge him verbally.