The Old Neighborhood: A Remembrance

Sunday was the day my family visited Grandma Ruthie. After forty-five minutes of eyebrow dialogue, foyer-pacing, and repeated checking of wristwatches, my father and I would heave a sigh of relief as the girls—my mother and three sisters—filed out our front door, spit curls adjusted, smelling like the perfume counter at Woolworth’s.

Each week we drove to the city, ending in the Bronx, that primitive junkyard that called up a wide array of emotions. The decay became more tangible as we approached the heart of the old borough. The dead buildings, their broken windows forming black-eyed Cyclops faces, held an eerie fascination for me. Amid the rubble were relics of an old country that could be spotted if one were very observant.

There was the live chicken market with it hand-lettered sign, where my grandmother would walk with her metal cage, in search of the perfect fowl for her Shabbat table. Gypsies in the park careened toward us at the curb’s edge as my father accelerated around corners, their arms outstretched for whatever we might have to offer. Cadres of brown-suited men lined the park benches on the Concourse, giant blond cockroaches, babbling simultaneously in a foreign tongue in this, my America.

I felt relief at leaving the suburbs, with its predictable lawns. As we neared Grandma’s building, a visceral excitement crept up from my belly to my throat. The building was ancient, deserted but for a gaggle of kids playing stickball in the street and in the raised vacant lots that bordered the entrance on either side. While all the neighboring buildings had an air of danger, Grandma’s building seemed sealed in a protective membrane that stunted the brick, immunizing it against further decay. Bony trees which we dubbed “witch trees” hovered in the dirt gardens, one in the center of each, contorted like Grandma’s nine-three-year-old neighbor. We imagined her bones to be translucent, like the bones of yellow pike on Grandma’s kitchen table when she dismembered them for Gefilte fish.

The interior of Grandma’s apartment was an odd mixture of thirties kitsch and gothic horror. The kitchen and front room floors were green linoleum, splashed with a flowery pattern and buffed to a high gloss. Here I delighted in building entire cities from clothespins, the cherished objects that Grandma kept for only me in a large coffee can. The front room was full of gaudy objects—a red Ballantine Beer tray (made more exotic by the fact that Grandma’s lips never touched beer), tins of raspberry-filled candies, and Grandma’s maroon velvet slippers that waited for her under the radiator, like obedient hamsters, exactly matching the splitting horsehair couch.

Eventually, I had to use the bathroom, an activity I put off as long as possible. Grandma’s bathroom had a foreign old-world odor, a cloying mixture of her sweet-smelling rouge and an earthier scent. The plumbing was so angry that I was sure a troll lurked just beneath the cracked floor tiles. Although I was near panic at the thought of what lay in the next room, I could not turn my feet around without a glimpse.

Grandma’s bedroom was a narrow cell dominated by a gigantic mahogany headboard and a severe matching armoire. The dark stain of the wood and the room’s proportions, with its oversized furniture, made my breath uneven. I was sure that creatures beyond my wildest ken did their evil dance here after dark. Above the bed was an oval portrait of Grandma, flanked by her daughters, with my father at her knee, a longhaired, girlish toddler in a white gown. My grandmother’s eyes seemed to follow me wherever I went, like the Mona Lisa’s.

The halls in Grandma’s building were painted the darkest and drabbest of greens, over a thickly textured stucco. None of the lights worked, which steeped the corridors in near blackness. This became our playground for the most daring brand of hide-and-seek. We would whip around corners, screaming like banshees, our shrieks magnified and distorted by the walls. Occasionally, a witch would stick her bony finger out from one of the doorways and we would run for our lives, back to safety in Grandma’s kitchen.

It was in these corridors that I first heard a tale too terrible to believe, yet too pungent to ignore. The local kids whispered it to each other behind our backs, chattering in code, but we managed to get the gist of it. A giant lived in the neighborhood, four or five blocks from Grandma. He was said to be seven-foot-six, and at least as grotesque as the Elephant Man. They said that he hung out at the Red Hen Luncheonette, where he drank four malteds in a row, surrounded by clusters of child-voyeurs. The most hideous thing of all was that he had to stoop over and crook his shoulder into the ceiling in order to drink his malts.

Our favorite taunt was scaring each other silly by impersonating the monster. The victim’s blood-curdling shrieks would fetch my frantic mother, convinced that someone had been hit by a car. All of my resolve, my promises, my Saturday-morning prayers were dedicated to imploring God to shield me from the sight of this most terrible of creatures.

When the excitement of our corridor games became too exhausting, we would spill numbly from the building—to sunlight and familiar stoops. Across the cobbled street, half hidden by its bumpy contours, was a tiny corner store. Just inside the door, a glass counter spanned nearly its entire width. A miniature soda fountain was crammed into the remaining two feet. From this gingerbread cottage, Mr. Curran, an elfin, roly-poly man, peddled his stock: penny candy the likes of which we had never laid eyes on.

Candy buttons hung in long strips from wooden dowels and chocolate babies—orphans who looked oddly content in their isolation—were my favorites. Mr. Curran was the kindest of men, but I never saw him smile. He would gladly drop his price to two candies for a penny, if he knew you were down to your last cent. A nickel from Grandma would bestow a jumbo scoop of Breyer’s ice cream on a sugar cone. Mr. Curran didn’t even stock those cheesy orange cones. “Pah,” he spat, as if the very idea tasted bad. “It’s all junk nowadays.”

It was into this Xanadu, this iridescent bubble that we would pour, once we had scared ourselves to the brink of hysteria in Grandma’s building. The few moments we spent confirming the day’s booty—for the selection varied from week to week—nourished our hearts as much as a whole day at the Bronx Zoo. These were moments of pleasure that existed beyond time and space. They helped us forget the signs of urban blight and suburban banality. When we turned to leave, our pockets empty and our jaws aching from sugar, we were ready to tackle the New World once again, blithely bouncing across the George Washington Bridge, fondly elbowing one another.

One Sunday we arrived at Grandma’s building, and as we bypassed the entrance, looking for a parking spot, my eye was drawn to an ambulance parked in front of Mr. Curran’s store. Nauseated from the stuffy drive and my father’s cigar, and unable to contain my curiosity any longer, I begged to be let out of the car, promising to wait at Grandma’s front door. My instincts led me instead across the street, where I waited, back pressed flat against the storefront. A few seconds later, a stretcher was dragged out by three attendants. On it, to my utter astonishment, was the longest human being I had ever seen.

His head and feet were draped ridiculously over either end of the canvas, his long curls sweeping the street. His face was bluish and a large purple bruise covered his right eye. Grotesque though he was, he was anything but terrifying. Tears rolled down his cheeks and a whimper like that of a dying animal escaped his lips. The attendants had to hoist him up at the knees, to stuff him into the ambulance. My throat locked and I wept silently for the giant, praying for his recovery. Perhaps some of my tears were for the death of his legend as well.

My heart deflated like a blown tire when Grandma dropped the bomb, quickly and expressionlessly, that Mr. Curran had died suddenly in his sleep. The gumball I had crammed in my jaw a few minutes earlier, now a giant bladder, imploded too, leaving a web of bitterness on my tongue.

Colors faded. In the coming months, our visits to Grandma’s were something we looked forward to less and less. Mr. Curran’s shop was boarded up by the city.

There seemed to be an egg caught in my throat each time Dad turned off the Concourse and headed for Grandma’s building. Where jelly beans and candy kisses had lolled on my tongue, there was now a flat, starchy taste. Soon, Grandma announced that she was moving to a new co-op building, in a safer section of the Bronx. Grandma and I were silent as we tied up the last of her chachkas and headed out of the old neighborhood.

Poetry of Daily Rhythms...part 2

Okay, so here comes the part about the poetry of small things. Call it poetry, call it serendipity, or, if you are more inclined toward the mystical and the collective unconscious, call it synchronicity. I do.

In preparing the extra bedroom for the impending tenant, the contents of the room were quickly moved to the garage. A family member had dibs on one of the file cabinets, so I thought I'd nuke its contents quickly. Part of the excitement of this new life is an ongoing purge of stuff....old bills and documents, extra clothes and shoes, objects that make me feel moored to the past, and not in a warm or nostalgic way. Firing up the shredder, I feed the soulless stacks of bill stubs and records into its hungry jaws, careful not to jam the delicate gears. But I am greedy---greedy to reduce this pile of stuff to spaghetti.

Amid the garbage is a large manila envelope marked "confidential," another one marked "Emotional baggage," and the kicker, a fat, business-sized envelope bearing the unmistakable handwriting of my mother. "Uh, oh" I think. It's THAT letter. I care for myself by not ripping it open and devouring the contents, and save it for tomorrow; the morning light is more forgiving than the vulnerable evening.

Remember the words to "The Farmer in the Dell?" If the rat had not gone out of his way to eat the cheese, perhaps the cat (who ate the rat) would not have snagged him. If things had not happened as they did, perhaps the cheese would not be standing alone....If the mold had not been discovered, I would still be trying to solve the mystery of my hives. And if the mold had not been remediated, I would not have moved my office, leaving the abandoned office with the thick, musty, mystery smell. If the friend had not asked me if I was interested in having a tenant, the room would not have been cleaned up anytime soon. And if the room had not been purged, the letter and important envelopes would not have turned up.....

High ho, the derry-o, the Farmer in the Dell.

The Poetry of Daily Rhythms (La Poesie Mondaine) - Part I

Decades ago, when I was a reference librarian at the Half Moon Bay Library, a novel entitled "When Things Get Back to Normal" was seen flitting across the circulation desk more than most books that hadn't made it onto the Best Seller List. That title always made me smile; what an ironic way of addressing the small or larger chaos clusters in which we find ourselves ensnared, much like Tar Baby. Whether it's shuffled tutoring sessions, seriously ill relatives, or unforeseen crises that bounce us off the back of the pickup, two things are clear: we've got to react quickly and things will NEVER get back to normal.

If you're over thirty, you've probably figured out by now that "normal" is a joke. (It's also a town in Illinois; I shun the thought of calling that town home.) In the last five months, my carefully constructed sabbatical year from full-time teaching has included (in no special order and in addition to tutoring and subbing in the public schools) finding toxic mold in my house and having it remediated,(thus wiping out my $$ cushion for the year), allergy testing and (at last!) an effective treatment for chronic hives caused by said mold, a very sick mother, an abandoned, musty bedroom crying out for cleaning, demildewing and painting, a surprise tenant who decided to rent said musty bedroom, do-it-yourself wallpaper removal and painting by yours truly, composting and preparing to plant a garden, and hundreds of visits and revisions to my ical page. In spite of all the unexpected busywork, I've managed to do a good amount of painting (the fun kind) and a bit of writing, squeezed in around students, sub days, and home projects.

Oh, I miss the biweekly paychecks, and the invisible medical premium payment even more. It strikes me as backassed that when you're part of the machine, their machine, the take care of all the dirty work. You just show up, do your bit, and keep putting those checks into the bank. But the minute you jump off the spinning carousel, go it alone, live by your instincts, market your own skills, you've got to pay and pay and pay to stay healthy. Am I the only one that thinks that's a little crazy? But I don't miss the lesson planning, the interminable, unproductive meetings, the grading and correcting, and the ever-increasing incidence of someone telling me I have to be at some evening function on my precious bits of "time off!"

Who ever thought I'd find time for a blog?