Brothers Emanuel: A Memoir of an American Family (13 page)

In the rest of our studies, we were held to high standards for both performance and effort. In fifth-grade math, for example, our teacher, Miss Hacker, required that all students score 100 percent on a weekly multiplication test before the class could stop taking them. Every week
she called out twenty problems; we worked over them in silence and then handed our answer sheets to our designated partners across the aisle. Mine was Joanne Finkelstein. Over the weeks, we all became invested in the perfect class score, and chastised the student or students who missed one question. When we all scored perfects in March, we screamed for joy.

This multiplication exercise was typical of the way our teachers fostered both competition and group cohesion. The school was so small that as the one classroom full of kids moved together through the years, we came to feel almost as close as family members. In addition to the strict academic program, Anshe Emet gave us a community that supported achievement. Almost every child came from a family that put a high value on education. Most Anshe Emet kids were also second- or third-generation Americans. For them, the story of immigration and struggling for acceptance was a fading memory. Their parents had high expectations for their offspring. We, in turn, pushed one another, and just as athletes improve as they play against tougher opponents, we got better.

The competition was especially good for a kid like me. Inside our family, I was the undisputed academic champ. One of my advantages was temperament. I was slightly less hyperactive and better at studying than my brothers. I also benefited from my status as firstborn. As the eldest, I was always ahead of my brothers in reading, vocabulary, and conversation and was welcomed into adult-style interactions with my parents and their friends. But though I was a pretty smart boy at home, I was, fortunately, not the smartest kid in my class at school. That title, for as long as I attended Anshe Emet, belonged to a scrawny kid with reddish brown hair whose name was Spencer Waller.

Spencer Waller was a lot like me. My father was a doctor. His was a dentist. We both talked too much. Like me, Spencer had scuffled with the kids from Appalachia whom he met on the streets and in the parks, and like me he had been taunted with anti-Semitic slurs. Indeed, we were so much alike that in first grade I just
had
to stick out my foot and trip him when he was hurrying past me. Spencer fell on his face and bit his tongue so hard that he was rushed to a doctor
for stitches. Considering my own accident with the radiator and the sucker, and Rahm’s almost-severed fingers, Spencer’s injury made me think, for a moment, that I might be a dangerous kid to hang around with.

Fortunately, I wasn’t often so aggressive or hostile at school. For the most part I was an eager, albeit loud and occasionally obnoxious, kid who was desperate to seize the top spot in my class, a goal that Spencer Waller always denied me. Week after week (and eventually year after year), Spencer would score just a point or two higher than me on most tests, quizzes, and homework assignments. I would try to make up ground with higher scores on homework and special projects, but here again he usually prevailed. A good example of this competition was the special Greek history assignment we were given in fourth grade. I put in extra effort, and handed in a report on the story of the Trojan War, complete with a model of the famous wooden horse. I was sure my project would get an A. It did. But Spencer’s project got an A-plus.

I became obsessed with beating Spencer Waller—indeed, for better or worse, part of me still is to this day—and this became a topic of regular conversation in our home. My father had dealt with his own academic nemesis in medical school and knew what it was like to finish second in his med school class. But though my parents sympathized, they never said or did anything to try to placate my hunger to overcome my rivals. In their view, you must work hard, tirelessly, using all the gifts God gave you, in order to succeed. Big achievements might be noted and celebrated in some modest way, but by the next morning life went back to normal and you were supposed to train your sights on the next goal. If we had a problem with the way things were handled we could ask for a family meeting—sometimes these were called powwows—and say whatever was on our minds.

Under the rules of the powwow, which usually took place around the kitchen table, no topic was off-limits. Sometimes these discussions got quite raucous, and as my brothers and I got older, the vocabulary permitted
around the table—and in our regular interactions—became more colorful. Yiddish, formal English, and cursing were all mixed up. In one burst of conversation you might be called a meshugenah, a moron, and an ass, all in rapid succession.

There was nothing personal in these words. It was the family style to include a little insult—“You’re an idiot and here’s why”—with whatever point you wanted to make. Also, you were expected to talk loud, and fast, and if you waited politely for your turn to speak you were lost. Our kitchen was a crowded deli at lunchtime, not a tearoom at 4
P.M
.

My mother liked these powwows because they gave her a chance to see inside our hearts and minds. If we used a family meeting to complain about her, it was generally because we were upset over those moments when she ran out of patience and abandoned us both physically and emotionally. She would throw up her hands and say something like “I hate all of you equally,” then retreat to the bathroom, which was the one place where she could find peace behind a locked door, flipping through a book or magazine and smoking a cigarette or two. For our sake I would pray that Rahm hadn’t made pinholes in her cigarettes, which was something he did every once in a while to protest her smoking.

Depending on the severity of the episode our mother would either emerge from the bathroom and life would return to normal, or she would freeze us out emotionally for hours or even days. The worst inevitably came on Mother’s Day, or her birthday. What she wanted was one day of special treatment—a nice breakfast, a thoughtful gift, and relief from her usual homemaking obligations. We usually failed to deliver.

It wasn’t that our mother made a mystery out of what pleased her. We all knew that she liked flowers and hoped for gifts that showed someone had considered her as an individual and not some generic “mother” or “wife.” However, our dad hated giving flowers; they were so ephemeral, dying after a day or two, and therefore wasteful. And he never had the insight for meaningful gift giving. Most of the time he didn’t buy one. If he did, it would be some impersonal household
item, or a utilitarian sweater. Without a great role model, we boys tried, but invariably fell short. We didn’t have lots of money and couldn’t coax him to cooperate. Also, we were not terribly good at planning either. The Big Day would arrive and we would have to scramble. Disappointed and angry, our mother would cry, “You don’t care! I work hard all year long and it means nothing to you!”

Sometimes the screaming could go on for hours. Other times she would go silent—which was even worse. For kids who were accustomed to a generous amount of attention and a loud house, this freezing silence was excruciating. We all felt the loss of conversation, affection, and energy in a way that grew more painful as time passed. Indeed, whenever the freeze lasted more than a day the family fell into a sort of situational depression, marked by anxiety and the fear that things might never get back to normal.

We responded by gathering on Rahm’s bed, the bottom bunk, to whisper ideas about how to get back into our mom’s good graces.

“We should make dinner tonight.”

“What can we make? Maybe we should ask Dad to take the family out.”

“Dad, take us out? No way. Plus it would be one of those silent dinners. With Mom still angry and not allowing anyone to say anything.”

“What’s your big idea?”

“I don’t have one. You know we just have to wait.”

“Let’s clean up the family room and make sure not to fight tonight.”

Over the years we tried various approaches. Cleaning the house. Straightening our room. Cooking Sunday breakfast of lox, bagels, and eggs. In all cases, we offered an abject apology and dish-cleaning service usually performed by Rahm. At the next family powwow someone, usually brave Ari, would remind my mother of how upsetting these episodes were and complain that they lasted way too long. To her credit, my mother would explain why she did what she did. But though our mother eagerly sought our opinions and seemed to enjoy hearing what was on our minds, she did not always give us what we asked for, emotionally.

Perhaps because he sensed better than us the limits of conversation, our father was not terribly enthusiastic about these family meetings. If things went on too long, or we pressed a point too hard, he would flee the kitchen for a book or the television, leaving my mother to handle things by herself. At other times he would use his status as the father to assert his authority in a way that violated the Emanuel philosophy. During one of these moments I complained loudly.

“That’s not fair!”

“Who told you it was a democracy?” answered my father.

“Well then what is it?”

“A theocracy.”

“So you’re God?” I shot back.

Across the table I could see Ari’s face light up. He got the shovav look.

“I guess,” he blurted, “that makes Mommy the god-ass!”

When you come from a family that is temperamentally outspoken and viscerally antagonistic to power, you carry a kind of injustice radar with you at all times. This device, which is always switched on, detects arrogance and the abuse of power with exquisite precision. You then have the choice to act or acquiesce. I faced this choice in third-grade gym class with Mr. Kerr.

Physical education for boys at Anshe Emet was everything you would imagine in a gym class of the 1960s. Think skinny eight-year-olds—some hyperactive, some with undiagnosed attention deficit disorder, many woefully uncoordinated—playing dodgeball, tumbling on mats, and climbing ropes under the punishing gaze of a thirtyish male teacher dressed in a T-shirt, khaki pants, and sneakers.

No doubt Mr. Kerr had his hands full with my class. Some of us may have had minimal athletic ability, but we were really talented at talking and arguing. With our many questions, opinions, and suggestions we could drive any gym teacher crazy. Nevertheless, he should
have known better than to draw the line he did one winter morning when the chattering and disorder got the best of him.

“All right!” he screamed. “Everyone line up! Now!”

I cannot recall now whether we had been treating our gym teacher with any extra disrespect on that day but he launched into a tirade that ended with the kind of question that reveals a commander who is afraid that he is losing his grip.

“From now on everyone is going to call me ‘sir’ at all times. Got that?”

Mr. Kerr paused for what seemed like ages, then asked, “Does anyone disagree with this? If you do, then step forward across this line.”

Granted, this was elementary school, not the USS
Caine
, and Mr. Kerr wasn’t Captain Queeg. But it was the third-grade equivalent of a moral showdown. Without hesitation I stepped forward and across the line.

I am not sure anyone noticed me at first. When he finally did, Mr. Kerr had to ask me if I had stepped out of line on purpose. I told him yes, and explained that the respect that comes with the title “sir” is something you earn. And by demanding it, he had shown himself to be someone who did not deserve it.

“Go to Mr. Reisman’s office. Now.”

Like all good private school principals, Morton Reisman was one part educator, one part administrator, and one part diplomat. A tall, balding, bespectacled man, he wore a tailored suit and tie to work every day. He knew the name of every child in the school and was so versatile and intelligent that he could serve as a substitute teacher for any class, including Hebrew. Sometimes, when he was under stress, he suffered from facial tics. He would suddenly twitch two or three times in the middle of speaking. He was so respected—loved, really—that no one seemed to notice or said a word about it.