New York Echoes (10 page)

Deliver me from that,
she thought. The fact was that old people were boring, their memories boring,
what they talked about was boring. Yet, she did commend herself for being
respectful. Her grandfather looked out of the window.

“Unbelievable,” he
said. “This used to be a block of attached row houses with front porches and
backyards. In nice summer days, the people sat on rockers on the porches. They
also had back porches where my grandparents made a sooky during holidays.”

She didn't know what a
sooky was, probably something connected with one of the Jewish holidays. She
let it pass. She wasn't religious although she had been bat mitzvahed.

“They had three fruit
trees in the backyard: a pear tree, a cherry tree, and a plum tree. They also
had vines that grew on a wooden thing and my grandfather harvested grapes from
them and made his own wine. I remember that they made stewed pears from the
pears and did the same with the cherries. I used to eat those cherries straight
from the trees. They were sour, but I can still taste them. Made your lips
pucker. But they were good to eat right from the tree.”

He looked up and down
the street. Most of the row houses were gone but there were a few still
standing, unattached from their neighbors' now, although they formed the
skeleton of new, undistinguished, flat facades that he did not recognize at
all.

“There,” he said
suddenly, delighted by what appeared to be the discovery of his grandparents'
house, still standing but, as he acknowledged, totally different. The houses on
each side of it were demolished and had become empty lots overgrown with weeds.
He unlocked the door and got out of the car and for a while seemed to be still
trying to orient himself. He moved closer to the house. There were numbers over
the doorway, one of them lopsided.

“2108. That's it.” He
looked back at Helen and waved her forward. “This is it, Helen. This was my
grandparents' house. Come on.”

He moved forward and
perhaps out of a desire to be protective, she unlocked the door on the driver's
side and got out. Remembering her father's admonition, she could not completely
chase away her fear, but since the street was mostly deserted, although she
could see people walking in her direction, she felt reasonably safe, although
they would certainly be the only white people in view.

The house that was
2108 did not have a porch, and was small, boxlike, and undistinguished. Her
grandfather stood in front of it for a long moment, then moved to one of the
empty lots next door.

“There,” he said. “The
trees are still there. I remember them like yesterday.”

He moved further into
the lot. She followed reluctantly.

“Do you think it's
wise, Grampa?” she said, but he paid no attention and kept on moving. At the
rear of the house was a short fence badly in need of repair. There was no back
porch now, but as he had exclaimed, there were three trees, one of them bearing
cherries.

“Imagine that. Still
bearing cherries after all those years. Do cherry trees last that long?”

He stood by the side
of the fence surveying the trees for a long time. His granddaughter stood
beside him while he looked. Is he watching the tree grow or eating the cherries
with his eyes? It was, after all, only a cherry tree.

Then suddenly he stepped
over the fence that had fallen in one spot, and it was easy for him to pass
over it.

“You shouldn't,
Grampa,” she said, feeling uncomfortable by his action. “This is private
property.”

“They shouldn't mind,”
he said as he moved into the little yard and placed himself under one of the
low branches of the cherry tree. Reaching up, he bent the branch, picked a
couple cherries, and put one in his mouth.

“Sour as ever, but
just as I remember,” he said, turning toward his granddaughter, who still stood
behind the broken fence on the vacant lot. Then suddenly, a voice screeched
with anger, and a large black woman in a housecoat rushed into the yard.

“Get the fuck out of
here,” the woman screamed. It took Sara a second to discover that the woman
held a pistol in her hand and was pointing it straight at her grandfather.

“I was just . . .” her
grandfather began. “I used to live . . .” But he couldn't go on. His complexion
turned ashen.

“This is private
property you sumbitch. Get your white ass out of here.”

“But I . . .”

She could see her
grandfather was too stunned to reply. Quickly she hopped over the fence and
stood between the outraged woman and her grandfather, looking down into the
barrel of the pistol. She had never in her life been that close to a firearm.

“I got my rights. If I
shot you both, I be within my rights. So get the fuck out of here before I blow
both your heads off.”

“Take it easy,” Sara
said, hands outstretched. “He meant no harm. You see, he lived here once.”

“I don't give a shit.
You have no business here. So git.”

“There's no need for
that gun,” Sara said. The barrel of the pistol was no more than a foot from her
head. “He is my grandfather.”

“Who gives a fuck?”

“I do lady. I do,” she
shot back. Oddly she felt no fear, only rage. “We're not here to do you any
harm. All he wanted was to pick a cherry. Don't be a fool.”

“Who you callin' a
fool?” the woman replied, her anger unabated. “Just get the fuck off my
property.”

“We're going. We're
going,” Sara said, turning to her grandfather, who seemed on the verge of
collapse, white as a sheet with fear and confusion. She put out her hand to her
grandfather, who took it. It felt like grabbing the hand of a child. Then she
led him to the edge of the property and across the fence to the vacant lot and
led him to the car while the woman watched them depart, still holding the
pistol, pointing it at them.

“She could have killed
us,” her grandfather said.

“Well, we're still
here.”

Her reaction had
surprised her.

“All I wanted was to
taste one of those cherries,” her grandfather said, as she gunned the motor and
headed under the El. As she drove, he opened his palm, which held a single
cherry.

“I picked one for
you,” he said.

“Thanks, Grampa,” she
said, taking the cherry and popping it into her mouth.

“Really sour,” she
said, knowing then that she would never forget the taste of it.  

Just
my luck to fall in love with a girl that lived way up in the Bronx. I met her
that summer in Rockaway when nearly every boy in our crowd had girlfriends. I
picked her up on the beach, which was the way we boys met girls. They all
wanted to be part of our crowd.

Helen
was sixteen and I was eighteen and going to summer school at City College in the years when they still called it CCNY. Even so, I always made it back to
Rockaway by two in the afternoon, which bought me nearly three hours with our
crowd on the beach.

I
loved the way Helen looked. She had a big face with big brown eyes and what
they called in those days dirty blonde hair. Also she had a great big warm
smile and a body that was described then as
zoftig
. I was proud as hell
of Helen's looks. She thought I was good looking, too. I was tall and thin and
tan and some people said I looked like Gregory Peck.

We
necked a lot in those days. It wasn't always easy finding enough dark corners
to do it in, but when we were on the beach or walking on the boardwalk we
always had our arms around each other. Necking was in those days a perfectly
respectable way to make love. You soul kissed a lot, blew in your girl's ear,
hugged and squeezed, sometimes for hours.

I
really loved her. I said so lots of times and she told me she loved me, too. We
were both happy being in love. I wrote her love notes, and since I was an
English major I read her poems from
Sonnets from the Portuguese
and
sonnets from Shakespeare. I was never certain that Helen truly understood the
words of these great poets, but she never let on that she didn't and, after
each reading, she would hug and squeeze me and tell me how much she truly loved
me. Of course, I believed her and I truly believed in my own undying infinite
love for her.

I
thought of her from the moment I awoke in the morning to the moment I shut my
eyes. I'm sure I dreamed of her. My heartbeat always accelerated when I saw her
for the first time each day. I could not wait to touch her, hold her in my
arms, and kiss her. God I was in love. We were in love.

Of
course the necking led to what they then called petting, which meant I felt her
tits and she occasionally let her hand brush against my erection. You've got to
understand how it was in those days. Girls were deathly afraid of pregnancy and
disgrace. They were equally afraid of getting a "reputation," which
would spoil their chances of finding husbands, which was their number-one
ambition and the preoccupation of their mothers and fathers.

Boys
were supposed to show respect to nice girls by not being "fresh."
Virginity was really a prized possession. Boys did not want to marry what they
secretly felt was "soiled goods." The fact was that the whole damned
value system was different. Sometimes, though, you were so much in love that
you both made a deep commitment to each other, deep enough to go a bit further
when you made love.

That
summer I loved Helen so much and she loved me so much that she proved her love
to me by letting me finally make love to her naked. It came in stages, though,
and we were both pretty clumsy at it. Also we were too shy to give each other
instructions. She used to jerk me off until I hurt and I was no better at
masturbating her.

It
was a foregone conclusion between us, a solemn pledge that one day we would
finally marry. We were certain, of course, that our love would last forever and
ever. Not that both of us weren't in love before. But that was considered
"puppy love." This was the real thing. Boys and girls of our age
truly wanted to find someone to love and to love them. That was the point of
existence. Of course, boys worried about their careers and their future and making
a living, but when it came down to what they truly wanted most was to be in
love with a girl who loved them and would always be true and loyal and loving.

As
the summer wore on and we contemplated going back to our respective
neighborhoods in the city, our lovemaking got more and more intense. You see,
we had a problem. Helen lived in the Bronx and I lived in Brooklyn. To
understand what that meant, one has to know something of the urban geography of
New York City in the early forties. This was, remember, before everybody
moved to the suburbs.

I
lived in Crown Heights in Brooklyn. For me to get to Helen's parents' apartment
on University Avenue in the Bronx I had to walk ten blocks to the subway
station, the one on Sterling Street or Kingston Avenue. Then I would have to
change at Franklin and rattle up through Manhattan and Harlem to the elevated
section of the IRT in the Bronx to Burnside Avenue. That took a good hour and
ten minutes. Then I would have to walk five more blocks up Burnside to Helen's
parents' apartment. Her father was a cab driver and they lived on the top floor
of a four-story walk-up.

Let's
face it, it was one big schlep. Then if we were to have a date in the city,
which was what downtown Manhattan was called in those days, that would be
another good forty minutes to get there and another forty to get back to
Helen's, after which I would have to spend another hour and a half, sometimes
two, getting back to my parents' apartment in Brooklyn.

That
was the reality of courtship if you happened to fall in love with a girl from
the Bronx. Which was why our lovemaking got very intense as the summer drew to
a close. But I tell you, I was madly in love, my heart bursting with feeling,
and I was sure that Helen's heart was bursting as well.

I
think it was about a week before the end of summer that we both felt compelled
to seal our love irrevocably, to prove to each other that we had made a
lifetime commitment to loving. My friend Harold's parents were going to the
city for a funeral and planned to stay overnight and he lent us his bedroom. We
were very resourceful in those days and always managed to find places to make
love. Don't forget, few, if any of us had cars in those days. But there were
porches and occasional empty bedrooms and blankets on the beach.

We
finally did it in Harold's bed. It was a real emotional scene with both of us
sobbing like babies as we finally went all the way, which was the way it was
described then. Physically, it was a lousy experience for both of us. I did the
deed but it hurt us both like hell.

But,
to tell the truth, that really was not the important part. The sexual thing was
not as connected as one might think. Maybe it was because of the way we were
brought up and thought about the opposite sex. I wasn't doing it for pure
pleasure. It was for love, for bonding. Even in our own minds, we did not call
it fucking. There was something holy about it nor was it something that I was
going to brag to the boys about. This was really private stuff, intimate. It
had to do with love.

We
only did it once that night and, of course, I wore a rubber and we clung
together for the longest time. Helen got hell from her parents for coming home
late. The very next day, I remember, I bought her an ankle bracelet, which we
called "a slave chain." We loved each other deeply. We had been with
each other every day and night for almost three months. We had been
inseparable, like Siamese twins.

I'm
sure that others in our crowd that summer were having the same experience,
although I don't think many of them went all the way like we did. Strange to
say, we boys never discussed that part of it, not about the girls we loved. Of
course we liked to brag but never about the girls we loved. Never that.

That
last night, our crowd spent the night on blankets around a bonfire on the
beach. We weren't much for drinking then. After we toasted wieners and ate our
spuds we paired off on blankets and made love while the fire burned low. Most
of us were under the blankets as well and, of course, Helen and I had our pants
off and were kissing and hugging and crying as we made love.

I'm
sure we both pledged undying faithful love to each other. I know we both meant
it. I'm sure I did. God, I loved that girl.

When
we got back to town, I called Helen every day and saw her every Friday and
Saturday night. I got into the swing of things at CCNY, which was a long schlep
from Brooklyn in itself, all the way up the West Side. But every chance I got I
either called Helen or went up to see her. Her folks never invited me to stay
over and I always went home, usually getting there when the sun was coming up,
but not before Helen and I had made love on the living room couch. Ironically,
her folks never got out of bed to catch us at it.

I
think they trusted Helen. But I was never sure they liked me. Thinking back,
maybe they thought Helen was too young to make a long lasting commitment. She
was still a senior in high school. Also, I could never be sure, but I don't
think girls confided as much in their parents as they do today.

But
the facts of distance did not mean our love diminished. In fact, I think it got
stronger. When we met we were like hungry lions and couldn't get enough of each
other. Even the sex part became better. It was really awkward and very
frightening to make love on the living room couch while Helen's parents were
sleeping in the next room. We never got totally naked and since there was only
one bathroom and you had to go past her parents' bedroom to get to it I used to
have to wrap all my used rubbers in Kleenex and put them in my pocket. I
wouldn't throw them away until I got to the trashcans at the Burnside Avenue station.

Once
I had a real scare. When we made love for the last time on a certain night, I
heard her father get out of bed and go to the bathroom. I pulled up my pants,
hastily zipped and belted and said good night. It was probably three or four in
the morning by then. Anyway, I left the house before her father got out of the
bathroom and walked down the four flights and started up the hill to the Burnside Avenue station.

When
I got the station, I discovered that somewhere between Helen's parents' couch
and the Burnside station, the rubber had slipped off. I was petrified with
fear. Suppose it dropped off inside of Helen's parents' apartment, right in the
center of the living room. Or in the hallway. Or just outside the front door. I
don't think Helen's parents would have understood.

It
was still dark out and, panicked, I retraced my steps back up toward Helen's
apartment, my eyes peeled to the ground, looking for that used rubber. Christ,
my heart was pounding and I'm sure I was calling for help from every celestial
being known to man. I got back to Helen's apartment house without finding it. I
even retraced my steps up the stairs. Still no sign of it.

I
got to Helen's door and searched the area in the hall, but couldn't find it.
But I didn't have the guts to ring the bell again and scare the shit out of
everyone. I can tell you I didn't sleep that night. I couldn't wait until I
called Helen the next morning. Her mother answered. She wasn't home, but she
seemed very polite on the phone, which relieved me somewhat. Later when Helen
called back she laughed when I told her my story. I never did find out what
happened to that rubber. 

I
wrote Helen love notes every chance I got. I managed to study and get passing
marks but my mind was never once free of thoughts about Helen. Sometimes I
would talk to her for an hour on the phone. It was hell being away from her.

Sometimes
when I got off really early from school, I would pop up to her place in the
middle of the week, but I would always go home earlier because usually I had
classes the next day. At times, because I couldn't get her on the phone, I
sometimes surprised her, which was quite exciting for both of us. Not once did
I question the mutuality of our love. Not once.

But
sometime in February when the nights were very long and the weather very cold,
we happened to get off from classes early. I think one of the professors was
sick. There wasn't any homework to speak of and, besides, that's the way I
passed the time on those long subway trips, reading mostly. I read all the
novels in my European history class going from Brooklyn to CCNY.

I
tried to get Helen on the phone. Nobody answered. I got to Burnside Avenue just
as it was getting dark and started to walk swiftly up the hill to Helen's
apartment filled, as always, with expectation and love. I remember there was a
candy story a block before University where a crowd of boys and girls about my
own age used to hang out. In those days hanging out around the candy store was
a way to pass the time.

But
what I saw startled me. It was Helen standing against a brick wall next to the
glass front of the store. She was kissing a guy, actually kissing a guy, right
there in the street. Nobody was paying much attention to them. People did that
in those days.

I
stopped dead in my tracks. My heart banged against my chest. It wasn't just a
question of disbelief, I was physically hurting. My breath came in short gasps.
I had to actually lean against a street light for support. It was awful and the
sense of pain beyond any that I had ever experienced.

But
it wasn't only a sense of overpowering betrayal and defeat that I was feeling.
I was embarrassed, ashamed, and it only exacerbated my emotions to feel that
and make me more ashamed of my shame. After all, it wasn't me who should feel
that. I wasn't the one being disloyal and untrue. I vowed not to look at them,
but, as in all vows like that, I could not keep my eyes away.

By
then, they had separated and were merely holding hands, which, in that context,
was equally as bad since it implied a relationship. I had had no warning. I had
been with Helen just three days before, had not the vaguest hint of something
like this. I hung back in the shadows, watching them, further humiliated by the
act of spying. Was that really Helen, my Helen, my true love. Thankfully, they
moved away, still holding hands, heading up the hill.