The Kingdom of Brooklyn (11 page)

My mother says she can't read the papers because of her headaches, but I notice she can read music without any trouble. She plays the piano on Sunday. Sometimes she plays too loud, and she plays too long; I have learned ways to close my ears to her music. When she's finished, my father always says something nice, like “Very nice,” and then he looks at me, and I say it also. “That's nice, Mommy.” She plays her Chopin, and she plays Stephen Foster songs, her boogie-woogie, and she always plays “Oh, Danny Boy,” to which my father howls along like a dog. She likes to tell the story of how, when she was seven years old, her father bought her a piano because he knew she had musical talent. “But Gilda had none,” she says. “She wanted a violin, but he wouldn't buy her one. He knew she had no talent.”

My father never lets this pass: “But if he never bought her a violin, how could he know?” My mother throws him a look that says he is not only not like her, but also stupid. I know that look—we all know that look. I suddenly understand that my mother has always hated Gilda just as I hate The Screamer; I feel a sudden rush of
likeness
to my mother. We
are
the same, I
am
her, but in ways she just doesn't recognize; we are both good haters—maybe the best.

On this Sunday, in springtime, we have the windows open, and warm, lilac-laden air is coming in on a hot breeze. We begin to discuss what we will do today. Even though we appear so content, reading the papers and hearing music, even though no one has to go to work or to school, we all know a moment will come when we get unhappy. The day, full of endless hours, lies ahead. How many more times can my mother play “Oh, Danny Boy” and how much longer can my father read the paper? Soon we will have to move on.

Somewhere out there in the world we have relatives, and I am told that on Sunday people visit relatives, but we don't. My mother won't have it. She said relatives are the most stupid people of all, and most of them belong to my father, and his are the worst. I remember a few of them, Aunt Clara and Uncle Charlie, Aunt Tillie and Uncle Harry, but that was from a time I was very small. I don't remember much, and what I do remember is not interesting to me. Uncle Harry had sharp whiskers and Aunt Tillie could not talk without sniffling and snorting. Uncle Charlie smelled of whiskey and Aunt Clara snapped the box of chocolate truffles out of my hands when I wanted a second one.

So what shall we do? We are at that moment. My mother asks it from the piano bench, her back toward us.

“The zoo? Issa would love the zoo,” my father says.

“Too smelly. The monkey house makes me want to throw up.”

“Prospect Park? We could rent a paddle boat?”

“Too many hoodlums there on Sundays.”

“What about the museum?”

“Blossom will get restless.”

“We could eat out at the automat.”

“Who knows how long those sandwiches sit in those windows?”

“Issa likes it there.”

“Well, she would. She's a child.”

“I like it there,” my father says.

There is silence. I know this whole play so well. Now my mother will turn back to the keys and play something fast and loud: a military march or the “Minute Waltz.” My father will pick up another section of
The Brooklyn Eagle
. That's the end of that. We won't go anywhere today.

Then, what happens is what always happens. The day turns dark. There is the feeling of the end of freedom coming. Tomorrow is school, tomorrow my father goes back to work at the defense plant, where (because they couldn't prove he was a saboteur) they have given him a much simpler job. Tomorrow Gilda's customers run up the steps like cackling hens (says my mother) and tomorrow the long week starts without a hint of respite.

I want, I want
…There ought to be fun for me. There ought to be roller skates. If I sit on my bed and look out any of the nine windows, I will see The Skaters going by, Linda and Myra and Myrna and Ruthie. Now they know I am in their class, they know my face by now, I tell them the time every day, but still I have no skates. If I had them, I could fly with them like the wind, I could play their noisy games, their rolling games, their racing games, their falling-down games. Whose fault is it that I have no skates?

My mother won't let me, that's all. If she would, the others would stop saying be careful be careful. My father does what my mother makes him do. Gilda, also, is led by her. She is terrible. I hope something terrible happens to her. Because of her we can't go to the zoo or rowing on the lake or walking in the museum. Because of her everything in my life is the way it is.

Good, we are getting a thunderstorm. Good, because it will shake the house with thunder. Good, because the rain will pour on the roof and streak the windows with mess and dirt. Good, because it will drown all the ants and soak all the birds and batter all the flowers, and make all the plants and trees bend down and shiver. Good, because my mother is down in the basement washing The Screamer's diapers and now she won't be able to hang them on the line and they won't get dry and they'll smell bad and The Screamer will have to wear her wet ones and get diaper rash and all that is good, because no one will take me to the zoo or get me skates.

Sundays are poison. I would go upstairs and bake with my grandmother, but she is clutching her chest today and moaning. I would go upstairs and roll bandages with Gilda, but she is checking her record book of war bonds and has to concentrate.

No one wants me, so I turn into thunder. With the thunder I roar and bang and clap and shake the very walls of the house. It is so dark outside that nighttime would seem bright with its moon and stars.

If only I could get sick they would pay attention to me, but I am healthy, I am strong as an ox, I am gaining weight from eating peanut butter sandwiches and tomato soup with Joe Martini. I could try to break my arm again, but even that didn't keep me sick enough for long.

What could happen that would change the dark furious feeling inside me? If I wait, something will have to happen. There is no way this feeling can go on without something to stop it. It is too ugly and terrible.

The clothes are washing in the basement in the Bendix. My mother is making bacon sandwiches for lunch; the smell of bacon grease gives my father a headache. He won't touch it, he won't even sit at the table when she serves bacon, but she makes it because she has to do things to stir him up. I know she likes to get him angry; it makes things happen, it makes the deadly dull Sunday come to life. I am just like her, so I know how she does things.

What I do is reach under The Screamer's knitted blanket and pinch her thigh. She can't talk, so she can't tell. I love to make her cry. I know it's bad and I love to do it. That's the way I am. Why I am bad I don't know, but I am.

The lightning is exploding through the windows. I used to be scared, like Bingo, of lightning and thunder, but I believe Gilda's telling me that it won't hurt me, so I let it happen now without screaming or hiding.

This is what I see; I am opening the refrigerator to check if my chewing gum is still stuck in the inside bottom corner. My mother is at the sink, in front of the open window, rinsing the bacon fat out of the frying pan. The bacon strips are lined up like curly snakes on a brown paper bag. The Screamer, still screaming from my pinch, is in her carriage near the stove. My father is not here: he has gone down to the basement to bring the wet clothes upstairs where we will lay them all over the backs of chairs.

And then my hair stands on end. I can feel it lift up at the back of my neck and rise up toward the sky. There is a tremendous crackling noise, and the room lights up. I turn around, and a ball of flame, big as the sun, has flown in the window and is hanging in the air, just behind my mother's back. It dances with fire, it's blinding me with fire, it hangs there in the space behind my mother till she turns around and almost takes it in her open mouth when she screams.

No one can move, we are paralyzed as it crackles and sparks. My father in the basement hears it and howls, “What? I'm coming!” and dashes up the stairs; he sees it just as it vanishes from the air. With a pop, it disappears, leaving a black hole in the air, an inside-out space.

We look at one another. We are all alive, but no one can move. We have been visited by a ball of fire. We have been electrified. We have lived through another Sunday.

My mother is convinced she will die by fire. Terrified since the ball of lightning came in the window, she won't open the windows. She won't let anyone take a bath or shower if the sky is cloudy. We can't even get a glass of water from the sink if there is one dark thunderhead in the sky. Could it be that she is being punished by God for making bacon? Could that
possibly
be the case? I don't think about God. How can I think about an invisible person who never shows up, never speaks, never shows the slightest indication that he exists. But maybe, as my father suggested, I should take this event as a warning and not eat bacon any more. Maybe my father is right, that God is everywhere, that he sees everything I do and knows everything I think. I have a sense that, if God does exist, his presence is especially dense in the area where the Jewish shawl and the Jewish prayer book are in sight. My father may know something: a ball of fire has never crackled at
his
back.

I watch my mother when she isn't aware of me; I follow her into the bathroom where there are only the two of us. The Screamer can't walk, so she has to stay wherever they plop her. She's like a lump of dough. One of these days her mouth will talk and her legs will walk, but not yet, not yet.

I walk, I talk, I see my mother leaning forward, looking at her face in the mirror, examining it as if it is spoiling, like a piece of molding cheese. She has a sad, disgusted look around her mouth, which she never opens to smile. Her pretty round behind comes toward me as she leans over the sink—even when she's sad her behind is always pretty, the way her skirt clings to it and then swings free down at her knees. When my mother walks, she dances, despite herself.

Very suddenly, I throw my arms around her legs and kiss her behind. She jumps, as if I have bitten her.

“Issa! Don't do that!”

“Why not? Gilda likes it when I do that to her.”

“You must never kiss people in those places,” she says. “And you must not kiss Gilda all the time. You're not a baby.”

“I wish I were.”

“Don't be silly.”

“Well, I do.”

My mother wants me out of there. I think she probably has blood on a napkin and wants to take it off and put on a clean one. I have seen her wrap the old one in toilet paper and put it in a paper bag. But that was when I was little and she would do those things in front of me. Now, I suppose, she only does them in front of The Screamer.

I don't think there is a reason for me to be in this house any more. I would like to live in some other house. With some other mother.

When Gilda wants to take me around the neighborhood to sell more war bonds, I ask her if we can go to a Skater's house. “Please, can we visit one of the girls from my class?” I beg. “Linda, Ruthie, Myra, or Myrna?”

“I don't see why not. I know all their mothers, every one of them is patriotic,” she said, hitching over her shoulder the canvas bag that has her record book and her money box in it. “Everyone is patriotic these days.” As we pass Mrs. Exter's house, Gilda points out to me the four gold stars pasted in her window. “A four-star mother,” she says, “poor thing. Four boys lost in the war. I'm glad I have no sons. I'm glad you aren't a boy, Issa.” Just then Mrs. Exter comes to her window and waves to us. She doesn't look too bad. When your children die, you can still smile and wave. What does that mean?

“I love the summer,” Gilda says to me as we walk on. Even after she has told me about four boys dying in the war, she can think of something ordinary like the summer. What does that mean? When grownups have feelings, do the feelings only last a minute or last forever?

“I love the summer, too,” I say, switching from dead boys to summer thoughts. I do the same thing grownups do—go to another subject. But what happens to the bad thought; if I bring it back later, will I get the bad feeling? Can I switch on and off like a lamp?

We walk along the summer streets, under the leafy shade of maple trees that drop little wing-shaped seed holders. I gather them up, snap them open in the middle and glue the wings to my nose. There aren't many cars on the street in the daytime; the fathers who have cars are all at work, including my father. Summertime is calmer than wintertime. I wear less clothes. I don't have to run to school. At night fireflies wink and glow against the hedges, and we sit out on the stoop to get cool, licking ice-cream pops we buy from Willy, the ice cream man.

But now that it is summer, I never see Joe Martini. I thought he would find me no matter what; I wonder if he has already forgotten me. He promised me he would walk over to my house as soon as he could, but he must have counted the fourteen blocks and decided I wasn't worth it. Or maybe his mother didn't like me and forbids it. Or…could it be…Jesus may have told him with his powerful eyes to stay away from me.

I wish Joe loved me. I wish everyone loved me. I wish anyone loved me.

Suddenly we are at the door of Linda's house. To my amazement, once the door is opened, there is the real-life Linda, just a little girl playing Monopoly with her father on the rug. There is Linda's mother, cooking in the kitchen. There is Linda's little sister, Evvy, pale and thin, because her heart is weak. (I thought only my grandmother, who is old, could have a weak heart, but look at this: a child younger than I am has a weak heart. This too could happen to me!)

“Hi,” Linda says. “Want to play?” Just like that, the invitation I have wanted for so long is laid at my feet. She pats the rug beside her and I rush to the place, folding my legs under me, grateful and weak with gratitude. Gilda goes into the kitchen to talk to Mrs. Levitz, and, because the game is beginning, I am just in time to get my money from the banker, who is Mr. Levitz. He has two missing teeth, and a stubble of beard, but he has a sweet face.