My Father, Who Art in McLarnin's (a short story)
Levy, Mort
MORT LEVY MY FATHER, WHO ART IN McLARNIN'NS Ethnic pride? I'll tell you about ethnic pride. There was a time long before any miracle at Entebbe, long before any joyous birth of a new old land...
...Often I would not venture out for recess, and more often than that I took the long way home, being compelled early in life to think with my legs...
...A smeared bloody puss is one of them...
...The teapot whistled, and he turned toward the door...
...And are His people not to defend their honor...
...It was not human...
...It t'isn't God who's invaded Poland," Father reminded him...
...Well, in that case let's have suffering, and don't I know just the place...
...Mother snapped, jerking me along...
...He had come over from Dublin—of all places—instead of from Krakow or Minsk, a proud devil with dark hair parted down the middle and a black mustache a la Gable, and that's what made the difference...
...Woman, if I'm not down there quick...
...Were you crazy in there...
...In sorrow, I say...
...All the ladies in the balcony pointing, smirking...
...Oh, Jay-sus," Magnan's father cried...
...Sons of bitches," I roared and fed Magnan's father a wicked kick to the shins...
...One did not mouth off to a Cossack...
...Once more I saw him reeling toward me, an angry one-eyed Titan...
...You mean you didn't throw one punch...
...Jack," Mother pleaded, "you mustn't be thinking of McLarnin's tonight...
...Magnan was with him, and three others, and together they crowded me against the rough bricks...
...It was hubris all right...
...In dazed gratitude I admired the widening evidence of my sacrifice until, abruptly, my clearing brain suggested that maybe the mosaic was expanding a bit too much...
...My chest heaved, and I breathed through my mouth while the master bed squeaked and Mother hurried down stairs, mules flapping...
...Father said...
...He's only a child," she argued...
...Some things a person must accept that's all...
...He wore a black fedora in need of blocking...
...I was just a little Jewish boy with a truss—a "condition"—breathing through open mouth now and feeling perspiration glue the leather band of my cap to my forehead...
...Or worse, a desperate cry from Father himself...
...Is it now...
...I couldn't decide whether it was the Irish or Jewish parts of him he was promoting, but seeing him that way—so isolated and proud—I thought he might very well be a god...
...Finish 'im off," others urged...
...Ah, if only Morty were here...
...I provided the details and, in anguish, watched the light fade from Father's eye...
...Wham...
...With luck they'd kill me...
...Bawling, I rushed to Father who swung me high and then down to where I could sob freely into his neck...
...On account of me...
...They're right up your alley, aren't they...
...I nodded, generous in victory, but already worried about what others would soon be saying...
...By damn...
...Beat, hit, punch...
...By them he meant his cronies, the ones who sang come-all-ye's and threw darts, the boisterous miners whose gruff and smoky fellowship each night balanced out Father's hard day as topside foreman at the Jeddo Coal Company...
...It's true then...
...His fist struck the table, the lid popping off the sugar bowl and Mother grabbing for it like it was the Hope Diamond...
...Whoosh," Magnan's father said...
...Then a second curse and the hard, wooden smack of a toppled bar stool...
...I've brought the cops...
...She eyed me suspiciously...
...Not one single punch...
...His green eyes, falling on my doll, darkened...
...And about to destroy the lot of us," Magnan's father said, hot-footing about...
...With guns and clubs," I added...
...What's this...
...The dart players took up their beers and crowded around...
...The silence formed a rushing in my ears...
...After all, it was still the America of restricted hotels and closed hiring and Father Coughlin and the KKK, and in tough Pennsylvania coal towns named Tamaqua and Hazleton and Pottsville, a Jew survived mainly by remembering that he was supposed to suffer...
...Both history and the Talmud, Jack...
...He was holding my knickers at arm's length...
...Who can't afford no conditions...
...Fatty Rabinowitz and company did not disappoint me...
...Tom, you...
...What need...
...The boy's thought of everything...
...On the return trip he glanced my way, sighed even louder, and vanished into the sun parlor, to reappear on the instant with an expression of absolute frustration...
...Father said...
...Father's plea hummed in my ears...
...I have a bomb," I warned...
...He bumped me again, harder, my back striking brick a second time, but the sharp abrasive pain was the least I deserved...
...A first warm trickle cruised down the inside of my thigh...
...I will not be mush," Father said and, leading us through the whisperers on the front steps, proceeded to dispense his cheery "Top o' the shabbos," not so much, I noted grievously, to be sociable as to provide ample opportunity for all to witness his now Infamous Orb...
...I will not be mush," Father announced...
...But it's your favorite," I said...
...Because he's crazy, that's why...
...They were grinning at an abashed and bearded old man who wore a six-pointed star sewn on his tattered overcoat...
...I dared not look up...
...Give, give, give...
...The chemistry of it all still escapes me...
...It's what God wants from us, that's why...
...I had believed him invulnerable, a Celtic god, but now he had a swollen eye, and it was all my doing...
...How would you like me to bust your shnozz, Milkguts, huh...
...And a truss...
...And once, while at table next morning, I saw that his knuckles were skinned...
...I watched his legs pass my secret place and mount the stairs...
...The author of two textbooks, he is now a freelance writer living in Pennsylvania...
...What need is there...
...I lay feverish on our couch, hugging my cowboy doll and watching Father range back and forth from room to room...
...Sit down already," Mother said...
...I doubled over, landing on all fours to spend the next minute head down, smiling stupidly at the plip-plops dotting the dirt between my hands while my unworried tormentors marched off past the averted eyes of Rabinowitz and his cowards...
...Both history and the Talmud...
...Oh, it's the violence you love, isn't it...
...All of which proved a source of great adversity to me, for early on I found myself stranded between two worlds and the butt of both...
...A litde button with a condition...
...What dumb kinda Jewish name is that...
...Oh, Jay-sus...
...Why do you persist in making life so difficult for the rest of us...
...I want my father," I told them, lungs heaving...
...Keep him whole and let him breathe...
...Sometime in the night it had rained...
...Now or ever...
...What need...
...Where...
...Awrr, blunt his hebe nose," Corrigan said and took his own advice...
...He wants to know what we've done with his father," McLarnin announced...
...Oh, he was solid Irish, that one, a bullheaded Mick with a fierce belief in a person's being his own man...
...and the master bed groaned and so did Father...
...Terror fashioned one monstrous fantasy after another in my head until, suddenly afraid that I'd not be in time, I threw aside the covers...
...Never...
...He winked at me...
...Mort Levy is a former Professor of English at Penn State University...
...Got that, Silly-Brilly...
...He was a fragile, bearded man with wire glasses and a long neck that extended from a frayed collar...
...Broke his nose," Magnan said and shoved...
...He means to get himself killed," Mother wept...
...My Jewish antagonists melted obediently away before the menacing leers of Corrigan and his mob...
...And still ducking, he vanished into the night...
...Clean a man out, they do...
...A moment later, the bathroom door slammed, the enema bag dropped off its hook, and all was silent...
...Then it was over, and, hotfaced, I followed Father up the carpeted aisle strictly by watching his feet...
...It is the Diaspora...
...I was never so embarrassed...
...Jeez, d'ja ever hear a dumber Irish name than that...
...he asked...
...And says he's brought the cops...
...Oh, Jay-sus," Magnan's father groaned and rolled his eyes...
...Or what I'd do...
...Whazzit...
...Tut, tut, John," Magnan's father told him...
...I was wondering that myself...
...Father began to tremble...
...Guilt-ridden, I launched a reunification effort, relying on the opening bars of Father's favorite come-all-ye, Rise Up, William Reilly...
...A/wter Brill," Mother sputtered over the headlines from Poland...
...Ka-pow...
...Hey, Morty...
...I am," I sang out and, terror-driven, lurched madly across Boyle Street plunging through beery exhaust into that queer orange darkness which I did not understand how anyone could love, Christian or Jew, and the huge, startled figure twisting at the bar, one brogan still on the brass rail, was—Magnan's father...
...My father says we don't need your kind makin' trouble for us in McLarnin's...
...Now give him to me...
...Father had done as much for me...
...Fresh from the mumps," was her angry cry...
...On my account, twas it...
...We must be patient...
...Stricken, I prayed for Father to break through those doors, please, God, just that one final effort so we might dash home together, though if he were too terribly hurt, I'd not be against running the opposite way to draw off his pursuers...
...Why it's Brill's kid," McLarnin said and checked the Budweiser clock...
...So back to Micktown and dig potatoes...
...Some things are not for a mother's eyes...
...Just once...
...Oh, indeed," Father said...
...It was past midnight when he finally stumbled through the door and into the hall stand with a loud "Damn...
...Been scrapping, have you...
...He went downstairs, still holding my knickers away from him, while I lay thinking that now, like him, I, too, was cursed—the fighting son of a fighting father...
...His voice rose...
...To all I was a pariah in galoshes and— growing up skinny and susceptible—easy pickings...
...And without galoshes yet...
...Mother cried, but even I knew the answer...
...And what's wrong with you...
...Brill's tyke...
...D'you think a root beer might help...
...Afterward, he carried me home through the misting darkness, stopping only once to feel my leg and mutter "Yeech...
...Ah, if only Morty were here...
...What else had enabled the children of Israel to survive over five thousand years, unloved wanderers in other peoples' lands...
...I did and I didn't, but I see now that for Father my "condition" must have been a brutal burden, the final kicker from a puny son who was always first on the block to welcome whatever microbes might be making the rounds...
...Another cheer, lustier and more triumphant...
...Sons of bitches...
...To suffer or to grow used to it...
...Now, a mere foot away, he pounded a scuffed football against his thigh and sneered at my galoshes...
...I fully believed Father would kill him...
...Hell," Father muttered and headed for the stairs...
...He limped a tight circle...
...but perhaps if we make no mention of your disgraceful language...
...D'you understand, lad...
...Better a person should get used to some things...
...I meant, to abide with suffering, not initiate it...
...I'm afraid so...
...He understands his heritage...
...I showed him the swollen evidence, which to that moment I was keeping covered with a piece of ice wrapped in a dish towel...
...Then leaning over, he inquired sweetly with whiskey breath, "But sup-posin' we was to bolt the door...
...Sing, joke, and reminisce with Jack Brill and he was your tippler's companion non-pareil...
...Aye," McLarnin said, "a bloody pistol, that one...
...S'a stupid name," Magnan agreed...
...Then a derisive hoot...
...It's not supposed to be fun...
...A man who thinks he knows better than God...
...When he heard why he had run three traffic lights, his great, damp head turned slowly toward me and a gleam crept into his healthy eye...
...A round of cheers, and I knew it was over, finished—I was too late...
...Suffering was our legacy, and to dare to act otherwise was the mark of a "greenie," an unattuned fool just aching for a bloody nose or a rock through the parlor window...
...Magnan followed with a bonus to the breadbasket, and the air shot out of me...
...Then, still trembling, he executed an about face on the speckled linoleum and marched from the kitchen with exaggerated dignity...
...That's right...
...Give me back my father...
...Well, now...
...He paid me a last agonized glance and shot out of the house...
...Do you think Mother will get over it...
...Now why would you be thinking that...
...Whoosh...
...Mother, too, turned inward, keeping to the kitchen although occasionally paying off Father with a slam of the icebox door that propelled him out of his favorite chair...
...And look at that nose, would you...
...Give, y'hear...
...Certain I was about to run out of blood, I lurched to my feet and zigzagged for home, head back and bawling, swallowing one bloody gob after another...
...Father answered with a mournful sigh and passed on into the dining room...
...You should be ashamed of yourself...
...A troublemaker who comes from Ireland," old man Rabinowitz remarked loudly two rows in front, "what else can you expect...
...Louder," Father said, with a demonstration that made me wince...
...Oh, God, is he crazy...
...Where is he...
...He wore his cap pushed back and owned hairy knuckles, and I saw that Father really had broken his nose...
...he shouted, wheeling like a dervish, his good eye panning the kitchen for some horrendous sight...
...To defy, like Father, the whim of God...
...He was marching straight back into the lion's den, not about to let anyone tell him how a certain person ought to act Not Jack Brill...
...You and your precious vanity...
...Not likely," McLarnin answered...
...Well now, ain't that the cake...
...Oh, not that he wasn't religious—just different is all...
...The hubris...
...Never Morty...
...I, his sickly non-image, had brought this shame upon him, had finally reduced him to beingjust another victim like the rest of us...
...Where are you going...
...For heaven's sake," Mother complained, but he was gone again, off to lap the dining room table...
...It's hubris," the rabbi told Mother...
...Not the coppers...
...Where?' "In a moment," Father soothed and carried me up to bed...
...Hubris, hubris, hubris...
...Wave-making was strictly for zealots, Zionists mostly, who, thank God, rarely bothered carrying their impassioned and embarrassing rhetoric beyond the tight little enclaves they inhabited in Brooklyn or the Bronx...
...Father asked...
...Measles, chicken pox, scarlet fever, I never let them down, and always Father stalked through our quarantined house bemoaning the injustice of it all and imagining the "What-else-can-you-expect's" being tossed around the bar at McLarnin's...
...A sudden curse from within the enemy camp froze me to the shadow of the hardware store...
...Okay, now here's an order," a tough voice announced...
...Morty Brill...
...Had it been only a dream...
...Rebounding off brick a third time, I was unable to stem the tears, but I received willingly the spreading pain between my shoulder blades, indeed, welcomed it...
...We must endure in sorrow," the rabbi insisted, focusing on Father's shiner...
...I could not see past the ring of drinkers to where Father's body lay, and I let a tear get away, then another...
...Damn," he cried, pointing to his closed eye, "if it's a lickin' you're to take, then, by God, child, give as good as you get...
...Brill's kid again they're saying...
...Father's entire body puffed up as though he would explode...
...Not Morty," Mother said proudly...
...A Brill...
...By fourth grade I had developed nervous eyes and the habit of walking on the balls of my feet, ever ready to spring like some skittish antelope at the least smell of danger...
...He used a napkin to blot my tears, saying things like "Fie" and "Sheesh," but when he was done, he turned to face our adversaries...
...What...
...Her brow creased and she hustled me home to bed, but I couldn't sleep for worrying about Father— or maybe I did sleep and dreamed it...
...Never," Father answered...
...Hopping on one foot, then the other, I dressed frantically, barely able to contain the whimpers and applying the final tug to my knickers as I tiptoed down the stairs...
...One did not make waves...
...That was my fault...
...Come Friday services when heads turned to eye the unrepentant Cyclops and his puffy-beaked progeny, Father coolly paid them what for, tuning his fine tenor louder and more Gaelic with every song and responsive chant until you'd have thought a John McCormack in yarmulke had descended among the congregation...
...D'ja know it was Magnan's dad your old man clobbered...
...But Father merely rose, very deliberately, and, with heavy fists jammed against his thighs, strode majestically from the room...
...Mother demanded in the foyer...
...But not you, Stork Feet...
...Might we treat this scurvy lot to a last round then...
...Bastards...
...Ah, where's me cap...
...They had me then, and the proof was in the hot, copious flow that soaked the top of my sagging stocking...
...Whoosh now," Magnan's father said...
...He was growing weaker, and his final words were, "Ah, if only Morty were here...
...Hubris," Mother shouted from the kitchen just before the enema bag struck the floor...
...His mouth opened and closed twice before the words came...
...I slid lower on the bench, but Father hoisted me erect without missing a response...
...Yes, let us lay eyes on this terrible bomb," the dart players insisted...
...Magnan's father asked...
...Patient," Mother echoed...
...A mild difference of opinion is all...
...Don't you understand that these trials are God's ways of testing His people...
...Is this where you skipped off to...
...Then his chest heaved, as though some powerful demon were twisting the knife, and he was up, dancing crazily to the hall closet and firing hooks and jabs...
...Here now," that gruff voice repeated, and through wavy sight I spied Father posed breathless in the doorway, jacket undone—and pajama top spilling out of unzipped trousers...
...Stupid," Corrigan repeated and jabbed me with the football...
...The rabbi's pale hands fluttered like bird wings...
...Father, who prided himself on being "the fighting son of a fighting father," could not fathom why I ought to be babied, while Mother, being the refugee in the family, failed utterly to comprehend why I should not...
...She smacked me on the rump...
...Well, in that case...
...He was not the least bit contrite, that one, but Irish proud and letting them know it...
...Louder...
...Then the bathroom door slammed, the enema bag hit the floor, and all was still...
...Mother banished me from the parlor, but I hid under the dining room table and watched him perch uneasily on the edge of Father's chair...
...Awrr, poke him in his Irish puss," little Klemow prompted from behind wire specs...
...Then sudden, terrible silence while crouched and shaking, I urged the father who had sacrificed himself for his puny son to break free, to hurry, please, hurry, and promised God that I would rush in to save him, just as soon as I counted to a hundred, which I did while my skinny body shivered and sweat gathered inside the elastic of my BVD's...
...Well, then, would there be others wantin' to take on Brill's kid...
...Are you anti-Semitic or something...
...I can't say now, except that sometime in the night I pictured Father in McLarnin's, solitary and beleagured, a magnificent giant surrounded by ruddy-faced wolves...
...I asked...
...Take Morty home," Father said, and the congregation watched him fade grandly into the quickening dusk toward Boyle Street...
...So," Father said and set me on the bar...
...I and my weak ways had forced Father to charge into the night and—like their Jesus—to take my sin upon himself...
...Compelled by an Irish temperament—and no doubt a fine amount of McLarnin's peat whiskey—he was forever driven to put the squelch on whatever latest rumors his cronies might feel tempted to take for granted about Semitic blood, noses, or monetary habits...
...What've you done with him...
...McLarnin said...
...Give me my father...
...Was it a fight...
...Hey," Rabinowitz said, closing in with his knickered cohorts...
...Not a soul walked the streets...
...Back then, the trick was to remain invisible, to blend with the social fabric called Middle America and not make waves...
...Then, suddenly, he was back, on one knee, snaring my burning head between rough hands...
...German soldiers lounged in front of the cafe, looking very young and confident...
...When I at last turned the corner onto Boyle Street, I saw it, the neon-lit bastion of my foes with its blue McLARNIN'S buzzing menacingly above frosted double doors...
...Oh, God, I'm killed," Magnan's father hooted...
...Recite," he said, tapping the page...
...Mother charged...
...The only other words he spoke were "Ah, lad, lad," and twice he kissed me under the ear...
...One Brill, maybe, but two...
...Sheesh," Father said...
...But not Morty, hear...
...The rabbi must have thought so too, for, turning white, he ducked his head like a chicken awaiting the axe...
...Which...
...To hell...
...That's right," she shouted, "punch, fight, defend your silly name...
...Eat," Mother snapped, but I could only stare across my lumpy farina at that eye with its distended flesh taut and shiny...
...Mother responded with a noise like a seal's bark and sank behind the news while I patted my doll and wondered why my father had to be the only Jew in the world who Moment/53 wanted to fight when everyone else knew it was our destiny to suffer...
...it's a lickin'you're to take, then, by God, child give as good as you get...
...He, too, was a Russian with ideas straight from the shtetl...
...If I'm not down there quick, there'll be them to charge us with yet another epidemic...
...There was a time long before any miracle at Entebbe, long before any joyous birth of a new old land called Israel, long before even the heroic tragedy of the Warsaw Ghetto, when Jewish pride was not such a hot thing...
...I switched to the side of my shoe...
...I was sweating terribly in my woolen knickers and my nose throbbed and I had trouble focusing on anything but the tops of my stiff shoes...
...It's 1939 I'm speaking of, when crazy rumors were pouring out of Germany about taints in Jewish blood, and I see now how my "condition," as Mother always described my hernia, affected my poor, handsome father...
...Which only confused me since Father never bothered to wear his hat in the house...
...Father asked me...
...Never Morty," Mother said...
...With Corrigan it was not so easy to play martyr...
...After one more check to confirm that I was not beyond repair, he staggered from the kitchen, only to return on the instant, reeling toward me like some thwarted Cyclops, the cords in his neck swollen purple...
...So that autumn, when I fell victim to mumps and yet another quarantine order, I began to despise myself and to feel truly sorry for Father...
...And who would that be, sonny...
...He's a Paddy hebe is what he is," Father shouted...
...Even the rabbi said so—each time he delivered that strange word: Diaspora...
...And nobody said a word...
...Without anger, without protest, for who is man to question God's ways...
...What if it had been a vision from God...
...I asked...
...All you big-nosed kosher crumbs—am-scray...
...Mother made a half-dozen trips to the bathroom to run water, and come morning I was shocked by the swollen purple slit that was Father's left eye...
...It's what it does for you...
...I did not quit traveling about on the balls of my feet—not immediately—yet, oddly enough, Rabinowitz and his bootlickers soon found other ways to amuse themselves, and even the pushes I received from Corrigan's bunch hardly rated as nudges...
...Ah, I can hear the flap now," he'd say, "the sons of bitches...
...I was miserable and ashamed and could think only of poor Mother, trapped alone in the balcony among the harsh whispers and unkind glares of the women...
...Jay-sus," he said...
...Then why won't Daddy...
...Give him to me or I'll blow you all to hell...
...A mean Irisher with broad face and a zillion freckles, he towered above everyone in this his second go-around in the fourth grade...
...They were a hard-drinking, debating lot whose stubborn views sometimes did not bring Father home until all save the wind-up clock atop the china closet was still...
...A bomb...
...He burst in red-faced and perspiring, a one-eyed madman with dark amoebic stains spreading across his denim shirt...
...No...
...Yes, sir...
...It's no fun...
...Why must we suffer anyway...
...He stared at me a moment, then nodded gravely...
...Mother was asleep, and I did not know what to do...
...Give him to me...
...Punch, fight," Mother cried, "but not Morty, hear...
...I kicked again, and the dart players scattered...
...What d'you mean 'yes and no...
...Why would a person want to get used to suffering...
...Son of a bitch, now we've got him," a voice whooped...
...Seein' I'm not the one's a prisoner of the health department...
...Good lad," Father said, then caught himself...
...Is cod liver oil fun...
...Understand, Jack," he started slowly, "suffering is our legacy...
...But did Father buy it...
...Morty Brill...
...Not when you must beat time on your truss...
...Five thousand years of history had prepared me for this moment, and I accepted—gladly...
...It was in worse shape than mine, puffed and wandering, with the flesh beneath his bloodshot eyes two purple-black smears...
...I thought you were hurt," I told him when I was at last clean and under the covers...
...The cops, you say...
...Mother, pale and frantic, was waiting in the kitchen...
...Father said...
...I was weak, weak...
...Corrigan asked...
...What the goyim in ancient Greece called excessive pride...
...She yanked me up the street...
...Then Mother helped Father upstairs, saying louder, "Didn't I tell you so...
...Ought I now...
...Fatty bumped me into the school wall...
...Being only eight, I sensed events more than understood them, but I realize now that what happened had to do with my being a delicate child and with the times and with Father's being a quirk of history rather than a shtetl graduate like the eighty or so other Jews living in Pitman...
...And why not I'm askin...
...I sprang upright in bed, my chest thumping, but in the pressing silence I detected nothing save the ticking of the clock...
...Like Feenamint...
...Quinn thought it bad manners to wear a hat about the house...
...Panic won out...
...Mother screamed once over me, then twice into the phone, and while she was still wringing bloody water from the washcloth, Father was home from the breaker with a screech of brakes and a mad plunge through the back door...
...Stop that," Father growled from behind an AP photo of a sidewalk cafe...
...Here now," a voice cautioned...
...There was excited talk, but none that I could make out except "I told you so...
...What's that...
...Ah, lad, lad," he lamented...
...And at this hour...
...Still, to cultivate scabs on one's knuckles...
...Never Morty...
...I like to think it was because of the happening at McLarnin's—but then again maybe it was the times, for the next week, when the Germans took Poland, Mother, on her own, made a special trip to the dry goods •store, and come Friday, the three of us walked into the synagogue, each wearing over his heart a six-pointed star with a shamrock in the center...
...Then, he'd fumble with the latch and bump into the hall stand or else march boldly up the stairs singing Brennan on the Moor...
...I've got it now too, haven't I?" "Got what...
...First, we must see this bomb...
...Yes and no, sir...
...I cried and heard one final time that Titan call, saw once more that fine god figure, hard put and harried on my account by merciless goyim who probably had never cared beans that their God had so loved His only son...
...the sidewalks glistened, and from the eaves of darkened houses water dripped into a curling mist...
...When the congregation at last rose for the Hatikvah, the singers around us launched a counterattack, but Father vanquished them handily, ignoring the rabbi's daggers and forcing old JafJe, the cantor, up a neck-swelling octave...
...The breath whistled madly in his nose...
...Ah, lad," he wailed, "if only you'd the stuff to let a Corrigan catch something first Or Powell's kid...
...Give, give, give...
...I tried not to think about what I'd find...
...Ah, if only Morty were here...
...He pondered a moment, finally sucking air through clenched teeth to say, "Not likely...
...Nevertheless, I remained true to my heritage, arriving timidly home each day to a house gone cold, where no one spoke, where each cheerless tick of the clock carried to the farthest room, and where each snap of Father's newspaper approximated an explosion...
...Like his calling out "Top o' the shabbos" at the close of Friday services...
...Like his old man...
...If there was one thing Silly-Brilly knew well, it was how to suffer...
...Don't ask silly questions...
...After all, I was very good at running, but, dear God, if I had to go inside...
...I lifted my squeaky voice...
...Let Health Officer Muldoon pop onto our street and what neighbor didn't know for "sartin" whose doorpost to check first...
...I suddenly craved the jeers of the schoolyard, and three days later when Health Officer Muldoon pried the tacks from the red sign on our door, I marched to school burning to receive the mocking voices that would remind me of the coward I really was...
...Then I counted fifty more, just in case I had counted wrong...
...That night the rabbi paid us a call...
...But I saw his point...
...Now I would do as much for him...
...When not cornered in the schoolyard by Corrigan's mob, I was being ambushed on my way home by Fatty Rabinowitz and his pals...
...McLarnin himself asked, a wisp-headed ogre with pouches under his eyes...
...Seein' the terrible damage you've inflicted...
...Next came a whimper, except just as I was about to let loose, a fresh, damning vision of Father got in the way...
...the rabbi shouted...
...Antagonize and abuse him and it was chaos come again...
Vol. 4 • December 1978 • No. 2
