Chains Around the Grass (21 page)

If he did, he would join Mary Christina Ravirez, who lived in the projects and had told everyone her daddy had died because he was fat…and Jesse, who hit her everyday…and the worst one of all, Hesse, who had somehow come into their family and destroyed everything.

She waited for the last bell, gathering her heavy books and briefcase. Most of the children ran to waiting cars that would take them to little private homes nearby, and to expensive Tudor castles in Cedarhurst and Woodhurst. Only she, Paulette Goldberg, and a few other kids took a bus in the opposite direction, toward the modest old houses of Arverne—and only she was left when the bus rode further on to the ugly housing project in Waveside.

“I hate Rabbi Bender,” Paulette said suddenly one day at the bus stop. “He always says to me ‘your sister was such a good student, my favorite, and look at you.’ At the beginning of the year, he said,

‘The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,’ and now you know what he said! ‘A rotten apple!’ I hate my sister and I hate Rabbi Bender,” she sobbed.

She had lovely blue eyes and soft, golden hair. She looked at

Sara expectantly.

“I hate my big brother. He always hits me,” she offered. “Does he go to the Hebrew Day School?”

“He goes to public school.”

“Wish I could go to public school and get out at 2:30 instead of 4:30 and wouldn’t have all this baa baw beh. I hate Hebrew! I hate Rabbi Bender!”

“I hate him too! I wish I could go back to public school,” she realized.

“Where’d you go?” “Forty-four.”

“Yuch! That’s near the projects!” Paulette said with disgust. “My

Ma says it’s dangerous. You don’t live there, do you?”

Instinctively, she shook her head knowing it was something else to be ashamed of. Something else to hide, like stains on clothes, and not having a father. So many things to hide, she thought with anguish. “I live in a house, further down.”

“My dad has a grocery store near the projects. I could go in and just take Drake’s cakes and everything.”

“Really?”

“I could. But he never gives me any. He says I’m eating up his profits.”

“My daddy drives a big yellow taxi and we go all over in it. To the Bronx Zoo.”

“Would he take me too!? Oh, please would he?” “He can’t.” She looked away.

“Why not?”

“’Cause he’s passed away…” she caught herself, “I mean gone away.

“So when he comes back then. Where’d he go?”

“I don’t know…” she murmured, telling the absolute truth. Paulette paused for a moment, considering. “Does he sleep with your mother?”

“He will when he comes back.” “Wanna play ball tomorrow?”

“Yes,” she let out the breath she had been holding, seeing the bus in the distance.

“I’ll bring mine. A Spalding.”

The heavenly bus stopped, rescuing her.

They were friends. At recess, they played ball. “My name is Agatha and my husband’s name is Alex, we come from Alaska and we sell apples,” bouncing a rubber ball beneath their knees with graceful rhythm. The ball was firm and light, bouncing back into your hand effortlessly. It was a Spalding, not just a regular handball, like her own. Paulette had new Spaldings, and jump ropes and Duncan yoyos, and a rubber band ball as big as a fist.

“I wish I could play punch ball,” Paulette said miserably. “But they won’t ask me. They all live near each other and practice together in the afternoons.”

They both looked off to the playing field. It was Marcia’s birthday and she was covered with corsages. From each corsage hung a number of colored ribbons—one for each year—to which something was taped: candy, a penny, or pieces of gum.

They watched her laughing as the other girls crowded around admiringly. She must have a corsage from almost every girl in the class. There wasn’t even room to pin them all on! Her hair shone. Her pretty green mohair sweater and green hair band matched perfectly. Her white teeth sparkled.

Sara and Paulette sighed, linking their arms together as they watched, the way believers watch a temple goddess accepting offerings from the faithful.

“For my birthday, I’d want a red one with Bazooka bubble gum on the ends,” Paulette said dreamily.

“I would love a blue one with pennies. Then I could buy anything I wanted,” Sara admitted shyly.

Sara never expected Marcia or Linda to speak to her. She had not brought homage, was not in the same neighborhood, couldn’t play punch ball… Her ineligibility for the role of handmaiden was clear. Paulette, on the other hand, had hopes. Whenever Linda and Marcia were near, she would suddenly jump up; begin to tell jokes about herself very loudly, overjoyed if one of them deigned to look at her and laugh. Sara watched uneasily. Having a friend was worse in some ways than being alone, she thought, her meticulously plotted stratagems of self-defense demolished by Paulette’s utter vulnerability.

“I’d love to play punch ball,” Paulette mourned.

“We could make our own punch ball game,” Sara suggested. Personally, she thought the game stupid. Baseball with no bat, no catcher’s mitt! She was good at baseball. Jesse and her father had taught her.

“Yes! And I could be captain and I would choose you…” Paulette agreed eagerly. But then her face fell. “Who else?”

“Dina, Sue and Ruth!” Fat Dina, lisping Sue, and Ruth with the thick glasses and funny clothes.

“Yeah, sure,” Paulette said, an odd look coming over her face.

After that, Paulette began avoiding her, hanging around the place where the teams were being chosen. At first, she stood apart, as if only watching. Each recess, she would move a little closer, making it clearer that she was a candidate, standing with the other hopefuls. And always, she was left behind when the girls ran off squealing to the playfield.

Sara watched her with quiet anguish, anxious for the ordeal to be over and for Paulette to come back to their special corner. Recess after recess she waited, bouncing an old rubber ball against the side of the white building, counting how many times she could clap before catching it, how many times she could turn around, or scoop it up beneath her leg.

She saw them coming towards her: Marcia and Linda, and all the girls who would always get chosen, their arms linked and their shining hair held back by pretty, new hair bands. Paulette was with them. Before she realized what was happening, they stood in a circle around her.

“Where do you live?” Marcia asked, charmingly.

“In… in,” she looked at the girls, terrified, “in Arverne.”

“Oh no you don’t either!” Paulette said suddenly. “I live there, but you don’t. You don’t get off the bus with me… She doesn’t.” Paulette smiled ingratiatingly at the others.

“DO SO!” She looked into Paulette’s face, pleading. “Ask her about the other thing,” Paulette said.

Then Linda stepped forward with a pleasant smile, the kind of smile she had when she would choose the girls and they would run to her, squealing, after being chosen. “Where does your father sleep?”

Sara stared at the wall of curious, serious faces; the neatly pleated skirts and perfectly matched hair bands.

“In the room…” she stammered.

“Which room?” Paulette demanded, looking at the others for approval.

“In the house…” her eyes began to swim, blinding her. “In the room…with my mother.”

Paulette shook her head significantly at the others. “My father knows her family—her mother shops at my father’s store. He told me her father passed away,” she said, smug supplier of valuable information.

Sara felt their eyes turn on her, like the eyes of her small pretty cousins when her mother had come home that day smelling of chilled wool and earth.

She turned and ran.

Only when she got off the bus, did she grow frightened, considering consequences. Perhaps the school would send a policeman. She thought of the big, jolly Irish cops she’d met at the Police Athletic Association Christmas party. That would be all right. But it could also be a truant officer—they were rumored to be monstrous. They’d knock on the door and drag her away. She would not go home, she thought. She’d run away and maybe someone would find her and adopt her and treat her kindly so she would not have to go back to the Hebrew Day School ever again. Like in a Shirley Temple movie, some kind, rich people, who would come along and rescue her, absolving all her sins and guilt.

She ran, turning toward the shanty houses and the boardwalk.

There, on the corner, was Lowitt’s Drug Store, with the man who chased children out. He had a cruel red face and thick glasses, which made his eyes melt into tiny black marbles. The corners of his mouth always turned down. Lowitt’s. The smell of white bandages and new cardboard boxes, iodine, and sour pink calamine lotion you put on chicken pox so they wouldn’t itch. They itched anyway. She ran past. The candy store. Kramer’s. The bell that jangled in welcome. Her father lifting her in his strong arms, holding her just high enough to peer into the icy rainbow of containers:

“Now which one, just tell the nice lady. You got green pistachio. You got lemon and vanilla fudge…”

“Chocolate!” she would scream, ecstatic. Was there any other flavor, really?

“That’s my girl!” her father would roar, hugging her as he did a little dance. Chocolate with chocolate sprinkles. Sweet syrup for Coca-Cola. Good! She ran. And there was the bakery. Fresh rye bread with warm poppy seeds and cream cheese from Mr. Weiss’s big tubs. Sour pickles from his old wooden barrels.

She ran.

Which way? Through the old shanty houses with their chipped and darkened wood, the swarms of small Black children with shining faces and torn sneakers hooting in laughter and chasing each other across the streets? Would they drag her into one of their dark houses, beat her?

She ran.

Lifting her head, she saw Temple Israel in the distance. Sponge cake and honey cake and salty herring. Benches of light wood, staircases to run up and down. Old women behind curtains. They turned to look at you and their faces cracked into a thousand lines. But they were only smiling. They would give you little hard candies wrapped in cellophane. And on Yom Kippur tears would roll down their soft white cheeks, falling into the grooves of their faces. Oy vey iz mere, they would sigh wiping their eyes. Don’t look, go outside, her mother would whisper. It was Yizkor, the prayer for the dead. But now she would have to stay and say it. They would look at her, they would check to see if she cried…

She ran.

And then, right next to Temple Israel, there was the long row of bushes that hid the priest’s house. If you stood on tiptoes you could see it white and immaculate behind two towering elms that arched over a wondrously red-tiled roof. It was almost like a gingerbread house in the woods. On either side of the cleanly swept steps, a garden rioted in rich glowing colors. On the wide veranda, a glider swayed, its blue silk tassels twirling gaily in the breeze. A few steps further was the church itself, which spiraled vertiginously skyward looking down with snobbish disapproval on the shanties, the projects, herself.

Sara walked up the steps and peeked through the huge doors. It was dark inside, almost black, except for the shafts of light which filtered though the many-colored windows. Eerie, ghostly. And the strange dolls on the walls—a naked man-doll—seemed to stare at her, annoyed she didn’t want to play. Not with him.

She ran.

There, finally, were the old wooden steps and the powdery white sand. The sea! She ran down the stairs toward the water, her blood racing through her veins in joy, her heart lifting and falling, dancing in her chest. She threw off her socks and shoes. Awwhh! But the water was like ice, like burning ice! But so good!

“Mr. Weiss is very nice, but Mr. Lowitt gives a schmiess !!” she screamed, choking with laughter.

She looked out toward the horizon, watching as one after another, the waves drew themselves up with a burst of terrifying power, stretching skyward like a wall of sparkling glass. She sunk to her knees, her laughter suddenly gone. And then, always, always, the taut fury of their threat crashed down, smashing itself into gentle foam, which licked her toes like a puppy.

Who had the power, she wondered, to break that taut fury? The ultimate, hidden power to control this wild sea, turning its monster waves small and gentle? Who had the power to keep you safe?

She dug her fingers hard into the sand, still warm from the morning sun. Something was there, alive, wriggling to get free. She pulled her hand back, as if scalded. A small sand crab emerged, scurrying for shelter. She picked it up, studying the rock-like firmness of its body, but its frantic movements to escape made her heart ache with a sense of familiarity. She put it down, watching with envy as it dug its way back inside the sheltering earth.

She lay down in the sand, watching the slow movement of wind-dragged clouds across the sky. Like mountains of snow, she thought, so heavy and solid, yet they moved as lightly as smoke rings. She, too, felt suddenly lighter. She jumped up, wanting suddenly to touch a cloud. I can catch it, she assured herself, stretching out her hands to the sky, she chased it. But always it moved just beyond her, just out of reach. She dropped to her knees, breathless, aware of her own heart pounding like some stranger begging to be let in.

He was dead. Deep in the ground. In a box. Covered with earth. He could not move. He could not smell or feel or hear or see… And he was never coming back.

She saw the light on the water move and change. She looked up at the seagulls as they soared into the sky, one after another, her heart slowing. A white gull, larger than the others, suddenly spread his furled wings, moving them slowly and powerfully. She craned her neck back, following his soaring progress into the clouds, until he almost disappeared.

The power!—she thought, stunned. The secret power of those strong wings that could lift the body into the sky at will, carrying it aloft to the heavens! She felt her heart stir with a strange passion. She felt dizzy, as if she were looking down from the clouds. And all at once she felt the hard shell wrapped around her heart crack open, like the clams the seagulls tossed to earth. And inside she found this pearly soft beauty. There all the time!