Chains Around the Grass (27 page)

She nodded with uneasy pride. Reading was not an accomplishment if you were almost eleven.

“Really? That’s great! Such a smart little girl.” This made her prouder and uneasier than ever. He thrust the book at her pointing not to the printed words, but those he had written in himself. It was a cheap cartoon book with pictures of naked women. Certain parts of their bodies had been attacked by a pen, dark heavy circles drawn over and over.

The Seven Brothers, she thought immediately, seeing it clearly for a moment: the Formica tables encircled by red upholstered seats; the boys with glistening slicked backed hair and black leather jackets, cigarettes hanging loose from thick, cynical lips. And the girls, their bodies outlined in tight pants and sweaters, their lips pouting and red, their hair teased high. And the way it made you feel to see them sitting there together so close—all queasy and queer.

“Can you read this?” he asked again, with a little hidden smile.

Oddly, she was not afraid, not then. He was an adult and one had to be polite to adults. To do as they asked. But she didn’t want to read it, not now. But his hand pushed the book at her, his eyes waited patiently, carefully. She had no way out. The words did not make sense to her. She had once had a pussy, a small brown and white little animal, fluffy as a newborn chick. Then he asked her the same question the man in the cartoon had asked the women. “Do you want me to tickle it for you?”

His face was pleasant and perfectly serious. He didn’t try to touch her, but waited there as if he had asked directions, or some other simple, perfectly straightforward question that common decency demanded be answered.

“I have to go home now,” she said, trying to be very polite and grown up, but carefully measuring the distance to the next exit ramp. It was not the one closest to home. It would mean a walk through the old summerhouses she dreaded. But a sure instinct pushed her urgently forward.

“I’ll tell you what,” he said calmly, his pace following her own, not running exactly, but a brisk measured step that did not allow her to get ahead of him. “Why don’t we go home and ask Mommy if it’s all right?”

The sky had gone from blue to pink-orange, to blazing red, and now it was over, fallen into twilight and creeping darkness. How cold it was suddenly! Freezing. Just the thought of being home with her mother, of laying her confusion down on her lap and letting her figure it all out made her breathe easier for a moment. But the comfort left her when she saw that he meant to go off the boardwalk with her, down the ramp. “I’m going home now,” she said, and then, softly, almost confidingly, almost as if she was begging his sympathy and understanding, “I’m afraid of you.”

His smile turned anxious and he fished a wallet from his pocket. It looked greasy and frayed and flat, and when he opened it and took out the only bill inside and offered it to her, all her doubts hardened into pure and utter terror, a certainty of impending pain and violation.

“Here,” he said, holding it out to her, “I’ll give you this.” And then she saw his eyes flick over to a row of bushes.

It was at this moment that she felt her whole life, everything she understood or believed, hang in the balance. This was the time. This was the ultimate test.

God! Her whole being cried out. My father in heaven! Help me!

And then, as if a signal had been given, the whole area was suddenly bathed in light as the street lamps went on. And then, miraculously, there were pounding footsteps. A big Black man and his small son jogged into view, the man slowing down as he saw the two of them. His glance was curious, disturbed, concerned as he slowed down, looking from her to the man. She ran back up to the boardwalk and fell in step behind him. He glanced back at her with a gruff smile. The stranger kept on moving, she saw, until finally, he disappeared. Then the three of them ran down the next ramp, through the dark streets all the way back to the projects.

Thank you, she prayed all the way home, as if addressing a flesh and blood companion, her dearest friend. It included the man and his son. It included God. This was the sign.

Chapter twenty-four

First you clean the chicken,” Ruth called out to her. “Then you cover it with water and add carrots and parsley root and an onion and celery root and bring it to a boil.” She sat in the chair calling out directions to Sara who worked in the kitchen. It was Friday afternoon. The child had decided to make a Sabbath dinner like the one she’d had at her friend’s house. She’d even insisted Ruth give her money so she could stop off at the fancy kosher bakery in Far Rockaway on her way home from school to buy a chocolate layer cake and sweet, raisin-filled challah bread.

Ruth, who couldn’t bring herself to move from the chair, shouted directions to her in the kitchen. How to boil noodles and mix them together with eggs and grated apples and cinnamon for a kugel. How to pluck and singe the pin feathers on the pullet. Almost in a daze, she watched as the child ironed the frayed white tablecloth and spread it over the chipped table top; how she set up the two challah breads and covered them with the old, gold embroidered velvet cover, then folded the napkins into little fans, and polished the glasses and silverware—things Ruth never did. She had even polished the big, heirloom silver candlesticks into something like a dull patina.

Ruth studied her daughter, wondering at the change that had come over her. It had happened that Saturday she’d come home so late and Ruth had been so worried. She’d begun to scold her, then stopped, seeing her face so pale and shaken. Instead, she’d offered her some warm soup and sat by watching as she ate. The spoon had trembled.

“Something happened?” Ruth had asked her. And the pale face had looked up wordlessly. Ruth had left it alone. But ever since, Sara seemed different. The word serene came to Ruth’s mind.

Sara placed the tall candles in the silver holders. She brought the wine and set it beside the old, silver, kiddush goblet. She even dressed Louis in a clean shirt, washing his hands and face and covering his curly hair with a skullcap she’d brought home from school. She stood surveying her table with a shy smile, then turned expectantly to her mother: “Come on, Ma. It’s time to light! It’ll be dark soon!”

Ruth couldn’t move.

“Come on, Mommy,” Louis called, walking up to her and tugging at her hands, pulling her up and out and into another place, where it was clean and smelled of boiling soup and sweet noodles baking with apples; where the table was set with clean dishes and an ironed cloth.

Ruth walked to the table, touching it tenderly with the tips of her fingers. She covered her hair with a scarf, then lit the candles. Her hands hovered over them, then pressed against her eyes to block out the light, to make clearer the separation between the light and the darkness, the ordinary workday and the holy Sabbath day of rest. She felt something roll away from on top of her. A door opening, light pouring through. She sat down by the table.

Sara served the simple meal with pride: canned gefilte fish with scarlet horseradish, boiling soup, roast chicken with sweet kugel, carrots and sweet potatoes. She cut thin pieces of the precious cake, serving her mother first.

Everything was so delicious, Ruth thought, amazed. It seemed so orderly. So normal. And when the meal was over, Sara opened her book and began to sing: Yom Shabbaton eyn lishkoach (the Day of Rest should not be forgotten, its memory is like a fragrant odor. On it the dove found rest, there shall the exhausted ones rest). She taught Louis some simple refrains, and they sang in rounds.

Ruth returned to her chair, her eyes closed, listening to the children, breathing in the lovely warm smell of the Sabbath foods. And then a sound, like a buzz—almost like some hovering bumble bee she thought—made her open her eyes and look up.

There it was, as clear as day, up above the table: Three of them, enormous creatures with large golden wings spread before their faces, hovering above her children’s heads. The first turned its face to her. It was her father, she recognized, stunned. Then the second lowered its wing just a moment and its face blazed with a shocking light. Dave, she almost shouted, paralyzed by the enormity of her vision. The third did not move, and never revealed its face.

Tears blurred her vision. She blinked them away. But when she could see again, the vision had vanished. Yet, she was sure someone was in the house. She felt it clearly. She wasn’t alone with the children anymore. She felt its force, its anxiousness and concern. And then a sudden peace, a beautiful calm settled over her heart.

“I’ll be all right,” she whispered. “Don’t worry. Don’t let your hearts grieve. I’ll be fine now, dear ones, my beloved. Rest now, rest. Papa, David. I love you both. Thank you. I’ll be all right now.” She felt the last large boulder roll away above her, leaving the opening large enough for her to push her way through. She got out of the chair and pushed it firmly away, back into a far corner of the room. She walked slowly toward the table. The children were singing: Mizmor le David.

Slowly, as if making a serious decision, she sat down and joined in.

A Song of David.

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

He lays me down by lush meadows; beside tranquil waters He leads me.

He restores my soul. He leads me on paths of justice for His name’s sake.

Though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me. Your rod and Your staff comfort me.

You prepare a table for me before the eyes of my tormentors. You anoint my head with oil. My cup overflows.

May only goodness and mercy pursue me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the House of God all the length of my days.

Chapter twenty-five

He got off the subway, a tall, slender young man with a small valise. He wore a nice new coat, and the polished shoes that his mother had given him on her last visit, knowing he’d outgrown the old ones after a year in the hospital. He felt, as he walked down the too familiar streets, like he’d stepped out of some time capsule: the bargain stores were still there selling the same rubber shoes and plastic flowers; the candy store window was still filled with the same dusty, bedraggled Easter bunnies and curling, faded cigarette posters of desert dromedaries. So much had happened, and so little had changed. It was comforting in a way, as well as enormously depressing.

This would be a day he’d remember, although he wouldn’t think of it often. His wedding day, the day he started his own successful business, the day he bought a beautiful corner house in an expensive Queens suburb, the days his sons were born… all those would leave a stronger, finer stamp upon his mind and heart. But the memory of walking down those dusty gray streets would be a stone in his pocket that he would roll around on his fingertips as he went through life, a reminder of where he had come from.

His mother had offered to pick him up at the hospital, but he’d wanted to spare her. In fact, if it had been up to her, he never would have been committed in the first place. She had begged the emergency room doctors to let her take him home after stitching him up, promising to travel with him for help every day to outpatient clinics; swearing she’d take better care of him. It was he who finally made the decision not to go home; he himself who had understood, even in his rage, that he desperately needed help she couldn’t give him.

Looking back, it had been an enormous risk. They could have sent him to some godawful state nut house like Creedmore, which could have easily swallowed him, chewed him and never spit him out. But some guardian angel had intervened in the form of a kind young resident at Bellevue, who had made the extra effort to find him a rare free bed at Brookdale—a five-star private clinic; a place where the disturbed and well-heeled were expected to recover. Nine times out of ten, they did.

He could see the projects looming only a few blocks away. To his surprise, they didn’t look as threatening as he’d remembered, merely disgustingly harmless, like a drunk who strikes up an unwanted conversation. And there they were, those chains around the grass his sister hated. Like bars on hospital windows, or those big, ugly factories belching smoke in Newark, they had a hard, cold, almost obscenely oily shine.

He wondered: What kind of men had thought up the idea of chaining off grass? And what did they tell themselves they were accomplishing as they hammered in the stakes and soldered on the links? Protecting rare and delicate foliage from the riff raff? Maintaining the aesthetic beauty of the “grounds”? Did they ever, he wondered, at least acknowledge that they were simply the keepers of the social order, the guardians and salesmen of the great American Dream? For if the children of men without money could play on wide, fragrant lawns, safe and happy, then how could men be induced into paying almost any human price to achieve such a decent, simple thing? He leaned back against a lamppost, taking out a cigarette, lighting it, and inhaling the smoke deeply into his lungs. His hands shook.

The horror of going back into that apartment! All those things he’d done, and all those things that had been done to him. All those memories of death, mourning, insanity, and pain…

Give yourself credit, Dr. Golden would’ve said. None of it was your fault. You were a child. In your own childish way, you tried to care for your family. To take your father’s place. You did your best. Your father did his best. Your mother does hers. Don’t look for perfect answers, perfect solutions.

He didn’t believe that, not really. Ambition was still strong in him. He had taken what he needed from the hospital, but craftily, preserving enough of his sanity to always remember who he was. He wasn’t going to be Morris and Harriet’s nice boy. He was

a risk-taker. An entrepreneur. There was a spectacular shore waiting to be explored and conquered. And now he was equipped with the wisdom to navigate wisely among the treacherous rocks, the natives hooting and throwing stones on the riverbanks as he sailed upstream toward it. The most important thing his doctors had taught him was simply to respect his limitations, as one respects a resourceful and clever adversary.