Looking for Me (3 page)

 

next to the three others
just like it.

I'm sitting in class,
dripping from this Indian summer heat,
trying hard to pay attention
to Miss Connelly's lesson,
when all of a sudden
a waterfall of rain gushes down outside.

 

As soon as the afternoon bell rings,
I dash home,
the rain matting down my black curls,
and when I open the door,
Melvin yells, “Eeediff...!”
and wraps his arms around my legs.

 

I run upstairs to peel off my wet clothes
and put on my bathing suit.
Then I pull Melvin's swimming trunks on him
and grab his hand.

 

We race to the end of the street,
where the rainwater doesn't drain
and it's three feet deep,
and we jump in together,
still holding hands.

 

Melvin starts flapping his arms
in the water like a bird
and laughs while he sprays me
with his wings,
and I hold both his hands
and swish him around me
like a motorboat
going faster and faster and faster.

 

I wish I could keep holding
Melvin's hands,
swishing him around
in our own private street pool
forever.

Maybe the swim
was a dumb thing to do,
because I'm home with a cold
and Melvin's sick, too.

 

We can stand the sneezing
and noses that don't stop dripping
and even the tea with lemon and whiskey
Mom makes us keep sipping.

 

But when Mom gets the castor oil
and says, “Open wide,”
Melvin and I
try to run off and hide.

 

It's too late for that.
Here comes the spoon.
“Drink it down,” Mom says.
“You'll feel better soon.”

 

It tastes so awful,
Melvin starts to cry.
“It's not that bad,” I tell him,
even though it's a lie.

 

Maybe the swim
was a dumb thing to do,
because now we're both sick
from castor oil, too.

When Melvin and I are over our colds,
I take him and Sol
to visit Bubby Anne.
She lives above her dry goods store,
and when she hears
the bell tinkling over the opened door,
she comes down
to help the customers.

 

To spare her legs
the walk downstairs
when we stop by,
as soon as we open the tinkling door,
we yell upstairs
to the second floor,
“It's nobody!”

Bubby Anne's last name is Polansky.
I would've been Edith Polansky except
that Dad, who was a Polansky
for most of his life,
followed Uncle Jake
who says he changed his name
for business' sake
from Polansky
to Paul.

 

I'm glad we changed our name
to Paul.
It's easier to say
and to spell,
and it rhymes with lots of words
like wall
and hall
and fall
and call
and even
with my little brother Sol.

 

I'm glad
we changed our name
to Paul,
because nothing
rhymes with Polansky.

When Dad goes to see his mother,
my Bubby Anne,
she serves him gefilte fish
with the bones still in it,
but he says it doesn't matter,
because she's a good businesswoman.

 

She's too busy at her dry goods store
to come to our house much,
so she sends Dad home
with her bony gefilte fish.

 

But we don't mind
because when we visit her,
she gives us nickels
and new socks.

 

Bubby Anne always says she'll never live
with any of her children.
“It's not good for two women
to be in one kitchen,” she says.

 

But if only she would invite
my other
bubby
—
Mom's mother—into her kitchen,
maybe she could learn a thing or two
about cooking!

Most of the kids are Catholic
who live on our street,
so they don't worry much
about what they eat.

 

But we aren't allowed
to mix milk with our meat,
or eat bacon, shrimp, crab,
or pickled pigs' feet.

 

And we use separate dishes
for milk foods and meat
and paper plates for crab cakes
('cause sometimes we cheat).

Eunice and I mostly go
to
my
house after school
because she thinks it's more fun
than a circus.
But today we go to Eunice's
for a change
(which I like because it's nice and quiet).

 

She asks if I'm hungry,
and of course, I say yes
because I love to eat
(maybe too much).

 

She offers me kielbasa,
a Polish treat,
and I say, “No thanks,”
even though my stomach
is growling for it.

 

“How about a ham and cheese?” she says,
lifting her eyebrows.
“No, thank you,” I say,
and worry she'll think
I'm the pickiest eater
in all of Baltimore.

 

“Don't like ham and cheese either?”
she asks,
with her hands planted on her hips.
“Nope,” I say,
willing my stomach to hush up.

 

“What
do
you like?” she asks.
“Everything else,” I say,
and I don't try to explain
why I can't eat pig,
because I came over to Eunice's house
to play.
I don't want my Jewish eating rules
to get in the way.

Peggy Schmidt,
this new girl in the neighborhood,
is coming over to play
for the very first time.
I open the front door
and find her staring up
at our doorjamb.
“What's that thing?” she points.
“It's a mezuzah—
a Jewish thing,” I tell her.

 

Then we go down to the cellar
to cut out paper doll clothes
and she's looking at me
with eyes wider than bicycle tires.
She comes right up to me
and starts poking her fingers
through the black curls
on the top of my head.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“I'm looking for your horns,” she says.

 

I'm not usually a shouter,
but I'm sure you could hear my voice
in the next county
yelling, “WHAT?”

 

Mom told me
that there are dumb people who think
that Jews have horns.
Only I never thought
I'd meet one

 

in my own house.

Jimmy Lenchowski chases me
like an angry storm
and calls me “Jew bagel”
and screams at me
about how I killed Jesus Christ.

 

When he comes after me,
my stomach starts jumping rope
and I run like a rabbit
to escape his attack,

 

run all the way home
and never look back.

Say what I feel,
do what I want,
act on a dare.

 

Maybe I should be more like Marian.

 

Go where I want,
Make myself heard,
never be scared.

Bubby Etta comes to visit
and I ask her to tell us a
how-it-was-in-the-old-country story.

 

First she closes her eyes,
to see the past better, I guess.
Then her body starts to sway
like she's doing a memory dance
and the words,
in her old-country accent,
          come
                    tumbling
                              out.

 

"
In Russia I was a midwife.
One night a man knocked on my door.
‘The baby's coming; the baby's coming' he yelled.

 

"
I rushed to his house with him.
It vas outside of our village,
where no Jews were allowed.

 

"
I brought out the baby from the mother
and then I brought another baby from the mother
and then I brought the third baby from the mother.

 

"
The man was so shocked
he fainted.

 

"
I brought thousands of babies into this world
and never lost even one.

 

"
They trusted me
with their babies,
but they called my people
zhyd.

 

"
They trusted me
with their babies,
but they wouldn't let the Jews
study at university
or vote
or learn Russian in school
or live where we wanted.

 

"
They took us from our homes
in the middle of the night
and marched us through the streets,
and sometimes they beat us...

 

"
but they trusted me
with their babies
"

 

Bubby stops swaying,
opens her eyes,
wipes the wetness from her cheeks,
and says,

 

"
Here in America, I can bring babies into this world
and I can live where I want
and I am not afraid
to be who I am
."

Today after school,
when Jimmy Lenchowski
starts yelling
about how I killed Jesus Christ,
I think about the story
Bubby told me yesterday
and how in America
she doesn't have to be afraid
to be who she is.

 

Well, neither do I.
So for the first time
I yell right back at Jimmy,
“I couldn't have killed Jesus,
because I wasn't even born then,
but my brothers are going to kill you
if you don't leave me alone!
And believe me,
I have a lot of them.”

 

Jimmy's eyebrows shoot up
and he stands there
looking like he just got punched.
Then he turns and runs
as if my brothers are at his heels.

And after that,
I'm not one bit scared
of Jimmy Lenchowski
anymore.

There's always someone in this family
who needs something from me,
always someone pestering me.

 

I'm just trying to do my homework
at the kitchen table
when Annette asks me to cut a kaiser roll
for her.

 

Eager to get back to my homework,
I snatch the knife
and slice more than the kaiser roll.

 

Suddenly blood's gushing out
of my finger
and a piece of it's dangling
like a yo-yo on a string.

 

Annette's pointing at it,
screaming, “Blood!”
like my head's been chopped off.
Then she runs for Raymond,
who rushes me to the corner druggist.

 

The druggist wraps my finger
tightly in cotton
and holds it
till the blood stops spurting.

 

I think I'll stay
far away from kaiser rolls
for a while
(and maybe little sisters
who need me to do things for them, too),
at least until my finger
stops hurting.

A postcard comes home
from Hebrew school.
“Raymond Paul absent for a week,” it says.
“Where were you?” Dad asks him.
Raymond tells him the truth.
“I was watching the serials
at the Roxy Theatre.”

“I'll fix you, Raymond,” Dad says.
Then he tells me to go upstairs
and get my brightest dress.
I come down with the rainbow one.

Dad makes him put it on
and go outside
when it's time for his buddies to gather
in the back alley.

That fixes Raymond, all right.
He decides he looks much better
in Hebrew school
than in my rainbow dress.

I'm squished in bed
between Marian and Annette,
thinking about Ray
and how his friends were all snickering
when they saw him
and how I wouldn't want to be Ray.
And even though it's really late,
I just can't sleep,
so I go downstairs.

 

Mom's sitting in the overstuffed armchair,
staring right through the picture
on the wall
of her father in Russia.
She has a threaded needle in one hand,
a button in the other,
and a crumpled shirt on her lap.
A pile of clothes lies next to her,
waiting to be mended.