Looking for Me (5 page)

Mom has to tear me away from the stores,
where every toy I'd ever want
is crammed into the windows
as tightly as my family in Dad's car.

 

I love hanging up stockings
on Christmas Eve
and going to bed,
knowing by morning
there'll be tangerines in the toes
and walnuts and filberts and hard candies
and maybe some crayons or jacks
filling up the rest.

 

And best of all,
I love waking up extra early
to a mound of presents
(there's only one for each,
but with so many of us,
the pile gets pretty high)
and a family stampede.

 

So when Freddy, a neighbor kid,
says Christmas isn't mine,
I tell him he's wrong:
“Of course it's mine.
Everyone celebrates Christmas.”

 

Then I ask Mom,
and she says it's not really ours,
but we're borrowing it
because here in America
we can celebrate
anything we want.

Last year
Marian said “Pee yew”
to the green coat she got for Christmas.

 

Marian said
“Pew yew”
to what Bubby Etta gave her, too.

 

So this year
Mom filled Marian's stocking
with orange peels and coal.

 

Now she really
has something
to “Pee yew” about.

When I unwrap it,
careful not to rip the brown paper
so Mom can reuse it next year,
I find paper dolls inside.

 

I can't wait to show them to Eunice,
but when I get to her house
and see what she got for Christmas—
roller skates with a shiny key,
a new ruffled dress,
a bingo game,
and a porcelain doll—
I feel like saying “Pee yew”
to my present, too.

With our measly presents,
our holey shoes,
our used-up clothes,
and our same old dinner
every Friday night—
matzo ball soup and boiled chicken,

 

I've been thinking
we're poor...

 

until today,

 

the day after Christmas,
when our new neighbors,
who have a lot of kids, too,
invite me to stay for dinner.

 

Their kids got
no
presents at all,
have no shoes on their feet,
and there's nothing in their house to eat
except potatoes and bread

 

without any butter.

She sits on her throne
while we sit at her feet,
our mouths watering
at the sight of the chocolates
her boyfriend Max gave her for Christmas.

 

She examines each brown treasure
and with a little push
of her thumb
caves in the bottoms.

 

She drips
the creams
and caramels
into her own mouth
and shares the nutty ones,
her least favorites,
with us,
her loyal subjects.

While we're out of school
for Christmas break,
my friends Eunice and Connie and I
run our own little school
for the neighborhood kids
and charge them a penny each.

 

We teach them how
to make aprons out of burlap
for their mothers,
and pinwheels
out of construction paper and pins.

 

I wish someday I could be a
real
teacher
like Miss Connelly.
But I stink at spelling
and I don't know
what those big words mean
that smarty-pants Helen Krashinsky uses,
like
preponderance, pungent,
and
pretentious.

 

So I guess I'm not smart enough
to be a teacher after all.

Christmas break's over
and I'm doing my homework
at the kitchen table
when suddenly chunks of white plaster
rain down on my head.

 

I look up to see legs
dangling from the ceiling,
and I race up the stairs
to pull Lenny free.

 

They tell me that Lenny, Sol, and Jack
were all jumping around on the bed
when Lenny missed his step
and fell through the floor.

 

But Dad's going to go through the roof
when we call the plaster patcher
who's been to our house
fifty times before.

In the boys' room,
the plastic spacemen
line up on the dresser,
perfect BB-gun targets
for Lenny and Sol.

 

These crazy brothers of mine cheer
when a BB makes a hit,
and they watch
the little men
as they teeter and fall.

 

But when Dad goes
to paint their room,
he makes them patch
every one of those
fifty million
holes
in their
bedroom wall.

I complain to Bubby Etta
about not getting invited
to Passover Seders, weddings,
and bar mitzvahs
because there are too many of us.

 

She tells me,
“Shayne maideleh,
you shouldn't worry,
with so many
kinder
you
are
a party.”

 

I guess she means like when
Mom gives us each a penny
and we go to the A&P across the street,
where Mr. Kennedy fills up bags
with candy and peanuts and pretzels
for each of us.

 

And when we get home with our bags,
we sit out on the marble steps
and play the movie star guessing game,
giving out only initials as clues,
and we sing our favorite songs
from
Snow White
while we dig into our bags
and share our treats.

 

It's a penny candy party,
and with so many of us,
we don't even need to invite
anyone else.

All of us kids are in the cellar clubroom,
crowded around the Victrola,
singing along
to “Some Day My Prince Will Come,”
the song we play over and over
and over again
because we only have three records
and this one's our favorite.

 

But then Dad stomps downstairs,
yelling, “I told you kids if I heard that song
one more time...!”
and he snatches the record
right off the Victrola,
scratching across the voices in mid-song.

 

He snaps it in two
over his knee.
The little ones start crying.
Even Melvin,
who always has a smile on his face.

 

And when Melvin looks up
with his chocolate-colored eyes all watery,
I hug him tight.
Now
everyone's
crying,
including me.

I can understand
why Dad hollers at us
when we wreck things,
like the ceiling,
because repairs cost money.

 

And I understand,
because I'm not too bad at math,
that
the Depression + lots of kids = never enough money.

 

But I don't understand
why a man who hates children
had twelve of them.
That just doesn't add up.

It's Saturday morning,
and Mildred and I
are taking Marian, Annette, Lenny,
Melvin, Sol, and Jack
and the gefilte fish sandwiches
Mom packed for us
to spend the whole day
at the Roxy, watching the cartoons
and the serials and the double feature.

 

We always try to get to the theater early
so Mildred can perform
in the Kiddie Club onstage
before the movies start.
She sings and tap-dances
so she can win passes
for us to see the movies for free.

 

I'm glad Mildred has talent,
because if
I
got up there
and tried to sing,
they'd charge us even more
than the regular fifteen-cent admission.

On the way to the Roxy
we make our usual stop
to buy sunflower seeds
at the corner pet shop.

 

I hold hands with Melvin
till we get to a light pole
and we both let go,
yelling, “Crackers and oleo!”

 

Now we're all watching the Buck Jones serial
and cracking open the seeds with our teeth,
leaving little piles of shells
all around our feet.

 

But when the ushers clean up
at the end of the show,
they'll never know the shells were ours—
we've all moved down a row.

So Mom is making us
scrub and polish
the marble steps
of our row house,
scrub and polish
until they shine.

 

We rub the sand-soap bars
back and forth
until our arms shake
and those steps sparkle,
all the while muttering
under our breath
about this horrible job
Mom makes us do.

 

But when the lady next door
offers to pay us each a dime,
we jump at the chance
and polish
hers, too.

I know that spring must be here
because, like always
when the weather changes,
there's my big brother Daniel,
propped up in bed with pillows,
wheezing.

 

And no matter what
the weather's like,
for breakfast
he has to eat his cereal
with water on it.

 

And worst of all,
he can't have ice cream
or milk shakes
with the rest of us.

 

But he never, ever complains.
I know
I
would.
Especially about the ice cream.
So I try never to eat any
in front of him.

They live in New York,
and they must be rich
because Theodora wears Mary Jane shoes
and party dresses all the time,
and Marvin wears long pants
instead of knickers,
and their dad takes family movies
on their very own movie camera.

 

While they're in Baltimore,
they could stay with Bubby Anne,
who has plenty of room,
or Uncle Willie,
who has a bigger house than ours
and only two kids,
or Uncle Albert,
who has a guest room,
or Aunt Ruth,
who has no kids of her own
and the biggest house of all.
But they always want to stay with us.
It's a mystery to me.

 

They're the lucky ones
because it's just the two of them,
but they think
squeezing into the beds with us,
where we're already sleeping
three to a bed,
head to foot,
foot to head,
is the greatest thing
ever.

Annette is supposed to be scrubbing
the white tile kitchen counters.
But instead she's opening
and slamming cabinets
and rifling through drawers.

 

I'm busy cleaning out the icebox
with Melvin at my side,
searching for stray bread crumbs
on the kitchen floor,

 

when Annette comes over to me
all teary-eyed and pitiful.
“I can't find it,” she whines.
“Can't find what?” I snap.
“The elbow grease Mom told me to use.”

 

“Keep looking,” I tell her,
trying not to laugh.

Mom brings home
a nice big carp to cook for Passover,
but when Daniel, Mildred, and I see it move,
we decide to save its life.

 

So we sneak it off the table
and put it in the bathtub,
where it swims around for a while.

 

But it doesn't really matter.
It still ends up as gefilte fish
served on a silver platter.

We'll have the big first-night Passover Seder
at our house,
but only Mom and Dad
are going to Bubby Anne's house
for second-night Seder,
leaving us kids at home,
as usual.

 

We're always having extra people
at our house for dinner—
Mildred's boyfriends,
Bubby Etta and her husband,
and sometimes our cousins.
Mom doesn't seem to mind—
she just adds more water to the soup.

 

“I wish somebody
would invite our whole family
to their house for dinner,” I tell Daniel.
“It'll never happen,” he says.
“It'd be like having
the whole Baltimore Orioles team over.”

 

I guess nobody
wants to have soup
that
watery.

Connie and Eunice and I
are playing marbles at the corner.
I'm about to roll the shimmy
when Eunice yells, “Hey, Edith,
there's an ambulance by your house
and that looks like your mother getting in.”