Sugar House (9780991192519) (12 page)

"Not so tough now, are ya?" the tallest
questioned.

"Yeah, they're just a bunch of yellow-bellied
cowards, huh, Abe?" replied the shortest of the three.

The Polish boys now found themselves
surrounded by the older Jewish boys. Franz and Paul stood with
their shoulders back to in an attempt to appear larger, but they
were no match for the teenagers.

"Uh… look, we w-w-was just trying to have a
little fun. Didn't m-mean no harm," Franz stuttered.

"Yeah? No harm, huh? Just lighting fires in
the middle of my street and blocking my Dad's shoe store with his
own wagon?" replied the one named Abe.

"What should we do to them, Abe? Let's
clobber the big ones and then we can take the little ones' pants so
they gotta run home in their underwear," the short one suggested.
His eyes gleamed ferociously in the firelight.

"Shut up, Ray. They're just little kids. What
fun would there be in that?" replied Abe. "But Ray is right," he
continued, looking at Franz now. "We've gotta get something for you
Polacks coming into our neighborhood and playing your dumb pranks.
How much dough ya got?"

Joe and his friends emptied their pockets
into Franz's hands. Counting quickly he replied, "Forty cents."

"Forty cents?" the older boys slapped each
other on the backs and laughed at Joe's group. "Forty cents won't
get ya nothing round here! Ha! Forty cents!" Abe laughed along with
the others.

"How about forty cents and I don't tell my
mother to put a curse on you?" Joe spoke, barely audible.

"What'd you say, midget?" asked Abe, towering
over Joe.

"I said, how about we give you our money and
I don't tell my mother about any of this?"

"Ya trying to scare us, midget? We don't
believe in curses—that's a bunch of old women garbage from the old
country. There's no such thing," replied Abe.

"Not normally, no," said Joe, growing
slightly in confidence. "But on All Hallows' Eve a curse can cause
serious damage if a spirit is called on to deliver it to an enemy.
And the old country is where my mother learned how to do it. This
old Jewish woman used to watch her when her mother worked in the
fields when she was little. She taught my mother how to use evil
spirits to get revenge against her enemies."

"Bullshit! No one believes that! You think
we're stupid?" Ray chimed in.

"A klog tsu meineh sonim" Joe responded. The
older boys laughing silenced. Abe peered down at Joe.

"What did you say?" he asked.

"A klog tsu meineh sonim."

"All right, all right. You boys have had your
fun. Now hand over the money and hightail it out of here." Abe
looked curiously at Joe while Franz handed over the coins. The boys
didn't wait after the coins hit the palm of Abe's hand. They
started running toward the safety of their neighborhood.

Breathless, the boys arrived back at St.
Josaphat's. "Hey, what did you say to those Jews?" asked Franz.

"It was Yiddish. It means a curse on my
enemies. My mother mumbles it under her breath all the time at the
market when the butcher tries to cheat her. She learned it from a
Jewish neighbor in Poland."

"Fantastic!" Franz said, "Never thought a
Jew's curse would save my Catholic ass." The boys laughed again,
punching each other's arms and teasing one another about how scared
they had looked. The boys laughed and slapped Joe on the back.

"Do widzenia!" (Goodbye!) he called as they
neared his block. He wanted to get away before any other tricks
were plotted. Joe ran down the lighted street and flew up the steps
to his warm home. The lights from the pumpkin and turnips had gone
out. The porch was dark and smelled of scorched pumpkin.

Joe stepped into the front room and greeted
his parents, who were reading
Dziennik Polski
by
gaslight.

"Have a good time, son?" Matka
questioned.

"Tak (Yes), Matka," he replied, removing his
hat and coat and hanging them on his hook in the hall.

"Not too much fun?" questioned Ojciec. His
father looked him over from head to toe.

"No sir."

Ojciec stood and walked over to Joe. Joe
looked up at his father as the man circled around his small
body.

"Have a bonfire with the boys?" asked Ojciec.
"I smell smoke."

"Yes sir. Just a small fire," he replied.
Well, it was a small fire, thought Joe, so I am not really
lying.

"You were careful not to catch anything else
on fire?"

"Yes sir." Nothing else could catch on fire
in the middle of a street so he was still telling the truth, right?
Joe was getting really nervous now.

"And you made sure the fire was out when you
were done, son?" Ojciec kept questioning.

"Uh huh" Joe replied. Now he was lying. Lying
to his father.
Breaking one of the Ten Commandments. Honor thy
father and thy mother.
He had heard that enough times from the
nuns at school. Now he was going to hell and he hadn't even wanted
to set fire to the stupid wagon.
Darn that Franz and Paul,
always showing off and trying to be tough.

"Okay son. Fill the big bucket full of water
and have a good washing to get the smoke smell off of you. Leave
your clothes in the kitchen for Matka to clean tonight," said
Ojciec. As Joe turned to follow his father's instructions, Ojciec
added, "Make sure to say your prayers before you got to sleep
tonight to ward off any lonely spirits wandering the streets."

A few minutes later, Joe climbed into bed,
where Frank was already sleeping. Joe lay awake and thought about
the destroyed cart . It might have belonged to a poor Negro who
collected junk to sell or salvage. Joe knew coloreds had a hard
time finding work and had to eke out a living by any means. (Poles
were not high on the ladder of society either, but they easily
ranked above the Jews and blacks.) Or maybe the cart had been a
Jewish boy's toy and his mother pulled him to the park in it on
sunny days. He was glad that Franz had forgotten the outhouse
prank. Soaping windows, making garbage piles and moving the shoe
store wagon weren't destructive. They were just part of All
Hallows' Eve as far as Joe was concerned, but igniting the cart
made his stomach hurt. Now he wished they had just overturned an
outhouse.

He closed his eyes and worried. Would he get
caught for being part of the arson? Even worse, would he get caught
for lying to his father? Joe was grateful the next day was a holy
day of obligation, when the family would go to church to pray for
the dead. Maybe if he prayed hard enough, God would forgive his
sins. Feeling slightly better and then remembering the spirits that
haunted the earth on this night, he drifted into a troubled
sleep.

Mass was a solemn affair, with many women crying into
their handkerchiefs as they remembered their loved ones who had
died. Many men, including Mikołaj, were not in attendance, as it
was a workday and employers did not care if All Saints' Day was a
holy day of obligation in the Catholic Church. The priest would
hold a Mass that evening for the laborers to remember their dead.
The somber atmosphere fit Joe's mood perfectly, and he got caught
up in the rituals of the day.

After Mass, the women and children walked the
two blocks to Woodward Avenue and caught a ride on a streetcar to
Mount Olivet, the Polish Catholic resting place seven miles east of
the city. The first Catholic cemetery in Detroit, Mount Elliot, had
been established within the city limits in 1841 and had filled very
quickly. It expanded twice, but by 1888 the Mount Elliot board of
trustees decided to purchase hundreds of acres outside the city to
accommodate the flood of immigrants moving to Detroit. The
potential for the city to grow and expand was foremost in the minds
of the trustees. They developed a grand cemetery outside the
city—as they knew had been done outside Paris, France—capable of
holding three hundred thousand souls.

At the cemetery Blanca told Joe she wanted to
wait for the other members of St. Josaphat's who had driven in
their own cars or buggies. Joe wandered over to a large metal sign
at the entrance. It read:

Mount Olivet Cemetery
Visitors please remember that these grounds are dedicated to the
internment of the dead and a strict observation of all that is
proper in a place dedicated will be required of all who visit it.
Persons with firearms or accompanied by dogs will not be allowed to
enter the grounds.

Why would someone bring a dog to a cemetery?
Joe wondered.

Frank picked up a stone that was lying on the
dirt road and attempted to throw it over the ornate metal fence.
Fortunately Matka was not paying attention because the procession
of cars was pulling up to the gates. The sun glanced off the
windows of the Model T's and off the shiny black carriages as their
wheels crunched over the dead leaves. Matka turned her attention
back to her two young charges, calling them over to stand by
her.

A beautiful stone building greeted the group
as they entered through the gates. Blanca went inside and purchased
three small candles, one for each of them to set on a grave.
Catholics from many ethnic backgrounds were milling about the
grounds. An older woman Blanca knew whispered that they should
follow the Jozefatowos to an area where the St. Josaphat
parishioners were buried.

The group walked down a dirt lane bordered by
trees, shrubs and hanging vines. A small sign directed the visitors
not to pick the flowers planted along the paths. The group
dispersed upon reaching the Polish sector. A light fog hovered over
a few low-lying places, creating an otherworldly feeling, and a
peaceful silence descended upon the visitors. Several stately
monuments adorned with angels and crosses dotted the meadow. Joe
noted two large mausoleums in the distance but didn't see any in
this section.

Joe's family did not have any relatives
buried here, having just moved to Detroit the year before, so Matka
led the boys over to an unvisited gravesite. The simple headstone
read" Wizkorski "across the upper portion and listed the names
Dewitt, Amboline and Flora underneath; Flora having only lived four
years. The deaths had all occurred in the winter of 1890.

"Why would one family all die in the same
year?" Joe asked his mother.

"That was the year of the Russian Flu, Joe… a
terrible illness that raced across continents killing hundreds of
thousands. I am sure this poor family all succumbed to it," she
said, making the sign of the cross.

Matka set all three candles on the stone and
lit the wicks. She instructed the boys to kneel before the memorial
and say a prayer for the souls of the young family. Joe kneeled
down in the damp grass and said a short prayer for the Wizkorski
family and then one for himself.

"Dear God, please don't let my parents find
out about setting the wagon on fire" he pleaded. He was brought out
of his anxious prayer by the soft voice of his mother speaking out
loud. Tears trickled down her face as she prayed for her own
mother, who was buried in the village where she had grown up,
interred with her ancestors. Matka worried there would be no one to
light a candle and pray for her soul. Her father had perished away
from her village, fighting in the revolution a decade before. Matka
did not know where her father had been buried and had stopped
trying to find out when she came to America.

Frank wandered off toward a grove of trees on
the outer edge of the cemetery. He was following a squirrel who was
burying acorns. Joe chased after his little brother and grabbed his
hand. They walked back together among the headstones and statues.
Frank wriggled out of Joe's grasp and hid behind a large tomb. He
peeked his head out from behind the stone to look at Joe and
declared they should play a game of hide and seek.
Sure
thing
, thought Joe.
Like I don't have enough trouble right
now without adding playing on top of a bunch of graves on All Souls
day.

"Come on, Frank," he said, grabbing his
brother's hand again. They headed back to where Matka was still
praying.

"Dear Lord, forgive me." Matka was
whispering, tears pouring down her face. "Forgive me, forgive
me."

"Matka, stop crying," said Joe.

Matka looked up at the boys in a daze. Her
light blue eyes tried to focus in on her two small sons. "I'm all
right, Joe… just missing my mother. Here… help me up."

Joe stood stiff, and Matka used his short
body to help support herself as she rose."Matka, Ojciec will be mad
at you for kneeling out here on this cold ground with the baby
inside you. He's always telling you to sit down and rest."

"You are right, my good son. Let's go home
and you can heat up some dinner for us. I'll sit by the stove and
warm myself. Enough of the dead for today. Let's think of this
little one who is yet to arrive." Matka wiped her eyes with the
skirt of her dress, straightened her babushka and, holding Frank's
hand, started toward the cemetery gates.

They climbed the steps of the streetcar that
was sitting at the front of the cemetery. Blanca sat Frank on her
lap and settled into the seat. Joe looked up at her, concern in his
bright blue eyes. She looked at her handsome son and smiled a
gentle smile.

"Did I ever tell you about my village in
Poland, Joe?" she asked.

"Not really, Matka. Just that you lived by
the sea."

"Life in Poland is not like it is here at
all, Joe. I was born in Jastarnia, a small town that lies on the
edge of the Baltic Sea. It is located on a narrow peninsula. This
area is referred to as Kashubia. Our language is slightly different
from the other regions of Poland, but we have always considered
ourselves as Poles.

"Oh Joe, it is such a beautiful place. I wish
you could see it. The sea is so blue. Every morning in the summer
I'd open up the front door of our stone cottage and look out at the
water. And so many boats, Joe, wide flat boats, sailing back and
forth into the marina like busy mice scurrying about. The fisherman
would set off at dawn and sail out into the sea to catch cod,
herring, whitefish and smelt.