I never went into the long closet again.
“My father’s family, the Yolens, are liars, but more politely call themselves storytellers. If it’s a choice between what really happened and what makes a better story, they go for story every time.
My mother’s family, the Berlins, always tell the truth. Except about important things. Like age. Like death.
I guess I am a bit of both.
But all families have stories that change and grow over the years. Stories that start with a kernel of truth and get bigger. My own children stand behind my back when I tell these kind of stories, making their fingers into quotation marks and whispering to anyone who is listening, ‘Author Embellishment.’
So I suppose the story of the long closet, a Berlin story told by a Yolen, has been embellished by time and by memory. What I have written is how I remember the story of my grandfather’s death, except that I couldn’t recall Wowser’s real name and so had to make that up. And I couldn’t recall the other games we played as children, so I made that part up, too. And while I remember Grandma’s flowered housedresses vividly, as well as the fox stole and the crepe dress, the rest of what was in the long closet is pretty hazy.
I called my Aunt Cecily after I finished writing this story. ‘Tell me,’ I asked, ‘what really happened the night Grandpa died.’ Interesting that in fifty years I had never asked that particular question.
She said Grandpa had been working hard at the store. He came home, lay down in bed, had a massive heart attack, and died. He was fifty-four years old, younger than I am right now. ‘If you kids and your mother hadn’t been living there,’ Aunt Cecily added, ‘I do believe Grandma would have died, too. She would have mourned herself to death.’
For years after Grandpa died, my mother tried to write stories. But she was a Berlin, not a Yolen. Stories to her were just lies. She felt that they had to be entirely made up, and so she did not put the truth in any of them. She sold only one story in her lifetime, to Reader’s Digest, a piece that she wrote with a friend under the pseudonym Yolanda Field about not being able to have children and then — miraculously — having twins. My father, on the other hand, wrote magazine and newspaper stories that had only a nodding acquaintance to reality. He made up ‘facts’ with abandon, but was always, somehow, true to the core of what he was reporting.
Luckily, I got the Yolen genes in good number and I tell tales that are true, not true, and somewhere in between.
Author embellishment indeed!”
Except for the time I want to tell about, the year and a half when we lived in Youngstown, Ohio, we always lived over the store. When my father managed Harris’s Men’s Clothiers in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, we did, and then when he went into business for himself and opened a ladies’ dresses and dry goods store just two blocks down the street, we did again.
Living over the store had its advantages. For one thing, we were always downtown, and every important thing was nearby. As soon as I was allowed to cross the street by myself (look both ways, even after waiting for the light on the corner to change) I could walk to school, to the library, to Sunday school, and I could walk to the Colonial for the Saturday movie matinee with my sister Harriett — two Ts.
Harriett and I shared a bedroom at our new place over the store. A door in our bedroom led to a little balcony that hung over the narrow space between our building and Troxell’s Jewelry Store next door. We had orders not to set foot on it. It was not safe. So there it was, as romantic as Juliet’s balcony when she was wooed by Romeo and as useful as a hangnail. I didn’t mind too much. I was a basic indoor child. I had my reasons.
I was not very good at sports.
Awkward would be a kind term.
Clumsy would be accurate.
The sidewalk was our playground. I was not good at any of the sidewalk games. Hopscotch: Drew the lines better than I could stay off them. Jump rope: Never could jump in. Always had to stand in. (Double dutch is still a mystery.) Roller-skating: Fell a lot. Never learned to brake. Had to run into something to stop myself. Bicycling: Still bear a scar under my chin from when I finally learned to ride a two-wheeler and went straight into a fire hydrant.
I was also hopeless at music. Once a week Miss Klinger came into our classroom to teach us music. She divided our class into redbirds and bluebirds. The bluebirds were allowed to sing; the redbirds listened. I was a redbird. At Christmas redbirds were allowed to sing, but all Miss Klinger offered were carols. Being Jewish, I did not think I should, but I wanted to, so I did. But I never sang all the words. When I came to Jesus or Christ, I hummed.
Fortunately, gym and music were never given letter grades. (How could anyone give a redbird a grade when she was never allowed to sing?) So those subjects never interfered with one of my two best things: Getting As. My other best thing was being the baby of the family.
Although there were occasions, like music days, when I did not enjoy school, I always enjoyed — really, really enjoyed — being the baby of the family. There were only two of us. Although Harriett was smart and responsible, these things were expected of her, for she was the older sister. The baby of the family is never expected to do things as well as the older ones do — and when you are the baby of the family, they are all the older ones. The baby of the family is always in training. She gets the kind of attention that is something between being a daughter and being a household pet. And she feels slightly adorable even when she isn’t. There is an unexpected quality to everything you do when you are the baby of the family.
Phoenixville was a mill town. The mill was called Ajax. I don’t know what was manufactured there, but I do know that when the mill closed down, people stopped buying dresses and dry goods. My parents had to close up shop, and we had to move from over the store.
I was in the middle of fifth grade. I was in the middle of learning about decimals in math and in the middle of learning about the middle of Europe in geography. Before we left, my school principal gave my mother two envelopes for my new school principal. One had my school records and the other had a “To Whom It May Concern” letter. My mother never let me see that letter because it contained my IQ and standard test scores, which were big secrets back then, especially to the person whom they most concerned — me. I had overheard my mother and father whispering about that letter, and I knew they were proud of whatever it said.
We packed up the family Plymouth four-door and went west, all across the width of Pennsylvania, and moved in with Aunt Rozella in Youngstown, Ohio.
Compared to Phoenixville, Youngstown was big. Last year’s geography book printed Youngstown in boldface and gave it four lines of text. Phoenixville was not even mentioned.
Compared to our place over the store, Aunt Rozella’s house was big. Aunt Rozella’s husband was so successful that I was sure that if he ever appeared in a textbook, Uncle Iz would be printed in boldface and be given at least four lines.
Although this was to be only a temporary arrangement until we could find affordable housing, I think my mother did not like being beholden to her younger sister; and I think having a whole family move in must have felt like a minor invasion to Aunt Ro. She had a big house, yes, but she had her own uses for it. There was Aunt Ro herself, Uncle Iz, Dorothy, their live-in maid, and their adorable little boy, my cousin Morley. Morley was smart for his age — not smart enough to get As in school, but only because he was too young to go.
Except for Morley, who paid attention to no one, and my father, who was on the road in the Plymouth four-door, none of us was very comfortable during the week in Aunt Ro’s big house with the live-in maid.
Weekends were another matter. On weekends we went to Farrell, just over the state line in Pennsylva-nia, where my father would meet us. There we stayed with my father’s sister. Aunt Wilma worked in a bakery, and she lived over the store, and her children — she had two — were older than I was, older than Harriett, and one of them was old enough to drive us from Youngstown to Farrell. At Aunt Wilma’s we wer
e much more crowded and much more comfortable.
But on Mondays it was back to Youngstown.
Right across the street from Aunt Rozella’s house was Warren G. Harding Elementary School, and a few blocks farther on was Rayen High, the only public high school on the entire Northside. A lot of kids from lesser neighborhoods went there. Harriett registered at Rayen. Once enrolled, she could remain there even after we found affordable housing.
Warren G. Harding Elementary School, on the other hand, did not have kids from lesser neighborhoods; so when my mother marched across the street to register me for the fifth grade, she knew that I would not be there when we moved into our affordable housing in a lesser neighborhood. I would be there for a few weeks at most. It was the time of year between the end of Christmas break and the start of a new semester, and both Mom and Dad had promised that by the start of the new semester, we would leave Aunt Ro’s. So even though my mother knew that going to Harding would be a temporary thing, she took that “To Whom It May Concern” letter over to the principal and enrolled me in their fifth grade.
By this time I had observed that my cousin Morley, who paid attention to no one, needed a lot of attention himself. Furthermore, whenever attention was to be paid, he always needed to be the center of it. I had also observed that as adorable as he was, when Morley didn’t get his way, he was not. Furthermore, as the new family pet, he was treated as extremely adorable even when he wasn’t even slightly.
As long as we lived at Aunt Ro’s, I would be expected to do things as well as the older ones — because I was one of them now. As long as we lived at Aunt Ro’s, I would have to make do with only one of my two best things; and that was getting As.
But there was a problem. Fifth grade at Warren G. Harding Elementary School was not in the middle of the middle of Europe in geography. They were in the middle of the United States. And, within the first week of my being there, they would be having a semester test. I was determined to pass that test, and not only pass it, but get an A. Maybe an A-plus.
I had to. I had to show everyone, Aunt Rozella and Uncle Iz — and most especially me, myself — that I could do what was expected — whatever that “To Whom It May Concern” letter had said I could.
When I got my A — maybe an A-plus — my new principal could announce it over the public-address system that, against all odds, Elaine Lobl had gotten an A — maybe an A-plus — on the semester test in geography. And when I walked into the classroom, the new teacher and all the students could give me a standing ovation — whatever that was.
I crammed. I made my mother ask me every question at the end of every chapter. I practiced spelling the names of all the cities I was to know about, and when I went to bed, the only thing that kept me from having nightmares was the dream of that teacher leading the applause as I went up to collect my perfect paper.
She passed out the corrected test papers, starting with the highest score. Not mine. Second highest, not mine. Third, not mine. I was about two-thirds of the way down the list. (I still remember one of the questions: What is the chief food fed to pigs in Virginia? I didn’t know the answer then, but I do now.)
When you have lost your home, when you have a “To Whom It May Concern” letter to live up to, when you are no longer the baby of the family, when you think that getting an unexpected A is all you can do to restore your place in the family, being two-thirds down the list is as good as failure.
I carried my test paper across the street. Aunt Ro asked me how I did, and swallowing hard, I answered, “She asked the wrong questions for the answers I gave.”
Finally, we had a house to rent. And not a minute too soon. I was happy to leave Aunt Ro, Cousin Morley, and Warren G. Harding: Displaced, replaced, and out of place.
A new semester was starting, and I would be going to William McKinley Elementary School. My teacher would be Miss Frances Thompson, and neither she nor the principal, Mr. Perkins, would see the “To Whom It May Concern” letter because I begged my mother not to show it to them.
William McKinley Elementary did not have a lunchroom. My dad was still looking for work, selling notions out of the back of his car to make expenses, so he did not come home during the week and certainly not for lunch. My sister was at Rayen High, which had a school cafeteria, so she did not come home for lunch either. I did. It was just Mama and just me. Just canned soup and good rye bread. We were as poor as we would ever be, but those lunch hours were rich magic. My mother would have lunch on the table and the radio on our favorite soap opera when I came home. We would listen to Mary Noble, Backstage Wife while we ate lunch, and then we would redd up and talk. (“Redd up” is what Pennsylvanians say instead of “tidying up.”)
My mother and I loved the same radio programs and Franklin D. Roosevelt. We loved the same movie stars and hated the same ones, too. We both loved clothes but couldn’t afford any. My mother seemed to want for me exactly the same things I wanted for myself. She was proud of me, and I was proud of her. I thought my mother was perfect, and she made me feel that I was almost. We had a kind of easiness with each other, and I couldn’t think of living anywhere that she was not. I loved her achingly.
When Miss Thompson passed out report cards for that first six weeks’ grading period, she announced that she was giving out the best report card she had ever made out in all her years of teaching: All As and one A-minus. And that report card was mine. I was back where I belonged — at the head of the class at William McKinley Elementary School and the baby of the family at 1507 Florencedale Avenue.
When I got to sixth grade, I had two new teachers, Mrs. Clark and Miss Mayer, both of whom I loved — although I probably loved Mrs. Clark more. I was getting As from both of them, and I was sometimes allowed to sing even when it wasn’t Christmas.
Then a few months before my eleventh birthday, on a day that will go down in infamy, my mother announced that she was going to have a baby. My mother, who would not even consider letting us have a puppy because we couldn’t afford another mouth to feed, this same mother announced that she was about to have a baby.
I was to be replaced again. I was outraged.
And I was embarrassed. By then, I knew what it took to get pregnant, and I thought that my mother ought to be ashamed of herself, that at her age — she was thirty-four years old — she had done it.
Neither my father nor my mother ever used the word pregnant. He said that my mother “was in the family way,” and she said that she “was expecting.”
My father was still having a lot of trouble finding steady work, still traveling, still coming home only on the odd weekend, and I suspected that he was no more pleased than I was about having a new baby in the family, but I supposed he felt partly responsible. My father asked Harriett and me to take care of her. Knowing how responsible Harriett was, he asked her to arrange to double up on her classes so that when the semester was over, she could skip the rest of the school year and stay home to take care of our mother. Harriett agreed.
Only weeks later, I was told that we couldn’t pay the rent at 1507 Florencedale. I was told that we would be moving to cheaper housing in a lesser neighborhood. Still Youngstown. Still the Northside. Still Rayen High for Harriett. But not William McKinley for me. Our new place would be in a different elementary school district. I was to be displaced again.
Mr. Perkins, the school principal, called my mother in to school and told her that he and both my teachers, Miss Mayer and Mrs. Clark, thought I would be out of place at the new school. They wanted me to stay at William McKinley, and if my mother would allow me to be bused, they could get an out-of-district permission for me. She agreed.
So every morning, Harriett and I caught a city bus, using school bus coupons. I got off at the Thornton Street stop on Fifth Avenue and walked the few blocks to the big yellow brick building that said “McKinley School” carved in stone above the door. Harriett rode on to Rayen High. I carried my lunch and ate alone in Mrs. Clark’s classroom.
When her doubling-u
p semester was over, it was Harriett who had those magic lunch hours with my mother. I was left out.
I no longer thought that my mother was perfect, and she no longer made me feel that I was almost.
I helped with the supper dishes, and I learned to help with the ironing, but I still felt left out. I felt as if I had not only lost my lunch companion, I had lost my place at the table. We no longer had a kind of easiness with each other, I began to think of my mother as “She.”
She who was expecting was not feeling too healthy most of the time. She developed a terrible rash on her arms and chest, and her gums bled when she brushed her teeth. She was anemic even though she had the appetite of a sumo wrestler. She craved strange foods out of season. Every time she had to stand for any length of time, the veins in her legs swelled and turned blue, and as her stomach grew, so did the size and number of blue swollen veins. The veins had a name: Varicose, but my mother was a She, and the baby was an it. Not even a capital i. Just it.
Harriett and I walked with her to Dr. Kaufmann’s office downtown because we didn’t have money for bus fare. Our new apartment was closer to town than Florencedale Avenue had been, but since we lived on the second floor, she who was in the family way did a lot of huffing and puffing getting up that flight of stairs. We had no health insurance, and Medicaid had not yet been invented, and we had neither friends nor family in the medical profession, so Dr. Kaufmann agreed to deliver it at a lowered fee because he was Aunt Rozella’s doctor and personal friend, a fact she reminded us of even though Dr. Kaufmann didn’t.
My father found a job in Farrell. And he found us affordable housing. As soon as school was over, we would once again be living over a store. We would have a kitchen downstairs and a living room, two bedrooms, and a bath upstairs — over the store. The store itself was empty. The windows were not boarded up, but were whited out with a paste made from Bon Ami cleanser.
We had hardly moved our furniture into the new place when my father said, “her time is near,” and we had to move her back to Aunt Rozella’s so that she could be near the hospital and Dr. Kaufmann.
When I Was Your Age, Volume Two Page 5
