The Martin Luther King Mitzvah

by Tekulsky, Mathew;

  After Jimmy had gone home, I heard my parents arguing.

  “And if I make a big stink out of this, how many stocks do you think your father will sell in this town? How much dry cleaning business will I get?” my father demanded heatedly. “It’s better that he learned the ugly truth now than when he gets older and really falls in love. He’s only twelve.”

  “But he’s a very smart twelve-year-old,” my mother countered.

  Listening to my transistor radio before I fell asleep, I heard Cousin Louie—a disc jockey on WABC-AM who lived by the duck pond— introduce the song “Cherish” by The Association. I thought about Sally Fletcher and it was as if that song had been written just for me; I thought about what my mother had said about Sally’s father and it seemed to me that he had passed on his hate to his son and I didn’t know what to do about that.

  I decided that if anyone could make sense of it, Gladys could, and I resolved to talk to her about it the very next day. After breakfast, I was kicking the yellow and red maple leaves to and fro on the pavement in front of her house when I noticed a red Chevy Nova parked in the driveway. Gladys’ car was usually tucked away in the garage; she didn’t drive much anymore. I knocked on the porch screen door, but nobody answered. I went around to the side door and knocked on the window. A black woman of about fifty, with threads of gray in her hair, opened it.

  “Who are you?” she asked, hands on her hips.

  “I’m Adam,” I said. “Where is Gladys?”

  “Are you a friend of hers?” she wanted to know.

  “Sort of,” I replied.

  “Where do you live?”

  “Over on Oak Avenue,” I replied.

  She opened the door and beckoned me inside.

  “Gladys had a fall the day before Halloween,” she told me. “I’ll be staying with her for a while. My name is Bernadette, but you can call me Honey, everybody does.”

  Honey was Gladys’ housekeeper, I found out, who cleaned the house once a week. She showed me into the living room where Gladys sat in her favorite rocking chair by the fireplace, which had a nice flame going. Her arm was in a sling and her eyes lit up when she saw me.

  “This is the young man I told you about,” she told Honey. “Come over here and give me a hug!” I was careful not to press against her injured arm as Gladys hugged me.

  “Don’t fret, it’s just a sprain.” Gladys reassured me when I asked about her arm. “How’s your young lady?” Gladys asked. “He’s in love,” she told Honey with a smile.

  I defensively hunched up my shoulders as if to deny it, but Honey saw right through me.

  “Oh, I see,” she said, with a knowing air. “We’ll have to do something about that. And at his age, too.” Honey started to laugh, a deep-throated affair that had joy and affection all caught up in it.

  “He likes hot chocolate,” Gladys added, trying unsuccessfully to contain her own laughter, until both women were howling and cackling until the tears ran down their cheeks. I felt myself starting to get embarrassed and Gladys took hold of my hand as her chuckling subsided.

  “It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” she said.

  “Lord have mercy,” Honey said as she disappeared into the kitchen to prepare the drinks.

  “Oh, I do miss Harry,” Gladys sighed, her hand shaking slightly. “He used to love to laugh.” For the first time I noticed the many wrinkles that lined her face.

  “What about your family?” I asked.

  “Honey is my family,” Gladys said, “and now you are too.”

  When I got home that night, I told my parents about Gladys and they said it was okay to go over there and help out once in a while.

  “But she wants me to come over every day,” I said. “Just for a little while. And she offered me fifty cents an hour.”

  “I don’t see how it can hurt,” my father said, “as long as you keep up with your homework.”

  For the next two weeks, I helped Honey with the housework. I dusted furniture, rinsed dishes and put them into the dishwasher, and helped Honey make Gladys’ bed by holding the sheet on one end while Honey held it tight on the other. I brought firewood in from the garage and stacked the logs next to the fireplace. I raked leaves and clipped back the privet hedge that ran along the side of the front yard. I even rode my bike to the market to fetch flour and sugar for the oatmeal raisin cookies that Honey made.

  While Gladys sat in her chair in front of the fire, reading books and rocking away, her arm got better and better. I became quite excited about the steady accumulation of dollar bills that I placed into the top drawer of the desk in my bedroom. After two weeks, at two hours per day, at fifty cents per hour, I had earned the grand total of fourteen dollars—enough to buy five Beatles albums!

  Meanwhile, the fire in Gladys’ house burned hotter and hotter as the weather turned cold and Thanksgiving approached. On my walks to and from Beachmont School, the chilly air froze my nose. During recess, as we played kickball, our breath looked like puffy white clouds. I was always chilled to the bone despite the increasing number of layers that I wore. Finally, Jimmy and I reluctantly stopped going to the clubhouse—the air was just too cold out there by the creek.

  On top of that, I had been avoiding Sally Fletcher ever since Halloween. I didn’t know how to fix the problem, but I had to consider the possibility that my parents had been right after all. There would be no mixing of the Catholics and the Jews in Beachmont, and I had to accept it. To make matters worse, Sally Fletcher was all bundled up in her winter hat and scarf, which meant that I couldn’t see her ponytail bobbing around as I walked home behind her.

  I guess she knew that I was back there because one day Sally stopped and waited for me to catch up.

  “I’m sorry about my brother,” she said.

  “Is it because I’m Jewish?” I asked.

  Sally turned her head to the sky. “They think if you don’t go to church…”

  Just then, Honey yelled out at us and I realized that we were standing in front of Gladys’ house. “Come inside!” she shouted. “You’ll catch your death!”

  Sally hesitated, unsure as to whether she should go in too, and we glanced at each other uncertainly.

  “Come on,” I said, “just for a few minutes to warm up. You’ve got to meet Honey. She makes great oatmeal raisin cookies.”

  “Cookies?” Sally repeated with a smile.

  “And hot chocolate too!”

  Cookies and hot chocolate together were too much for Sally to resist, and we scampered up the driveway and into Gladys’ warm kitchen.

  “Now you must be Sally,” Honey said matter of factly as she took Sally’s coat and draped it over a kitchen chair.

  Sally looked over at me.

  “Uh-huh,” Honey went on. “We’ve heard an awful lot about you, young lady, and most of it was good.” Then Honey let out a wholehearted laugh as she went over to the refrigerator.

  “Hot chocolate for four,” she said as she pulled a carton of milk out of the fridge. “Take your friend into the living room,” she told me. “Gladys is waiting for you.”

  Honey made the hot chocolate and brought the mugs into the living room, along with a plate of still-hot-from-the-oven oatmeal raisin cookies. We had a great time drinking our hot chocolate and eating our cookies, and Gladys told Sally to never mind her brother and her parents and that I was okay.

  I walked Sally home, just like I used to do. Sally told me how much she liked Honey, how she was sorry that Gladys had hurt herself, and even apologized again for Peter’s treatment of me. I walked her up the steps to her front door, When I said goodbye, I thought I saw a curtain at the front of her house move.

  Chapter Two

  When the snows come in Beachmont, it usually happens while you are sleeping. You wake up in the morning and look out of your bedroom window and all you can see is white on the
trees; when you look at the street, it too is covered in white, and when you look down toward the creek, all you see is white and more white. The sky is white like a freshly starched sheet, and if the snow is still coming down, you can see the snowflakes falling like lace past your window. You can almost recognize each snowflake as a unique creation that was made just for you.

  It was on just such a morning in November of 1966 when I scampered out of bed, ran down to the kitchen, wolfed down two bowls of Sugar Frosted Flakes and a banana, pulled the snow shovel off the hook in the garage for the first time of the season, and burst out of the garage door into my driveway. Jimmy Robbins was already waiting for me, his own shovel in his hand.

  After shoveling my driveway, we headed out into the neighborhood. In a few hours, we had cleared off the driveways and front paths of five houses, and had ten dollars in our pockets—a veritable fortune!

  I was getting tired, but Jimmy wanted to press on.

  “Just one more house,” Jimmy said, “then we can take a break.”

  We had just turned up Beach Avenue and I said, “Let’s do Gladys’ driveway. That way, Honey can get her car out.”

  “That’s a great idea,” Jimmy said. “We’ve got enough money and besides, it’s the right thing to do.”

  Just then, Peter Fletcher and two of his friends came around the corner and met us just as we were turning up Gladys’ driveway. Bobby Taylor, whose father was the minister at the Beachmont Congregational Church, walked on one side of Peter, and Billy Collins, whose father owned the Collins Service Station, walked on the other.

  Peter’s blond locks stuck out from the side of his winter hat, and there was a bit of a stubble on his chin, even though he was only fourteen. He looked more like a man than a kid and towered above me. Bobby, thick-bodied with meaty hands, smacked his fist into his palm, and scruffy, red-haired Billy looked like he had fire coming out of his eyes.

  “I thought I told you to stay away from Sally,” Peter barked, putting his hand on my shovel. I tried to pull the shovel away, but he wouldn’t let it go.

  Bobby Taylor, likewise, moved in on Jimmy. “Give me your shovel,” he spat. Bobby grabbed Jimmy’s shovel; Jimmy just let it go.

  “This’ll teach you and your dumb friend not to mess around with Peter’s sister,” Bobby growled. He tilted the shovel to one side, put his foot on the top part of the scoop, and stepped down on the thick wooden handle until the blade bent beneath the force of his boot.

  “Hey!” I hollered in protest, but Peter had already yanked my shovel out of my hand and bent it sideways.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Honey running down the driveway with a broom held high over her head. She yelled at Peter and his friends: “You hightail it out of here or I’m gonna whip your fannies somethin’ good!” As she approached, I could see the whites of her wide-open eyes, and the angry furrow of her brow beneath the waving frenzy of the kitchen broom. Peter and his friends lit out of there like bats out of hell, and Jimmy and I were left on the sidewalk with our broken shovels and our broken hearts.

  “All right,” Honey said, “let’s get your sorry behinds inside,” and she led us up the driveway with the bent shovels in our hands.

  Gladys threatened to call Bill Fletcher, but we talked her out of it.

  “They’ll know we ratted them out,” I said. “Then we’ll really get it.”

  “You have to stand up to them sometime,” Gladys said firmly.

  “My dad’s going to be really mad when he sees this shovel,” Jimmy said mournfully.

  Sure enough, Sidney Robbins was livid when he saw what had happened to Jimmy’s shovel; he browbeat the poor kid just long enough to get the truth out of him. My father had a different attitude.

  “It’s just a shovel,” he said. “This will all blow over when you get tired of that girl.”

  “I’ll never get tired of Sally!” I shouted at him. “You always chicken out of everything!”

  “Look,” my father said irritably, “you can blow this whole thing out of proportion, if you want. We could go to the police. We could have a big trial. Do you really want that kind of attention? Sometimes it’s best to just let things go and move on. It’s not for us to punish anyway. Don’t let them drag you down to their level.”

  He kept talking but all I heard was blah, blah, blah. I had visions of pushing Peter Fletcher’s head into a pitchfork, or pushing him over a tall cliff, or maybe even running over him with our car when I got old enough to drive. But then I thought about Sally, and what she would think of me if I hurt her brother.

  Later, after I went to bed, my mom came and sat on my bed, smoothing the covers over my shoulders.

  “Your father loves you, Adam. It is just that he had a difficult childhood,” she said. “He wants to keep a low profile and not make any waves, and he doesn’t want you to be hurt the way he was as a kid.”

  A couple of days later, Peter Fletcher, Bobby Taylor, and Billy Collins showed up at our front door with a brand new snow shovel. I don’t know what Sidney Robbins said to their parents, but these guys actually apologized in front of my dad, my mom, and me!

  That night there was a heavy snow, and the next day Jimmy and I set off in the gleaming sunlight to shovel driveways and front paths. When I got home, my whole body was sore but I had a pocket full of dollar bills.

  Of course, Jimmy and I both knew that Peter Fletcher would try to get his revenge. We just didn’t know when, or where, or how. In the meantime, there wasn’t much to do in Beachmont in the wintertime, so Jimmy devised this game where we threw snowballs at passing cars, aiming at the hubcaps. Like every other harebrained scheme that Jimmy came up with, this one was destined to get us into all kinds of trouble.

  As Jimmy and I both knew, there are snowballs and there are snowballs. The first snowfall is soft and powdery, and you can’t make very good snowballs. After it’s been on the ground for a while and the sun starts to melt it just a little, then you can pick up a patch of snow and mold it in your hands until it’s as hard as a rock.

  So, on the Saturday evening before Thanksgiving, as the cars whizzed by on Beachmont Avenue, we packed the snowballs together until they were as big as softballs, and piled them up in preparation. When Jimmy shouted “Go!” we hurled them toward the passing cars; the whack and thud as they hit the metal hubcaps was music to our ears.

  Jimmy had three hubcaps to my two, when, in my rush to catch up with him, I wildly hurled a snowball with all of my might. I saw it fly across the street and wallop against the side of a police car, on the driver’s door, leaving a big white mark. The police car screeched to a halt, did a rapid U-turn and sped up in our direction, the falling snowflakes reflecting in the car’s headlights. My heart dropped into my stomach and panic and fear all mixed up together as Jimmy and I started running up Woodbine Avenue. Headlights illuminated the path ahead as I dove into a snowbank and watched the lights pass by. Holding my breath, I lay still and quiet in the snow until I heard Jimmy—“Adam, you can come out now.”

  Pulling myself out of the snowbank, I saw Jimmy standing next to Police Officer Grady, the coach of our Little League team.

  “Jacobs, is that you?” Officer Grady asked, yanking my ear with one hand, as he gave me a slap on the left temple with the other.

  “I can understand Robbins here,” Officer Grady said. “After all, he’s a little slow. But you, Jacobs? I thought you were better than that.”

  He looked over at his partner, Officer Nelson, who leaned with one arm on the police car and another on his hip. Officer Nelson gave us both a dirty look.

  “What do you think we should do with these boys?” Officer Grady asked him.

  Officer Nelson shrugged and said, “I think we should bring them in.”

  “No, no!” Jimmy started moaning in despair. “My father will kill me!”

  Officer Grady turned to me. “You’d bet
ter play well this year, Jacobs,” he said. “Now, both of you get out of here and don’t throw any more snowballs at cars.”

  The policemen got into their car and drove off. After they disappeared, I turned to Jimmy. “Thanks for ratting me out,” I said irritably.

  Jimmy looked down at the slushy street and mumbled, “Sorry, I panicked.”

  I gave him a fake punch in his right arm just for effect and then I said, “You’re in the doghouse, at least until Thanksgiving.”

  The following Thursday, my parents and I went over to Grappa’s house for Thanksgiving dinner. Grappa showed me his basement darkroom with the enlarger and the array of chemicals needed to develop black-and-white photographs. My grandmother had died when I was six years old, but a few years later Grappa married a Viennese beauty named Elise so I felt as if I still had a grandmother of sorts. Grappa didn’t do well on his own, so my mother was happy that he had remarried. My mother got along well with Elise, who put on a great Thanksgiving feast every year, topped off with her signature delicious walnut torte that was covered with real whipped cream.

  After dinner, Grappa handed me his camera bag and said, “Take this. It’s an early Hanukkah present.” Within the bag was his prized Leica camera. “I need to get a new camera anyway,” he said, “so you take this one.”

  The next day, I really wanted to show the camera to Jimmy, but I couldn’t find him anywhere. I decided to walk down to our clubhouse. The reed roof of the clubhouse was bowed beneath a foot of snow. As I approached, I heard a noise from inside.

  “Is that you, Adam?” Jimmy’s voice asked from within.

  I ducked through the entrance and there was Jimmy sitting inside, all huddled up in his winter jacket and covered by a sleeping bag. He was smoking a cigarette, and he handed one to me and I lit it up. Then I crept under the sleeping bag but I made sure that I didn’t get too snuggly with Jimmy. That would give me the creeps.

  “I’m sorry I ratted you out,” Jimmy said. “I thought you might come down here, and I really needed a smoke.”