Debasements of Brooklyn

by Ira Gold

  One thing. Dad’s love of the artistic and intellectual never included an affinity for educational institutions or their overseers. His fiery contempt for schoolteachers’ small-mindedness informed my childhood. “Read for yourself,” he counseled in the manner of the towering humanist Erasmus. My mother, a shy and conventional Italian girl when she first met my father and a shrewd, practical, and disappointed woman afterward, wondered what the hell I did in my room all day. Never a scholar herself, she couldn’t comprehend how I spent hours reading and still did lousy in school.

  My mom and her family reviled all educational institutions, not for their intellectual narrowness but as a general waste of time. After forgiving my mother for marrying a Jewish schlemiel, my cousins, nearly all of them named Sal, took me under their wings as we gangbanged here and there, finding it more and more difficult because of the steadily declining ethnic tensions that existed in Brooklyn. (The action, of course, was in those neighborhoods closer to Manhattan, but instead of Italian, Irish, and African Americans kids fighting with bats and chains, developers battled it out with residents at zoning board meetings.) Physical culture always interested me. Never one for team sports, I took up street fighting and Pilates.

  5

  Stalking Memory Lane

  Rosy-fingered dawn arrives even in this blighted neighborhood. By six A.M. Pauli Bones and I are the only ones left in the place. He glares at me with untamed hatred, maybe because I only fronted him 200, maybe because he is a psychopath. You can’t talk to him when he gets into a homicidal state, so I volunteer to lock up the poker room and tell him to go home or wherever he plans to escape being murdered.

  Without saying another word, he flees the building as if pursued by howling demons. A brief stab of anxiety pricks, seeing Bones so terrified. Normally, he welcomes mortal violence.

  I lock up. Vinnie Five-Five never keeps a room open two days in a row. He rotates the game from one of his four apartments using an algorithm I can’t fathom, though the gamblers gather together as if directed by a heavenly call. Me, I get a phone call an hour before my shift starts. By switching the rooms around, Vinnie keeps the chance of being hassled by the police and other gangsters to a minimum.

  It has been a tepid, rainy April, punctuated by winter chills. But sunrise brings a crispness that wakes one into life and ignites hopes of rebirth. I cross Ocean Parkway, a wide boulevard bordered by grass, service roads, and the oldest dedicated bike lane in the country. I usually cherish this mile-long stroll, from East Third Street to East Twenty-First Street where I live in my sister’s (half sister, my father had an earlier, even unhappier marriage) basement apartment. It is a cozy place, with the windows peeking up to the driveway where I have a wonderful view of the radial tires belonging to my brother-in-law’s Civic.

  So I walk the streets familiar from my earliest childhood and recognize every tree, ancient yet skinny as crackheads. I prize the old wood-framed houses that rest cockeyed on their foundations. Mostly, though, attached row houses with high stoops and narrow porches line the street. This part of Brooklyn contains many retired plumbers and Mafiosos—all suffering from irrelevance and waiting for death.

  On Coney Island Avenue I pass the store where I used to buy candy and baseball cards. On East Seventeenth Street, quieter than the other blocks, I, the Five-Five boys, Bones, others, played punchball using the parked cars and manholes as bases. These childhood markers might oppress some with thoughts of underachieving. Me, I’m a sentimentalist. The crap and unrealized goals I let slide, while the loving care and good times take on a numinous glow. My mind flies across time and space when I read my father’s books, but my body feels most comfortable in the neighborhood that I know from infancy. Nothing really bad can happen to me here.

  6

  Basement, my basement

  This morning, however, my heart races with every passing car. Adrenaline courses through my body whenever I notice someone in the gloaming. I’m nervous as shit.

  Pauli Bones has spooked me. I spin around as I hear voices. Nothing there. I fight against breaking into a run. Sweat drips down my forehead and my hair stands on end.

  I quicken my pace. Just because I’m a flunky does not mean that I’m exempt from the iron laws of war. My lowly status might even make me more of a target. Killing me would annoy, but not enrage, the powers that reside both here and in Jersey.

  Besides, I am not totally unknown. My pot-selling operation has expanded as I meet more and more building workers. I am also friends with a goon named Ivan Rachmaninoff, a fifth cousin of the composer. We sometimes play handball, this Ivan and I, at the Manhattan Beach courts. He happens to have a deep interest in Russian literature. He’s the only gangster I know who has a strong opinion on the Turgenev/Dostoyevsky debate. He agrees with Dostoyevsky that Russia has a Slavic, not a European, soul.

  This cocksucker knows where I live.

  I finally make it home. I go in through the side door and walk a half-flight down.

  Here, my setup comforts me. This single-wide room has served as my crib for five years. Strategically dotted around the space are a queen-size bed, some chairs, and a small kitchen table. In an unfinished area near the boiler I have my bathroom. The sink, stove, and fridge are up against the staircase wall where a washer/dryer used to be. (Judith moved them into a converted pantry upstairs.) On the back wall, warped wooden bookcases hold my father’s sacred library. If Pythagoras infused souls into beans and the Hindus transform cows into deities, why shouldn’t my father worship Penguins? He would reach nirvana while reading every word of every masterpiece—no matter how boring and disappointing the wisdom of the ages proved to be.

  Ah, my father was a sick man, suffering from cruel compulsions. Had he enjoyed sci-fi or mystery rather than Swift and Von Kleist he might have escaped his gloominess.

  And now, as if his soul possessed mine, as if the curse of the esoteric passed from generation to generation, I too have become fixated on these orange-sheathed, compact, and easy-to-carry volumes. Each word I read in them makes me more of an outcast.

  I lie on my bed. After work, my body usually switches off in a minute but today I quiver with nerves. My apartment might look secure on this quiet street in this out-of-the-way neighborhood, in a house with sturdy doors and bars on the ground-floor windows. Yet a determined adversary, a killer, could easily penetrate the perimeter and slit my throat. I sure would not be the first to go this way.

  Still, I need sleep. I think of the catatonic effect of reading The Faerie Queen. This might work, but I can’t bear a single line. So I go to my medicine cabinet and swallow an Ambien and, for good measure, a Benadryl. As if conked on the head with a mallet, I sleep for six solid hours.

  At noon, I awake struggling with a faceless figure, a phantom who has escaped from one of my nightmares and attempts to suffocate me with a pillow.

  7

  Stateless in Brooklyn

  Dazed with the drugs and exhaustion, I go upstairs. My sister, Judith, sits on a stool at the kitchen island drinking coffee and watching The Price is Right on a small television. Except for the grating TV noise, this presents a homey scene. Judith keeps a neat kitchen, with copper pans hanging from hooks and dozens of spices resting on a rack. A cookie jar and toaster stand side by side on the granite countertop. The sun pours in from a window above the sink. Judith, with a seven- and a ten-year-old, girls, works hard keeping house. Until last week she also cashiered at Key Foods three days a week before they gave her a choice of full time or nothing. Child care would have eaten up every penny of her pathetic earnings so she is forced to take nothing. This adds more financial anxieties to an already worried woman.

  But she is always happy to see me. She comments, “The price is never right.” And with that she presses the remote.

  I don’t know why Judith feels so loyal. Growing up we rarely saw each other as her mother pulsed with radioactive hatred for our father. Neither of us understood why. Dad was a mildish man, given to rages only
when drunk. And he drank rarely—New Year’s Eve, July Fourth, Halloween, a few points in between. Enough, I guess. My own mother, used to brutal and unpredictable men, appreciated the reliability of my father’s violence. By keeping careful tabs on him, she knew how to strategically withdraw, to keep me out of his way, as soon as he poured his third drink. If we were out, she’d simply take me home. If we were home, she would tell dad that if he took another sip, she’d spend the night and maybe the rest of her life somewhere else. Dad would look at my mom, would look at his glass, tortured by a terrible dilemma. Then, he’d tell her to take a hike. Because my mom caught him early in the bender, he never sounded nasty. On the contrary, he was concerned for our well-being, offering to drive us as far away as we wanted to go, perhaps into the Atlantic where our carcasses could feed the fish and thus serve a useful purpose. We always took public transport.

  I don’t think Judith’s mother had the diplomatic abilities of my mom. Her mother came from a more typical Jewish family where men, when dealing with frustrations, likely numbed themselves with cake and coffee and attacked those nearest with sarcasms that left them feeling pleased with their wit. My mom, a full-blooded Sicilian, saw the women of her family defend themselves with threats, posturing, and, if need be, heavy frying pans. If shove came to shove, I always suspected that my demure mother could take my father, no problem. He could have suspected the same thing, for while sober he never raised his voice and while blasted he never raised his fist.

  Judith, meanwhile, had loved our dad. She could care less about his drunken interludes or his compulsive gambling. He never missed his child support and was always kind to her, shooting her extra money whenever he could. And Judith was strong minded enough to ignore her mom’s assault on dad’s character. Especially in high school, when Judith’s mother became more and more isolated and estranged from the world, Judith would come to visit us after class, welcomed not only by dad, but my mom, who took pity on this unhappy girl. Judith, ten years older than I, sometimes babysat. She kept these meetings secret from her mother, but they increased in the years before our father died.

  Judith, tall and sturdy like I am but with much softer eyes, married a handsome dope who barely makes a living as a roofer and is equally unsuccessful pursuing extramarital affairs. After my mom died, Judith offered her basement to me until I found a new place. Truthfully, my search, never aggressive, petered out as soon as I moved my books in. Perhaps I lack ambition. Perhaps I recognize a good thing when I have one.

  I do what I can around the house. My most important chore is keeping John from beating Judith. She always used to have a story, but the black eyes and swollen lips told a different truth. Luckily, John, a cauldron of frustrated ambition, had been careless enough to smack Judith soon after I moved in. I don’t know what they were fighting about, but I ran up the stairs in time to see him bring Judith down with a backhand to the nose. I broke his wrist and would have killed him if Judith hadn’t jumped on my back. Paradoxically, this act of near fatal violence convinced John of the value of nonviolent resolutions to domestic disputes. At least until I move out. Meanwhile I have earned his eternal hatred, though he happily smokes my pot.

  Judith slumps on the stool. “I have to talk to you.”

  These words, of course, always precede bad, no, terrible news. Whether it’s being fired or dumped or any other everyday horror that causes suicidal despair, the words and, even more, the tone cannot be mistaken. I don’t need more tsuris, but one cannot choose one’s time of death.

  “You know I lost my job,” Judith continues.

  I wait.

  “John, too. Business has been real slow.”

  I have a few bucks and a brick of weed secreted in the dropped ceiling. I deeply regret the dough I burned on Pauli Bones. “Do you need some money?”

  Judith hears the crack in my voice, and she, too, chokes up. “You’re paying what you can, but John says we can get twice as much or more on the open market.”

  John, though a total failure as an engine of wealth creation, has always had an unbending belief in the free market even as its unforgiving machinery destroys him and his family.

  “How much is he asking?” For a second I think I might be able to swing a higher rent. Maybe I can get in on a couple of truck hijackings.

  “John says 1,200.”

  Being a half-assed gangster never pays well, and with the war my prospects dim further as business gets put on hold. When I have it, I give Judith 600 a month. When I don’t, I live for free.

  Judith is crying. “Judith.”

  “You can stay in the guest room until you find a place.”

  How Judith turned out so wonderful given her crazy mother, our feckless father, and the overall barbaric attitudes of all who surround us, I don’t know. Her charity is the one random, undeserved gift destiny has granted me. To lose this hurts all the more. “I should leave anyway.”

  Judith picks her head out of the well of her coffee mug. “Why?”

  “Some problems at work.”

  No idiot, this alarms Judith. “With Vinnie Five-Five.”

  “No. Not exactly.”

  “With one of the boys?”

  “Not our boys.”

  Judith relaxes when she finds out that no one in the neighborhood is after me. She has no idea of the genocidal ferocity the murder of Scrunchy Cho has unleashed.

  She notices my expression and retreats. “We can manage for a bit longer if you—”

  “No. I’ll go underground and take the danger with me.”

  “I’m so sorry, Howard. I wish—”

  “Don’t wish nothing. I’m not a baby.”

  “Keep your stuff here until you find a place. Do you have enough money?”

  “Of course!”

  “How much do you need?”

  My finances are complicated. That is I have little actual money. Cash flow goes into inventory (the brick), and is used for kickbacks and kickups.

  My few hundred bucks would barely get me beyond city limits. Yet I can’t take anything from Judith—who has two kids, a lug of a husband, and no job.

  Judith leaves the kitchen and comes back with her hand in the pocket of her housecoat. She approaches and slips some bills into my hand, holding on to it for a second.

  She probably just handed me her last spare penny. “I can’t take this.”

  Judith rearranges herself on her stool and grips her cup again. “You have to stay alive. That’s the most important. Now get out of here before John comes back. If he knew that I just . . .”

  I hug my sister as if we are separating for life, but she gently wiggles out of my grip. “It’s all right, Howie. You’re going to make me start crying.”

  I go downstairs and pack a gym bag with clothes. At the last minute I put in a pair of brass knuckles I have owned since I’m fourteen. Hidden in a remote panel of the dropped ceiling I have stored a beautiful cadmium-handled Glock 9, the best weapon I ever owned and the well-wrapped kilo of weed. These I will leave until I find a place to stay. I’d like to have them on me, but wandering around with them is a risk.

  I count the money Judith gave me. Six hundred dollars. Not only that. The bills look familiar. One of them has a tear in the top right-hand corner. On another, someone has blotted out Benjamin Franklin’s homely face, as if the vandal had a particular wish to insult the only man to sign the Articles of Confederation, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution. These are the same bills I had given Judith the last time I paid the rent.

  Like a mother, like poor housewives of all eternity, Judith has kept the money I paid her in escrow in case I needed it. Her concern for me, so baffling, overwhelms and I collapse on my beloved bed, maybe for the last time. My mother had not cared for me more.

  But I don’t stay for long. I can’t. My sister needs the apartment. The Chinese and Russians are gunning for me and I’m putting Judith in danger by being here. So I leave through the side door and walk down the driveway having no idea
where I might go. I’m a man without a neighborhood.

  8

  A Clean and Well-Lighted Escape

  The elevated train’s rusted, bolt-infested girders shade East Sixteenth Street. Hidden way above the tracks is a giant blue sky and a spot of yellow sun, stuck in the center as with Velcro.

  It is just past one on an almost-summer Tuesday afternoon. April should be crueler.

  In the beginning, a century ago, pushcarts rested at the bottom of the subway, selling everything from apples to undergarments. Then stores spread, offering cheap clothing, fruit, flowers, meat, fish, baked goods, whatever one might need on the way back from the garment factories that crushed the soul. Today, an equally oppressed working class populates the dilapidated buildings near the train.

  Into this morass where people are ground to pulp by work and, more, by the lack of it, a café named Stamm Tisch (Regular’s Table) opened in a storefront twenty feet from the stairway leading to the Q/B platform.

  The vast majority of the commuters have little energy to sip lattes while watching hungry people stagger home. Why? You need to glimpse the kids before they go to bed. You can’t miss your favorite show. Some may even want to exchange a few tired words with a spouse.

  In the more northerly parts of Brooklyn, cafés spread like the pest. Along with wealth, they crept southward. Yet, on

  the whole, they remained miles from Gravesend and Sheepshead Bay, unable to cross the cultureless moat of Midwood and Flatbush, miles and miles of desolate landscape peopled mostly by savage tribes of Orthodox Jews and roving bands of the low net worth individuals.

  Yet somehow downtown had planted a flag, miles from its nearest outpost. Rickety wooden tables of various sizes filled the café’s interior. One could get a chessboard from the barista. A few books, maybe the only ones in the neighborhood, lay neatly stacked on built-in shelves. Stamm Tisch brings all the claims of middle-European intellectualism to the grandchildren of people who despised it when they lived there.