Down Under

by Sonia Taitz

  That would really ruin the effect she was intending to have with her wardrobe choices. She thought violet was a hot and exciting color. Not an evocation of the Holy Temple and its divine plant source.

  If Judy wore a blue shirt, similarly:

  “Blue. Oh, blue was also one of the colors in the Holy Temple. The dye was based on a now extinct mollusk.”

  There was no need for Jude to associate one thing to another and another. She simply loved blue; it reminded her of the open skies above, unbounded by mazes of history and logic. It reminded her of Collum and her feelings for him, as deep as the deepest blue seas, continuous, billowing, flowing. Her father’s mind had so many valences and charges, so many lines and borders!

  Purple and blue were no mere colors to Aaron Pincus; they trailed a holy history. They brought him joy and inspiration that exceeded anything she was bringing to the picture. The lines and borders she shunned were written by God himself.

  On the other hand, for Judy’s father, yellow was the color of the stars the Jews had to wear under the Nazi regime. When she wore brown, her father was also disturbed.

  “Brown is the color of excrement—the color of the Brownshirts.”

  “It’s an earth tone,” Judy insisted. “The color of the trees, or nature.” Earth tones were “in” with her peers—orange, brown, yellow, burnt sienna.

  “In this case, we are talking about the most unnatural people on earth, worse than animals. May their names be erased from memory.”

  “May their names be erased from memory” was not a phrase reserved only for anti-Semites of the mid-twentieth century. It could include all persecutors of the Jewish people, from the Amalekites (for whom the phrase was coined, and possibly had worked, as no one but Jews now knew about them) to the Ku Klux Klan and beyond.

  But how could names be erased from memory, Jude mused, if her father kept bringing them up? Wasn’t it better to just move on and say nothing?

  The conversation would travel far past the question of Judy’s brown shirt, which actually was a chocolate-colored polo shirt with a baby-blue collar and three horn buttons.

  “They thought they were better than everyone,” her father concluded (for the time being). “Well, I guess they were wrong.”

  And God forbid Judy should question the moral superiority of the Jews to the benighted peoples of the earth. From her earliest years, Jude heard her father say things like:

  “See the headline? Anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union? What a shame! But it will end in the same way.”

  Which way? Judy would think, spreading marmalade and margarine on her rye toast. Her father, lost behind the large leaves of the newspaper, did not need coaxing. His monologue proceeded:

  “In the end, the Jews will go free, another exodus. But the empire that oppresses them? The USSR? It will soon be destroyed.”

  At other times, Aaron Pincus might read aloud from his Prevention magazine, dedicated to the betterment of human health:

  “Let’s see, let’s see,” he’d say. “There it is! The new miracle drug. And who is part of this discovery? Of course: Goldberg and Friedman!”

  Or Cohen, Levy, Bernstein, Finck.

  As she matured and began thinking for herself, these fixations increasingly bothered Judy. Sometimes she dared to protest:

  “Jew-Jew-Jew!! You’re obsessed, Daddy!”

  “I’m obsessed? I’M OBSESSED? The world is obsessed! Adolph Hitler—may his memory be blotted out—was obsessed! And why? Because he was jealous! Because we were better, smarter, one hundred percent more chosen, and that’s what he always wanted to be!”

  “You’re taking a page from Hitler? You’re obsessed because he was obsessed?”

  “Look at him now. The worst villain in the world. A screaming loco with a little moustache. Crushed to powder, blown away. A failed painter, did you know that’s who he really was?”

  “No.”

  “Yes. He wanted to paint like a great artist, and of course in his daily life he happened to meet a Jew, an art dealer, who didn’t think this punk was such a genius, and so little Ado got frustrated! He got mad! One particular Jew let him down, and then he got mad at all of the Jews? Isn’t that crazy, Judy?”

  For a brief moment, Judy thought uncomfortably about Neil Whitsun. Which Jew had let him down? Judas? Someone more recent? Was her friendship with Collum making things even worse? Was it, using another of her father’s favorite phrases, “good for the Jews”? Would Neil Whitsun end up brandishing a burning torch and whipping their village into a frenzied mob? (And what if she let Collum down? Would he turn against her? Impossible.)

  “Yes, the world has a lot of crazies,” sighed her father, interrupting her brooding. Judy remembered that they were talking about Hitler, not Neil Whitsun. It was all a matter of proportion. But was her father right to be so vigilant? Did people like Whitsun, who started out as cranks, end up as Nazis? Not if they drank, she reassured herself. Collum’s father was a harmless lush, she thought, almost fondly. He’d pass out before he could do a real genocide.

  “Too bad he didn’t buy his crappy paintings and hang them somewhere.”

  “Whose crappy paintings?” asked Judy, who was now thinking of Whitsun’s oeuvre, particularly the hanging Jesus with the shiny painted blood drips. Had she responded with enough awe to his work? Would his hatred eventually spread like mushroom spores? Would it carry into the future through his boys, Ryan and Rob, or even Collum?

  “That Jewish art dealer. What a shame. A momentary decision, and a whole catastrophe follows. It’s too bad it didn’t go differently. But this dealer was a man of sophistication and taste, and who was this little Adolph? A schmo from schmoland! But then the talentless schmo begins to think, to brood on it: Who are these people to judge me? Where do they come from? And how do they manage to hold the keys and block the doors? Why do they own the galleries, and the stores, why do they ruin things for—”

  “I know, I know, they used to say we ran the world.”

  “They still say it. They always say it! They come back to that! That’s what Hitler said. Because he wanted what? To run the world. To have it his way! Like a spoiled brat, a bully! He had to have a tantrum! So get rid of the Jews, and you win the game?”

  “I guess that was the idea . . .”

  “Bravo! You run the world! Bravo! You’re chosen! You’re it!”

  “Yes, if you want to murder people—”

  “Which was no problem for him and all his helpers. Not even a little problem. But they couldn’t win even when they killed off millions, and why, my dear little Judy?”

  Long pause.

  “Are you asking me?” said Judy. Sitting with her father and talking about psychopathy and genocide made her want to run away to the woods, where people could live pure and free, like Thoreau (a non-Jew), whom she had learned about in school, or like Robin Hood and Maid Marian. Maybe she and Collum could live pure and free one day. She’d read somewhere about communes, where people lived “off the land.”

  “All right, let’s drop it for a moment,” said her father, “just know that you have a destiny, and a good fortune ahead of you.”

  “Sounds more like endless persecution and torture,” she muttered. “By a series of crazy loners—you know, people who keep pamphlets and spread crazy lies. And also those who can’t stop thinking about the badness of people.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Nothing.” How could she have equated her father and Neil Whitsun?

  “No. I’m curious. What did you say? I always like to learn from other points of view.”

  “Well, today we kids—my generation—are beginning to realize that people suffer from oppression all over the world. Since the beginning of time. Not just the Jews. Not just far away. Everywhere, all the time, someone is suffering. So to focus on just one people—I mean, it could seem selfish. Because, what about the other broken people?”

  Judy was actually thinking less universally than she spoke. Specifically,
she was thinking of her darling boy, Collum.

  “So maybe it’s time to smoke the peace pipe, Daddy.”

  “Who’s not making peace? Who’s not smoking the pipe? Ask me for peace and I’ll give it,” her father answered. His jaw was tightening. “I would welcome it, in fact.”

  “Please, Daddy, I didn’t mean to make you more upset. I was just trying to explain how I—”

  “UPSET?” he shouted. “WHO IS UPSET? ME? I’M PROUD! I’M PRIVILEGED! IT’S AN HONOR!!!”

  Aaron Pincus’s face looked distorted, swollen and red as a Concord grape. Was this always there, this panic beneath his bourgeois exterior? Judy, of course, did not share it.

  “OK, OK, calm down,” she said, feeling guilty for having hurt her father. She knew he had lost a large part of his family in the war and was somehow defending their lives. A lost cause. They were dead.

  But those days were over. They happened long ago and far away.

  “Everything is gonna be fine, Daddy,” Judy said patiently. Why could he not see that the old hatreds were vanishing away, and that her generation would end them?

  Her father’s breath slowly returned to normal. He briskly wiped his face with a folded square handkerchief.

  Judy wasn’t sure if her father wanted everything to be fine. It seemed that he was at his glorious best in the outraged state: remembering temples built and destroyed, Hitler frustrated in his bunker, Jews rising like the phoenix from the ashes, trees growing from the desert (which were better than just plain trees any day). And yet, they lived in soft and harmless Brewster, New York. It seemed as though the worst thing that could happen here was that leaves collected in your rain gutter, or a bat got in the house.

  Or your father got a heart attack. That would be bad, too, and not just for the Jews. Anyone could be toppled, any time.

  Judy had overheard her mother nag her father to lay off the salt. She had heard her say that he had high blood pressure, and that “the pills” were not enough. That he was a pressure cooker that could actually pop.

  “Should I get you a glass of water, Daddy?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  She was sorry she had upset him, but not sorry enough to let his words alter the hope she harbored for herself and Collum Whitsun. He was the son of a violent maniac, and maybe she was the daughter of another, more aggrieved one, but their love was stronger than vendettas, however lopsided or ancient.

  Escape

  Collum brought his father’s new pamphlet to school. He had thought about it. Judy had to know what was going on in his home. She knew enough. Let her know it all.

  As soon as classes were over, they ran for shelter under the football bleachers at the far end of the high school campus. It was raining heavily, and field sports had been cancelled. While most of the downpour fell with a heavy rattling sound on the metal benches, some dripped through the spaces between them. Collum took off his parka (what Betty, his mum, called an “anorak”) and put it over himself and Judy, a little tent to keep them safe and dry.

  “Comfy?” he said, wrapping his arm around her.

  “Yeah,” she answered, leaning her head on his shoulder. If only they could stay like this forever.

  “I’ve got to show you Dad’s latest writing,” he said, rifling through his bookbag and handing her a wrinkled little pamphlet, mimeographed on cheap paper, the ink faded in spots. Neil Whitsun’s “brochure” seemed so pathetic that way; even as Collum tried to straighten it, he felt doubly embarrassed by the feeble presentation of his father’s thoughts.

  “Give it to me,” said Judy. “Let’s get it over with.”

  Judy skimmed the paper, crumpled it, and threw it. It rolled a bit, then lay on the grass and the rain torrents beat it almost flat. Judy thought about the ink running, washed away into the mud. She nuzzled deeper under Collum’s anorak.

  “Your father’s really crazy, huh,” she said, loving the feel of his body’s heat in the cool, wet air. “But my dad, he’s got his own little fixations—”

  “Yeah, but he’s a talker, right? And your mom’s always there, nice and smooth. My father thinks with his ham-sized fists, and his little lady shrinks away. A real mom would block him, you know that? She’d block him.”

  “If I were your mom, I’d take you away,” said Judy.

  Collum almost cried, but he contained himself.

  “Yeah, where would you take me? She’s an Irish lass, no skills. She’s broken in. He’s all she’s got, and that kitchen, the boys. The family, sick as it is.”

  “I think—I think she even loves him, right?”

  “He’s got her brainwashed. Of course she loves him, which is even more insane than being him. She actually thinks love is greater than hate! Well, it’s not, Judy, and you can watch that battle play itself out in my house every day.”

  Judy didn’t know what to say. She was silent, sad. If love wasn’t stronger than hate, then her father was right. She felt, just then, like kissing Collum. Stopping all this talk and just kissing.

  “And I don’t know how much more I can take of this. When he watches the news he gets madder and madder—and he takes it all out on me. As though every change in the world were my fault or something.”

  “It’s ’cause we’re friends, I guess,” said Judy.

  “We’re more than friends. I love you. I love you,” said Collum. “He doesn’t know how much. No one does. He’d go nuts if he knew. And he’s all worked up about the war, and the draft—he talks about moving us all out, out of the country, even—”

  “My darling, my darling,” said Jude, feeling very grown up when she used such a word. “I see we are both in the same boat.”

  “Same boat?” said Collum, trying to understand. “My father will beat the shit out of me if he ever catches us together. My oldest brother’s 1-A, and Dad will never allow him to spill his blood fighting for this Satan-ridden country. He’s planning to pick us all up and ship us to Australia.”

  “Australia?”

  “Yeah, he has some family there. What exact danger are you in?”

  “Collum—understand this. Your father does not want you with me, the Jew. My father distrusts you, the Christian.”

  “I’m no Christian. I don’t believe in anything,” said Collum.

  In the next moment, he shuddered as lightning began to flash, followed by the boom of a thunderclap.

  “I believe in God,” Judy acknowledged, as the sound faded. “I do, but in a universal way—not in all this kind of ‘I hate you/you hate me’ stuff. That can’t be right. I mean, it’s like Montagues and Capulets. We must defy our fathers and forge a brand new path.”

  Their class was reading Romeo and Juliet. Judy had been impressed by how well Shakespeare understood her and Collum’s world. What was in a name? In a clan? In a tribal grudge? When would it end?

  “Let’s run away. Soon, Collum, before everything closes down on us.”

  Collum insulted Judy by laughing in her face.

  “Think I never thought of that? Even before you came into the picture? But you have to know what you’re doing, Judy! Get real!”

  Judy took his face in her hands and held it.

  “I have money, Collum. Bat mitzvah money, which I never spent.”

  Both of them thought glancingly of how that sentence bore out some old Whitsunian fixations, but neither dignified such thoughts with any mention.

  “How much?” was all Collum said.

  “A lot. Enough to get away. I have a jewelry box, too. Three drawers, and they’re almost full. Real pearls. A couple of opal rings. A gold bangle bracelet. And Collum, look at this.”

  She held out her golden Star of David, which hung on a fine chain around her neck.

  “Yeah, I know, I know.”

  “No, listen. I told you. It’s eighteen-carat gold, even the chain. That’s really rare. It’s special. It’s worth a lot. My mother told me that when she bought it for me. Also eighteen is a lucky number in Hebrew. It stands for ‘life.’ Our
life together.”

  Collum lost track of the plot when Judy described the necklace she was wearing. His eyes followed it down into her soft V-neck sweater. He grabbed at Judy, and with both hands took her breasts. He felt them, nuzzled his head between them.

  Her body froze still; she was shocked.

  “Stop it,” she said, recovering. She’d felt woozy in an instant.

  “When we get away, I’ll give you everything. But stop it now. We really have to think!”

  Judy wasn’t sure what she had felt, but it had been frightening, and she needed time to process it.

  “You’ll really give me everything?”

  “You mean my bat mitzvah money?

  “No, your—your body—you know . . .” he stumbled.

  “What do you think? This is a game? I love you and I will do anything you want. But not now!”

  “Whatever I want? Don’t you want me, too?”

  “Desperately,” she said, not knowing fully what she meant. She did love him desperately, but her body was another matter. Parts of her still felt private and taboo. If he touched her any more she might scream out loud. That kind of touch felt outrageous, unthinkable.

  Collum was far more experienced. Despite his youth, he knew all that a boy could know about sex. His brothers, with whom he shared a room, had secretly brought girls home for years, and the way they talked about these girls (“cunts,” “twats”) had made it easy for Collum to grow up. One of those girls had seduced him, only months before he had met Judy. She had done it on a dare from Ryan, the oldest.

  In the middle of the night, while Collum was sleeping, this girl had woken him, grabbed his penis, and put it into her mouth as it hardened. He had never felt such pleasure. Then she had ridden him so hard and fast that he came in seconds.

  “Now you’re broken in,” she said, laughing.

  Now, when he masturbated, he thought of this woman, her mouth, the aggressive way she’d mounted him. He couldn’t help it. He read his brother’s magazines, studied the way women’s bodies were made, and how to please them as they pleased you.