Before My Life Began

by Jay Neugeboren

  He was playing it awfully close. My heart bumped. What if his shoe got caught, if he tripped? I remembered an old war movie in which a soldier gets his boot stuck in a railroad track while crossing a train yard. When the train roared across the screen, blacking it out, the whistle blasting, I’d covered my eyes and felt sick.

  I moved fast, to jump down, but the other guy held my arm.

  “Don’t be crazy, guy—Frankie, he does this all the time.”

  Frankie, in the well of the subway, had two hands on the platform, for leverage. He vaulted up easily, as if he were getting out of a swimming pool. He brushed himself off.

  If the word were already out, or if they heard about what happened later on, after they got home. If they remembered me…

  I put my hands in my jacket pocket, felt the gun through the inner lining of my pocket. Frankie’s girlfriend was all over him, yelling at him about how scared he made her. She was shrieking and laughing, mascara running in a thin black line from the corner of her right eye. One hand on her ass, Frankie brushed his hair back with his other hand, stared at me across her shoulder, then plunged his tongue into her mouth. The train bore down on us. The other girl had both hands pressed over her ears. The train doors slid open. When they entered the rear door of the front car, I moved sideways, walked through the first door of the second car.

  I sat by myself, picked at the cane cushion. There were eight or ten men in the car—no women at this hour—and a few were asleep. When his own father died, my father told me, they placed pennies on his eyes. The train windows were smudged a watery tan. There were always choices. Abe was right. I was choosing not to telephone Gail. I closed my eyes, tried to force my father’s face into my head. I wished he could have lived long enough to have known Gail, to have held Emilie. The train swung from side to side, out of the station, high above the street, rocking around curves. From a distance it would seem tiny, these tons of steel and glass and wire—a mere necklace of pale-yellow beads moving noiselessly across the horizon.

  The train was slowing down. Grant Avenue. We were near the Cypress Hills cemetery. Why was my father still crying? Why did he love me? Did he agree with me that, for the sake of my wife and daughter, I was doing the right thing? I wanted to have the chance to be the kind of father to my own child that I’d always wanted him to be to me. I smiled. Gail would understand that, wouldn’t she? Later I would tell her all about what had happened and why I’d done what I’d done, though she would probably turn her back on me at first, fold her arms across her chest. The train doors closed. We moved again. I kissed Gail’s cheek, from behind—she was at the window, looking out—and when I saw her turn on me, her eyes were filled with something beyond rage. A fist closed around my heart.

  Later?

  I rose from the seat, one hand pressed over my heart. Didn’t I know? Couldn’t I understand? My mother was shaking her head, laughing at me for my innocence. Later? Didn’t I know that I would never see Gail or Emilie again?

  The train heaved to one side and I stumbled, grabbed at an overhead strap. Below me, an old man looked up from his newspaper. His eyes were kind and he set the paper down beside him, ready to help me if I fell. He put one hand over his right eye, to keep away the glare from the ceiling lights. I moved backwards, sat. The man disappeared behind his paper. I heard my heart tapping steadily against the wall of my chest, but there was nothing squeezing it anymore.

  It had probably never occurred to Abe that a loser like Vincent was capable of doing Fasalino’s dirty work. Did he have a moment at the end, I wondered, like the one he’d wished for—a second or two to look back, to take stock?

  Things seemed clear enough. With Abe and Rothenberg gone, I was no real threat to the others. Still, they would probably keep after me for a while. Little Benny and Lefty and Monk and Turkish Sammy could be taken care of easily enough. If they survived, they’d work for whoever paid the rent. As soon as the killing stopped, the police would lose interest. I looked through the window to the city beyond, out over all the rooftops and on to the horizon, where the air was such a pale, misty black that it was hard to see the dividing line between city and sky.

  The less Gail knew, the safer she was. I would protect her the way Abe had protected me. No letters, no calls, no messages. I leaned back, closed my eyes, saw my mother dancing in slow circles with Beau Jack. I looked at the station signs, thick black letters on white. Crescent. Chestnut was next. Then Montauk and Linwood and Van Siclen. We’d be at Atlantic Avenue in less than ten minutes. I looked behind me, saw the two guys and their girlfriends out on the platform, moving backwards as the train began to move forward.

  I knew, of course, what would be in the safe-deposit box. It was simple enough to take on a new identity. All you had to do was keep your eye on the obituary columns until you found somebody your own age who had died. Then you went down to City Hall, bought a copy of his birth certificate, took his name for your own. The rest was easy. The lights raced by, flickering like enormous fireflies. I stared at my reflection, suspended in the dusty window above the city, superimposed on the city as in a double exposure.

  The train was rocking us gently. I imagined that we were moving out past the Philadelphia suburbs. Gail’s feet were tucked under her, her head on my chest, and we were heading for Maryland. We kissed, and at that moment the train swerved, our teeth clicked. We laughed. Gail touched my mouth with her fingers. Was I sorry about our decision? Would I regret it later on? Would I hate her and resent her for taking away my freedom, for stealing from me all the other lives I might have had? She hated it when we were apart. She wasn’t tempted by other men, but it made her feel crazy and scared—as if she were going to crack open, as if her parents were right to worry about her—because without me there she would begin to feel that she couldn’t remember me. She would begin to feel that she couldn’t hold onto the feelings she had toward me when we were together. Would I forgive her for being weak in that way? When she concentrated, trying to envision me, to conjure me up, she would lose a piece of me at a time, as if I were being erased—first my hair, and then my forehead, and then my eyes, and then my nose, and then my mouth…

  Distance, like memory, she said, was painful. She had never believed all the nonsense about absence making the heart grow fonder. The heart could easily forget what the eyes could not see and the lips could not touch and the fingers could not feel. Distance, like memory—like anger, I wanted to add—like rage!—was a veil.

  BOOK TWO

  11

  GRASS LIKE ICE—mint-green, frosted. Aaron Levin slides the curtains apart, the brass rod cool to his touch. Outside, nothing moves. Tapping. The sound of his own heart? The green world fades to gray, filters through dull glass, through frayed threads of cream-colored curtains. An early morning frost covers the grass like fine netting over crushed velvet. The hill slopes gently away from the window, down toward the dirt road. Gray gravel. Fog. Dust. The brass rod catches light from the window, glistens under his fingertips, and he recalls shiny copper pennies set on trolley tracks, sparks spraying from wheels. He thinks of his son Carl, seven years old, cleaning coins in a solution of water and bicarbonate of soda. Carl dries them under a heat lamp, buffs them, slips them into glassine envelopes, hard plastic with black backing, so that they sparkle. Aaron imagines his children waking, dressing, eating breakfast, walking down the hill to wait for the school bus. The brittle surfaces of puddles crack and shatter, spider webs of dark-gray crystal. Larry, his youngest child—six last May—likes to wake early, to knock at his parents’ door, to enter their room, to climb between them and snuggle. Tapping. Aaron touches the curtain. Is he home already?

  He rubs the frail cotton with thumb and forefinger, absently, measuring the thinness, feeling, in his mind, his wife’s favorite dress—a faded yellow shirtwaist flowered with pale-blue forget-me-nots, flecked with darker greens of stem and leaf. Aaron lets the curtain fall, rubs his eyes, tries to make sense of the fog inside his head, of the strange white lig
ht that makes the grass shimmer, that draws his eyes downward, past the road, to the ghostly dull-gray trees beyond. What hides there? He sees, again, the curve of his wife’s hip, believes that he can feel her warm body as, in memory, he traces its shape with his palm. Tapping again. Larry at the door? The air in the small room is warm, moist, mildewed. He glances behind, at the bed, as if he expects to see Susan there, lying on her side, her back to him. Is she awake? He shivers, desiring her, longing to be inside her, to feel her moistness grip him. The lawn is silver-green now, brighter. The hem of Susan’s skirt billows up slightly as she kneels. She raises it so that she can weed, can avoid grass stain. She brushes back her hair, smiles up at him, digs her fingers into the soft brown earth, licks her teeth….

  “Who’s there?”

  “It’s just me—Nicky. Can I come in?”

  Aaron opens the door, tucks in his shirt. Nicky closes the door behind her, doesn’t move. She is nineteen years old, from a small town in eastern Pennsylvania, a Freedom School teacher like himself.

  “Did I wake you?”

  “It’s okay. I had to get up anyway to go to the door. Somebody was knocking.”

  “Very funny.”

  She walks to the window, pulls the edge of the curtain back with a hooked forefinger.

  “The moon sure is bright,” she says.

  The springs squeak when he sits on the edge of the bed. The sheet, where he was sleeping, is damp. His lower back aches. Tomorrow he’ll get a board to stick under the mattress. He puts on his shoes, laces them.

  “Boy, I was really lost,” he says. “No wonder the light’s that way. I couldn’t figure out where I was for a few minutes. It’s evening then?”

  “Night. I was scared and I needed to talk to somebody—not to talk, just to be with somebody. You. Do you mind?” She pulls the right side of the curtain to the center and he thinks of Jennifer’s puppet theater, of his children giggling and arguing below the stage. Jennifer is thirteen. “Do you ever get scared?”

  “Sure. I’m scared now.”

  “You could have fooled me.”

  She walks around the room, picks at the wall, which is bare wood, pine slabs. She recites the security rules to him: beware of cars without license plates; never be the last one out of a mass meeting; never go out alone; watch out for cops who wear no badges; listen for accelerating cars; if you wake up at night thinking there’s danger, wake everyone.

  “So I woke you, but I guess there’s no danger. Would you like me to leave?”

  “No.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes. I like having you visit me. You know that.”

  Her body is lean and wiry, her straw-colored hair pulled back into a ponytail. Her ears stick out. He thinks of a gold loving cup. She is only an inch or so taller than Jennifer. He can smell her hair, cool and lemony, freshly washed. She wears dungarees, a loose-fitting gray T-shirt, a small round black-and-white S.N.C.C. button pinned just above her left breast. She has the gait of an athlete and he imagines her streaking over hurdles, hair flying, legs split wide.

  She sits next to him. “What do you do when you get real scared, Aaron? I mean, I know how to cover up and protect what they taught us to protect, all that private, vulnerable stuff—but when you feel your stomach start to come apart and turn to water—heading South, right?—and you want to kind of creep off, just go back home and be like everyone else and forget the whole thing—what do you do then? What do you do when you get scared like that?”

  “Nothing. I wait it out.”

  “Me too, I guess.” She shrugs. “Okay. Where do you do your waiting?”

  “In dark rooms.”

  “Wanna tell me about it?”

  He smiles. They talk like this often, tease one another gently, playfully. The kid sister he never had? “Like in dreams,” he says. “Don’t you ever have dreams like that—that you’re in an old house, say, trying to escape from people pursuing you, going from room to room, all of them pitch-black, full of danger, people who’ll kill you and torture you, and you’re scared to death in each room? So what you do, instead of waking up, is just stand stock-still inside the blackness until the fear penetrates as far as it can.”

  “Jesus! I’d wake up. Don’t you wake up in that kind of dream?”

  “No. I just stand there.”

  “And then what happens?”

  “After a while I move. I kind of grope around until I find a wall, a doorknob, the next room.”

  “Do you get out of the house?”

  “Yes. I always get out.”

  “And then—?”

  “Usually I find that I’m holding one of my kids’ hands—Carl or Larry—that we’re escaping together.”

  She shakes her head. “I don’t have dreams like that.” She grabs his arm above the elbow, squeezing hard. “But I’m not a quitter, Aaron. I will stick it out—you’ll see. We will overcome, won’t we? We will turn all this hate and death around, won’t we? Won’t we?”

  He puts his arm around her. His dream scares him more now, when he remembers it, than when he was in its midst. “I hope so. If we have enough brave teachers like you—”

  “Shit on that. I’m just scared. I’m not brave at all.”

  “You’re tough as nails, Nicky.”

  “Sure. And about as thin. I wish I was as big as you and could talk to people the way you do. That must help, being big. Take me to my leader.” She looks up at him. He is a foot taller than she is. “Take me to my ladder, I’ll see my leader later, right?” They laugh. “I guess I’d follow you anywhere, Aaron. That was some speech the other night. They’ve been calling you Aaron Luther King since then. Even the Negroes, did you know that?”

  “That surprises me. Would you believe that I used to be very shy and quiet?”

  “You still are. When you’re alone with people….”

  “Yes. But when I see faces out there, the words seem to come of their own. It’s as if, with everyone’s eyes on me—trusting me—I can take power from your eyes and your trust, as if I want more than anything to send words out there that are so solid you’ll be able to climb right onto them, to stand on them and be safe, to ride those words until…” He lets his hand caress the shape of her head. He fingers the rubber band that holds her ponytail. He feels sad. “Sometimes when I get depressed—low—I feel that I’d just like to give one long cry, Nicky, and ride that cry to the other side.”

  “And take me with you?”

  He rubs the knobby bump behind her left ear. “Words aren’t ever enough, of course, but I keep feeling that if I can reach down into what I feel and know, and if I can use words to give some of that to others, then maybe we’ll have a chance, maybe things can still change….” He stops. “Words help me cross over, I guess.”

  “From where to where?”

  “From fear to hope.”

  “Could you do me a favor?”

  “Yes.”

  “Could you hold me real tight?”

  Her teeth are clicking, out of control, and he takes her to him, feels her tremble. Her small heart beats against his own, wildly, as if it might crash through her chest and drive itself into his body. He feels the firm mounds of her breasts. He glances past her to the night table, where a photo of his family—himself, Susan, the four children—is propped against a stack of paperbacks: The Plague, Borstal Boy, Emerson’s Essays, The Fire Next Time.

  The frost, then, he realizes, is moonlight reflecting off evening dew. It is summer, not winter—nighttime, not morning—and he is in a small house at the edge of Greenwood, Mississippi, not in his own home outside Northampton, Massachusetts. Nicky sits up straight, wipes her eyes with the backs of her wrists. Her wrists are thin, freckled.

  “Would you come with me to the store?” she asks. “We’re not supposed to go out alone. It’s the other reason I’m here—my pretext—but I need to go to the shopping center before it closes, to call home. I don’t want my folks to worry too much—especially now that they found th
e bodies. In addition to which, it’s that time of month, but I’ve been too busy to remember to stock things in.” She puts her mouth against his bare arm, below the sleeve, and kisses him there. “So you’re safe with a girl like me, see?”

  The five black children sleep in one bed, pinwheel fashion, heads to the center. Nicky goes around the bed, kisses each of them. The two-year-old, Cephas, sleeps thumb in mouth, sucking away. His navel protrudes like a small brown stone, and Aaron touches it, then pulls the boy’s shirt down, circles his ankle with thumb and forefinger, strokes the slender pointed bone.

  “Tell Aaron what you just told me,” he hears Nicky say. “Softly, though. Don’t wake the others. Go on…”

  Billy grins. He is seven years old. His eyes sparkle. “All I say, Mister Aaron, is that if you all keep teaching in them schools here, they gonna kill you for sure, so I wouldn’t do it less they payin’ you real good.”

  Aaron smiles. Billy is delighted, knowing he has pleased them both. “I’m getting the best pay in the world,” Aaron says, and he lifts the boy, hugs him.

  The mother is on the porch with the three other civil rights workers, her feet in a bucket of ice water. Her name is Rose Morgan and she chops cotton for three dollars a day. She is a few years younger than Aaron—twenty-six or twenty-seven—yet he thinks of her as being ten years older than he is. She rarely speaks and when she does her voice is flat, her eyes dull, filmed over. The workers—George, Dwayne, Holly—are trying to get her to talk with them. They try every night, with no evidence of success, and Aaron admires their persistence, their innocence. This is where the work has to be done, he knows—one-on-one, person-by-person, helping others take control of their own lives. At its best, the Movement knows what a loving parent or friend knows: that you need to love people not for what you want them to be, but for what they are.