A good question: Years from now if I read this will I remember the things that happened to me and that I thought and that I did not write down?
I could make a 2nd diary with all the things I never list in this one!
They closed the school yesterday and a lot of the students were at the funeral, wearing their blazers. Their parents were there too, and what I noticed was how well-dressed their mothers were. If Charlie could buy and sell homes to them he could be rich fast, but he says families like theirs don’t move so much.
He won’t work now for the 7 days of mourning. Even though he’s not supposed to say Kaddish he does, and he sits on a wooden bench the funeral home gave us. So do Anita and the children. All the mirrors in the house are covered with sheets or soaped up and Charlie won’t shave until the SHIVA is over. None of the mourners wear shoes inside the house.
Other things you’re not supposed to do during the week of SHIVA if you’re mourning: leave your home, cut your hair, bathe, use make-up, greet another person 1st, work or talk business, study the Torah except for parts about mourning.
The only time I cried so far was at the cemetery when Charlie got in line and shoveled earth into Murray’s grave. I liked the sound of the dirt falling on the wood. They buried Murray’s Talis and Tephillin in the pine box with him.
What I thought even while I was crying and watching the others shovel dirt on top of the box: Now is a good time to show Charlie how well he can read.
I watched the gravediggers in back of the crowd and I hated them. They lowered the box with a machine and straps that did the work for them. I hated them because they don’t know Charlie and what he feels and what he’s like inside. They couldn’t wait for us to leave.
This is what Charlie said after, just before we got into our limousine: What’s it all about, Danny? What’s it all for?
I didn’t say anything.
Irving put his arm around Charlie’s shoulder but he didn’t say anything either.
It’s all so disconnected, Charlie said. To be buried in a place you never knew, to have a funeral where you didn’t grow up, to have no relatives from your childhood who knew you when you were a boy. Don’t you see? he asked.
It’s shitty, Irving said. It’s very shitty.
I wish Sol could have been here, Charlie said, and then instead of crying he made a fist and slammed it into a tree trunk so hard I thought he would break his hand. Irving grabbed him from around the back and held him with his own head resting against Charlie’s back, but when I looked at Charlie’s hand, his knuckles weren’t even cut.
In the car, driving back across New Jersey, I sat next to Herman, with Charlie and Irving and Irving’s wife in front of us. Anita and the children were alone in the car in front of ours with just Anita’s sister. Anita’s mother and father are dead. Her sister has been married and divorced 3 times and has no children.
Herman talked to me about his hobby. He enters contests and sends away for free things. It started when he was a traveling salesman going from city to city and selling leather goods. I liked to have mail waiting for me, he said, so I started clipping out coupons from magazines and entering contests. He put his cheek next to me and made me sniff his free after shave lotion.
His wife helps him now and he showed me her picture. She’s 8 years older than him and lives in a wheelchair. They were married 10 years ago. They get 3 sacks of mail a week from the post office. 2 years ago they won a color TV set from a Reader’s Digest Sweepstakes. Our names are sold from one mail order house to another, he said, and he invited me to visit him sometime to see his collection.
These are things he gets free samples of: stationery, stamps, soap, fabric, magazines, books, key rings, jewelry, silverware, photo albums, records, underwear, and spices.
The best part, he said, are coupons he gets worth over $15 a month. He and his wife belong to several Coupon Clubs. Charlie and Irving and Irving’s wife were very quiet and it made Herman’s voice get lower and lower until he stopped and said, It’s just a hobby.
Hey, Charlie said to Herman, and he grabbed him above the knee and pressed hard. I’m not angry with you, all right? Herman nodded his head up and down, but he was sniffling and crying.
TUESDAY
(at Anita’s House!)
I would have written more down about the funeral and what happened when we 1st got home from Brooklyn and how Charlie and Irving took care of everything, but Charlie woke up while I was writing last night and made me put the light out and get into bed. He said he was worried about Anita because her sister was too nervous for her, and that we would sleep here again tonight.
So I brought my notebook today without telling him. I told Hannah about keeping it but she didn’t even ask me if she could look at what I wrote. I asked her if she wanted to know why I kept a diary and she said OK, but before I could speak she was tickling my right ear with her fingertip. I got angry and told her to stop and she pouted and said that the guys in school said it excited them to have her play with their ears.
She was worried that Dov was spying on us so we picked a different place today. First we went outside and then we circled back and went down into the cellar from the back of the house. There was an old couch in a storage room and we sat on that and I had a hard time concentrating on kissing because I was worried I’d forget my notebook somewhere.
We could hear people walking around on top of us. Once when we stopped to get air I asked her what she would think if her mother married Charlie and she said, I don’t care what she does. I said I didn’t believe her and she said she didn’t care about that either. She made me put my hand on her breast, under her blouse and it was soft like a baby’s skin must be. I was afraid she would see my erection. She ruffled my hair and slid her finger down the back of my shirt.
I thought about how Larry and Steve and the other guys used to brag about what they would do to girls.
A question: How do grown-ups hide their erections all the time?
I wondered how old Charlie was the 1st time he kissed a girl.
I touched her ear the way she touched mine and she started wiggling against me. She stopped kissing me and she blew into my ear in a way that gave me shivers.
How old am I really?
IF MR. MITTLEMAN IS RIGHT AND I’M OLDER, THEN WHAT HAPPENED TO MY MISSING YEARS?
When I blew into her ear she moaned like an actress. She was laying almost on top of me and I know she could feel my erection against the inside of her legs but neither of us said anything about it.
What I thought while we were kissing: This will make good pictures for inside my head when I don’t have her with me!
Charlie’s wife and daughter came to the funeral when we were sitting in the waiting room before the service. Lillian kissed him on the cheek. I was surprised at how young and pretty she looked. “Oh Charlie,” was all she said.
“Gee I’m glad you came,” was what he said back, and they held each other for a while.
His daughter is very tall, almost as tall as he is, and she stands up like a ballet dancer. She has a beautiful long neck and her black hair was pinned on top of her head. Even though she’s probably just a year or 2 older than Hannah she looked 5 years older, like a girl in college. She had Charlie’s eyes. When Charlie told them my name and where I came from she looked at me in a way that made me want to tell her everything I feel about Charlie! She wore a tan suit made out of soft wool.
I wonder what she lets guys do to her. She didn’t look as if anybody could ever mess her up in any way, she was so neat, and her clothes fit so right. She wore pale pink lipstick and she kissed her father on the lips.
This is the truth: I don’t really like Hannah but I know I can’t say no to her. Maybe she’ll change. She said one thing which made me think she might have things inside her the way I do. She said, “Nobody knows what I’m like.” I asked her what she meant and she said that her name and the way she looked weren’t what she was like. I said I thought her name was beauti
ful and that in Hebrew it meant merciful but she said she didn’t like it. My father treated us all like objects, she said, and that was the end of the conversation.
Did she get that sentence from her mother, or was it her own?
People seemed almost happy today. In the afternoon we had a Minyan and Irving was the leader and the guys kidded him about the way he chanted the prayers. He said he would be here in the morning early tomorrow so we could have a Minyan again and put on Tephillin. You can’t say Kaddish without a Minyan. Ephraim didn’t put on his Tephillin Sunday because it was the first day of mourning, but he does now. Dov took a stack of comics and sports magazines outside and sat in the treehouse all afternoon. He never says anything to anyone.
There were some students from the school there when we prayed in the living room and they looked in at us and I felt as if my heart were in flames. I was so proud because they could see Charlie singing in Hebrew with the others!!
This is what I thought: JEWS DON’T NEED PRIESTS OR CHURCHES BECAUSE WE CAN TAKE OUR RELIGION WITH US ANYWHERE. Wherever there are 10 Jewish men you can have a Minyan for a service, and you can have it in a home. That’s why the men were laughing with Irving after, because doing it this way in a home shows that life goes on, for the individual and for the species too. Murray must have walked on the same spot we prayed on only 3 days ago and it didn’t make us holy and silent.
What I think: With thoughts like these I could be a Rabbi too!
A good saying from PIRKAY AVOS: “Whole branches of Jewry may wither but the tree lives on.”
What I know: The less I say to people the more I can write.
If I had to explain to Hannah why I write, I wouldn’t have written all I’m writing today.
Then why did I ask her if she wanted to know why I write my thoughts and experiences down? The answer is that I wouldn’t have asked her if I hadn’t felt she would not be interested.
In the beginning I would have asked Charlie, but not anymore.
He was all excited after supper because a longdistance call came from Sol. He’ll be here in 2 days. He saw Murray’s obituary in THE NEW YORK TIMES.
Sol and Charlie
5 MINUTES LATER!
MR. MITTLEMAN JUST LEFT AND MY HEART IS STILL POUNDING! I can’t even remember what I was going to write about Sol and Charlie, he got me so upset. I don’t know how long he was standing next to me but when I looked up he was there. Well, well, he said, the historian of the event.
I’m still sitting in Murray’s office at Murray’s desk the way I was when he reached toward me with his hand and I flinched away. He said he only wanted to touch my hair the way Charlie always does. He said my hair invited touching.
I didn’t say anything. I closed my notebook and he sat down on the other side of the desk and spoke very gently as if he was a different Mr. Mittleman. He asked me how Charlie was feeling and when I said OK he said to let him know if Charlie did anything funny.
He said I shouldn’t be afraid of him, that he wouldn’t take advantage at a time like this. I stared at his cigar and he said this: You’re a very smart boy so you should understand about Charlie. Sometimes he’s like a child and we have to watch over him, all right? Shirley and I agreed that I should speak with you since you’re with him so much. We don’t like him to think we’re spying.
I said that I already said Charlie was OK but he just sighed and spoke very softly as if I wasn’t there. I can still hear his voice! You’re too young to understand, he said, but I’ll tell you this: The hardest part of growing old is that your friends begin to die.
Charlie isn’t old, I replied.
I wouldn’t have thought it when I was his age, he went on. How much I would miss them. He leaned toward me then and said that sometimes he begins missing his friends before they’re even gone! I wanted to keep him from speaking about Charlie anymore so I asked him what he thought of the Rabbi’s sermon and he said he was very moved and that he liked the part about Murray’s name. He laughed and said that when he worked with people more he used to call himself Mittleman the Middleman.
Then he stood and kissed me on the forehead just as if I was his own grandson and left!
This was what the Rabbi said in his sermon: that Murray’s Hebrew name was Moshe, or Moses, and that it had been a fitting name for him for several reasons:
1. The original Moses was an orphan and a leader also.
2. Moses also stood for Moses Maimonides, for the name of the Home, and Maimonides was a great Jewish philosopher, Talmudist, and physician. He was called The Jewish Aristotle. “From Moses unto Moses,” the Rabbis said, “there arose none like Moses.”
3. Murray had the exact same full name as another great man in Jewish history, Moses Mendelssohn, who was a German Jew and a hunchback. Born into poverty, Moses Mendelssohn became a great philosopher and theologian and he fought for the emancipation of the Jews in Germany and Switzerland. He opened the 1st free Jewish school in Berlin in 1781.
When the Children of Israel were at the Red Sea and the Egyptians were pursuing them and they cried unto God, God said to Moses, “Wherefore criest thou unto me? Speak unto the Children of Israel, that they go forward.”
God didn’t make any promises. The Rabbi said Murray was like Moses. He went forth without promises. Born poor and an orphan, he never relied on God’s miracles, but took responsibility for his own life into his own hands and went forth and created a beautiful Jewish family and home and became head of an innovative school which influenced educators from all over the country.
WEDNESDAY
This morning Hannah asked if she could visit one of her friends and Anita said she could go if she promised not to stay more than 2 hours. People aren’t coming as much as they did the 1st day. I heard Hannah on the phone and one of her girl friends was supposed to call some guys to meet them there. They’re from Murray’s school so they have off this week.
Charlie and Irving talked about Sol today. Irving said that Sol’s father was a typical German Jew, but I didn’t know what he meant. Charlie said he felt that if he could know more about Sol’s father he’d know more about Sol. He said Sol said his father used to hate poor Jews but not orphans. Sol’s father believed that even the meanest Jew can rise by his own bootstraps. Sol said he was a very great man and had endured great humiliation from non-Jews even though he was wealthy and educated.
After lunch Mr. Alfred came from the Board of Directors and said they wanted to name the school after Murray. Anita surprised me and turned him down and Irving took her side against Charlie.
This is why Anita turned him down: She doesn’t want charity or a widow’s retirement money. SHE WANTS TO TAKE MURRAY’S PLACE AND RUN THE SCHOOL!
She got angry with Charlie and Irving for trying to help her. She wants to help herself. She said she has it all figured out. None of the other teachers can take over because she said Murray hired weak sisters so he could be in control. It’s the middle of the school year and parents will want reassurance. These were her words: How can they say no? I have as many damned degrees as Murray. I was a teacher and a guidance counselor before we started repopulating the world with Jews, remember?
Irving said he thought it was a terrific idea but Charlie asked her what she would do about having the baby. He was looking at her stomach a lot.
She laughed at him and stood in the doorway with her arms around Ephraim and Rivka, pulling them close to her like a real mother. She said if the baby didn’t come during spring recess she might have to take a week off but that Charlie could run the school if she did. She said she heals quickly after 5 children.
Charlie asked what she was going to do about money and said she could refinance her house and told me to explain what refinancing was to her but this got her even angrier. You really mean to see me helpless, don’t you? she said. You’re just like him in that way. She let her children go and stood over Charlie and I saw him smile at her anger. Irving tried to put his arm around her but she pushed him away.
That’s wonderful, she said, but she turned away so quickly and left the room that I couldn’t see how she meant it.
This is what I was thinking while the scene was going on: If Charlie didn’t want her before, he’ll want her now!
The most peaceful part of the afternoon was when Anita was talking about what Murray was like when she first knew him and his great desire was to be a martyr. She asked Charlie and Irving if they remembered the summer she and Murray went to a camp in Ohio to prepare for going to teach in Alabama. She talked about how Murray used to imagine the headlines there would be if he was killed helping blacks. She said everybody knew the government wasn’t going to do anything until whites were killed also and she imitated Murray. I’m the most qualified, he used to say. A family man with small children. An orphan…a Jew…
He changed, Irving said. He’d be angry if you brought it up now.
Morty and Herman came later in the afternoon and so did some of Anita’s relatives and we had enough for a Minyan. We didn’t have a Minyan in the morning. Then everybody reminisced some more about Murray and Herman told the story of how when they used to go to the movies away from the Home Murray would take a bag of warm oatmeal from the kitchen and he’d sit in the front of the balcony and yell suddenly that he was going to be sick. Then he’d open the bag and make believe he had to throw up and let the stuff plop down on guys under them.
When Murray was in college at Columbia, he took Charlie to visit him and Charlie was asked by the football coach to apply there. Charlie started to tell the story to show how good Murray was to him but when he got near the end he was depressed, as if he’d made a mistake.
Morty asked if Mr. Prentiss gave me to Charlie and I didn’t know what he meant. He explained that at the Home, for summers and after school, they would be assigned to work for a Jewish businessman somewhere. Morty had worked for a children’s dress manufacturer in the garment center and now he was a partner. He took out his wallet and showed me pictures of his family and his home on Long Island. In a separate envelope he had pictures of his swimming pool, his snowmobile, his snow blower, his electric barbecue, and his riding mower. What’s money for if you don’t use it? he asked.
An Orphan's Tale Page 13
