Boy on a Greek Ship.” The “comrades” snigger.
Mother kvells—one of those untranslatable Yiddish expressions, insufficiently expressed in English as “coos like a bird with pride —“You hear that Abraham? These comrades will get you a job on a ship when you are older!”
Had she the faintest inkling of the “job” that the “comrades” had in mind, she’d have thrown them down the stairs.
In 1932, Sam and Esther hitch-hiked from Cleveland to Washington D.C. to observe the Bonus March. Forty-five-thousand marchers—veterans of World War I and their wives and children—had camped out in the swampy field that was Washington’s Anacostia district. They demanded that the bonuses promised them in 1945, $1.00 for each day served in the States or $1.25 for each day served overseas, be moved up to the present instead. It was the pit of the depression. The men were facing destitution. Army Chief of Staff Douglas MacArthur and his aides, Dwight Eisenhower and George Patton, crushed the peaceful assemblage with cavalry and tanks, clubbing the families from horseback and flattening and setting to flames their plywood shanty towns. For years MacArthur was known in radical circles as “the hero of Anacostia flats.”
How is that for a honeymoon? It was a sight Mother never forgot, though observed from a distance.
She cut to the moral center of the thing. She said of MacArthur, “The man clubbed the men who had fought at his side; he had them clubbed when they asked for bread.”
14: Mother – Childhood – Other Things
April 8, 1937 is the day I entered this world. True to my heritage I came out kicking and screaming and tore Mother’s womb to shreds. Another pregnancy was dangerous and out of the question, the doctors told her: she should be thankful she had two strong, healthy boys, and that settled her quest for a girl. Her womb had dropped and in a few years she would suffer through a difficult partial hysterectomy.
Abe has recently reminded me of some things I was in no position to remember: that I was born 11:45 pm at Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx; that after Sam carried me up the stairs in his arms to our tiny apartment on Trinity Avenue, he nestled me into my first home, swaddled in soft sheets and blankets: a dresser drawer.
“This is your brother,” he said to Abe, who was not yet four years old. “He is part of our family.”
We need to back up a bit before I go on with my life. We need context. We need to understand Mother: her anarchism, which she came upon before she met Sam; her integrity; her compassion; and, yes, her compulsion to control and dominate her sons through a love that was conditional upon our moral behavior as defined by her. Abe and I have thought a great deal about these things. He reminded me not long ago of an incident in Mother’s young life that I think is key to the development of her character.
15: In the House of Father Abraham
A good place to start is the photograph of Father Abraham and his young family circa 1909. They are stiffly posed and formally dressed in the manner of the day. Father Abraham is seated, his back straight, balancing Mother’s sister, the infant Sarah, swaddled in white linen on his lap. Grandmother Ida, a pretty woman, stands to his right proudly, if slightly recessed, her hand resting on his shoulder. Mother, little Esther, stands in front of Ida and at Father Abraham’s side. He clasps her hand gently. He is indeed a handsome man, and I can still discern Mother in that tiny face staring out at me from over a century ago.
Mother mentioned many times Father Abraham’s straight back and military bearing, which he came upon honestly. That is, he served several stints in the Tsar’s Army. Her fondest, most loving memory of him was creeping down to the bathroom of their Cleveland home in Garfield Heights, then a gracious suburb, to watch the ritual of his morning shave. He’d appear shirtless, suspenders over his long underwear, facing the small, round mirror. No shaving cream, stuff like that: instead soap, cold water, and straight-edge razor, which he stroked expertly on a long leather strap at his side, grown shiny with use. She loved the delicious sound of the blade against his cheeks, chin, and neck, and the way he got the blade around his mustache—all this while standing ramrod straight, as if at attention. He was of course aware of her as he shaved but said nothing; he’d smile, and she’d smile back, their little secret. Mother adored Father Abraham.
He came from a long line of bricklayers and construction tradesman. She was fond of telling us the stories Abraham told her of the pace of 1880s life in the small White Russian village of his birth. Here’s one: Seems the village priest sent for him one evening. Could he do some brick restoration work on the local church? A portion of the wall was crumbling. “I’d be glad to,” Abraham says, “but I am off to the Army tomorrow for at least two years.” The Tsar required one male from each family. Generally it was the oldest son, but since Abraham’s brother was getting married, Abraham was going instead. The old priest shrugs, “So? When you get back!”
As usual, Mother saw beyond the superficial to the moral center of the story. “You see, the priest knew that was Father’s work. He would not think of giving that work to another man. And the priest knew he was a Jew. That didn’t matter. They respected each other.”
That tolerance did not extend to the barracks of the Tsar’s Army. He had a hard go, but, typical of him, he said nothing about it. There was one incident that he savored, however, and Mother recounted it to us with relish growing up: Father Abraham was assigned to the detail that stood guard and paraded at important ceremonies. The men were picked for their looks and bearing, for the impression they made. One Easter service found Abraham deployed front row in full dress uniform and full mustache on the steps of the St. Petersburg Cathedral. Out comes the priest in full regalia. Deliberately and in stately fashion he sprinkles holy water from a golden pail at the troops, first to one side, and then the other. Now, it is good luck and a blessing to be sprayed with as much as a drop, but a full blast catches Abraham’s cheek. The water is cold and unexpected and he flinches. “Had to be a Jew!” the men behind him growl.
Once in the clutches of the Tsar’s Army it was hard as hell to get out; they’d keep you for as long as they wanted. For that and the other familiar reasons, Abraham and his young wife made their way to the U.S., and eventually to Cleveland, where they were fruitful and multiplied. They had six children who made it to adulthood. Mother was the oldest by a few years; she was brought to America six months of age. There followed Sarah, Martin, Joseph, Sid, and Daniel, who was much younger, a change of life baby.
By all accounts Abraham was a wonderful father from a bygone age, as honest and direct as his back was straight. Though he knew Hebrew well he’d read passages from the Torah to the children in his accented English, tell them the stories of Daniel and the Lion, of King Saul, of David and Goliath (though never David and Bathsheba), of Noah; Mother grew up with the Old Testament in her bones. As an adult, she loved to read from it. She loved the poetry, the purity of the language, and the wisdom. She called it a remarkable document of an ancient people and that was enough for her. There was no need of a god to worship.
And Abraham was skilled in many things. He could do carpentry, metal work, masonry, bricklaying, and farming. He built the home they lived in with his bare hands. He kept a garden with fruit trees on to which he grafted the branches of other trees. And a proud man, proud of his work. He’d take the family, the whole brood, into the city proper to admire the brick bakery ovens he built with his bare hands, his labor. I wonder if any of them are still there? In use?
He made his own tools, kept them in a large storage shed that he built in the back yard. He took the wood from fruit crates and made pirate chests for the children, with curved tops that he painted and shellacked to look old. He used his forge to make iron hinges and ornamental metal of different design for each chest. He gave them secret locks, so that the
