has hog-tied and handcuffed me. As a child, it was as if I had a premonition that foretold the anguish I would soon cause my parents. Looking back after all these years, I see that that uncanny ability to see the future robbed me of my boyhood.
Be still, I remember ordering myself, as I waited for what my father would do next. Trying my best to be a good boy, I sat on my hands. I pressed my palms into the wooden breakfast room chair so hard that I almost levitated.
“Look at me when I talk you!”
I remember my father’s voice like it was yesterday. I looked up at him, but only for an instant. I couldn’t bear to see him angry. I never could. I noticed that he was only using English. Languages have a special way of communicating feeling. English is good at icebox coldness. A pleaser by nature, I was devastated that my father was displeased. Invisibly, I trembled.
“Let me see them,” Papa ordered. I reached down and picked up the shoes from their place by my stockinged feet and presented them to him. That was the third new pair of shoes I had gotten in the past six weeks. Generally, my mother was the parent in charge of shoes. When my shoes got too tight, I went to her. Papa took hold of those shoes, examined them for some anomaly, and muttered to himself. He resumed pacing.
I wondered why my father, a man whom I respected and adored, a man who worked from sunrise to late at night six days a week in our little family store, would not only be interested, but mad about my shoes.
Does he think I’m not telling the truth? I remember asking myself. Truth was important to the Erlichs. And it has always been important to me. I recalled the day my father lectured and spanked my big brother after he lied about a case of eggs purchased especially for Passover that had gone missing. Ben had appropriated them as a secret weapon to heave at the neighbor boys in a dirt-clod fight.
“In German, Erlich means honest,” he’d said. Although I was an innocent bystander, he’d lectured both of us. When Papa enunciated the word “honest,” I had thought of our name as a badge of honor. I visualized my family as Apache Indians in the Sonoran Desert, brandishing our war shields, announcing to everyone who we were and what we stood for.
“When you don’t tell the truth you bring shame not only on you but on your family,” my father warned. Looking back, I can say I feared shame more than I feared my father’s belt, which on occasion I’d seen him use on Ben.
Though it was wintertime and not at all warm in that unheated kitchen, I began to sweat. “Papa, my shoes don’t fit anymore,” I insisted. “I’m not lying to you. I swear.”
“I know, I know,” my father said, in a quieter but still stern voice. Papa stopped pacing and kneeled in front of me. I noticed that his brow was wrinkled and a bluish-purple vein above his right eyebrow throbbed. Thankful to be distracted for a few seconds, I watched it move. Papa further unlaced my barely scuffed, black high-top Buster Brown shoes and loosened the tongue. With a firm, determined grip, he took the shoe in his right hand and slid my foot partway in, just past my toes and instep. I remember how Papa pushed harder; I had to avert my eyes. I was embarrassed, but not sure why.
I looked down and saw my father’s brown oxfords, which he cleaned and spit-shined daily. I was fond of those shoes. I remembered all the nights I had peered out from under my bedcovers at Papa’s shoes. He would come home late as usual from work and tiptoe into the room that Ben, Myer, and I shared. Then he would bend over and give us each a kush on the forehead. I looked forward to the predictable, soothing squeak my father’s shoes made on our wooden bedroom floor. It was a talisman of safety, a blessing, a sound that reminded me things were secure in that dimly lit room. When I heard that sound, I could let myself fall backward through space into sleep. That’s a feeling I haven’t had too often in my life. That evening sitting in our kitchen I wondered how my father saw my shoes. From the look on his face, and the way he was straining, they seemed more like a curse.
Over the years, when I recall how my father struggled with those shoes, it reminds me of the tale of Jacob’s wrestling match with the angel that I’d learned when I was a little boy in chader—Jewish School where we went to study Monday through Friday after school and on Sunday. In that Bible story Jacob scuffles with a seraph and won’t stop grappling until the angel blesses him. Watching this unfold, God laughs. He changes Jacob’s name to Israel, which means “you who struggle with God and prevail.” Though Papa was single-minded and strong, it was impossible for him to have known that was the beginning of a lifelong wrestling match with an invisible menace he would not and could not win.
“Papa,” I asked, trying my best to connect with him and lessen the distance I felt growing between us, “when your shoes didn’t fit, did your father get mad?” My father was so focused on what he was doing that he didn’t say a word.
I knew I must have done something very wrong. Only two Mondays before, after school, Mama and I had gone to Givens and I had picked out a pair. In those days it was the only place to buy kids’ shoes in El Paso. Two months before, when Mr. Silverman measured my feet, he couldn’t believe that I was only in the second grade. I liked the attention and felt proud to be big for my age.
Upon our return, Silverman looked surprised and muttered, “Das ist ungaublich.” My mother shot him a disapproving look. When she paid Mr. Silverman, pulling coins from her purse, she’d looked at me and frowned. “These have to last you until Pesach,” she said.
I remember worrying that the salesman must have given me a smaller pair by mistake or maybe when I had walked through a puddle of water in front of the Azar’s house on the way home from school the day before they had shrunk.
“Stand up on that foot, Jake.” Papa tried and tried to force my foot into the small opening, but it was no use. He pushed so hard his face turned red. I pushed, too. I felt that forcing my foot into that tight leather shoe was imperative for the family’s survival. I knew that shoes were expensive. I imagined that if my parents spent all of their butter and egg money on me, Ben and little Myer would have to go without. Maybe the family would starve. I knew I was lucky to even have shoes. After all, some of the kids at Vilas School went barefoot.
“Ouch, that hurts, Papa,” I said, no longer able to keep silent. Papa sighed, sat up, and wiped the sweat from his brow. I felt guilty that I’d hurt my mother and father by not wearing my shoes at least until spring, as I knew I ought to. I was comfortable with oughts and shoulds. In those days they defined my world, like the North Star. “I’m sorry; sorry I made you buy those awful shoes for me, Papa,” I started to cry.
Papa reached up and put his right hand on my shoulder. I knew he wanted to comfort me, but he must have felt strangely unequal to the task. I know Papa was uneasy with his sense of inadequacy in the face of my sadness.
“It’s nicht gaferlach mien kind. It’s not so important,” he said. But I didn’t believe him. My father didn’t know how to tell me that he wasn’t angry; he was frightened. Papa just sighed, picked up the shoes, and stared out of the window into the moonless night. I stood there for a few seconds, waiting for him to turn around. Then I silently retreated to my bedroom. I wondered if Papa would give me a kush that night.
The next day, Mama and I made our way to Givens.
“You two, again?” Mr. Silverman said in a loud, overly familiar voice.
I avoided his eyes by watching the salesman’s belly shake as he spoke. I smiled to myself and thought, It moves like the jelly on top of Mama’s gefilte fish.
For the second time in a month, my mother and I sat silently in front of the eager seller of shoes. Silverman had been selling shoes and boots in west Texas since the turn of the century. He was like a walking
