That Said (13 page)

and a stuffed baby chick for me.

 

The moment I saw the chick—

its black glass eyes, its real beak

smooth as a shelled peanut

with two little slits for nostrils—

I was afraid of it.

Its insides had been scooped out

like chickens my mother koshered:

she'd stick her hand between the legs and pull out

the shiny gizzard, liver, and the gigantic ruby

of the heart, then rub the skin and the inside cavity

with Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt.

 

What scared me the most

was that the chick was really dead,

dead in its
actual
body, like a mummy;

its precious organs thrown away,

its body sanitized, stuffed with straw,

and covered with feathers dyed a sunny yellow.

 

I was sure I'd caught chickenpox

from the baby chick.

I thought I'd die.

 

The first Passover,

the Angel of Death had slaughtered

every Egyptian firstborn son.

Smeared blood was the sign

for the Angel to pass over.

I was a firstborn.

My body was covered with signs.

 

On Easter morning,

I watched them walking home from church

to eat their Easter meals—

men and boys in somber suits,

women in flowered hats,

girls wearing new spring coats on sale

at Lobels Department Store,

in lovely Easter-egg colors—soft unbleached wool

dipped into pale washes

of baby blue, mint, lavender, and pink—

 

pink as an Easter ham

stuck all over with cloves,

cloves like the burning scabs I scratched

as they paraded past.

The electric eye of the mezuzah

guarded our apartment over the store,

as innocent of Christmas

as heaven, where God lived,

how many stories above the world?

Was He angry when He saw

all the windows on my street—

the assimilated grocer's, druggist's,

even my father's store—

lit up like an Advent calendar?

 

Alone in my bedroom

the nights my parents worked late,

I'd hear voices and laughter

float up through the floor—

customers trying on dressy dresses

in the fitting rooms below.

The store was dressed up too,

with tinsel, icicles,

everything but a Christmas tree—

“Over my dead body,” my mother said.

 

Christmas was strictly business

in my parents' store.

Fourteen shopping days to go,

my class sang carols

in front of the school assembly.

In starched white blouses

we marched up to the stage,

our mouths a chain of O's.

When we came to the refrain

“Christ the Savior is born,”

 

as if on cue all the Jewish kids

were silent, except me,

absent-mindedly humming along

until the word
Christ
slipped out.

It was an accident!

Gentiles believed in Christ.

We Jews believed in a God

Whose face we were forbidden to see,

Whose name we were forbidden

to say out loud, or write completely.

 

We had to spell it
G-d,

the missing
o
dashing into its hole.

That afternoon after school,

I sat near an empty fitting room

folding gift boxes, carefully locking

cardboard flaps in place.

Was God going to punish me?

My father knelt in the window

like one of the Magi in a crèche,

among mannequins, dressed

 

and accessorized, as if they actually

had someplace to go. He dusted

off a plastic angel three feet tall.

Stored in the cellar, she lorded it

over the old broken mannequins,

naked, bald, their amputated limbs

piled in the corner like firewood.

The Sunday before holiday season

she ascended, one flight, to the store,

trailing a tail of electric cord.

 

After my father plugged her in,

she glowed from halo-tip to toe,

faith—a fever—warming her cheeks,

her insides lit by a tiny bulb.

I longed to smuggle her up to my room,

to have some company at night

when the store was open late.

I gazed down the darkening street,

Seventy-ninth to Boulevard East,

and out over the Hudson.

 

At sundown, I went upstairs.

Dinner was defrosting in the oven.

The last night of Chanukah,

eight candles, like eight crayons—

arranged from right to left,

like a line of Hebrew writing—

wobbled in the brass menorah.

My father struck the match.

Flame wavered in my hand;

I numbly sang the blessing

 

as if the words on my breath

could sweep away the word

I'd sung earlier that day.

Was God going to punish me?

I'd have to ask the Magic 8 Ball,

my gift on the first night of Chanukah.

For the past seven nights,

before going to sleep,

instead of saying my prayers,

I'd consulted the 8 Ball.

 

It could predict the future.

You asked it a yes-or-no question,

you turned it over,

and the answer slowly floated up

through the inky liquid

to the round window on top.

I held the black ball

firmly in my hands.

“Is God going to punish me?”

“CONCENTRATE AND ASK AGAIN”

 

I stared out my bedroom window

across the back alley

at the rabbi's house,

and watched him walk from room

to room, his windows

like frames on a strip of film.

He vanished through his kitchen door

and reappeared a moment later

a shadow, a hazy nimbus rippling

his bathroom's frosted window glass.

 

Swaying before his mirrored ark's

two fluorescent scrolls of light,

he performed his evening ritual—

brushing his teeth,

washing his hands, then

sinking discreetly out of sight.

For spying on the rabbi,

I'd added on another sin!

I concentrated, closed my eyes,

again I asked the question:

 

“Is God going to punish me?”

“REPLY HAZY TRY AGAIN”

“Is God going to punish me?”

“BETTER NOT TELL YOU NOW”

“Is God going to punish me?”

“IT IS DECIDEDLY SO”

“Is God going to punish me?”

“MY REPLY IS NO”

“8 Ball, what is your answer?”

“ASK AGAIN LATER”

 

I had to see what was inside.

I took a hammer to the ball

and whacked. Not a crack;

I'd barely scratched its shell.

I looked into its eye,

the dark unblinking eye,

as far as I could see inside the skull

where, floating together in ink

(so many I couldn't see them all),

were all the answers possible.

In 1959, at Horace Mann Elementary

in North Bergen, New Jersey,

wearing white on Wednesday meant you were a virgin,

wearing red on Thursday meant you were a lesbian,

wearing green on Friday meant you were a tramp.

 

The gymnasium's locker room and showers

and drains moldered in the basement.

Sanitary-napkin dispensers were always empty,

and the changing rooms' private stalls'

flapping white curtains didn't quite close.

I undressed, put on my gray cotton gym suit,

and stepped out in the open with all the other girls.

 

The gym teacher, Miss Piano, wore a Dutch-boy haircut.

Her legs were as solid as a baby grand's.

She called us by our last names, like privates in the army,

and clapped, as each girl climbed the ropes

and disappeared into girders and beams

and caged light fixtures on the ceiling.

When my turn came,

I gripped the lowest knot and dangled down;

my legs drawn up, I looked like a dying spider.

 

On the bleachers, chummy as sorority sisters,

the lucky girls who had their periods

gossiped and pretended to do homework

after handing Miss Piano a nurse's note.

Where was my excuse?

After gym class, I'd undress, stuffing

my gym suit back into its mildewed bag.

But first I'd examine my underpants

for the red smear of “the curse.”