The Dream (16 page)

He had been thinking of running away from home for a long time, he told me. I did recall that he was generally very silent among us and said little about himself. Joe was always communicative about his life, telling us of
his
experiences when he knocked on a door or rang a bell, and never knowing who would come to answer it. Once a bulldog leaped at him and would have torn him to bits if the owner hadn’t been right behind to call off the dog. Once a young housewife in a negligee invited him in to have a coffee with her. That was all Joe told us, but it was enough to indicate what had happened after the coffee.

Saul, on the other hand, never spoke about his work or the people he worked with. It was something that he kept inside himself, tormenting him, the jeers that he got from his fellow workers over the yarmulke he wore and the tsitsis, and how practical jokers would sneak up behind him and pull at the fringes. But worse than all that was the sin he was committing by working on Saturday. Especially that, the day he was supposed to be in the synagogue praying.

It had been plaguing him the whole time he had been working there, and he kept it to himself until it was no longer possible to do so. He knew as he entered the big grey building of the mail order house that he could not keep this up much longer. The sin of working on a Saturday was in itself becoming too heavy to bear. On these mornings he always entered the plant with a prayer on his lips, asking God’s forgiveness for working on the holy day, but there was more than that troubling him, a premonition almost of something going to happen.

The day began as all the other days did, with the mail clerk dumping his portion of the orders that had arrived by mail, and had passed through various other hands before reaching his, then the filling of these orders and going from bin to bin and shelf to shelf where the various
products
were kept, and the wrapping and packing of these goods.

The work was monotonous and tiresome, and he had developed a strong dislike for it. The hours seemed to drag, and he grew hungry and it seemed as if the lunch bell would never ring. He brought his own lunch from home. He would never have eaten the food in the plant cafeteria, as so many of them did. My mother prepared a sandwich for him that was strictly kosher and that morning, around eleven, that sandwich was very much on his mind and the hunger he felt could very well have contributed to what was soon going to take place.

It was about this time that he picked up his next order. As a rule, customers sent in their orders on the form that was in the catalogue, but occasionally they came in the form of letters. This one came on a postcard. It was for BVDs, the popular men’s underwear in those days, and Saul was about to fill it when he glanced at the other side. The card was from Colorado and the picture showed a scene of the Rocky Mountains.

It was a fascinating and awesome sight, and Saul gazed at it spellbound. He had heard of the West and its beauty, and here it was with all its majesty and strength. It carried him away momentarily from the prison of his surroundings and gave him a yearning that he’d never had before, to be in a place like that with all its freedom and beauty.

Suddenly, he felt a tap on the shoulder. It was one of the foremen who went around checking on the order fillers. ‘What are you supposed to be doing?’ he asked. ‘Working or looking at pictures?’ He was a thin fellow with quick, sharp eyes, and he carried a notepad and
pencil
around with him and jotted down the names of those he found doing something wrong.

Saul had never been questioned before and he was in no mood for it now. He snapped back his answer: ‘What’s wrong with looking at a picture?’

It got him extra punishment. ‘I’m giving you five extra demerits beside the two you got for loafing on the job,’ the foreman said and wrote in his notebook.

Ten demerits total got you fired. Saul went back to work, boiling with anger, and five minutes later he felt his yarmulke being snatched off his head. This was not the first time it had happened and most of those times it had been Callaghan, a tall Irish fellow with a constant grin on his face who’d been the tormentor. It was Callaghan again with the same grin on his face holding the yarmulke in one hand and about to throw it to someone else, who’d keep on passing it round until Saul was able to rescue it.

This time, however, he did not go on the chase, but struck out with a fist and caught a surprised Callaghan on the nose. However, he was quick to recover, and the fight was on. They were both swinging fists and there was yelling among the order pickers around them, and foremen were making their way quickly over to the scene with notebooks and pencils poised ready for action.

The same one who had caught Saul reading the postcard was the first to arrive on the scene. He wasted little time and he didn’t bother to write anything in his notebook. ‘Report to the office,’ he said.

Saul knew what that meant. He knew also that of the two he was being singled out for extreme punishment. It
meant
being fired. Callaghan was being let off with five demerits.

Saul didn’t go to the office. He was burning with resentment and sick of the whole place, and that picture postcard was haunting him. It was still early, but he didn’t go home. He wandered about a bit, trying to pluck up courage to do what he knew he really wanted to do. Then, finally, he headed for the freight railroad yard, which was not far from where he was. And there he was able to find a train that was headed west, and he had no problem boarding an empty boxcar and was soon on his way to a journey that would take him all over the United States and would last five years, during which time among common hoboes and vagrants of all sorts he never gave up wearing his yarmulke and tsitsis, and the fight with Callaghan was only one of many that took place in his wanderings.

Chapter Thirteen

SO NOW THERE
were just three of us left, my sister, my baby brother, who was no longer a baby but a growing kid of seven in the second grade at school, and myself, seventeen, soon to graduate from Lane Tech and go on to college; and of the three of us Rose was the only one working and bringing money into the house.

She did this regularly without fail, every Saturday, handing a $10 bill to my mother silently, never talking to her, still the embittered girl from England who had been cheated out of her parlour, still filled with hatred. She must have been around twenty-three then, a strange girl whom we hardly knew. She locked herself in her room as soon as she had finished her dinner after coming home from work. Only occasionally did she come out and bang away on the piano for a few minutes, then go back into her room. She had no friends. She knew no one.

I think my mother felt a great deal of pity for her. She tried hard to break down that wall between them, speak to her, bring her into the life of the family, but always to no avail. Her feelings towards Rose were also mixed with a great deal of gratitude, for she knew that the $10 came
out
of a meagre salary and left her with very little for herself. Without it she would have had a hard time making ends meet. My father, true to his old self, gave her only a small portion of what he earned, and after cursing both Joe and Saul for what he called abandoning us – ‘those rotten, ungrateful bastards’ – made no attempt to make up the loss of income my mother had suffered.

She didn’t say anything. She managed with what she had. She knew how to manage. She would walk for miles to find a street market where food was sold at bargain prices and she would come home walking slowly with a heavily loaded bag in either hand.

The days of ‘wealth’ were over, apparently. But she did not give up. There was still me. And after me there would be Sidney. But Sidney was far off. Here I was about to graduate from high school, then go to college and become something. My father didn’t share that feeling. He saw no reason why I shouldn’t go to work. Right now, when money was needed. Never mind graduations. Never mind college. He glowered darkly at me. But I was no longer afraid of him. I glowered back and, I must say, there was something brewing between the two of us.

My mother saw it and she was fearful. ‘You mustn’t look at him like that,’ she whispered when he was not in the house, having clumped out to go to the Romanian restaurant on the west side that he had been frequenting lately and where he could find cronies and cheap moonshine served in teacups.

‘I don’t care,’ I said to her. ‘If he looks at me that way I can do the same to him.’

‘He’s your father,’ she said.

‘He’s no father,’ I said bitterly. I had friends. I visited
their
homes. I knew what a father was. I added, ‘He’s no husband either.’

‘You shouldn’t say that.’

‘I should,’ I said. ‘It’s time somebody said that. You know I’m right. Ma, why do you stay with him? I don’t know how you’ve stood it all these years.’

‘What could I have done?’ she asked.

‘You could have thrown him out,’ I said. ‘Or you could have left him, like I say you should do now.’

‘It’s not that easy. I had six children to take care of. Where could I have gone? How could I have lived? Believe me,’ she added sadly, ‘I thought of that many times, but I knew it couldn’t be done.’

‘Well, it can be done now,’ I said. ‘You don’t have six children to worry about any more.’

‘I don’t think it’s any use,’ she said.

‘Why not?’

She was silent for a moment, then: ‘I gave him a promise.’

‘What promise?’

‘Before we got married he told me all about himself, when they were in Poland, how they’d gone off to England and left him alone by himself. He cried when he told it to me and I felt so sorry for him, and I promised him he would never be left alone again.’

‘Oh, that,’ I said irritably and with contempt. ‘I’ve heard that one before. You told us already. After the way he’s treated you, you shouldn’t feel bound to a promise you made when you hardly knew him and what he was. Besides, remember what Grandpa told us. He said it wasn’t true and they wanted to take him but he wouldn’t go. That’s more likely the truth.’

She was silent again for several moments, brooding, with her head bent a little, then she asked, ‘Where could I go?’

‘We can go anywhere we want,’ I said and thought eagerly, if only I could persuade her to do it. Oh God, how wonderful it would be to get rid of him, to live without him. ‘You won’t be alone. I’ll be with you and I’ll bet any money Rose will go too. If she has to choose between you and him she’ll choose you, no matter how she is towards you. And you’ll have Sidney. So what is there to be afraid of? I’ll get a job and you’ll be better off than the way you are now with the stinking bit that he gives you every week.’

‘What about your school?’ she said.

‘I’ll get a job after school. Anyway, I’ll be graduating soon, and then I can get a full-time job and I’ll bet I can make more money for you than what he gives you.’

‘What about college?’

‘I can put off going to college until I’ve made enough money to pay for it and leave some for you.’

‘No!’ She said this with such emphasis that the plan I’d just conceived was crushed immediately. ‘Your Uncle Saul said that and he’s still a door-to-door salesman. Joe was going to be a journalist and he too is selling magazines door-to-door. You’re not going to be like them.’

I was silenced for a moment, then I said bitterly, ‘What are you going to do, then, go on letting him treat you like so much garbage? Listen to his shouting and cursing and watch him come home drunk almost every night and throw up in the bathroom and know that what he’s spilling into the toilet is paid for with the money that belongs to you? Is that what you’re going to do?’

She shook her head back and forth slowly several times, brooding all the while. ‘No, no,’ she murmured. ‘It always made me sick.’

‘Then why do you put up with it?’ I wanted to know. ‘I can understand how it was when we were all kids. But we’re not kids any longer and we can help you. Why, why do you have to stay with him?’

But she still had no answer for it and perhaps I myself did not fully understand, no more than she herself could.

She did say something finally: ‘Let me think about it.’

But there were other things for her to think about then and to worry over. There was Rose. Suddenly, inexplicably, her habits seemed to have changed. She no longer came home from work, had her dinner in silence, then locked herself in her room. Nor did she bang away on the piano as often as she had before. Now, there were days when she did not come home for dinner at all, without telling my mother, so that the dinner was left uneaten and wasted. She came home very late, often after we had all gone to bed. She seemed very busy. But with what? We were puzzled and I think my mother was a bit alarmed. What could all this mean?

Was she going out with somebody? A man? Impossible. One good thing came out of it for my mother. Now that Rose was away so much it gave her an opportunity to go into her room and clean up the place. From the glimpses she’d been able to have of it in the past she knew it was in a horrible mess, with things lying about on the floor, the room dusty, the curtains long since needing to be washed and ironed.

There might have been an opportunity to go in there
and
clean it up while Rose was away at work, but she had always kept the door locked even then and had taken the key with her. But now with her new busy life and mysterious absences, she evidently had forgotten to lock the door, so my mother went in one day with a broom and dustpan.

She was appalled at the condition she found it in, worse than any other time when she had glimpsed it during a brief opening and closing of the door. Everything seemed turned upside down, dresser drawers half opened, with clothes sticking out, things lying about, on the floor, everywhere, as if Rose had been in a great hurry and simply did not have time to straighten these things out.

I was in the kitchen doing my homework when I heard her call my name. I ran in. She was in the midst of straightening out the mess and had gathered together a pile of books, pamphlets and what looked like leaflets of some sort, and she seemed baffled by them. ‘They were all over the place,’ she said, ‘and I don’t know what to do with them. She needs a bookcase or something. Since when has she started reading books?’