East Side Stories:Tales of Jewish Life in the Lower East Side of New York in the 1930's (12 page)

She stared at him with contempt. “Your money, hah? With blood on it, I should take it? Never.”

Kalman shook his head in disbelief. He turned to Marty and offered the bill to him. “Here. You take it. A present from me.”

“Don’t touch it!” Marty’s mother commanded. Marty stared at the bill then at his mother who said, “It’s murder money, don’t take it!” Kalman was about to say something but she went on, her voice became softer, “Kalman, Kalman, you have my father’s name, your
zaydeh’s
name, your grandfather’s name. He was an
ehrlicheh mann,
a moral man. It’s a sin to do this to his name, you hear me? Why do you do this? Why? Why do you have to come to Cannon Street with them?”

Kalman became silent, everything had become silent. He shrugged, stared at the ten-dollar bill in his hand, looked at his aunt, at Marty. He shrugged once more, returned the money back into his pocket. As he turned to leave, he said, “I’ll tell you,
Tanteh
—” he began.

“I’m not your
Tanteh.
No more.”

He shrugged again and said, “I’ll come over with the boys anytime they want to come. You don’t like it, don’t look. Don’t come to talk to me. If you don’t come to us there’ll be no trouble.”

“A-ha!” she said, her eyes flashing. “Orders now. Let me tell you what I will do. I’ll sit
shiva,
I’ll do the mourning for the dead for you. You’re dead for me.” She turned to Marty, said to him, “You got no cousin Kalman, he’s dead, you hear?”

Marty said nothing. He glanced from one face to the other, both stony now, both set with a cold fury. Kalman finally said, “Do what you want. But stay away.”

He began to walk away taking swift steps. Marty’s eyes followed him. Marty’s mother too was looking after her disowned nephew. Now she turned, reached out for Marty’s arm as she said to him, “Come. Let’s go. Away from this
drek,
filth.”

The two of them walked on slowly, passing another two tenements. She stopped, her arms went out, half raised, the thumbs of both of her hands touched the tips of the three adjoining fingers. Her hands rose up and down in small beseeching arcs as she stared up at the huge sky and said,
“Tateh! Tateh!
Father! Father! You have no one that has your name now.
Ai, Tateh!”
She looked up at the wide deep sky for another moment, turned to Marty and said in a more subdued tone of voice, “When you have a son, Marteleh, you’ll name him after your
zaydeh,
yes? You hear? Promise me.”

Looking into his mother’s face, Marty nodded. His mother sighed deeply and said, “Come. We go to Rivington Street, away from this
drek.”

Walking slowly alongside his mother, he glanced backward briefly towards the ring of men under the street lamp on the corner as he thought, just for a fleeting moment, What was it like having all that money? Being rich like that?

 GOING TO SEE CAB CALLOWAY

Now past Sixth Street they were walking down Avenue B, the three of them, Eddie and his two classmates, Aaron and Heshy, were on their way to Fourteenth Street to the theater where Cab Calloway and his band was the stage attraction.

Aaron was saying, “I hope Cab Calloway will play ‘Minnie the Moocher’.”

“What’re you crazy, or what?” Heshy said. “Sure, he’ll play it, that’s what he’s famous for. His band will play it and he’ll sing it.”

Aaron began to sing the song louder and louder as they walked on. They were out of the Lower East Side, they had passed its fringes, having gone down Clinton Street past Houston Street into the beginning of Avenue B where the ragged edges of the Lower East Side were located.

Now they were in another country where there were no kosher butcher signs with Hebrew lettering on their windows, where the grocery store windows displayed types and brands of food some of which were unknown to Eddie. The signs on the stores, while in English, had funny sounding names to Eddie, names that came from foreign languages that he didn’t understand, perhaps Polish or Russian, or some other Slavic language. Maybe it was Danish or Swedish. Who knew? Or German or Italian? No, it wasn’t Italian, one thing Eddie knew, Italian words ended in an o or an i, there were none of those on the windows of the stores, no it wasn’t Italian. Or even German, sometimes German words sounded like Yiddish. Only the candy stores seemed the same, with their windows open

for the summer, selling cigars and cigarettes, soda and candy to people out on the sidewalk.

They had passed St. Mark’s Place which normally would have been Eighth Street, and outside in the street some women sat on old folding chairs tending baby carriages, small groups of boys and men stood here and there, some young girls were skipping rope.

“Hi-dee-hi-dee-hidee-hoh!” Heshy roared out. “Hee-dee-hee-dee-heedee-hah!” Eddie and Aaron, in unison, shouted out to the rooftops.

Now in front of them, staring at them, were two boys, older than any of the three of them, a taller one with blonde hair, the other with dark hair. The blonde one said to the singers, “Who in hell do you think you are, making all this noise here?”

Eddie and his friends suddenly stopped singing and Heshy said in a polite voice, “We’re just going along minding our own business, that’s all.”

“We ain’t harming anybody,” Aaron said in a quiet voice.

“You’re making too goddam much noise here, in these streets. You don’t belong here. These are my streets, not yours,” the blonde one said taking a step forward.

Eddie glanced quickly at his friends, began to move sideways to walk around the two strangers. He knew, his friends knew, not to stop and argue with someone like these two. Hadn’t Eddie’s mother told him so many times, Don’t look for trouble, Eddehleh, someone wants to make trouble for you, go away, you hear?
Zull ehr nuhr schluggen zein kupp in vant,
Let him bang his own head into the wall. Go away, you hear?

Eddie had always replied, Yeah, I hear. I’ll go away.

The blonde boy made two quick side steps and stood in front of Eddie, the dark-haired boy blocked Heshy and Aaron. The blonde said to the three of them, “This ain’t your neighborhood. Get the hell out of here! And don’t come back!”

“This is the street, the city owns it,” Aaron said reasonably. “Everybody can walk in the street, can’t they?”

“This is our street, this is our part of town,” the darkhaired one said. “You got your own streets where you live with those crazy words in that crazy Jew language that nobody understands. Jewboys, go back to your Jew neighborhood. We don’t want you here.”

Silence. Cold silence. As the blonde and the dark-haired companion stared with contempt at Eddie and his two friends, Eddie’s heart had begun to beat violently, bang! bang! It sounded like a bass drum in his head. He glanced at his friends, Heshy was staring at him. Aaron’s face had turned pale. Eddie’s mouth had turned dry, the fear in it tasted sour, almost like dry vomit.

Again he remembered his mother’s words, You don’t fight. When there’s trouble you turn around and you go away. You run away. You hear me? If you fight, you get hurt. You like to get hurt, hah?

No, he said silently to himself as if answering his mother. I don’t want to get hurt. No, mama, I won’t fight.

He glanced at the blonde standing in front of him, at the face with the contemptuous smile and Eddie felt suddenly weak, his knees felt weak, his hands were powerless, useless.

The blonde was saying, “You Jewboys better not come here. Me, I don’t like Jewboys, they think they’re so smart. You like to talk, don’t you? With your hands, right? But you can’t use your hands to fight, can you?” His contemptuous smile grew broader and he approached closer and said, “Come on! Let’s see you fight, you bastards!”

Why was he doing this? Why was he saying this? Eddie asked himself, the questions racing through his mind. He had friends in school, the Adams boy, he was called Harry by all of them, his real first name was Harrison. Harry wasn’t a Jew but he and Eddie were friends. There was the Smith boy, his father was a janitor in one of the tenements on the Lower East Side, there were the few Italian boys, another one who was Polish, they were all friends of Eddie’s, some closer than others, they never acted like this.

But why, this, now?

The dark-haired boy was grinning at them, he said to Heshy who was the tallest of the three friends, “We’ll play a little game, Jewboy. You don’t know the game so I’ll teach you, right?”

“You Jewboys can always learn something new, can’t you?” the blonde said with a laugh. “I hear you got your long noses in books all the time. Right?” he asked his companion.

“Right,” the dark-haired one said. “And sometimes they make a mistake,” he began to laugh, “and they close the damn books fast, their noses are stuck in the books and bam! the noses get longer.” His laughter grew louder and he jabbed a finger into Heshy’s chest and said, “Now, about the game.”

Eddie wished desperately to avoid what was about to happen, wished fervently, Please, no fights. Please, please. He edged slightly to one side hoping to get around the blonde one. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?” the blonde asked.

Eddie’s mouth was a desert of dryness, his legs trembled as he stopped his movement. He cleared his throat and said in a hoarse whisper, “Look, we’re not doing anything to you. We don’t want any trouble, we just want to walk down the street.”

“That’s what he says,” the dark-haired one replied. “But that’s not what we say, right?”

“Right,” the blonde said. “Now, like my friend said, we’re going to teach you something.” The dark-haired one had picked up a small thin stick and gave it to the blonde who approached Heshy and balanced the stick on Heshy’s shoulder as he said, “I put this on your shoulder, like this, and I say,” and he began to chant, “three six nine, a bottle of wine, I can fight you any old time.” His chant finished he said to Heshy, “And I knock it off, then you’re supposed to fight me. Otherwise you’re a no-good Jewboy coward.”

The dark-haired one laughed. “Yeah. And we got to teach a Jewboy not to be a coward, right?”

In spite of himself Eddie blurted out, “What did we do to you? Let us go by.”

“Hey, small Jewboy,” the blonde said. “Keep your damned mouth shut! When I want your advice, I’ll ask you.” He took a step towards Eddie.

“Let him go,” Heshy said in a strained strange voice. “He’s not doing anything to you.”

The blonde disregarded Heshy and said to Eddie, “This little bastard’s too goddam snotty.” He lowered his face to Eddie’s level as he said, “You hear that? A snotty Jewboy from a snotty Jew family—”

“You keep my family out of this!” Eddie said, feeling terribly fearful, feeling himself tremble inside.

“Your Jew family, they’re all no good. You got a sister? She’s a whore.” He grinned then, those white teeth near Eddie’s nose.

The words blasted out from Eddie, “You can’t talk that way about my sister, you hear!”

The blonde moved even closer to Eddie. Deep inside Eddie once again he heard his mother’s words. He felt a tremendous fear yet mixed with that was a roiling of anger, Who in hell was this bastard to say these things? To stand there and stop them from walking on?

The blonde was saying to Eddie, “Your mother goes up on the roof with men for a quarter. She—”

A tumultuous anger suddenly erupted inside of Eddie. “You bastard!” he roared out. “You shut your mouth!” He was still fearful, but this huge fury was exploding out of him, moving him. He lunged at the blonde in front of him, his fists were hammering out, the blonde’s face took on a startled look as he fell back, then regained his balance and he moved in towards Eddie. Somewhere to the side of him Eddie glimpsed his two friends beginning to battle the dark-haired one.

In the haze of the furious battle now, Eddie could only see flickers of the blonde’s face and body, could see the fists aimed at him, he could dimly hear the commotion around him, he could hear the drum of his heart in his head. Movement, fists, grunts, roars, that was all Eddie saw and heard.

His nose suddenly dripped blood, he had run his hand across his lips and with surprise noticed the red streaks on his fingers and hand. He rushed at the blonde, kicked ferociously at his shins, heard the blonde gasp with pain and surprise, saw him retreat, crouch once more in fighting position. Eddie bored in, felt the smash to his eye, heard as if from far away his cry of pain, but still he crowded in and in, was able to put his arm around the blonde’s throat. Eddie rode up his back, Eddie’s arms were now coupled together, he heard the strangling sounds from the blonde’s throat.

Eddie began to shout, “I’ll kill you!”

He felt hands around him prying him away from the blonde’s back. He held on even more tightly and shouted at the blonde, taunting him, but the strangers who were pulling him away now had separated him from the blonde, and one of them, a man, asked, “What the hell’s going on here?”

“Let me at him!” Eddie shouted straining against the hands that held him back. “I’ll kill him!”

“You and who else?” the blonde was saying breathing heavily, blood seeping from his lips to his jaw.

Some men had intervened between Eddie’s two friends and the dark-haired one, all fighting had ceased. A man was saying to all of them, “Stop this fighting! Right now! Now, go home, all of you!”

While Eddie, was saying to the blonde, “Me! That’s who! I’ll kill you! I’m saying it..”

“I’ll fight you any old time,” the blonde said as he touched his lips gingerly. “Who’s scared of you?”

“You are, you bastard!” Eddie said, his anger suddenly gone. Yet acting defiantly he said, “I’m not afraid of you.” Held there by the men the two of them glared at each other. Eddie pulled himself away from the men who were holding him, he turned to Heshy and Aaron and said, “Come on, let’s go.” They walked past the other two boys, past the small group of men.

From behind them the blonde’s voice shouted out, “You Jew bastards, stay out of here!”

Eddie stopped, turned, glared at the blonde and said, “We’ll go wherever we want to go!”

He turned his back on the blonde and began to walk away. Eddie felt the pain now, the aches in his body, the growing stiffness at his knees, his nose was an aching blob. As he limped forward he dabbed away at the area under his nose with his handkerchief. He glanced at his two friends, Heshy had a welt on his cheek, Aaron was sucking on his bloodied knuckles. Eddie looked down, there was dirt on the knees of his pants. Luckily, the pants weren’t torn, his shirt either.

“What’ll we do now?” Aaron asked. “Should we go home?”

“Nah,” Eddie said limping along. “We said we were going to see Cab Calloway and we’re going to see him.”

Heshy said to Eddie, “After you wipe all the blood from your face, we’ll go to the toilet of the cafeteria near the theater and we’ll get all washed up. Then we’ll go see Cab Calloway.”

“We ain’t letting any of those bastards stop us from doing what we want to do,” Eddie said, dabbing away at his face.

Aaron said with a loud laugh, “We sure did give those two bastards hell, didn’t we?” He shook his head in admiration and said, “Did you see how Eddie went after that blonde sonofabitch, did you see that? Did you see him after Eddie got through with him? We let those bastards know we were there, didn’t we?”

“Yeah. We sure did,” Heshy said. “Eddie really gave it to him.” And to Eddie, said, “Gee, I didn’t know you could fight like that.”

“Yeah,” Eddie said almost to himself.

He walked along thinking of some of the other times when something similar had happened, everything in him had turned to pure panic. His heart drumming, his lungs scalded by tortured gasps, he had run away from the tormentors, feeling great pain but there had been a greater shame, he had shown fear, he had run away. The tormentors had laughed at his flight, how they had laughed! And a long way away from the danger he had stopped, bent over to catch his breath and that unending snake of a thought had uncoiled itself from somewhere deep inside his brain and had hissed out, Coward! Coward! He had berated himself for his failure to fight, he shouldn’t’ve run away, he should’ve killed them! A huge catalogue of what he should have done but hadn’t came to him in his mind. He had felt debased.