“What’s wrong with it, kid? That’s all we got.”
They’d call the police, they’d call her mother. Her skin prickled and burned like poison ivy. “She said a big bottle,” mumbling, “thank you.” In agony, she turned. Backs of women. No one, the aisle swam. She hurried to find Alice, staring at the goldfish and eating candy.
As they walked out, she said, “You want this?”
Alice took the bottle, holding its nail against her own. “Sure, Siren Pink. It’s a good one.” She laughed, suddenly, with her whole body, squeezing the bottle before she tucked it away. “I’ll try it as soon as we get back. Presents you’re given are better than the ones you take.”
Side by side on stools, they sipped chocolate cokes and talked about money. “I’ll have a ranch in California, right on the Pacific with the waves rolling up. Eight cats and eight collies—I’ll raise them together. A plane I can fly. And a boat to sail all over the world.”
“I want a mink and so much money I can walk in them stores downtown and say charge it, and nobody’ll blink.”
“You could come too. We’ll sail around from island to island, eating coconuts, and we’ll find an orphan chimpanzee and make him a pet. We can go swimming off the side …”
Alice’s straw rasped on the bottom of her glass. “We’ll have a high old time, nobody to boss us around.”
She shielded Alice on the way out, to lift a bag of potato chips. Alice tore an end off and they passed it. She whistled in snatches, thinking how she’d got the polish, and how Alice had laughed with pleasure, her face bright. Then her stomach sank and bits of chip lay on her tongue like wooden splinters. If they were caught, and they would be!
“Maybe Ma won’t be home yet.” Alice looked sideways, smiling. “I bet she won’t.”
That night at the Tabernacle, Deborah waited as her mother chatted in the anteroom. “I said to him, John, if you buy that TV set, you let a new snare of Satan’s into our very midst.”
“No man can serve two masters—”
“I said to him, if you’re sitting watching scantily-clad women and people shooting each other, you aren’t thinking about God. And think of children seeing beer commercials day in and day out.”
She tapped Mother’s arm. “Mama, I’m going in.”
“Save us good seats, Deborah. Near the front.”
She walked into the cross-shaped room filled with folding chairs. A picture of Christ the Shepherd stood at the far end, surrounded by banked gladiolas. The speaker’s lectern was centered in the little stage before it, “I shall not die, but live and declare the words of the LORD,” on a banner above. “Advertise the LORD!”
After the opening prayer, Brother Gentry lit into the night’s topic, the Last Judgment. “When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation and expect those days should be shortened, there should be no flesh saved: but for the elect’s sake, those days shall be shortened …”
She felt suddenly, this is not me. On the folding chairs, all about her were the Elect, the lambs of God: but she stole and lied and played dirty games and the Dump she loved better than the Tabernacle.
“And He shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet … There shall two be in the fields: the one shall be taken and the other left … And these shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal.”
She grieved for herself, standing among the damned in a dusky field, their faces upturned to the dissolving skies where angels darted like comets carrying off the virtuous. She was wrong with Alice, yes, and Alice would end it by pushing too hard. But her affections were back in the wrong corner now, instead of with the faithful at the head of the cosmos. She did not love the Elect: they were clean and law-abiding, they washed in the sight of God and ate their peas and answered the right words, they sat on straight chairs without daydreaming. They marched, they did not play games that came alive, or test each other, and never would she make one of them laugh as Alice had when she had given her the stupid stolen polish. What they had, they kept.
One winter evening when she was ten, she had been let out to play and built an altar of snow. In the alley she found a vase glazed with flowers. She set it on the altar as an offering. The next morning, wanting to take the vase in, she hit it on the sidewalk to knock the snow out. It broke in her hands. She had realized then she couldn’t cheat God.
Time for the closing prayer. She bowed her head but did not follow obediently the words of Brother Gentry. No, not for her. She walked, tall and alone, beneath a sky of thunder clouds toward black mountains ragged with flames. She had made a pact with the grim, all-seeing God, and He had closed his books on her. Her ribs burned with joy and fright: she was free, she was outside, she walked into the wind.
They were driving back when Mother remarked in an overly casual tone, “By the way, Brother Gentry said you could conduct the next study meeting. Isn’t that something for a girl your age.”
God had not told Brother Gentry about her yet. Or was He bargaining? Too late. “I can’t do it.”
“Don’t be scared. God will give you the right words. We’ll study it over beforehand.”
Mother wanted her to. For once they would be pleased. She wanted to say, Mama, I’d do it for you if I still could. “I can’t go to the meeting.”
“Can’t?” Mother scowled. “What kind of nonsense is that?”
The neon lit storefronts of Brand Street. Mother never did understand about Indians, and she would never see why you had to be a renegade, how you got damned and joined the other side. Loneliness was cold and wind-struck. She had to make Mother let go, or they would coax and batter her till she was halfway Chosen again. “I don’t believe in God anymore.”
“What?” Mother slammed on the brakes, throwing them forward.
“I’ve lost my faith,” she mumbled. “I won’t be going with the Brethren after this.” Her voice sound so stiff and funny, she felt a nervous smile tweak at her lips.
Mother started the car again, turning sharp into their street. “I don’t know who’s been at you. Wait till your father hears! I’m going up to that school and see who’s been poisoning your mind! You hear me?”
“I decided all by myself.”
“What have you been reading behind my back? Wait till your father gets home, just wait! You’re going, all right.”
“No.” A game of kick-the-can broke, scattering kids to let the car pass. The sky full of stars above the huddle of wooden houses was the universe of God’s faithful, but she would be strong as a tree in the wind, and be damned with a little smile like Alice’s.
Her stomach wriggled cold and slippery. Mother would go to school. Mother would shout about religion and everyone would make fun of Deborah. The teachers would laugh behind their hands in the hall. She could still take it back. But no, she could not promise and promise anymore. She would laugh, instead, far out ahead of Alice and her coughing and mother and Crow and Georgia, she would test herself and be loyal to her test like an Indian at the Sun dance, till her renegade’s laughter puzzled the obedient stars.
Scars
In 1968 I spent the summer in Cuba. I was one of the founders of the North American Congress on Latin America, one of the few New Left organizations that still flourishes, putting out an excellent magazine covering issues, events and conflicts south of the border you would never read about elsewhere. It was because of that connection I was invited to come.
The CIA terrorized us on the way from Mexico to Cuba. But the story I want to tell you is about a trip I took with friends who had come down later and with our guide Lohania to Santiago de Cuba. It is one of the parts of Cuba—near the Sierra Maestra—that has the strongest African traditions still current. It’s an old city of mostly white or cream colored buildings and from the hotel we looked down on tile roofs the color of orange sherbet and rusty metal ones, the steep descent to the bay below. Most of the streets climbed up or skidded down. Many of the buildings dated to the colonial period.
The huge mountains of the Sierra Maestra crowded in on the city as it crouched around the stunning bay with its busy port and its glittering beaches. Lohania had arranged for us to be there during Summer Carnival when the Revolution is celebrated. The streets were crowded day and night. We heard drums, we heard small orchestras, we heard singing and from little kids on up to great grandmas, people danced in the bars, on the beach, in the street. It all led up to the 26th of July when it felt like half the population was marching, dancing in the streets. Lohania had arranged for us to watch from the balcony of one of those beige Spanish buildings that held offices, but we insisted on being down in the street.
The candombes marched, each with their santos and their drum rhythms. Each candombe used different rhythms, passed down from generation to generation. The dancers were like congeries of parrots and parakeets, dressed up like Santería gods and goddesses, like pirates, like guerrilla fighters, like caricatures of colonial aristocrats. Santería had been forbidden under Batista but was alive and vibrant after the revolution. Group after group passed us where we stood, in eye-scorching colors like huge tropical birds, weaving and dancing, beating on big and little drums, skin and tin. We danced along with the drums and shared local beer and occasional Cuba Libres with the locals and street food—Cuban sandwiches, the toasted peanuts in paper cones called maníes, plátano chips, papas rellenas. We drank a lot of guarapo, freshly ground sugar cane juice. And we danced.
We were staying in an old faded stucco hotel on a hill with a swimming pool and it was hot. It was humid. The air felt like a wet wool blanket except at the beach. Even at night the temperature dropped at most ten degrees. We had noticed that Lohania always wore pants even on the most sultry days. While we frolicked in the pool to cool off, she sat fully dressed on the side. When we went to the beach, she sat clothed and read among the females of all ages in bikinis. We wondered among ourselves if this was some kind of excess modesty, unusual in the Cuban culture. We were used to seeing woman carrying machine guns with their hair in curlers, party dresses under their camouflage, women wearing sexy tops or tight, short dresses at the common street dances or dances in private homes or institutions to which we were invited. Cuba was a sensual place. Women dressed up or down as they chose. But it was hot. Why the constant cover-up? We wondered privately whether the Party was trying to institute some new standards of dress or behavior.
Lohania was of medium height, slender, with erect posture I envied and skin deeply tanned with hair the color of a good brown sauce. She wore a long braid often draped over her shoulder. Her eyes were dark and large. She was strong physically and usually quite verbal. Her English was workmanlike, but she came alive in Spanish. She could only joke in her native language. She could dance well and when we had to climb the steep hills, we got out of breath long before she did. She would grab our luggage and haul it up the stairs before we could stop her.
On the 27th, the carnival was winding down. My friends went off to visit the huge old fort that loomed over the bay, San Pedro de Roca, but I thought it too hot to stumble around the stones in mid-afternoon. A local guide had been provided, so Lohania stayed with me.
Finally I asked her about her modesty, not sure if it was polite, but consumed with curiosity. We had become friendly on our excursions. I’d been in Cuba longer than the others and at that time, my Spanish was excellent. I’d studied it in high school and for two years in college, but that wasn’t the reason I was fluent. Living on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, I used it daily with the local bodega, my drycleaner, the greengrocer, the guys in the building who were all from the Dominican Republic.
We were crossing the patio where the pool was crowded with adults swimming and children splashing. “Why don’t you ever swim? Don’t you know how? I don’t swim well myself, but I like to get wet and cool down.”
She was silent for a couple of minutes. “I swim when I’m alone on a stretch of beach. That’s easy here. We have so many beaches.”
I waited. She sighed and then she pulled up her left pant leg. On the flesh of her calf were large wounds that had healed but had left gruesome-looking, puckered and discolored scars. They were a couple of inches across, circular, raised. They were scattered along her leg as far as she let me see.
“Were you attacked by a dog? A large animal? Or is that from the fighting?” I knew she would have been quite young then, but our driver had joined his mother in the mountains when he was fifteen.
She motioned for me to sit down on the low wall that surrounded the pool and began her story. Behind us, the palms rustled in the salty breeze and a gecko peered at us from the shingled-looking bark. She tossed her braid over her shoulder and frowned, rolling her pant leg back down. She was silent for a few minutes and I waited, watching the gecko scamper up the palm bark. She spoke slowly. She had been part of the brigades of young people sent out into the countryside all over Cuba in the literacy campaign—the analphabetization. Most Cubans who were not middle class, especially in the country, had no education and could not read a word. She had been sent to what had been before the revolution the King Ranch, a huge area where the American corporation raised cattle and feed.
“It was hard to teach there. Most of the children suffered from kwashiorkor. They wanted badly to learn, but words slipped through their minds. Concentration was so difficult for them.”
I didn’t know what the word kwashiorkor meant. Lohania explained that it is a deficiency disease caused by not having enough protein in the diet. It is especially hard on infants, toddlers, children.
“On a cattle ranch?”
But the workers and their children did not get beef. Kwashiorkor causes brain damage and makes learning far more difficult.
“Is that what you had?”
She laughed. “You can’t catch it. It’s a deficiency disease only. No, I went barefoot part of the time because I felt funny wearing shoes when none of the kids had them. There are worms in the soil that eat their way into your feet. They live in your body doing damage for months but when they are ready, they chew their way out. It leaves these ugly scars.”
“I’m so sorry. That you should be left scarred from trying to help people.”
“Everyone there had them. The worms were endemic. So while I was there, I didn’t mind the sores so much.”
“But now you do. You must regret that happened to you.”
“Mostly it was a good experience for me. I never knew how badly so many of my people lived. The scars remind me of what we were fighting to change.” She pulled her pant leg back down. “But they do embarrass me. I think if I were a better Communist, they wouldn’t.” She grimaced. “But I don’t like people to look at me with pity. I don’t like people to think I’m deformed. So I hide my scars.”
I thought to myself that maybe we all have scars we hide. I didn’t go around telling people how I had almost died from a self-induced abortion that had left me anemic, bone-thin and weak. And scared. I was as obsessive about birth control as she was about covering up her legs. My mother had concealed her age till her death, never admitting she was ten years older than my father. I knew, but he didn’t, that she had been married twice before him, not once.
“Can I tell my companions your story?”
“Just keep it to yourself. I don’t like to be pitied.”
“I don’t pity you. I admire you.” I lied. Both were true.
She’s Dying, He Said
Circa 1943
I was what was then called a tomboy until halfway through my seventh year. I had always played with neighboring boys. I had little interest in school—being just average and paying little attention. Then I caught the German measles followed quickly by rheumatic fever. The doctor came, examined me, said I would die and asked for his ten dollars in cash.
My grandmother Hannah who lived with us half the year and half with my mother’s youngest sister Ruth came on the train from Cleveland. I have vague feverish memories. I felt like my mother and father were angry with me
for being so sick. My bobbelah rushed into action. My Hebrew name was Miriam. The first thing Hannah did was conduct an impromptu naming ceremony as if I were a newborn. There was a guy present I remember dressed all in black with peyeses and speaking Hebrew, so it might have been a rabbi she pressed into service. She changed my name to Marah, bitter, so that moloch ha moves, the angel of death, would not know me, and would not want me and would pass over.
She hung on my neck a hamsa, that upraised hand with the eye in the palm, to ward off the demons that were attacking me. I have it to this day, although the string on which she hung it has long ago fallen apart. She said it protected me against ayin harah, the evil eye, from which diseases and curses come.
Most of this occurred when my father was absent. He was not Jewish and resented any religious observation. He would go to the Presbyterian Church when we were visiting his relatives in Ebensburg, Pennsylvania, in soft coal country, but he did not believe in a deity. He was stolidly materialist rooted in what science he knew and understood, believing passionately in mathematics and rationality—except when he lost his massive and fiery temper. He regarded any Jewish usage as superstitious, unclean, messy. My grandmother who had given me my religious education was Orthodox. When she was with us, we ate kosher. My mother managed to make it acceptable to him without telling him much of what was going on. He would insist on dairy with his meat, but the rest of us avoided it quietly. I grew up understanding that being Jewish was a secretive thing in Detroit, but not in Cleveland. When Hannah went back to Ruth, our level of observance dropped to zero. No more Shabbat candles, no prayers, no singing except of popular songs.
I was racked by fever, slipping in and out of consciousness. I remember waking and smelling something burning. I still don’t know what herbs my bobbelah set on fire in an ashtray, but again, she was driving out the demons. She surrounded my bed with a rim of kosher salt. My mother, being a superstitious woman herself, let Hannah do what she could but hung back, mostly I think from fear of what my father would say if he found out. He did not come into my sickroom—it had been my brother’s bedroom but he had gone off to the Marines to fight in the Pacific. Until he left home, I slept in my parents’ room.