"Land of Secrets" by Elizabeth Levine - 2025 Brooklyn Non-Fiction Prize Winner

 

Land of Secrets 

by 

Elizabeth Levine

 

Brooklyn 1973

 

I inherited secrets from adults when I turned five. I carried them with me, like a nomad across the desert, balancing this vessel of water on my head, careful not to spill a drop.  I learned how religion divides us from ourselves, from the familiar, suddenly rendered profane.

My relatives visited from all over Brooklyn, converging like an intersection at my grandmother’s house in Midwood, as if our family house were the equator from which we never strayed north or south, but rested in a state of permanent equilibrium, where safety could always be found. Home. Family. History.

Amy Schwartz and her five sisters played hopscotch on the sidewalk diagonally across from our living room window. Childhood friends, we traveled from her house to mine, on foot or bike, hungry or full, clean or grimy; welcome everywhere we went.  Almost every night, we arrived home late for dinner, minutes before our mothers got mad, just shy of actual disobedience.  We represented our younger, happier selves when friendship still protected us —the innocence of childhood about to end.

This big, beautiful borough of Brooklyn was home. I attended nursery school at East Midwood Hebrew Day School.  Jewish life resembled Amish county, except that Jews believed in electricity.  This enclave sheltered me, keeping me immune from ordinary human fears circulating right outside of my school. Religion floated throughout the school day, like awe. I sang foreign and sorrowful prayers that evoked lament.  These forlorn, familiar rhythms became my lullaby. I studied English in the mornings and spoke Hebrew in the afternoons, when time seemed more sacred. Hebrew letters seduced me with the intricate shapes and mysterious markings. I loved the magic of hidden vowels, the trick of reading from right to left, the intricacy of this backwards alphabet. Hebrew words, on the other hand, tasted similar to gravel, gritty and rough. These guttural noises sounded harsh and ugly outside of East Midwood’s walls.

Strangers made Jewish students paranoid, our suspicions following us all the way from Canarise to Bensonhurst. To stay safe, we kids normally traveled as a pack. walking home surrounded by the six older Farkas children, who also lived on East 21^stStreet. I always stayed in the middle of their herd for protection.

Our Polish and Russian great-grandparents passed on their persecution complex to us as our inheritance.    Whenever I stared at my ancestors' black-and-white portraits, they looked identical, their grim lips wearing only worry.

Fleeing the pogroms and frequent invasions from neighboring countries, my relatives immigrated to America. These merchants and farmers abandoned their meager Ashkenazi harvest of only limp carrots, hungry with deprivation.  Intuitively, I recognized that I was not like other Jews at East Midwood. In first grade, I found out that Jews were different from Christians. Suddenly, my perceptions about my neighbors shifted until I scratched at them. These new contradictions left small, secular scars. Doubts about being Jewish swirled around my ankles, as fierce as fire ants. I wondered if God would punish the Jews by casting them into pillars of salt. I feared we would evaporate or fold, tumbling out of the Brooklyn sky like falling stars. 

My sense of unease and anxiety about God, religion, safety, identity, and belonging grew tangled up inside of me, I brought home my fears. They lingered throughout dinner that night. Six of us sat around the table to eat together. I pushed the lima beans behind my corn, procrastinating about how to tell my parents what happened at recess, knowing my father would get upset. Avoiding their questions about my day as long as I could, I stalled until desert. Haltingly, I finally asked my parents, “Why are all Christians bad?” I needed their reassurance.

 Silence settled across the table like an uninvited guest. Normally, everyone in my family talked at the same time during meals ,and no one really listened to each other.  My father stopped eating.  Everybody listened.  The listening is when and how I knew that my question was as disturbing to them as it was to me. But I needed an answer, I needed to know why.

My father looked right at my mother, then my grandmother, then my younger brother, then my sister, and then me. He didn’t answer right away. He cleared his throat, something he rarely did, another bad omen.

        “Where did you hear this, Eliza?” my father asked quietly.

 “At school.”  That was what I learned earlier that day.

“Who told you that? My father demanded, his face ashen. He held onto my wrist,

 “The boys at school did. On the playground.”

My father’s features grew angry, an acute angle.   As a six year old, I lacked the word for complicity. Yet, even in first grade, I understood how dirty it felt.

“I will talk to the rabbi at school tomorrow,” my father said, closing the subject.

The following evening my mom ordered pizza for dinner, because she went to school with my father, leaving my grandmother to babysit my younger brother, Matt and sister, Jan. My mother came home looking weary; my father went into the office straight from school and did not come home until 7:00. I remember the time because it was an hour later than we always had dinner, and the fact that we were eating that late when my brother and sister, Matt and Jan, went to bed at 8:00 struck me as ominous.

“You are not going back to East Midwood next year,” my father told me at dinner.

         “Why?”                                                                                                  

“When you are older you will understand. You will probably even thank me for it.”

“But I can finish first grade there, right?”

‘           ’Yes, we don’t want to pull you out in the middle of the year,” my mother said in a strange tone that I didn’t recognize.

“So be it,” my grandmother said, shaking her head in disgust. But, I wasn’t sure exactly what it was that disgusted her, the fact that I had to finish the year at East Midwood, or the fact that I was transferring to public school.

The other families from East Midwood Hebrew Day School stopped talking to my parents, not even bothering to ask why we were leaving, just demanding, “How could you leave?” My parents didn’t respond to them. Suddenly, being Jewish became tricky and treacherous. Kids I had known since nursery school wouldn’t play with me anymore.

God disappeared that year. I no longer prayed, read Torah, or spoke Hebrew.  I discovered Blondes, Blacks, and Puerto Ricans in my classroom. I read my new friends like Braille, mesmerized by their mystery.

I met Casey Stein in September of second grade, when she landed next to me in the cafeteria. She sounded breathless, as if she had run across the lunch room looking just for me, the lucky girl who became her new best friend. Casey rattled off a series of personal questions.

“How do you like it here so far? How’s life as the new kid? Where did you come from?” Casey asked, chomping on her peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I leaned closer to hear the question, breathing her Love Baby Fresh scent,

“I went to a religious school before. I like PS 152 more than Hebrew school,” I confided in her.

We picked up our trays and emptied them is vast, metal garbage cans that lined the exit of the gritty cafeteria. It wasn’t as clean or quiet as the cafeteria in my old school, where we formed neat, patient, obedient lines to empty our trays. Here at public school, it was a free-for-all all, deafening noise echoing through the cavernous room, chocolate milk splattering on the floor as we rushed to Mrs. Johnston’s class.

                    I went straight to the reading corner of our classroom, where Casey was already sitting, and picked a new story for silent reading time. She was laughing and telling another girl wearing a purple mini-skirt and a hot pink Tie Die t-shirt which book to choose. I heard her say, “THIS book. THIS is the real deal.”  I wondered what it meant to be the real deal. I needed to ask her tomorrow, because to me, it could have meant anything or maybe nothing at all.

I knew right away that I wanted to be more like Casey and less like myself, wishing I  too, could feel as certain. We were opposites. Maybe that was the attraction. My insecurity lodged inside me; it manifested as constant ambivalence about my own ideas, my family, my clothes, my personality, and my dreams in life. Casey had no doubts, like freedom from worry. THIS is what I saw in her and wanted for myself.  I needed to know everything about her and what made her tick. How could I be more like her?  

            “So what’s up, pussycat?” Casey asked the next day at lunch. “How’s life as the new kid?” She didn’t wait for an answer, “Where do you live anyway? I live in an apartment building on Ocean Avenue.  You will have to come over and play one day after school. You will love my neighbors-they are all old and speak these funky, weird languages that you’ve never heard before. Do you walk to school?”

“My mom brings me and my brother, Matt. We walk over together from my grandmother’s house on 21^st street between Avenue I and Avenue J.” My grandmother came with the house when we bought it. She lives upstairs in the attic.

“Oh you have a brother too! Is he older or younger?”

“He’s younger; Matt is in Kindergarten.”

“Which teacher does he have? My younger brother, Jonathan, is also in kindergarten.

“I don’t remember his teacher’s name,” I said.

“Jonathan has Miss McDonald. She’s a real witch!” Or maybe Casey said “bitch.”I wasn’t sure I heard her right, and I didn’t want to ask. I had never heard the word, bitch, before and I wasn’t sure what it meant, but I suspected it was not the real deal. That reminded me.
            “Hey, Casey, what does it mean to be the real deal?” She laughed out loud.

            “You don’t know what that means?” she asked in disbelief, leaning closer to me, her plump arms pulling me into her as she cupped her chubby hands, her stubby fingers speckled with hot pink, chipped nail polish, and whispered into my ear, as if sharing secrets, “It means no bullshit. You can trust who they are, and they will NEVER hurt you or let you down. Finding the real deal is everything. You’ll see.” And I was struck by the word “trust”, which was not a word that I used a lot, if at all. It would never have occurred to me not to trust grownups. But maybe Casey sensed that she could trust me, because I could already tell that I could totally trust her. For me, she would always be the real deal.

       

could leave Judaism behind me now, because Casey gave me a new place to belong.

Enormous in her personality, gestures, and size, Casey’s tiny breasts, like measel bumps brushed against her pink and gold colored summer poncho, revealing the two white straps of her training bra hidden beneath. Her bellbottoms rode up her backside, her purple underpants forming a wedgie when she sat down. Nothing bothered her, not her underpants, not her weight, not her puberty, not her excesses--not a thing. Although Casey was not especially pretty, her enthusiasm spilled out in every direction, capturing everyone’s attention. Her personality made her long, wavy strawberry blond hair and striking peridot eyes. She possessed more self- confidence than the entire grade, unique from any girl I knew before or after. 

Casey ate and talked simultaneously, like a juggler, never missing any bites of her lunch or losing her myriad of ideas before the bell rang. She graciously offered to share her French fries with me, waving a lukewarm, limp stick of imitation potato at me like a ketchup- soaked wand.  She taught me about the Chinese Zodiac.

“Hey we were both born in 1964, the Year of The Dragon. Our horoscope promises us that as dragons, we will definitely have a brilliant, adventurous future. Dragons are the fiercest animal, so we will accomplish amazing things. Nothing will stop us,we’re already on fire!”   Casey didn’t just laugh, she roared.

She informed me over lunch that we were both in the G and T program. I didn’t know if this was good or bad news, since I had no idea what these initials actually meant.  Rolling her eyes while slurping her chocolate milk, she explained patiently to me “Gifted and Talented, silly. We are gifted and talented!” After only an hour together, I already felt smarter than earlier that morning, when I didn’t know who or what I was.

Casey reminded me of  sunshine, she burned that bright and that hot.   I reminded myself of dusk, that vaguer period between extremes, not day or night but crepuscular. She always managed to make me feel more likeable when we were together, than when I was on my own.  Without her, I could have faded away and nobody would notice I vanished. Casey propelled me forward towards the light, making me confront my insecurities and forcing me to dismiss my lingering self-doubts.  Her self-confidence comforted me in a way that my parents never could, because she alone convinced me that everything would be all right.

You worry too much, Lizzie, that’s your problem. We’re kids for Christ sake, we are supposed to have FUN! You are always afraid you will get in trouble. Live a little. It won’t hurt you! In fact, I bet it would be good for you. You need to loosen up!” Casey informed me.

Like a lioness, Casey possessed only fierce dreams. She insisted I believe in a bigger, grander future, only possible now that we had each other. Before I met her, I had planned on being a maid like Margaret, who worked for my Aunt Molly, but she assured me that I didn’t have to work as a maid ever.

Adjectives failed to truly describe her exuberant personality of bold nouns, active verbs, and blatant disregard for punctuation. Sometimes I couldn’t follow precisely where her thoughts began or ended, since her sentences expanded into entire paragraphs. Casey traveled across multiple topics, one after the other, as she asked. Casey had the answers; I had all the questions.

"A Terrible Thing That Was" by Melissa Anne Leonard - 2025 Brooklyn Non-Fiction Prize Finalist

 

 

A Terrible Thing That Was

by

Melissa Anne Leonard 

 

Brooklyn College in 1990 was a campus in transition. Remnants of the faded 1930s glory of the place some called the “Poor Man’s Harvard” were juxtaposed with the prefab 1970s architecture of budget cuts. The grand old buildings were stone, their hallways capacious and ceilings high. The humble new buildings were low, their lighting fluorescent, and offices shabby. The Faculty Lounge abutted the Library, had floor to ceiling windows and featured ancient women in aprons who served afternoon tea as we reclined on long chintz couches and stately wooden chairs. The dining hall was in the basement of the Boylan building; students sat on plastic chairs around formica tables. It was run by a fashionable young guy who said he “dressed as a man during the week and a woman all weekend long,” which was quite a statement in those days. In the English Department office, Louise and Ann, the no-nonsense secretaries, ruled supreme. Louise, acerbic monitor of the usage of the copy machine, had a tattered notice over her desk that warned, “Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.” Ann, model thin with a wardrobe of winter white, wore cat eye glasses and scandalized Louise when she revamped her hairstyle after decades of being the last holdout of the bun. Except for the antediluvian department chair, they terrified everyone. 

The teaching staff, as in so many American colleges, had begun to change. The full-time faculty had individual offices overflowing with decades of memos and books, journals untouched for years, never retrieved students’ essays, agendas for long ago meetings, reams and reams of paperwork. As tenured professors retired, some of whom had been there since the late 1940s, and settled in their brownstones and beach homes, they were cost effectively replaced with poverty wage graduate students instead of new tenure track hires. Since there was an ever increasing number of us, the only room large enough for a common office was an old classroom across the hall from the English Department. Louise and Ann referred to it as the Adjunct Room, but for those of us sequestered there, it was the Abject Room. A slew of us jockeyed for space in the dank commune stuffed with rusty desks, mismatched chairs and industrial green filing cabinets used more to demarcate our cramped places than to store any documents. Only the most desperate students sought out any of us after classes in that sad, jerry-rigged room.

So I was surprised, one afternoon, to see Leroy Brown come looking for me because he was not at all desperate; in fact, he was one of the best students in my first year writing class. His name amused me because he was the anti-thesis of the “baddest man in the whole damn town” in that eponymous 70’s song. Leroy was in his late twenties with inquisitive brown eyes, close cut hair and an earnest but confident voice. While he had the physique of a linebacker, he had the cheerful, even-keeled demeanor of a camp counselor, which made sense because he often wore polo shirts embroidered with the logo of the Brooklyn Boys and Girls Club, where, he told me early in the term, he’d been hired right out of high school. Leroy had worked his way up to a full time administrative position and was taking classes to get his B.A. so he could keep climbing the ladder. When he came in, I said, “Hey Leroy, what’s up?”

“Hey Professor Leonard,” he said, then added with a grimace, “Something happened last Sunday.” 

I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I knew it wouldn’t be good. “Ok, tell me.” I gestured to a chair for him to sit down, but he remained standing.

“On Sunday, my wife Cynthia and me were coming out of church. Emmanuel Baptist, Clinton Hill, you know it?”

I nodded.

“So we’re coming out and our little boy Michael is right behind. He walks all by himself, nobody can tell him nothing. You know, little kids, independent. All of a sudden he starts screaming.  I thought he fell down. I turn around. He’s standing there and I think, ‘Oh Lord, his hand’s stuck in the doors.’ It’s got those big old wood doors, right. I’m gonna pull it open but then I see his hand’s covered with blood and Cynthia’s grabbing him up screaming, ‘It’s his finger! His finger!’ I look where she’s looking and I see that’s his finger down on the ground. That door chopped his finger clean off.”

“Oh my God Leroy, that’s awful,” I said, “Is Michael ok?”

“He is now, but it was crazy. Everybody hears the screaming and comes running and everybody’s yelling, ‘Hold it tight’ ‘I’ll get ice’ ‘I’ve got a car.’ ‘Michael’s crying and crying. Cynthia’s dress is covered with blood.”

“Everything happens so fast. We get to the hospital, run into the emergency room. I carry Michael, Cynthia’s got a baggie full of ice with his finger.  There are just a couple of folks in there and they are staring at us. The lady at the desk sees the blood and she takes us right in. So now we’re in this room, you know, with the curtain. Cynthia’s got Michael on the little bed. I’m too nervous to sit, I’m standing there holding the little baggie and I think, ‘Thank you Lord’ because I know any minute a doctor’s gonna come in and tell us, ‘We’re going to sew Michael’s finger back on.’ A nurse from one of the islands comes in and takes Michael’s temperature; she says, ‘You’re brave little man, the doctor’s going to fix you right up.’”

            “So did they, Leroy?” I asked with urgency. Leroy was so intense I was getting frantic about poor little Michael. “Did they sew it back on?”

 “Well, the doctor comes in, he looks at Michael’s finger and says he wants the surgeon to look at it and he goes out. So we wait some more. I say to Cynthia, ‘What’s taking so long?’ It seems like everything’s slowing down. I look in the bag and the ice is melting, his little finger’s floating now. I’m not gonna lie—I was starting to freak out. But then the surgeon came in and I think, ‘Amen, now it’s going to happen!’ He looks at Michael for just a second and I’m holding out the finger but he doesn’t even look at it. Can you believe that?”

Leroy paused, assumed the officious stance of the surgeon, and continued, “And he says, ‘Mrs. Brown, Mr. Brown, I’m sorry, but we cannot reattach Michael’s finger. But don’t worry, it’s a clean cut and we’ll sew it straight across. You’ll hardly notice it. Children are resilient and he will, without a doubt, learn to live without that finger. Over time, it will be a minor inconvenience.’”

“He said what?” I interjected, shocked. “A surgeon said that? That’s so wrong.”

“’Yes, he did. I couldn’t believe it myself, ‘I said, ‘That can’t be! He’s three years old, it JUST happened. We came here right away. We have his finger right here, it’s been on ice the whole time.’”

“And Cynthia was saying, ‘Why can’t you sew it back on? For my boy’s sake, can’t you please try?’ But he said, ‘I’m sorry but there’s nothing we can do.’ And that man was gone. We could not believe it. The three of us in that little curtained room and my wife started to cry again and now I did too.”

 “And then, that little curtain flies open and the island nurse marches back in. She looks straight at me and says, ‘Man, do you have health insurance?’”

“I said, ‘Of course I do, I have it through my job.’” She goes back out and right away, the doctor and that surgeon, who was just there saying there’s nothing he can do, come rushing like the house’s on fire and say, “We have to get this child into surgery immediately; where’s the finger?” I hand him Michael’s finger that he didn’t even look at. The nurse starts an IV and they put Michael on a stretcher. Some orderlies came to take him to surgery and we walk with him as far as they let us.”

“While we’re in the waiting room, it hits me–I finally get what’s going on. They thought we didn’t have insurance. They were going to let our little boy, three years old, go through life with a missing finger because they didn’t think they’d get paid.”

Leroy stopped talking and sat down. He looked exhausted.

“That’s an awful story Leroy,” I said. “Shocking. How’s Michael doing?”

“He’s fine, they said he’ll be able to use his finger just fine.” Leroy paused.

I waited. I was riveted.

And then he continued, “Wasn’t that a terrible thing?” Leroy asked me, Professor Leonard, I want to write a letter to that hospital to let them know what a terrible thing that is.”

And so we sat side-by-side on mismatched chairs at my rusty desk in that little room, and Leroy Brown wrote his letter to the hospital’s Board of Directors in which he told them exactly how terrible a thing that was.

 

"Sylvia, Spaghetti and Spaldines" by Joan Caspi - 2025 Brooklyn Non-Fiction Prize Finalist

 

                 Sylvia, Spaghetti, and Spaldines 

                  by

           Joan Caspi

 

 

                                          “Never economize on luxuries.”    Angela Thirkell

Growing up, I was the only girl on my block in Brooklyn, except for Joanne Tropiano, who was six years old—three years younger than me. I lived in a diverse, working-class neighborhood with Italian, Irish, and Jewish families. We mostly got along.

I loved roller skating up and down my street, East 8th Street, between Avenue R and Avenue S. My skates, the inexpensive kind, clipped onto my shoes. They were tightened as much as needed with a skate key. I knew every crack in the sidewalk and the potholes in the gutter. I zoomed around my neighborhood, the skate key on a piece of twine bouncing around my neck. I was naturally curious and enjoyed checking out the neighbors’ houses and yards, craning my neck to see what I could through the windows. 

I think subconsciously, I was looking for an alternative to living in my home.

I was utterly fascinated by the houses of my Italian neighbors. First, I was drawn to the religious statues in the front yard. Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ, dressed in a pale blue sarong of some sort,with her arms outstretched. It was a compelling sight sitting in the middle of a front yard.

My questions about Mary vanished after my first ‘inside visit’ to my friend’s house. There were two kitchens! This wasn’t about being wealthy; it reflected the culture they brought from their ‘homes’ in southern Italy. 

I discovered that the ‘kitchen’ on the main level was purely for show, tiled all over in white. The appliances and sink were always gleaming, shining as if they had been polished daily.  

The dining area was dominated by a large wall mural of Southern Italy, hand-painted by a family member, so it was not exactly a work by Michelangelo. There was a dining table and chairs covered in plastic, with a centerpiece of plastic grapes, sometimes decorated with yet another religious keepsake.

The living room had a cut velvet sofa, two matching brocade chairs, and a shiny coffee table. Above the couch, there was always a religious oil painting. All these pieces, except for the coffee table, were covered in plastic and only used for gatherings after funerals or graduations. The entire upstairs of the house was, in fact, a ghost town. Today, they call it ‘staging.’

The true heart of these homes—the place where the most inviting cooking smells came from the large pot of ‘gravy’ simmering on the stove—was in the basement. This was where the family gathered to eat, do homework, and play cards. Windowless and sparsely furnished, except for a big wooden dining table and chairs, there was even a small black-and-white TV at the end of the table with rabbit ears on top. This space was the heart of the home. Nonas (Grandmother) dressed in black from head to toe, stirring or chopping at the stovetop, while Grandpa smoked something odd in his pipe and held court at the head of the table. Whether a meal was being served or not, this was his designated “throne.” I loved hanging out in the basement. They might have been subterranean spaces, but they were filled with love.

It was here that my friend Joanne and I played with dolls. The basement setting was perfect because ‘playing with dolls’ was not part of my ‘street’ image.

I could ‘exhale’ in this overheated, fluorescent-lit, noisy, chock-filled lower level, surrounded by three generations of the Tropiano family. They just accepted my presence without question. Bowls of pasta placed in front of whoever was sitting there when the spaghetti was done was placed in front of me, too. I felt more at home in the basement than I ever felt in my own home.

After a few months hanging out with the family, I decided to convert to Catholicism. Embracing this wonderful religion, which didn’t judge me but instead welcomed me and fed me delicious dishes, felt right to me.

I wasn’t exactly sure how to handle the conversion, so I asked my friend’s sister, Maria, who was twelve and attended Catholic school. You can imagine my surprise when she said that the Jews killed Jesus, and I would have to confess this as a Jewish person to the local parish priest. I wasn’t ‘going down’ for murder, nor was I ready to confess every week; I had way too many secrets. 

My parents were ‘Part Time Jews,’ meaning we celebrated the High Holy Days with festive meals and observed Shabbos every Friday. I had a vague understanding of Judaism but never attended Hebrew school. It was too expensive to join a temple where they taught my people’s history. My brief but sincere desire to convert to Catholicism didn’t last long. I decided against it. I didn’t want to risk going to Hell. “The Son of God” thing weighed heavily.

That’s the thing about Judaism, I felt safer: no Hell.

My family owned a modest, detached three-bedroom, two-bath home. We had a patch of grass in the front and a small garden in the back. It sounds simple, but my mother planted and cared for that garden as if it were Versailles. Mom was a magician; our house was the only one on the block with a fully stainless-steel commercial kitchen (because it was cheaper), white carpet in the living room (a remnant from the carpet shop), and antiques that helped create Mom’s made-up background.

My mother, Sylvia Spitz, grew up on a farm near Coney Island. Even though they lived close to the famous amusement park, there was never laughter in her home—just chickens and poverty. Her alcoholic mother was abusive and often passed out instead of cleaning. Her older sister took her own life at seventeen, rather than continue living in their dirty house filled with neglect.

Every item in my childhood home reflected my mother's determination to change this story.

I had more important things to worry about now than religion. I was nine years old and desperately wanted to join the neighborhood gang. The boys would let me play sometimes, but I really wanted to become an official member. 

I had already sharpened my attitude; I radiated toughness and street smarts that helped me gain acceptance from the boys. They were of different ages and backgrounds, but all were working-class guys who wore their Dodgers caps backwards and spat on the ground to make a point. I was skinny but strong, fast, and agile. 

As a result, I could steal bases in stickball, outrun some of the boys in relay races down the street, endure having my arm twisted behind my back without crying, and most importantly, punch back. Still, the gang leader had to give me the nod to become an official member. The chances of this happening were slim; after all, I was a girl. I thought long and hard about the best way to find acceptance...

The local kids always pooled resources for their games because equipment was scarce. Garbage pail covers served as bases for stickball, using old tennis balls found on the local courts. However, they didn’t last long because the stickball bat was worn too thin. I knew the facts; I came up with a plan.

The neighborhood gang was led by Buster, an Italian American who was three years my senior, so he was twelve. His father was a New York City detective. Buster was tall for his age, with a broken nose, the reason for which no one knew, but it did add character to his face. He loved hanging a pair of broken handcuffs from the back of his jeans, so no one messed with him.                                                                                                                                                           

Buster ran East 8^th Street with an iron fist. He picked the games and whistled using just two fingers. It was such a piercing sound that we all held our ears. Buster chose the teams and could lift anyone who didn’t follow his rules three feet off the ground. I decided to bring him an offering. I wanted in. He was intimidating and a bully, but he wasn’t scarier than my mom, so I went for it.

I asked my mother to take me to the local discount store she liked. I remembered they sold Spaldine balls, the reddish-pink, spongy ones that almost smelled like vanilla. You could bounce these suckers as high as your skills allowed, making them perfect for stoop ball, racket ball, and stickball. Mom was doing her weekly run to the store for toilet paper, so she agreed.

 I raced into the store and found the pile of balls. Handpicking was painstaking, but I finally ended up with three perfect ones. I had one dollar left over from ironing handkerchiefs for my dad at a nickel apiece. Three balls were ninety-five cents. I was ecstatic. I was nine years old, and this was my first serious purchase.

My one-dollar bill felt like it was burning a hole in my shorts. I had a big paper clip from Dad’s store and was building my own “pile of money.” I had purchases in mind, but I had only saved up five dollars so far, which was my “mad money,” just like my dad used to give my mom once a month. I knew the importance of saving, so peeling off one dollar, although painful, was necessary.

I stood on tiptoe so the manager could see me. He placed the balls in a paper bag and rang up the sale. I could already taste the Bazooka bubble gum I was going to buy with my change.

“A dollar eight cents,” he said. I was dumbstruck. “You said the balls were ninety-five cents.” The manager peered over his black framed glasses down at me. “With tax, that’s what it comes to.” He reached for my dollar bill, but I wouldn’t let it go. “Ask your mom to give you eight cents.” 

Mom was in bargain heaven, her arms full of toilet paper, tissues, and a box of laundry detergent, large enough to last the coming decade. She was headed my way; I had a decision to make.

“What’s your best price?” I asked the guy. “Say what?” the man chuckled. I repeated it, this time standing en pointe, so I could appear serious and taller.

There was no way I was going to ask my mom; she would never let me buy something ‘beyond my means.’ I had heard all the fights she had with my dad about ‘living beyond one’s means.’ The guy looked at my mom, stocking up for an apocalyptic event, and pushed the bag into my hands.

“I like your style,” he said.

I still remember the feeling of victory. My first street negotiation in retail led to my acceptance into the neighborhood gang. They didn’t have a formal name or jackets, but I was ecstatic. I was the first girl in the history of East 8^th Street to join that group.

My mother never recognized the connection between my desire to belong, my feistiness to rise above my circumstances, and her own determination to reinvent herself. She did offer me one piece of advice, 

“Duck if they hit the ball too hard and kick them in the balls if they knock you around.”  Both practical and instructive, I thought to myself as I headed out to the stickball game.

 My Dodger cap was on backward, I was snapping Juicy Fruit chewing gum, extra sticks in my back pocket to share - I was ‘ready for anything.’

Brooklyn taught me that.