“Coney Island”
“A PSYCHOTHERAPIST’S DIARY”
by
Anna Halberstadt
At the New-York social agency for new Americans we were seen by the vocational counselor Fiona Berkowitz, a middle-aged lady in a grey woolen skirt and a cardigan with embroidered flowers on her chest, reminiscent of a Tyrolean peasant’s costume.
I have seen similar outfits at my mother-in-law’s apartment in Moscow, in fashion magazines, such as Burda and the Spiegel catalog, scattered on the coffee table. We arrived at the appointment as a family – my nine-year-old son was taken to an adjacent office by some other social worker. My mother had Parkinson’s disease, already in advanced form, and my father was sixty-four at the time of our immigration, still a fairly productive age for a research scientist, a neuro-physiologist, professor, who taught all biological disciplines at Vilnius University in two schools, of natural sciences and medicine.
We were not assigned a translator, because my English proficiency, after graduating from an English high school, was rated as exceeding agency requirements.
I felt enormous responsibility for my parents and child, and guilt for my father leaving his research and his students because of me. In Vienna I had told my parents that I will not go to Israel, despite having relatives there– my mom’s sisters and cousins, who settled there over ten years ago. My son’s father was Russian, and I was not sure, whether he would be discriminated against in Israel, and of course, I dreaded him having to go through the army service. I had no idea, that Sasha was Jewish according to the Halakhic laws. Besides, I grew up in Vilnius, a relatively small city, and I imagined Israel as a deeply provincial place, where babushkas from Zhmerinka and Kamenetz-Podolsk were sitting on benches, munching on sunflower seeds and gossiping.
To tell you the truth, the same took place in Moscow on Profsoyuznaya Street, when I was returning home from the lectures at Moscow State University. My husband’s grandmother Marya Nikolayevna would meet me with the words: “ Avdotya Nikitichna told me: why doesn’t your daughter-in-law ever greet me?”
And I had no clue, who was this Avdotya Nikitichna and what were the other old women on the bench near the building entrance called.
The counselor looked at my father, after going through the folder with his chart, and she said: “And your chances, mister Halberstadt, to find employment in your field, are about the same, as me becoming a ballerina!”
I froze, picturing dad having a heart attack there and then, and did not even try to translate Fiona’s statement. I just mumbled something vague.
Good Luck
Next time I went to see Mrs. Berkowitz on my own. She glanced through my diploma from Moscow State University school of psychology and told me that the name of one of the subjects I studied was spelled wrong – it should have been “etiology”, not “ethology”. I explained to her, that ethology was the science of animals’ behavior, that was taught by professor Fabri. She looked at my resume– junior researcher at the Institute of Psychology at the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences, psychologist conducting psychological testing at the First psychiatric hospital, named after P.P. Kashchenko, in Moscow, and looked at the document, certifying me passing all doctoral exams, she sighed and said to me:” you are an educated young woman, but in America many students wait on tables in restaurants. You could also try. Time will pass, and in a few years, I may bump into you on the street, you will be dressed like a lady, and you will be working in your field.” I looked at Fiona’s outfit she wore that day. I was dressed in a straight pin-stripe skirt, made in House of Fashion, where my mother-in-law dressed ladies from Moscow beau monde, and in a silk blouse form Benneton, bought at a Christmas sale in Benneton in Rome for ten mille lira, and I mumbled under my breath :” I already look more like a lady, than you, Mrs. Berkowitz, with your provincial taste.”
One of the agency employees, a kinder daughter of German Jews, who had escaped Hitler, offered an opportunity to take a secretarial typing course, which I, a leftie with terrible handwriting, taught to write with a right hand in a Soviet school, started attending.
I continued to look for jobs at the same time. A restaurant manager, who looked at me, who had lost weight during our journey from country to country, and told me, that I don’t look like a woman, who would easily lift and carry heavy trays loaded with dishes.
In the advertising agency a man, who told me that I had European looks and high cheekbones, that would make me a good candidate for ads of European products, but he would need a portfolio by a professional photographer, for which I obviously had no funds, and he pulled me to him and tried to embrace my waist.
My American aunt Nina, my father’s cousin, who immigrated to America in the late forties, taught Russian language and literature at NYU, but used Americanisms, when she spoke Russian. When I told her on the phone, that I was terribly worried about finding employment, she answered: “ Anechka, but who works in the summer? Why don’t you marry some nice Italian guy, a Catholic? “Perplexed, I asked her:” Why an Italian, aunt Nina?”
And then a miracle happened – a woman, an American lawyer, who notarizedmy diplomas at NYANA, said to me: ”You are a psychologist, and you are fluent in English, Morris Black happens to be looking for a psychologist to work with Russians. Let me give him a call.“
And on the same day I went to an appointment with Mr. Black, an executive in charge of mental health clinics at a non-profit health and human services agency, as it turned out, the most prestigious of its kind, in the country, where many stars of psychiatry, psychoanalysis and family therapy were teaching at the time.
Morris Black called someone, named Mr. Pollack, and he immediately scheduled an interview with me at a clinic in Coney Island, in South Brooklyn, not far from Brighton Beach, where thousands of Soviet immigrants had already settled.
The Interview
It was a typical New-York hot and humid day in July. My only Moscow friend Lyuba offered to accompany me, and spend some time on the beach before the interview. The clinic was conveniently located directly across the street from the aquarium in Coney Island. I took a bathing suit with me and put on one of the two summer outfits I had( we immigrated in November), and took a train with Lyubka.
After the long ride we were hungry and we bought a couple of empanadas with meat.
The stuffing turned out to be spicy, and after a while I got pangs in my stomach. The clinic was situated in a one-story building, a former Bonomo candy factory.
Mr. Pollack, a fairly young heavy-set director of the clinic, saw me in a dark windowless office. After talking to me for a while, he told me, that he invited a Russian colleague to the interview. Boris Landa, a former student a year ahead of me at Moscow university, curly-haired and smiling, walked in. His mother, Maria Solomonovna Neimark, was my professor, and I did my fourth-year research in her lab. It turned out, that Boris was the author of the grant proposal, laying out the need to provide mental health services to the newcomers, refugees from the USSR, the so-called “Russians.” He himself had already been working in the program, together with another psychologist, a Polish woman, who just recently switched jobs.
Boris invited me to his office after the interview and explained, that psychotherapy wasn’t that complicated, nothing to fret about.
The Clinic
The clinic was situated in the neighborhood of new apartment buildings, not far from Trump Village, a development of cheap coops, interspersed by shops and cafes, built by the future president’s father. In the building itself, a former candy factory, there were no windows. Among the shrinks’ offices Mr. Bonomo, who used to bring candy for the secretaries, when visiting, kept his own office, where from time to time he met with mysterious visitors. Presence of Italian mafia in Coney Island at the time was palpable. These characters gathered and spent long hours at the Italian restaurant “Gargiulo’s” and in “El-Greco” diner at another Southern Brooklyn neighborhood –Sheepshead Bay.
Clinic staff would go out to these joints to celebrate birthdays and holidays. Among the employees there was a smart and lively Cuban Teresa and a a psychiatric resident from Baku, Grisha. Teresa was writing her dissertation, and Grisha in his spare time was researching the exciting world of sex in New York.
Dark-haired Grisha was divorced, had a child, dated young men, and often complained to me, that the next morning money from his wallet or a watch were missing. He was trying to discover his true sexual identity, but he wasn’t ready to simply come out as a gay man yet.
Every day, between appointments, Boris played chess with Grisha in one of the clinic offices. Boris once told me, while doing light calisthenics and stretches in his office, the his whole life cycle took place in the office. Sometimes he showed up to work very late, after playing cards through the night with his friend, another dissident Valery Chelidze.
His patients were already sitting in the waiting room, when Boris showed up in the clinic in a wrinkled shirt , with a radiant smile on his face. Secretaries, who adored him, always covered up for him and apologized to the patients. The rest of the employees were Americans, who treated the natives. One of the of the Americans, Zhenya, came from a Russian family, but she retained only a few Russian words.
Luchi Khuzhi Takzhi
One of the psychiatrists there was doctor Edward Kremen. It’s possible the name had Russian roots, kremen means flint in Russian. He even tried to learn a few phrases in Russian to communicate better with our patients. When he was seeing our Russian-speaking patient, and I was translating, he used to ask her a question: “Mrs. Borukhova, kak vy– luchi, khuzhi ili takzhi?” Which meant:” How are you – better, worse or the same?”
This patient, an immigrant from Azerbaidzhan, was profoundly depressed after her husband’s death. She came back to New York from California, where she and her husband owned a restaurant. Each time when the doctor asked her this question, while trying to find most effective medications for her, she would answer:”Khuzhi”
After the ninth visit, when she again answered:”Khuzhi,” the psychiatrist opened wide the door of his office and exclaimed:”Mrs. Borukhova, please, leave, I really cannot help you!”
I tried to explain, that the patient is actually making progress, she is more active and seems to be in better mood, and her answer has to do with cultural stereotypes.
She can not admit to herself and her family, that she is feeling better, because then her son and daughter-in-law will stop showering her with attention and care. The doctor invented for her a task, which was supposed to help her regain self-esteem and feelings of self-worth. When she was describing the dishes she and her husband were cooking in their California restaurant, Edward asked he to bring samples to her appointments with him. For some time, all of us sampled pilavs with spinach and dried apricots Baku style and other Mrs. Borukhova’s delicacies at the lounge ,where therapists and interns were lunching on their plain sandwiches. Unfortunately, Mrs. Borukhova’s depression was cured once and for all.
Oedipus-Shmedipus
The clinic staff consisted of American-born psychologists and social workers, and in the fall a few interns from Columbia university joined us – three guys and a young woman in a pair of glasses with very thick lenses.
David Rogers and Ann Smith joined our staff. Both were American Jews, even though Ann’s last name was Smith and she had a short turned-up nose, obviously, a product of a nose job. Because the rest of her family members, on photographs, were endowed with dark curly hair and had regular Jewish schnozzles.
In the lunch room where we ate at the round table and talked, David, like all young psychologist , undergoing their own treatment, complained about his mother. “Imagine, I met this girl, we started dating and I am just crazy about her. I brought her to dinner at my mom’s, and after the dinner she tells me with a sour face, that my girlfriend does not really have a good posture. At that point I just lost it. Her fucking posture, pardon my English, isn’t good enough for my mom!”
In the course of their own analysis young therapists would often begin resembling Freud’s portraits more and more – they would grow a beard, start smoking a pipe and wearing tweed blazers.
David was still at the stage of growing a beard.
Period
The clinic was on the second floor, on the first, there was “Luna-Park” car-service, and a delicatessen store, where we used to buy our sandwiches. One day
I went down to the deli to buy my lunch. The owner, a badly shaved man from Odessa, Zyama, was listening to loud music.
“ Who’s singing ?” I asked him.
“Shufutinsky! What, you don’t know Shufutinsky?”
“I don’t!”
“Don’t you party in Brighton restaurants?”
“No, I don’t.”
“So where do you party?”
The sales woman, who usually to made sandwiches, was absent for over fifteen minutes. I waited for five more, and asked Zyama, how I could finally get my sandwich.
“She is not feeling well. She has a headache!”
“I understand, but I am on a break between my patients. I need to rush!”
“So, I will tell you the truth – she got her period!”
At that point I exploded and told him, that I come to the deli to buy my lunch, and I do not share with my co-workers the schedule of my periods.
As I returned to the clinic with my food, I shared the story and complained to my colleagues, who were lunching at the round table in the staff lounge. Oh, my God! They poured out their stories about being cheated at the downstairs deli, told me, how sorry they all felt for my having to work with the “Russians”. Especially with Sonya Rozen bloom, who always smelled like a ton of raw onions.
The Killer
One day someone called the clinic. They were calling from a jail, and they asked if there was a Russian-speaking psychologist at the clinic. I was connected with the jail employee.
“Doctor, we have one Russian inmate here. He is fatigued and very depressed. Could you talk to him, please?”
The Russian was put on the phone.
I heard a hoarse voice: ”Doctor, I am terribly depressed. I am all alone here. My children never visit.”
“What did you do? Why are you incarcerated?”
“ Doctor, I committed a homicide.” And then he broke down crying.
As it turned out, the inmate killed his wife with an axe. Because of jealousy. And children, for some reason, did not feel like visiting him in jail.
The Russians
One of the clinic employees was Edward, a tall and handsome black man, around forty, a former jazz musician and a Vietnam war veteran. He was a maintenance man, he also delivered clinic mail on his bike, did small repairs and paint jobs at the clinic.
Ed constantly joked with me and told me, that if I were of the right complexion, I ‘d be in trouble. Ed was divorced and he had two teenage kids, a boy and a girl, both good-looking, like Ed, with olive skin and hazel eyes. Ed’s girlfriends constantly called him.
I used to tease him; “You be careful, Ed, one of them could find out, you are cheating, and get here to shoot you!”
“Oh, don’t you say it!”, he used to reply.
Before Passover UJA federation would give out Passover assistance to Russian immigrants, twenty-five dollars per family.
Ed would have to guard the entrance to the clinic to control the crowds of Brighton Beach inhabitants in line for the assistance, so that they don’t break the doors– among them, heavy matrons in mink hats and astrakhan coats, brought from Odessa.
My American colleagues were taken aback by the eagerness.
One day among the waiting for the assistance we saw an ancient-looking American Jew. A social worker asked him: “Are you also from Russia?”
The old man proudly answered: “ Yes, I was brought to America as a child, in 1902! ”
Maria Solomonovna
When Boris left for Kanzas-City to join his wife, an American psychologist, Jean, who was expecting their second child, I talked his mother, Maria Solomonovna Neimark, who was my fourth-year adviser at Moscow university, and supervised my fourth-year paper, to interview for a job at the clinic at the clinic. Maria Solomonovna, Musya or Musenka for her family and friends, was already an established scientist, author of many books, translated into many languages, but she agreed. She was well known for her Freudian works on motivation of Soviet school children, where she often demonstrated conflicting motivation, conscious conflicting with the unconscious, when children’s works was scored differently, if the results benefited them individually, or benefited their team in competitions. She alsow created a term “Inadequacy affect”– an emotional state, where a person’s accomplishments do not meet the level of his aspirations.
It should be mentioned, that after five years in America Musya has not made much progress in her studies of English. Her husband, lev Naumovich Landa, also a prominent scientist, studied psychology of learning, including learning languages, and he had become an international consultant with his own company. Lev often criticized her methods of learning, and she remained stuck. Over the years I noticed, that highly educated people, speaking beautiful literary Russian, could not allow themselves to open their mouths and utter anything, because of their fear of of speaking broken English.
With Maria Solomonovna, who was called Maria at the clinic, we have become very close over the eight years of working together, Since my mother was very ill, I was afraid to share any of my worries or troubles with her, not to upset her. And Musya became an older friend to me, wise and insightful, a very important figure in my life.
Cultural Stereotypes
After Boris’s departure, his patients and about one hundred charts, with just a handful of notes, were transferred to me. Ken, the clinic director, was grumbling and saying that instead of Kansas City, Boris should have been sent to Siberia for his paperwork.
In those years Russian immigrants often came to clinic, looking for an orthopedist, a dental technician etc. Some of them were referred by their internists, who could not find any somatic reasons for their distress. Children were referred by their schools. As opposed to the Soviet system, where parents would come to school, asking the pioneer organization or the komosmol committee to influence and discipline their child, in America the school personnel would refer the parent to take a child with learning or behavioral problems to a therapist. American send a clear message to the Russians, that child rearing was the parents’ job.
Parents often would get perplexed. And t top I, corporal punishments was illegal in America, a child could show his bruises and black and blue marks to the school teacher, who was call child protective services, and a social worker would be sent to a home visit. Russian parents were incensed by it– they used to tell us, that their parents used to hit them, and for the better. America raised their children to be like Pavlik Morozov, a boy who reported to officials that his father was hiding grain from appropriation in 1930s, and his father was executed, and Pavlik proclaimed a hero. And his was a traitor.
Many told us, that they had taken a psychology course at the teachers’ institute, and they considered themselves. We often heard them saying :” I don’t believe in psychology!” Maria Solomonovna would answer: “You don’t have to believe in it, It’s not a religion. Better tell me, what brings you here.” Among Soviet men there were patients, whom a psychiatrist I knew, Valery Sagalovsky, would call “ Chief specialist in every field”.
Brighton Beach
The clinic was situated in South Brooklyn, literally a fifteen-minute walk from the famous Brighton Beach, named by the locals Little Odessa by the Sea.
Brighton Beach Avenue ran under the Brighton beach subway line, above the street. There were rows or turn of the last century red brick buildings on the beach side, that used to be populated by American Jews before and after the war. Eventually they started leaving for the suburbs, and by the time immigrants from the USSR, mostly form Odessa, arrived, the neighborhood was in the state of relative decrepitude.
Other, than a couple of old joints – Mrs. Stuhl’s Knishes, a Polish -Jewish delicacy, and a kosher dairy café, there was nothing else there. And on the boardwalk, that stretched further South to Coney Island with the Aquarium, the Luna Park with its Rollo coasters, and young Woody Allen’s character from his “ Annie Hall”, growing up in a house next to it, permanently shaking, and a stand with famous kosher Nathan’s hot dogs. On the opposite side of Coney Island avenue there were stalls, where you could buy anything – old furniture, crystal chandeliers, oil paintings, old fur coats, anything that remained, when one moved or died.
After the Russian arrived, Brighton Beach got a new life. A “Black Sea” book store opened up. Aa few restaurants, with names like “Kavkaz” and “Primorsky”, and a night club “The National.”
It’s worth mentioning, that despite the hardships of the first years of immigration, people, who arrived from gray and drab Soviet reality, were in the rush to get dressed. Outfits of the night club guests were stupendous – a black gown with a gold lame sash, tied in a bow on one shoulder, like in portraits of eighteenth-century aristocrats, sequins and rhinestones, one young woman wore a white turtleneck with a phosphorescent bra underneath. Two-years-old’s were running around in little tuxedoes and bow ties. One could say, that the people had finally built their bright future Fellini style. La Dolce Vita!
At the night club two young- twins with red curls sang Yiddish songs from Berry Sisters’ repertoire and Russian hits, like the one about the flight attendant Zhanna, who is being adored and desired.
The guests were paying the band to play songs as gifts to the birthday boys and girls: “Natella and Boris are sending their birthday greetings and song “Tbiliso” to the family of baby Rezo, who for his first birthday!” Or: “And now Oleg is going to present engagement ring to Karina! Cheers!”
Sometimes we would go out to Brighton Beach to celebrate birthdays with my American colleagues. One time I took out a newcomer at the clinic, a Spanish-speaking therapist, to lunch at “Kavkaz”, a Georgian restaurant. It was two in the afternoon, on a weekday. The restaurant was empty, with the exception of a group of women from Hadassa at a long table. They were also celebrating something at the podium a singer was singin “Main Yidishe Mame“ for them. A perky waitress told us, that they had a minimal order for lunch – twenty dollars.
In those years one could have a lunch at coffee shop for four-five dollars, a slice of pizza and coke was two dollars, seventy-five cents in total.
“Why twenty?”– I asked. “ I did not notice a crowd of waiting to get in ?”
“All right, then ten,” and she brought us lobio and satsivi.
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