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 21stStreet. 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 21st 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.
No comments:
Post a Comment