(dedicated to my father, a victim of the 1909 polio epidemic)

He was one of the first victims of the infantile paralysis epidemic of l909.  Day after day from our stoop in the Bronx, I watched him move down the hill on East l84th Street. His body swayed from side to side. I pictured his pale left leg, inches shorter than the good one, just bone covered with skin.  His powerful right leg with its thick thigh and short black hairs was the leg I focused on when I had to dance with him.

“Dance with your father,” my mother would say and then she pushed me onto the dance floor at every Bar Mitzvah and wedding. My father wore his dark blue suit, a white shirt and a tie. He was so handsome with his curly black hair plastered back. It was the only time he smelled from cologne. My cheeks flamed. I felt everyone watching the girl in the pink organza dress from Lynne’s Discount Store on Fordham Road. I tried so hard to stay in step, to follow him. The sweat beads dotting my father’s flushed face were from drinking. I knew he waited until he’d had a few drinks before he got up to dance.

His left hand gripped my waist. The other hand probably looked like he was holding my hand up. It was the normal way everyone danced. Only I knew the pressure on my right hand as he moved his body from one position to the next. That I held him up, balanced him, was my secret. When I stumbled and straightened up, I saw the truth behind the smiles around us. I knew they were laughing at how my crippled father danced.

Daddy chose the slower music, but as he jerked his body and shifted his weight to the good leg, his shorter, skinny one was left swinging in the air.  If I tripped over his foot he would laugh. “What’s the matter kid, can’t keep up with your old man?”  The band played the Anniversary Waltz. He loved that song and always approached my mother first, but she never danced with him. Her laughter blended with the others when he turned to me instead.

Most times, my father looked like he was trying to walk as fast as he could without falling, especially when he was trying to get away from my mother.

And when he did, I wanted to call out, “Come back, Daddy. Come back. We need you.”  But the other part of me longed to shout, “Run, Daddy, run, run if you can, fast, away from here.” I wanted not to be twelve years old. I wanted to run away with him.

Almost always their fight was over money.  Mother would spit out awful words.  She seemed to savor them, waiting for just the right moment.   She would whirl around from the stove and look him straight in the eye.

“Oh,” she’d moan. “Oh, are you lucky we have these kids.  Who would stay with you otherwise? Who?” And my mother would hit herself in the chest.

One cold, windy night he came home telling us the taxi cab he drove had broken down. Once again he came home empty-handed.  There was no money for supper. I knew my mother would send me to my nasty old grandmother for money. But even I knew it wasn’t Daddy’s fault. Why didn’t my mother?  She spun around the shabby kitchen, swinging a wooden spoon in great arcs.

“I should have listened to my mother. Oh, she warned me.  They all warned me.  Now look.  How am I supposed to feed these kids? Marrying a cripple, they said, a cripple.  Oh, if only I had listened to my mother.”

We huddled in the kitchen doorway, my baby brother pressed against my side, my little sister behind me, whimpering in tiny gasps.

Mother stopped.  Her eyes moved about as though she was searching for something, as though she’d never seen the awful kitchen before.  Then she crossed her arms over her chest and stared at him.  Daddy’s blank face stared back. Sweat trickled down from his forehead.

Say something, my silent voice cried out to him. Tell her to shut up.  Tell her it’s not your fault.

My father didn’t say anything. He reached out for a second as though to touch her but then he dropped his hands. They hung by his sides, broad and rough.  Sometimes I complained about his rough hands. He just laughed and said he liked them that way. He said it reminded him of his other life, the one at the marina in City Island.

I loved it when he said that. It was then I could picture him smiling while he scraped the barnacles off the bottom of his little boat. I also remembered the late autumn day when he let me stay home from school to go fishing with him. My mother made an ugly face when she called me his pet.  I guess she was right in a way because I was the only one he ever took to City Island. Anyway, his hands were really okay with me, especially on that day when I had trouble cutting up a worm for bait. He patted me on my head with his heavy hand. “It’s okay kid,” he said. “You can do it.”

That night my father turned away from my mother and moved toward the front hall. I got out of his way as he shifted to his bad leg. His finger marks dotted the door frame from all the other times he’d reach out for balance. The real threat was the linoleum that curled up at the end of the kitchen floor. It was like that in every room. He tripped on it when he was upset and tried to get away too fast.

Mother seemed to love reminding us it was Daddy’s stupid pride that stopped him from wearing the braces an agency was willing to give him for free. Daddy said he didn’t need them and that the way he walked was good enough for him.  Then he’d change the subject and brag about how he could switch his good leg from the clutch to the gas pedal and back again real fast, without the taxi stalling.

“What’s wrong with Daddy being proud?” I’d ask.

“He’s not really proud. He’s selfish. He wants us to worry about him.”

As I watched my father reach out for his long gray coat and driving cap, I hated her.

I walked onto the stoop feeling the cold and the wind. My brother and sister’s crying echoed through the apartment. Mother came up behind me. Like a witch in a fairy tale she tried to push me off the step.  I wouldn’t move.

“Go after him,” she whispered in my ear.  “Go ahead, go after him.”  Her prodding finger dug into my back. “Get him. Bring him back. It’s nothing. Go ahead.  You can catch him before he turns the corner. He won’t run from you.”

I didn’t know what to do.  I needed him. We all needed him. I also knew he needed to be away from this place.   Even if I walked, I could catch up to my father.  I held my breath. I didn’t want to win this race with him.

I watched how the wind wrapped his long coat around his legs.  If only he could run to escape the cold the way the rest of us did.  He limped down the hill, his weight shifting from side to side.

I turned and looked up at my mother in her stained housedress. The smell of her perspiration made me dizzy.

“This is the last time,” I said. “Promise me.”

“Yes, yes, the last time.” She gave me a push.

“I promise. Now go. Run.”

Across the street at the tidy DeGallo’s house someone peeked from behind the curtain. The door to the Piano Man’s house was open. I was sure Danny would come out and see me running after my father. I took a deep breath and ran, finding myself at my father’s side as he reached the corner.  I always thought that if I didn’t get to him before the corner, he would make the turn and be gone forever.

We were the only people on the street. Bits of newspaper swirled around the sidewalk at our feet.

“Daddy,” I called over the wind.  “Come back, Daddy. Please. We need you.”  For a second I thought he didn’t hear me but I held back from grabbing his sleeve. I was afraid of upsetting his balance. In my nightmares I often saw his bloody face as he lifted himself from the pavement.

I was out of breath. Mother had pushed me out without a coat and I was shivering from the cold. My father stopped and looked down at me.

His ruddy cheeks were a constant reminder of how he went to check on his boat even in winter. His wavy black hair was carelessly pushed back from his good looking face.  Aunt Evelyn said you could tell by his broad shoulders that Daddy would have been much taller. She said his growth had been stunted by his polio.

I saw the plaid of his blue flannel shirt around his neck and knew that at least he was warm. I waited. Maybe this time he wouldn’t come back but I was ready to cry and beg. That had always worked.

I touched his sleeve gently.  “Come on, Daddy. It’s cold.  Let’s go home.”

He pulled his arm away. A glaring light replaced the sadness in his eyes. “Get lost, kid,” he shouted in an unfamiliar voice. He swallowed a sob.  “Leave me alone. Go home yourself.”

For three days after school I kept my vigil on the stoop waiting for my father. I watched the bottom of the hill, sometimes thinking that if I held my breath he would  turn the corner and come back to me. The sun went down, the wind blew hard and icy, but I wouldn’t go in until it was really dark. On the third night while I was asleep my father came back to the apartment. He never said where he’d been that time or any of the other times but that was okay with me.  My father was home again.

THE END

© Cora Schwartz

(dedicated to my late husband, a Holocaust Survivor)

Rudy whistles the tune with no melody, the one he learned long ago from the Naxi soldier who also strolled up and down the aisles.

Rudy looks like he has all the time in the world as he throws his head back and exhales cigarette smoke into the cavernous casino. He runs one hand lovingly over the slot machines. The other hand is thrust deep in the pocket of his army jacket with its collar turned up.

Three hours later Rudy’s whistle echoes down the deserted, windswept street of Atlantic City. He looks up for a second and the late sun accentuates his deep wrinkles. Both hands are in his pants pockets now and the jacket with the collar still turned up is thrown over his shoulders. As Rudy reaches the bus and climbs the steps, the bus driver looks up from his newspaper and winks at him.

“You’ve got another hour out there, you know.”

“I know. But I’m cleaned out. Thought I’d take a nap.”

The bus driver laughs. “Good thing they give you that token to get back to New York on this bus, huh, Rudy?”

Rudy pulls his empty pockets inside out and grins. “Ah, you get used to it.”

“You’re something, man. Once a month. Like clockwork you are. Always back early, always cleaned out. Don’t look like it bothers you much though. They’ll all be back here in an hour, long in the face, but not you. Smiling all the way back to the city. What’s the deal man?”

“Well, you see, it’s a long story.”

“I got an hour. Nothing much in this damn paper but horror stories anyhow. It never ends, this damn shit.”

“Yeah, right, it never ends.”

“So what’s the deal?”

Rudy eases himself into a front seat and pulls the brim of his baseball cap lower. He slumps back and folds his hands over his stomach. His smile fades. Joe turns sideways to see him.

“Well?”

 “Yeah. So like you said, it never ends. You don’t know how right you are, Joe. Like the money I just lost. It’s shit money. Officially it comes from Germany. It’s called Wieder Gut Machen.”

“I don’t know any German, Rudy. Give me a break.”

Rudy doesn’t smile. “It means to make amends.”

“Hey, come on, I don’t know them fancy words either.”

“Okay Joe, it means to make things good again. They give it to us poor suckers who were in the concentration camps. It’s the money they give me for taking shit, more shit than you can imagine, Joe. You see, they kept feeding me all this shit. Not for one day, or one week or one month. They fed it to me for years. I took more shit than you’d think anybody could stand. So much Joe, that after a while a person feels like he’s just an animal rolling around in all that shit. It’s inside you. It’s all around you. It’s hot and it sticks to you and it smells like, shit. And you know, Joe, all that shit turns you into a fucking animal.” Rudy looks up and smiles. ” And then Joe, guess what happens?”

Joe’s mouth hangs open as he leans forward. “What happens?”

“Once they see for sure that you can’t take one more ounce of lousy, stinking shit, that you are ready to give up…”

“Yeah?”

“They give you shit money. And they say, ‘Okay animal, go have yourself a ball. Here’s your shit money. See if you can be human again.'”

Joe shakes his head.

“But see, that’s the funny part, Joe. A lot of people don’t understand this but the more money they give you and the more you try to use it to become human, the more you become an animal.

It’s a funny thing. It’s like a trap. It’s like there isn’t enough shit money in the world. It’s like shit money is really just shit. That’s how they fool you. They’re just giving you more shit. That’s why you can’t stop being an animal.”

“I don’t understand but heh, how come you look so happy?”

Rudy sits up in his seat and moves to the edge. He bends over the aisle so that his face is only a foot away from Joe’s. “Now look, Joe, you got to promise you are not going to tell this to anyone. See?”

“Yeah, sure. No problem.”

 Rudy looks over his shoulder and lowers his voice. “Well, if you can just get rid of the shit money fast enough, you get clean. Like me, see, cleaned out. You still look like an animal, people look at you like you’re still an animal, but you know what Joe? I ain’t no animal. I ain’t no animal, Joe. You know how I know?”

Joe shakes his head again.

“Because I have a heart. They think I got no more heart. That I have no more feelings. But I do, Joe, I feel everything.”

“Is that it, Rudy?” Joe’s forehead wrinkles. “Is that the end of the story, man?”

“Yeah, Joe” Rudy slides back into his seat and pulls the baseball cap completely over his face.  “That’s the end of the story.”

THE END

© Cora Schwartz