Authors: Jerry Stiller
I once asked my cousin Sandra how my mother had got to America from Europe. “Faiga brought your mother over,” Sandra said. Faiga had brought them all over, five of her brothers and sisters, and also Jake. She did it by selling towels door to door. Tanta Faiga lived to be ninety-three and never stopped selling towels.
Our family hardly went anywhere together, and never to the movies—mostly because my mother enjoyed love stories and my father couldn’t stand them. He’d fall asleep. Anything with Marion Davies, Mary Astor, or Bette Davis would put him away.
But he loved vaudeville, especially the comedians. Sitting through the feature movie was murder for him, but when the coming attractions appeared just before the vaudeville acts, it was like the arrival of spring after a long Russian winter.
I was no more than five when my father, who was unemployed, took me to my first vaudeville show. We were then living in Williamsburg, a depressed part of Brooklyn, and my father, a frustrated performer, would sometimes play the saxophone, usually in the toilet to avoid the glare of
my mother, who thought the time could be better spent looking for work. Unemployment being the main occupation of the entire country in the 1930s, Willie Stiller was no exception in indulging in reveries and illusion rather than facing the pain of joblessness.
One afternoon, he schlepped me with him to his favorite escape, the Follies Theater on Flushing Avenue. The two youngest members of the family, my brother Arnie and sister Doreen, were left behind.
The show consisted, as ever, of vaudeville plus news plus a movie. My five-year-old impression was that all films were fake. I, like my father, couldn’t wait for them to end.
During the coming attractions my father snapped to his feet, grabbed my hand, and said, “Let’s move down.”
Like two jackrabbits, we leapfrogged over rows to seats closer to the stage. Others had the same idea, but my father got us there first. From my new vantage point I could see the musicians filing in, and as the lights on the music stands in the orchestra pit flicked on and the musicians began tuning their instruments, I saw my father’s excitement grow. In the dark pit a party was about to begin: The boisterous trumpets, sexy saxophones, innocent violins, vulgar trombones, and raucous drums were conversing with one another, tuning up, paying no attention to what was on the screen. I became a part of it. I couldn’t wait for the final “cock-a-doodle-doo” of the Pathé News rooster.
Suddenly the movie screen soared skyward and the crimson traveler curtain swept across a stage blanketed by the glare of white lights. I could see just enough of the back of the conductor’s head as he raised his baton and exclaimed, “Hit it!” I could hear the electrical clicking of the golden baroque standards on either side of the stage as the cards moved up bearing the name of the orchestra. The band’s vibrant energy filled the theater with excitement. When the introduction ended, the cards dropped, revealing the name of a dancer and the subtitle
TOPS IN TAPS
. Then came an Apache team: Three minutes of mayhem in which a man and two women in gypsy attire commit violence upon one another without getting hurt. This was followed by a monologist—a low-keyed performer who professed to be one of the best and cheapest in his line of work. I knew the last act would be someone funny.
They were a team. He came out first and told suggestive jokes, then he introduced his beautiful foil. Her blue-and-silver sequined costume shimmered under the lights. A single-strapped bra precariously contained her
flouncing bosom. Her costume disappeared at her thighs, replaced by silver tassels that sparkled as they danced at her slightest movement. Her naive persona gave no indication that she was a steaming temptress enticing everyone, including myself. Standing there wearing not much more than a smile, she was emblazoned indelibly on my five-year-old brain.
I felt a peculiar sensation in my pants as I watched this delicious lady succumb to the comedian’s advances. What I saw made me want to climb up onto the young woman’s lap and take her away from this weird, leering beast who wanted to harm her. I could feel myself wanting to kiss and hug her. I wanted to show her how much I could care for her. I could smell the powder on her face, I could feel those tassels in my fingers as she threw herself at me, telling me she was a nice lady and not anything like the way this man acted toward her. I desperately wanted to protect her from him. If only I could get up there and tell that guy where to go. It really annoyed me.
It was at this point in the act that the comedian reached behind the curtain for a large wooden plank. With it, he whacked the gorgeous lady on the behind, causing a loud explosion and lots of smoke. She screamed with shock and grabbed her backside and ran off. The audience roared with laughter. The smoke clouded the first several rows of the orchestra. The whole bizarre business and loud explosion frightened me.
To this day, I have never forgotten the board hitting the beautiful lady. As we left the theater I told my father I never again wanted to see vaudeville when they had loud noises.
At that moment, though, I loved my father for taking me with him to the show, loud noise or not. On the way home I asked him, “Do all the acts go home together, Deddy?”—that was what I called my father—“Do they sleep in one bed? Do they live in one house like a family? Do they eat together?” My father didn’t reply.
When we returned to the three-room flat on South Fifth Street, my mother demanded to know where we had spent the afternoon.
“I took him to vaudeville,” my father replied.
I was his alibi. It was my father’s way to legitimatize his unwillingness to go out to look for work. My father was a cab driver. He had at one time been partners with a pal and they owned a Lincoln. When the Depression hit, they lost the cab. People couldn’t afford to ride in a cab.
“Why the hell don’t you get a real job,” my mother snapped.
“I tried yesterday. There’s nothing around.”
“Keep looking, I got three kids to feed.”
“What do you want me to do, sell apples?” he asked. That was the ultimate bottom and he refused to see himself that low.
“I should’ve married a real man,” she cried. “Where are you going?”
“To lie down.”
“I need money,” she screamed. “Go out and hack a couple of hours, you could make a few cents.”
“I’m going to sleep,” he said.
“Sleep? Look at this!” My mother turned her pocketbook inside-out. “Nothing, not a penny. We’re broke. I don’t even have money for milk. First you go to vaudeville and now you want to
sleep?
”
The day my mother said there wasn’t enough money for milk was the day I really knew the meaning of poor. It must’ve hit my father too as he slowly put on a sweater and headed for the door.
“You hate vaudeville,” he said to her.
“Maybe if I wasn’t with you I’d like it.”
It was dialogue I remembered all my life and that I would someday use on stage with Anne. The difference was that our audience would laugh at it.
My father, defeated, left the house to hack. When he returned a few hours later he threw a quarter on the table.
“Here,” he said, “buy some milk.” And then he started to cry.
Within the space of one year in the Depression—1933 to 1934—we moved from South Fifth Street to 131 Meserole then to Siegel Street, then to the end of Siegel Street. I never was told what caused these departures.
At our last Siegel Street apartment, the rickety wooden staircase to our five-room, cold-water flat turned slightly before reaching the second floor. The five of us stood on a landing that faced two apartments. The one on the right belonged to us. My mother turned the key and we were looking into a kitchen that had a gas range, a bathtub with a porcelain cover, a coal stove, and a door leading to the bathroom we would now share with strangers. A room to the front overlooked the street, while the other four led to the backyard.
Suddenly I realized we had dropped to life’s lower scale. We could no longer afford the luxury of steam heat. At that moment I knew we were no longer the chosen people. It was as if God had decided to put us out of His kingdom. Jews had always had steam heat.
After my mother fully took in the bleak surroundings and digested the indignity of having to share a toilet with people of unknown origin, she said: “We’re only going to be here a couple of months.”
Her eyes avoided my father, who stood by catatonically, unable to control the events that had brought us to this horrible place.
We had traveled the grand distance of five blocks, transporting our personal belongings in shopping bags, the furniture by pushcart.
“Let’s get unpacked,” my mother said.
My father moved quickly, simulating an army going into battle, grabbing cartons of dishes, pots, whatever came into his hands. He was trying to maintain his manhood. At that moment—six years old, going on seven—I wanted to take over. I was sure I could do better than he.
“It’s cold in here,” my mother said. “We need some heat. Make a fire.”
My father hurried into the next room and returned with some scraps of wood.
“We need coal,” my mother said.
“I’ve found some!” my father shouted triumphantly, dropping the wood and coming back with a bucketful of coal.
The huge black stove stared at us like some monster at feeding time. We had never had to face one of these before. My father stuffed newspapers into the bell of the stove, then wood, then shiny black chunks of coal. He tossed in a lit match, and in a few seconds smoke filled the apartment, choking us.
“Can’t you put it out?” my mother shouted.
“There’s a thing here someplace,” my father said, looking for the damper. Smoke was everywhere.
“You picked this place!” my mother screamed. “Don’t you know how to work the stove?”
“I’m a nothing,” he yelled back. “You made me a nothing.”
My brother and sister were crying. I could hear them even though I couldn’t see them. I wished I were an orphan.
I don’t belong to these people,
I told myself. I placed an invisible shield between my ears and the words they said to hurt one another.
“Stop crying,” I said to Doreen through the smoke. “Everything will be all right.” I had to become a father to Arnie and Doreen.
Suddenly the bathroom door opened. A short middle-aged woman in a dark dress stood in the doorway. “What’s wrong?” she said in a thick
Italian accent. “I’m your next-door neighbor.” She headed straight for the stove.
“You no open the damper,” she explained, grabbing a handle on the stove and shoving it forward. “You gotta smoke in the whole house. The fire engines is gonna come.”
The smoke stopped pouring out of the stove.
“We just moved in and it was cold,” my mother said. “We never did this before.”
The woman looked at us as if we were immigrants who had just landed.
“You gotta start slow,” she said. “Gotta have patience. Use a little bit of wood, then put the coal on one at a time. Then you got a good fire. It can go all night.”
“Thank you,” my mother said. “I’m Bella. This is Willie and our kids.”
“I’m Mrs. Palazzo. My daughter and I live next door. We and you share the same bathroom. There’s a lock, see? You want privacy, you just turn it.” She pointed to the little screw latches on both doors to the bathroom, hers and ours.
“You no sleep in the back room,” Mrs. Palazzo said, pointing. “The heat don’t go back too far. Better you sleep together in one room, near the stove. It’s nice and warm.”
“Thank you,” my mother said.
“Anytime you want something, you call.”
From that moment the Palazzos and the Stillers were neighbors.
When she left we dropped everything and went to sleep. All five of us in one bed.
Tessie was Mrs. Palazzo’s only daughter. She was a Roman beauty in her twenties. Her olive skin and classic features made her seem like a goddess. She loved kids. She’d come in and play with us. She knew what we were thinking. She could wrap us around her little finger.
My mother and Tessie got to be friends. They’d smoke cigarettes, drink coffee, and talk about things. We never knew what they were talking about, but it fascinated us. We’d watch them for hours.
It was sometime in December just before Christmas that we first noticed the lights on a tree blinking on and off in the Palazzo apartment. We could see the lights through the frosted glass of the Palazzos’ bathroom door. And, as it turned out, Tessie could see the silhouettes of our faces against her frosted glass. One night she pulled open the door.
“What are you looking at?” she said, as if catching us in some forbidden act.
“Your tree,” we whispered.
“Don’t you have one?” she said, peering into our apartment. She saw we didn’t. A revelation.
A couple of nights later she knocked on our door and very apologetically, seemingly on tiptoe, asked my mother if it would be all right to invite the children in to sit under the tree.
“They don’t have to do nothin’,” Tessie said. “They can just come in and sit there under the tree.”
My mother’s face turned white. Arnie, Doreen, and I sat waiting for her answer. The doors between both apartments were now open. We could see the lights on the tree twinkling on and off, the peppermint candy canes, the colored balls, the icicles, the little Santa Clauses, the stockings filled with gifts. My mother looked at the three of us and very quietly said, “I’m sorry, I don’t want to offend you, Tessie, but in this house we don’t celebrate Christmas. That’s why we don’t have a tree. I hope you understand.”
Tessie stood for a moment, then silently walked back through the bathroom into her apartment.
“I hope you kids will understand someday,” my mother said to us. “We don’t celebrate Christmas.”
We watched the lights on Tessie’s Christmas tree blink on and off, and then we went to bed.
A few nights later, while listening to Eddie Cantor on the radio, we heard what had to be loud arguing in Tessie’s apartment; lots of crying and cursing. There was a man in the apartment.
“Marry you? I wouldn’t marry you,” we heard Tessie say. “Besides, you’re already married, you bum. You’re nothing to me.”