Coney (21 page)

Suicide enticed her. However, she decided on resurrection. Leah committed suicide, and Velia, the enslaver, was born. Leah had been dirty, mired in the shit of the tenements. Velia was as clean as a blond, gentile nurse. Leah had shut her eyes to escape from reality to darkness. Velia needed only a blink to enter a wish life.

When her initial flight from Leah through Schrafft's was halted by her father, she knew that she must escape her parents. The where was not important. She choose the most accessible path: Moshe Catzker.

Catzker, a twenty-year-old deliverer of beds and mattresses for Kaplan's Bedding on Stanton Street, who called himself a poet, had been pestering her for almost a year. He would wait for her outside school and walk beside her reciting poems in Yiddish. When she ran, he dared not pursue.

The next time he appeared, they shared a chocolate soda in a candy store. Catzker promised that her beauty would inspire thousands of lyrical poems. She had found her first slave.

A week later, on a lumpy bed in a room that smelled of feet, she stayed her nausea while Catzker hurt her terribly. Her blood
stained the sheet and caked on her buttocks. He called it the nectar. She ran to the bathroom and threw up.

It became less painful. Her body was numb, floating like an angel on serene Polish clouds. Catzker, pumping, sweating, stinking, breathing like a mad dog, was a comedy seen from afar.

Soon it would be time to talk of marriage, escape. But then her nipples hardened and she awoke to nausea. She wanted an abortion, but Catzker would not hear of it. He was in delirium. The child would be the most beautiful the world had ever seen; her all over again. He wanted to ask her parents for permission to marry. She replied that her father would call the police.

They were married at City Hall with a five-cent ring from Woolworth's. When they told her parents, her mother made a semicircle over her belly and spat. Her father ripped a patch of hair from his head. Six months later, two days after her seventeenth birthday, Harry Ephraim, named after a dead grandfather and dead uncle, was born.

Velia passed Bryant Park, turned left onto Fifth Avenue, and blew a kiss to the regal lions who sat like two snobbish doormen on the steps of the 42nd Street Library. Such lions would guard the entrance to her villa in Italy, next to Greta Garbo's.

A large, square car stopped at the curb alongside her. Vince, the chauffeur, blocked her path.

“Get in the car,” he commanded.

She tried to dodge him. He grabbed her wrists.

“I'll scream,” she threatened.

“There's nothing to be afraid of. My boss just wants to talk to you.”

“Let go of me this minute!”

“OK.”

His grip lightened. She relaxed. Suddenly she was shoved violently and tumbled into the backseat of the car. Her head fell onto a lap. She looked up at the cripple. The car moved forward. There were black shades on the windows. Menter smirked down at her.

“Wanna give me a blow job?”

She sat up and moved as far from him as possible.

“Look at me!” he commanded.

She did not turn her head.

She saw his palm coming. She braced, feeding rigidity into her neck, pressuring out her jawbone to create a solid wall on which he would break his fingers. She willed herself to become marble. She swallowed sticky blood. He rubbed his palm. She smiled. She had hurt.

“Luigi told me you were a tough cunt.”

“Luigi! What has he to do with this?”

“Everything.”

She sagged forward like an old woman overtaken by sleep.

“Yeah. Luigi liked your hot Jewish pussy. But he's had enough of it. A kike is a kike, man or woman.”

“Why does not Luigi tell me this himself?”

“That's none of your fucking business. You're talking to me now, and if you want to keep that sheeny nose of yours breathing, you'll listen and listen good.”

He sent a murderer, she thought. Murderers murder. No more problem for the workingman's friend.

“What happens now?” she asked.

“That's better. Luigi is a soft guy. Personally, I would have thrown you out on your fat Jew ass. But Luigi got you a job with Sam Rolfe of the Fur Union. You can start spreadin' your legs for him.”

Yes, like a whore
, she thought,
passed on
.

“And you never speak to Luigi again.”

“That should not be too difficult.”

“Don't be such an uppity cunt, it ain't healthy.”

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“Coney. Cab service. I think you should suck Vince's uncircumcised prick for a tip.”

“I must get back to work.”

“No, cunt. You never go back. All your shit will be sent to Rolfe's office.”

They stopped in front of her house. The chauffeur opened the door. He unzipped his fly. She ran past him, but knew she could never outdistance their laughter.

H
ARRY WALKED INTO THE FREAKS' HOUSE FOR A SOCIAL VISIT
. T
HERE
would be few betting slips to collect. Saved summer wages had dwindled. Some residents temporarily had left Coney. Lohu and Mohu had joined a carnival that meandered through the South. Olga was in Leningrad with a Russian circus. She had sent Harry a picture of her feeding bears ice cream.

Those whose appearance permitted had found normal jobs. Otto was a bouncer in a Yorkville bar owned by a cousin. Albert-Alberta, all male and very British, was an elegant host at a Child's restaurant on Broadway. Jamie, his second mouth bandaged, washed dishes at a Queens diner.

Jo-Jo had been employed as a shipping clerk at a Garment Center dress house. The boss called him
Bow-wow
. One day he brought his five-year-old grandson to see his discovery. The child laughed and petted Jo-Jo. He asked his grandfather to make Jo-Jo bark. Jo-Jo refused. The child threw a tantrum. Jo-Jo was fired.

The story, told him by Jo-Jo, was part of a ritual that had developed over the winter months. Harry, provided with hot chocolate and cake, listened to tales resembling a musical round. The meshing lyrics told of the torment and humiliation endured at the hands of so-called normal human beings, who treated freaks as a permanent sideshow put on earth to provide endless amusement. As common property, freaks could be commanded to perform by
anyone—especially drunks—for the pleasure of everyone.

Jo-Jo told of being forced to put his palms against a bathroom wall and hump a urinal. In a bar, Blue Man's shirt had been ripped off and the crowd, given pens and pencils by the proprietor, drew blood while covering his chest and back with dirty words. In Jersey City, Olga had been pinned into a barber's chair and shaved while grimy fingers confirmed that she was a woman. And poor Fifi, pissed on.

Exempted from the freaks' condemnation and disgust, Harry felt close, familial. Harry, too, felt at odds with the world, weighted down by layers of weltschmerz and anomie pressed upon him with love by loved ones ignorant of its toxicity on the young. He had been taught a controlling world. which preached capitalistic hypocrisy as God-commanded values and punished heresy by exile, enisling as freaks all who refused to believe.

In his house, society was the criminal. Lockerman asked:
What is a greater crime—to rob a bank or to open one?
John Dillinger was a victim, robbing banks before they robbed him. His betrayer, the lady in red, had been duped by the capitalists. At school the bubble gum trading card of G-man Melvin Purvis, who had tracked down and killed Dillinger, invoked hero worship among Harry's classmates and disgust in him. And above all, Jews, history's permanent underdog, could find friends only among the oppressed. If not for a less than total disbelief in Bama's warning of the evil eye, he would have openly proclaimed brotherhood with the freaks.

Fifi sat on a couch reading. Delicate pince-nez spectacles on her massive face shrank them to a child's scaled-down replica. She laid down the open book, placed the spectacles on the spine and offered her cheeks for kisses. The soft, heavily powdered flesh smelled sweet but tasted bitter.

The dining room table had been moved aside. Otto, wearing only shorts, was bent over a heavily weighted barbell. Trickles of sweat navigated his muscles.

The strongman had appointed himself Harry's mentor in
matters of physical well-being, insisting on a program of weight lifting. The first lesson had been a show of Otto pressing, snatching and curling hundreds of pounds while Harry gasped in admiration. There had been no further instruction, but much talk of the upcoming wondrous transformation of Harry's body, while Otto kneaded Harry's nonexistent muscles like a Dust Bowl farmer sifting spent soil. Sometimes Harry's released flesh bore bruise marks for which the strong man apologized, while stifling a grin:

“I no know mine strength.”

The hurt, Harry knew, was Otto's crazy way of expressing friendship and a pat on the back for Harry's tolerance to pain, a stoicism Otto revered.

“Hello Harry,” Otto said, grabbing the barbell and thrusting it over his head, while simultaneously executing a skip that placed his left leg in front of his right before drawing them even. Harry applauded.

“Now you try it,” Otto said, laughing and pointing to the bar that had shaken the house upon striking the floor.

Harry grabbed an imaginary barbell and imitated Otto, tottering and groaning. Fifi laughed. Otto forced a smile.

“I ever tell about 1936 Olympics. Hitler shake my hand.”

Harry knew that Otto revered Hitler and Nazism, but forgave it as one of Otto's mental tics—an opinion that passed for thinking and assured the strongman that his brain was not void. Harry was certain that Otto liked him. Even so, his expression soured at the pride in Otto's voice.

“Harry,” Otto said, creasing his brow, no doubt imitating a German American Bund deep thinker, “Hitler have nossing against you or you people. He want to send dem to homeland in Palestine or Africa.”

“Otto …” Fifi began, but she might as well have tried to brake a speeding train.

“It is healsy t'ing to send Jews from Germany. De Germans be healsier and also Jews. Both pure. Is in de Bible, God say to Noah:
get two animals of same breed—
same breed
—to start new, pure world. We obey God,
yah
Harry?”

Harry refused to meet Otto's eyes, but nodded slightly to end the subject. Fifi's face was impassive, but her body gave off odors. Anger made her sweat. She was furious.

“Is not time for nap, Otto?” she snapped.

“Yes,” Otto answered, oblivious to anyone but himself. “Harry, be sure take many naps. Is very healsy.”

He clamped Harry's shoulder, tilting him.

Harry sat next to Fifi. They had not repeated sex. Tacitly, instinctively, they had agreed to lift that moment out of the normal flow of life and to forever share it in Harry's favorite country: limbo.

She took his hand and patted it.

“Otto is crazy like he is strong. But I like him. How you hate ze baby for making
kaka
in pants?”

Harry smiled. Because of her appearance, it had taken him some time to realize that she was very smart. She spent the winter reading, and writing notes in the margins of books, like Zadeh.

She had given him French lessons, using texts far beyond his novice status. After being told the plots, he closed his eyes as she read to him from
Nana
or
Madame Bovary
. The soft French voice sang of the heroine doomed by a cruel world. Yet another version of the freak message.

“'Arry, you have perhaps read this
livre
. It is called Of Ze Mice and Ze Men.”

“No, Fifi.”

“You should read. It is about ze cruel heart. Zis
Americain
, Steinbeck, know life like ze French peoples.”

She handed him the book.

“It's a funny title,” he said, “it sounds like a fairy tale, maybe where a mouse becomes a prince.”

She patted his head.

“You have ze imagination. Not let anyone to take it away. No. I not understand myself. Maybe you help.”

She opened the book and showed him the frontispiece:
The best laid schemes o' mice and men gang aft a-gley.

“What mean that? Is English? Only find
gang
in ze dictionary. Not make sense.”

“Maybe it's about a gang of mice …”

“No, 'Arry is not one mice in book.”

“What's it about?”

She cocked her head and pointed to Otto's barbell.

“Is about man like Otto, but not like also. Otto big, strong, but inside is baby. In book is same, but big difference. In Otto is cranky baby. Strongman in book is baby full of love. World hate so much love. Make angry.”

“Why?”

“Because zey cannot love. Zey forget how. Because is easier to hate.”

“I don't hate, Fifi, but I don't think I love.”

Fifi's head bolted backward as if struck.

“Not say that,
gosse
. Is terrible and not truse. I see love in you. Most certain you love Mama, Papa.”

“I know I'm supposed to love them.”

“What you feel for zem?”

“I'd like to make my mother happy. But I can't. I don't think anyone can. I don't want her to be sad.”

“And ze Papa?”

“I like to be with him. I'd miss him if he went away. There is also a friend of his I'd miss and my grandmother. They would miss me too. But it's not easy to explain. It's like it has nothing to do with them or me. It's like we don't attach ourselves to things about a person, but because the person is always there. It could be anyone else.”

Fifi lifted his chin which had dropped as he spoke. She stroked his cheek.

“
Pauvre.
Is your age of all confusion. Not worry.”

She lifted her hand. He grabbed at it and returned it to his cheek.

“Sank you,” she said.