Morning Is a Long Time Coming (3 page)

As I re-entered the gymnasium, I saw the back of a familiar well-tailored, glen-plaid suit. My father was speaking to Mrs. Turner. “You’re not making sense. If she fainted then where is she?”

I smiled what I hoped would pass for a sincere smile. “Hi, how are you all enjoying the party?”

“Mrs. Turner just told me you fainted,” said my father, who sounded for the first time since coming here as though he was no longer bored.

“Sir?” I asked, while trying to face-register surprise as I wondered just why it is that I’d go through almost any kind of deception, at almost any price, to keep my parents from ever seeing me either weak and needy. Physically or emotionally. It was all the same.

“What I said,” corrected Mrs. Turner, “was that Patty lost every speck of color as she held onto that door for dear life.”

“I did get a little warm,” I admitted cheerfully, “under this old black gown, so I went out to the bubbler for a drink.”

My mother was quickly approaching, but from fifteen or twenty feet away, she called out, “Did you really faint?”

Some five or six people nearby, including Mr. Casper Willis and his spinster daughter, Rachel, who had been unaware of the incident, turned to gape at me. Probably they were very annoyed to have missed out on the greatest drama since that Sunday morning Reverend Benn preached from the pulpit with a freshly blackened eye.

Maybe they’re thinking that if I truly cared about their amusement, I’d stage something really interesting. Perhaps
the ancient and honorable Japanese ritual of disembowelment or, at the very least, an epileptic seizure, preferably grand mal.

Within reaching out and touching distance, my mother came to an abrupt halt. “Well, what’s wrong with you?”

“I got so hot wearing this old black gown that I had to go outside to the bubbler for a drink.”

She looked at me suspiciously as though some valuable tidbit was being withheld from her. “Tell the truth, you were sick to your stomach again, now weren’t you?”

“I already told you.”

“This is the third time lately. Somebody must have said
boo
to you,” she said loudly enough to satisfy Rachel Willis’s ongoing interest in Mother’s observations.

“No, nobody said
boo
to me, honest.”

“Well, somebody must have,” she insisted. “Because every time someone says
boo
to you, you vomit.”

3

A
T TEN MINUTES AFTER FOUR
(exactly one hundred thirty minutes after the start of the graduation ceremonies) all six of us crowded into my father’s sun-baked Chevy. When he zoomed on down Highway 64, neglecting to take the first right turn which would have taken us through the two business and the two residential blocks which comprise Jenkinsville, Arkansas (population 1,170), I knew that he wanted to cool off his car.

On the other side of Bud’s Gulf station, my father tapped on the right-hand side of his windshield. “Look over there, Sam. That red brick house going up.”

When Grandpa acknowledged seeing what someday soon was going to be a “nice little house,” my father continued, “You’re a real estate man, Sam. How many good houses would you guess have been built here in Jenkinsville in the last five years?”

“Oh, not many. Not more than four or five a year since the end of the war. Twenty, twenty-five, say thirty houses in all.”

“I’ll tell you better’n that,” said my father. “That’s only the second house of any kind that’s been built here since the war. This town is stagnating!”

“Lots of up-north industries, Harry, are looking for quiet places with cheap labor. First thing you have to do is band together with the other merchants.”

My father made a hissing sound. “I’d sooner band together with a bunch of rattlesnakes. Once we had us the Jenkinsville Mercantile Association. It was back during the war when everybody was making a buck. There was six of us leading merchants who (thanks to me) were real successful in getting people for miles around to come into town on a weekday. We handed out free tickets every Wednesday, every time anybody made a purchase.

“And at exactly eight o’clock on Wednesday night, there’d be a drawing in front of the picture show and that’s when the grand prize of fifteen dollars was handed out. Well, Jesus H. Christ, you never saw so many people crowding into one small town in your life. From as far away as
Cherry Valley they chugged into town in old trucks and battered cars that cranked from the front.”

“And I’ll never for the life of me forget,” added my mother, “the preacher’s wife coming into the store fit to be tied, telling us that we were playing Satan’s game by luring folks into town on a weekday. ‘Why,’ she complained in that whiny little voice of hers, ‘I couldn’t even park my own car in front of my own house. All those niggers and rednecks just a-choking up the streets.’ ”

“I didn’t care about that bitch!” said my father. “It wasn’t her. It was the big cotton planter, George C. Henkins, who killed Wednesday. At the dinner meeting of the Rotary Club, he read out a resolution asking the merchants to dispense with Wednesdays. He talked about how it’s only patriotic keeping the sharecroppers working in the fields where they belong. Cotton is needed for the war effort. And we all have to make sacrifices in wartime.

“Well, sir, no sooner did George get his speech out than the other five merchants practically wet their pants agreeing.

“But I stood up to him and I mean to tell you that I was the only one to do it. Looking him right in the eye, I told him: ‘I want you all to know right here and now that I’m as patriotic as the next man. And maybe more so! But I’d like George to answer me, why in God’s name do I have to ruin my business to see that your fields get picked? More money in your pockets!’

“Well, old George lifted his hands for quiet just like he was fixing to sermonize. ‘Now, Harry, I’m surprised to hear you say that, really I am.’ He was talking softly as if to say that he didn’t know cotton prices was going straight through
the roof. “ ’Cause I thought you, of all people, appreciated what this war is all about. We Americans, trying to save
your
people from the Nazis.’ ”

When my father turned off Highway 64 at the First Baptist Church of Jenkinsville corner, I knew that the car, if not the passengers, was considered sufficiently cooled.

We cruised down Main Street past the Rice County Bank, the post office, the picture show where the marquee announced Deborah Kerr and Stewart Granger in
King Solomon’s Mines.

In front of the largest store in town, the car rolled to a stop. Because I sensed that some sort of recognition was needed by my father, I found myself reading aloud the big, bold, black sign that was touched for emphasis with a dash of red. “Bergen’s Department Store,” I sang out like a radio announcer thrilled by the opportunity to deliver a hard sell. “Quality Goods for the Whole Family. Shoes, clothing, hardware, and variety.”

After my recitation, my father drove back to our six-room white frame house with the screened-in side porch. We all lunched on the lean corned beef, kosher dills, potato salad, and fresh pumpernickel that my grandparents had brought all the way from Rosen’s Delicatessen in Memphis.

And shortly after that Grandma reached into Grandpa’s inside suitcoat pocket to bring out a long white envelope for me with the printed return address:

S. Fried & Sons, Realty Co.

240 N. Main St.

Memphis, Tenn.

As I took the envelope, I noticed that both of them were smiling proud smiles. Why are they doing that? If I was something to be proud of, wouldn’t my own parents know that too? Wouldn’t they be the first to see it? Maybe, no credit to me, grandparents are practically genetically compelled to love their grandchildren. What else could it be?

Still I don’t understand them. They were about the only people who always acted as though I had nothing in this world to be ashamed of. When people from all over this country exploded over the fact that a Jewish girl would actually hide an escaped German prisoner, my grandparents considered it not much more than a
mishegoss.

I wish that Yiddish word was in my big Webster’s International Dictionary because I’d like to know precisely what it means. But I’m pretty sure that it means making a fuss over nonsense. Like when my mother cries to Grandma about some slight from Uncle Irv, then Grandma usually says something like: “Pearl, you’re being silly. It’s all a
mishegoss.”

At any rate, my grandparents were convinced that my being sent to reform school was more of a disgrace for the people of Arkansas than it was for me. “Nothing but a bunch of rednecked anti-Semites! Since when does a human person have to get credentials before they’re allowed to give food to a hungry man?”

Actually, I wasn’t as innocent as that. Because all the time I was hiding Anton in those abandoned rooms above our garage, I knew I might get into trouble, but I also knew that it wasn’t wrong. Nothing that God would consider wrong! Wish I could just once talk to somebody ... almost anybody! I’d like to explain it to them. I’d want them all to understand that Anton didn’t escape our prisoner-of-war
camp to bomb our cities or even to return to Germany to fight again.

Only thing in this world that he wanted was to be a free man. Why is that so impossible to believe? But I’d have no more luck getting people to believe that than I would getting them to believe something else which is equally true. Outside of Ruth, Frederick Anton Reiker was the finest person that I’ve ever known.

“Well, aren’t you going to open it?” asked Grandpa, who had, in fact, taken the envelope from me to remove the handwritten card inside. “I wrote it, so I’ll read it.” He adjusted his glasses and cleared his throat. “Poetry it’s not.”

“Just read,” said Grandma. “And leave the commenting to Walter Winchell.”

“A-hem. It says: To Patty our dearly beloved granddaughter on her graduation day, we give this check so that it can help you prepare for your life and your work at the college whichever you choose. Love and kisses from Grandma and Grandpa.”

I ran into Grandpa’s arms so that nobody would even suspect my tears. Part of it was that they could still love me in spite of everything. And the other part was the awful suspicion that they’ll stop loving me once their gift money is spent on something other than college. It won’t be spent on anything but college! I can still stop myself! I am very much in control.

Because if I did spend my money on what I’m thinking about,, then they, like me, would consider it nothing but a betrayal. A bare-faced betrayal.

“Now that you’ve heard the sentiments from the heart,”
said Grandma, adjusting a diamond stud in her ear, “you aren’t a tiny bit curious to see how much the check is for?”

I nodded yes while wondering if they had forgotten telling me periodically over the last few years about their plan to give me a thousand dollars for each year that I stay in college.

Grandma patted my shoulder. “It’s for a thousand dollars.”

It took several swallows to clear my throat of enough tears to be able to express just how much I appreciated both them ... and their check.

Later when my mother, Sharon, and I (my father was napping) walked my grandparents out front to their well-polished black Buick, Grandma said, “Patty, darling, take the morning train to Memphis next Wednesday. Stay for at least a week. We’ll buy college clothes.”

I searched for the words to tell her, to tell them both, that I didn’t know if I’d be needing college clothes. That everybody had been operating under certain false assumptions which I had more or less deliberately perpetuated.

But then if I said that, wouldn’t Grandpa ask, “What false assumptions?”

Well, I wouldn’t have to answer much more than I don’t think I’ll go to Memphis State College or even the University of Alabama this fall.

Grandma might add that there are other places where Jewish boys and girls meet. Places like the University of Texas. And so where did I plan to go?

What could I say then? How could I even begin to explain something to them that I have never satisfactorily been able to explain to myself? Even the first part of it, the going-to-Europe part, would be incomprehensible to them. Grand
father would raise his voice: Jews don’t go
to
Europe. They come
from
Europe.

I understand that, I tell him as I feel my dream begin to sink beneath the moving sands of never-never land.

Probably my grandmother would start remembering again, would start crying, “My sisters Toby and Miera, their husbands and children, they’d all be alive today if they had only left Europe in time. ...”

And I couldn’t argue with them because they’re not what you’d call wrong. Not wrong at all. But they’re being right doesn’t help me. Doesn’t help me with the obsession!

Grandpa helped Grandma into the front seat and after some last minute hugs, kisses, and farewell waves, the Buick headed off in the direction of Highway 64..

Because I needed to be alone and Sharon obviously needed company, it took me a good half hour before I was able to slip away. I walked into our garage which is located halfway between our house and the railroad tracks and looked up at the non-existent stair boards which my father (with his characteristic attention to detail) had removed twelve years ago when he bought this property. Said he wanted to keep hoboes from finding a home in our abandoned over-the-garage servants’ quarters.

I successfully balanced myself step by careful step on the thick brace boards to climb to the place which I even now
think of as “Anton’s hideout.” Propping myself back against the desk that I had so many years ago fashioned from forgotten sawhorses and a discarded door, I tried “seeing” him.

Sometimes it’s so hard to do. Oh, I can still describe just how and where his hair fell across his forehead and exactly where in his hazel eyes those specks of green were located. And even now, I can still remember how his lips felt when they kissed me goodbye. Then why can’t I bring him back whenever I want ... whenever I need to?