to keep them from grinding one another into a little heap of Jewish dust.
One Saturday early in May, after competing all day in a statewide track meet in New Brunswick, Heshie got back to the high school around dusk, and went immediately across to the local hangout to telephone Alice and tell her that he had placed third in the state in the javelin throw. She told him that she could never see him again as long as he lived, and hung up.
At home Uncle Hymie was ready and waiting: what he had done, he said, Heshie had forced him to do; what his father had had to do that day, Harold had brought down himself upon his own stubborn, stupid head. It was as though a blockbuster had finally fallen upon Newark, so terrifying was the sound that broke on the stairway: Hesh came charging out of his parents’ apartment, down the stairs, past our door, and into the cellar, and one long
boom
rolled after him. We saw later that he had ripped the cellar door from its topmost hinge with the force of a shoulder that surely seemed from that piece of evidence to be
at least
the third most powerful shoulder in the state. Beneath our floorboards the breaking of glass began almost immediately, as he hurled bottle after bottle of Squeeze from one dark end of the whitewashed cellar to the other.
When my uncle appeared at the top of the cellar steps, Heshie raised a bottle over his head and threatened to throw it in his father’s face if he advanced so much as a step down the stairway. Uncle Hymie ignored the warning and started after him. Heshie now began to race in and out between the furnaces, to circle and circle the washing machines—still wielding the bottle of Squeeze. But my uncle stalked him into a corner, wrestled him to the floor, and held him there until Heshie had screamed his last obscenity—held him there (so Portnoy legend has it)
fifteen minutes
, until the tears of surrender at last appeared on his Heshie’s long dark Hollywood lashes. We are not a family that takes defection lightly.
That morning Uncle Hymie had telephoned Alice Dembosky (in the basement flat of an apartment building on Goldsmith Avenue, where her father was the janitor) and told her that he wanted to meet her by the lake in Weequahic Park at noon; it was a very urgent matter involving Harold’s health—he could not talk at length on the phone, as even Mrs. Portnoy didn’t know all the facts. At the park, he drew the skinny blonde wearing the babushka into the front seat of the car, and with the windows rolled up, told her that his son had an incurable blood disease, a disease about which the poor boy himself did not even know. That was his story, bad blood, make of it what you will … It was the doctor’s orders that he should not marry anyone, ever. How much longer Harold had to live no one really knew, but as far as Mr. Portnoy was concerned, he did not want to inflict the suffering that was to come, upon an innocent young person like herself. To soften the blow he wanted to offer the girl a gift, a little something that she could use however she wished, maybe even to help her find somebody new. He drew from his pocket an envelope containing five twenty-dollar bills. And dumb, frightened Alice Dembosky took it. Thus proving something that everybody but Heshie (and I) had surmised about the Polack from the beginning: that her plan was to take Heshie for all his father’s money, and then ruin his life.
When Heshie was killed in the war, the only thing people could think to say to my Aunt Clara and my Uncle Hymie, to somehow mitigate the horror, to somehow console them in their grief, was, “At least he didn’t leave you with a
shikse
wife. At least he didn’t leave you with
goyische
children.”
End of Heshie and his story.
Even if I consider myself too much of a big shot to set foot inside a synagogue for fifteen minutes—which is all he is asking—at least I should have respect enough to change into decent clothes for the day and not make a
One Saturday early in May, after competing all day in a statewide track meet in New Brunswick, Heshie got back to the high school around dusk, and went immediately across to the local hangout to telephone Alice and tell her that he had placed third in the state in the javelin throw. She told him that she could never see him again as long as he lived, and hung up.
At home Uncle Hymie was ready and waiting: what he had done, he said, Heshie had forced him to do; what his father had had to do that day, Harold had brought down himself upon his own stubborn, stupid head. It was as though a blockbuster had finally fallen upon Newark, so terrifying was the sound that broke on the stairway: Hesh came charging out of his parents’ apartment, down the stairs, past our door, and into the cellar, and one long
boom
rolled after him. We saw later that he had ripped the cellar door from its topmost hinge with the force of a shoulder that surely seemed from that piece of evidence to be
at least
the third most powerful shoulder in the state. Beneath our floorboards the breaking of glass began almost immediately, as he hurled bottle after bottle of Squeeze from one dark end of the whitewashed cellar to the other.
When my uncle appeared at the top of the cellar steps, Heshie raised a bottle over his head and threatened to throw it in his father’s face if he advanced so much as a step down the stairway. Uncle Hymie ignored the warning and started after him. Heshie now began to race in and out between the furnaces, to circle and circle the washing machines—still wielding the bottle of Squeeze. But my uncle stalked him into a corner, wrestled him to the floor, and held him there until Heshie had screamed his last obscenity—held him there (so Portnoy legend has it)
fifteen minutes
, until the tears of surrender at last appeared on his Heshie’s long dark Hollywood lashes. We are not a family that takes defection lightly.
That morning Uncle Hymie had telephoned Alice Dembosky (in the basement flat of an apartment building on Goldsmith Avenue, where her father was the janitor) and told her that he wanted to meet her by the lake in Weequahic Park at noon; it was a very urgent matter involving Harold’s health—he could not talk at length on the phone, as even Mrs. Portnoy didn’t know all the facts. At the park, he drew the skinny blonde wearing the babushka into the front seat of the car, and with the windows rolled up, told her that his son had an incurable blood disease, a disease about which the poor boy himself did not even know. That was his story, bad blood, make of it what you will … It was the doctor’s orders that he should not marry anyone, ever. How much longer Harold had to live no one really knew, but as far as Mr. Portnoy was concerned, he did not want to inflict the suffering that was to come, upon an innocent young person like herself. To soften the blow he wanted to offer the girl a gift, a little something that she could use however she wished, maybe even to help her find somebody new. He drew from his pocket an envelope containing five twenty-dollar bills. And dumb, frightened Alice Dembosky took it. Thus proving something that everybody but Heshie (and I) had surmised about the Polack from the beginning: that her plan was to take Heshie for all his father’s money, and then ruin his life.
When Heshie was killed in the war, the only thing people could think to say to my Aunt Clara and my Uncle Hymie, to somehow mitigate the horror, to somehow console them in their grief, was, “At least he didn’t leave you with a
shikse
wife. At least he didn’t leave you with
goyische
children.”
End of Heshie and his story.
Even if I consider myself too much of a big shot to set foot inside a synagogue for fifteen minutes—which is all he is asking—at least I should have respect enough to change into decent clothes for the day and not make a
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