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Authors: E. L. Doctorow
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expected their complete attention. They stopped what they were doing and stood and looked at the chalk scrawl. Donald stepped up and raised his arm, and used the sleeves of his sweater as an eraser. The other boys were equally solemn. They took the whole thing seriously. “It’s bad,” Donald told me. “Whenever you see one of these, make sure to erase it. Use your shoe sole, spit on it, rub it with dirt, do anything. It’s a swastika.”
My mother added to this intelligence later the same day. “The next time you see one of those boys you tell me,” she advised. “If you see someone who obviously is not from this neighborhood and doesn’t belong here, don’t stand around, but come inside and tell me. Or tell Donald. These boys think they’re smart. They’d like to be Nazis. They’re disgraceful. They carryknives. They confront Jewish children and say they killed Christ. They rob. You come inside if you see them.”
And so my horizons were expanding. As I understood it, beyond Eastburn Avenue, on the far side of Claremont Park and down the hills, were the East Bronx neighborhoods, pockets of Irish and Italian poverty, that were the source of these depredations. These Irish and Italian neighborhoods were far below us, in valleys that rang with trolley-car bells and shook with the passing of elevated trains, where people lived in ramshackle houses with tar-paper siding amid factories and warehouses.
I had the good fortune to be living in this neighborhood, but its borders were not inviolate. That my house was of red brick, which I knew was essential from the tale of the three little pigs, evoked in me feelings of deepest gratitude. However, in bed at night, after the light was out, I heard outside in the dark sometimes the kicking over of ash cans, or a police siren, and then closer to my ear but somehow less audible, the breath of someone watching me. And in my sleep figures would loom in threatening gesture and just as suddenly recede into colored swirling points, as if I myself had been spread-eagled on a wheel spinning so fast that the colors melted together and became a target.
ROSE
O nly now do I see that our lives could have gone in an entirely different direction. We were young and energetic. But little by little the two families were accepting us. The shock was wearing off. This began when Donald was born. Another generation! Donald was born at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Rockaway Beach. A Catholic hospital. The nurses there were lovely to me, the nuns. It was a wonderful hospital and they took everyone in, it didn’t matter to them. The only thing was the nurses wore habits and in the front lobby on the wall was an enormous gold cross, and in each room was a crucifix that was quite specific, with a painted Jesus on the cross. Well, you can imagine, when it was time for the birth my whole family traveled all the way from the Bronx, and for them the occasion was to be celebrated in the traditional way, with cake and wine and a little whiskey, so there were, in addition to my mother and father and sister Bessie and my brothers Harry and Billy, my aunts and uncles and cousins. Here they came dragging all the way from the Bronx, which was quite a trip then, nobody had cars, nobody could afford them, you took buses and the elevated train and then the real train, it took hours. And they had bags and shopping bags and gifts. And when they walked into St. Joseph’s and saw that big cross on the wall, they were stunned. One of my uncles, an extremely religious man, a ridiculous pompous man,took one look and turned around and walked out and went right home—Aunt Minnie’s husband, Uncle Tony, he was English, he wore homburgs, he had a very high regard for himself. Then Minnie followed him, of course, she always let him lead her around, and one or two of the others, but my mother, a blessed dear woman, she and my father stayed, they were no less religious than Uncle Tony. The crosses on the walls were a
My mother added to this intelligence later the same day. “The next time you see one of those boys you tell me,” she advised. “If you see someone who obviously is not from this neighborhood and doesn’t belong here, don’t stand around, but come inside and tell me. Or tell Donald. These boys think they’re smart. They’d like to be Nazis. They’re disgraceful. They carryknives. They confront Jewish children and say they killed Christ. They rob. You come inside if you see them.”
And so my horizons were expanding. As I understood it, beyond Eastburn Avenue, on the far side of Claremont Park and down the hills, were the East Bronx neighborhoods, pockets of Irish and Italian poverty, that were the source of these depredations. These Irish and Italian neighborhoods were far below us, in valleys that rang with trolley-car bells and shook with the passing of elevated trains, where people lived in ramshackle houses with tar-paper siding amid factories and warehouses.
I had the good fortune to be living in this neighborhood, but its borders were not inviolate. That my house was of red brick, which I knew was essential from the tale of the three little pigs, evoked in me feelings of deepest gratitude. However, in bed at night, after the light was out, I heard outside in the dark sometimes the kicking over of ash cans, or a police siren, and then closer to my ear but somehow less audible, the breath of someone watching me. And in my sleep figures would loom in threatening gesture and just as suddenly recede into colored swirling points, as if I myself had been spread-eagled on a wheel spinning so fast that the colors melted together and became a target.
ROSE
O nly now do I see that our lives could have gone in an entirely different direction. We were young and energetic. But little by little the two families were accepting us. The shock was wearing off. This began when Donald was born. Another generation! Donald was born at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Rockaway Beach. A Catholic hospital. The nurses there were lovely to me, the nuns. It was a wonderful hospital and they took everyone in, it didn’t matter to them. The only thing was the nurses wore habits and in the front lobby on the wall was an enormous gold cross, and in each room was a crucifix that was quite specific, with a painted Jesus on the cross. Well, you can imagine, when it was time for the birth my whole family traveled all the way from the Bronx, and for them the occasion was to be celebrated in the traditional way, with cake and wine and a little whiskey, so there were, in addition to my mother and father and sister Bessie and my brothers Harry and Billy, my aunts and uncles and cousins. Here they came dragging all the way from the Bronx, which was quite a trip then, nobody had cars, nobody could afford them, you took buses and the elevated train and then the real train, it took hours. And they had bags and shopping bags and gifts. And when they walked into St. Joseph’s and saw that big cross on the wall, they were stunned. One of my uncles, an extremely religious man, a ridiculous pompous man,took one look and turned around and walked out and went right home—Aunt Minnie’s husband, Uncle Tony, he was English, he wore homburgs, he had a very high regard for himself. Then Minnie followed him, of course, she always let him lead her around, and one or two of the others, but my mother, a blessed dear woman, she and my father stayed, they were no less religious than Uncle Tony. The crosses on the walls were a
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