By Sandra Hurtes (New York, NY)
Crown Heights was a world my mother and I explored together. The effects of Hitler’s war revealed themselves from St. John’s Place to Montgomery Street, from Utica Avenue to Albany Avenue. On our way to the doctor or the grocery or the park, my mother whispered stories about the greena (greenhorns from Eastern Europe who came to America after the Holocaust).
There was Esther who lived on President Street and had three children. My mother pulled me close and said, “Zug gurnish, mámala, [say nothing, sweetheart], Esther screams every night about Auschwitz.” With each walk, the story took on different tones. Soon it became, “Esther is in the hospital. Her psychiatrist is giving her shock treatments.” Then my mother, nodding in understanding, pursing her lips, sighing.
I wondered who was home watching Esther’s children, and if her husband, Murray, was cooking supper. I tried picturing her getting shocked, but didn’t know how that looked. I wondered if the shocks singed, like electrified barbed wire.
When my mother and I visited her friend Margie who lived on Lincoln Place, my mother reminded me, “Don’t stare at Margie’s hand.” On her right hand were four and half fingers. She sawed her middle finger in half while working in the munitions factory she was transferred to from Auschwitz. When Margie’s hand was steady, it appeared as if her finger was bent at the knuckle. Then she moved, and the finger wiggled like it had no bones.
There was Sylvia who once lived on Carroll Street. I recalled her only through my mother’s stories. One afternoon Sylvia was vacuuming. As she pushed the long hose along the floor, she fished in her pocket for a sucking candy. When she began choking on the button she’d accidentally slipped in her mouth, her son David frantically called the police. By then she was blue. The police held her upside down but the button was lodged too deeply.
Each time my mother told me the story she said, “Sylvia survived Hitler to choke on a button in Brooklyn. God bless America!” And all I could think about was that the police and David saw Sylvia’s underwear when her duster fell over her head.
There was Mrs. Steinberg who we often passed on Schenectady Avenue, pushing her shopping cart. While hiding in Siberia, Mrs. Steinberg had two miscarriages. Each time we passed her in the street, my mother admonished me, “Quick, mein scheina kint [my beautiful child], smile, say hello to Mrs. Steinberg before she gives you the evil eye.”
My mother lived in fear of the evil eye, a superstition she brought with her from home. This belief—that a curse would be cast upon us when someone was jealous of something we had—was one way in which she would remain old-fashioned, regardless of how glamorous she became. And so, since my mother had two children and no miscarriages, she worried she’d be cursed by Mrs. Steinberg.
To ward off the evil eye, my mother protected herself by making her hand into a fist and pushing her thumb through her index and middle finger. Whenever we saw anyone else who might curse us, we reflexively made the fist and held it behind our backs. If asked how we were, we said, “Fine,” and squeezed our fists tight.
There was Manny on Montgomery Street. He was my story, and a secret I kept from my mother. He came from Poland and struck it rich in a shoe business on Orchard Street. Manny was tall and lanky, with hair falling across his forehead hitting close to his right eye. Every afternoon I played pretend games with his daughter in their apartment. Just before I left for supper, Manny came home, undressed and stood naked in the bathtub, the water from the shower sliding down his body. The shower curtain was pulled apart, the door wide open.
I never told my parents about Manny. I knew innately that what he did was wrong, and I wanted to protect him. And I was ashamed too, of the excitement I felt running past the bathroom, once, twice, three times, stealing looks as he rubbed a soapy washcloth in circles on his chest.
Ironic. Impossible. Ordinary. That was our Crown Heights.
Girls played double dutch, the jump ropes crisscrossing in the air like lines on a globe. There were hopscotch games chalked in yellow and pink, girls hopping in this box and that one, their ponytails flying back and forth or frizzy hair like mine a powder puff around their heads. Boys played Johnny on the Pony on the corner of Union Street and Schenectady. In the street, they kicked the can; gangly boys ran and hid as the metal cylinder rolled beneath parked Chevys and Desotos.
There was the varoooom of motorcycles speeding down Eastern Parkway. The soft rapid murmur of prayer trailing the Hasidic men in black as they hurried in and out of the subway. The high-pitched whine of alley cats crawling through garbage cans. Taunts like shake it don’t break it and your momma followed me and my friends, all of us barely aware of who we were.
When my mother and I walked together, she looped her arm through mine. We maneuvered between the stories of the greena and the everyday. We thanked God for our ability to hold a glass firm with all ten fingers, to not need shock treatments, not be the ones whose evil gaze was feared.
At home, my mother sang Que Sera Sera in a wistful tone as she cleaned the bathtub, a rusty can of Ajax in her hand. She scrubbed until the tub was spotless, singing all the while, what will be will be. When she bencht lecht (lit candles)for Shabbos, a tichal (kerchief) over her head, she prayed she would one day see all her siblings, as one family at a time, they emigrated to Crown Heights.
We believed we kept our stories to ourselves. We told each other we were lucky. The complications of war belonged to the others. When my mother and I strolled the promenade of Eastern Parkway, tree branches canopied over us, and birds flew from their nests. In those times, Auschwitz seemed so far away.
Sandra Hurtes’ work has appeared in The New York Times, The Jewish Week, Poets & Writers and many other publications. This essay is excerpted from a collection that she’s working on tentatively titled “Halfway Home.”
The Jewish Writing Project 