Tell it true, Marty. No gags, no punch lines, no shticks … just the way it was.
All things are as they were then, except …
YOU ARE THERE …
Your name is Morrie Feldman. Your father’s name is Lew Feldman, your mother is Sarah Feldman. You are the only Jew on your street, the only Jewish kid in your grade school. There are seven Jewish families in town. You go to Lathrop grade school and you are a little kid. At recess time they get you out on the ball diamond, and one of them picks a fight with you. Usually it’s Jack Wheeldon, whose head is square and whose hair is cut in a butch, and whose father is a something or other at the Diamond Alkali plant. Jack Wheeldon is big and laughs like a jackass and you don’t like him because he looks with a terrible strangeness out of his cruel eyes.
You stand there while Jack Wheeldon calls you a dirty kike, and your mother is a dirty kike, and you pee your pants because all kikes do that, don’t they, you frigging little kike? And when you swing and hit him on the side of the head, the circle of kids magically grows about you, and while you’re locked in an adolescent grapple with Jack Wheeldon (who is all the things in this life that you despise because they are bigger than you and slower-witted and frightening), someone kicks you from behind. Hard. At the base of your spine. With a Thom McAn shoe. And then you can’t help it and you start to cry.
You fall down, and they begin kicking you. They all kick you very hard, and you aren’t old enough or smart enough to pull your arms and legs around you. So after a while everything goes sandy and fuzzy and you know you are unconscious. There’s a special sort of pleasure in that, because that’s what happens to the good guys in the movies on Saturday afternoons, when they’re being attacked by the bad guys. And after a while Miss Dexter with the pointy nose, from the fifth grade upstairs, comes out on the playground, and sees what is happening, and goes back inside to tell someone else. Then, later, the faceless teacher from the third grade, who likes you, comes running out, and lifts you in her arms and tenderly carries you inside.
The first thing you hear when you wake up is one of the kids saying “ … dirty Jewish elephant.” And you wonder with childish logic why he calls you an elephant. You don’t have a long trunk. That is the first time they let you know you have ashonikker apple between your eyes and your mouth.
Your name is Morrie Feldman, and you live at 89 Harmon Drive. You have been away at camp all summer, and now you are back, and your father is telling you that your dog Puddles was gassed while you were away. Mrs. Shanks, next door, called the pound while your father and mother were in Cleveland for the afternoon, and had them take Puddles down and gas him. Your father tells you he is sorry, and doesn’t know why Mrs. Shanks would do such a thing, but you run out of the house and hide under the side porch all day and cry, anyhow. Later, you steal Mrs. Shanks’s rug-beater from her garage. You bury it very deep in the soft, amber dirt behind the garage.
Your name is Morrie Feldman, and you are in junior high school. You hear something heavy hit the front of your house late one night, and then something else, and then a half-eaten grapefruit comes crashing through your front window, and out on the lawn — here in Ohio, and who’d ever think it — you see a huge cross burning. The next day you learn about the Anti-Defamation League. You don’t tell anyone that you saw Mr. Evan Dennis from Dennis’ Florists, with soot on his face and hands, running down the street to a car with its headlights out.
The name is the same, and it’s later, and somehow you have a girl named Peggy Mantle, who has blonde hair and blue eyes and Anglo-Saxon features, and you love her very much. Until you catch her doing things she never did with you. She’s doing them in the bushes behind her house after the Hallowe’en party. She’s doing them with Leon Potter from across the street, whose mother always slams the door when you come on the porch. You don’t say anything. You can’t. You’re afraid.
You’ve been afraid for a long time now. When you were smaller, once in a while you could beat Jack Wheeldon, or convince Leon that he should play with you. But they’ve continued to get bigger, and you’ve stayed small and frail, and they can beat you with their fists.
So you’ve learned to cut them up with your tongue.
You’ve learned how to tear them and shred them and slice them with your mouth. That’s how it started. That’s where it came from. That’s why you leave town in a fruit truck, and go to Buffalo, and from there New York. That’s why you go to a plastic surgeon when you’ve saved the money, and have your nose molded to look like another nose … Leon Potter’s nose, or as close to it as the surgeon’s samples came, but you don’t realize that till much later.
That’s why you decide to change your name.
Your name is not Morrie Feldman.
Your name is Marty Field.
You’re a funny, funny man.
“ … and so it is my extreme pleasure to introduce the boy we watched grow into a national celebrity … Marty Field!”
The auditorium caught up the frantic applause and flung it back and forth between the walls. The tumult was like nothing else Marty Field had ever heard. It caught in his eyes and ears and mouth like a great tidal wave, and drenched him with adoration. He rose and walked to the Principal, extending his hand automatically, receiving the embossed bronze plaque and the handshake simultaneously.
Then the wave subsided, leaving him washed up on the shore of expectancy, a sea of eyes beyond, waiting to bathe him in love and fame once more.
Fritz, it’s cold; throw another Jew on the fire.
“Th-thank you … thank you very much … ”
Tell them. Tell them, Morrie Feldman. Tell them what it was like. Tell them you know them for what they are. Make them realize that you’ve never forgotten. Show them the never-healed wounds; open the sores for them. Let them taste the filth of their own natures. Don’t let them get away with it. That’s why you came, isn’t it? That was why the conquering hero returned! Don’t let them lie to their children about all the good times, the fine times, the wonderful wonderful Marty Field they all loved and helped and admired. Don’t let them spew their subtle poisons to their children while using you as an example of what a good non-you-know-what is like.
Let them wallow in their own scum, Marty Field.
So Abie says, “Business is business.”
“ … I don’t know quite what to say … ”
Don’t let him Jew-you-down …
“ … after all these years, to return home to such a warm and sincere …”
Kike!
“ … I want you to know I’ll always cherish this handsome bronze …”
Yid!
“ … means more to me than all the awards I’ll ever …”
Dirty little Christ-killer!
“ … so thank you very much, again.”
You walk off the stage, Marty Field. You hold your thirty pieces of silver (or is that one piece of bronze?) and you leave the high school, and get in the car that will take you back to the airport, and the world that loves you. You had your chance, and you didn’t take it. Of course, you didn’t, Marty. Because you’re a coward. Strike your blow for truth and freedom? Hardly. It’s your life, and you handle it for the guffaw, for the belly-buster, for the big exit.