My father said he would give me such a beating that it would hurt to raise my eyebrows, but while I sat there like a mouse under the broom my mother stopped him and said there was plenty I could do at home and school was beginning in a few weeks anyway. My father said I’d only been given a partial hiding and she told him that would do for now, and that night once they started snoring I crept to their beds and kissed her goodnight and pulled the blanket from his feet so that he’d maybe catch a chill.
Because I couldn’t sleep I helped her with the day’s first chores, and she told everyone she was lucky to have a son who didn’t mind rising so early. I worked hard and kept her company. I emptied her wash buckets and fetched hot compresses for my brother’s chest. She asked if this wasn’t much better than breaking bottles and getting into trouble, and I told her it was. I was still so small that I could squat and ride the bristle block of the long-handled brush she used to polish the floors.
When she told my father at least now their children were better behaved he told her that not one of us looked either well-fed or good-tempered. He joked at dinner that she cooked like a washerwoman. “Go to a restaurant,” she said in response. She later told me that when she was young she never complained, so her mother would always know who her best child was and keep her near. So I became myself only once the lights went out, and in the mornings went back to pretending things were okay.
AT OUR NEW SCHOOL WE SAT NOT AT ONE FILTHY table but on real school benches. I wanted more books but had no money for them and when I tried to borrow them from my classmates they said no. I dealt with bullies by not fighting until the bell for class was about to be rung. When my mother complained to my teacher that a classmate had called me a dirty Jew, my teacher said, “Well he is, isn’t he?” and from then on she made me take weekly baths. I stayed at that school until another teacher twisted a girl’s ear until he tore it, and then my mother moved me back to a kheyder where they also taught Polish, two trolley stops away. But I still shrank from following instruction like a dog from a stick. My new teacher asked my mother what anyone could do with a kid who was so full of answers. He’s like a fox, this one, he said; he’s eight going on eighty. And when she reported the meeting to my father he gave me another hiding. That night she came to my bedside and sat and asked me to explain myself and at first I couldn’t answer, and then I finally told her that I had figured out that most people didn’t understand me and that those who did wouldn’t help.
My two older brothers got jobs outside of town driving goats to the slaughterhouse and were gone until after dark, and like my father they thought my mother should stay at home, so she confided in me about her plan to expand her laundry business. She said it was no gold mine but it could be a serious help, especially before Passover and Rosh Hashanah. She told me she used some of their hidden savings to buy soap and bleach and barrels and that every time my father passed the money’s hiding place she had a block of ice under her skull and could feel every hair on her head. I said why shouldn’t she take the money, and she was so happy she told me that once I turned nine she would make me a full partner. And this made me happy, because I knew that once I had enough money I would run away to Palestine or Africa.
The week before Passover we set giant pots of water to boil on the stove and we pushed all the bed linens and garments we’d collected from her customers into two barrels with metal rims and she lathered everything with a yellow block of soap before we rinsed it all and ran it through the wringer and dragged all that wet laundry in baskets up to the attic, where she’d strung ropes in every direction under the rafters. Since we opened the windows for the cross-breezes, she couldn’t rest that night and whispered to me about the gangs that specialized in crossing rooftops to steal laundry, so I slept up there so that she could relax.
“See? You don’t only care about yourself,” she whispered when she came to wake me the next morning. She put her lips to my forehead and her hand to my cheek. When she touched me like that, it was as if the person everyone hated had flown away. And while he was gone, I didn’t let her know that I was already awake.
I DIDN’T NEED TO PLAY WITH ANYONE, SO AFTER school I came home and helped her instead. While my younger brother napped, we talked about our days. I told her about a soldier on a horse near the trolley stop on Gęsia who took some coins from his saddlebag and handed them to me, and she asked if I’d thanked him and of course I hadn’t. She agreed it was a strange thing he’d done and wondered if he’d been thinking of his own little boy. We listened to our neighbors arguing across the hall, and she said the father spent his days in the synagogue securing himself a place in the next world while the mother wore herself out seeing that everyone was fed. She said that the mother had had fourteen children and only six had survived. I said maybe they were finished having children, and she said that for the mother’s sake, may a six-winged angel descend with the news.
I did kindnesses for my mother but she always wanted me to do them instead for my little brother. He was afraid of everything. She kept a lit candle near his bed to drive shadows out of corners because his window had no shutters and at night he always thought someone was standing beside it outside or knocking on the wall, and he cried himself to sleep about it. When she went to comfort him his eyes were so full of fear it scared me to look at them. Our father shouted at him to stop, which made things worse. He reminded my brother that everyone in the building understood that parents didn’t need to hold back and could give rule-breakers what they deserved. He’d work himself up about it and then our mother would placate him in the other room after telling me to stay with my brother and do what I could to quiet him down.
My brother had all sorts of medicines and drops and inhalerpots on his bedside table and my mother taught us how to grab his head and tilt it forward when he had trouble breathing and started to choke. He hated being inside all the time and finally ran away and left a note saying he’d had enough of this life, and he was missing for two days. Once he was back my mother locked him in the apartment and he pulled his chair to the window so he could see outside.
I didn’t understand him but liked the blank way he didn’t complain. He cupped any treat he was given in his hands and peeked at it before passing it along to one of us. If he wasn’t napping or staring out his window, he stayed near my mother. When he got angry he didn’t hit anyone or shout but instead went for days without speaking. My mother had a saying about how quiet he got, that his wisdom died inside of him, something her own mother had said about her. She told the neighbors that as a toddler he’d once laid himself spread-eagled on the trolley tracks to prevent her from leaving, and she’d had to carry him home, and that when she asked him about it afterwards he’d put his hands over her mouth.
HE LOVED THE RADIO AND IT WAS BECAUSE OF HIM that I first heard Janusz Korczak’s show. Thursday afternoons I had to sit with him and we could hear it through the wall, since our neighbor’s wife was hard of hearing. The show was called The Old Doctor and I liked it because even though he complained about how alone he was, he always wanted to know more about other people, especially kids. I also liked that I never knew what to expect. Sometimes he interviewed poor orphans in a summer camp. Other times he talked about what he loved about airplanes. Or told a fairy tale. He made his own barnyard noises. When I asked my mother why the show was called The Old Doctor she said there’d been complaints about allowing a Jewish educator to shape the minds of Polish children.