But everything in their house was nailed down, and nothing ever broke. Everyone just stopped talking and everything shook. I had been in their house when the Cyclone was going. Moran, who lived inside the Cyclone roller coaster in Coney Island. Sitting on a bench next to her would be Mr. Greenberg would stand nearby, but she never opened her mouth. Zayde Sam would be arguing with Uncle Zaretsky, who was called The Red because he was a tall thin man with red hair and because he was a Communist. I have crawled out the window to join him. When I think of Zayde Sam I picture him standing on the balcony of his apartment, bending over the rail to talk with people down in the park below. I did not know Zayde Isaac as well as my maternal grandfather, Zayde Sam. Only years later did I realize-this was not education it was initiation. He came only one other time to show me the contents of his wonderful satchel. I did not know Zayde Isaac very well I did not see him very often. This was how I was introduced to the aleph bes, the Hebrew alphabet. They were large and beautiful, and they seemed to be moving in rows. These are Hebrew letters, he said, opening the bag just a little. It looked like a doctor’s bag, and I came closer to see what was in it. My mother retreated down the long hall with baby Carol on her hip, leaving Zayde Isaac and me in the dining room, alone with each other. He had thin white hair and a round white face. He was a rabbi, like I am now, and though he may have been no older than I am now, he was a little old man. My father’s father, Zayde Isaac, came to our house one day to see me. This was Brooklyn in the forties and everyone spoke Yiddish there were pickle barrels out on the streets and candy stores full of penny candy on every corner. The world I had become part of was completely Jewish. He pulled the covers up around my chin and stroked my hair, looking into my eyes, and a great love passed between us. For a moment, when he reached me, he stood absolutely still. I could hear the scrape of his chair against the linoleum, and I could just make him out as he walked toward me through the inky darkness. Why was he sitting alone? Why was he sitting in the dark? Was he, too, transfixed by the cascading blue curtain? He stood up, then, stubbing out his cigarette. The glowing orange orb was the burning end of his cigarette. Across the hall, in the kitchen, my father was sitting alone at the Formica table, smoking in the dark. I floated in my bed watching it vibrate, watching the vibrations going out from it in concentric circles, radiating out forever. In the very center of the infinite blue was a small orange orb that the whole universe was funneling out of. My bed lifted and began to float inside of it, and blue velvet filled every cell of my being. It was filling the world, and now it was coming into our house, and, finally, even my little room was awash in blue. Outside, a deep royal blue was filling up every corner of the universe. I watched her dark silhouette leaving the room.Ĭarol continued to scream she screamed and she screamed.Ĭould it be that there was nothing my parents could do to make it stop? Carol’s screams were filling up the world, and now even my dresser and my shelf of toys were filled with them, and they became the very stuff the world was made of.Īnother evening, when I was about five, I was lying in my bed with my eyes wide open, when the night began to cascade down around me like a blue velvet curtain. Carol has to wear the braces, she told me, tucking me in again. My mother took me by the hand and led me back to my bed. Finding my mother, I pulled her desperately by the hand. She was in an agony of pain, and I knew what it was-the braces were hurting her!įinally, I got up out of bed and ran into the living room. I could hear people laughing through the walls.Ĭarol continued to cry. Then she tucked me in, kissed me, and turned out the light. It’s for her own good, my mother said to me. My mother put Carol into her crib and strapped big metal braces onto her legs. I got into my bed carefully so none of the stuffed animals would be disturbed. I got up and started walking toward the room I shared with my sister, and my mother followed with Carol in her arms. It’s time to go to bed, now, Alan, my mother said. I was sitting opposite them in the big chaise lounge. I can remember watching my mother sitting up in her bed, nursing my baby sister, Carol.
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