I’m in my study now, Saturday morning, maybe 10:00 a.m., having gone back to bed at around 5:00. Jake’s been fed, but I feel terribly upset, as if death surrounds me, encroaching on a narrow island on which I’m forced to live. A storm throws sea water across its cliffs and over the shore, as the island seems to be shrinking until there are fewer and fewer places to stand.
I remember 1959, a critical year for our family. But perhaps “critical year” isn’t quite right because the whole of 1959 wasn’t critical, only one afternoon.
I type out what I recall.
It’s early afternoon, and I’ve been here since morning. My nursery school, a rather informal affair—a classroom in the cooperative apartment basement, run by a teacher hired by the cooperative members. I see the teacher’s dress but not her face. I see her hands, hair, shoes. She wears a blue cotton dress, fitted bodice and flaring skirt. The waist is belted with thin braided white leather.
This morning we’re executing an arts-and-craft project involving crayons and cutting with plastic scissors. Barbara Goldstein, my best friend, sits next to me. We’re the only girls and wear blue plastic smocks that are slipped over our heads and tied at the sides.
I can draw well with both my left and right hand, but I choose to draw with my left one, and the teacher tries to correct me. I won’t let her. Instead, I pick up a scissor with my right hand and begin to draw and cut at the same time.
“You’re going to be a lefty,” the teacher warns. “And it’s a righty world.”
Later, after we drink our small cartons of cool thick milk, eat our crackers and cheese, we are helped out of our smocks. We walk out the building’s side door—up brick steps past the laundry room, with its narrow basement windows, large metal folding tables, machines that make creepy whirring noises, past the damp dryer smells that make me feel a little nauseated—as we take the short-cut to the concrete playground.
Here is a red whirl-a-gig, the old-school type children run beside and power with their feet. And seesaws, six in two groups of three, a couple of commercial-grade swing sets with wide wooden seats—my favorite—and a sprinkler for hot summer days, a basketball court for the older kids, two small rows of baby swings, with seats made of rubber strapping and a chain in front that clips so that babies won’t spill out.
I run to claim my favorite swing, knowing that if I sit backward on it, I’ll feel like I’m being carried over the chain-link fence and into the “jungle.” I pretend I’m Tarzan, never Jane, swinging on rope vines along the rain forest canopy.
Sometimes my teacher corrects me and asks that I face forward like the other children, but today she doesn’t. Instead, she sits, relaxing, on the park bench by the fence underneath the overhanging feathery leaves of a mimosa tree.
Barbara sits on the whirl-a-gig while a couple of boys compete to see how fast they can make it spin. She sits crisscross in the center, where a rider is less likely to get dizzy. Her long mousy-brown hair flies about her face.
I swing as high as I can, until the swing’s chains skip, buckle, and I become frightened and slow down. When we play alone out here, Glenn and Teddy will jump off their swings, often in unison, and propel themselves over the fence, into the jungle. But that always feels too risky for me, so I’ve learned to drag my feet to slow the swing, then climb the fence to join them in the wooded area, behind the big boulder, where we have our club meetings.
Today, with our teacher present, however, we don’t dare go into the jungle. We swing and play, taking turns on the equipment, shouting, running, getting messy, and finally very tired.
After playtime, we walk noisily, our energy gradually winding down until we reach the nursery room where we take—or are supposed to take—post-play naps on bright, various-colored roll-out mats.
Douglas, a small boy who wears glasses, teases me to take the pink one because my last name is Bloom, and he thinks pink is the color of blooming flowers. Then he calls me “Bloomy Doomy,” only because the words rhyme. I often pull his cap over his face to shut him up. But this day, I make it over to the stack of mats early and grab a yellow one, bright as the sun on a summer’s day. Bright, I think, as the yellow feathers of Happy, our pet parakeet, the only pet we’re allowed to keep in the apartment, though no one has explained to me why Nana and Pop-Pop, my maternal grandparents who lived in the cooperative’s other apartment building and are allowed to keep their dog, a terrier mix named Bobo, whom I love very much.
It takes a while for us to settle down, as a few of the children get to their mats late because they need a bathroom break. When they return, they’re fidgety, still struggling to buckle a belt, tuck in a shirt, wipe a drippy nose with a sleeve.
By 4:30, our day is over, and when Barbara’s mom arrives, I’m told that she will take me home. I hold one of Mrs. Goldstein’s hands and Barbara holds the other as we walk around to the Middle Entrance to take the main elevator in my wing of the building up to the fourth floor. Mrs. Goldstein has blonde hair that she wears in a ponytail, and she has on blue jeans with a simple white shirt and flat slip-on shoes. She looks very unlike my own mother, but she is always nice when I come over to Barbara’s apartment, where jazz and classical music often play in the background. They don’t even own a TV.
On the way up to the apartment, Mrs. Goldstein tells me that my mom is home and that we have visitors. I should be a good girl and listen carefully to what my mom needs me to do. Also, there’s a chance that I’ll be coming over to their apartment later today for cookies and milk if my mom is too busy to look after me.
I half-listen, although what she says is odd and should focus my attention. When we arrive home, the front door is ajar. Inside, my mom sits at the dining room table with two policemen dressed in dark blue uniforms. Dennis sits in the living room with another man, official-looking, but dressed in a dark business suit. I scan the apartment: some kitchen cabinet drawers are open, and the big silver samovar on top of the sideboard is missing.
My mom rises to greet us.
“Edna, would you like Rachel to stay with us for a few hours? It would be no trouble.” Mrs. Goldstein bends toward my mom, gives her a polite hug, then holds her gently by the shoulders.
“No, Gail, not necessary. She’ll be fine. Thanks so much for picking her up.”
“Anything more I can do?” Mrs. Goldstein asks.
“No, really, you’ve helped tremendously. I’ll call if I need you, though.”
“Yes, please do. Don’t hesitate.” Mrs. Goldstein bends down and gives me a rather strong hug. It is only then that I notice Barbara, standing too quietly outside the apartment.
“Be a good girl,” Mrs. Goldstein admonishes. “A good girl for your mommy.”
I’m only home for ten minutes before my Aunt Em—who lives in the apartment directly beneath ours, with my Uncle Leo and my two cousins, Sheryl and Ellen—comes to get me. Aunt Em is my favorite aunt. She has bright red hair, teased high so that light shines through it. She also has a cartoon face, highlighted by cat-eye, rhinestone eyeglasses that glitter when she moves her head. Her head is always in motion. And her thick Brooklyn accent flattens her words so that I love to hear her speak. I also love her hugs, tight and intimate.
Before I leave with Aunt Em, my mom tells me that we have been robbed, that Dennis was home, and that a bad man had tied him up with daddy’s work ties, put a pillowcase over his head so that he couldn’t witness the robbery. Dennis is fine, but I’m not supposed to mention the robbery to anyone.
Mom takes me in her arms. “Not to anyone,” she whispers in my ear.