I’ve mentioned that I had a fast rise through public school. My Minsker Godol blood worked for me, and I also had luck. A new school, P.S. 75, opened in our neighborhood in the field where our haunted house had stood; the watchman my mother clobbered with a brick (“How dare you strike my child?”) had been guarding that construction. Kids were transferred there en masse, and in the disorder, I tended to float upward. A class would get crowded, and I would be spot-promoted to make room. The higher class would be learning something strange like fractions, or the subjunctive mood, and I would have to sweat to get my bearings; but I was doing all right, until I overtook Frankenthal.
Frankenthal had made considerable noise on Aldus Street about being promoted to the seventh grade, where pupils changed classrooms and teachers every hour; no more of that kid stuff, said Frankenthal, all day with one teacher! “DEE-part-mental! Wow!” My sister Lee had reached the seventh grade a year before, and ever since had put on airs about her DEE-part-mental status. Frankenthal mouthed on and on about this, though he professed contempt for the whole school system. Paul abounded in dirty rhymes, rumors, and jokes about teachers; as, “Mrs. Hennessy is suing the city for building the sidewalk too close to her ass”; also, about a big-bosomed one who dealt out “zips,” or zeroes, wholesale:
Tramp tramp tramp
The tits are bouncing,
Lizzie Reed is at the door,
We will take her book of zips
And we’ll throw it at her tits
And Lizzie won’t be dizzy any more.
Paul had a mind that sieved out knowledge and collected crap like that. My memory may appear similar, but it more nearly resembles an attic where everything accumulates, precious or worthless.
Anyway, Paul was mighty impressed with his seventh-grade status, and for once he had nothing but praise for a teacher. Mr. Winston, his home-room teacher, looked just like Douglas Fairbanks, he declared, and moreover was a regular guy who fucked all the lady teachers. Paul boasted of this as though he were doing it himself, a clear case of identification with his hero. He was comfortably ahead of all of us, thirteen years old, secure in his double eminence as king of Aldus Street and “departmental” pupil; when into Mr. Winston’s room, led by Miss McGrath of the sixth grade, ambled none other than Davey Goodkind of Apartment 5-D, short, noncombative, something of a religious mollycoddle, nothing of a rock thrower, obtusely innocent, aged nine and a half. “Here’s your new pupil,” said Miss McGrath, with whom I was then in love, to Mr. Winston, who indeed had a Douglas Fairbanks dash about him. I noted the gleam in his eye at my dear Miss McGrath, and the way she flirtatiously bridled as she left. Hmmm! Was he—was she—perish the thought!
Mr. Winston sat me down in a vacant front seat. I was brokenhearted at being parted from Miss McGrath. Mr. Winston’s talk at the blackboard about square roots was pure scary Chinese. I’d been in Miss McGrath’s class only one month, earning a C in effort for dreaming in class, mainly about her. I was not happy at being shoved upward again, and at home that night I did not mention my new rise. I was all grief over Miss McGrath, and loathsome suspicion that she and Mr. Winston were “doing it,” probably that very night. Why, I’d seen the lascivious looks they had exchanged! And there was my fear of Frankenthal, too. I’d have done well to concentrate on that, and not on Miss McGrath’s hideous fornication with Mr. Winston.
Next day I thought I caught on to the idea of square roots. Patiently and wearily, Mr. Winston was going over and over the ground to an uncomprehending class, calling pupils to the blackboard to struggle through simple examples. I began to work the problems for myself on a scratch pad. Frankenthal’s turn at the board came. Mr. Winston wrote
and handed the chalk to Paul, who stared at the board with blank hostility. I raised my hand and blurted, “Teacher, isn’t the answer twenty-five?”
“Excellent, David!” Mr. Winston flashed me such a charming Douglas Fairbanks grin that I instantly changed my mind about him. This fine clean-cut man couldn’t possibly be “doing it” to Miss McGrath. In fact, I didn’t care all that much about Miss McGrath, anyway. “David, come up here and show Paul how you figured that out.” Frankenthal gave me the chalk, with a mutter. Also a look. He stalked off to his desk; and as I worked out the problem on the board he sat glaring at me. Talk about the evil eye!
I may be blowing all sympathy for myself with this disclosure. We have all known such obnoxious little smart-asses who jump in with the answers. Okay? Now just a word in my own defense. You have to envision my peculiar status on Aldus Street. Inside Apartment 5-D I was the petted jewel, but on the outside I was a nobody, a dud at one-a-cat and stickball, by no means the worst of the kids—there was always Howard Rubin—but among the dregs when it came to choosing up sides. A minor Paul Frankenthal hanger-on, I admired him, and despite his faults, felt a sort of affection for him. He was our leader. That he was number one seemed to be in the way of nature. And yet I felt that my own street ranking was off the mark. Maybe I had absorbed Mama’s yoxenta spirit. Small and street-inept though I was, I thought myself a yoxen. The square root of 625 gave me my first chance to meet Paul Frankenthal mano a mano, and I leaped to the contest.
That afternoon I told Mama about my square root coup. For once I had bested the mighty Frankenthal, and I was feeling pretty good. Mr. Winston had patted my back when I finished at the board and said, “That’s remarkable.” I told Mom this. I told her that Paul Frankenthal was in my new class, and that it was Paul I had floored. Mama made me repeat the whole story, asking a lot of questions. “The square root of 625, eh? And where do you sit? And where does Paul sit? And he couldn’t figure it out? What an overgrown dope! Here’s a quarter for skipping, I’m proud of you. Hm! The square root of 625, you say? I have to borrow a cup of sugar from Mrs. Frankenthal.” And she was off like a race horse. Her sugar jar was in plain sight, brim full. I guess she overlooked it.
A quarter! Half the Aldus Street kids trooped with me down to the Woolworth’s on Southern Boulevard, to share my haul of five-and-ten cent sweets, while a hard core stayed behind with Frankenthal when he sneered, “Who wants your shitty candy?” God, how heady that was, leading Aldus Street kids away from Paul Frankenthal! And in those days, what piles of candy you could get at Woolworth’s for a nickel! After loading up my followers with chocolate twists, gumdrops, and sugar corns, I left them, to gorge by myself on a strawberry ice-cream soda and a charlotte russe. Never before had I experienced such sheer joy of life. At nine and a half I was as innocent as Adam before the fall. I thought I had simply come into my own, a big yoxen, and high time!
***
Right after the lunch hour a few days later, the white-coated school doctor came in with two nurses bearing trays, swabs, bottles, and syringes. A diphtheria scare was on. We Bronx kids had been through these mass inoculations before, an awful business of getting stuck with needles at school. The burning lumps on our arms could ache and sting for days, but go fight City Hall! The pupils unhappily trudged up and bared their arms, as the doctor called names from a bundle of health records. They shrank under the puncturing and returned to their seats, trying to smile. Paul Frankenthal of course made a great grinning swagger of his turn. I sat in a funk. I had a deep horror of needles.
“Israel Godkin,” called the doctor.
He had to mean me, nobody else had a name remotely like that, but I sat frozen. Mr. Winston struck in, “That must be Good-kīnd, Doctor.”
The doctor squinted at the miswritten card through thick glasses. He had been stabbing wincing children for days, and the strain seemed to be telling on him. “All right,” he grumbled. “Goodkind. Israel Goodkind.”
“And that should be David,” said Mr. Winston.
“No David here,” snapped the doctor, brandishing the card. “Israel! Just Israel.” By now all the eyes in the class were directed at me. “You! Are you Goodkind? STAND!”
“Well? And are you David or Israel?”
I was mute; struck dumb by the Dracula gaze of Paul Frankenthal, in the direct line of sight from me to the doctor. In those eyes was the glitter of sunset, and in his white smile were fangs. On Aldus Street I was Davey, and always had been. Nothing else. My father’s pet name for me, “Yisroelke,” had never registered among the kids.
“Well? Do you have a brother named Israel here in school, or what? Speak up, child.”
Child! The man who had solved the square root of 625!
“My name is Israel David,” I choked out.
“Well then, Israel David, come on up here.” I stood still, embarrassed and paralyzed. In a tremendous burst of medical wit the doctor added, “Don’t be afraid, Izzy. You may have two names, but you’ll only get one needle.”
An insane gale of classroom laughter! Even Mr. Winston—I forgive him, he’s undoubtedly in his grave—even Mr. Winston laughed. Frankenthal’s face lit up in a frightful smile, as I passed him on the way to the needle. “Hi, Izzy,” he hissed.
***
A short disquisition on “Izzy,” reader. This happened back in the 1920’s. You have to grasp what “Izzy” meant then, or the rest of this part will make no sense; the whole rest of this book, in fact.
In 1948, as all the world knows, the State of Israel was reborn. Five Arab states at once invaded it, and Israel won its War of Independence. American Jews like myself—I was then just starting law practice—were stunned by this military miracle, and filled with a new wondering pride in our people. At the time, Jewish nightclub comedians worked one joke hard.
Fine thing, the new Jewish state. Just great. Only it’s a shame they called it Israel. Why didn’t they name it Irving?
The attitude is so dated that the joke is no joke any more, but it does suggest what “Izzy” implied in the 1920’s. And not only Izzy; Abey, Ikey, Jakey—that is, the three patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—were the standard Jew names in cartoons, vaudeville routines, and dirty jokes.
Izzy comes home and finds his best friend Abey in bed with his wife, see? He says, “Vot’s dis? Abey, mine bast frand, you! Und you, Reba, mine own vibe! How could diss heppen, und—say, you could at least stop, vile I’m talking to you!”
And so forth. Hundreds, hundreds of jokes and songs. Always Izzy, Abey, Ikey, Jakey. There was even a comic popular song about Izzy, at the time I entered Winston’s class; in a burlesque Jew accent, a wife who suspects she has a rival wails, “Whose Izzy izzy, izzy yours or izzy mine?”
Nobody worried about ethnic sensitivities then. Nobody thought about them. There were Jew jokes, Irish jokes, wop jokes, nigger jokes, ad infinitum, and all, all the Jew butts were Izzy, Ikey, Jakey, or Abey. The immigrants, arriving with old-country biblical names, had fixed the stereotypes. Their children and grandchildren, in protective mimicry, took to using Irving and Irwin for Israel, Arthur and Alan for Abraham, and so on; what I’ve called the inside and outside names. Nowadays, of course, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Israel are perfectly fine American names once more; they can even have a tart New England ring to them, if they go with suitable manners, dress, education, and possessions, instead of with beards, skullcaps or derby hats, thick accents, and pushcarts.
Now you are ready to hear what happened on Aldus Street that night. It was Halloween.