New York, N.Y.
July 30, 1956
“We hardly ever see anyone from Mail, and Mail hardly ever sees anyone from Addressograph, and so long as they do what they do and we do what we do no one hardly ever sees no one and everyone’s happy… The guy that Salazar replaced—Salazar’s the guy you replaced—told Salazar that there’s two of ’em in the mail room, and ’cause no one hardly ever sees no one there, the guys there take ‘port and starboard’ liberty just about every day.”
“One day on, one day off! Every day?”
“Not counting weekends when we’re shut down altogether, yeah, towards the middle of the month when it ain’t busy.”
****
“Dumdumdumdumdumdumdumdum!” Ruby sang along with the music and, Clack…clack…clack! pounded away on the Addressograph machine.
Clack…clack! “Shit! Em, eh…” Mitchell pushed the back space key four times and the erase key four times and tried to pound away on the Addressograph machine.
****
Traffic crossing the Brooklyn Bridge was stop and go.
“Where you from, Mitch?”
Surprised this hadn’t come up before, “Chicago.”
“Ol’ ‘Chi’ town, ’eh. So tell me, your town really as windy as they say?”
Mitchell glanced at Ruby.
He’d never thought of Chicago as “his town” till recently. Actually, New York City was the only other big city he had ever been to, and until he’d married Marsha and moved to Seagate, the people he had met, the men on the Halfmoon and at Rockaway Life Boat Station—with the exception of Warrant Officer Floyd Richard Ewing—were friendly enough. But now, thinking specifically of the unfriendly group of men at Third District Headquarters and the people in their building, of whom, besides their immediate neighbors, Lou and Grace Weiner and Mrs. Tennenbaum—the old lady that owned the apartment building they lived in—no one had made much of an attempt to be friendly.
“Yeah, pal,” answering Ruby’s question, “it sure does get windy, but no worse than here at times, except maybe downtown or along Michigan Boulevard. But one thing about Chicago: the people there are really friendly. I haven’t been all over, but from what I’ve been told and seen, no one’s as friendly as mid-westerners… Where you from, Ruby?”
“Baltimore now, but my mother is originally from New Orleans. That’s why I’m named Rubidoux. It’s French. You see, I’m named after my great, great grandpa…” looking at Mitchell, “who was a slave holder.”
Stopped in traffic, “a slave holder?” Looking to his right, his eyes locked with Ruby’s.
Knowing only what he had learned of the south in school, to a twentieth century boy from Chicago, slavery—even thought history books said it existed—was a phenomenon that was so far removed from Mitchell’s mind that it was almost an incomprehensible fact.
“You mean he actually owned slaves… ‘Owned’ people? No shit!”
“Yeah, he did! And ol’ Rubidoux—and from what I’ve been told he was a miserable son of a bitch—forced his, uh, attentions on my great, great gra’ma. And his son, Rubidoux Junior and, oh, God, how I hope both’a them fuckers are rotting in hell, forced himself onto my great gra’ma, even though she was only twelve.”
Another incomprehensible fact: “Twelve!” Hearing the horn from the car behind, Mitchell pressed on the accelerator. “You mean they were able to do stuff like that? To just, uh, do ‘it’ if they wanted? To anyone?”
“Mitch, those fuckers were like kings!” Ruby said bitterly. “They were the ‘masters’! They could do whatever the fuck they wanted to anyone, so long as they were shvartzers and the fuckers owned ’em!”
“But, Ruby, a white guy? To just, uh, do it with a Negro girl?”
“Jesus, Lipensky, you’re so naïve! Fuck ’em, ya mean! You don’t think white guys want to fuck shvartzers?”
A memory: You don’t think white guys want to fuck shvartzers?
****
Mitchell remembered when he was… what, sixteen? When most of the Caucasian families had moved from his old neighbourhood on the west side of Chicago and the Negro families had moved in; when—although he did enjoy doing it and was glad it had happened—when he was trapped into playing softball with Junior Johnson and some other Negro kids.
Junior had introduced Mitchell to his girlfriend, Louise, and even then, more than six years later, in his mind’s eye, he could see her.
Louise was small, about 5' 2", and young, possibly just fourteen. Dark skinned, almost black, Louise had a thin nose with wide nostrils, full, but from his viewpoint not too full, sensuous lips and, for a girl of her size and age, unusually large breasts.
When Junior introduced them he’d thought: God, what a beautiful girl! And a moment later, noticing the circular protrusions of her nipples beneath the tightly stretched material of her cotton T-shirt, his heart thudding, his penis engorging, not knowing how to respond to Louise or what might be considered an insult and certainly, at that time, completely intimidated by Junior and his friends, merely muttering a timid, “Hi.” Mitchell turned away from the girl wondering if there was something wrong with him for wanting… Hell at that moment he would have given anything he had to be alone with Louise, naked with Louise, to look at, touch, and suckle on those, oh, God, wonderful tits… And maybe, maybe even fuck Louise…
And he did!
For the next two months, until his family moved from the west side to Skokie, Mitchell looked at, touched, and suckled on those, oh, God! wonderful tits.
And indeed Mitchell did fuck Louise!
And he did it night after night and occasionally in the afternoon… in his hand held fantasies.
And during that time, when he thought about it, the fact that her skin was black only added to the mystique of Louise.
****
You don’t think white guys want to fuck shvartzers?
“Yeah, Ruby, I guess you’re right. I met this beautiful Negro girl once…”
“Mitch,” cutting him off, “did you think of her as a girl first, or a shvartzer first?”
“Jesus, Ruby,” he said defensively, “she was beautiful!”
“Yeah!” Turning on the seat, gauging the depth of their budding friendship, looking at Mitchell intently, “but what did you feel about this girl, Mitch? What did you really feel about this girl?”
Glancing to the right, thinking, he brought his eyes forward again.
Mitchell did not know word “mulatto” and thought of Ruby in the old west term of “half-breed.” As shocked as he had been when he’d first met him that morning, now, looking at him, he was surprised because he no longer saw Ruby as a white shvartzer but as a friend, and felt that as a friend it would be for the best if he told the truth about Louise and that long ago meeting, although he was not sure he really knew the answer to the question.
“She was beautiful, Ruby! And to tell truth, I’d have given everything I owned—which sure as hell wasn’t much—just to see her tits… And when I first saw her I thought of her as…” He stopped. “When I first met Louise I thought of her as just a beautiful girl and wanted to look at her tits and fuck her more than anything in the world! Then—I’m sorry, Ruby—but then I thought that maybe something was wrong with me, and felt ashamed of myself for wanting to fuck a…” Hesitating, not knowing if he should use the slang, Yiddish word, but, What the hell, he thought, Ruby uses it. “I felt ashamed of myself for wanting to fuck a shvartzer.”
Satisfied with the honest answer, “Know what, Mitch? Maybe you and I can be friends.” Looking forward, quiet a few seconds, “Anyway,” going on with his story, “my great, great grandpa raped…”
The rancor in Ruby’s voice causing Mitchell to glance at him again.
“…my great, great gra’ma and thirteen years later the old fucker’s son, Rubidoux Junior, raped my great gra’ma, only he didn’t knock her up. And then a little something happened called the Civil War and my great, great gra’ma ran away north to Baltimore. But Baltimore is on the Mason-Dixon Line so even with the Civil War things weren’t so great there either, and after another ‘mixed breeding’ with my great gra’ma my gra’ma came along, who was a real pretty ‘high yellow’ lady that was able to pass…”
“Pass? What’s ‘high yellow’ mean, and what do you mean by ‘pass’?”
“High yellow means her skin was almost white, and that she had Caucasian features; you know, straight hair and with a nose and lips like yours—like a white person. Understand?”
Nodding his head, “Yeah.”
“And she was able to become… to pretend she was white: to ‘pass’ for white.” Expecting a question, Ruby stopped. When none came, “My grandpa thought my gra’ma was white, but when my mama was born she had just enough of my great gra’ma’s features for grandpa to think he knew she wasn’t white. So grandpa—I hope he’s rotting in hell with alongside the Rubidouxs—threw my gra’ma out with my mama, and twenty years later someone came along who’d just migrated from Germany: my daddy, Doctor Lewis Meyers. He and mama fell in love, and even though mama told him she wasn’t white, that she was… is a shvartzer, papa didn’t care.
“So they were married and were able to keep mama’s secrete till, lo and behold, I was born.” Chuckling, “An’ here I be’s ‘Mas’sa’! Why my mama ever wanted to be reminded of those assholes back in New Orleans, and why she named me Rubidoux, I’ll never know!” He laughed. “Except being a white, Jewish shvartzer and having a name like Rubidoux Meyers maybe would only tend to toughen me up.” Flexing his right arm, thick biceps swelling beneath the taunt flesh, “That’s why I worked so hard to get these, and to keep ’em. And when I was younger, unless it was a bunch’a kids—hell, it was shvartzer kids as much as white kids—if it was only one or two at a time I’d take ’em both on and beat the shit out of ’em!”
His voice beginning to rise again, looking at him, “Take it easy, pal.” Patting Ruby’s knee, “You’re among friends.”
Leaning back, closing his eyes, “Yeah, I know, Mitch. Sorry.” Quiet a moment, opening his eyes, “Shit, Lipensky, I even had a Bar Mitzvah!”
“Really? No shit!”
“Yeah.” Putting his hand atop his head, Ruby recited, “Baruch ata Adonai, Ehloheinu mehech haolam, borei p’ri hagafen.”
“Yeah, me too.” As his cap was on, Mitchell, too, recited, “Baruch ata Adonai…”
“When it looked like I might be drafted, I joined the Coast Guard Reserve, which bought me a little more time in college. When my active duty time came up, after some time on a buoy tender, papa pulled a couple’a strings and got me shipped to H.Q… But when that prick Frohlick took a look at me, he knew just where I belonged—except I type sixty, seventy words a minute and if anyone should be in the front office, it’s me!”
“But instead they stuck you in Addressograph.”
“Yeah. But you know what?” Not waiting for an answer, “I’m glad, ’cause I come and go as I please and do whatever the hell I want, and, like I said, so long’s I do my job nobody bothers with me. And now that you’re here and I don’t even have to ride the fuckin’ subway, life is just fine!
“What were you taking in college?”
“I started with business administration, but papa wanted me to try pre-med so I applied, and when this is over,” pointing to the Coast Guard shield sewn on the sleeve of Mitchell’s tunic, “that’s what I’ll do.”
“Jesus, Ruby,” said in near awe, “a doctor!”
Catching the tone of his voice, laughing, “Mitch, I don’t know if I can even get into premed, and if I do it’ll be years before I’m a doctor… How’s about you? Were you in college?”
“Yeah.” Thinking, For a month. “But not for long.”
“What were you taking?”
Answering honestly, “Taking up space mostly.”
“What are your plans when you get out? You going back to college?”
“Don’t remember if I told you, but my wife’s expecting…”
“No, you didn’t! I can’t believe it! We’ve talked all day and you never mentioned that your wife’s pregnant.”
“I don’t know why I didn’t say anything.” Wondering to himself: Fear of the future? Maybe because I let it happen? “Guess it just slipped my mind. Well, anyway she is, and I’ll have a wife and baby to support. And to tell the truth, I’ve never been much of a student. Matter of fact, I was one of those guys that did nothing but fuck up in school, so I guess I’ll be going to work for my dad as a salesman. He’s a commercial photographer and has a studio downtown, in Chicago.”
“You interested in photography?”
“No, not really, but I can’t think of anything else to do.” Wanting to change the subject, “I imagine most of the single guys live in Manhattan, closer to the office. How come you live in Brooklyn?”
“Because it’s closer to my girlfriend’s house. Sherry lives in Brooklyn, with her folks.”
“Hey, I’ve got an idea! Let me check with Marsha first…” Their very first argument had been caused when Mitchell had made a plan without consulting Marsha. So he’d learned, early into their marriage—two days into their marriage to be exact—that Marsha wanted to be consulted whenever he made a plan that included her, or, actually, whenever he made any plan. “…but maybe, on Saturday, if you’re not busy, you and your girlfriend can come over for dinner, and then maybe we’ll sit around and talk or go to a movie or something. What if I let you know tomorrow?”
“Sounds good to me, Mitch. I’ll check with Sherry, too.”
Marsha usually worked from nine to five. Mitchell would leave the office at 4:30, and since the drive from Manhattan to the I.A.P. garage—where he traded the I.A.P vehicle for his car—and from the garage to Bensonhurst took about forty five minutes, Marsha would be waiting for him to pick her up.
****
Leaning across the seat, “Hi, baby,” he opened the door.
Sitting, “Hi!” kissing briefly. “So,” Marsha asked, “how was your day?”
“Well, it started out kind’a shitty.” Glancing in the rear view mirror, he pulled away from the curb. “Because I’m not such a hot typist, I got shipped from the office to a place way back called the Addressograph room.”
“Oh! And does this bother you?”
“Yeah, it did; at first a lot. But there’s this other, uh, really interesting guy there about my age by the name of Ruby Meyers…”
“Meyers! He Jewish?”
“He’s, uh…”—deciding—“Yeah, he is. We hit it off pretty good and it looks like him’n’me could really be pals.”
Marsha knew that although her husband had spoken jokingly about the men in the office not shooting paper clips or rubber bands at him, he was upset over the lack of friendship there so did not question the unlikely first name, at least for a man, of “Ruby.”
“He’s from Baltimore and lives in Brooklyn because his girlfriend lives there. I’m going to be giving him a lift to the office and home every day, and thought that maybe him and Sherry—that’s his girlfriend—maybe they can come over for dinner Saturday evening, then we can stay home and talk, or go to a movie.”
“Mitchell!”
“I know!” Punching her thigh softly, “I told him I’d check with you first.”
“You’re learning.”
“So, is it okay?”
Figuring she could use a friend, too, “Saturday? Sure. What should I make?”
“Let’s keep it simple.” Remembering Ruby had said he was kosher… that he was kind of kosher. “How’s about baked chicken, potatoes, peas and salad.”
