A “For Better or Worse” excerpt
“Prospective 1/ Marsha/1944”
Chicago, Illinois—Lakeside, Michigan
Leaning through the open window, “You okay on your pillow, baby?”
Bending her head backwards, looking up at him, “Yes, Daddy.”
“You’re sure? You comfortable enough?”
“Yes, Daddy.”
“Everyone set? We got everything?”
“Yes, Eli.” someone said tiredly. “We’ve got ‘ everything’, Eli!”
“Anyone have to go to the toilet?”
“ ‘Christ’,” one of the men in the front said good naturedly, “he’s ‘such’ a nudnick!”
“No, Eli,” one of the women in back giggled. “No one’s got to ‘go potty’.”
Reaching through the open window, cradling the back of the little girl’s head, protecting it from being bumped, closing the rear door Eli pulled the handle up from the inside, locking it.
The ropes holding the bale of items atop the car and the overly loaded, ajar, trunk lid were checked once again, then, taking the outside position, sitting on the front seat he pulled the door shut. “Okay, Harry,” Eli said, “let ’er rip!”
Harry Rafkin, the driver and owner of the pre-war Cadillac, was married to Sadie, the eldest of the sisters, who—her mother excluded—considered herself the matriarch of the family.
The man sitting in the middle of the front seat was Stanley Bernstein who was married to Ida.
Ida Bernstein— nicknamed ‘Duchess’—was a regal appearing woman who ‘always’ spoke properly, ‘always’ carried herself erect and was usually royally, if not noticeably, soused.
Rhea, the youngest, and by far the most beautiful of the sisters, sat sandwiched between Sadie and Ida. Rhea’s bare feet rested on the girl’s outstretched legs, but the girl didn’t mind; matter of fact, Marsha ‘loved’ the feel of her mother touching her— even if it was only because there was no place else for Rhea to comfortably put her feet.
Marsha’s brother, Roger, and Maxine, who was her younger cousin—by four months—had left for Lakeside an hour earlier with David and Rose Wolf and their two children, Robert and Sharon. The Wolfs were neighbours and close friends having known the sisters and their husbands for years.
When Mrs. Dombroski, the old lady that owned the grove of summer cottages, had died two years earlier, knowing they would receive more money if sold separately rather than as a whole, her children offered the eight, two bedroom cottages to their present tenants at a cost below individual market value. Each of the sisters, along with the Wolfs, took advantage of the opportunity.
Slightly less than a hundred miles from the Goldman apartment on the near north side of Chicago, the route to Lakeside led along Lake Michigan, through Chicago’s south side and the sulphur smelling town of Hammond, Indiana and across the tip of Indiana into the state of Michigan.
When the demographics along the two lane highway changed from urban o rural, overhanging trees and high, grass covered embankments lined either side of the well travelled road. Fruit and cider stands abounded in both directions to catch the travellers going and, or, coming.
Reaching behind the seat, Eli patted his daughter’s knee to get her attention, then rubbing his thumb and forefinger together, indicated that he wanted to hold her hand.
Holding it, Marsha felt her ‘daddy’s’ strength.
There were calluses on the tips of Eli’s fingers and the pads of his palm, yet his hand was absolutely clean and each fingernail with a perfect white crescent, was perfectly trimmed and filed.
Moving her face to it, rubbing her cheek in the palm of her daddy’s hand, the young girl could smell the slight, clean scent of ‘Vegal Lilac’.
All of her life, whenever she would smell even the slightest hint of ‘Vegal Lilac’ or a reasonable facsimile, a feeling of nostalgia would overtake Marsha and she would be reminded of this exact moment and her father’s aftershave lotion.
Through Illinois…
Through Michigan City, Indiana, and over the ‘singing bridge’…
Into the state of Michigan.
Only eighteen miles to go!
Here’s New Buffalo. Eight miles to go!
Here’s the ‘Union Pier Bowl’ and the ‘Old Road’ cut off.
Only two miles to go.
Here’s ‘Captain Dan’s Fish and Shrimp’, and here, ‘here’! Take a left off the highway, go to the first dirt road take a right and…
‘Oh, God’! There it is!
The short road ending in a cul-de-sac, each of the eight cottages were separated by a dirt driveway and a tangle of lilac and raspberry bushes.
“ ‘We’re here’!”
Back in ‘the country’!
Smell the pine trees, the flowering bushes, the lake! Smell the air!
So cool! So sweet!
‘Oh, God’! She thought. ‘We’re back’!
Marsha ‘loved’ it there! More than anything in her life, Marsha loved the country: the beach. The lake. Her summertime friends…
The one thing missing, the ‘one’ thing that would make summer perfect: Mother.
The men must work, Marsha was aware of this. But her aunt Sadie and her aunt Ida and Mrs. Wolf —whom she called ‘Aunt Rose’ and ‘all’ the other mothers in the grove remained with their children. So why couldn’t, why ‘wouldn’t’ her mother stay too? Maybe…? Maybe this summer she would.
On Sunday evenings the men, Uncle Harry, Uncle Stan, and Mister Wolf—whom Marsha called ‘Uncle David’—and her daddy all piled into Harry Rafkin’s Cadillac leaving David Wolf’s Buick for the women to use for shopping or in the event of an emergency, and drove back to Chicago. And last year and the year before, for the two years the family had been summering at Lakeside, Rhea went with them.
It was not as though she ‘had’ to go, she ‘wanted’ to go, and nobody—so they said—could understand why, or if they did, no one admitted as to why they thought she wanted to go or what she did alone in the hot apartment during the day while Eli was at work from early Monday morning to Friday afternoon when the men and Rhea got together once again to drive back to Lakeside for the weekend.
If Eli had ever tried to understand the motivations of his wife, he had long since given up trying. Or, more then likely, he truly did not want to know.
Rhea rationalised leaving her children alone with the thought that Roger could, more or less take care of himself and, to some degree, his sister. Besides, Rhea ‘knew’ that her sisters and the other women of the cove were there to help, supervise and watch over Roger and Marsha.
Sadly, Rhea was mistaken on all counts.
Roger, like many older siblings, disliked his sister, at first thinking of her as an interloper, a pest that came along and diluted his parents love and attention.
Although, concerning the love of his mother, Roger had ‘no’ need to worry for all Rhea had ‘ever’ wanted was ‘one’ child: ‘Roger’… And any outward display of motherly love or attention to Marsha was given ‘only’ for the benefit of other people or was accidental or was administered by Rhea as sarcasm that Roger sometimes misconstrue d as affection.
The affection Roger’s father readily bestowed on Marsha was a far different matter, of course.
Although he could not put his feelings into words, even at age twelve Roger considered his father an inconsequential dupe and a cuckold, and truly did not care if his sister received ‘all’ of their father’s love and attention because Roger blamed Eli, because…
****
On May 12, 1943, having an earache and excused from school, eleven year old Roger Goldman had been sent home at 1:40 p.m.
Expecting his mother to be napping or out as she so often was when he came home from school, using his back-door key, Roger let himself into the two bedroom apartment.
First going to the room that he ‘very’ unhappily, shared with his seven year old sister then, upon hearing a strange kind of whimpering sound coming from the far end of the apartment, approaching quietly, standing just outside the not quite closed door of his parents bedroom, looking through the crack there…
Lying nude on the bed, his legs spread from side to side, was Manuel Berger: ‘Uncle’ Manny, and…
Her back to him, though, of course he had never seen her naked, Roger knew it was his mother because of her long, black hair. And besides, who else would be on his mother’s bed?
On her haunches, Rhea’s buttocks, rectum and the hairy underside of her vulva open to her son’s view— positioned between Uncle Manny’s thighs, hunched over with her mouth on Uncle Manny’s…
Because even an eleven year old boy knows the guttural names for minimally two of the components of his body, most especially ‘that’ component, Why’s mom kissin’ Uncle Manny’s prick? Roger had wondered naively. Then, because most eleven year old boys, at least in his school, had seen at least one ‘eight- pager’. Holy cow, he thought disgustedly, she’s givin’ Uncle Manny a blow job! And, as he—also by courtesy of eight pagers—knew the guttural names of some female body components, most especially ‘that’ component, Wow! he thought… But because she ‘was’ his mother, he ‘really’ didn’t want to look… But because he was eleven and curious and she ‘was’ female and exposed, after all, and because he thought she was beautiful and he loved her, and ‘especially’ loved being held to her bosom, at times Roger did wonder about his mother and, ‘whenever’ the occasion presented itself, he would go out of his way to sneak a look at—the other known female component, or components—her ‘tits’. And because this was the very first time he’d ‘ever’ had the opportunity to see ‘that’, even if she ‘was’ his mother. Though repulsed by, ‘one’: that he’d caught his mother giving Uncle Manny a blow job; ‘two’: that his mother was naked; ‘three’: that he was looking at his mother naked; and ‘four’: that even though he was repulsed by numbers one, two, and three… I got a boner! So, hardly daring to breath, Roger ‘did’ look and, Wow! he thought again. That’s what a lady’s cunt looks like!
Later, consciously, Roger ‘had’ tried to block the scene from his mind, but subconsciously couldn’t and after a nocturnal emission with his mother as, ‘literally’, the girl of his dreams—and a few emissions that were not nocturnal—which caused him a ‘great’ amount of guilt that he juxtaposed as anger at his father because Roger ‘truly’ believed, or wanted to believe, that his father did not know about his mother. Otherwise, as a member of the male sex, Roger wondered, Otherwise why wouldn’t he kill her? Roger ‘did’, nonetheless, blame Eli for allowing this to happen. But because of Myron, his ‘very best friend —whose parents were divorced— cried daily, Roger refused to mention the ‘Uncle Manny’ incident to his father, or ‘anyone’ else.
****
As for the sisters…
Shortly after the birth of Marsha, Rhea began to repeat the pattern she had begun when Roger was two, but had to be careful and only allow her ‘friends’ to visit while her then four year old son was napping.
Occasionally, if a ‘special friend came to visit, to be sure Roger slept maybe a little longer, and maybe a little sounder, Rhea would crush a quarter—and now and then half—a ‘phino’ and feed it to her son in a teaspoon of applesauce.
One year later, when Roger began his half day session of kindergarten, things became easier for Rhea. Then, when he began school full time, it opened the day completely and it wasn’t too hard for the next two years, until…
Born in 1936. When, approaching four, Marsha began to ask questions about ‘that man’, Rhea started to find excuses for dropping her daughter off at the homes of either Sadie or Ida, and soon, at least regarding Marsha, she became an all but absentee mother.
Sadie: Although not ‘really’ wanting to know the truth about her baby sister, deep down Sadie knew Rhea was seeing other men. But maybe because she herself had strong—although totally repressed—feelings about the possibility of having an affair because, ‘after all’ Harry Rafkin, the butcher, was probably the least romantic man on the face of the earth… Also, in a totally subdued way, Sadie envied Rhea’s beauty and admired the ‘chutzpah’ (the nerve) to do what she herself could just fantasise about.
Ida: The picture of naiveté, Ida believed only in what she saw and what was logically apparent. In her eyes, neither Sadie or Rhea could, nor would ‘ever’ do ‘anything’ that might be construe d as morally improper. Ida had a deep, enduring love for her husband and the mere thought of either Stanley or herself ‘ever’ being with another person was preposterous.
But for all of Ida’s proper bearing and thoughts, she ‘did’ have a number of secret friends—friends with the names of ‘Chevas Rega’, ‘Cutty Sark’, ‘Haig & Haig’ and, not being a prejudicial person, at least when it came to scotch, ‘Jonnie Walker’, either red or black.
Lavishing whatever attention and motherly love she had on the boy, both sisters knew that although Rhea was a good mother to Roger, she was just the opposite with her daughter.
It soon became apparent, even to Ida, that their sister would try to pass her responsibility onto either or both of her sisters whenever possible.
In the beginning, caring for Marsha really did not bother Sadie or Ida because they each had their own children and one more sweet little girl once a week or so wouldn’t make that much difference.
But in time, Sadie and Ida began to feel that it just wasn’t right for Marsha to be deprived of the loving care and attention of her ‘own’ mother. So the two sisters entered into a conspiracy and, so they’d convinced themselves, “If we don’t watch over Marsha, or even feed Marsha; if we pay no attention to Marsha,”—so they’d erroneously reasoned—“sooner or later Rhea will get the idea and accept her responsibility and begin to act like a mother to her daughter, too.”
But Rhea did not and…
The major problem for Marsha was that Sadie and Ida rarely turned their sister down when asked to leave her daughter in their care. But once in the home of her aunts Marsha was all but ignored. When she was younger the sisters would, whenever possible, feed their children before Marsha arrived or after she left. So on many occasions the little girl did not eat at all. When she became older, Marsha would be sent home when it came time for lunch or dinner to somehow shift for herself.
Of course, this ill treatment of their niece did cause Sadie and Ida—who were basically good people—guilt. “But it’s for Marsha’s own good,” they’d rationalise. “And if ‘we’ don’t take care of her, maybe her mother will!”
But Rhea never did.
As for Roger: Again, like many older sibling, Roger would go out of his way to be spiteful, and mentally and physically hurtful to his younger sister. But primarily picking up on the actions of his mother and aunts, Roger mostly ignored Marsha too.
As for Marsha....
As a young girl shunted from one aunt to the other. As she grew older, when not in the home of her aunts, given money by mother’s ‘friends’ or ‘uncles’ and shoved outside and later warned—and sometimes beaten by her mother and warned—constantly to, ‘not ever, ‘ever’, say anything to your father’!
Though never catchin Rhea as Roger had, eventually Marsha realized what her mother did while she was with her aunts, or out in the cold, or out in the heat, or snow, or rain.
But out of fear of her mother and brother, and especially because of her love for her father and ‘knowing’ how he loved his wife and ‘ not’ wanting to see him hurt. And most certainly ‘not’ wanting her parents to divorce and then being sent to live with gypsies, Marsha said nothing to her father.
****
What began as a conspiracy by two sisters to teach a mother to care for her daughter, became an unlearned lesson for the mother… and a lifelong punishment for the daughter.
To be continued as…"Marsha 2/1944"
However, first let us go back to Mitchell at: "Baylor 2/American Children"
