“Becoming” Excerpts
Chicago, Illinois
1946 Atomic Ring +
_________________________________________________
October 19, 1946
The Atomic Ring
It came!
Finally, after two months of running up and down the stairs checking to see if the mail came—and if it did, did ‘it’ come—on this day it did.
The box was smaller than he’d thought, no more than three inches square. There was a miniature ‘ Ovaltine’ logo on the left corner, and on the right, in self-depreciating type, the caption read, ‘ THIRD CLASS MAIL’.
Putting the box to his ear, he shook it. Then sitting on the top step, using his house key, he cut through the brown paper tape that held the two halves of the box together. Inside, the treasure he’d so anxiously awaited was held bondage by a crumpled piece of paper. Carefully, so it didn’t slip out of the paper and fall and break on the marble step, the boy lifted the crinkled package out of the box, put it on his lap and unwrapped it.
There it was!
Sunlight streaming through the plate glass door reflected on its multifaceted, diamond-like, clear plastic dome. Embossed in the self-adjusting, ‘one size fits all’ gold plated tin ring, around the dome it said: ‘Captain Midnight’ with the two clock hands pointed straight up in the ‘midnight’ position.
Running up two flights of stairs he tripped on the second floor landing and almost fell. Regaining his balance, he rushed up the last flight and through the door into the apartment and yelled at his mother, “It came!” as he…
“Mitchell, ‘stop running’!”
…ran into his bedroom slamming the door behind him.
Sitting on the edge of the bed he laid the paper on the blanket and smoothed the wrinkles with the flat of his hand.
CAPTAIN MIDNIGHT’S SECRET SQUADRON ATOMIC RING.
HOLD RING TEN INCHES FROM ARTIFICIAL LIGHT FOR THIRTY SECONDS.
GO INTO DARK ROOM. HOLD RING TWELVE INCHES FROM EYES.
“That’s it?” he said aloud, turning the paper over. “That’s all it says?” Thinking, It don’t say nothing about millions of flashing, colored lights like the guy on the radio said. Or as ‘if you’re standing in the middle of a shower of shooting stars’! Turning the paper over again, seeing nothing other than what he’d already seen, he then looked in both halves of the box to see if there was something that he’d missed. There wasn’t.
Disappointed, but, Oh, well. Tilting the shade back, turning the light on, holding the ring approximately ten inches from the lamp on his dresser, the boy counted to 30, then went into his closet and closed the door.
As the door closed he did see ‘millions of flashing, colored lights’, but the lights were from the rapid dilation of his pupils caused by staring at the naked light bulb then going into the total darkness of the closet… But nary a twinkle from ‘Captain Midnight’s Atomic Ring’.
****
“Mom, what’s a second?”
“Huh?” Myra looked at her son as though he were an idiot.
“I mean, exactly how long? Like counting ‘one, two, three’?”
“Well, no, it’s more like, ‘one-and-two-and-three’.”
Thinking, I’ll do it longer this time. Holding the ring to the bulb he counted, ‘one-and-two-and-three’… to sixty, then went back in the closet… to the sunburst of phantom lights from his pin-point pupils.
****
“Mom, read these instructions an’ tell me if I’m doin’ somethin’ wrong.”
Myra looked at the crinkled paper. “Mitchie, are you looking directly at the light when you hold the ring there?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“Well ‘on’t’. Close your eyes and turn your face away.”
Back in his bedroom, he again held the ring to the light and counted slowly to sixty, but this time, averting his face, Mitchell closed his eyes…
With his eyes still closed he groped his way into the closet, closed the door, held the ring in front of his face and opened his eyes.
At first he saw only black, then, as his eyes became fully adjusted to the darkness, he saw a small green dot. If he moved the ring closer the dot got bigger. If he moved the ring away the dot got smaller. If he moved the ring in orbit around his face, the dot trailed in a small circle…
No ‘Flashing, colored lights’.
No ‘Shower of shooting stars’.
For the cost of three ‘Ovaltine’ labels and a quarter—one full week’s allowance—Mitchell Lipensky had received a rapidly fading green dot and, sadly, one of life’s lessons: The knowledge ‘ that you do not always get what you pay for’.
_______________________________________________________
Chicago, Illinois
August 22–23, 1947
A Bar Mitzvah Story
Blue and red shadows from the blinking ‘Carta Blanca Beer’ sign on the top of the building kitty-corner from his flashed across the ceiling and walls of his bedroom.
Indistinguishable voices speaking in Spanish and the sounds of laughter came through the open, sliding wall of carpet cleaning plant three stories below.
Screeching breaks, clanging streetcars… and the heat.
Twisting on the sweat-dampened sheet, Got to get to sleep! Tomorrow’s the day and I’ve ‘got to get to sleep’!
If he pulled the window shade down to block the flashing light it also blocked whatever slight breeze there was, and in this night’s heat closing the window was completely out of the question. Turning onto his stomach, the boy momentarily solved the dual problems of sound and light by putting his face onto the pillow and folding it over his ears… For about ten seconds, until the heat of the feather pillow became unbearable... Then he turned onto his back again.
Maybe, if I think I’m cool and don’t think of nothing else, maybe I’ll fall asleep. Composing himself. Lying with his arms and legs spread so air could circulate the length of his body, closing his eyes, Mitchell thought, I feel cool! I am not hot! Then he thought of nothing, literally nothing… ‘Nothing’! Don’t think of nothing! …Except for thinking of ‘not’ thinking. It didn’t work and his mind returned to tomorrow.
Okay, so he couldn’t read Hebrew, at least not enough to get through the entire Hebrew phase, but he had that covered and surprisingly—no, it was not all that surprising when he thought about it. As a matter of fact—It was Rabbi Berkovitz’ idea…
****
“So, Lipensky, you know how to read from the Talmud?”
It was the first of four review and instruction classes held forty-five minutes before the start of Hebrew school for that month’s ‘Bar Mitzvah boys’.
No one was in the room but Mitchell, Donnie Weinberg and Rabbi Berkovitz.
“So? So read already!”
“B-b-ruch, a-ata,” haltingly, but trying, “A-d-onai…”
“Lipensky, come.” Berkovitz motioned to him.
Rising from his front-row seat, Mitchell walked to his desk.
Turning his book in the boy’s direction, sliding it across the desk, pointing with a nicotine-stained finger. “Read!” the old man said.
“B-ruch, a-ata, uh, A-do-onai… emm?”
“Lipensky, you got your Bar Mitzvah in five days, und you can’t even yet get by the first void, yet? So tell me, Lipensky, tell me vhut you learned, besides…” he suppressed a smile, “how to fall in a toilet?”
Donnie Weinberg, who didn’t know much more than Mitchell, snickered.
Leaning his head around Mitchell, Berkovitz glared at the other boy. “You vait, boychick,” pointing a stern finger. “it’s your turn next… So, Lipensky,” coming back to Mitchell, “read to me already!”
Trying again. “B-bruch, a-ta, A-do-nai…”
“Lipensky, you know ven your mama und papa brought you here—und they should have done it years ago, but den, ‘God forbid’, I vould have you in mein class for years—it vas so you vould learn to be a Bar Mitzvah. Vell, Lipensky, I ain’t gonna disappoint them, und you ain’t gonna disappoint them, too!” Opening a drawer the old man removed a mimeographed piece of paper and handed it across the desk. “Lipensky,” whispering, Berkovitz moved his head closer to the boy’s, who crinkled his nose at the old man’s putrid onion, garlic and tobacco breath. “I vant you should be a Bar Mitzvah for tree reasons: Von, a boy is tirteen only vonce. Two, Torah says you become a man, und should be a Bar Mitzvah ven you’re tirteen… Und also, I vant you should be hout from mein class!”
Mitchell looked at the paper. It was in Hebrew and English, and read phonetically: ‘Ba-ruch a-ta Adonai, eh-lo-hei-nu meh-lech ha-o-lam, bo-rei p’ri ha-ga-fen’.
“Lipensky, I vant dis should be our secret!”
Oh, thank you, God! Mitchell had thought, In English! I got it in English, and all’s I gotta do is memorize it.
“Hokay? No-von should know but you und me!”
“Yes, Rabbi! Believe me, I won’t tell no one!”
****
Tomorrow was Mitchell Lipensky’s Bar Mitzvah.
****
Coming off the bed he went to the window, sat on the floor and looked down through the open wall of the carpet cleaning plant three stories below.
The carpet was unrolled onto a concrete deck. First hosed with steaming water, the workers, wearing high rubber boots, pushed electric scrubbers back and forth leaving thick tendrils of foamy soap. Occasionally one of the workers, passing from one end to the other, would run and slide across the foamy carpet.
Kind’a looks like fun, Mitchell thought, except for all that steam. “Yaght!” He watched a minute longer, then went back to bed.
Now I gotta sleep! His hand moved to the band of his shorts. Maybe if I… Maybe it’ll relax me… No! Not tonight! Not the night before my Bar Mitzvah! He looked at the Baby Ben on his dresser. Almost the day of my Bar Mitzvah. His hand went to his chest… Then down again. This time, though, poking through the fly, the tip of his finger caressing the glans, Oh, God, he thought, Why’s this always happen to me?
And, as if by magic –as the parting of the Red Sea – the fly to his ‘Jockey Shorts’ parted and ‘it’ sprung through and knowing it wouldn’t, Maybe it’ll go away, he further thought as, forcing his hand up. Crossing both hands behind his head. Staring at the flickering, multi-colored ceiling. Concentrating. Whispering, he concentrated on, “ ‘Ba-ruch a-ta Adonai, Eholo-hei-nu mel-lech ha-o-lam’…”
Dropping to his stomach, “ ‘br-rei p’ri Ha-ga-fen’.” His index finger circling his navel. “ ‘Beloved parents, relatives and friends’.”
Now, holding the warm, hard protrusion. “ ‘Uh, today, emmm...” His hand moving... “Today I am...” Faster, “emmm, a man!” Faster…
“Oh, God!”
Instantly depressed. Feeling guilty. Wiping himself with a handkerchief he got off the bed, went into the living room and, as he still had the remnants of his erection, looking past the dining room and seeing that the lights were off in his parents’ bedroom, he tiptoed to the bathroom, urinated, then got back into bed.
I shouldn’t have done that! He yawned. God’ll punish me for doing that tonight! He did feel relaxed, though, as if the act of masturbation had drained him of apprehension and tension, which in fact, outside of guilt, it had. Yawning again, Mitchell Lipensky closed his eyes…
August 23, 1947
“Mitchie,” Myra Lipensky called softly through the partially open door. “today’s the big…” Pushing the door open, “uh, day.” she quickly, quietly, pulled the door back to its previous position.
Stirring, “Yeah, Mom.” the boy yawned, stretched his arms and legs and rubbed his crotch… Where his hand lingered a moment on the urine caused erection that had, once again, pushed its way through the fly of his shorts, Looking at the partially open door, he quickly pulled the summer blanket over his lower body. “I’m awake!”
****
“Walt? Mitchie, he, uh…”
Sitting on the edge of the bed, smoking this day’s first cigarette. “Yeah,Myra,” Walter Lipensky asked. “Mitchell what?”
“Walt, just now when I went to wake Mitchell…” Trying to think of a delicate way to say it.
“Myra, what in the hell’s the matter?”
“Uh, when I went to wake him the, uh, door wasn’t closed all the way and Mitchell was lying, uh, sleeping on his back, and…”
“And ‘what’?”
“Walt, his… ‘thing’, his…” pointing to her husband’s crotch, “...was out of his underwear and it looked like a man’s! You know, like you… when we, uh, make love.”
“Yeah?” Amused that she’d be so flustered over this. “So what? He probably had to ‘make’.”
“ ‘Make’?”
“For Christ sake, Myra! Your son had to go to the toilet! You do remember what happens to boys sometimes when they have to ‘make’?”
Myra had bathed, changed and dressed her two boys often enough to know that when a baby has to urinate, sometimes his little penis erects. But the last time she’d seen Mitchell’s it was a small, cute, five-year-old penis, and she’d never given thought to it growing in size along with the rest of his body—and Mitchell was big for his age, standing an inch or two taller than any of his friends—So, this morning, when she’d seen ‘it’,, ‘it” looked like a man’s and it had shocked her.
Blushing, “Oh, yes, Walt, how stupid of me.” she said. “I forgot.”
****
Remembering. Still feeling an enormous sense of guilt, coming off the bed the boy stood and the tan of his face turned a sickly khaki as, sitting again, he...—whether it ‘was’ caused by God as punishment for masturbating the night before his Bar Mitzvah, which was rather doubtful or, more the likely, due to guilt it was ‘psychosomatic’— ...Mitchell felt a sharp pain in his testicles. Standing again, supporting the weight of his scrotum in the palm of his hand, going to the window and looking skyward. “Oh, God, I’m sorry I did ‘it’ last night, and I know you’re punishing me for doing it, but please, God...” Mitchell prayed, whispering the words because he felt a prayer would not be listened to unless the words were more than a mere thought. “...don’t let there be anything wrong today! I’m sorry and I promise ‘never’ to do it again! Honest!”
****
Standing her family by the front door, inspecting, wanting them to look perfect today, “What a beautiful family I have!” Myra said proudly, adding, “Mitchie, honey, you look a little… pale.” Meaning a little green. “You feeling okay?”
“Yeah, sure, Mom. I’m just kind’a, you know, nervous.”
“Sure. I don’t blame you, not one bit.”
“Okay.” Appraising her husband and boys one last time, just to be safe, “Are we ready to go?”
“Yes! Let’s get this show on the road!” Walter lifted three-year-old Lawrence, who had slumped to the floor, back onto his feet. “Ready to see your big brother become a ‘fountain pen’?” he uncharacteristically joked, giving Mitchell a rare smile, and an even rarer wink.
“ ‘Walter’!” Myra said, feigning anger. “How could you?”
Just the evening before, Al Marcus had told the old joke about the Bar Mitzvah boy who was told that for his Bar Mitzvah he’d get all kinds of presents: a fountain pen and a sweater; a fountain pen and a wallet; a fountain pen and money, and when the boy made his speech he’d said, ‘My beloved parents, relatives and friends, today I am a fountain pen’.
Thinking of Mitchell as an extremely handsome boy, but not necessarily an overly bright boy; worried her son would, somehow, make the same mistake, Myra had berated her brother-in-law for telling the story just the evening before his Bar Mitzvah, and she now scolded her husband for the same thing.
“Yeah!” Giggling, “ ‘A fountain pen’!” Lawrence mimicked.
Holding back tears of joy and pride. “You’re all so beautiful.” Myra said once again. “I’m just so proud of all of you, and especially you, Mitchell. After all, it’s not every day a mother gets to see her son as a boy one day and a man the next…” Alluding to the Hebrew theory that a boy becomes a man on the day of his Bar Mitzvah. “...Is it, Walt?”
Thinking his wife may have a double meaning to her question; referring to both the Hebraic belief and what she’d seen when she accidentally looked in on Mitchell earlier that morning. “Yes, Myra,” Walter said sincerely. “You’re so right! It’s sure not every-day a mother gets to see that!”
_____________________________________________________
Chicago, Illinois
June 22, 1948
Ally Softball
Mitchell Lipensky was not too athletic, and really not too interested in sports of any kind.
Oh, yes, he’d play football, both touch and tackle with the guys, but as for softball, his enthusiasm was minimal, except when…
“Mitchie! ‘Yooo’! Mitchie!”
Rushing from the kitchen, letting the screen door slam shut behind him. Leaning over the banister. “Yeah, Sharon?”
Almost fifteen, Sharon was a pretty Jewish girl with the unlikely last name of ‘Duffy’. Sharon and her divorced mother lived in a second floor apartment, in the two-story building on the southwest side of the bisected alley. “Yo, Mitch! You wanna play baseball?”
Considering, he looked to see who was there.
The kids were sitting on the low, broken wall of a 4x6 cement incinerator that was to the side in the junction of the tri-cornered alley.
There was sixteen-year-old Phyllis Koscinski, the Polish girl that lived next door to Mitchell. It was her porch that must be crossed when entering or leaving the Lipensky porch. Sitting next to Phyllis were the fourteen-year-old twins, Susan and Sally Gugulski. Next to Sally was Marlene, the thirteen-year-old daughter of Abe, from the corner deli, and to the left of Marlene was ‘Big’ Rosalind Feigenbaum. On his porch, Norman was awaiting Mitchell’s answer because, though he’d rather play ball with the guys, he’d rather play ball than not play ball, and if it had to be with the girls, so long as Mitchell played, he’d play, and besides Mitchell’s team usually lost.
Tossing the split-seamed, ten-inch softball in the air and catching it. “So, you wanna play?” Phyllis called.
Mitchell looked across the yards at Norman, who shrugged his shoulders.
“Yeah! Be right down!” Rushing back to the kitchen, letting the screen door slam shut behind him. Shoving the rest of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in his mouth and gulping down half a glass of milk... Slamming out of the apartment again, running down the three flights of stairs.
“Same sides?”
“Yeah, sure!” Norman answered. “Why not?”
As always, it was Norman, Marlene and, for fourteen-year-old girls, the hard-hitting, fast-running Gogulski twins against Mitchell, Sharon, Phyllis and lumbering, Big Rosalind. Norman and Mitchell were the power hitters and by then actually had a team rivalry… of sorts.
Norman tossed the bat to Mitchell then wrapped his fist around the bat on top of Mitchell’s fist. Mitchell’s hand went snugly against Norman’s, then Norman’s and, “ ‘Buttercups’!” like a small steam shovel, Mitchell’s hand capped the top of the bat. “We’re ‘up’!”
They played facing east in the long portion of the alley with ‘home’ just opposite the first floor of Mitchell’s building.
Norman’s team took their places in the field. Norman pitched. Marlene went to shallow left, but because of the tall fence that bordered the alley, left was actually closer to center. Sally took deep center and Susan right field.
Phyllis was ‘up’ first.
The following batter was always catcher, so Sharon knelt a few feet behind the crushed tomato juice can that on that day served as home.
Slow, but ‘if’ connecting, Big Rosalind was powerful and waiting her ‘ups’, Rosalind stood in the shade leaning against the building. Batting clean-up, in his usual spot, Mitchell sat on a cinder-block in the dirt to the right and just slightly forward of the batter.
“Okah...” Norman called from the pitcher’s mound, an old tattered ‘Life” magazine. “...Batter up!”
****
Phyllis and Sharon’s standard baseball uniforms were blue jeans and one of their father’s old, short-sleeved, loose-fitting dress shirts open at the collar and, depending on how hot it was, an additional one or two buttons down…
This mid June day was a hot mid June day.
****
Phyllis came to ‘home’ and, grasping the bat, hunched forward, leaned to the right and concentrated on Norman’s pitch.
Sitting on the cinder-block with his elbows on his knees, his head held in the palms of his hands, hunched forward also, Mitchell cocked his head to the left and, “Come on, batter!” he called to Phyllis watching her closely. “ ‘Slug it’!”
Straining to ‘slug it’, the tip of the poised bat moved in a slow, tight circle, and Phyllis crouched even lower…
The collar of the loose fitting blouse gapped open and…
Phyllis’s breasts swung pendulously, openly and in ‘full view’ of Mitchell.
Sharon was up next.
To be continued as: Freshies/fukawees
