A “Becoming” excerpt in sequence: “Death, That’s Life?”
Chicago, Illinois
March 29, 1951
Death, That’s Life
One last blustery storm proved the adage: March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb.
At approximately 1:27 p.m., on Thursday, the 29th of March, the last muddy remnants of an early March storm trickled down the drains, through the sewers and into the Chicago River where it joined forces with millions of kindred gallons bound for Lake Michigan and the never-ending water cycle; waiting for the sun’s evaporative force to lift the vapor skyward where it becomes rain, and in time, snow once again.
As though timed. As though Mother Nature herself had clicked a stopwatch the very day and, it seemed, the very hour the last trace of winter departed, the first signs of spring arrived: Earthworms and microscopic hairs of grass burrowed out of the freshly warmed earth. Diminutive, barely-seen nodules formed at billions of points along the naked branches of millions of trees and shrubs.
As the earth felt the loving kiss of spring, so then did…
Flipping the partially smoked cigarette onto the muddy ground of Douglas Park, taking a deep breath of the fresh, invigorating air, lifting his face to the warmth in the sky, God, he thought, it smells ‘so’ good!
The intoxicating caress of spring passionately warming his already passionately warmed blood, looking about, seeing no one, squeezing his crotch with a hard, rubbing motion causing a partial erection. “God,” Mitchell said to the unhearing sky, “I want’a get ‘laid’!!” Then, thinking, Why am I putting it off? Well, yeah,” he answered himself, because what I ‘really’ got a feeling for, what I ‘really’ want…
He’d had a few single dates, and four dates with one particular girl, but no matter how impassioned the necking session became—and there was almost always a necking session—he had been rebuked whenever his hand wandered—in every girl’s opinion—too far up or too far down. And if he couldn’t even cop a feel over the girl’s bra, over her blouse, over her coat, jacket or sweater, then that girl was too low on Mitchell Lipensky’s imagined chain of sexual evolution.
Besides, he hadn’t met a girl, including the four-date girl that he cared enough about to invest the time, or his then hard-earned money on in an attempt to cultivate her to a position where she might, just might, allow even a ‘feel’. Even if that feel was over three layers of clothing.
Mitchell accredited this ‘hands-off’ phenomena to the fact that he’d only dated ‘Wej drubs’ [Jewish broads] and in his mind’s eye there was an absolute goldmine of ‘shiksas’ [Gentile girls] that were waiting to be ‘shtupped’ [laid]. Only problem was that all of the cute shiksas with big, up-pointed, pointy tits seemed to be so hoodie and, he was sure, that every shiksa—‘especially’ those with big, up-pointed, pointy tits—had a big, hoodie-type boyfriend. And besides, he thought, what in the hell do I have in common with a shiksa? What in the hell do we even talk about?
So, not wanting to be too transparent about his reasons—or reason—Mitchell had never worked up the nerve to ask a shiksa out.
He’d been reluctant to call either of the two girls that he knew he would, ‘maybe’, have a sure thing with: ‘Ina Dorfmann’ and ‘Gina Glambos’.
But on this day! Feeling the hot surge of spring, he wanted more than ever to be close to a girl. Hell, he wanted to be closer than close! But more than ‘just’ sex, what he ‘really’ had a feeling for, what he ‘really’ wanted…
What Mitchell Lipensky really felt was a deep longing in the pit of his stomach to meet a girl that he could love that loved him back… And if he could have sex, of sorts, with that girl, that would be ‘really’ nice, too.
However the only known choices on that day, though, were Ina Dorfmann and Gina Glambos.
Oh, well!
Running up the back stairs. Anxious to get to the phone taking the steps three at a time. “Mrs. Kaplin, hi!” he yelled to the long-suffering second floor neighbor; her of the broomstick-pockmarked ceiling. “Great day, isn’t it?” Not expecting an answer other than…
On her porch sweeping winter’s last accumulation of dirt through the bottom of her banister, Mrs. Kaplin did not surprise him and, “Hurrumph!” she replied to Mitchell’s fleeting back.
Pulling the screen door open, expecting the inner door to be unlocked too, he twisted the door-knob twice before realizing that the door was locked. Fitting the long-shanked key into the lock. Opening the door, “Mom, I’m home!” Stepping inside he allowed the screen door to slam shut.
“Mumser.” Below, in her kitchen, glancing at her pockmarked ceiling, Mrs. Kaplin muttered, again, “Mumser.” [bastard]
On the kitchen table was a note:
‘Mitchie, honey, it is such a nice day I decided to take Larry and Mortie for a walk. We are going to walk to Sears and daddy will pick us up and bring us home.
Love, Mom.’
Throwing the note into the can beneath the sink. Pouring himself a glass of milk and taking a package of Hostess Cupcakes from the pantry, he threw the cellophane wrapper into the can also. Balancing the rectangle cardboard sheet, with the two chocolate cupcakes on the rim of the glass. Going to the telephone table in the dining room, putting the glass onto the table and taking his wallet from his pocket he removed a scrap of paper. Dialing a phone number…
“Hi! Is Ina home?”
“Yeah, I am. Who’s this?”
“Ina, It’s Mitch,” he said as though she’d have to remember him.
“ ‘Mitch’?” Ina questioned, thinking, Mitch who?
“ ‘Mitchell Lipensky’. You know, from Union Pier.”
“Oh… ‘Oh, yeah’.” Her hand absently going to her forehead, feeling a bump that had disappeared months ago. “ ‘ That Mitchell’! How are you, Mitch?” she asked in an oddly flat tone of voice.
‘That Mitchell’? “Fine, Ina. I’m just fine.” Suddenly at a complete loss of words. Trying to think of something to say without sounding too obvious. “So,” he asked, “how’s school been for you?”
“Ehh, you know, ‘bout the same’s it always is.” Not really caring. “How’s it with you?” she asked.
“Me’n’Norm… You remember my pal, Norman?”
“The blonde guy with glasses you always hang out with?”
“Yeah, that’s him. Anyway, him’n’me figured a way to make lots’a money in the lunchroom at school and we started a business collecting the bottles from the kids that didn’t want to bring ’em back for the two cents and we were makin’ about…” exaggerating a bit, “fifty bucks a week, each, even after paying off a couple’a other kids we had working for us.”
“No shit!” Finding it hard to believe. “ ‘Really’! You guys made fifty bucks a week? ‘Each’! By goin’ to school?”
“Yeah,” he laughed. “’No shit’! I couldn’t even ditch. Fifty bucks a week for goin’ to school ain’t too bad.”
“Wow!” Truly impressed. “No, that ain’t too bad is right!”
“Yeah,” he said sadly, “but they made us stop, and Normie’n’me are working at a shoe store over on Cermak Road now.”
“Hey, listen,” speaking as though the voice of authority. “If there’s a way to make a buck you think those jerks’ll let a couple’a kids make it? Not on your life!”
“Yeah, we sure felt it wasn’t fair. If kids pay two cents and don’t want to stand in line to get it back, then why shouldn’t Normie’n’me be able to do it, if we want?”
“Yeah, that’s why I never eat in the lunchroom.”
Unable to make any sense of this statement, letting it pass, “Ina, the reason I’m calling…”
I know ‘the reason you’re calling’, Ina thought.
“Is because I’d ‘love’ to see you again, and maybe, if…”
Now he’s gonna say, If no one’s home later, maybe he can…
“…you’re not doing anything tonight, or maybe tomorrow night, if you want, maybe we can...”—the thought of his conversation with Frank Rizzo regarding going to a movie with Gina flitted through his mind and, as then, he really didn’t want to—“...go to a movie or something. Or if, uh, ‘maybe’, if your folks aren’t going to be home, maybe we can, uh, you know, kind’a hang around there… at your house.”
****
Ina ‘thought’ she remembered most of what had happened on the night of their tryst. She had given it a ‘lot’ of thought and was sure that they did ‘not’ have completed sex because he wasn’t wearing a ‘rubber’. leastwise she had no memory of seeing him put one on or take it off. And if he wasn’t wearing a rubber she had no backwash of semen in her panties. But she did find a number of the familiar, translucent, dried droplets of semen on her thighs and stomach. But also—which had added to the mystery—the next day her father had wanted to know, “Who’s the goddamned slob who dripped goddamned ice-cream all over my goddamned dashboard? No,she had thought at the time, that ain’t ice-cream! Only thing is, how’d he get jizm all over me and the dashboard, too? Oh, yeah, Ina had thought about that night and, ‘What the hell’d he do to me’?
As soon as Ina had dropped Mitchell off she’d pulled to the side of the road and inspected the flashlight. If he’d’a hit me as hard as I got hit, to raise a goose egg the size of a goose egg on my forehead, he’d’a dented it good! she had thought. But the flashlight didn’t have so much as a dent and, as improbable as it was, Okay, maybe I did bump my head on the steering wheel. But how? And why’d he keep apologizing? And what in the hell was he apologizing for?
As was Gina, Ina was an insecure, promiscuous girl who would look anyplace for approval, and who would have intercourse with almost anyone if she thought it would make him like her. And ‘yes’, she would have liked to be with Mitchell ‘that way’ again. But Ina Dorfmann,— the girl that would screw just about anyone— thought that Mitchell Lipensky was some sort of a ‘pervert’ and was afraid to be alone with him.
****
“Gee, Mitchie,” trying to think of an excuse without being rude. “I’d love to see you again, but, uh, my dad’s been transferred to, uh, Peoria, an’ we’re movin’ tomorrow.”
“ ‘Peoria’? You’re moving to Peoria, ‘tomorrow’?”
“Yeah,” she said sadly. “We gotta.”
“God, Ina, do they even have Jews in Peoria?”
“Don’t know… Yeah, I guess so.”
Grasping, hoping, “How’s about tonight? Can I see you tonight?”
“Nah. I’d really like to, but, uh, we’re packin’ and I gotta help my folks.”
“Oh. Oh, well. Gosh, Ina, I’m sorry.”
He’s sorry again. “Yeah, me, too. Well, if we ever move back, maybe I’ll see you sometime.”
“Yeah,” disappointed. “Well, bye, Ina.” Breaking the connection. Sitting back and looking at the phone a moment, Mitchell peeled the dark frosting off one of the cupcakes and, slowly, savoring the chocolate, ate it. Taking another scrap of paper from his wallet he dialed Frank Rizzo.
A youthful, feminine voice answered, “Hello.”
“Uh,” picking on the frosting of the second cupcake. “This the Rizzo residence?”
“Yes. Who’s calling?”
“Is Frankie home?”
The line silent a moment. “Who’s calling?” the young woman asked again.
Breaking the frosting, putting half into his mouth. “ ‘Mitchell’.”
“ ‘Mitchell’? You a friend of Frankies?”
“Yeah. we went to military school together, during the war.”
“Oh, ‘that’ Mitchell!” Her voice sounding oddly flat “This is Cynthia, Frank’s sister.”
‘That Mitchell’? “Oh, yes, ‘Cynthia’! I visited your house….” thinking, God, was it two years ago? “…two years ago. Frankie wanted me to meet you, but you were away, at school or someplace.”
“ ‘Retreat’.”
“Excuse me?”
“ ‘Retreat’.” Assuming he knew she meant, “I was away at retreat.”
“Oh.” Having no idea what Cynthia meant by ‘retreat’. “Oh, yeah. Your mom’n’dad, they’re okay?”
“Mitchell, when’s the last time you talked to my brother?”
“I don’t know.” He did, though. It was two years ago when he got on the streetcar and he and Frank said goodbye. Picking the second half of the frosting off the cupcake, “It’s been a while, I guess.”
“Yeah, I’ll say ‘it’s been a while’… Frank’s dead.”
“Huh! What?”
“My baby brother,” her voice catching, “is dead.”
“Cynthia, I, I…” ‘Dead’? How can Frankie be dead? He’s only a kid! Stunned, his fingers opening the frosting dropped to the floor. “ ‘Dead’! Cynthia, Frankie’s a kid! How can he be dead?”
“Yeah. Well that ‘kid’lied about his age, joined the Marines and got sent to Korea.”
“How? You’ve got to be eighteen, at least!” Remembering that Frank was, almost a year older than himself. “ ‘Oh, my God! Cynthia’, I’m ‘so’ sorry! What happened? Uh, if you want to talk about it.”
“He stepped on a land mine. A pal of his called when he got back to the States and told us. ‘Thanks be to Jesus’ it happened fast and he never knew what hit him.”
“Cynthia, I…” Feeling his throat thickening and his eyes burning. He didn’t know what to say.
“Please… ‘Please’ tell your Mom and Dad I called and that I’m sorry. ‘Oh, God, I’m sorry’… Goodbye, Cynthia.”
Replacing the receiver he stared at the wall a few moments. Then, as though in a trance, walking to the sofa, folding his legs beneath him and resting his chin on his crossed arms on the back of the sofa. Staring out the window, seeing nothing. How can Frankie be dead? Kids don’t die. Kids’ friends don’t die!
No one he knew had ever died. ‘Death’ to Mitchell was a complete abstract. ‘Death’ was something detached from himself. ‘Death’ was something that happened to Nazis, Japs and bad guys in movies. ‘Death’ was something that happened to faceless voices on the radio. ‘Dead’! To be ‘gone’! To ‘never’ see or talk to again! ‘Never’! Too inconceivable to comprehend. I’ll never see or talk to Frankie again? Slowly, the realization sinking in. ‘No’! How can that be?
Sounds in the hall.
The door opening, Walter, Lawrence and thirteen-month-old Morton in Myra’s arms, came into the apartment.
Trying to keep his emotions under control, Mitchell went to his family.
Seeing his bloodshot eyes and the look of terrible sadness on his face. Grasping her baby tighter. frightened, her voice high-pitched, “ ‘Ma’?” Myra asked. “ ‘Pa’?”
Unable to speak. Shaking his head ‘no’. For the first time since he was five years old, going to his father, putting his arms around him and laying his head on Walter’s shoulder, Mitchell cried.
Living with Mitchell. Seeing him every day, Walter hadn’t noticed his growth nor realized how tall he’d become. Now, being held in his embrace he realized that his son was taller than himself and being held in another man’s emotional embrace embarrassing him, Walter’s arms hanging awkwardly at his sides, “Mitchell, what’s wrong?” he asked.
Sitting Morton on the floor, going to her eldest son, “Mitchie,” putting her hand on his shoulder, “tell us! What’s the matter?”
Crying, barely able to speak… “Frankie.”
Spotting the piece of chocolate frosting on the floor. Crawling to it Morton shoved it in his mouth and a brown, frothy drool dribbled down his chin onto his light-blue spring jacket.
“What’s wrong with Frankie?”
Moving his face from Walter’s shoulder, “Mom, he’s dead.”
Shocked, but at the same time relieved that it wasn’t her mother or father. Taking a deep, relaxing breath, “What happened?”
Attempting to speak, Mitchell gulped air.
Walter barely remembered Frank Rizzo, and only because this was affecting his son so badly did the death of this one person affect him more than that of any stranger.
“Mitchell, calm down.” Moving him from his shoulder, holding him at arms length. “Tell us what happened.”
Forcing himself to stop crying, “F-Frankie joined the Marines. Got shipped to Korea, and got killed by a land mine.”
“Oh, Mitchie, I’m so sorry!” Turning him in her direction, Myra put her arms about him, “I know he was a good friend.” Trying to console him. “What a shame. Shhh.” Patting him on the back, “Shhh.”
Hissing, “Bastards!” in her ear. “ ‘Fuckin’ bastards’!”
“What?” Not sure she’d heard what she knew she heard. Shocked, Myra looked at her son. “Mitchell, what did you say?”
Breaking from his mother’s arms. “ ‘Fuckin’ bastards’.” Speaking softly, venomously, looking from his mother to his father to his six-year-old brother. “ ‘Fuckin’, gook, commie, bastards’!” Speaking faster, louder. “He was right! Martinez was right! He said we ought’a drop the fuckin’ A bomb on the whole fuckin’ country and kill all those fuckin’, sonsabitchin’, commie bastards!” Catching himself, remembering where he was and whom he was with. Stopping suddenly, he tried to calm himself.
Holding his hand to his mouth, “Ohhh,” Lawrence said, “Mitchie said the ‘F’n’ word, a whole bunch’a times.”
Seeing the shocked look on his mother’s face, “Mom, I’m sorry, but they killed my friend.” Turning from his family, rushing to his room Mitchell slammed the door shut.
Myra began to follow, but…
Seeing his pain, a sudden sense of empathy causing a bond Walter hadn’t before felt for his son. “Wait.” Stopping his wife, “Give him a while to calm down and I’ll go talk to him in a few minutes.”
When the sound of sobbing stopped, “Mitchell,” knocking on the door, “can I come in?”
A deep sigh coming from behind the door, “Yeah, Dad.”
Opening the door, Walter went into his son’s bedroom.
“Okay to sit?”
Moving aside, making room for his father, “Yes. Sure.”
“Mitchell, I know we don’t talk much…”
“Yeah,” forcing a thin smile. “The last time we talked you told me about the birds and the bees.”
“Yeah. Well I think it’s time I told you about the other side of the birds and bees story. This may sound strange to you, but the other side of the story is that everyone who’s born has got to die. Thing is, we all hope to die in our proper time. Problem is, no one knows when the ‘proper time’ is and we all want it to be some other time. Bubby and Pa have lived long lives and unless something bad happens, when they die it’ll be their proper time. I hope your mother and brothers, and you and me, too, are as lucky as Bubby and Pa and we die only after long lives, and in our proper time.”
Feeling the tightening in his throat again because, though he knew they would, he’d never allowed himself to think of life without his parents, to think of his mother and father dying. Then again he’d never thought that a friend of his would die either.
“Thing is,” going on, Walter said, “sometimes we do die at a time that doesn’t seem proper, like your friend, Frankie. It’s a real bad thing that he had to die, but who knows, maybe, if you think about it, maybe it was Frank’s proper time to die… You understand what I’m saying?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“I guess, to make it real easy, when you talk about dying, what you’re really talking about is living, too.”
Slightly confused, “Death,” Mitchell asked, “that’s life?”
“You got it.” Smiling, reaching to him, doing something Mitchell could not remember his father ‘ever’ doing. Tousling his son’s hair, Walter said, “That’s life, kid.”
Chicago, Illinois
1951: The Blight
The West Side had been stagnant for years.
Names on mailboxes had remained the same year after year, and if not the same name than certainly the same European derivation of that name, or the neighbor’s name.
In the years following World War II, millions of people from throughout the world flocked to America, and in particular to the city of Chicago.
The Europeans came, some with more, most with less, but all came bringing their own culture, wanting to be with their own kind, and settling, as silt in water, upon the suited financial ledges in the existing melting pot ghettos and, for the most part, harmonizing with those who came before them.
But now, slowly, all but unnoticed except by those who lived along the constantly changing, eroding borders, the European names on mailboxes changed, from Mazisyk, Binkowski, D’Angelo and Shapiro to ‘American’ names.
‘Jefferson’, ‘Jackson’, ‘Washington’, ‘Davis’ and ‘Robinson’.
As the multitudes flooded into the city, both from within and outside the borders of America, the ghetto neighborhoods grew constantly, continually encroaching inward and the existing natives began to move either deeper into the melting pot temporarily away from the erosion or, if they had the means, out of it completely, to the suburbs or cities of Berwyn, Cicero and Brookfield to the west; Oak Lawn, Evergreen Park and Blue Island to the south; Lincolnwood, Skokie and Morton Grove to the north.
Previously well-maintained buildings changed hands and the newly found money was transferred out of the old neighborhoods and into the new… Into high-rise apartment buildings for the wealthy… Into shopping centers and countless tracts of suburban, pea-pod houses.
The blight was not the fault of the encroaching people because they were the victims, but rather the fault of the political representatives of the previously existing people for allowing the onset of these destructive conditions. Graft was widespread. Building violations ran rampant and, against all existing building codes, the new landlords subdivided individual two- and three-bedroom apartments into two, and even three separate apartments with shared bathrooms and Pullman-type kitchens.
The previous space housing a single family of three, four, five or six people became the spaces for two, three or even four families.
As the existing families vacated their ghetto apartments, the vacuum they left was quickly filled.
As the socioeconomic makeup of the neighborhoods changed, moderate- to low-income, previously decent neighborhoods became filthy, over-crowded slums, and in the passing of those going and those coming misconceptions and prejudices were formed that lasted lifetimes.
The Parting
Chicago,Illinois
June 7, 1951
The hot sun reflecting off the cracked, white-glazed brick facade, the boys sat on either side of the front stoop watching as, much too quickly, the small moving truck was loaded with furniture being carried down the three flights of stairs by two sweating moving men.
They sat in silence, as though were one to speak it would open a floodgate of uncontrollable emotion and neither boy wanted to appear less a man to the other.
Beading their foreheads and upper lips, sweat trickling down the backs of their shirts, neither moved.
The last of the items, the refrigerator, was hoisted onto the tailgate of the truck and secured with rope.
For the very last time, a small women, a husky man, and a seven-year-old boy walked down the stairs they’ve traveled so many times over the so many years they’d lived here.
Stepping through the wide, doorless entry, the man nodded to the dark-haired boy. With his youngest son following, he went to the driver side of a green, ’47 Oldsmobile, opened the rear door for the boy, then his door.
Stopping, the women looked at the boys. Feeling their sadness, holding back her own tears, she kissed the forehead of the bigger boy, went to the car, got in and faced straight forward.
Sighing, the blonde-haired boy stood and looked down.
The other boy stood, also.
Blinking their eyes. Biting their lower lips in concentration, the boys looked at each other for a long moment till, turning away, the smaller boy went to the car, opened the rear door, sat down and pulled the door shut.
The ignition turned. The motor came to life… The car pulled away from the curb.
Removing his glasses so they wouldn’t blow off, leaning his head through the window, turning his head he watched as the figure on the curb became smaller and smaller. Only when Mitchell disappeared from sight completely, did Norman bring his head in.
Alone now. Mitchell turned away and no longer able to control his tears ran through the long, now lonely hallway, out the back entrance, through what ‘was’ Norman’s yard, into his yard and up the three flights of stairs.
Next “Becoming” Excerpt in sequence: “Black Kids & a Bullet"
