Bronx Noir

Outside, the sky was as hard and gray as the cracked sidewalk. Someone had drawn a potsy, but I didn’t feel like hopping the squares. The red bricks on the walls of our five-story walk-up stared across the street at the yellow bricks of the elevator building. The mommas were talking Yiddish on their folding chairs, Mrs. Yellin rocking the big black carriage back and forth. I looked at them different. The Jewish mommas knew about the camps, for sure. Was that what they talked about in their weird foreign language? Oy veh. Oy gevalt.

Oy gevalt—my mother said only the Jews could come up with such a useful cosmic summary. Cosmic. Summary.

Oy gevalt.

I said hi to Mrs. Bradford, my father’s bookie, and walked past her—right in the middle of the sidewalk as usual. No one could ever get me that way. Terrible things could happen to a little girl on her own. If I walked in the exact center of the sidewalk no one could grab me into a car at the curb or pull me into the cellar of a building. I was religious about it. Mrs. Bradford’s peroxide hair was pinned up in curls underneath that ratty green wool scarf of hers, and she was carrying a string shopping bag with a tissue box in it. Everyone knew what the box was for—she hid the betting slips underneath the tissues. Mrs. B. was breaking the law. My father said it was no big deal, but I wondered: Would Mrs. Bradford burn in hell? Would Adolf Hitler?

Usually, running to Daitch Dairy for my mother, or to the butcher or the fish store, I stayed on the far side of the street from the huge brick Veterans Hospital with its green lawn and big trees behind the iron-spiked fence. My father said the soldiers in the hospital were ones that got hurt in the war. You saw them sometimes, in wheelchairs or wandering around the paved walks with whacked-out looks in their eyes. Usually I don’t pay the place much attention, but that day I couldn’t take my eyes off it. I don’t remember crossing the street, but next thing I knew I’d grabbed an iron fence spike in each hand and was just standing there, staring in. My father said there was nothing to be scared of—the guys in that place were heroes. Some of them even went into the camps and liberated the Jews. He was in the war too, but I guess he wasn’t a hero because he’s not in a hospital and the shrapnel in his back only hurts when it’s raining out, and he never, ever, talks about it. I watched a dark-haired man on crutches move toward me across the grass. He looked like a tall boy in a robe and striped pajamas. He was walking on one leg—the other one…just ended. No knee, no nothing. The man in the pajamas was inside the iron fence, I was outside. I couldn’t stop staring at him. I couldn’t let go of the bars. “Hey, girlie,” he said. “What’re you doin’ here? God, look at you—aren’t you a little sweetie?”

I screamed and ran, and he called after me, “What did I say? What did I say?” I zigzagged across Kingsbridge Road, still screaming and almost getting clobbered by a big cream-and-red bus. The sidewalk swarmed with people. Outside a Kosher bakery I dodged three baby carriages and Julian Levine from school. “Hey, meshuggeneh,” he yelled, “what’s the matter by you?” Sister Mary Michael from Our Lady stuck out her arm to stop me, but I slapped it away and kept going. I’ll pay for that, I know, hitting a nun—even a gazillion “Hail Marys” won’t atone. So many people on the sidewalk and they were all gonna die. Could it happen again? Like the Jews in the camps? Was Julian Levine gonna burn in an oven? Was Sister Mary Michael? Was I? I whipped past the big stone armory to Jerome Avenue, then up Jerome around the reservoir, past the colleges. It was all I could do to keep from howling the whole time. My legs pumped like those wheel rods on a freight train with cattle cars. What was I running from? From the man with the leg? From Miss Cohen’s poems? I didn’t know, but I couldn’t stop. It was like something was sick in my stomach that I didn’t want to vomit into my head. No, that doesn’t make any sense. I ran like I had the Gestapo at my heels. I tripped on broken concrete and fell and skinned both knees, and it didn’t slow me down one bit. When I turned onto the far end of Sedgwick, I knew I’d never get away from whatever was chasing me so I might as well go home.

In front of our building an ambulance idled, ashy smoke puffing from the tailpipe, revolving lights turning the neighbors’ faces red and white. Blood and bone. Blood and bone. Ashes, blood, and bone. Two men in white carried a stretcher out from the courtyard. A sheet strained to cover a huge belly but missed the top of a red-bristled head. A couple of policemen followed the stretcher. One of them was my father.

I grabbed his hand. “Is that Mr. Schmidt?” I heard my voice rise to a screech.