Boogaloo On 2nd Avenue Read online

  "I think Officer Parma didn't like my food," Consuela said with a smile.

  "Eso es como la kikhl tsebrokhn," said Chow Mein, staring out at the street.

  "¿Qué?"

  "The way the cookie crumbles," said Chow Mein, already thinking of other matters.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Tribulations of a Tenth Man

  RABBI LITVAK had long ago given up on women. It wasn't sexism, merely pragmatism. The synagogue on Sixth Street had been founded in the 1880s and, it seemed, had slowly lost members ever since. It was down to eight, and it needed ten. Jewish law said so—ten men, a minyan to hold a service. When all else failed—it seemed to be happening more and more—Nathan was nearly kidnapped. Since women did not count for a minyan, they were of no help; they simply did not address the primary problem, which was trying to hold a service. They were welcome but unnecessary, and since no one tried to get women to come, no women came. The horseshoe-shaped balcony where women used to pray had been empty for years. No one ever went up there. It was rumored that squatters lived there.

  When the small congregation stood and faced the east for the silent prayer, the amidah, taking three steps forward and three back, and began furiously bowing and jerking their heads in impassioned reverence, reciting in their minds the silent prayers, Nathan stood there politely, staring at the eastern balcony.

  Suddenly, on more than one Friday, he would see a graying bush of hair appear above the balcony's dark velvet curtain. Slowly his brother Mordy's head would become visible. Mordy would be staring out with sleepy, unfocused eyes, trying to see who had disturbed his rest. Nathan would be looking on in horror as the other men recited the amidah, bowing and bobbing their heads, seeing only the Hebrew letters in the book in front of them. A minute later, a woman's head would appear on the balcony, and—though she would always be conspicuously unkosher, black or Chinese or large and blond, and always beautiful and a bit naked—Mordy would shrug and smile weakly at his brother and mouth the words, "She's Jewish," as his bushy head and the silken mane of the Chinese woman slowly disappeared below the dusty balcony velour.

  It never really happened, but ever since Nathan had heard that there were squatters living in the balcony, he had been expecting it. He would close his eyes and take three steps backward, and the hallucination would vanish.

  The men would gather early They all wore hats. They even had extra hats for the people they took off the street. If one asked for a yarmulke, Rabbi Litvak would say, "What are you, an Israeli?" Only once the answer came back "Yes."

  They wore old gray fedoras that they had been wearing since fedoras had been fashionable. They paced with their hands in their pockets. Some read Hebrew passages from the siddur. They waited anxiously— three of them, five, then seven, then eight. When they got to eight, they wandered the street looking for a ninth man. They tried to get someone from the neighborhood. This was a skill almost everyone in the neighborhood had, recognizing who was from the neighborhood. When Joey Parma found a witness to identify a suspect, one of the first questions, even before the physical description, was, "Did he come from the neighborhood?"

  They only needed a ninth man because the tenth man they knew would come eventually, though always a little late, teasing the deadline of official sundown. The tenth man was Nusan, whose lateness was intended to make clear his stand on religion. The older he got, the more Nusan, who no longer believed in God, resembled a Talmudic scholar. He was devout about not believing in God.

  But he did keep his head covered with the same dusty brown felt hat all year. Added to that was a maroon scarf that almost passed for a prayer shawl. It was strange to wear such a scarf in the summertime, except that Nusan wore the same clothes all year. He refused to acknowledge the seasons, as though even this would be too much homage to God. He always wore the same dark gray wool suit. It was certainly wool because he had never cut the white embroidered label off the sleeve that asserted "100% pure wool."

  In the spring of 1985, Nusan had had a heart attack, which had left him with the habit of rocking back and forth impatiently Was it a problem of balance or some inner impatience with his weakened state? He had collapsed during a Passover seder, which he had explained he was "going to but not attending." Taken to Beth Israel Hospital, he was told that he had suffered a heart attack. In fact, the doctors discovered that there had been others. Just one more thing that he had suffered alone and would not talk about. And he began this rocking.

  Whatever the reason, Nusan the atheist was frequently seen with his head covered, a scarf around his neck, rocking back and forth in the manner of a devout Jewish prayer—davening. He, of course, insisted that he was not davening. "Davening," he often sneered, "is God's one truth. You should be ready to duck at all times."

  All he was missing was the beard, which was the subject of the longest-running family joke. Ruth used to say "Beser a yid on a bord, vi a bord on a yid," which literally meant "Better a Jew without a beard than a beard without a Jew." But Nathan and Mordy liked saying, "A Jew without a board is better than a board without a Jew," and eventually, "A Jew without a board is better than a bored Jew," which became the family motto on religious practice.

  It was possible that Nusan truly had no religious feelings, that he completed the minyan out of friendship with Rabbi Litvak, who was his age and had a similar tattoo on his arm, though he had never explained it. Actually, not much was known about Nusan's tattoo, either. He never talked about what had happened or which camps he had been in. He rarely showed his forearm. There was no day too hot for a jacket. Sometimes he would have bad days, angry days, and on those days his forearm was made visible. When Nusan showed his tattoo, the family knew to be careful with him.

  On this Friday, only seven men arrived; they found the eighth buying a Korean challah, and when Nusan arrived it made nine. This was the consequence of the killing of Eli Rabbinowitz. They couldn't even say kaddish for him without one more. "They are killing us, one by one," Yankel Fink said glumly, and Nusan snickered for reasons known only to him. Jack Bialy—whose real name was Jack Kimmelman but whom everyone called Jack Bialy because he made them in his factory on Grand Street and his black shoes always had a fine dusting of flour— protested, "What do you mean by 'they'?"

  "They, they] The ones that killed poor Rabbinowitz, may there be no unions where he now rests in peace," said Yankel Fink.

  "Who killed him? What do you mean by they'?" Jack Bialy insisted.

  Yankel reached his hand up to heaven for assistance in his argument. "Rabbinowitz is dead, we have no minyan, and big deal Mr. Socialist wants to lecture."

  "What does Socialism have to do with this?" Jack Bialy argued.

  Though it might not seem apparent to an outsider, Nathan, blocks away, would have known where this argument would lead. Nusan said, "We can get my nephew."

  Yonah Kirchbaum, who sold Judaica on Avenue B in a little store full of mezuzahs and menorahs from Israel that stayed in business because Harry Seltzer owned the building and did not charge much rent, knew that it would be his job to find Nathan, because at the age of sixty-seven, he was the youngest in the group. Actually, the youngest in the group by five years was Jack Bialy But they could not send Jack Bialy for Nathan because he might run into Nathan's father, and Jack was not speaking to Harry since Harry had lost his $200 on the canceled Charlie Parker concert. Harry had long since paid it back, but it was the principle, the mismanagement, that angered Jack. "You think this is nothing," Jack said when Harry gave him the money. "This is three hundred and twenty bialies." Jack Bialy measured his life in increments of sixty cents.

  So it was Yonah Kirchbaum who walked to the shop on Tenth Street, but it was closed. He was surprised by Nathan's observance of the Sabbath. At the end of the street he asked sweet-faced Ruben, who said that he thought he had gone home.

  And there was Nathan, captured and brought back for services. At the end, the rabbi would raise a large silver goblet, so tarnished and black that no one remembe
red that it was a mid-nineteenth-century German masterpiece, filled to the brim with wine so that it always spilled on Litvak's hand, and said the blessing. The cup was passed from man to man, and Rabbi Litvak would pat the challah they had reserved from the kosher Fourth Street bakery with all ten fingers, as though it were a chicken whose plumpness he was measuring, and say the motzi and tear off ten pieces, dipping them in a bowl of salt and distributing them with precise and complicated movements.

  Nusan would not eat his piece but would put it in his pocket. Then Rabbi Litvak would serve the herring and mofongo. The herring would go first. But Nusan would eat huge quantities of both.

  "We have dinner waiting," Nathan would plead.

  "Maybe, maybe," said Nusan. "But we know we have this."

  By the time Nusan had his fill of kosher mofongo and herring, it was considerably past sunset. Ruth had already lit the two Shabbas candles, covered her eyes with her hands, and said the blessing. At the last words of the blessing, "shel Shabbat," the entire family turned their heads to the door for Nusan's imminent arrival. They would wait for him before blessing the wine and bread. Shabbas was a night in which he made everyone wait for him twice.

  Even Mordy was already there. To Mordy, Shabbas dinner was a chance to take a girl to dinner without having to pay. Otherwise he would take her to dinner and order only a salad, arguing the environmental abuses that had befallen everything else on the menu. He used to take women to Saul Grossman's Deli because Saul gave him credit. But he never paid, and in time Saul canceled his credit. Even then, Mordy could sometimes talk a waiter into two dinners, until Saul had a sign made:

  Do not take checks or orders from

  MORDY SELTZER

  He placed the sign by the telephone behind the counter where customers got their carryout orders, so that everyone in the neighborhood would see it. Harry paid his son's debt to get the sign taken down.

  An alternative was to invite someone home for a Friday night dinner. Whenever possible, he would find someone Jewish. This Shabbas, the chosen Jew was about twenty years old. Ruth and Harry were not disturbed by this. She wore a flimsy top with bare shoulders and enough skin exposed to get the general idea of the tattoo covering most of her upper body—and maybe more—in three colors that resembled a Blake illustration of Paradise Lost. Ruth was prepared to overlook this, though Nathan and Sonia worried that their daughter was absorbing the notion of piercing and tattooing by living in the neighborhood around such girls.

  Nathan professed a horror of tattoos. Harry, though he didn't approve, thought it was well done, probably Cristofina's work. Secretly, he understood what Mordy liked about her multicolored torso. But he would never want to kiss a woman with rings through her lips.

  Can you kiss like that? Harry wondered.

  Are they real silver? Ruth wondered.

  Sarah, notebook in hand, moved in for a closer look, but the young woman let out a barely audible shriek and recoiled. She was afraid of children because she had been told that they like to pull on the rings and sometimes even yank them out.

  For Harry, the most difficult part was the leather dog collar with silver studs. But her name was Naomi, so apparently she was Jewish.

  "Naomi," Harry repeated cautiously He had made mistakes before. When Nathan started dating Sonia, Harry was distressed to learn that his son was dating a Mexican. Sonia was from Mexico, though her parents were from Poland. But Harry didn't hear about her parents. He did not even notice her curly, ginger-colored hair or that her name was Sonia Cohn. The first time Nathan brought her to a Friday night dinner, while Ruth served the brisket, Harry nervously talked to her about tacos and enchiladas, food her family never ate in Guadalajara. The brisket was all too familiar, but Harry hadn't noticed. "Ruth, maybe Sonia would like some of that hot sauce Chow Mein's mother gave us."

  "Who is Chow Mein?" Sonia had asked, looking at Nathan for help.

  Nathan followed Ruth into the kitchen. "I don't know why Dad is acting like this. She's Jewish. Her grandparents were born in shtetls."

  Ruth's face warmed to a smile. "She's not Mexican?"

  "She's Mexican, but she's Jewish. I told you. Her name is Sonia Cohn!"

  "Sonia Cohn," Ruth repeated, savoring the words. "Oboyoboy."

  Nathan smiled back and gave his mother a kiss on the forehead. "Okay?"

  "Okay," said Ruth. "But don't tell your father. Make him earn it."

  And they did, and so now Harry graciously offered to let Naomi say the blessing over the bread. Naomi moved toward the bread but retreated slightly because Sarah was there. Mordy stood between them and Naomi touched the bread, her fingernails painted a pearly green that made her skin look white, her right hand with a blue spiderweb tattoo, her left one with a spider, and said, "Baruch ata adonai eiochenu mekch ho'clom chomethi lechum minh'areth," and proceeded to break up the challah, dip pieces in the salt bowl, and distribute them while Mordy stared at her with the look of a man who had been defrauded and wanted his money back. Her Hebrew, like her English, was perfect except for a slight "th" sound on some words, which may have been caused by the small silver balls that were riveted to her tongue.

  Nusan took his piece of challah and slipped it into his jacket pocket.

  During herring, the conversation turned to the death of Eli Rabbi-nowitz.

  "That was the last real dairy restaurant in the neighborhood," said Harry "And he was a nice man."

  "Yes," Nathan quickly agreed, but the rest of the diners were silent.

  "I love dairy footh," said Naomi.

  "What difference does it make," said Mordy, "if you get your hormones and chemicals from the dairy industry or the meat industry?"

  "But it was kosher," said Ruth. Nusan laughed, but no one turned to him because Nusan was not a merry man and they had all learned to fear his laughter.

  "There are still good dairy restaurants in Brooklyn," said Sonia. This observation met with silence. Neither Harry nor Ruth could go to Brooklyn. In a perfect marriage to a man who feared rivers, Ruth feared bridges. She would take the Midtown Tunnel to Queens or the two tunnels to New Jersey, but Brooklyn, she feared, required a bridge. Subways went through tunnels but some went over bridges, and she could never remember which trains, and not wanting to ever find herself suspended on a bridge in a subway car, she avoided Brooklyn.

  Impressive amounts of herring were consumed, probably because everyone knew the brisket was next. Mordy, however, didn't eat fish. In fact, between political convictions, economic restrictions, and a general belief that most food had been poisoned by someone, Mordy ate almost no food at all. To Nathan, who had seen how much herring Nusan had already eaten on Sixth Street, it was striking to see how much more herring he ate now. And Harry loved herring.

  But soon the dreaded moment arrived, and Ruth carried out the large chunk of meat, jagged as though it were a handful yanked from the side of a stringy animal, cooked for hours until it was reduced to a bundle of fibers languishing in mawkish brown liquid.

  "I'm a vethetarian," Naomi announced in a rapid preemptive strike. "So ith Mordy"

  "The strings would get caught in your rings," suggested Sarah, who herself refused to eat brisket.

  "That's not nice, Sarah," said Sonia.

  But Sarah reached toward a silver ring that was looping an eyebrow. Naomi let out a breathy shriek and Sarah pulled back. "I just wanted to see what it is for." Naomi put up her forearm defensively

  But since Sarah had innocently raised this interesting issue, Harry decided to pursue it. "Isn't it a problem for eating? And for ..." He decided not to ask her about kissing.

  "Just a small slice," said Nathan, who also hated brisket. In fact, they all did. Ruth hated it, too. But her mother always made brisket on Friday nights. She vaguely remembered it being better. The packaged onion soup mix might be a mistake. Ruth always made enough for several families, and after a small amount was eaten the rest was wrapped up and given to Nusan, who rarely spoke during the meal.

  "Not
only have we lost the last dairy restaurant," said Harry, "but Moishe Apfel is closing."

  Everyone looked down at their plates, not daring to look at one another, especially not daring to look at Ruth. Moishe Apfel owned a kosher butcher on the ground floor of their building. He was the source of the hated brisket.

  "And that's the last kosher butcher in the neighborhood," Harry pronounced gravely.

  Thank God, thank God, they were all thinking. Ruth had lost her source for brisket.

  "What are you going to do?" Nathan asked his mother, trying not to sound cheerful.

  "Now I'll have to go all the way to Elizabeth Street," said Ruth, crushing all the hope in the room.

  "I couldn't find another butcher. I ended up renting to the Japanese. Carryout sushi."

  "Ohh," squealed Naomi, "I love thuthi. Mordy won't eat it."

  "The Japanese are cleaning out the oceans," said Mordy. "Besides, the fish is all full of mercury."

  "Well," said Harry, "I am ashamed of renting a Jewish store to the Japanese."

  "You don't mind eating German pastry," said Mordy, and Nusan smiled malevolently

  "I have known Bernhardt Moellen for forty years," Harry said defensively

  "Fifty would be better," Nusan muttered in a barely audible voice.

  "He is a good man. I like him. All the kids like him. You kids used to love going over there, remember?"

  "You still like going over there, don't you, Nathan," said Ruth.

  Nathan wondered why she had said that.

  At last the shredding carcass was removed. As the apple strudel, which had been placed on a long, ornate silver tray and redusted with powdered sugar, was brought out, Nusan hurled the look at Nathan that he always gave him at this point. It was a reminder that Nathan suspected the pastry maker of being a Nazi. Nathan wished he would forget. Nothing was found. There was nothing to it. Just racial stereotyping because he happened to be German. It would be like suspecting the three Sals of being connected to the Mafia—which, actually, he did suspect. "You could call me," she had whispered. Call me for what? What had she meant by that?