A Stone for Danny Fisher (1952) Read online

  Her voice hardened and took on a nasty edge. “I thought you liked Marjorie Ann.”

  I almost smiled to myself. “What made you think that?”

  She looked down at Rexie, lying between us and scratched the dog’s head. “I thought you were always sweet on her. She told me——”

  “What did she tell you?” I cut in.

  Our eyes locked in silent battle. Hers fell before mine. I still watched her, my eyes wide and unblinking.

  “She—she told me you did things with her,” she stammered.

  “What things?” I asked insistently.

  “Things you shouldn’t,” she said, studying her nail polish.

  I smiled suddenly. “She’s crazy! I never even touched her.”

  Relief flooded into Mimi’s eyes. “Honest, Danny?”

  I was still smiling. “Honest, Mimi,” I said quietly. “You know I wouldn’t lie to you.”

  She was smiling back at me. “I never believed her really, Danny. She makes up so many stories.” Her hand touched mine lightly. “I’m glad she’s going to get married and go away now. I don’t like her any more.”

  We looked silently down the street. It was growing dark and the street lamps came on with a sudden yellow radiance.

  “The days are getting shorter again,” I said.

  She didn’t answer and I turned to her. She looked like a kid sitting there in the glow of the street lamp, her black hair cascading down to her shoulder. Though she was two years older than I, I felt much older. Maybe it was the features of her face. Her bones were small and her mouth was unmarked. I wondered if she had ever been kissed. Really kissed, I mean. Then I put the thought quickly out of my mind. Not my sister; she wasn’t that kind of a girl.

  “Papa and Mamma look tired,” I said, changing the subject. “It must have been hot down here in the city.”

  “It’s not only that, Danny,” she answered. “Things haven’t been going too good. Business is bad and we’re behind on all our bills. Just the week before last the milk company almost cut us off. It was a good thing I got some part-time work at A&S; otherwise things might have been worse.”

  My eyes widened. I had known things were bad, but I hadn’t realized they were that bad. “I didn’t know,” I said. “Mamma never said anything in her letters.”

  She looked at me seriously. “You know Mamma. She wouldn’t write anything like that.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I reached into my pocket and took out a pack of butts. I put one in my mouth and was about to light it when she interrupted me.

  “Me too, Danny,” she said.

  I held the pack toward her. “I didn’t know you smoked,” I said in surprise.

  “I didn’t know you did,” she countered. She looked up at the house. “And we both better be careful Mamma don’t see us or we’ll both catch it.”

  We laughed together and held the cigarettes concealed in the cupped palms of our hands.

  “I’m glad I’m graduating this summer,” Mimi said. “Then maybe I’ll be able to get a job and really help out.”

  “Things are really that rough, eh?” I said thoughtfully.

  “Yes,” she answered simply. “Mamma is even talking about having to give up the house. We can’t keep up the mortgage payments.”

  “We can’t do that!” I was really startled now. Not my house. I just couldn’t believe that.

  Mimi shrugged her shoulders expressively. “Whether we can or we can’t’s got nothing to do with it. We’re running out of money.”

  I was quiet for a moment. I wasn’t a kid any more and I never really believed that this was my house as Papa had once said, but I didn’t want to move out of it. Somehow the thought of this house with other people living in it, another family eating in the kitchen, some other person sleeping in my room, bothered me. I liked it here, I didn’t want to have to move away.

  “Maybe I ought to quit school and get a job,” I said carefully.

  “Danny, you couldn’t!” Her voice was protesting. “You gotta finish school. Mamma and Papa got their hearts set on it.”

  I didn’t speak.

  “Don’t worry, Danny,” she said consolingly, placing her hand on my shoulder. “Everything’ll work out okay. I just know it will.”

  I looked at her hopefully. “You really think so?”

  She smiled at me. “Sure I do.” She got to her feet and threw her cigarette into the gutter. “I’d better get in and help with the dishes or Mamma’ll be after me.”

  I hoped she was right. She had to be. We just couldn’t move from here. There was no other place to live as far as I was concerned.

  Chapter Eleven

  MY name is Danny Fisher. I’m fifteen years and four months old. I’m in the sixth term at Erasmus Hall High School and I attend the morning session. It is one o’clock in the afternoon and school is over for the day. I am standing on the corner of Flatbush and Church Avenues watching the pupils stream by on their way home.

  They say there are more than three thousand pupils in the school, and at this moment it seems as if all of them are walking past this corner. They are laughing. Some boys are kidding some girls. There is envy in my glance as I watch them. Nothing bothers them.

  They have nothing on their minds until tomorrow, when they must return to class. Not like me. I got a house I want to keep more than anything else in the world. So I have to go to work. I look at a clock in the window. It is already a few minutes past one. I hurry, for I have to be at work by half past the hour.

  I walk down Flatbush Avenue. It is late October and the first chill of winter settles about me. I tighten my lumber-jacket. I stop for a minute in front of a movie house and read the lobby cards. It looks like a good show, and as I stand there some of the kids from school go in to see it. I’d like to catch the show too, but I can’t spare the time. I start walking again.

  I am past the heavy shopping district. The stores here are smaller and seem to cater more to the neighbourhood shopper than they did farther up the avenue near the school. My pace quickens. There isn’t as much here to catch my eye and slow me up.

  I have been walking almost a half-hour when I get to the six corners, where Flatbush and Nostrand come together. It is the terminal station of the Flatbush division of the IRT subway.

  There are many food stores on this corner: A&P; Bohack’s; Roulston’s; Daniel Reeves; Fair-Mart. It is this last that I enter. I walk through a long, narrow store.

  A man behind the counter looks up and yells at me. “Snap it up, Danny. We got a flock of orders waiting.”

  I break into a run and go into the back of the store. I place my school books on a shelf, take down an apron, and wrap it around me while running back to the front of the store. The orders are on the floor near the door and I begin to carry them out to the hand wagon.

  One of the clerks comes out and checks the bills with me. He gives me the exact change for the C.O.Ds. and I start off. The wagon and I weave in and out of the streets and traffic all afternoon until the sun sets and it is six o’clock. Then I take a heavy broom and begin to sweep down the store.

  At seven o’clock I take off my apron and fold it neatly back on the shelf so that it will be ready for tomorrow. I pick up my school books and walk to the front of the store and the manager lets me out, locking the door carefully behind me. I hurry up Nostrand Avenue to Newkirk. A bus is waiting at the subway exit there and I board it. I stand, for the bus is crowded with people coming home from work.

  I get off on my corner and walk up the block. My feet hurt and my neck and shoulder muscles are sore from lifting the heavy cartons, but I forget the pain when Rexie comes running down the street to greet me. She is wagging her tail happily in her excitement and I laugh and scratch her head. I go into my house still smiling, warm from the joy of her greeting.

  I spill a handful of change on the kitchen table. Slowly I tot up the nickels and dimes. Eighty-five cents. Tips were good today. I put twenty-five cents in my pocket and spill
the rest of the change into the tumbler over the sink.

  Mamma has been watching me. Now she speaks: “Go upstairs and wash, Danny. Supper is waiting.”

  Papa has been sitting at the table. He reaches out a hand and sorts of pats my shoulder as I walk by. He doesn’t speak and neither do I. We both know how we feel. I am content.

  For every day there is the little stream of change, and on Saturdays after I’ve worked a full day, from seven in the morning until eleven at night, the manager hands me my week’s pay. Three and a half dollars. Good weeks it can come to as much as ten dollars altogether with the tips.

  It is a good thing that school work comes easy to me, because most nights I fall asleep over my homework and have to finish it in a study period the next day. I sink into bed and sleep the sleep of the exhausted, but when I wake the next morning I am new and strong again. I have the indefatigability of youth on my side.

  There are times when I watch the boys in the street playing touch tackle and I feel like joining their game. Sometimes I get my hands on a football that one of the boys has failed to catch. I pick it up and my fingers instinctively caress the soft, smooth pigskin. I remember how much I wanted to be on the team at school. Then I throw the ball back. I watch it spiral lazily in the air until it falls into the receiver’s hands. Then I turn away.

  I have no time for play. I am sombre and thoughtful. I am engaged in a much greater game. I am working to keep my home secure.

  But there are forces at work of which I know nothing. The cold, unemotional mechanics of finance and credit, the machinery of business and economics, which hold a careful level on every life in every stratum of society and are only words in a textbook to me.

  And one night shortly before the end of October I came home from work and found Mamma crying.

  Mamma looked up at the clock. In a few minutes it would be time for lunch. She wondered where the morning had gone. She had awakened with such a strong presentiment of evil and bad luck hovering over her that she forced herself to keep busy every moment.

  She had cleaned and dusted every corner of the house, had even gone down into the cellar and sifted through the ashes to save the half-burned lumps of coal that fell through when the grate was shaken out. But in spite of all her preoccupation the feeling hung about her. It was always there in the back of her mind.

  She hurried into the kitchen and put some water into a pot on the stove and turned the light on underneath it. She heard a rustling on the floor. Rexie had got up from underneath the kitchen table and gone to the door, where she stood wagging her tail and looking back at Mamma.

  “You want to go out?” Mamma said to the dog as she opened the kitchen door.

  The dog ran out barking happily and she turned back to the stove. She put an egg into the water, which was just beginning to boil.

  After she had eaten she cleaned off the table and put the dishes into the sink. She was tired. She stood looking into the sink at them. She was too tired even to wash them.

  Suddenly she could feel her heart pounding so heavily that it seemed to vibrate all through her body. She was frightened. She had heard many times how heart attacks come upon people without warning. She went into the parlour and sat down on the couch, leaning back against the pillows. The palms of her hands were wet with perspiration. She closed her eyes and rested.

  Slowly the beating of her heart quieted. Her breathing was easier and her fear disappeared. “I’m just tired,” she said aloud. The words echoed in the empty room. She would take a hot bath; it would relax her and do her good. It was all nerves anyway, she decided. She undressed in the bathroom while the tub was filling, folded her clothes neatly and hung them on the towel rack, and looked into the mirror.

  Her hand reached up wonderingly and touched her hair. There was a great deal of grey in it, and the black seemed faded and dull. It seemed only yesterday that it had been alive and lustrous. And her face had tired little lines etched into it, the skin was not soft and smooth as she remembered it. It seemed almost as if someone else, not she, was looking at her from the mirror.

  She unhooked her brassiere. She studied herself in the mirror. She had always been proud of her breasts. She remembered how well shaped they had always been, how firm and strong, and bursting with life while she had been nursing the children. But who now could be attracted to such things as these?

  She turned away from the mirror toward the tub. It didn’t make much difference now. Neither of them had any appetite left. The struggle of the past few years had taken it from them. The memory of pleasure was dim in her mind. It was best left for youth and those without care.

  She sank into the tub carefully. Slowly the warmth of the water seeped through her. She felt light and buoyant. The gentle swishing of the water seemed to drive away her fears and once more she felt comfortable and secure. She leaned back against the tub, loving the feel of the water as it crept up to her shoulders. She rested her head against the tiles over the tub. She was drowsy and her eyelids felt heavy.

  “I’m getting to be a silly old woman,” she thought as she closed her eyes. She dozed.

  Her heart was pounding again. She tried to move her arms, but they felt heavy and lifeless. She must get up, she thought desperately, she must. With an effort she raised her head and opened her eyes. She looked about her with a startled look.

  The ringing of the telephone came to her ears. Suddenly she was wide awake. She remembered having come upstairs to take a bath. She must have been dozing for quite a while, she realized; the water was almost cold. The telephone downstairs was ringing with an urgency she could not ignore. She got out of the tub quickly, hurriedly dried her feet on the bath-mat and, throwing a towel around her wet body, ran downstairs to answer it.

  As soon as she picked up the phone and heard Papa’s voice she knew something was wrong. Somehow she had been expecting it all day.

  “Mary,” he cried, his voice shaking, “the bank’s got a judgment out against me and they’re gonna serve it tomorrow!”

  She tried to be calm. “Did you talk to them?” she asked, her voice reflecting his fears.

  “I did everything,” he answered resignedly. “I begged them, I pleaded with them to give me more time, but they told me they couldn’t do any more.”

  “Did you talk to your brother, David?” Mamma asked. “Maybe he can spare you some money.”

  “I spoke to him too,” he answered. He paused for a moment and a sound of finality came into his voice. “We’re finished—through.”

  “Harry, what are we going to do?” A vision of the family walking through the street in rags flashed before her. She fought her hysteria.

  “David is coming with his car tonight,” Papa replied. “We’re gonna try to empty the store as much as we can. We’ll hide the stuff in his place until I can find a way to open up somewhere else.”

  “But if you’re caught, you’ll go to jail,” she cried.

  “So I’ll go to jail,” he answered, his voice flat and dull. “Things can’t be much worse.” Somehow in telling what had happened he had lost all capacity for emotion. “They attached the house too.” He lapsed into Yiddish, as he didn’t do very often. “Alles iss forloren,” he said, “everything is lost.”

  That was the night I came home and found Mamma crying at the kitchen table, and Mimi, with tears in her eyes too, holding her hand.

  That was the night I left without supper and went down to Papa’s store and helped move hastily packed cartons of merchandise out to Uncle David’s car.

  That was the night when I stood in the darkened street at two o’clock in the morning and my father, crying bitterly all the while, looked at the store windows and murmured: “Twenty-five years, twenty-five years.”

  That was the night I watched my mother and father fall sobbing into each other’s arms and learned that they too had feelings they could not control. For the first time I saw fear and despair and hopelessness plainly in their faces.

  I went quietly to my r
oom and undressed, crept into bed and lay there looking up into the dark. The muted sounds of their voices came from downstairs. I could not fall asleep and watched the morning creep into my room, and there was nothing I could do. Nothing.

  That was the night when for the first time I admitted to myself that it was not my house, that it really belonged to someone else, and there was no heart left in me for tears.

  Moving Day

  December 1, 1932

  IT was wrong. Everything was wrong, nothing was right. I knew it the minute I went into the B.M.T. subway station at Church Avenue instead of walking home. When I got up that morning, there was a dull, choked feeling in me as if someone had poked me in the solar plexus and it had been getting worse all day. Now I could feel its ache spreading all through me. I was going home from school, but I wasn’t going home any more.

  There was an express in the station when I got down the steps and automatically I ran for it. I got aboard just as the door was closing. There weren’t any seats, so I leaned against the door on the other side. This door opened only once on the way, at Atlantic Avenue, so at least I could stand there with as little disturbance as possible.

  It was cold in the train and I pulled the collar of my sheep-skin jacket up around my neck. It had snowed a few days before, but the streets were pretty well cleaned up by now. Some snow still lay on the tracks as the train pulled into Prospect Park. The tunnel closed around us, choking off the day. I took a deep breath trying to get rid of the sick feeling inside me. It didn’t help. If anything, it only made it worse.

  That morning the barrels and boxes around the already strange, empty-looking rooms had reminded me: today was moving day. I had left my room without a backward glance, Rexie close upon my heels. I wanted to forget all about it—forget I was ever kid enough to believe that it was really my house. I was old enough now to know that was the kind of a story you told to children.