A Christmas Story
By Roger Rosenblatt
What Sister Geraldine would have visitors understand is that it is not a matter of how much she gives to the people of Sunset Park but how much she gets back. The gift is their lives, she says: they trust us with their lives, and we offer them in return practical things like food and clothing, spiritual things like comfort and encouragement, hope, perhaps; sometimes we give them hope. But oh, what they give to us. Sister Mary Paul actually cried last night to realize how lucky the two of us are to be here. Don't think for a moment that these people are characterized by their poverty. They are wonderful people, wonderful. Maria. Tony and Ingrid. Rose and her six kids living in a car. Even Mallory. Yes, Mallory too, though I know you won't think so. Sure I love them. I'm supposed to love them as part of my vocation. But you can't love someone into life. They do it themselves. The process is slow but continuous. Sunset Park goes on and on. The work we do, it's not like your kind of work, not like most kinds of work, with beginnings, endings and neat hard lines. It's not like a story.
I MALLORY
The darkness has two colors: purple and gray. They float toward each other like ghosts in the hallway of Mallory's basement apartment. The darkness is absolute. Not even the walls are visible, until the door to the kitchen is pushed open and the apartment is cast in a cold silver, late afternoon light admitted through a single kitchen window. Three chairs surround a formica $ table standing flush against a wall. The seats of the chairs are torn open, exposing a brown stuffing. Beside one of the kitchen chairs a gas pipe juts straight up three feet where an oven used to be. Mallory explains he has no use for an oven; the hot plate on the sink is more than adequate for Michael and him. Beneath the sink all the drawers of the kitchen cabinet have been pulled out, leaving holes. In an aluminum pie plate on the table, cigarette ashes mix with the remains of a crust. The ceiling is water-stained around a circular fluorescent bulb. The walls are yellow, sallow in the darkening room.
"Why don't you turn on the lights, Mr. Mallory?"
"Saves money." He touches a finger to his forehead to indicate shrewdness. His small dark eyes look both cold and imploring.
"Where does Michael do his homework?"
"Here, at the kitchen table. I turn on the lights at night. Don't need 'em in the day. Don't need heat, either. You feel warm enough, don't you?"
Mallory's apartment has four rooms, but he rents out the front room to a Puerto Rican mother and two children. If that family wants to use the kitchen, or the bathroom at the far end of the kitchen, they must ask Mallory's permission. On the bathroom door Mallory has posted a sign: DO NOT USE UNLESS YOU CLEAN UP AFTER YOURSELF. Of the two other rooms, one belongs to Michael and Michael's mother Eileen. The other is Mallory's bedroom, nearly filled by a low queen-size bed with an upholstered maroon headboard into which a clock radio has been fitted. Above the headboard on a yellow wall hangs a huge novelty $1,000 bill, with Mallory's face where Grover Cleveland's would be. Beside the bed is a phone with a lock on the dial. "They want to use it," says Mallory, "they have to pay."
The room given to Michael and Eileen is packed like a storage cellar with paint cans, a battered cocktail wagon, a shopping cart, cardboard boxes full of clothing, which serve as Michael's chest of drawers, suitcases and a single bed resting on remnants of red carpet.
"Michael's mother sleeps there."
"Where does Michael sleep?"
"On the floor under the bed. He likes it there."
"Why doesn't Eileen sleep with you?"
"I won't let her. I don't like her. I keep her here for Michael, but Michael don't like her either."
His reason for keeping Eileen in the house is to ensure that Michael, age 7, will not be taken from him again and given over to a foster home. That has happened three times, when Mallory left Michael alone in the house. Mallory was reported for neglect. He lets Eileen stay to make it appear as if the boy has a stable home, even though Mallory calls Eileen a bad mother, who will run off with anybody anytime. He cared for her once, he says, but now he cares only for Michael. He will buy Michael a bike for Christmas.
"He can read at a fourth-grade level." Mallory looks pleased again. "I taught him myself, by my own special method. If he don't know a word, I make him write it ten times. I make him read a book every night, until he's got it. I've been doing this for years. But Michael's teachers tell me not to teach him."
"Because of your method?"
"Yeah. It upsets what they teach."
"Does Michael find the two methods confusing?"
"No. He learns both ways. It's better. It's power." Mallory falls into a coughing spasm. He's had the flu for weeks, he says. At his job working as a messenger for the city government, they think that he is shirking. They want to fire him, says Mallory. But they won't get away with it. "Look at this." He produces an official letter of complaint from his employers, several pages of grievances, ranging from laziness to insubordination to petty thievery to poor hygiene and unkempt appearance. "They think they'll throw me out, but I've got a union lawyer. Let 'em try."
"Why did you seek help for Michael?"
"He gets into trouble at school. He fights a lot. It's his mother's fault. He don't have a mother, really. He's frustrated." Mallory looks troubled, puzzled. He is 48, stubble bearded, but he has the face of a fearful child. "I'd like to get married," he grins. "I'm sort of playing the field."
The doorbell rings, and Mallory admits two tall black men delivering a huge brown, metal free-standing closet. They struggle to angle the closet through the darkened hallway to place it in Michael's and Eileen's room. Mallory's plan is to rip out built-in drawers in the hallway, and thus widen it into a dining room. The immediate effect of the alteration is to make Michael's room impossible to enter. Mallory touches his head again. "Smart, right?"
Michael enters with Eileen. This is Veterans Day: no school. Ordinarily Michael would be in a therapy session at the Center for Family Life, an institution run by Sisters Geraldine and Mary Paul for the welfare of Sunset Park. Michael half skips, half struts into the kitchen where, the afternoon ^ gone, Mallory has finally turned on the fluorescent bulb, filling the room with fierce pink light. Eileen follows, wearing jeans and a denim jacket. She is slim and pretty, with the raw look of a teenage boy.
"You can tell that's Michael's mother," says Mallory.
"Everyone says that Michael looks like me," says Eileen.
"No. He looks like me." Mallory is amused at his joke.
"He has your nose," Eileen laughs. "That's all he has."
"He has my intelligence," says Mallory.
"I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about features. He has my feet, my hands, the color of my skin when I was a kid."
"All ugly," Mallory chuckles.
"All ugly? I'll punch you one, all ugly. Then why is he so beautiful?"
Mallory places a book in Michael's hands. "Read for the man, Michael." The boy rests the book on the kitchen table and stands before it, pronouncing each word as if it existed alone.
"Sam the Slug had eaten a pink petunia leaf. Night was almost over. He had time for one last bit."
"Bite." Mallory corrects his son.
"He had time for one last bite," says Michael. He continues: "Sam yawned and chewed happily. How wonderful to be a slug."
"Do you know what a petunia is, Michael?" Michael eyes the stranger.
"No." He is shown a picture of the flower next to the story.
"Do you know what a slug is?"
Again he says, "No."
"Read the page over," says Mallory. Michael starts to read more rapidly this time. His arms flap at his side like a panicked bird. But he reads the page without a hitch and looks up for approval.
"See?" says Mallory. "What did I tell you? Smart."
II GERALDINE AND SUNSET
PARK
"First, let's see the awning." Sister Geraldine squirms with anticipation in the seat beside the driver. "They just put up a new awning on the thrift shop. There. There it is." She points to a skirt-shaped burgundy awning over a doorway on Sunset Park's Fifth Avenue, the neighborhood's main shopping area. On the awning in white lettering is inscribed CENTER FOR FAMILY LIFE THRIFT SHOP. "Doesn't it look great?"
"Just like a cute boutique on Madison Avenue."
"Oh no! Do you think so? Do you think it looks too fancy for a thrift shop?" She pouts, considers, concludes that she is being teased. "It doesn't. It looks absolutely perfect."
On a bright blue afternoon the shops along Fifth Avenue spill their goods on racks onto the sidewalk, as if the shops' interiors had burst open, overstuffed. In front of a hardware store, toilet seats hang displayed like tropical leaves: lavender, pink, green, purple, yellow. A yellow seat shows a painting of a naked couple kissing in silhouette. In front of another store are racks of sweatshirts, slacks, bright-colored T shirts. Another presents bins of Christmas lights, sandals, bogus Cabbage Patch dolls, a heap of green plastic ice buckets made in the shape of apples.
Up and down the avenue lies the history of the neighborhood, of New York, of much of the nation. In the window of a drugstore that looks preserved from the 1940s, boxes of Whitman's Samplers, chocolates, are stacked beside a cardboard cutout of a vanilla ice-cream soda. Down the avenue: a pizzeria, Ryan's bar, the Klassy Klothes Boutique. One restaurant seeks at least two populations: Comidas China Latinas y Szechuans. A clothing store, "For Latinos," shows its original name, Glass and Lieberman, embossed in the sidewalk. On other streets, other identifications: German, Polish, Korean, Finnish, Norwegian. The Scandinavians are the neighborhood elders, vestiges of the time up through World War II when Sunset Park's harbor bulged with freighters and warships.
"Half the neighborhood is Hispanic. Most of those who come to the center are Hispanic, but by no means all. Mallory is Irish, of course. Every nationality we work with has its special troubles on top of the general human variety." Geraldine (Italian) indicates the scope of her purview with a sweep of her arm. "We have a whole world here."
The world of Sunset Park holds 98,000 people, one-third of whose families live below the poverty line. The neighborhood is shaped like a dog-eared rectangle, slightly over a mile wide and 2.6 miles long. Upper New York Bay creates the western boundary, across the water from which the financial towers of lower Manhattan stand bunched together like a bouquet of steel pipes. The eastern boundary is Eighth Avenue, the land rising steeply as one moves inland from the harbor. The southern boundary at 65th Street separates Sunset Park from the middle-class neighborhood of Bay Ridge. Across 17th Street, at the northern boundary, is Park Slope, a newly fashionable area where the high price of housing has driven many poor from their homes. Geraldine and Mary Paul fear this may happen in Sunset Park.
One other boundary exists inside the neighborhood. The Brooklyn-Queens + Expressway, an elevated highway, extends over Third Avenue, dividing Sunset Park from itself. When the BQE opened as the Gowanus Parkway in 1941, the life under the highway was shadowed away: meat and vegetable markets, restaurants, seven movie theaters, all disappeared, along with the people. Now, to the east of Third Avenue, middle-income families, both Hispanic and white, are refurbishing brownstones with elaborate cornices and carvings. Between Third and the harbor, however, are tenements and abandoned houses spread out among bleak whitish factory buildings and the Lutheran Medical Center. On Third Avenue itself, the BQE makes a continual shushing noise, with traffic racing from Staten Island on the southwest out to the other boroughs. The vast stout legs of the expressway straddle the avenue like a gigantic millipede, around which lie stacks of dusty automobile tires and junked cars. Human life is furtive, barely visible. Under the legs of the expressway, hunched figures scavenge in metal garbage bins or simply lean against a pillar and stare.
"There's Billy." Geraldine points out a slinking figure in a black ski cap, with a gash-scar running from the corner of his right eye to his chin. "I've known him since he was a kid. Now he's an addict, a pusher too, probably." She shouts, "Hi, Billy." The figure, startled, uncoils, waves brightly and moves on.
"It can get rough here. There's no pretending that it can't. When Mary Paul and I opened the center in 1978, youth gangs ruled the neighborhood. The Homicides. The Assassinators. Now the gangs are gone, but the pushers have taken over. The violence stays. One night two summers ago, we were closing up our Teen Jam, and I walked past this group shouting at one another. One gang trespassed on a rival gang's turf. Suddenly, a woman and a boy were shot dead. A white car sped off, chasing a wounded boy all the way to Lutheran Hospital. They fired straight through the windows of the emergency room."
Much of the greenery in Sunset Park lies in Greenwood Cemetery, one of the oldest and largest public burial grounds in America. Among the half a million interred are Currier and Ives, Samuel F.B. Morse, William ("Boss") Tweed, Horace Greeley and Elias Howe, inventor of the sewing machine; Charles Tiffany, jeweler; Pierre Lorillard, tobacco tycoon; Edward Squibb, the pharmaceutical manufacturer; William Colgate, the soapmaker. James Kirke Paulding lies in Greenwood, the man who composed "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers," as does Frank Morgan, who played the Wizard of Oz in the 1939 movie.
They are buried among the Dutch and English, who first settled the neighborhood in the 17th century with farms stretching from the hill down to the water, and among those who fought under Washington in the Continental Army. Sunset Park was a major stronghold in the Battle of Long Island in the summer of 1776. Some trees of Greenwood Cemetery--oak, maple, beech, white pine--are old enough to have sheltered the Canarsie Indians, who maintained a fishing station at what is now 37th and Third. Greenwood rests above the neighborhood like a great serene estate, some of the wealthy contained in vast crypts beside decorous ponds, as stark and monumental as Egyptian tombs.
South of the cemetery is Sunset Park itself, 18 acres of walking paths, playgrounds, graffiti-ridden benches and a WPA-built swimming pool. From the high ground around the flagpole, neighborhood citizens may look down over the rooftops into the bay at the Statue of Liberty, sheathed in scaffolding for repairs, rising from the water like a shapeless green plant; or watch Manhattan at twilight sparkle into being.
"We use the park for our summer camp," says Geraldine. "The pool is too shallow for the bigger kids, and fights break out. But it's all we've got in the heat."
Besides the camp and the after-school programs that Michael Mallory attends, the Center for Family Life organizes a foster-grandparent program, a theater workshop, and literacy classes for adults. A dance group produces a version of the Nutcracker for the neighborhood Christmas show. The awninged thrift shop not only sells inexpensive goods but provides free emergency food. The center also operates an employment agency to help non-English speakers in particular. The main work of the center is counseling--group-therapy sessions, and individual meetings between staff members who are professional social workers and clients who, like Mallory, seek the center for help.
"Mallory came to us because of Michael's wild behavior in school, but that's only part of the problem, as you can see. Mallory wants to hold on to Michael. Fine. In his way, he really loves Michael. But if Michael stays with his so- called family, he may be a lot worse off. I've discussed this openly with Mallory, who, naturally, doesn't like it. The case is a mess."
The car parks at the center, a plain, deceptively large building that backs on St. Michael's Church, with its odd, elongated acorn spires. Geraldine and Mary Paul attend 8:30 Mass every morning, but they have no time for other formal daily prayers. There is no religious cast whatever to the center. On the ground floor are a reception room and Geraldine's office. On the upper floors, staff offices, consultation rooms, a large "family room" used for parties and group sessions. The top floor constitutes the convent for the two nuns. This is their place of privacy.
Geraldine bustles into the center and is greeted by Zaida, a soft-spoken receptionist and a longtime resident of Sunset Park. There are many phone calls to return. Sister Mary Paul has gone to a budget hearing in the city. A Puerto Rican family of four sits on a bench, looking friendly and anxious. Geraldine leafs through her messages, then looks up suddenly. "Zaida! Wait till you see the new awning."
III MARIA
I used to fight a lot, I don't know why. This girl that I hated, she hated me too, and I tried not to fight her, but then, you know, you start thinking about the person, even at night. She's always on your mind. You practice in your house. So I planned on a Monday, you know, to fight. But it didn't work out. So Tuesday I went. I had on my red Jordache. In those days it was in style. Not anymore. You like this jacket? And my sneakers and a red sweatshirt. And I saw her. Everything I had to say I told her the day before in an argument, so I ran out of words. I told my friend to tell the girl that I wanted to fight her, because I don't like her and she don't, doesn't, like me. Right? Then the girl, she pushed me. She hit me first. She called me a bitch. We started. I kept telling myself, Fight like an animal, like an animal, and don't stop, don't stop.
She bit my finger. I had her like this, you know, my arm around her head, and my hand was in her face, scratching her. I wanted to hurt her bad. The night before, I polished my fingernails to make them hard. Her father charged me with assault. That's stupid. But I got in trouble in school, in court, and my mother, you know, she cried when the cops came. Mothers get so nervous. But that's stupid. They wouldn't lock me up. I was 14.
That tape recorder. The light goes red when I speak. Right?
I knew something was wrong with me, you know? Me and my friend, my friend and I, started joking around. We saw a cop and we stopped in front of him, and I said, "I'm depressed," and we all started laughing. But I was really depressed. Then I went up to a lady, and I said again, "I'm depressed." And she goes, "Oh, honey. I'm depressed too. That's life." I started saying I'm depressed for a joke, but it was real. Then my friend told me, "You're crazy. You've got to talk to a psychiatrist. She told me about the center, so I came to Mary Paul and Geraldine. I was getting scared of myself. My boyfriend gave me a knife. I still have it, in a purple bag.
I hate my voice on tape recorders. I sound like a little boy.
The sisters were the first people I ever talked to about stuff like that. In my family nobody talks. They just fight. Like last week I came from gymnastics. Right? And my brother was in a bad mood or something, so he pushed me. I got mad and I pushed him. We ended up in the kitchen, and he threw me against the window, which cracked, but I didn't fall out. And my mother started screaming and pushed me to one side, and I started screaming, and my other sisters started screaming. It's always like that. When we lived on 39th Street, my brother put his finger in my eye. I had an operation.
My father's worse. He's the worst. He drinks. He hits me. He's stupid. Yesterday, he came home and started fighting with my brother. I got mad at him. He says he was at my brother to give him a lesson, but he don't give anybody any lesson, doesn't; he's just mean. I smelled his breath. Smelled like liquor, and I told him. He said, "You shut up before I step on your face and throw you out of the house." And I say I'm going to leave the house on my own. And he asks, "Why would you do that?" He's so stupid. He almost broke my back once, punched me. Geraldine wants me to go to college. I'm applying to Purchase and Queens. I can't wait to get out of that house.
And my mother takes his side, you know? She hates him for hitting us, because she loves us. Right? But she likes him too! Like last Christmas they kissed, and I never seen them kissing, and I got embarrassed and I left. I didn't know they did that.
I think he's depressed like me. But he doesn't take depression like me. You got to take it and face it, you know?
He messes up everything. I know he's going to mess up Christmas again. Year before last, we were driving to our cousins in the Bronx. It was raining, and he gets in a fight with another driver. Last Christmas the same. We were in the car, and he's driving drunk, putting us in danger. And he starts fighting with my big sister, who can't take it. She keeps her unhappiness inside. She ; tried to kill herself one time by swallowing all my grandmother's asthma pills. My other sister tried to kill herself too. They had to clean out her blood in Lutheran. My friend and I went to visit her. I said, "Hi." I was scared to kiss her. I took her hand, and she pulled it and kissed me. A lady psychiatrist was looking at me. She was wearing red high heels. I didn't like her. She was looking at me as if my sister was my fault.
You got kids? You like your kids?
He's always calling us pieces of crap. He's garbage. I hate him. When he hit my back, he took my jacket and put it over my head, and banged me against the floor. After that I thought he was finished hitting me, but yesterday he said he was going to step on my face. You want to dial the cops, but you can't. I never talk about him to my boyfriend. I didn't even want to talk to Geraldine at first. I didn't like her at first. I liked Mary Paul better. I thought Geraldine, you know, wanted too much. Then I wrote her letters. That helped. You want to see the letters?
I think two people are here. You're looking at me, and the tape recorder is looking at me.
You would have killed a father like mine. He tells me I'm good for nothing, that I won't be nothing in the future. But I'm going to be a scientist, or a medical assistant, or something. You know why he tells me I'm no good? 'Cause he's no good. Everybody always told him he's no good, and he's going to tell his children they're no good.
Last night after the fight he held the door open for me, when we were going out. I never saw him do that before. But I wouldn't go through. I just let him hold the door until he got tired of holding it, and then he went through and I went through on my own. No way I was going to let him hold that door for me.
IV MARY PAUL
There was a time when Geraldine was convinced that Mary Paul was a saint. She is not at all sure now that she wasn't right about that, but Geraldine did not see the point in treating Mary Paul like a saint if she also wanted to work at her side. The glow was bound to get her down. As a young nun, Geraldine was in awe of Mary Paul's combination, as she put it, of heart and head. Still, she thought, Mary Paul is 20 years my senior. When I'm her age, I'm bound to be smarter myself. She cherishes Mary Paul's high seriousness and contemplative nature. Mary Paul cherishes Geraldine's vivacity, goodness and sense of fun. The only severe blowup in the 25 years of their friendship came when Geraldine began to fear that Mary Paul would die someday, so she acted ornery as a pre- emptive strike.
At 65, Mary Paul looks very far from dying. Her dark brown hair not only shows no gray but seems to reflect the deep blue of her habit. Her face is soft, cheeks puffed like a doll's. Her eyes, also deep blue, are a girl's eyes, her voice soft as a girl's, yet firm and untentative. She is very small. Sitting in an armchair in the upstairs convent of the center, she must lean forward so as not to be swallowed in the cushions.
"As a girl I never thought of being a nun. I wanted to be a teacher. I was a bookish little kid, very serious always. Unlike Geraldine, I did not go to Catholic school. Religion only began to interest me when I was halfway through Hunter College, and then mainly as a subject for contemplation. I read a good deal. Books such as Thomas a Kempis' The Imitation of Christ, which I cannot stand now. Thomas a Kempis said the more one goes into the world, the less one becomes. That's not true at all. The more you go into the world, the more you are."
Mary Paul and Geraldine belong to the Sisters of the Good Shepherd, an order founded in France in 1641 as Sisters of the Refuge to shelter banished women. The order was renamed and internationalized in 1835 under the leadership of Mother, later Saint, Maria Euphrasia, who emphasized gratitude as the basis of the order's faith and works. "Vous avez un coeur fait pour aimer, fait pour etre reconnaissant." (You have a heart created to love and to be grateful.) Theologically, the tenet of gratitude is seen as the opposite of original sin because it grasps God as the source of all that is good. Mary Paul translates this idea into appreciation: "The staff truly appreciates the people they represent." Both she and Geraldine de-emphasize the role of religion in the center's work. It never seems to be mentioned, and both staff and clients represent all faiths and none. But faith is clearly at the core of the nuns' own lives, though it is a private business with them, and both must be prodded to discuss it.
"Two things you cannot describe to anyone else," says Mary Paul. "Sex and prayer. God lives in a different realm of reality. To talk about that reaches beyond the point of talk.
"But I can talk endlessly about the center. The community set us up, in a way. As the needs evidenced themselves, we developed programs to try to meet those needs. Our employment office was a response to the fact that there's 12% jobless in Sunset Park, 4% higher than the rest of the city. You were kidding Geraldine about our building an empire here. Well, we did. We started with a dozen staff, and we never dreamed we'd grow as big as we are. But the needs are so various and complicated. Last week I did a preliminary interview with a woman who said at first that her problem was her 14-year-old son, who never showed up at school. The woman carried an enormous briefcase with her --all the time, I learned later--packed with every notice and letter she has ever received. She cannot read, so she carries this file around with her for reference. When I got to meet her son, he could not read either, and he didn't go to school because he was ashamed.
"Or you take Maria. Maria is smart, clever, volatile, funny, mischievous, a real piece of work. She would have us believe that she does not realize that she loves her father in spite of his awful behavior, but she does realize that. She does not need to be taught to love him, so in that she is playing a sort of game by pretending her love is a secret we all must disclose. But Maria does need to learn to live at peace with the world, because in temperament she is very much like her father. That's her real problem."
The Center for Family Life is not the sole agency of help in Sunset Park. Lutheran Hospital offers high school equivalency classes to the community, as well as medical care. Doug Heilman, a Lutheran minister, established Discipleship House in 1981, a sort of Boys Town for teenagers in trouble. Heilman's work with street kids is praised everywhere in Sunset Park; wherever he walks he is greeted warmly by young men, many of whom are former gang members. The help he provides takes the form of moral encouragement or simple solace. Heilman corresponds with a young man from the neighborhood now in prison for murdering his six-month-old child in a fit of rage. Before Heilman took to the streets, no one in Sunset Park recognized such people.
Yet Heilman, Father Thomas Haggerty, the pastor of St. Michael's, Bob Walsh, Joe Montalto--community leaders who work in different ways for Sunset Park --all agree that the center is the social engine of the neighborhood. They remember that in 1978, Sunset Park, though designated a poverty area in the 1960s, had not yet reached the point of deterioration of the South Bronx and the now destitute Bushwick section of Brooklyn. There was still a chance to pull the neighborhood back from disintegration. The center is credited for the beginnings of recovery. Mary Paul and Geraldine do not deny this, since it is demonstrably true. At the same time they are made visibly uncomfortable by any focus on themselves as individuals, and will, when so threatened, immediately draw one's attention to the others in the community and to their staff members, all of whom the sisters prize: Carol Heiney-Gonzalez, Maryanne Sabatino, Anna Nalevanko, Anita Cleary, John Kixmiller, who runs the after- school program at P.S. 314; Tom Randall; Julie Stein Brockway, who leads the theater workshop; Diana Hart-Johnson, the woman preparing the Nutcracker show.
"They are there for the people. They certainly don't love everyone of their clients. It's hard to love wife batterers and child molesters. But they have this basic, nonjudgmental quality of acceptance."
The phone rings in the convent. Mary Paul must see a woman whose six-year-old and 1 1/2-year-old children were discovered on a fire escape at 4 a.m. The woman's excuse was that she had to go buy milk. "Of course, it isn't true. The woman undoubtedly has a pattern of leaving her children in hazardous situations. Is she going to trust us enough to allow us to help?
"You wonder why the staff does this work. People who are in what we call the helping professions are curious. I think they may feel something missing in their lives. There can be a lot of ego in this profession, a lot of vicarious fulfillment. One wants to see oneself as a good and giving person. There is nothing wrong with that, but it can't be the only goal. The ultimate goal must be a change in the system in which both the giver and the taker live. Life is made better generally. I bet if you had time to interview every one of our clients, many would not attribute changes that occurred to us at all. Good things happened, and they believe they were their achievements. In many ways they were.
"People call us a charity organization. I don't like the word charity, except in the sense of caritas, love. Love is not based on marking people up by their assets and virtues. Love is based on the sense of the mystery of the person. Here we have the privilege of meeting people in via, as it is said, on the way. They're on a journey. The gratitude I feel is that I am able to see this particular person at this particular time. Yet the person remains an unfathomable mystery, and is going somewhere I will never know."
V CENTER FOR FAMILY LIFE
THEATER WORKSHOP
Sixteen teenagers in a circle run in place, snap their fingers, clap their hands under their legs as they lift them. Much giggling and groaning. Jokes about Jane Fonda. Stretch exercises on the cafeteria floor of P.S. 1. Julie, the staff leader, wears a sweatshirt reading NAGS HEAD, NORTH CAROLINA. Calls out directions: "Let's do knots." Kids divide into two huddles, all crossing arms, grasping one another. Entangled, they must work their way out by twisting until their knot unravels. "Anita's stuck again." Laughter. Julie: "Double duck-ducks, please." Kids on haunches in one large circle again. Hector, tagged "Goose," has to run outside the circle to tag Felice. Slips and collisions. Howls, exaggerated pain. Circle re-forms. Julie: "Huggy-bear two." Kids embrace in pairs. "Huggy-bear five." Kids embrace in clusters of five. Hector to observer: "Love at first sight." This is an elimination game. Last boy pretends to weep with self-pity, moans, "Rejected." Julie again: "Emotional machines." Kids make instant clusters, constructs of their bodies. In a cluster one girl cries; another spanks her; a boy rocks on the floor as he clings to the second girl's leg; another boy pulls that boy's foot. "Too easy," Julie shouts. "Take your risks, ladies and gentlemen. Family machines." A girl begins, "Gimme," and continues repeating the word as at the start of a roundelay. A boy chips in "No," and continues to say "No." Second boy: "It's mine." Second girl: "Will you stop whining?" Third boy: "Shut up." The family machine roars. Applause, whistles, whoops. Circle again. Julie: "Start a feeling." One: "I'm happy." Each follows with own intonation until "I'm happy" goes round once. Another: "I'm so frustrated." Another: "Why do you do this to me?" Julie: "Carlos, don't say it until you feel it." Another feeling starts: "I'm so cool." Another: "I've got chirasma." The whole group: "What?" Boy, confused, repeats, "I've got chirasma." Girl: "You mean you got asthma." Laughter. "You mean you got charisma." Julie: "Let's do it. Keep it moving. Today we've got chirasma."
VI MARIA'S LETTERS
Geraldine:
My father is drunk again, like always, he sat in front of me. He's losing his eyesight with the alcohol. I saw his eyes, all red. He said he couldn't see very well during the day, I almost cried. I wish I wouldn't live with a person like that. Every day for years he always came home drunk, making me hate him. I know he'll soon die and that makes me cry. He gives up on life, he doesn't look for solutions. I remember when I was small he used to hug me. Things are getting worse. I got to get ready before he dies.
Geraldine:
You're not right. I'm angry at you. I know you are the one who told my mother to talk back to my father, the same thing you told me, which I won't do, cause you don't f-----g know what's going on. You know, if my mother gets hurt because of listening to you, you'll get hurt too. Don't come saying things you think is right. My father is different. If you talk back to my father he gets dangerous . . . I f-----g have you and my stupid mother. My mother is acting like a bitch. I feel like punching her out . . . It's your fault. I see you every week and you never do nothing for me. My mother right now is close to my father, listening to him . . . I hope she dies. I hope they both die and I don't know about you.
Geraldine:
There are so many things to tell you, but I never tell you. I try my best, but I'm not happy, even though I make believe. I worry for my family which now is in danger. Don't you f-----g understand? My father is dangerous. Right now he lost control. We have to get away from him, but he's then not gonna have anybody. He broke the thermometer of the apartment and the boiler is becoming into flames. I don't know if this letter will reach you. I can't sleep. He screams out of control. Everyone in the house is awake at 12:30. I don't know if we'll ever sleep today. I just can't hold on too long. Every day I think of leaving a message to some friends and teachers and throwing myself from the school's roof. I always think of that. How about my sisters? If I die it will be better because it was gonna happen anyway . . . Things will be much easier away from him, my life, my school work, my health and my eyes. I hate. I have to kill him someday, take his brains out, slashing his face and my mother's too, if she cries.
Dear Geraldine:
Hi. I don't want to interrupt when you're busy. But I've been thinking I don't have to put up with all the garbage my father says. I know they're not true, but they really hurt. They hurt because no matter how I try to say that he's not my father, I can't say that to myself. He's my father, and he's the worst enemy I ever had.
Dear Geraldine:
The Purchase application is inside the black and blue book . . . I don't have an application from Queens. Should I call that lady? . . . I'm making a new + list of applications to send. Could you review it with me?
Dear Ms. Geraldine:
I'm not trying to make you show that you care because I already know that. I want you to know that you're a good example that I will like someday to follow. If you had the time, I know you would of liked to help the whole world. Not to become affluence, but because it is something you enjoy to do. See, I use a big word (affluence). Geraldine, what is wrong is that I expect you to do everything for me . . . I expect you to make my decisions . . . P.S. I'm going to change because it's something I've been avoiding.
Dear Geraldine:
I'm going to write that I love you because I can't say it. You're a wonderful person, your personality and all. Before I used to think that only your own race cares for you. That's not true is it? If it's true don't tell me. Anyway I'm never forgetting about you. When I move to college I want you to visit me and I will write to you . . . P.S. If you feel that I'm talking foolishly, well too bad. If you're getting tired, tell me. And if you want to finish with me after a couple of years, tell me, O.K.? Don't hide it.
VII TONY, INGRID AND
MARYANNE
"Can you explain the process so that an outsider can understand it? What exactly happens in these counseling sessions?"
"We talk. We observe, we listen and we talk. That's all there is to it. At our first meeting, I will introduce myself fairly formally: 'I am Maryanne Sabatino, I'm a professional staff member here at the center,' and so forth. Then we'll begin. It's hard to see anything clearly for a while. You visited Tony and Ingrid for the first time this morning. What did you see?"
"What struck me at once was how neat their apartment was. The two of them are a lot poorer than Mallory, but their place is a palace compared with his. I gather that the main problem is that woman superintendent, who seems to be driving them crazy. She constantly yells at the two little girls. Ingrid says that Tony is after her to have it out with the woman, but Ingrid wants to solve the problem by moving. She claims that the super has become the main sore point in their marriage."
"It may be a sore point, but it isn't the heart of their troubles. In a way, Tony and Ingrid are a classic situation. They came to the center with one specific complaint, and then it opened to something wider and deeper."
"Are drugs their biggest worry, then? Ingrid is down to nothing, but Tony still uses a lot of methadone. Is Ingrid afraid that she'll get hooked again?"
"That's a problem too, of course. So is Tony's health. He coughs up blood, which he blames on the metal fragments he inhaled at the sheet-metal factory. Ingrid says he's gone down four pants sizes in a year. Also, they live together illegally even though they're married, because Ingrid's welfare check would be cut off if the government knew Tony was helping out with the support. All serious problems. But the central issue is Tony and Ingrid. I've told them that directly. Both are 30; she may be 29. She is strong, articulate, ambitious. He is sweet and irresponsible. She feels that he is trying to hide from life. He feels she is dominating him."
"But that woman-super business. Doesn't Tony come off as the more aggressive of the two?"
"That's merely her way of bolstering him in front of a stranger. The irony there is that if Tony really wanted to stand up to the super, he would not do it through Ingrid. And she defines the problem as her responsibility, not his, merely reinforcing the circle. Even on the idea of their moving, Tony feels that he is being told what to do, not only by Ingrid but by the super, who is forcing him to make a decision. Tony avoids decisions. Ingrid has charge of the finances, the family schedules. For Tony, there is his guitar and his car. Given the chance, he would tinker with that car forever."
"He showed it off to me. A blue Cutlass. He only came to life when he talked about that car, explaining in meticulous detail how he fixed the carburetor, changed the radiator. Ingrid was with us, saying encouraging things."
"Yes, but she wants him to sell that car to help them move. Yet the car is very important to his self-esteem. And so it goes. That's Sunset Park. Real problems, poverty problems and simply problems of modern living. Tony and Ingrid are former heroin addicts living in a slum, almost wholly removed from the world. They saw their first Broadway show last year, The Tap Dance Kid; dinner at Howard Johnson's, a real excursion. Yet their troubles are middle- class troubles. She says: Take charge. He says: I don't take charge because you do. She says: If I let you do it, it doesn't get done. He feels resentful and excluded from the family."
"Where do you begin to help?"
"You look to understand first. You try not to judge, because inevitably judging is rejecting. You may have to make hard choices, but without judging. You look at their past. Tony and Ingrid have climbed a long way up to get to the kinds of troubles they now have. She comes from a German-Welsh background, grew up in a German section of Queens. Mother a schizophrenic, in and out of institutions. Heartbreaking for Ingrid. Father a bitter alcoholic, consumed with self-pity. Ingrid was putting needles in her arms at 14. She was arrested for pushing at 15. Yet she managed to play mother to five brothers and sisters, and eventually she stopped the drugs. That's how she met Tony: they both were on detoxification programs. I think they met at a lunch counter."
"Isn't there hope for them in the fact that Tony too showed courage? He described his childhood in Brownsville to me, how his mother would slice a banana so that each of the ten children would have something to eat. Did he tell you about his stepfather? About his hitting the kids with electric wires and cracking a thermos over Tony's head when Tony was five? Tony said the man would dip his fingers in Tabasco sauce and stick them down Tony's mouth, that he hit Tony's mother in the stomach with a baseball bat when she was eight months pregnant. As you say, they both have struggled. What do you do to keep them going?"
"Well, I give them an exercise in responsibility. This week I've suggested that Tony try paying the bills. He said I was putting him on the spot, but really I was putting them both on the spot because the exercise is also a test of whether Ingrid can ask Tony to do something in a way that will make him glad to do it."
"Even as an outsider, I could see there is a lot to Ingrid. Isn't there? As we talked it was clear that Tony couldn't care less about his sheet-metal job, but Ingrid was fascinated by the fact that the things he makes go into the Holland Tunnel and onto the Brooklyn Bridge. You could almost see her mind travel."
"Three months of working with them has shown me there is a lot to Tony too. They are both very gentle, very generous. The trouble is that she is moving much faster than he is now. And Tony simply does not believe in himself. After every session at the center, he makes a point of shaking my hand. The reason may be that I see him in a way he does not see himself."
"Funny about Tony shaking your hand. When I was leaving, they both walked me downstairs. The woman super, incidentally, was snooping at her door, and slammed it as we passed. Suddenly, Tony thanked me extravagantly for coming --patted me on the shoulder, looked at me with real affection--even though it was they who were doing the favor for me."
"You treated him like a man."
VIII MICHAEL
Michael bends his head so close to his notebook that his nose almost brushes the page. He insists on doing his homework, although by now he knows that these group sessions at the center are exclusively for play. Lori and Betsy, the two graduate-student group leaders, practically have to pry Michael away from the book. Ralphy, who like Michael is seven, watches the scene with interest and malice. "That your stupid old notebook?" he asks Michael. Ralphy is black. Carmen is Hispanic. Elena is white, with a broad Slavic face. All four children are the same size.
Betsy calls for the serving of refreshments. Apple juice, orange juice, popcorn and pieces of hard candy. The children sit cross-legged on the linoleum. Michael serves the popcorn.
Ralphy: I want ten pieces.
Michael: You get what I give you.
Carmen: Ralphy, don't you live on my block?
Ralphy: Betsy Betsy Betsy Wetsy.
They are asked to say their names aloud for the benefit of the group. Ralphy refuses. Michael says his name, smiles and looks playful. He gently places a piece of popcorn on Betsy's head. "Who will recite the group rules?"
Michael volunteers, stands. His blond-brown hair is shaggy, emphasizing the beauty of his face. His brown pants are frayed at the bottoms and torn at the seat; he seems not to notice. Over a blue shirt, he wears a maroon sweater. He speaks to the room: "1) Keep hands and feet to yourself; 2) don't call out; 3) be nice to each other; 4) call one another by name; 5) stay with the group."
He leaves to go to the bathroom. While he is out, Ralphy snatches a piece of Michael's candy. Lori and Betsy come down hard on him. Michael returns, takes immediate note of the theft. He says, "My candy," wanly, as if making a disinterested discovery, and takes no action. Ralphy tells him, "I took the purple one." Michael seems not to pay attention. He takes his cup of remaining candy and offers a piece to Lori: "Want candy?"
Now the children are asked to draw pictures of themselves. Each selects a Magic Marker. Michael chooses black. He draws a small circle at the top of the paper, then, unsatisfied, flips the sheet over and begins to draw a small stick figure. The two young women suggest that the children lay their heads directly on the paper; Betsy will draw an outline of their heads, and the children may fill in the features. Carmen and Elena respond at once and begin to work. Ralphy balks and starts to play elsewhere. He is taken out of the room by Lori.
With brisk strokes Michael colors the hair of his stick figure. Then he covers the entire face with hair, tosses the paper aside, and begins again. He appears not to have heard the suggestion about laying his head on the paper and instead draws his head as a large circle with slits for eyes, a button nose and a huge mouth grinning with jack-o'-lantern teeth. He discards that paper as well. Suddenly he is out in the hall, watching Ralphy receive his lecture. He is told to return to the others, and he runs back with strange, jerky movements of his arms and legs.
Instead of addressing his own sheet of paper, he turns to one Betsy has been working on; she is occupied with Carmen. He draws a satanic face within Betsy's outline. "The devil is in her," he says to no one in particular. Elena draws a girl with a thick brown ponytail, like her own. The hair Carmen gives herself is half black, half red. Michael to Betsy: "The devil is in your heart, and he is trying to make you bad." Betsy watches as he covers the picture of her face with a cyclone of circles.
Betsy asks him calmly, "Michael, can you draw a picture of your house?" The house that Michael draws is a series of connected ladders and squares. Stick figures occupy the upper squares; they represent tenants on the upper floors. The lowest square is filled in with green. As he continues to work, the other children are asked to talk about their self-portraits. Elena is too shy. Carmen says she is pretty in her drawing. Betsy asks Michael where his self- portrait is. Michael picks up one of his discarded sheets, announces, "This is a bad guy. I'm going to make a jet." He folds the paper into a plane and lets it fly.
"Tell us about the house you drew, Michael."
"This is a Christmas tree, and this is Santa Claus at the gate." The tree is discernible; Santa Claus is not. Of a figure standing outside the ladder structure, Michael says, "This is a girl going to my house, and this is a monster kissing her." He is asked, "Where are you in the picture?" He points to the center of the green square. "I am inside the house looking out," he says.
The others continue drawing. Ralphy has returned and produces an excellent self-portrait. Michael has stopped drawing. He sits at a desk, lays his head on his arm and stares dreamily at the window and the dark blue afternoon. He takes a swig of apple juice and is reprimanded by Lori for not asking first. "Let's play outside, Lori," he asks. Lori explains that today is meant for drawing. Michael takes more apple juice without permission. Lori says that she will tell Sister Geraldine.
"You won't tell," Michael implores her.
Lori reaffirms that she will.
"Give me one more chance?" He holds up an index finger.
"Why are you so afraid?" asks Lori.
"I'm not afraid," said with no emotion. He folds another sheet and raises and lowers it in the air. He mutters, "Bird."
Michael heads for the bathroom again, going out without asking. Lori calls after him. The session winds up. The other children are putting away their Magic Markers. Lori calls, "Michael, you'd better be back in this room by the count of five." Michael re-enters at four, crushes a plastic cup under his heel, crumples his picture and throws it into the trash can. Lori stares at him. He runs toward Ralphy and slaps Ralphy's self-portrait out of his hand. He laughs, slams the door to the room from the inside. As the other children slip on their jackets, Michael stands at the wall, looks everyone over and turns out the lights.
IX SUNSET PARK
Between the winter hours of 4 and 6, the long avenues of Sunset Park glow like orange groves, the light trickling into the side streets the way water glints in dark canals. Each area of the neighborhood has its own light. On the older residential streets, the lights in the houses are modest, like candle glow, except where someone has decided to explode with the season and Christmas lights engulf a house to the extent that no house shows. At the harbor, the late day brings almost total darkness; the lights are on the water in the windows of the boats.
On Third Avenue, there are the lights of gas stations, garages and used-car lots: bulbs blaring in loops. The bars glow. No light whatever shows under the BQE, where the shush of cars grows louder with the rush hour, people passing over Sunset Park on their way home to other places. Tony and Ingrid live just east of Third, across from a car wash whose walls are covered with curlicues of graffiti. At this hour, Tony is on the job at the metal plant, and Ingrid has the two girls home from school.
^ Maria lives just west of Third, on a dead-end street where END has been crossed off the sign. The windows in her house are blue. She heads home after a tutoring session in chemistry. Mallory lives just off Sixth Avenue, near the Park Slope line. A streetlamp sheds a pale beam in a circle in front of his house.
Where the lights come into their own is on Fourth and Fifth avenues, not only the Christmas decorations but the shops shining from inside: Santiago Grocery, De An's House of Beauty. Billy, the drug addict with the gash on his cheek, skulks in and out of these lights like an actor on a stage. He pauses at various clusters of men his age, hangs out for a while, then moves along. Everywhere there are huddles of such men, standing together and apart at once, their bodies angled away from one another while they remain close. From a shop window piled high with big box radios, Carly Simon's voice sweeps into Fifth Avenue singing That's the Way I've Always Heard It Should Be. At the south end of the avenue, beyond Sunset Park, the Verrazano Bridge loops like a necklace in a black velvet case.
If one did not know differently, Sunset Park at this hour could be mistaken for a small New Hampshire town. The shorn trees in the park, the cemetery on the hill, the quiet churches, the low houses looking for their occupants' return at the day's end. At P.S. 314, Diana Hart-Johnson rehearses the Nutcracker presentation scheduled for Christmas week. Teenage boys, galoots, clomp on the stage and attempt to learn their dance as the Spirit of Winter Dreams. The smaller children make soldiers' hats. The windows of the school blaze out into the cold.
Things quicken and contract. At the Center for Family Life, Geraldine plays cards with Michael in her office, after Michael's group has dispersed. They talk in whispers. Upstairs in the convent, Mary Paul completes some paper work, prepares a dinner of cold salad and sits down to watch the news.
X ROSE
"When we moved here we counted 28 mice, and we didn't count twice. I got one cat. He died. So I was looking for a new cat now because I had mice. And I was very upset for the kids. I went all over looking. Somebody told me they were giving away cats over at the clinic at 59th Street. I went and I got this one here, which was named Mollie, and I changed it to Jangles. When I got back, there was my girlfriend's friend waiting for me with another cat, Patches, which I had no heart to throw out, so I took him in too. So now I have Patches and Jangles. Meanwhile, my darling son Benjamin here brings home this kitten, Lucky. Lucky because he has a home. And I told Benjamin, 'You're going to be unlucky because I'm going to kick youse out.' " She wipes her brow with a dishrag. "Your turn, Benjamin."
Benjamin, age 8, climbs up into the kitchen sink for his eve- ning bath, as his sister Daisy climbs out. Rose throws a towel over Daisy, shampoos Benjamin, tells Davey and Joey to get pajamas on the twins.
"I got two dogs too. Out back. You can see 'em at the window. Hear 'em too. Hah. That's Rocky and that's Bam Bam. Bam Bam will not let you near my kids."
The four smaller children file in from the outer room to present themselves to their mother before going to bed. They stall, ask for snacks. Benjamin whines about a cut finger.
"Benjamin, I'm going to shock you," Rose tells him. "I believe you're going to live."
Rose's apartment has two rooms, the kitchen and an all-purpose room where the seven of them sleep. Benjamin, Daisy and Sabrina sleep in the bed. Davey, Joey and Dino sleep on the floor. Rose takes the couch. They have no phone; the bathtub leaks; the ceiling is splotched with water stains. Yet this is the best place they've ever had. For a month before this, Rose and the children lived in a car, and bathing was carried out in Rose's girlfriend's apartment. Compared with then, Rose says, the sky's the limit these days. The kids go to school regularly, and they take part in the Center for Family Life's after- school programs. Rose too gets help from the center, mostly advice in practical things, like her welfare payments. She goes to school now too, to learn how to be a beautician. "I even signed up the girls for ballet lessons." When she smiles she looks baby-tough, like an East Side Kid from the movies of the 1930s. A plate hung above the kitchen door reads GOD BLESS THIS LOUSY APARTMENT.
She glowers at the lot of them: "You're getting on my nerves, and you know what that means. Yesterday I went to school without my homework done. O.K. ? And I got yelled at just like youse would get yelled at. Now I'm telling you, not asking you. Get in bed and do not move. Good night."
She pushes aside a garbage bag full of laundry and plonks down on a chair, warily eyeing the kitchen door. "It isn't paradise, but they don't go hungry. When I was a kid, I didn't eat the best either. I was raised on french fries and macaroni because that's what my mother could afford. I loved that stuff. I love it today. And I'm a healthy little woman. And macaroni is good. I say that because (she raises her voice deliberately to be heard in the next room) some of my kids with silver spoons in their mouth think that macaroni three or four times a week is too much." She grins and winks.
"My father died when I was nine. I lived with him in Coney Island. I don't know why I lived with my father and not my mother. He couldn't take care of me, and I remember eating hero sandwiches every day from the luncheonette, and my clothes were wrinkly, smelly, in the corner with mess and garbage. Anyway, he dies when I was nine." She glares at the door. "Sabrina, that's enough!
"My mother was sickly, very sickly, with cataracts on her eyes, diabetes, heart trouble. Name it, she had it. I played hooky a lot. I wasn't on drugs or nothin', so she didn't care. In junior high, I told my mother I didn't want to go to school anymore. The school was going to throw me out anyway. They said I was taking space. And I couldn't read, I couldn't spell. I still can't read good or spell good.
"But I could always work. Even going to beauty school, I can get work before Christmas, like I did last year in Toys R Us.
"Anyway, I met Davey's father, Davey Senior, at 18. I met him in an after- school center, where I played Ping-Pong every day, which I loved. Davey Senior was thrown out of his house for something, so he came to live with my mother and me. And then my grandmother moved in too. My grandmother was a rip; she used to beat up all the kids with a broom. Davey and me lived in the same house, but we didn't do nothin'--would you believe it? I was a virgin till I got married. I was a very good girl, raised myself with honor." She holds her fists over her head like a winning boxer and laughs. "I didn't have no bed of roses. I came from a broken home. So what? I don't go for blaming everyone else for what you do wrong. Here's a kick: I was even a virgin the day after I got married. I got drunk at the wedding--nice Italian wedding--and went home and fell asleep."
A few years later, Davey Senior ran off to Florida with another woman, leaving Rose with the first of her children, Davey Junior, a boy of 15 today. Davey's one winter jacket was stolen last week. Rose vows to get it back. Joey, the second-oldest child, was produced by Frankie, with whom Rose lived for a year. The four other children belong to Vincent, with whom, until recently, Rose has been in an on-and-off custody war. Rose won the first * battle after Vincent had taken Sabrina and was sent to jail in handcuffs. "I hated to see him that way. I still had feeling for him.
"But a week later Vinnie comes and takes all my kids. He called B.C.W., which is the old child welfare, and tells them I'm neglecting my children and I'm beating them and they never go to school and they weren't up to date with their shots and dah dah dah. I tried to fight, but I wasn't ready for court. I am not a smart person by any means. They closed my welfare case because I had no children, which meant that I had no money, no electric money, food money. I got thrown out of my apartment. I would have been a goner if I hadn't been taken in by Vinnie's brother and wife. So I took care of their six kids while I was waiting for the court to give me back my own. I took those kids to school. I bathed them. The judge says I got to prove I'm able to be a fit mother. I got jobs. I was a cashier in Pathmark. I worked from 11 at night to 8 in the morning, and then I took care of Vinnie's brother's kids, which meant I got maybe two, three hours' sleep a night. But I proved something to the judge, and I got my kids back.
"Not that my troubles were behind me. I lost my apartment because I fell behind in my rent. Day after Easter, they sent me to a welfare hotel. I could not stand it. That's when I lived in the car. Finally, I came to Sunset Park and I got this place, which is fine, so I think things are going to be good from now on. The kids are doing O.K. in school. Not great but passing. I stick with it at the beauty school. There's a lot to read, that's the trouble there, the way I read.
"When I graduate, I'm going to get a good job. If there's no good job, I'll get a bad one. You know what I'll do if there never is a job? I'll cut hair in the street and charge five bucks a head. What do you think? Will they go for it? You can't beat the price."
XI MARIA
"I know that kid, Davey, that lady's son. I mean, I don't really know him, but I saw him last week after some Puerto Rican kids stole his jacket. It was a new leather jacket. They held a gun to his head. I saw him in the subway, and I gave him a hug. I didn't like him or anything. I just wanted to show him that not all Puerto Ricans were like that."
Maria walks toward her house in the early evening, her hands stuffed into the pockets of her jeans to keep off the cold. Her chemistry tutor did not pay attention today, she complains. Her grades are solid Bs, but she feels inadequate in chemistry and in English too.
"I'm afraid to go to college, you know? I think I won't belong there. But I don't care if I don't fit in with all of them. I don't want to change, you know? I like my music, my clothes. I want them to take me like I am."
The sky is unusually clear; the stars show. Maria does not notice them. Planes fly in low over Fourth Avenue, one after the other, on their way to La Guardia Airport.
"You must see those planes all the time," says her companion. "Do the jets always fly over Sunset Park?"
"I don't know. I never look."
"You'll be on one of those planes someday, on your way to California or Paris. Do you believe that?" Maria shrugs. She is still brooding about college.
"Geraldine has been good to me, you know? She helped with all my college applications."
"Why does she help you, do you think?"
"She likes me. And I think that she is sort of like me too. She has a temper, you know." Maria giggles. "The flying nun flies off the handle. But she helps me with everything. She wants me to be nice to my father, you know? But I can't do that. He's not the sort of person you talk to. I am scared to get close to him.
"But I think I'm getting a little closer to my big sister. She and my father got in an argument last night. It was 4 in the morning. I got up and went into her room. I said, 'Don't listen to him because he's stupid. He doesn't understand.'
"She had a pillow on her head. I said, 'I like you, so don't feel bad.' Somethin' like that. I never said that to her before. Then we started talking about college, because she's going to college now, she knows what I feel. We talked and talked, but we didn't look at each other. All the time she was looking out the window and I was looking at my sleeping brother, but we were talking to each other. I was scared to look at her face. Then I made a joke, and she started laughing. And I started laughing. And then I looked at her, and showed her that I liked her through my eyes."
On the steps of an abandoned courthouse a group of young men give Maria the once-over. She does not look up. Two boys are fighting over a bike at the corner of her street. She calls to one of them, who responds cagily, trying to determine if her walking companion is a cop.
"What happens when you and Geraldine both feel that enough progress has been made, and are ready to stop?"
"Then we'll stop. But she will still be my friend. She's part of my family. I'll grow up and I'll see her every Christmas, like that. I feel strange when I think about it. I'm happy to have her as my friend. She taught me how to learn to like yourself, and you have to learn to like yourself, you know, because if you like yourself, you can like other people."
"Do you know how she feels about you?"
"Geraldine hugged me once. In front of my mother and everyone. I got embarrassed. I hugged her once too, and then I pulled away. I haven't hugged my sister in years."
"When do you plan to hug her again?"
"When I leave for college. Or maybe when I graduate."
"That's going to be some hug."
"Geraldine has no trouble showing people she likes them, you know? She has a big heart for everyone."
"Do you think she cares for everyone equally?"
"Equally, but differently. Because everybody is different."
She approaches her house, with the blue windows. "I want you to meet my grandmother." A small, shy woman is led out into the hall in her slippers. She smiles, nods and retreats. Maria shouts upstairs to see who is home. "You won't meet him. He'll be out drinking until late." She calls to her sister in Spanish. Cara, the youngest, comes downstairs in her pajamas and greets the stranger politely, as Maria's eyes suddenly shine with a prospective joke: "Cara," she says, "this is your real father."
XII MALLORY
The trouble with the people who give those psychological tests is that they're trained in books, but not real life. That's what I say. So they tell me Michael has emotional problems, that he's immature. Well, what do you expect? He's young. And his mother don't exactly help either. She doesn't know how to treat kids. She talks stiff to Michael. Like when we're eating, she tells him she won't give him any food. I tell her: "Don't do that to him." I give him mine. She doesn't see what I see, you know what I mean?
I try to tell this to Sister Geraldine. She says that Eileen is intelligent. I say, "Yes, all crazy people are intelligent." I mean, they show real intelligence, but they do funny things along the way. I've known Eileen since she was 18. She changes: angry state one day, happy state the next. She used to take Michael to bars with her when he was a baby. She's run off eight times already, leaving me with Michael. And they say I neglected him. How you gonna help leave him alone sometimes when you're alone?
Tell you something else: When Michael was born, I was so happy. I didn't have any children with the woman I was married to. But when I walked into the hospital, Eileen tells the doctors that somebody not me is the father. She put down the name of some guy in New Jersey. Can you beat that? I told her she wasn't getting a dime until Michael had my name, and I went to court to make it legal. I could have murdered her then. She killed my fatherhood from the beginning, the first born.
And that's where Sister Geraldine is wrong again. She wants me and Eileen to stay together; she doesn't say so but I can tell from things she says that she wants it. Now Sister Geraldine is another intelligent person, but certain things she don't know anything about. I think she thinks I hit Michael, but I don't. Maybe a tap on the bottom, but that's all. I'd never hit Michael because I know how my father used to hit me, with the stick end of the plunger. I still have the marks.
I was one of 21 children, would you believe it? My father lived with my mother and my stepmother at the same time. He made me quit school when I was eight, so that I'd stay home and help clean house. The only one who tried to protect me was my mother. My father used to punch her in the stomach when they were in bed together. When she screamed, he said she was leaping for sex. She left when I was four. She wouldn't take me with her. I remember it today, isn't that something? I remember like it was yesterday.
Then I left home too. I ran away a lot, so they put me in Willowbrook for the crazy kids, because I was stealing bikes and radios, little things. I was 15. Some of the Willowbrook kids banged their heads against the wall all day, just sat and rocked and banged their heads. Some of them would get sexual and funny with me. I don't remember if they attacked me, because I didn't know what they were doing.
When I got out of Willowbrook I was 20, and I went to live with my father. He was an old man then, 70, but he got sexual with me too. He said it gave him strength. I felt awkward. You know what I mean? With my own father.
Excuse me for all this coughing. It's worse than when you were here before. I really have been sick; I don't care what they think at the office. My dentures are killing me too. The uppers don't fit. My gums shrink.
After six months I moved in with my mother. I think I began to grow for the ! first time in my life, living with her. I went to night school to learn to read and write. I started to teach myself to read in Willowbrook when they locked me up for 30 days after I jumped out the second-floor window, trying to escape. I used the detention time to try to read. I tell Michael: "Reading is the biggest thing." At night school I was doing well. I began to feel like somebody.
Nine years I lived with my mother, till I got married. I was 33, she was 20, a Jewish girl. I wanted to get married so badly. I didn't like her really. But she talked to me. I love to talk. It gets me thinking, worked up. I like talking right now like this.
What I'm saying is that I don't want the things that went wrong for me to go wrong for Michael. He's the happiness of my life. Yesterday he comes home with a rip in the seat of his pants. I tell him: "Throw 'em out, we'll buy new ones." Sometimes he gets upset with his lessons, rolls up the paper in a ball. I tell him: "Stop. Put the book away and relax." The only thing is I don't want him to grow up on cloud nine, which is why I make him learn. His life's got to be better than mine.
Not that my life is over yet either. Know what I mean? I'm intelligent. Don't you think I'm intelligent? And I'm still learning things and doing things and growing. I don't know where's the end of it.
XIII GERALDINE AND
MARY PAUL
"You have to be in for the long haul. Mallory is an excellent lesson in that." Sister Geraldine hurriedly adjusts her veil and prepares to attend Mass. This is the one day of the year when Sisters of the Good Shepherd all over the world renew their vows. No ceremony takes place; Mary Paul and Geraldine will reaffirm their vows in silence at the regular morning Mass at St. Michael's. Geraldine calls upstairs to Mary Paul that they may be late, conjectures that Mary Paul is lost in the morning papers.
"Mallory says he wants to ditch Eileen, and I believe he means it. If he really wants to provide a new mother for Michael and if that makes for a solid loving family, I'll be glad to see it happen. Eileen certainly isn't easy to get to. I make appointments with her at the center, but she rarely shows up. She has complications of her own, and I wish we could begin to see how they impinge on her relationship with both Mallory and Michael. We call this the Center for Family Life because we believe in families as systems, that everyone touches and affects everyone else. Yet Mallory contradicts himself too. The three of them spent Thanksgiving happily at Eileen's parents' house; Mallory told me so. It speaks for the necessity of patience."
Mary Paul descends the stairs and picks up on Geraldine's last words. "You have to help people be patient with themselves, as well. Rose, whom you met, is living in an imaginary world right now, in which she tells herself that everything is going to be fine for her and the six children. But ask Anita Cleary, Rose's case worker, and you will discover things such as Rose's total inability to handle money; Anita has confronted Rose on that. Those ballet lessons Rose is so delighted with cost $500. Anita is very careful to do two things at once with Rose: to make her believe that everything is possible, and to prepare her for defeat, so that she won't collapse. That strategy applies to Mallory, Maria, Tony and Ingrid, and, I imagine, to us too."
The nuns start walking toward St. Michael's. Geraldine, no taller than 5 ft. 7 in., appears twice the size of Mary Paul. They walk comfortably together, having done so for many years, each one's stride making automatic concessions to the other's.
"I think one must learn a different, less urgent sense of time here," says Mary Paul, "one that depends more on small moments than big ones. Today we renew our vows. It is a special day, but not as special as you might think. There are no really special days here, no momentous occasions. That even includes Christmas. I would not go so far as to say that Christmas is merely another day in Sunset Park, but in a way it is. It is necessary for us to remember that there is the day after Christmas too. Helping families to give toys is gratifying, but quite momentary. For me Christmas is special because it is a quiet day at the center, and it allows me time to meditate and replenish myself.
"And I really need these periods of reflection, because I know now how corrupting this work of ours can be. Years ago a child told me: 'You want me to succeed so much. Could you understand if I failed?' He meant: Could you love me if I failed? It is so easy for us to love someone because he is making progress and being responsive to our efforts. What about those who can't respond? It is important to learn to love someone without asking for love in return. It really is very important." "I'm not even conscious of whether I need the response or not," says Geraldine. "It's just that I have this powerful feeling of loving, which I treat as a joke sometimes, but it is there. Maybe this work does fulfill my emotional needs, I don't know. It certainly teaches me a lot, an expansion of the heart."
"We try not to be carried away," says Mary Paul, "to give and pull back so that you can give to many, not just one or two. The long haul, as Geraldine says. When I was starting out, I heard other sisters rhapsodize about how God was in our midst when we were doing good works. I grew jaundiced at that talk. I think God is in our midst at many different times, and it does not take a surge of emotion to produce him. On the subway I look at children, look at their little blank faces, and I'm so disturbed, I'm beside myself. I wish that I could speak creatively about the beauty in those faces, in painting or music, but I can't. All I do, on the most mundane level possible, is what can be done."
Morning Mass is conducted in a small chapel of St. Michael's set up with folding chairs. A cross bearing a gilded figure of Jesus hangs before the parishioners, fewer than 20, all of whom are in their 50s and older. Most have attended Mass here all their lives. Men and women in cloth coats whisper prayers to themselves before the arrival of the priest. They fill the room with soft hisses and t-sounds.
The two blue figures kneel beside each other in the second row and pray in silence: "My God, with all my heart I renew the vows I have made to thee to practice poverty, chastity and obedience, and zeal for the salvation of souls, and to be faithful to thee forever."
At the entrance of the young priest the parishioners rise.
Priest: May the Lord be with you.
Parishioners: And also with you.
XIV SUNSET
PARK
Thirty minutes before the Nutcracker begins, the auditorium at P.S. 314 shows an audience of two: a pair of Hispanic fathers, wearing identical Alpine hats and somber winter coats, which they do not remove. They sit together, saying not a word to each other, and stare with pious seriousness at the tall paper Christmas tree pinned to the red curtain. A few minutes pass, and two more parents enter and find seats in the auditorium; then a jabbering group of five; then 20; then an onrush. Grandparents with canes; mothers shoving strollers; brothers, sisters and cousins of the performers; Geraldine and Mary Paul, who upon entering are rushed by a flock of small girls dressed as Snowflakes insisting: "Look at me! Look at me!" Maryanne Sabatino takes a ; seat at the rear, sees Ingrid and her two daughters, and signals cheerfully.
Michael trots in at the side of Eileen, who is dressed in a maroon winter jacket and a black ski cap, from which her hair sticks out like loose hay from a bale. They take seats on the side, as Michael throws down his red school bag bearing the words BOOKS, BOOKS. Maria enters, looking sour. She has come to this performance at Geraldine's invitation, but protests that she is bored, and proceeds to search the room for kids her own age, sidling past Doug Heilman, the Lutheran minister, who sits flanked by the boys he takes care of. The auditorium is full now, loud with squeals from backstage and neighbors greeting one another. Geraldine cannot sit still, has a welcome for everyone. Julie, the theater leader, is here, as is Anita Cleary, who has come hoping to see Rose and the kids, but Rose could not make it. A woman sits down at the baby grand and begins to play background tunes. Eileen sings White Christmas to herself in a soft, pure voice.
Before the show, awards are presented to the seven groups in the after-school program by John Kixmiller and by other staff members and volunteers. To the stage march children in their party best, hair ribboned or slicked flat, to receive certificates for the "most improved" or for the "greatest contribution." Every child is applauded vigorously, not wildly. Eileen claps enthusiastically. Michael does not clap, but watches. From time to time he puts his face close to his mother's; she gives him a playful poke; he yanks at her cap. As the Nutcracker opens, the smallest children mount the stage in nightcaps and pajamas and face the audience like a UNICEF poster: white, black, Asian, Hispanic. On the faces of the audience the weariness of the workday transforms to eagerness. Maria complains to Geraldine that this show is for babies.
"They started to dream," Diana Hart-Johnson narrates on a loudspeaker. "And in their dreams they saw the most wonderful things; things you would never see when you are awake."
Groups of children appear one after the other, each with its own dances and bright costumes. Toy soldiers in blue hats; snake charmers in yellow turbans with paper emeralds on the front. At the Waltz of the Flowers, the two fathers in Alpine hats snap to their feet simultaneously and flash pictures of their girls. The stage goes dark, and the boys representing the Spirit of Winter Dreams beckon the little children to them, make a circle about them, then / stroll in a circle, casting beams with their flashlights on the children at the center and on the audience as well. One beam catches Michael, who stares back blank-faced at the light.
Diana reads, "The children clapped and cheered. Then everything became very quiet. The Spirit of Winter Dreams was calling the children deeper into their dream."
Maria slips her hand under Geraldine's arm and holds the position until the performance ends. As a finale, all the children gather onstage to lead the audience in Christmas songs: Jingle Bells, Santa Claus Is Coming to Town, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Feliz Navidad. Eileen urges Michael to sing, but he only gazes at the other children, who shout the songs at the top of their voices and inspire the audience, now packed to standing room, to do the same. Geraldine, Mary Paul, Doug, Maria, John, all sing. Mallory enters at a side door, looking dazed and disheveled. He searches the crowd, sees Eileen waving, does not return her wave but makes his way to her.
Mallory sits beside Eileen without a gesture of greeting, and Michael hops aboard his lap. The three of them huddle together as the children and the audience come to Feliz Navidad, moving smoothly between Spanish and English:
Feliz Navidad, Feliz Navidad
Feliz Navidad, prospero ano y Felicidad.
I want to wish you a Merry Christmas.
I want to wish you a Merry Christmas.
I want to wish you a Merry Christmas
From the bottom of my heart.
Mallory and Eileen add their voices to the roar, tilt instinctively toward each other, and seem not to notice that Michael is singing.