We got to the racetrack at the Big Fresno Fair a little before 8 in the morning. Kat was up for it but not in any overtly noticeable way. We followed the arrows until we saw an ocean of kids. Kat jumped into line and picked up a t-shirt, a fanny pack, and coupons good for a hotdog, a Pepsi and two rides on the midway. She got all this just for showing up, and she was guaranteed a ribbon, regardless of how she placed. She was as thrilled over this prospect as any of the other 10 year olds. We parents stood on the inside of the track, holding on to the treasures and our cameras, while the kids—an entire city of them it seemed—made ready to run. Kat had not trained and she didn’t appear worried about it; she had that “take things as they come” attitude, which usually is not a bad philosophy, with the lone exception of competing in a 2k run while out of shape. At the gun the kids broke out fast, as if they were afraid there might be someone in the group who would be able to sprint the whole thing. After the first kilometer the pained look on Kat’s face suggested that the price one pays for taking things as they come was higher than she anticipated. Nevertheless she was in the middle of the front pack and held her place for most of the rest of it. The winning time was 7:06; the first girl arrived 24 seconds later in 8th place, while Kat clocked in at 11:12, gassed out and looking relieved. Her recovery rate was impressive. Within minutes she was chatting away as if she had run the race two weeks ago. “This isn’t my race.” “Oh you did all right. All you have to do is get in shape next time.” “I’m running this race next year and every year, but I am better at sprints and the 4×100.” “Yeah, that’s good, good to know where your strengths are.” “I’ll win, too. I’ll get all kinds of medals and ribbons.” “I believe it. You can do it, just gotta work for it.” “Duh, Dad.” “Let’s go see how you did on the cookies.” She had not just entered the run; she had entered the Junior Cooking Exhibit. The two entries—her mother’s chocolate on crackers and pumpkin cookies—placed 1st and 4th respectively. Kat was exultant; she couldn’t wait until her class took their field trip to the fair so she could show them the display. “See Kat? That’s what the fair is really about. Being part of the community.” “Dad.” “You know, like feeling connected to everyone else.” “Know what the real best part of the fair is, Dad?” “Well, now that is a matter of perspective, Kat.” “The rides on the midway!!” She picked out the ricketiest of the rickety rides on the close to sleazy midway at the Big Fresno Fair. I found myself longing for the antiseptically clean, straight, regimented rides of Disneyland, but to Kat there was no difference; if it went fast, spun crazily, and banked hard, it was good. That’s right, this contraption spun like the teacups but traversed up, down and took turns so severely it could separate your soul from your body, and just for the additional thrill of it, the ride appeared to be half a century old, complete with rust corroded rails which seemed to lift off at every turn. The car itself creaked when you didn’t want to hear a creak, sounding like one of those murder movies where the bad guy has loosened a few bolts to make a homicide look like an accident. And then there was the matter of the operator of the ride; he looked like James Dean if Dean had lived another 40 years and had a permanent open-mouthed heroin-inspired expressionless look on his face The difference between age 40 and 10 was never more clearly in evidence. I added up all these factors and concluded that catastrophe had a 3 to 1 edge over having a nice time. I envied Kat, whose trust and naiveté would not allow the possibility of danger or harm; everything in her world, in the world of children, was made for amusement, which was rated either effective or not. Our car picked up speed and the rattling and creaking increased. I tried leaning out when the car turned in, and I leaned in when the car felt as though it were about to tumble out onto the ground. I saw Kat laughing and waving her arms. When I was sure I couldn’t take the ride anymore, it occurred to me that it was, after all, made for profit, not torture. If the ride injured or killed children it would be bad for business. I thanked God for capitalism, and I thanked God again a moment later when I realized that the ride would be limited in the number of minutes it went on because the shorter the ride, the more passengers per hour were possible. And, indeed, it started to slow down, but just when I breathed a sigh of relief as it creaked to a halt, it demonically started up again, this time going full tilt, backwards. Kat cheered wildly while I felt sucker-punched. When it slowed down again, I did not assume that this meant the end, and sure enough, as if it were determined to have the last laugh, we were treated to a series of violent jolts, which converted my spine into an accordion, playing a kind of punk polka, like something out of an old cartoon. Kat laughed as though she were the first to hear the world’s funniest joke. She took on the Big Fresno Fair; there would be so many realms of life she would approach with verve and laughter. The world was her cupcake, and I was glad just to witness it
Greg Royal could do a Woody Woodpecker imitation which would be more than enough to certify your coolness in the third grade but there was more in him that was cool than that. He wasn’t afraid of Mrs. Macbeth, for one thing; he had her flustered so often and so well it had become a form of entertainment far superior to TV. Whenever we heard Mrs. Macbeth cry out, “Greg!” that meant the show was about to begin. “Greg! Sit down!” “What?” “Sit down.” “Me?” “Yes.” “Now? “Don’t be ridiculous.” “Who’s that?” “I said sit down.” “Do I have to?” “Yes.” “You’re not sitting down.” “Take your seat, young man, this instant!” “Where to?” “What?” “Where do you want me to take it?” “Put that down!” “But you said…” “You are incorrigible!” she shrieked after he dropped the chair to the floor with a crash. “Not really, I’m Greg Royal.” At that point she grabbed him by the collar and tossed him into his seat. “Hey, take it easy, I’ll sit down. If you’re nice I might even sit up.” He smugly smiled at his cleverness. She returned to her desk pretending she didn’t hear his last comment; we returned to our math problems. I felt sorry for her. Her voice and hands quivered with age. She was so old and so wrinkled it looked like her face was melting. Her posture was stooped and her makeup appeared to be drawn in a way that made her face a perpetual frown. She knew we had Miss Bennett in 2nd grade, and that she was young, calm, gentle, pretty and perfumed. Miss Bennett was like a TV mom who came to our world. We knew nothing of Macbeth’s world of exhaustion and frustration, compounded by age and the betrayal of her body. I feared her but I did feel sorry for her. That didn’t mean though that I wasn’t going to admire and attempt to emulate Greg Royal. There was the day she told me to settle down and get to work. “I am working.” “It doesn’t look like that to me.” “Maybe you should get some glasses then.” “Don’t you get smart with me.” “Ok, but why am I in school then?” “What did you say?” “If I don’t get smart what am I in school for?” That one unhinged her. She stood over me, shaking. “Now you listen to me. I said get to work. I don’t want anymore of your nonsense. I said get to work so you’d better get to it now,” she shouted. But I couldn’t resist the opportunity to be as cool as Greg Royal. “Relax,” I said, borrowing my words from a TV ad, “sure you have a headache, you’re tense, irritable. But don’t take it out on the kids. Take Bayer aspirin.” “CLOSE YOUR MOUTH AND GET TO WORK!” “Ok.” I didn’t want to take it too far. But I had reached my goal: if I wasn’t the new Greg Royal, I was at least his peer. A few days later he came up to me at recess. “Hey, you’re a pretty funny guy.” “Thanks. I like when you do Woody Woodpecker.” “Ha-ha-ha-HAA-ha!” “Yeah, that’s it. How’d you learn that?” “I dunno. You just Ha-ha-ha-HAA-ha!” “Yeah,wow.” “Yep.” “Yeah, so anyway, how come you took that fish?” “What?” “On the field trip. The tuna. You know, the Star-Kist tuna factory.” “Oh yeah. Well, he looked like he was in prison.” “Ha-ha. It stunk up the whole bus though.” “I was gonna hide it somewhere in the house when I got home.” “Oh, yeah. That’d be funny!” “Yeah, but old Mrs. MacBag threw it in the trash.” “Yeah.” We were quiet for a while, reminiscing. “Hey!” he exclaimed, “You know what?” “What?” “Today after school they’re going to have a fashion show.” “A what?” “You know, where they put on different dresses and walk up and down.” “So what?” “So what? Are you crazy?” “What?” “They change, they put on different dresses.” “Yeah, so?” “So dummy, they’re like all in one room with no clothes on!” “Nu-uh.” “Yes, I’m not lying. I swear on a stack of Bibles.” “Where?” “They’ll be changing in that building right there.” He pointed to the last wing before the auditorium. “Where? Which room?” “In the last one on this side. All’s you have to do is stand on a trash can and look in that window.” “And you can see everything?” “They’re in their underwear.” “You gonna be there?” “Of course. What about you?” “Well…” “You’re not chicken are you?” “No.” Then the bell rang and Greg put his head down and sprinted away, the Woody Woodpecker laugh trailing behind him. At lunch I found my best friend, Lenny and told him about the fashion show. “That’s great. It’ll be like a mission, like in Combat!” he said with delight. Something new always energized him. “I get to be Sgt. Saunders.” “No you don’t. You can be Kirby.” “Ok.” When the three o’clock bell rang I didn’t see Greg Royal anywhere and Lenny insisted we attend After School Sports so that as many people as possible would clear out. We played a silent game of Carroms to pass the time. Lenny beat me two games out of three. Then we turned the board over to play the other game which I didn’t like as well. He beat me soundly and was setting up for the second game. “I don’t like this one. Let’s check out a football and play catch,” I said. “It’s not football season. It’ll look suspicious.” “Ok then, we’ll get some mitts and a softball.” “You can’t catch and you can’t throw.” “Ok, basketball but I got dibs on Elgin Baylor.” “You can’t do a layup like Baylor. You can be Rudy LaRusso.” “No, forget it.” “Fine.” “Let’s just play horse.” “No.” “Why not?” “Have you ever beaten me at horse?” “What’re we gonna do then?” “We’re gonna go case the job.” “You watch too many gangster movies.” So we left the carroms board and started drifting west toward the building next to the auditorium. Along the way a short, doe-eyed kid named Donny joined us. We filled him in on the way. He wanted to be Littlejohn and Lenny said ok, even though I pointed out that Littlejohn wasn’t little. As we approached our destination, Lenny put his index finger over his lips and then pointed to me and Donny to take a position directly under the window. When we did that, Lenny flattened himself against the wall and moved slowly toward us. He gestured for Donny to keep lookout and for me to get on all fours. “How come you get to go first?” I whispered. “Shut up!” he whispered back, “You want to blow this operation? I’m the Sgt, don’t forget.” I dropped down and Lenny stood on my back. “See anything?” “Nope.” “Greg lied to us!” “No, I just can’t see.” He was short and his chin barely made it to the windowsill. “Ok,” I said, “let’s switch. I’m taller.” Sure enough there were five or six middle age women in the room chatting amiably, walking around in full slips, holding up dresses. “See anything?” Lenny asked. “Yeah!” I answered. “When’s my turn?” Donny whined. “You guys have to be quiet!” Lenny said, fully annoyed. He started to stand and I cried out when I fell. “What’re you trying to do?” I said to Lenny while he laughed. “It was an accident,” he said, still laughing. “Do I get a turn or not?” “Hold your horses, Donny,” Lenny said. “Yeah, you better not stand on this guy’s back. You can’t trust him.” “I said it was an accident.” “Anyway, you’re shorter than Lenny. You won’t see anything.” “If I stood on your shoulders I could.” “HEY!” a woman’s voice suddenly shouted, “What are you boys doing?” We took off running at speeds I never knew I possessed, a speed I was sure would make us uncatchable. But the woman, who was in heels, pursued us. We hadn’t figured on this so we ducked into a building and into a classroom where the door happened to unlocked. We tried to catch our breath and figure out what to do when we heard the door to the hallway open and we heard high heels clicking in our direction. Lenny pointed to the closets along the far wall and got in and closed the doors, Lenny and I side by side, and Donny at the far end by himself. “Whatever happened to Greg Royal?” I asked in the dark. “Shh!” Lenny said, “I think I hear her.” Donny started whimpering. “Don’t cry, Donny,” I said, but that make it worse. “Donny, if you don’t stop, we’re gonna tell everybody what a crybaby you are,” Lenny said, and that stopped him. Then next thing we heard was the classroom door swing open. “Janitor,” Lenny whispered. But he was wrong. “All right, I know you’re in here hiding somewhere. Come on out.” We didn’t budge. “You’re in big, big trouble. You’d better come out.” “It’s Lugurcio,” I whispered, “Let’s give up.” “You’re gonna just get shot by a Kraut?” he answered, still playing Combat! “Yeah. It beats getting tortured and then shot.” Mrs. Lugurcio was the toughest, meanest, most savvy teacher in the history of Abraham Lincoln Elementary School. I did not want to tangle with her. I was hoping for leniency if we surrendered. “No way. She’s bluffing.” “Come on, right now,” Mrs. Lugurcio said in a more demanding tone than before. At the far end of the six door closet, Donny came out. I tried to peek through the crack but didn’t see anything. I put my hand to the door where we were to come out but Lenny pushed it away. We waited through the slowest five or six seconds ever. “All right,” she said to Donny, “you come with me.” We heard the door close and her footsteps fading away. We waited a full minute after it was quiet before we moved. Then Lenny kicked the closet door open and started laughing. “I saved your life, Chavoor. I saved your life and you owe me.” “Yeah, yeah,” I answered. We walked home together, replaying every moment over and over again. For the next five years Lenny told everyone we knew about the day he saved my life. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpsmfSqjFyA
This is a family history essay my mom wrote her senior year at Fresno High School in the fall semester, 1930. On the centennial anniversary of the Armenian Genocide we testify to the truth of what happened and we also celebrate the strength, determination and success of the survivors.
My great, great grandfather on my maternal grandmother’s side, Manoog Touisian, was a great builder. His family before him had always been builders of churches and towers. At one time the Turkish king, Sultama Moorad, was so well pleased with the builder’s work, that he called him to court. Upon going to court he was given a sword, an official suit of clothing, and an Arabian steed, all tokens of high honor. The Turkish king also said that henceforth he would be known as Ustua Manoog, which means Manoog, the “Master Builder.” Since that time the family has taken the honored name Manoog with the addition of “ian” which means son of, hand and have used it as a surname. One son in each family is known as Manoog Monoogian. My great grandfather was a great scholar was well as a builder. He built Euphrates College, which is still in use today. After completing the college, both my great grandfather and great grandmother attended the college. My grandmother was born in the college town. She had three sisters and three brothers. Grandmother was about nine years old when her parents left the college town and moved to a country home. A few years later my great grandfather died, leaving the family in prosperity. The prosperity ended when the Turks had a big massacre and killed many Christian Armenians and destroyed all their homes and property. This was in the year 1895. At the age of 17 my grandmother married Gabriel Sadoian. He was a shoemaker and was in partnership with his father and brothers. They owned the largest shoe shop in the town and were the first ones to purchase a Singer sewing machine for stitching shoes. My mother was born in Kharpert in the year 1890 and was the only child for nine years. When she was three months old her father came to America. Seven years later the rest of the family came. Their first home was made in Brockton, Massachusetts, where my grandfather had worked in a shoe factory and later went into business for himself. In Brockton, four more daughters were born. In 1911 my mother was married to Mr. Charles Habib. After their marriage they moved to Worcester, Massachusetts, and opened a grocery store there. I was born in Worcester on January 3, 1913. When I was one and one-half years of age we moved to West Bridgewater, Massachusetts. The ten acre farm was partly pasture and partly swamp. The farm was not intended to bring in an income, but was intended as a country home. The house was built in colonial style and was one hundred years old. When we moved in, the house had only four rooms. In time we built additional rooms making a beautiful home of 12 rooms. All sorts of farmyard animals were found on the farm. There was one black and white calf, which I was quite fond of. I had named her Daisy. As an experiment, Daddy planted peach and apple trees. There were also many other kinds of fruit trees. On the left side of the house was a large vegetable garden. In the garden Daddy had planted pole beans which, when at their full growth, were higher than Daddy’s head. The neighbors were very close to our farm, and we soon became very friendly. For many miles around the place there weres no small children for me to play with. The only playmates I had were two boys who were quite a bit older than I was. They let me tag along wherever they went, however. Playing with boys made me quite a tomboy in spite of my long curls and white dresses and shoes which I always wore. I could climb trees, run, and jump or do anything that Harold and Gordy could. People say that I was quite spoilt and always had my own way or cried till I had it or was punished. I remember one day when seated at the dinner table I reached across the table for something that I wanted. My uncle took it away from me and told me I should have said, “Please pass…” Being stubborn, I refused to say it and was mean about it. To my surprise I was instantly slapped on the face. To this day I dislike the thought of sitting at the table near my Uncle Albert. Another time my grandmother had taken me to the city, and while crossing the street I stopped on the streetcar track and would go no further. The car was coming and Grandmother had many bundles as well as a suitcase. Again the same uncle was with us and he picked me up and carried me to the sidewalk. I began crying and Grandmother says a crowd gathered and wanted to know what had happened. I remember many things that happened in the year 1917. I knew that my cousin went to France to fight, and that maybe Daddy would have to go also. In the month of March, Mother asked me if I would like to go and stay with Aunt Pearl. Pearl being my favorite aunt, I went and stayed about a month. At the end of the month, Daddy came after me and said that Mother had a surprise for me at home. The train wouldn’t go fast enough for me; what could that surprise be? Upon reaching home I soon found out that the surprise was a baby brother. I was greatly pleased with the fat baby and would allow no one to touch him. His name is Harry Peter. After the baby came Mother stayed home all the time; before she had gone to the city each day. I was five years old when I started the first grade. Mother took me to school the first day, and remained with me till about 10 o’clock. When she left I was very sore to think that she had gone and left me. The school was a typical two-story country building about half a block from my home. The first, second and third grades were all in one room with one teacher, Miss Machine. One of the first things taught me was to write my name and address. My name was, “Frances Habib” and I lived at “162 Center Street, West Bridgewater, Massachusetts.” My second grade teacher I will never forget. She was determined that I was to learn to write plainly and correctly. Many a day she slapped my fingers with a ruler to remind me to do better. I am afraid it did little good, however. In the third grade the teacher was Miss Frances Johnson. The fact that her name was the same as mine caused me to think that I also could be a teacher. I remained in the third grade for two years. That winter both my brother and I had been ill with the measles, causing me to stay out of school for over two months. That is why I failed to pass the grade the first time I took it. Miss Johnson was my teacher in the fourth grade also. I often rebelled against going to school. It was the third year in the same room with the same teacher. It was in the fourth grade that we began to write with ink, and the boy who sat in back of me would dip my curls in the inkwell. Not wanting the curls and disliking having my hair dipped in ink, I cut one side of my curls; of course the other side had to be cut also. Those days on the farm were days of perfect enjoyment to all the family. In 1922 grandfather and grandmother left for California, taking with them their other four daughters. After staying on the farm for a year or so Daddy decided to go to Detroit, Michigan. There Daddy had relatives and he thought it would be well for Mother to be with friends. The fifth, sixth and seventh grades I took in the Detroit schools. The school was crowded, half the time the school was so crowded that the children only had half a day of school. At times we even went three days a week. I did not like the schools very much and just abut hated the children who went to school with me; they were so very different than the boys and girls on the farm. While in Detroit I was always sick and out of school about twice a week. I had scarlet fever while in the sixth grade, and the following year, when I was in the seventh grade, I had my tonsils taken out. After that I improved a little, but not much. The city had proved harmful to our whole family. Mother soon became blind and had to have a doctor’s care each day. A little sight was left and the doctors told Mother to move to a drier climate if she wanted to save her eyesight. They said if she stayed in Detroit a few months longer that she would soon be permanently blind in both eyes. It was June 28, 1926 when once again Mother, my two brothers, and I took another train and continued further west. We had a woman with us, but she proved more trouble than help to us. The trip was very enjoyable to us all. It seemed that as soon as we left Detroit with a good hundred miles behind us, that Mother began to feel better. In California, Mother’s eyes have completely cured and she seems to be much happier and healthy than while in Detroit. I am sure that my brothers and I like it here better than in the large city. The eighth grade found me in Alexander Hamilton Junior High School. The hours 8:30 to 3:25 bothered me at first, and especially the 55 minute periods. I soon became used to it however and do not mind it now. In the ninth grade I realized that I really wanted to be a teacher. I made up my mind that I would go to college and be a teacher. How I wish that someone had told me the importance of making good in the high school grades. I am sure I could have done better in the years of my high school work if someone had showed me the importance of it all. My sophomore year was quite interesting and happy. I joined in the many school activities and also the Girls’ Reserve Club. On the whole the high school was the best school I had attended since I had left the farm. My junior year was very hard, but I lived through it, and am glad of the experience. Last summer I took an English course in the summer school. I enjoyed it very much. My school life has been very interesting and wonderful, but I am glad that I shall soon be ready to go to college and after a few years be ready to take my place in the world as a grown-up.
Mike’s class, Icons in the 20th Century, was late in the afternoon. Maybe he figured we were tire and that’s why he ran such a loose class in such a nonchalant style. He had a PhD, and he knew his stuff, but he was young. He wore Levi’s and pearl snap button shirts. His mustache touched his lower lip; his hair hung in his eyes. He asked us to call him by his first name. We frequently met outside, sat on the grass and would just shoot the breeze. That’s how he described it. He’d sit Indian-style, looking for an appropriate blade of grass to chew, and then he’d look up at the sky and squint as if God was giving him a question to ask. Then he’d begin with, “What if…” or “Didja ever think about…” or “Does it really matter if…” We were too far into the 70’s to call it a rap session, but that’s pretty much what they were. It was a derivative of the Socratic Method and would become the precursor of the Grand Conversation.
It was at one of our outdoor gatherings that he posed a question that he knew would be risky but my sense of it at the time and today is that he really was just wondering aloud.
“What if,” he began tentatively, and then rephrased his question. “Do you suppose that,” he hesitated, “I mean, is it possible that men and women are different?”
“Wait a minute. You can’t say that,” a middle age woman said, putting her hand out like a traffic cop.
“Well, I mean, I’m not saying one is inferior and the other is superior. I’m just saying different.”
“No difference from the neck up,” a younger woman said angrily, bolting up from a supine position.
“Does it really matter if the genders are different, as long as they are equal?” Mike said, remaining calm.
He knew his comment was not received well but he seemed to be curious about whether they could at least see his point. Instead, the women began peppering him from all sides.
“No, that’s not right!”
“No difference from the neck up!”
“You’re wrong, Mike!”
“How can you say that!”
Mike didn’t say anything. I figured he was waiting for the storm to pass.
“That’s the same shit they talk when it’s about bein’ black! We different, but equal. That’s some bullshit. Everybody know what that mean– blacks aren’t equal! That’s really the same damn thing you’re saying right now,” a heavy set black woman put in, speaking for the first time all semester.
“Solidarity, sister!” a waifish, freckle faced red headed woman cried out, her cigarette pointing to the sky along with her clenched fist salute.
“I ain’t your sister, ok?” the black woman replied sharply, more annoyed with the red head than she originally was with Mike.
“Well, look,” Mike began, trying to smooth things over, “I don’t think I’m a sexist or a racist, I’m just saying what if?”
“No difference from the neck up!” the younger woman said again, as if it was all that needed to be said on the subject.
“It’s not scientific but just in your own observations from everyday life, doesn’t it seem to you that men and women respond to any given situation in different ways?” he wasn’t going to give up.
We were silent while the “neck up” woman shook her head.
I was plucking blades of grass and tossing them in the air. There wasn’t much of a breeze. Of the six guys sitting there, not one of us spoke up for Mike. I thought it was a fair question, but I was tired and hungry; I didn’t want to prove or disprove anything to anyone.
I began thinking about a Chinese place on Plummer that featured a gigantic plate of broccoli beef for three bucks. On the occasions I went there—late in the afternoon—the place was empty; no one was dining, and the cooks who sat in their white aprons, white t-shirts and white paper hats at a table nearest the kitchen, didn’t mind that I temporarily interrupted their afternoon tasks, usually cutting green beans. They chatted away in Chinese, usually laughing, but on some occasions their voices were low and serious. They never seemed angry though—always simultaneously focused on the task and the conversation.
“It was just a thought,” Mike said after the long silence.
“A sexist thought,” the red head put in, “and I really can’t believe you would say something like that.”
Mike didn’t answer except to shrug and look away. I felt like he was thinking of his weekend. He seemed like a guy who tinkered with cars or rode a motorcycle. There was something about him that made him seem not just unthreatened about not having the final word as most professors would; he seemed utterly unconcerned about it.
“Well, it’s about that time anyway, so let’s make like a real commuter school and jump on the 405 and get out of here. Don’t forget that paper is due next week. We’ll catch you on the flip-flop then. Don’t forget to tune in to those Not Ready for Prime Time Players. Great show.”
I wanted to say something to him, but I had a general rule of never speaking in any class and I chose at the last minute to keep my streak going. I stopped talking six year earlier when everyone in my freshman English class laughed after I posed the question: Why would anyone shoot the guy who shot the president? I kept my vow of silence for the next five years. My version of the term paper that Mike referred to was an analysis of a Johnny Hart comic strip. I was sure he would like it, and I thought maybe I’d say something to him after he read it. But I didn’t.
My stomach was growling as I got up and brushed myself off. I headed to the parking lot but instead of hitting the 405 I went west up Plummer for some solitude and steaming hot broccoli beef. I walked in and they were cutting green beans laughing with gusto. One of them saw me and said, “Mista Broklee Beefman, right?”
“That’s me. And a large Pepsi.” I sat down at a corner opposite theirs. The cooks started chattering amiably. I felt better already.
5:57
Juana, her little brother and her mom come in. The room’s not ready but I had gone home to take a nap so as to gather up the energy to keep going from 6 to 7:30. It used to just bother my feet, then my back, finally I feel too wiped out at the end of the day to do it at all, even after a 32 oz diet Pepsi. But it’s in the contract, so here I am– a mercenary.
Juana’s a nice kid, likes to joke and is easy going. Mom asks about her behavior first, and her grade second. I tell her that most of the time she is good but sometimes she likes to tease the boys who sit near her. I ask Juana if she is going to translate that fully, and she says she will. Mom gives the same playful, bug-eyed look of a response that Juana makes every day. I tell Mom that her behavior is good and the teasing is not on a regular basis. They walk around the room, like it’s open house in the 4th grade instead of her senior year. Mom asks about her grade. Juana had just inquired about it in class today. I fudged it a bit to get it to a C. Mom asks if all her work is in, and I say yes. She looks at Juana as if to say, it’s all in and you only have a C. She wants to see her work. I ask Juana if she turned in her benchmark essay. She says she has done it but she hasn’t turned it in yet. Mom gives her the look. No essay means I don’t have anything but the posters and an old quiz to show Mom. I explain that I have had the flu for three weeks and I am behind. I still feel guilty though because I may have actually been in the same place even if I never got sick.
6:25
Brittany and her boyfriend come. She says Mom has to work but her boyfriend is Mom’s eyes and ears. He looks about 20. Brittany has a C and all her work is in. She is a B student and she could pull off a B if she wants. I remembered Brittany had asked me if I knew any Mexicans with her very “white” name so I asked her boyfriend the same question just for fun. He says well, my name is Dylan so, it’s ok. Dylan? Yeah, he says, Dylan Jagger. My dad’s really into those guys, so he named me after them.
That’s cool, tell your dad I said that’s pretty cool. I’m a very big Dylan fan. Not so hot on Jagger. But Dylan is still cutting records. Very cool.
He smiled; she laughed.
6:35
Monica’s mom comes in with her niece to translate. I forget to ask Mom to tell Monica to stop putting on her makeup in class. It’s like an uncontrollable urge with her. Checking the makeup, touching up, then a minute later checking again. At first I am mad for forgetting, but then I remember that since the last time I yelled at her for it she has stopped. Her grade is a D but she has a missing test that could move her up to a C.
6:40
Tina’s Mom comes in, takes a phone call and then tells a heartbreaking story of Tina’s boyfriend that sounds like the early signs of abuse. He restricts her movements, doesn’t want her spending too much time with her own family. She already has a baby from a previous relationship and the new boyfriend not only has no interest, he has lied to his mother, saying that the baby is Tina’s little sister. Mom takes three more phone calls. The boyfriend has no job, and lives in an apartment that his parents pay for. Tina is failing the class. Mom says that Tina has lost interest in school since the boyfriend came into the picture. Until today she had been absent so much that I didn’t recognize her when she came to class. She has four missing assignments and I tell Mom I will allow her to make them up. We talk about her predicament for 20 minutes. I finally realize that Mom is an aide here. I feel a little embarrassed for not remembering.
6:43
Allan and his five year old brother and their Dad come. They are fans of the San Diego Chargers. We talk sports for a while. My poor Vikings may never win a Superbowl. The five year old is a singer who came to class last week and did a two-song performance. He was fantastic. Very strong voice and very charismatic. He is already performing professionally at parties. Allen tells me that they wanted to buy a house in San Diego but the houses were too expensive. Allan has a C in the class. He is a goof off and wants to chat up all the girls in class. He has a girlfriend and I gave him a bad time about it today.
I was telling Dad about his chattiness, especially with the girls and Allan tells his brother, “That’s how we roll, huh?”
“No,” I say, directly to the little one , “that’s not cool.”
Dad takes it all in. He talks about the housing situation in Tijuana; apparently there’s some kind of housing boom going on there, right across the San Diego border.
6:50
Miguel and his mom.
“So, did you get your dog?” I say to Mom.
“You know about the dog?”
“Oh yes, Miguel was very concerned.”
“Can we not talk about the dog?”
Just talking about it pains Miguel. The dog got out and someone called Animal Control and Miguel’s brother texted him during class so I took his phone. He was near tears, not knowing the fate of his dog. He thought they would immediately destroy the animal. I told him they wouldn’t, but that his dog might get kennel cough while he was locked up. I explain to Mom that I once had a dog who loved running away and so I’ve had much experience bailing out dogs.
“How much is it?”
“I don’t remember, but not much. Just have to watch out for that kennel cough and even if he gets it you just have to get some medication for him, oh sorry, her.”
“Can we please not talk about the dog?”
“Oh yeah, sure, but I would not wait to go get her; I would get her tomorrow.” “Where is it? Off of Belmont, past the cemetery.”
“Way the heck out there?”
“Yes.”
“Can we please?”
“Oh yeah.”
“Ok honey, we’ll talk about something else. Miguel won an award.”
“He did?” “
“Yes.”
“But let’s not talk about that, either,” Miguel said.
“Congratulations.”
“Thank you, let’s not talk about it though.”
“Ok, Miguel has a C, based mostly on the grade he received when he transferred to this class. He was absent twice last week but those were cleared I believe?”
No answer from Mom so Miguel explains why he was out.
“Anyway I’m sure he can maintain his C grade.”
“Ok, thanks, nice to meet you Mr. Chavoor.”
“Likewise, glad the dog is ok. Or will be.”
“Yes.”
“We’re not talking about the dog, remember?”
“Oh, yes.”
7:05
My Ipod dies. I go next door to visit Joy Garratt. We’re done, I say. Five minutes past. We’re going to 7:30 aren’t we? Oh that’s right. I feel some disappointment. I tell her that I’m writing a little bit after each visit. Oh, about how much they love your class? Something like that. I go back to my room but no one comes. I finish writing at 7:50.
8:16
Too tired to fix anything for dinner, I stand in the kitchen in a daze. Grace is still at Fresno High’s open house. Kelsey comes home and points at the cabinet in front of me. Popcorn? She nods yes. Sounds good to me. On tip-toes I reach for the bag of Jolly Times.
Early in the month of May 1970, the National Guard opened fire on a group of students at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, USA. I’ve never been to Ohio; I grew up in California, 2400 miles away. But everyone who was alive at the time remembers the iconic photo that was in magazines and newspapers all across the country and the world, of the girl crying out in anguish, crouched over the body of a slain student. There was another girl, though. She wasn’t protesting, wasn’t angry, wasn’t flipping anyone off or throwing rocks. She was going across campus, 300 feet back, a football field away, and she had nothing to do with the protest; she had a ham sandwich and was heading for lunch. The bullet hit her in the neck and she died. Certainly none of those who were shot deserved to be shot, whether they were participating or not, but the girl with the ham sandwich really shook me. When Neil Young wrote and released the song “Ohio,” about the shooting, it gave me the chills every time I heard it. It still gives me chills.
Five years later I was attending Cal State University, Northridge and whenever I was going from class to class or from class to lunch or class to break or class to the parking lot, my brain would be on guard, my eyes would seek the nearest bullet-proof refuge, and I would pick up the pace just a little. Which direction would the bullets come from? Would I get behind a post or pillar or bike rack or trash can in time? Who would fall? How long would it last? Would I be brave enough to help someone else? Would someone else help me? I never told anyone about my musings, but I guessed that others might feel the same because we were living not just in a post-Watergate era but a post-Kent State era and it seemed to me that if it happened in one place it could happen anywhere else.
I sometimes would go to the Oviatt Library there at Northridge and do my own research on the Kent State shootings and while doing that I discovered the less-heralded shootings at Jackson State College, which took place less than two weeks after Kent State. Wherever I went after Kent State happened, at any college campus, my mind would conjure up the crack of rifles and the screams of people and the chaos and horror that followed. It receded as the years and decades passed, but it was always there, no matter how distant.
But lately I’ve been thinking my fear wasn’t the residue of the Kent State shootings. Why would I think about the girl with the sandwich? One moment she was thinking about lunch or a class or her friends and the next moment she’s on the ground, having the last five minutes of her life. For the last month I’ve been looking at the phrase, “I am a descendant of a survivor of the Armenian Genocide.” I fit that description, and I think my mind was connecting those two incidents.
Well, the thing is I am writing this essay for an assignment. The assignment was to write about your archrival. Except I didn’t have one. I don’t have one and I don’t want one. True, there were people in my life I didn’t like but I either avoided them or tried to find some kind of common ground with them. It’s always been that way with me. Now, I will engage and fight after a long, long while, after being convinced that the other person doesn’t want reconciliation, compromise or to make any effort to change or understand something new and only wants to antagonize. For the most part though, it has been resolution or retreat. So I wasn’t sure how I was going to write an essay about an archrival. But while there may not be someone I with whom I have engaged in an ongoing struggle, there is something with which I have, the genocide.
For me, most of my life I have wanted to be and am a middle class all-American guy. I grew up in the suburbs where things were quiet and calm. There was almost a laziness attached to it. It is so much easier to be nice than it is to be agitated. I have employed all my usual methods of dealing with being the descendant of an Armenian who survived the genocide. I have tried to make peace with it. As a young child I thought of myself as American as anyone else. My ethnicity was merely a matter of rice pilaf instead of mashed potatoes, and also a few Armenian words—vermak for blanket and doshak for pillow—that I thought of as baby talk. Otherwise, I was fully assimilated. I was in the Cub Scouts and I played on a baseball team. I watched cartoons on TV, listened to the Beatles on the radio and ate hamburgers at McDonald’s. I didn’t want any bad things in my cultural background. Early on I created a scenario where both sides of my family managed to avoid the carnage via their early, pre-1915 arrival to the United States. But I was careful to not let myself find out that Kharpert, their city of origin, was attacked in the 1895 “smaller” genocide. I eventually did discover that truth, although it was much later in my life.
I also tried to make peace with the first genocide of the 20th century by reading everything I could about it. And I asked my Armenian friends about their grandparents’ experiences. “The truth will set you free,” I said to myself. And there was truth to that. To the Turks, we were nothing more than an annoying infestation of snails that had to be exterminated by any method available. That was the essence of what I heard and read. Those were the pictures I saw. There’s a saturation point though and when I reached it I thought I was done with it. How much and how often could one read about the tying up of the father, the raping of the mother, the disemboweling of the children? Or the families put in a rowboat and pushed out to the middle of the lake to become targets in a shooting range at an amusement park? The knives, swords, pitchforks. The cutting, stabbing, slashing. The burning, taunting, torturing. The screaming, crying, begging, praying, cursing. Nothing but some kind of infestation. No heart, mind, or soul. No value. Was there any benefit to reading about it while sitting comfortably on the couch, noshing on an apple, 7,000 miles and six decades removed? Did those benefits outweigh the deficits? Was there residual, multi-generational damage? I decided to run from it. That stuff was the past; we left it. Isn’t that why we came to America? Wasn’t I American? Wasn’t that what we aimed for?
There were times though when I felt angry instead of free or lucky or blessed. I remember when I was around 19 I would feel furious, suddenly, for no specific reason, often on Sunday, right after arriving home from church. I wrote a paragraph about it, without knowing anything about why I felt angry. I could only describe the feeling and the objects around me—the car, my Sunday clothes, the curb, the sidewalk, and the doorknob of the front door. I felt that I had to write the paragraph or things would get worse. At the time I thought I was just angry about teenage stuff. But maybe it was more. After all, Dad was funny, philosophical, intelligent, ethical and hard working. But he also had anger issues. All my life I tried to figure out the source of his anger. Why were his standards and expectations so close to perfection? Maybe a part of him was thinking that if our people had only done something better, made better choices, maybe then the Turks wouldn’t have killed us. Survivors get to wonder what might have made things different. Smarter? Faster? More shrewd? More aggressive? More patriotic? More religion? His parents were survivors, but the part I didn’t see for a long time was that no survivor escapes scot-free. What about their parents and aunts and uncles and cousins and friends and neighbors? What happened to them? No one talked about it. Dad was grateful and successful here but still, considering all the suffering and loss his parents went through, why wouldn’t he be angry?
Anger and fear are symbiotic. Angry people carry fear with them. What is the fear? Something’s about to go horribly wrong. Something unexpected and unaccounted for could go wrong beyond anyone’s control. Maybe it’s akin to PTSD. The trauma was from 100 years ago though. Over one hundred years ago my grandmother, who was five at the time, was playing in the yard when there came a very loud whistle, one she never forgot. Her mother grabbed her and ran. The Turkish soldiers were coming, setting houses on fire and killing Armenians and Assyrians randomly. One moment a normal day, the next something unimaginably horrific. It was over two years before there was any stability in their lives. And neither of them ever divulged what they endured or witnessed during those years. Is it any wonder that my parents and the parents of many of my Armenian friends would consider what might go wrong under any given situation? Watch where you’re going, you want to fall? What are you doing? What’s wrong with you, don’t you know better? The wrong and bad had to be considered first and foremost before right and good could even be approached. Even if you got something right, something might go wrong down the line that you didn’t anticipate. Like the Saroyan character in a short story who repeats the same thing throughout, “No foundation. All the way down the line. What. What-not. Nothing.” Nothing, and no foundation now or later. A likely source for fear and anger. Maybe there is something though.
I have said in the past, “God was with me that day,” maybe in reference to what could have been a serious car accident or some other kind of near catastrophe. But I think that in fact it’s kind of a rude thing to say. I mean, what, God was with me but not with a zillion others who were in the same situation? We put God and evil things in the same time and place, and then we attempt to assign meaning to it. The Armenian people were practitioners of Christianity for 1600 years when another group of people decided that the Armenians were worthless, that they deserved to be exterminated, eradicated mercilessly. Our collective faith was thrown on an anvil and the hammer was dropped with full force. The result, we either said, “Ok, where was God then? We’re done with that,” or people dug deeper, and their faith gave them strength to survive. Still others pushed their faith to an almost obsessive and sometimes yes, an obsessive-compulsive level. I believe at some point your faith instead of guiding and inspiring can disable people and make them dysfunctional. I would like to say that most of us kept or regained our balance spiritually and kept our faith and practice it sensibly but I am not sure there is or could be any reliable research on the topic.
It is said that when they realized they weren’t being exiled, but were being sent away to be murdered, many Armenians requested a last communion during which they used dirt as bread and the water from the Euphrates River for wine and then told their captors they were sufficiently prepared to die. There were other Armenians who, once they figured out what was going on, took to the hills with their rifles and fought. I can’t find fault with either of these groups. And there is yet another group who chose to change their name, language and faith in order to survive. I am sad and feel a loss over this group, but still I will not judge them. It is not for me to do. None of us know exactly how we would respond under the circumstances.
The girl from Kent, Ohio with the ham sandwich at Kent State on that day in May 1970 never knew what hit her. She died that day. Her parents and siblings and cousins and friends grieved, maybe without consolation; they will never be able to think about her without the atrocity of how she died attached to their memory. The night before the shooting, the mayor of Ohio said he wanted to “eradicate the problem” of radical students protesting the expansion of war. After four were shot dead and 9 were wounded an investigative commission concluded that the shooting was unwarranted, but no criminal charges were brought. There was a lawsuit that went on for many years, which was finally settled out of court. I don’t know if the mayor ever apologized for his comments; neither do I know if the National Guard ever apologized.
I don’t know if the monetary settlement was a comfort to the family of the girl who was shot and killed, and I don’t know if the lack of an apology still pains them to this day. But I can tell you that I am not waiting for an apology or any kind of acknowledgement from the Turkish government for murdering a million and a half Armenians. I do not expect an apology and do not need one and I am not going to give them any power over me by anguishing over it. They’ve had 100 years to think it over; I think their position on the subject is pretty clear, so actually I will choose to say I forgive you, Turkish government, whether you ever acknowledge your crime or not. I forgive you in the name of Jesus Christ who was falsely accused, denied due process, stripped, beaten, mocked, tortured and killed but forgave His tormentors without determining whether they acknowledged their wrongdoing or not. If that’s the example then I am obliged to do no less. It is the only way forward. I don’t want an archrival or a would-be nemesis and I won’t have one. That doesn’t mean the dark cloud of the genocide won’t appear before me from time to time, but it does mean every time I see it I will dismiss it again and again and again. Forgiveness, not power, is the most dynamic force in the universe.
The assignment was perfect. It was tuned in to both the climate of the era and the unchangeable truths of the Scripture. I had the need to hitch a horse to something or I wouldn’t go anywhere. One needs a horse, a wagon and a destination to live life. I felt that without all three, I was just sitting around in the barn. And now I had this assignment. It was still just some task in a college class, and as such it wasn’t directly linked to whatever my real life might be but it was something much more real than anything I had ever encountered and I realized it had the potential to connect something abstract and dusty to something real and organic. It was, if fact, exactly what I thought a Christian College should be doing. I was never happier to be a student at Azusa Pacific than I was that day. What I liked most about it was what the A students liked least: it was very broad and open-ended. “Demonstrate how a Biblical principle functions in today’s world.” That was it. Fred, my roommate and friend, and I were so ecstatic about the project that it was the very, maybe the only assignment that I did not put off until the last minute for my entire college career.
“Whatever you do for the least of these, you have done it for me,” I said, as we walked briskly across campus back to Adam Hall.
“Love thy neighbor,” Fred countered.
“Who is my neighbor,” I replied.
“Yes!” Fred said, as if we were finished instead of just beginning.
“What?”
“That’s it.”
“What’s it?”
“We just described our project.”
“Well, those were Bible verses but which one are we going to use?”
“All of them.”
“Uh, Ok.”
Whatever it was spinning in his head wasn’t quite clear to me.
“We just we went in a different order.”
“Wait, now.”
“You’re slow, Chavoor.”
“Maybe.”
“Love thy neighbor is what?”
“A Bible verse.”
“Duh. What about it though?”
“It’s what Jesus said.”
“And what’d He say just before that?”
“Uh, Love the Lord your God…”
“With all your heart, all your mind and all your strength.”
“Yeah, my Grandma taught me that one.”
“And He called it the greatest commandment.”
“Right.”
“And loving your neighbor is the second greatest.”
“Ok.”
“So you take that and you take the other verse.”
“Whatever you do for the least of these…”
“You’ve done it for me.”
“Right. Get it?”
“Oh, ok. So your neighbor could be the least of these. Your neighbor could even be people you don’t like.”
“But…”
“But if you do something for them, something good, then it’s like doing it for the Lord, doing what God’s wants you to do.”
“Exactly!” Fred said in triumph, throwing both arms in the air.
“Ok, so how do we demonstrate that?”
“I have no idea.”
When we got to our dorm room I sat at my cubicle while Fred paced the floor, bouncing a tennis ball. I got up and put “Blood on the Tracks,” Bob Dylan’s new album, on the record player.
“Does it have to be Dylan all the time?” Fred asked.
“Do I really have to answer that?”
“Argh.”
“Don’t worry, this is the side with Lilly, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts on it.”
“Humph.”
“Come on, you know you like that song.”
“It’s great, but it stinks.”
I was never sure what he meant when he said that but he said it often.
“This? This is just great. It’s genius. Did I tell you I’m writing a term paper on Dylan for my poetry class?”
“About 50 times.”
We listened to both sides of “Blood on the Tracks,” but we didn’t come up with any ideas for the project. A few days later we were in the cafeteria having lunch.
“How can you stand eating that stuff?” Fred asked, jerking his head back as if he’d been shot.
“It’s lamb, what kinda Armenian are you?”
“That’s not lamb, it’s mutton.”
“Mutton, shmutton. Tastes like lamb.”
“Looks like a moose turd.”
I ate with much vigor; Fred had a peanut butter sandwich followed by a bowl of Fruit Loops.
“Did I tell you about the poem I wrote for the poetry class?”
“It’s about Dylan, I bet.”
“No. It’s called Potato Salad is the Color of America.”
“Oh brother.”
“Yeah, it talks about Los Angeles and 4th Street.”
“What do you know about Downtown LA, Valley Boy?”
“Where we worked, for Artine.”
“What about it?”
“The Potato Salad People don’t know anything about Downtown LA.”
“I hate to break it you, but you’re potato salad, Jack.”
“Yeah, but all along it was there. And seeing it, those homeless guys, just made things different.”
“You’re a wuss.”
“What?”
“A weenie.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“You talk all this stuff and write poems about it.”
“Yeah?”
“But why didn’t you go to Mexicali to help the poor during Easter Week?”
“I told you. I was into it but then they kept saying, like, a week in the dirt, a week without toilets, a week without your soft, comfortable life.”
“I rest my case. Wuss.”
“I would have gone if they hadn’t have tried to make it sound so horrible.”
“You wanted to hang out in the Valley and go buy records.”
“When they came back, everyone said it wasn’t that bad. It was pretty bad but not that bad.”
“So?”
“So why’d they have to sell it like it was worse than a concentration camp or something? They were too dramatic.”
“Shouldn’t have made a difference. They didn’t want any whiny babies.”
Fred drank off the dregs of his bowl of Fruit Loops and then we headed back to the dorm. His words stung me and we were silent. When we got back I put on “Late for the Sky,” and took my spot at my cubicle with my feet on the desk. I was staring at the Simon and Garfunkel poster. Fred was on his bed with his feet on the wall.
“Ok, I got it now. I got the idea for the project,” I said, breaking the silence.
“What?”
“We’ll go downtown and we’ll interview some of those homeless guys.”
“Great. What for?”
“So that people can see them as real human beings. God’s creation as much as anyone else.”
“Love your neighbor.”
“At least know him.”
“What else? You can’t just interview them.”
“Take pictures?”
“Yeah, it’s got to be like multi-media.”
“Ok, like slides and interviews and a song.”
“A song?”
“I know the perfect song. It’s not Dylan, don’t worry.”
“How about a Beatle song?”
“Which one?”
“One Tin Soldier.”
“They didn’t do that.”
“Yeah, they did.”
“Fred, I have every Beatle album. They didn’t do it.”
“It was a single.”
“Fred, I’m telling you, they never did it. Besides it’s an anti-war song.”
“It’s about people not understanding other people.”
“Ok, you got a point there. But listen to this.”
I got up and put on “Drinking Song,” by Loudon Wainwright III, with its attention grabbing first line, “Drunk men stagger, drunk men fall. Drunk men swear and that’s not all. Quite often they will urinate outdoors.” Fred pushed himself off the bed in a backward summersault, landing on his feet.
“That’s great!” he proclaimed.
“But?”
He thought about it for a while.
“But it stinks.”
“Why?”
“How does it prove our point? And besides, are they all winos?”
“But wait, listen to this part.”
Near the end of the song was the line, “Be he broke bum or rich rake…his beverage be the worst of whiskey or the finest wine.”
“So?”
“We’re all the same. Homeless or not. Rich or poor. We make the same mistakes. The least of these? They’re our neighbors.”
So one Saturday morning we got in Fred’s ’64 Nova and drove to Downtown Los Angeles with a cassette recorder, camera and a bag full of apples. I wanted to offer them Pall Mall cigarettes but Fred said they weren’t in a prison and we should be offering something healthy. The first person we met was Jimmy. He was a short, stooped over man with a round, red face. He smelled not just like garbage but like garbage that had been sitting in a windowless, airconditionedless room for the entire month of August. We introduced ourselves and offered him an apple. He thanked us, accepted the apple, and then rubbed it on his sweatshirt which was once grey but now was the grimy color of the alley we stood in. He reached in his back pocket, took out a pocket comb and cut the apple into quarters.
“Want some?” he growled in a voice that sounded older than he appeared.
“No, thanks,” Fred said, “it’s for you.”
“I, uh, just ate,” I said.
He only ate a small section of the apple; then he put the rest of it in the pocket of his sweatshirt. He thanked us and put the comb back in his pocket.
“We were wondering if we could interview you,” I said tentatively.
“What for?” Jimmy asked.
“It’s for a class project,” Fred explained.
“You two still in school?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“I quit school went I was 16,” Jimmy said, nodding when Fred turned on the cassette recorder.
“Bad grades?” I asked.
“No, I done all right. I just didn’t see a reason for it. I was living in Santa Rosa back then. I hitched all the way down to Long Beach, working jobs and getting myself in trouble.”
“Trouble?” Fred said.
“Girls, drugs, drinking, fights. The usual, you know. I ended up joining the Navy.”
He pulled up his sleeve and showed us a tattoo as proof but what once may have been a tattoo was now a large blue and black smudge.
“Oh yeah,” I said, pretending I could see an anchor.
“They threw my ass out. I don’t know, some jacked-up reason or another. I couldn’t find no work and got in more trouble and started shooting. Ended up right here in the City of Angels. Shit. I tried to get clean. I went to a methadone clinic but they closed it down. Just went last week. Don’t believe me? It’s right around the corner.”
“We believe you,” I said.
“Come on, let’s go. I show you where it was at.”
“Maybe they opened a new one”, Fred said.
“At a different location,” I said.
“They sure as hell kept it a secret, then.”
We walked up and down various streets, turning north, then west, then south. Jimmy was sure it was just around the corner, or the next, or the one after that, and he told us if we found it and it was open he’d sign in on the spot. It took me and Fred about 45 minutes worth of walking to realize that Jimmy had no idea what he was talking about, and that just last week could have been the same as last month or last year. We parted ways. Jimmy chose not to have his picture taken.
We walked around for another hour. Most of the men we met did not have enough teeth to eat an apple, but asked for any spare change that we might have. They shared their stories and all but a few spoke highly of the Rescue Mission, where they could get a meal. Even those who did not like the Rescue Mission—because they felt they were being bribed to listen to a preacher them tell to “get with God”, ate there anyway. Fred took pictures, and then we found the Nova and got out of there.
The final project was one of those things that is better when it’s in the planning stages in your mind than it is as the finished product. We had slides, music and the words of Jimmy, but it wasn’t received well by our fellow students. They didn’t say anything bad, but they didn’t say anything at all, except with their faces, which registered a kind of soft disdain and discomfort. The professor was complimentary but in a restrained manner. In the introduction I was going to say something like, “I’d like you to meet Jimmy, my neighbor,” but I didn’t. I certainly couldn’t say that I loved my neighbor by giving him an apple and asking him about his life. I was, maybe, acknowledging his existence, but maybe I was just using the tragedy of his life and the others to make a hipper-than-thou project in a small Christian college.
Still though, I believe that I learned something that Saturday, and that I gained something from meeting Jimmy and that by being willing to do that and learn from it, I was able to do other things later on in life that I otherwise might not have considered. And if there is one thing I’ve learned from being a teacher, it’s that students maybe register disdain facially but the message may still get digested and result in something positive. That’s why I’m sharing this story, so more people can meet, and consider Jimmy, who is our neighbor, and a child of God.
My sister and I were up early; it was a little like Christmas but not quite the same build up or intensity. My brother though slept in as usual. For Charles, sleeping in had the highest priority. For all I knew, Mickey Mantle could pay him a visit but if it was before noon, the Mick would have to wait. But Shamera and I knew that Mom had been up well before us, and had transformed our living room into a candy store. The door to the living room was closed but we knew what we would see: three chocolate bunnies trapped inside their boxes with nothing more to look out of than a cellophane window; and the living room in some kind of put together condition which meant the cushions were squared away, the pillows set symmetrically, magazines placed one on top of top other from Life to Good Housekeeping, then Redbook and finally the diminutive Readers’ Digest. Fixing things up created better hiding places for the jelly beans. I loved the visual trickery better than anything in Highlights Magazine. Here you see a normal looking living room, can you spot all the jelly beans?
So Mom gave the word and Shamera and I would burst through the living room door and swoop down on the jelly beans. We were not competitive about it because there were always more than enough. They were on bookshelves, window sashes, the TV cabinet, end tables, and under the magazines, cushions and pillows. Some of them were so well hidden—between TV tubes, inside flower vases– that I would discover a jelly bean treat as late as the middle of July.
About an hour after the hunt was over, Grandma Victoria and Auntie Sadie would come over with more candy. There was much hugging and kissing to endure, but we loved them and we loved our treat; the chocolate egg with fossilized fruit bits and unidentifiable gooey stuff was a rare delicacy.
And so, my sister and I gathered quite a haul of candy, well before 10 o’clock in the morning. Now there was only the devouring to be done. It seemed a shame to wreck the bunny, and the unmolested egg was akin to art, but esthetics was no deterrent to my lust for sugar. Getting dressed for church I took a bite of the egg, then the tip of the bunny’s ear, and then topped it off with a fist full of jelly beans, all the while wondering what any of it had to do with Easter. Eggs, bunnies, baby chicks, jelly beans and Jesus coming back from the dead was so incongruous a notion that not even an 8 year old could make some sense of it all. But it was the grown up’s world; they called it, we caught it. Jack-in-the box Jesus—push Him down on Friday, He comes back on Sunday, and in the meantime, gobble up candy.
I put one sock on; take a bite, and then the other sock, another bite. Pants and shirt, two bites. By the time I was dressed the egg looked like a canoe, and the bunny had no ears. The basket of jellybeans though was full. I lined my pockets with them in preparation for the trip to church. As I did that I sampled different combinations. Would a green and a yellow one taste like 7-Up? What was the flavor of the white ones? Shamera said it was vanilla, but Charles said it was plain, with no flavor at all and that made me feel sorry for them. And why did the black ones only taste good with the orange ones? While I contemplated these things, Mom called me into the kitchen.
“Don’t forget, it’s Daddy’s birthday today,” she said, tucking in my shirt.
“Are we going to have birthday cake?”
“No, we are going to have a great big Easter egg. Do you remember from last time?”
“Uh-uh.”
“A great big green Easter egg. “
“Oh yeah! I remember now, a watermelon!” I rubbed my tummy to show my delight.
“That’s right. Now, eat some breakfast so we’ll be ready to go.”
I poured myself a bowl of Sugar Frosted Flakes, wondering where she hid the watermelon and guessed it was somewhere on the patio, under a blanket. I finished breakfast, went to the patio to look for it but failed to do so, and figuring she put it in the garage refrigerator, went back to my room excited about the wonderful leg of lamb lunch after church with watermelon for dessert.
I returned to my room where the disfigured egg and bunny stood forlornly on the dresser, so for mercy’s sake I alleviated their loneliness. The bunny was now headless and the canoe-shaped egg was now half its former size. I put on my shoes and reloaded my pockets with jelly beans. I one pocket I ended up finishing before we to church while with the other I worked on through the service.
I stood beside Dad in the front row of our tiny little chapel which our tiny assemblage of protestant Armenians was renting until we could afford to buy our own property and build our own church. A hundred of us packed the chapel, and I began to feel funny. I felt the breath of everyone; I felt that the church was breathing, like something you might see in an old cartoon. All the good was going out and all that was left was the smell of moth balls from the men’s suits, the gaudy perfume of the elderly women and oil used to preserve wood which was in the pews.
It wasn’t just the air though; it was also the faces of the old Armenian women who occupied the front row. The look on their faces was sadder than the pictures of Jesus on the cross when He looked up to heaven seeming to ask God why He had been forsaken. These women, survivors of the genocide, had experienced unspeakable horrors that even the promise of eternal life couldn’t quite heal. They knew about feeling forsaken. Their Jesus was not candy or a jack-in-the-box; to them He was something that most people couldn’t or wouldn’t understand.
Then it seemed to get dark. I listened for my Mom’s off key-warbling of, “Christ the Lord is Risen Today,” but I couldn’t hear the others; only Dad’s basso profundo. My armpits were on fire but my toes were icy. My head wobbled, and when I open my mouth to sing the line, “Made like Him, like Him we rise,” water filled my mouth. I swallowed and said, “Father,” and wondered whether I meant Dad or God because I never had called Dad by his formal title. That’s when I puked in church on Easter Sunday. I was sure that Dad was going to react violently but I didn’t have time to feel afraid; I puked again. There was vomit on my clothes, the pew, the floor and my nose. The combination of the smell of vomit and Vitalis hair ointment made me quiver. Then I felt Dad’s hand under my arm, lifting me off the ground.
We were alone in an empty Sunday School class room. Dad was wiping my face with his handkerchief. He looked funny sitting in a little kid’s chair. He asked if I felt better and when I didn’t answer right away, he stood me up and walked me around the room.
“That was just the bad coming out. Now if you breathe in the air, that will be the good coming in.” I doubted him but I did start to feel better. Then he sat me down again and rubbed my back and touched the back of my head.
“Are you all right now? Do you feel better?” I nodded although my eyes were watering. I coughed and then looked at the Real Estate pin on his lapel.
“Happy Birthday, Dad.”
“Why, thank you very much.”
He rested his hand on my shoulder and looked at me.
“Mom got you a watermelon for your birthday.”
“Hip-hip hooray!”
The bad was out, the good was in. Dad waved a hand in the air but I wasn’t quite ready to be celebratory with him yet. I smelled his Old Spice and the cool of night that emanated from his suit at every hour. I felt better not just because I had expelled the sugar overdose but because Dad, who could be volatile and in my view at that time had the right to be angry, had demonstrated instead a tenderness that I had not experienced before.I took more breaths; the bad was out, the good was in. It was going to be a good day and a memorable Easter.
The Talking Wall 