The Writing Life, A Return to Brooklyn
Photograph by Jamie Dedes
I often use music to nurture the mood of a scene. For the piece that follows, I used Cantor Rosenblatt’s My Yiddishe Mama of which Connie Francis did a pop Italian-American version.I find this particular song evocative of the conflicting pull of the old and new on immigrant peoples that I observed growing up in Brooklyn in the 1950s. Such are some of the people presented in the early portion of the novel on which I am currently working. The old world with it’s old loves, old values, and old customs tugs at the heart even as the new world moves in and stakes its claim. Children become “acculturated” to the new world and the new times, and mothers’ hearts are broken. (Yiddishe Momma by Sophie Tucker provides – in effect – a translation of Rabbi Rosenblatt’s version.)
I played Cantor Rosenblatt’s version along with some other cantorial music when writing about the character, Abel. Here, Tessa and her mother, the major protagonists, find themselves struggling. They have their much-loved church on Sunday, little money, no family, and few friends. They befriend Abel and are befriended by him in turn. Able is a respected cantor, a liturgical singer at synagogue. He also owns and operates the corner candy store. Such stores, in Brooklyn of the 1950s, were as ubiquitous as Starbuck’s today.
Abel’s entry into the novel seems an appropriate post for December 22nd, the second day of Hanukah 2008.
Excerpt from And So Goes the World, a novel in progress
Copyright 2008 Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved.
There was a small candy-store tucked into the front of the next building, where penny candy, cigarettes, sodas and ice cream sundaes, magazines and newspapers were sold. Much to my delight, I found that the store also sold small, glassine envelopes of United States and foreign postage stamps for collectors. At ten cents for a bag of twenty-five stamps, I became a greedy collector. The stamps provided me with a tiny art collection that didn’t take up too much space in our small apartment. In fact, I could carry them everywhere with me, and I often did.
A Jewish gentleman named Abel owned the candy store. He was short and dark, not unlike my own uncles whom I sorely missed. He had the same brownish-black, curly hair. Abel had a number tattooed on his arm. Ima explained to me the horror of its source and asked me to be sure not to stare. It was hard not to. He was a nice man, and it was a great sorrow to think of the suffering he and his family had endured. Able had lost his first family to that thing called the Holocaust. Knowing Abel made me realize that despite our difficulties, we might be fortunate people after all. Survival was difficult, but no one was actively seeking to separate, torture, or kills us. Abel was caring and gentle and told me to drink milk, not soda, so that I would grow up to be strong. He would wave his finger at my mother and remind her that milk was cheaper than Cherry Coke. Abel was the cantor at his temple and could often be caught singing sacred songs while he worked. This was a new and unexpected joy. They had the same soul-touching oriental sounds as the Arabic music of my family. Sometimes I would sneak in and hide behind the door. I didn’t want Abel to see me and stop singing.
One day Abel and Anna invited us to their home and to meet their children, David and Rebecca. Anna, Abel’s second wife, was an Eastern European Jew, a victim of the pogroms, and lovely but fragile. In her sad eyes, fear was ever present. Over the years, I went from looking up at her face to looking down into her eyes; but, no matter how much time passed, no matter how tall I grew, Anna never grew to feel safe and confident. In all the time she was still with us, she beheld everything and almost everyone with fear, even terror. Sometimes she rocked herself in her chair, her mind returned to that angry place where people rioted in the streets and did unforgettable, unforgivable crimes.
Anna and Abel’s apartment was one with a million comforts. It overflowed with amazing things, more books than I’d seen in any home, a silver menorah, an ancient dreidal, an upright Steinway piano, and a beautiful old violin and stand. Abel read to us from the Old Testament. The poetry of the Psalms was enhanced by his wonderful sonorous speaking voice, just as beautiful as his singing voice. Anna served pot roast for dinner and honey cake with delicate, slivered almonds on top for dessert. It was a good visit. When Ima promised they could come spend an evening with us, I hoped she could make it happen. I wondered where we would get enough money to feed six people. And further, what would she cook, this mother of mine for whom even scrambled eggs presented a challenge?
More on writing and other excerpts from And So Goes the World at:
http://musingbymoonlight.wordpress.com/2008/12/18/novel-inspiration/
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