Mitla Pass - Leon Uris [177]
In the evening, we’d sit on the porch swing and rock, and as we got closer and closer, he told me about what it was like to go to Philly.
I’d be pretty much asleep when the conductor called out, “Chester, Chester, next stop Chester.” The train pulled into an open-air elevated platform station. There were red brick factories all around from the turn of the century and, on a corner down the block, the flashing neon lights of the Colorado Cafe. Funny name for a diner. Outside the window I saw the big sign painted across a building: WHAT CHESTER MAKES MAKES CHESTER. Philly was the next stop. Christ, I hoped I’d never see that sign again. Sometimes my dad met me, but most of the time I’d take a streetcar.
Dad moved quite often, but every place looked alike. They all seemed to be second- or third-story apartments and they were spooky because they were usually in the rear of the building and the halls were never lit. There was a lot of dark mahogany paneling and a uniform mustiness and gloom. When I entered, the first thing that got to me was the smell of mothballs from the front hall closet where Dad’s only good suit hung.
Dad had married a Party member with two sons older than me. They weren’t bad guys. We’d all sneak off to the ball games together, and when I was able to see major leaguers, Dizzy Dean and those guys, it was almost worth the trip. Dad was always on his stepsons with his temper and I stood up for them against him. All pleasures were forbidden, even the funny papers.
Dad’s wife, Lena, was a kvetch, a complainer and nagger. Every sentence she spoke started out negatively, to put you on the defensive. “What’s the matter, you don’t like Philadelphia?” The big joy of her life was stuffing food down everyone’s throat. “Eat, eat, eat, eat” ... like she was getting sexual satisfaction out of cramming your belly; or, if you didn’t eat until you burst, she’d take it as an insult: “Jewish cooking is not good enough for you?”
Little varied between me and Dad. Almost every conversation turned out to be a lecture. “Do better in school,” “Don’t hang out with hoodlums,” “Read important works by Party members,” “Pay honor to the Soviet Union.”
The Second World War had started and France had fallen and England stood alone. At first the Communists had been ordered to berate and denounce the war as an imperialistic war. Then Stalin made a pact with Hitler. I heard that members quit the Party in droves over this, but Dad justified the pact. Then, later, Russia was attacked and overnight the bad war became a good war, according to the Communists.
I had reached puberty and the whole new world of masturbation was a wonderment, really fantastic. I read a lot of books and could even talk to Aunt Simone, who was a lot different than Bubba and Momma. She taught me not to feel guilt and shame and that stuff. Also, not to seek answers to my curiosity with her daughters. I’d never touch my cousins. I loved them.
One night in Philly I was in the bathtub and I started jerking off. Dad came home from a Party meeting in a fury. I could hear by the way he slammed the door. He always kept a key to the bathroom door so my stepbrothers and I couldn’t lock ourselves in. He broke in and caught me and beat the hell out of me. I was slipping and sliding all over the tub, unable to stand, and he just kept pounding me with both fists. I could have whipped him, but a guy doesn’t hit his father, no matter what.
“Filthy, rotten, dirty little pig!” he screamed.
I swore I was going to get even, and I did. As summer came to an end, Dad’s temper got worse and worse. One night, out of the blue, I came home to see the kitchen filled with a half-dozen comrades. One of them was on the Central Committee.
“Sonny boy, I have a big surprise for you,” Dad told me. “The Central Committee has decided, due to my faithful years as a Party member, to waive your age requirements and swear you into the Young Communist League, now ... before you go back to Baltimore.”
... So there I was holding up my fist in the Communist salute and repeating an oath