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Books
by G. David Schwartz
A Jewish Appraisal of Dialogue /
Midrash and Working Out of the Book
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Shawn
By G. David Schwartz When I was
in Schroeder Elementary School, my best friend was named
Shawn. This was back in the days when the term “best
friend” meant something. But “best friends,” in those
days, changed more quickly than classrooms. Still,
Shawn was a most interesting character, probably because
I never remember him talking about homework, or a
particular teacher, or anything relating to school.
But there
was something different about Shawn, something obvious
and somewhat unintelligible just because the difference
was obvious. Shawn walked to school and I took a bus.
My mother watched the local news each evening, as this
was in the days of bussing, and I never had the
opportunity to tell my mother how much I enjoyed taking
the bus. Every morning, sitting next to some "really
fine" twelve-year-old girl and clowning around right
under the driver's eyes. Me, getting away with things
like unscrewing the backs of seats, right under the very
nose of the driver. Sometimes we would pull into the
circular drive in front of the school at the same time
as Shawn was arriving with his heavy wool coat, and
scarf, and cap tied tight, wrapped around, and
persuasively trying to hide him. But Shawn really stood
out against the backdrop of the snow.
His father
was a preacher. I had no idea what that meant. No one
in my family was even the nearest equivalent, a rabbi.
Preacher. Shawn told me one day that his father "talks
for a living." Great work if you can get it.
Science was
my favorite class in those days. What we were required
to memorize seemed so clear, precise, non-debatable. I
think I also liked the idea that things could be
tested. So when one day I heard some voice refer to
Shawn as "Brillo head," I was very, very curious to
reach under the sink at home and feel a Brillo pad. But
science also spawns a discontent. Surely Shawn's head
could not feel this wiry, brittle, and hard.
Memory has
an ironic timing all its own. Supposedly, we live in a
nation at a time when comparison is not in favor. But I
spent an exorbitantly long amount of time wishing to
touch Shawn’s hair, to see if it really felt like a
Brillo pad. What a scientist I was. This was back in
the days when an "exorbitantly long" amount of time may
have been five minutes.
Within the
same five minutes, within a week, within some
immeasurable, unquantifiable time, Shawn came to school
after a few days absence with a dent in his head. A
dent in his head. His perfectly bold forehead had an
actual dent where the skull had sunk below the surface
in what seemed to me to be the perfect shape for the
edge of a baseball bat.
I dared not
question him. I did not dare ask why he was absent, or
where he received that cavity in his skull. I don’t
know where that fear of talking with a friend came from,
but I knew that the evening news was no longer leading
off with stories of bussing.
Obviously,
and unintelligibly, something was very wrong. My
parent’s were going through a divorce. And why not! We
were the first ones on our block to have a color
television. We were the first one’s to have a
microwave. Why not be among the first to divorce?
What
anguish. I’ve since been put into positions where I
want to tell my own children, in more or less words: My
dear, you are at the age when nothing is supposed to be
going right. I always want to say this tenderly,
compassionately, fatherly. But it typically comes out
with the words, "No, no one told you life was going to
be fair. And it’s not."
You want
fair, Go to the carnival.
My folks
were taking turns pretending to be the carnival. They
were under so much pressure to be fair, or at least
guard their tongue when speaking. The result was that I
grew up knowing nothing of what might have benefited me
and an implicit commitment to make every mistake
possible, and pay the price. Or to learn quickly to keep
my own big mouth shut.
There was
pressure, so much pressure to be Jewish without a
working definition or clear example of what being Jewish
was supposed to mean. To be proud of my heritage, but
not arrogant. To be insulated and worldly at the same
time. And, yeah, to avoid the baseball bat to the side
of the head.
So in this
ironic time of memory, I feared being myself, feared
even knowing who or what I was, and fearing becoming
like "them.” There were always so many of “them” I had
to avoid being like, and such unclear definitions of who
"they" were. I wanted a voice, just one clear voice,
one scientific voice to tell me: Oh, my dear, you are at
the age when nothing is supposed to be going right. But
there were no voices to be found. None except the news
reports.
One hot,
very hot day, I decided I couldn’t take the pressure
anymore and determined to go to my father's house. But
I had no money for a bus, so I started walking. I had
only a vague clue how to get to his house. The only way
I knew to go was through Avondale. It used to be a
Jewish neighborhood. Grandpa had lived there, along with
the rest of the Jewish people of Cincinnati, until they
all moved away.
So through
the ghetto I walked. Blisters on the bottoms of my
feet, which were ignored only when I thought, "any
moment now." Any moment one of these people might take
the baseball bat to the side of my head. At any moment
one of these people might ask me why I was in their
neighborhood. So I walked with my eyes to the ground,
looking only occasionally from the corner of my eyes to
the cars hastily passing through the ghetto.
A circus
for the mind. No one paid the least bit of attention to
me. I told this story to a friend many years later,
emphasizing how the local news had talked about the
violent nature of the ghetto. I knew it had to be. The
evening news told me it was. And my friend countered
with a different story. She grew up in South Carolina,
an “outcast” Charismatic Christian in a Baptist
neighborhood. Her father sold very used cars to people
who would come to her father’s house to look at the
cars, or pay off debts.
She told me
her family invited one of the neighbors into the house,
and the man stepped in with a look of suspicion. He
kept his eyes on the floor. He was rigid and stiff. He
was terrified. Of what, she wanted to know. Why was he
so afraid?
The nice
thing about imagination is that you can envision reality
in any form you desire, so I am four years old,
fourteen, forty-six all at once.
I see large
liquid eyed men standing on a linoleum floor in South
Carolina, terrified. Why? Horrified. Why? Because
they are at the same time narrow-eyed youth in
Cincinnati who are prone to violence. Because they are
simply non-Jews who want to assault me because I “killed
Christ.” No. Because they have a poor self-image,
that’s all. They have a very poor self-image, I’m
afraid. Things would be much better if they would have
a better image of themselves.
How quite
smart I was, thinking this, then watching white father
knows white best on my white and black television
screen. And for real entertainment, I fly through the
channel of the years and watch the repartee between Jack
Benny and Rochester.
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G. David Schwartz is the former president of
Seedhouse, the online interfaith committee. Schwartz is the
author of
A Jewish Appraisal of Dialogue and coauthor,
with Jacqueline Winston, of Parables In Black and White.
Currently a volunteer at Drake Hospital in Cincinnati, Schwartz
continues to write. His new book, Midrash
and Working Out Of The Book is now in stores or can be
order posted 26 July 2006 |
