PARADISE ON THE WAY OUT

The first garden in my life that I ever noticed was the one that I was going to lose. It was the garden at Laurel Avenue in Sea Gate. It was the garden of that home which my family moved into when I was not quite 3 years old. We had the upstairs apartment of that house. Our landlords the D’s lived downstairs. We had to climb a flight of brick stairs that were outside in order to get to our front door. This stairway led to a little vestibule that had a big glass door that was never used at its’ side, and was dangerous because it ended in a drop with no stairs, no one ever, never, ever opened that door, at all times. It was always kept locked. There was a dark and somehow comforting interior stairwell of carpeted stairs, which led up into our apartment. When I got older it was usually my job to vacuum the carpeting of those stairs. I loved that job.

The D’s were a family of four. Mrs. D always looked like an old lady to me. She was very kind and loving to me, but I could often hear her yelling and screaming at her kids or her husband. Mr. D always had a smile on his face. He was bald headed and like his wife was always very kind to me. The D’s were much older then my parents. They had two children who were way older than me, and lived there in the house with them. There was Ray, who was the oldest daughter, and there was Daniel, who was my first dearly beloved baby sitter.

Daniel was an Eagle Scout. He was very smart in school, and he had terrible warts on his knees. He slept in a big double bed in a very dark and small bedroom. His father and he slept in that bed together. His mother and Ray slept in two single beds that were in the big bedroom. Mostly the D’s fought with Ray. They wanted her to get married and move out. She had a good job and wanted to keep working and didn’t like any of the men that her parents seemed to be always fixing her up with. Like her mother and father, she was very kind to me, but it was Daniel who became my friend.

My bedroom faced the garden that belonged to the D’s. There was a big and gnarly peach tree that grew from the garden and overhung the roof that was right outside my bedroom window. The peaches from that tree, which were the very first peaches that I ever remember eating, were delicious, and the blossoms of the tree were maybe the first flowers that I ever noticed. When the tree was in full bloom those flowers almost reached my bedroom window.

The garden behind the house was tended by Mrs. D. I can remember her in a sun bonnet, with a basket at her side as she pruned and weeded the flowers in the garden. There was a hillock with giant poppies, and an entire side wall of roses of all colors. There were Iris, and hollyhocks. I can still remember feeling lost in that garden because the flowers were so tall and I was so little. I can remember being there with Mrs. D, when she gave me my first lesson about bees. There were many giant bumble bees that gathered honey from those flowers. I remember that they were so big that I could see the pollen on their hind legs, and hear their giant buzzzz, and easily see their huge eyes, and their curved stingers.

There was a fish pond made of red brick, with moss in its cracks. There were big orange gold fish in the pond and one giant black and speckled one. The fish pond was just next to a grape arbor that had grapes growing all over the top and down the sides of it. Those grapes were plump, small, and black and had giant seeds and tasted different than the grapes that were green and came from Palumbos, our vegetable store. They had the smell and taste of Passover wine, I didn’t like them too much, even though the big people told me they were delicious.

The sides of the house had other kinds of plants growing around it. There were big honeysuckle bushes and lilies of the valley. My mother taught me about the nectar inside the honeysuckle flowers and I would take the green end off the white or golden flowers and carefully slip the long white string thing out of that end and with the very tip of my tongue capture the single drop of sweet honey suckles juice. I wanted to be able to be quiet enough to hear the chimes of the teeny little bell shaped flowers of the lilies of the valley, which were my mother’s favorite flower, and I could never be quiet enough. I would imagine however, that the bees could hear that sound, and I thought they were very lucky.

Besides the bees in the garden there were other interesting bugs. There were giant Japanese beetles. They were black and had green flashes when the sun struck them right. There were Lady Bugs, and we would say, “Lady Bug, Lady Bug, fly away home…” and blow them off our fingers…I always hoped that they would get home in time to save their children. Then there were the ‘Darning Needles’, they had wings that sparkled rainbow colors in the sunshine and I thought they were fairies, and wanted to capture them and see their little fairy faces, but that never happened. We kids thought that they would sting us, so we never tried very hard to capture one. We did catch butterflies though. There were so many different kinds. Mrs. D made me a butterfly net, so that I could catch them without damaging their wings, but that never happened. The net never worked because it never stayed open. I always captured them by trapping them against the flowers, or the leaves of the plants. Their white powder always came off on my hands and my catch would wobble off, no longer able to fly straight. I was a butterfly murderer.

Sometimes on not so warm days, not like the ones that were called ‘beach days’, we wouldn’t go to the beach but instead we would have a picnic lunch under the arch of the grape arbor. But mostly, the D’s would use that arbor to visit with their family who were something called Sephardic Jews, gossiping under the big bunches of grapes, when they came to visit in the summer time. I knew that I was a little Jewish girl, and we were a ‘Jewish’ family but there was no one in my family like these people. These were very important people who were always treated with a lot of respect by the whole D family. There were several men with beards and funny hats and long black robes. They always spoke in a different language then any words I ever heard except spoken by them. Both Mr. and Mrs. D could speak that language. Daniel and Ray could not.

But most days we went to the beach. Saturday and Sundays and holidays were special because besides the mommies and kids at the beach, there were the daddy’s and best of all for me, the daddies’ friends. My mother and father belonged to a big peoples club that was called the Norton’s Point Club, and most of my big men friends were members of that club. These men were something called ‘bactchalers’ and that meant that they weren’t married and didn’t have kids of their own, I was their special and favorite kid to play with. On the weekends and holidays when they didn’t have to go to work they were there on the beach and they would always play with me. My most favorite big man friend was Joe Schwartz…I called him, Joe ‘Forts’. He loved for me to call him that, and would laugh every time I would run up to him, calling with delight, “Joe Forts, Joe Forts, play with me!”…and he always did!

He was a very big and hairy man. He had hair all over his front and his back. He would take me swimming in the ocean with him. I would hold on to his hairy shoulders and he would swim way far out with me, far, far away from the shore…I would be squealing and he would be laughing…Then we would come out of the deep ocean and onto the beach again and he would towel me off with a big dry towel and then he would build something made of tons of sand for me to play with. Sometimes it was just a giant castle that we would decorate with sand drips so that it had turrets, and big spires…sometimes it would have packed sand and tunnels and holes in it that we could roll a ball down on, but the best ones were the cars and boats he would build for me that I could sit in and ‘drive’…I wanted to marry, Joe Forts!

Then one day everything changed. I felt my whole life begin to get different. It started with the big people beginning to listen to the radio much more. There was always music to listen to on the radio. Music to dance to, and on some days music that was the opera to listen to, and kids shows like, Uncle Don, and Jack Armstrong, but suddenly all the big people began to listen to was the ‘news’ on the radio. They listened and clustered together and talked, to each other like things were bad. Then I found out that most of my big men friends might go to something called a war. Everybody seemed to grow way older and they started to talk about some place called Poland, it was still in the summer, almost at the end of the summer, but I remember that life began to become different during that summer in the year of 1939.