That's all I could think the first time I spotted Roland Singh in the library stacks. A smile split open his silky brown face; loose, rumpled hair swept into a pompadour. In his freshly glossed wingtips, he came sauntering down the aisle, hips swinging in his triple pleat pants, holding out a cone of greasy newspaper. I was sure he was a delivery boy. That, or a jazz musician. Definitely not somebody I should be talking to.
"Hey book-lady," he whispered. "You try." He pointed to his package.
"It's against the rules to be eating here," I told him.
"And is against my rules to talk so rude to someone bearing a gift."
Giggling, I pushed my book to the edge of the carrel desk, then checked my watch. I had about five more minutes before my boss would look up from his desk and notice how long I'd been gone. Bored of typing reference cards, a half hour ago I'd slipped a novel under a stack of library books, faked an urgent search and went wandering to my hideaway, where I went almost every day. Usually there was no one else in the archaeology section, where now and then a sleepy-looking graduate student floating among the carrels, slid a volume from the shelves and vanished once again.
"Come on," the man now urged. Edging closer, he pointed to what looked like a turnover nestled in the paper and broke it open. Steam, pungent with spices, floated to my face. "See here. This is the pattie. It's just ground beef. And the outside here is coco bread. Nothing going to kill you." Seeing me hesitate, he added, "Go on. Give it a try."
My jaw tightened. "Why should I?"
"Because I brought it for you."
"Why me?"
"I saw you before. You need a little fattening up. Is going to make you read better."
"You noticed me?"
"You come up here, hide out like me." Again he held the package near.
"I don't get it."
"Look, darlin', where I come from we don't let a girl lie quiet when she so skinny like you. And I been tryin' for days. I push my cart, but you too stuck up, you keep your face in that book of yours. I even come by two times the other day and you still no look."
It astonished me that any man, even this man, droplets of grease sliding off his fingertips, would try to nab my attention. I didn't think of myself as much to notice. Sure, I managed a bit of slapdash, homemade style with my wide gypsy skirt. But my breasts were too little and I wasn't very good at small talk. I broke off a corner of the pastry and chewed. The state was strange, but not unpleasant. I could feel him staring at me, as if he liked watching me eat.
"Still hot?"
I nodded. The taste of oil lay on my tongue.
"Just got this from Brooklyn on my way over," he explained.
"That's where I'm from."
"Yeah, but I bet you don't know my Brooklyn."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"I see you chattin' it up with your girlfriends. Last thing you know about is a fellow like me and the places I go."
"Now look who's stuck up!"
"Not me. I'm not in this country maybe four, five years, I don't know much about the place. But I know a girl with a stubborn mouth like yours."
Embarrassed, I wiped my fingers and tried to give the pattie back to him but he was ready for me, thrusting out a greasy hand. "Now you don't know me yet. My name is Roland Singh. But you call me Bump. And if you be nice to me next time, I bring you another pattie and I tell you how I get such a name."
This made me hesitate--what an odd, crazy man he was: clavicle bone showing like a ledge through his shirt; his rush of words to fill the narrow space between us. "Nice to meet you, Bump," I said. "My name's Sarah Weissberg. Now can I get back to my reading?"
"That's the idea, sweetheart."
Before I could say anything more, he had sauntered to the elevator.
--
It didn't take very long to figure out that Roland Singh was following me. When I ate my lunch in the cafeteria with the other librarians, I spotted him stumbling towards a table, the rounds of his spectacles flashing like bright white clock faces. He was so adorable, so childlike--the dimpled curve of his cheek, unruly curls flopping at the back of his collar. Each time he spotted me, his thin body seemed to stiffen with purpose, then he waved, giving me an impish grin, as if there was now a secret between us. I waved back shyly.
"Who's that?" my friend Nettie asked one afternoon. "I've never seen him here before." Nettie grew up in the same neighborhood as me. Right after high school she'd enrolled in librarian school and gotten engaged to Ernie Cohen, which now gave her permission to be a know-it-all about everything, especially my life. "Come on, Sarah, who's the stranger."
"A man."
"No kidding."
"He works stacking books," Elaine put in. Elaine also came from our East New York neighborhood. In high school, Elaine was a cheery, popular type I would have steered clear of. Now we ate lunch together every day and I pretended to like her. Today, the soft, loose bundles of her breasts were sheathed in yellow cashmere, showing off her good coloring.
"Is he Negro?" she went on. "His hair is kind of different."
A flush rippled through me. "No, he's Indian." I wasn't sure how I know this but it seemed important to impress on Elaine my newfound authority. "And you might try not being so obvious. He does have eyes."
"I think he's interesting looking. Sort of contained and off to himself."
"Stop it!"
"Somebody told me he's a graduate student," she went on.
Nettie shook her head. "You must be mistaken. His English couldn't be that good."
"I think she should talk to him," Elaine giggled. "Sarah always has mysterious things happen to her."
Nettie flicked a bread crumb. "Mysterious! I think he's creepy. Did you notice his nail? They're dirty."
"If I didn't know any better, Nettie, I'd call you prejudiced."
"And you think you've found your Heathcliff, Sarah."
Though the three of us laughed, they had managed to make me both ashamed and excited for my stranger. Across the room he sat with a fat textbook flung open before him. I pitied the grin he could not wipe off his face. But by the time I folded up my lunch bag and rose from the table, my stranger had disappeared.
For days I waited for him to come up to me, or walk into the cafeteria with those loose, ambling strides, thrusting his hand from his jacket sleeve, offering his friendly wave. But he was nowhere to be seen.
On a damp dreary day a few weeks later, I slipped another book under the library pile and went wandering up to the archaeology section. As I was turning a corner, I spotted him. First his tumble of rough black curls buried in his arms. Then a column of textbooks perched on the desk corner, about to tip over.
I tugged on his shirt sleeve. "Bump," I whispered. When he didn't answer, I tugged again. "Bump, you can tell me now. About your name."
His shoulders stirred. He jumped up, shouting, "What's the hell!" His textbooks fell with a clatter to the floor. He grabbed his glasses, peering at me. "Oh it's you." He tamped down the waves of his hair. "Why you have to scare me like that?"
I did not even recognize him. He had lost weight; his eyes were rimmed with ashy circles. "Are you sick?"
"I was working hard. I had an exam."
"Then you are a student."
Roland's eyes narrowed. "What you think? I'm planning on spending my whole life stacking books?"
"Why do you always put things in my mouth before I'm even finished with what I want to say?"
We paused, suddenly wary of one another. He seemed different, not the adorable stranger I'd fantasized about. An angry mask slid over his features reminding me that he was a foreigner, coming from God knows where. Nervous, I took a step back. "Forget it, then. I guess I made a mistake."
His mouth opened, as if to say something, only it was as if his ovice had suddenly evaporated. Our glances see-sawed, first to me with my books pressed against a neatly buttoned blouse, then he with his untied shoelaces, swiping at a lock of hair. I could tell he was trying to figure out what to do with me. I wished right then and there he would lean over and kiss me, so I might taste his soft, plum-colored lips.
Instead he blurted out: "Food!"
"What about it?"
Roland was hopping back and forth, from foot to foot, like a child getting impatient on line. "I said it before. You too skinny, girl. Don't you get enough to eat?"
"I eat enough."
"You peck and fuss, I can tell."
I smiled. "So what's Bump?"
Now it was his turn to smile. "That's my nickname. My mother name me that 'cause I always knocking into furniture, running after my older brothers and sisters."
I liked the name and could easily see him as a clumsy, eager brother tripping over his feet, scrabbling after others with the same wavy black hair. It made me want to take him into my arms.
"Will you?" he crooked a finger around my wrist.
"Will I what?"
"Go to dinner with me."
I drew up my shoulders. It was one thing to nab his attention, but I didn't want him getting too arrogant on me. "If you promise--"
"Promise what?"
"Not to call me skinny." I grimaced. "I hate that word."
"Don't you worry, sweetheart. I'll call you a lot more than that."
--
I never had much luck with homes. They seem to sift through my fingers like a slippery fabric. For the first six years of my life I was shuttled between foster homes all over East New York. I slept in baskets and beds, next to radiators, once in a closet. I didn't learn what a real family was. I didn't know places intimately; not the turn of a doorknob or the shape of my father's coat on a rack. I learned to shrug off places; to love people dually since I knew that the hands that smoothed my hair each morning also got a check for keeping me. My real mother, an unmarried telephone operator, had left a note pinned to my blanket when she handed me over to the adoption agency: Just remember: my daughter is Jewish.
I can still remember the day I first went to the Weissbergs, an old couple from Russia who'd told my social worker, Ruby Markowitz, that they wanted to adopt me. I was living with the Steins--Mrs. Stein wore dresses made of tablecloth fabric and Jacob Stein used to pinch my knobby knees and tell me I would one day die of scarlet fever in a Ward's Island hospital. That morning I combed my hair into two pigtails tied with pale ribbon, put on my only good dress, velvet with lace, and stepped into the full luxury of a beaver-tipped coat given to me by the Stein's older girl, Rachel. With Rachel's head of yellow-silk hair, the coat seemed glamorous, Shirley Temple-ish. On me, the sleeves hung too long and the color brought out my sallow face.
Sitting on the streetcar, fists bunched in my pockets, I wondered if my new parents would change their minds when they saw how scrawny I was. As we got off and trudged up the block, there was the old guy Samuel, crouched on his stoop, thin hair blowing up on end. He'd put on a suit and bow tie--which touched me--to wait on the dirty concrete, the air raw with wind. My heart quickened. I even broke into a skip.
But as I hurtled toward him, cold air streaming at my cheeks, I noticed Samuel's face turn pale with fright. He yanked his shoulders back, as if bracing for the full impact of me. It was wrong. I was too boisterous, too noisy. My knees stopped pumping. My head lowered, as if someone had pressed a hand against my neck.
Inside the apartment, the old man's wife Frieda stood by the dining room table, hair done in pink-yellow curls that lay flat against her cheeks. I noticed her hands were smooth, fingers long, with two glamorous rings.
Shyly I followed her into the living room and climbed onto an overstuffed chair. On each end was a table. The right table held a shallow glass dish filled with nuts. While the adults were busy talking, I began sliding the dish back and forth. Then I switched it to the other table and started to take the nuts out and arrange them in a row. Frieda pushed the dish away from my fingers. "Darling, are you hungry?"
I shook my head.
"Something to drink, then."
I shrugged.
A few minutes later, the old woman had hurried back from the kitchen with a glass of warmed milk on a saucer. I gave the milk a tentative sip. I hated warm milk. It always made me queasy, frothing sourly in my stomach. And this room seemed too dark. I was sure the walnut doors of the armoir in the corner were going to fling open and swallow me.
Ruby Markowitz, though, had settled on the sofa across the room, and was gushing about my grades in school. "She's a little genius!" she exclaimed. "Ninety-seven in history! Ninety-five in spelling!"
The old man and lady glanced at me, like embarrassed winners of a lottery. I could hardly open my mouth to speak. I tried to remember what Mrs. Stein had told me before I left. "Watch that big mouth of yours, Sarah," she had advised. "Don't pick your cuticles and remember to agree with everything they say." But the milk had made a sticky web across my throat, making it hard to murmur even a few syllables of gratitude. Ruby Markowitz was getting on my nerves.
Then the old lady noticed my glass. "Why didn't you tell me you don't like it?"
"Because you didn't ask," I said, before I could help myself.
A furrow appeared between her eyebrows. "Such a waste!"
At that moment, I felt all my apologies, my good manners, drop like pebbles into my stomach. Milk went sloshing out of the glass, scalding my wrists. "It's not my fault!" I cried and jumped up from the sofa.
"Ah!" the old lady cried, her hands flying to her mouth. She jumped up from her seat to open the doors to the armoire. I began to shriek some more. "Don't!" I wailed, watching her arms disappear into the frightening dark mouth while a white stain seeped into the carpet. Embarrassed, Samuel looked away while Mrs. Markowitz kept her eyes on her hat.
The rest of the afternoon didn't go much better. During lunch, I didn't want to eat the borscht and creamed herring, either. None of those foods ever went down right with me. But I noticed the old lady's lower lip pull over her teeth when she saw my untouched place. Terrified, I picked up my fork and forced myself to eat.
--
At night I would lie in my bed, fists tight against my thighs, listening very hard, as if my whole life depended on believing in those sounds. If I could shape them in my mind--a radiator shriek, the shuffle of the old lady's slippers as she passed my door--then I could be normal. The Weissbergs would be my home. I would not be alone.
But there was always something to keep me apart. Frieda and Samuel seemed nice enough, but they left a chill that stiffened into a cold knot at the bottom of my spine. The first day, I unpacked my suitcase and hug my few dresses in the cupboard in the tiny bedroom that was now mine. Frieda let me tack an Ann of Green Gables movie poster over my bed. But otherwise she was a tyrant about the apartment: don't move the dining chairs, the lamps, and even my teacup had a special hook.
Samuel wasn't much help, either. Kneeling on the floor, he clasped me by the shoulders and said, "You will stay with us. We are not easy people, but you seem a good girl."
"What does that mean?" I asked.
"You wait," he smiled. "You are with us now."
Frieda and Samuel were odd people, coiled snail-like into their ways. Samuel owned a grocery on Pennsylvania Avenue, a narrow strip of a room, a terrifying double-handled cheese knife hanging slant-wise behind his head at the counter. Back in Russia, he'd been a shy, prized son sent to a yeshiva, not meant to coarsen his hands in a shop. Then one summer night five Cossacks came crashing through his village; the next morning he woke to find his own father lying face down dead in a neighbor's hay loft. He fled with his mother through a maze of relatives and friends, pocketing his dark, angry star of difference, arriving in East New York where he married the first woman his mother found for him.
And it took a while, but that ice cube of my heart did start to thaw, guilt leaking through my body like any other kid. Samuel became papa; Frieda ma. In the school yard, when the kids asked me who made my sweater with the pearl stitch yoke, I let those strange syllables slide off my tongue: my parents. My parents. I grew to love small things about my new parents. I loved Frieda's nails. They were slender and immaculate-pink. And there were the lullaby words I'd never before heard--mama shaynala, sleep my sweetest--sugar drops dissolving in my tired mind when I lay under the quilt each night, freshly bathed, Frieda smoothing my damp hair flat. She taught me how to sew and knit; evenings, we sat by the window, chewing knots of thread, French-stitching, hem-stitching, needles clicking, gathered into a strange blue peace that lifted us far from the stormy tantrums of the day. I loved her then for her soft white arms, her yellow hair, her competence.
But then came Fridays. Our apartment pulled tight with new rules: no friends, no singing, no sitting in the front room, no radio; God forbid we might die of pleasure. Frieda flew about the kitchen like a startled canary, beautiful hands trembling over the countertops. Nothing was ever right--the challa, her stewed cabbage, the roasted chicken.
I only made matters worse by doing everything wrong. I mixed up dishes, used the wrong candlesticks, dropped a chicken bone near a smear of Farmer's cheese. I chafed under my mother's constant, worrying gaze. Friday afternoon Samuel would arrive home, shrug off his shopkeeper's jacket, put on his prayer shawl, and disappear into the living room. I couldn't understand why he did this, since it didn't seem to make him very happy, his prayers rising through the glass-pane door in soft, depressing waves. I wasn't allowed even to put a tow in the living room.
To revenge them, the next morning in the temple balcony, I let the Hebrew sounds slide right through me. There was the spine of the book on my palm, the still, airless heat, but none of it ever seemed real to me. My mind wandered and dallied on other, better things. My movie magazines. I was in love with Clark Gable. I loved his great black brush of a moustache, his long earlobes. Squeezed on the bench between my mother and the wide-hipped Rose Saltzman, I used to practice my Vivien Leigh swoon, imagining Rhett Butler would part the curtain to the women's balcony and sweep me into his arms, take me far away from this sweaty room.
Sometimes, when no one was looking, I scraped up my dimes and nickels and ran to the corner candy store run by Joe Mahoney. Then I would order a vanilla egg cream and a BLT and suck them down in ten minutes flat. Afterwards I'd push through the glass doors and stand on the pavement, sweat pouring down my legs, as I waited for a delicious crack of sky, the lightening bolt to strike me down dead.
Copyright by Marina Tamar Budhos
Global City Press, 1995