E. Doctorow - The Book of Daniel

But of the people who came, not one came without leaving a few dollars, or a cake, or a pound of cookies from the bakery, or a box of candy from Krum’s near Fordham Road. Susan said to me: “Is my daddy dead?” I felt the same way. It was like when Grandma died and people came. It was like we were sitting shivah for my father.

I asked my mother what was going to happen. She told me there would be a trial to decide if my father was guilty. “Your dad,” she called him. “The trial will determine if your dad is guilty.”

“Guilty of what?”

“Guilty of being a spy, of giving secrets. But really guilty of wanting a new world of socialism without want.”

I knew he was guilty of that, and I began to cry. “What will happen to him? What will happen to my father? What will they do to him? Will they kill him? Will he be dead?”

“Now, Daniel. Come here. Come here. I always forget how young you are. Isn’t that funny? Let me hug you. Let me hug my Danny. He’s such a big brave boy, I keep forgetting he’s not old at all. He takes such good care of his baby sister, I forget that he’s a baby too.”

“I’m not a baby.”

“He’s my baby.”

My lips were touching her cheek. “And then they’ll get you,” I sobbed.

“No, no, honey.”

“Dr. Mindish will kill you, too.”

“Don’t be afraid of Mindish. Feel sorry for him. Don’t be afraid of the Mindishes of this world. Pity them.” She pulled away from me. Her mood was changing. “Nobody can hurt them worse than they hurt themselves. Nobody can be hurt by them as badly as they hurt themselves. The treachery of that man will haunt him for as long as he lives. His treachery will haunt his children. Mindish will live forever in hell for the terrible thing he has done. He has exiled himself from the community of man.”

I couldn’t control the sobs that racked me.

“Stop crying, Daniel. Don’t cry. Nobody can hurt us. Hold your head up. Hold your shoulders back. Don’t be afraid. Nobody will take your daddy away from you. No one can take us away from our babies.”

Rochelle attempted to preserve the remnants of normal routine. Every morning I was packed off to school. I hated to go. I felt that if I wasn’t home, the FBI would kidnap her. I was terrified of their coming back. I ran home for lunch and I ran home at three o’clock.

I never told her, but in school things were hardly normal. One day the principal came into our room and spoke to the teacher up at the board so that no one could hear him. After he left, I was asked by my teacher to go to another room for a few minutes. It was an empty room and I sat there the rest of the day. The next day I spent in the school library — the whole morning, and the whole afternoon. The day after that, when I was admitted back into my class, I was placed in the first seat of the row next to the window. I wondered about the change. I understood that this new position left me in proximity to the least number of other kids. It didn’t bother me that much. In fact it was convenient because every few minutes I had to jump up to hoist myself on the radiators for a look out the window to my house — to see if anything was different. The teacher, with a fake smile, treated me with too much courtesy. As if she was afraid I would break. I was allowed to look out as many times as I wanted to. Her inability to hold to our previous relationship made me feel lonely. In trying to act as if nothing was different she phonied up the whole room. The kids all felt it. They felt it when she overpraised me, as if I was in kindergarten, for the answer I gave to some shitty little question. They wanted to talk about my father, but she wouldn’t let them.

“Is Daniel’s father a spy?”

“We won’t talk about that now, dear.”

I compared to my mother, uncharacteristically thin and pale, with the skin of her face so white it had become almost colorless, as something to see through to her flesh or bone — this opaque teacher with red lipstick and red fingernails, and shiny white teeth, all glazed porcelain, and smelling of flower water, who called me “dear.”

I was told by kids in my class that in prison they pull your fingernails out with a pliers, and they chain you to the wall, and it’s always dark, and the rats eat you, and that you have only bread and water to eat, and the bread has worms. I was told that the Army had already shot my father because he was a Russian. I was told that General MacArthur flew all the way from Japan to cut off my father’s prick with a scissors.

I asked Rochelle what prison was like. She told me that during the War she had been a Volunteer for the Blood Donor program, and one day they took blood from men in prison in downtown Manhattan. Maybe it was the very same prison. She said it was very clean. In each cell was a cot, a chair, and a window. And it was true that the window had bars, and the cell had bars, and that the walls were tile, and the floors were cement, and it was hardly cozy; but it was clean. And the prisoners were allowed to read. And they went to a dining room to eat three times a day. And there was a small yard where they could get fresh air. And they had blankets to keep them warm at night.

“Really,” my mother smiled at me. “It’s not so bad.”

One morning she told me she had to go downtown to testify before the Grand Jury. By the time I was ready to leave for school, Grandma’s old friend, Mrs. Bittelman, had arrived to sit with Susan. For Mrs. Bittelman the community of misery had no politics. My mother had been desperate after being served the summons because she did not know who would take care of Susan while she was gone. She had no money to pay anyone. My father’s two sisters, Frieda and Ruth, both worked, and besides that neither of them had come to see us or called since Paul had been put in jail. I suppose they felt they were the ones who ought to be consoled. Then my mother remembered Grandma’s friend, around the corner, and she went to knock on Mrs. Bittelman’s door and the kind woman said she would stay with Susan.

“I should be back before you’re out of school, Danny. But in case not, have some milk and cookies when you get home. And take Susan to the park. For lunch I left you a peanut butter sandwich and an apple in the icebox.”

I didn’t want her to go.

“I have to go, Daniel.”

“They’re going to put you in jail, too.”

“No, they’re not. They want to ask me questions, that’s all. That’s what a Grand Jury is. You are asked questions and they listen to your answers. The government lawyers want to ask me about Daddy, and I’m going to tell them what a terrible thing they’re doing and make them understand he’s innocent.”

She was taking the subway and was meeting Ascher at the 161st Street stop, and then they would go downtown together. She was wearing her black coat that was almost down to her ankles in the fashion of that day. She had let the hem down to make it longer. She was wearing her blue dress with the white high-necked collar. She wore her tiny wrist watch that my father gave her before they were married. She was wearing on the back of her head a little black hat she called a pillbox.

She was last seen in her black cloth coat with the hem let down and a black pillbox hat. My mother was last seen with her tiny watch on her wrist, a fine thin wrist with a prominent wrist-bone and lovely thin blue veins. She left behind a clean house, and in the icebox a peanut butter sandwich and an apple for lunch. In the afternoon, I had my milk and cookies. And she never came home.

My mother left me in her long, black coat, and although she never wore hats, she wore a hat that day, also black, and almost invisible in her thick curly black hair. At lunchtime I ate the peanut butter sandwich and the apple from the icebox. Mrs. Bittelman smiled at me and told me I was a shayneh boychik. At three o’clock I came home and had a glass of milk and two sugar cookies. My mother had still not come home. I waited for her. I played with Susan. Mrs. Bittelman kept going to the front door and looking outside. I waited. It got dark. Mrs. Bittelman began to moan softly to herself and shake her head as if some chronic pain had returned with the nightfall. She was a stout, old woman with swollen ankles and she liked to stay off her feet. It was suppertime, and after looking in our kitchen, she decided to go home to her house and cook Susan and me a meal in her own kitchen. She wanted us to go with her. I wouldn’t. I told her to go and Susan and I would wait in our own house. Mrs. Bittelman went home. Susan and I waited for our mother. The house was cold. We sat in the kitchen. The rest of the house was dark. Every few minutes I went into the dark hall and opened the front door to see if she was coming. It was beginning to snow, and the snow was sticking. I turned on the light in the hall. I sat in the kitchen and played with Susan. She wanted to know where her mommy was. She was cranky. She fell asleep with her head on the kitchen table. I waited. I sat straight in my chair. I kept my head up. I tried to hear if Williams was home downstairs in the cellar. I thought I heard his radio playing. I couldn’t hear him. I was afraid to leave the kitchen to find out if Williams was really home. I would have to go outside to do that, or down the dark stairs to the basement.