E. Doctorow - The Book of Daniel

We were on the third floor of the Shelter. The girls’ section was on the second floor. Sometimes at night I lay after Lights Out and in the dark quiet heard the screams of rage of my sister coming up through the walls.

Once a week we had Fire Drill. Once a week we had Bomb Drill. For Fire Drill you went out on the sidewalk. For Bomb Drill you stayed in.

The first floor was for the offices of the staff, the lunchroom and the kitchen. The fourth and top floor was completely taken up by the indoor gym. The name of the place was East Bronx Children’s Welfare Shelter, City of New York (Hon. William O’Dwyer, Mayor. Hon. Edward J. Flynn, Bronx Borough President). It is located off Tremont Avenue near Crotona Park in a cluster of municipal buildings.

A bus took the hardcores to school everyday. I don’t know why we were taken to one public school rather than another. There was one within walking distance to which we did not go. The big purple school we did go to was as far away, although in a different direction, as what I thought of as my real purple school, P.S. 70. It made little impression on me and I don’t remember the number of it today. Nobody cared whether you did the work or not. It was an old school with tired, grim teachers and a lot of black kids.

At the Shelter the big game was softball. The quality of athletics was very high. Kids played intensely and they played well. The best games were on Sunday. In the morning we’d all sit on our beds in our best clothes and wait for relatives or guardians or whatever to take us out for the day. By noon it was clear who was not going to be taken out. There would be a choose-up game in the yard or, if it was cold, in the gym, and usually it was unsupervised. The Sunday games were played fiercely. Everyone played like hell. I learned the game on Sundays. Someone always ripped up his best pants sliding on the concrete, or tore the sole off his shoe. The girls watched and taunted and it was a completely self-contained, totally populated society with nobody of any importance missing.

Most of the children wore clothes that didn’t fit. Socks bunched up around the ankles. Flowered dresses of older sisters. Pants from Goodwill that had to be folded at the waist and stuffed under the belt.

In the lunchroom they served lukewarm frankfurters from big pots of water covered with an amber slick. They served vegetable soup. They served half-pint containers of milk. They served creamed corn and mashed potatoes. I will never forget the smell of that lunchroom: it was a warm good smell, far better than the food. I suppose it was the smell of the vegetable soup which, since it eventually incorporated everything else, out-smelled everything else. I connect that smell with impoverishment. I think of vegetable soup as disenfranchisement. When Phyllis makes vegetable soup she keeps adding things in hopes of recapturing that smell for me. She’s never touched it. I think you need tile walls. You need high ceilings with lights hanging down on chains and cafeteria trays of maroon-colored plastic.

The other big smell in the Shelter was the smell of vomit. There was always a lot of vomiting. Kids were always getting sick and throwing up. The janitor came around with his cart, a big broom, a shovel, and a bucket of sawdust. He covered the vomit with sawdust, and when it was all soaked up, swept up the gloppy mess with his broom and shovel. Then he’d mop around with a solution of ammonia. The ammonia smell would drown out the vomit smell for five minutes or so. But for the rest of the day the area smelled faintly of vomit. In its fainter essence it was mysterious and frightening. The smell of the insides of bodies.

Maybe it was the smell of vomit which did something for the vegetable soup.

Some of the older boys were into puberty and had hair. There was a lot of homo wrestling. One kid liked to jerk off in the middle of the room where everyone could see him. Once there was an attempted sodomizing. There were always violent confrontations and some kid or other would be discovered with a knife he shouldn’t have had. Punishment was an instantaneous clout on the head. Mr. Levinson, the boys’ supervisor, didn’t stand for any crap. At night his assistant came on, an older man named Clancy, a flabby dried-out alcoholic with no teeth for whom this job was reclamation. Clancy went to sleep when we did.

Whenever I saw Susan it was on the way somewhere, on the run, usually, when the boys and girls brushed past each other’s schedules. She always clung to me. One day I realized it was her birthday and I told Mr. Levinson, who wrote a note to the girls’ supervisor. At supper they had a cupcake in her place with one candle on it, and the girls at her table sang Happy Birthday. But she had no present that day. Two days later a card came from jail. Both of them had signed it. In my mother’s handwriting it said Happy Birthday to our blessed little girl. Next birthday we’ll make up for this one. Love, Mommy and Daddy. Susan was five. Because she was small you would expect her to have been popular — like a pet for everyone. But she did not ingratiate herself. She was not cute. She was terrified. Her hair was black and dirty and her blue eyes had sunk into her cheeks. She looked like a D.P. She bit the girls’ supervisor’s hand one day and was slapped. Then she kicked the supervisor. She was a problem down there. Whenever we saw each other she clung to me.

One day Mr. Levinson told me to go downstairs to the Psychologist’s Office. The psychologist was Mr. Guglielmi. He was younger than Mr. Levinson. He worked in the Shelter part-time. He wore a jacket and a tie and Mr. Levinson wore only a shirt. He wore shiny brown shoes with thick soles. He talked to each kid once a month for ten or fifteen minutes.

“Come in, Dan, have a seat.”

The psychologist lit a cigarette and leaned back in a wooden swivel chair that squeaked. “Dan,” he said, “I need your help.”

Daniel stared at him.

“I don’t know what to do about your kid sister. We’re trying to make her feel at home. We’re trying to make friends with her. But she’s giving us a very hard time. Let me ask you: Did she throw tantrums when you still lived at home?”

Daniel shook his head.

“She doesn’t eat properly. She keeps the other kids awake. If someone says something to her or even looks at her the wrong way she starts in to scream. She won’t cooperate with anyone.”

Daniel smiled. He couldn’t help it.

Mr. Guglielmi said, “I’m asking you what you think we ought to do.”

“She thinks this is jail,” Daniel said.

The psychologist wrote something down. Then he leaned forward. “But that’s foolish,” he said softly. “There are no bars on the windows. No locks on the doors. She can go out to the play yard at playtime.”

“You won’t let her sleep in the bed with me,” Daniel said.

The psychologist wrote something down. Then he said, “And that makes her think she’s in jail?”

“In jail people are kept apart. Then they’re killed.” Daniel couldn’t help smiling.

“Oh now, hold on a minute. That’s not what happens in jail. People do something wrong, they have a trial. If they’re found guilty they go to jail for a certain time and then they’re released. They’re not killed. Very few people do something serious enough for that.”

“My mother and father are in jail and they haven’t had a trial.”

“Well, that’s just a technicality. They’re waiting for their trial.”

“Why can’t they wait home with us?”

“I don’t know, Dan, I’m not a lawyer. Maybe the government is afraid they would try to run away.”

“Well, they wouldn’t feel afraid if they weren’t going to kill them.”

The psychologist shook his head. He put out his cigarette. “Have you discussed this with Susan?”