Blog

Here’s a story I wrote several years ago. Nobody else wanted to publish it, so I am publishing here myself.

After Peter had swept the floor, put away the clean pans and utensils, and sanitized the worktable, he washed his hands and threw his apron and dingy white baker’s coat into the hamper. He changed from clogs into basketball sneakers with high tops and pulled a camouflage bomber jacket over his tee-shirt. He pushed open the heavy linen curtains separating the kitchen from the small storefront of the family-owned bakery and came behind the counter where his mother was tying up a cardboard box of pastries with red and white string. He nodded to the waiting customer, bent down a foot and a half from his six feet and kissed his mother, whose floury skin, pale hair, and transparent blue eyes he had inherited.  He lifted the Formica panel at the end of the counter, walked through to the customer side and exited the bakery, a little bell attached to the door announcing his departure.  It was Friday at 3:30 pm; he rose early to do the baking, so he had already put in a ten-hour day.

A song from the Top 40 radio station he listened to all day buzzing in his head, Peter ambled down Manhattan Avenue, his hands thrust into the pockets of his jacket. He felt invigorated by fresh air and the springiness of rubber soles after confinement in the hot kitchen and standing all day in the rigid foot bed of his clogs.  It was his custom to have a couple of beers after work before going home to play Call of Duty until his mother shouted down the cellar stairs and announced it was time for dinner.  He was twenty-six years old, an only child who was born when his parents, now past retirement age, had long given up on having children.  And although they told him daily that they were anxious for him to find a wife and give them grandchildren, there was something fixed and permanent about their three-person family constellation, and it was hard to imagine it would ever change.

When he was alive, Peter’s grandfather loved to tell the story of how his father had come to America in 1917 hungry for bread as one of the “za chlebem” and about how hard he had worked as a laborer to keep his wife, who took in laundry, and their five children who were born in Brooklyn, clothed and fed.  It was a typical American story. His Dziadek had grown up watching his parents’ struggle and eventually he had opened the bakery where he made egg bread and angel wing cookies, and poppy seed and cheesecakes, and taught his son how to do the same. It hadn’t made them rich, but it was a steady living.  And ever since he could remember, Peter’s parents had told him the bakery would be his someday; it was something he never questioned, especially since he’d never been much interested in school. 

 Peter was not like his older cousins who had moved to or grown up in the suburbs and had gone to college and entered various white-collar professions. He couldn’t see himself living some place different or doing any other kind of work besides baking. He had moved from his room upstairs to the basement of his parents’ two-family lime green aluminum sided house when he was nineteen and had taken over the baking responsibilities from his father.  He got up early for work and spent his evenings alone—watching TV, and occasionally, porn on the Internet, but mostly playing videogames. Those times when his mother suggested he attend church with them or go to some event at the Polish and Slavic Center so he could finally meet a nice girl, Peter usually found a way to get out of it, not because he didn’t like girls; he did, but because he never had any success with them in person and he could not imagine the space one might occupy in his life.

 Every day on his walk from the bakery to the tavern he noticed new signs that the neighborhood, where he had grown up riding his bike and playing tag and kickball with other kids like him on the narrow streets, was disappearing. Trendy eateries and galleries were springing up alongside the established cleaners, butcher shops, hardware stores and family restaurants he remembered from his youth.  A chain coffeehouse had opened several doors down from the bakery and at dinner his father, who didn’t actually work in the bakery anymore, constantly complained about how it was ruining business. 

 One thing that hadn’t changed was Rudy’s Place with its fake stone façade, scalloped valance curtains and dimly glowing neon Zyewiec Beer sign hung inside a pair of oblong windows that looked like they had been stolen from a Greyhound bus. A rotting asphalt awning sloped over the windows like cottage thatch, giving the outside of the bar a homey Hansel and Gretel look that contrasted sharply with the two stories of red painted brick that rose above it. Peter felt reassured by this landmark and as he left the sharp sunlight of the early spring day and entered the cave-like darkness of the tavern, the sense of relaxation he craved after a long week of work instantly came over him.

 He nodded to a couple of the regulars and glanced up at the TV, poised awkwardly near the low ceiling in the corner of the room, and tuned to a 24hour sports channel, before hanging his jacket on the coat rack and noticing what looked like an animal skin suspended from one of the hooks.  The bar was mostly empty at this time of day, except for the old guys from the neighborhood who passed their time at a table near the front playing cards, drinking Polish beer, listening to old country tunes on the jukebox and reading the Greenpoint Gazette.  But today Peter noticed a strange girl hunched over a drink sitting at the far end of the bar. She had thick dark hair that fell in ringlets across her face and past her shoulders.

As Peter moved closer, he saw that she wore a short black skirt, a white silky long-sleeved blouse and black thigh-high boots, the heels hooked into the rungs of the bar stool. The boots made him wonder if she were some kind of prostitute, unleashing images in his head and stirrings in his crotch and bringing back memories of when he was a senior in high school and he and his friend Carl Nowak would sneak out at night and cruise around Bushwick in his father’s Chevy looking for strung-out streetwalkers who would agree to give them a blow job for five dollars.  Peter was a creature of habit, so even though it felt awkward, he slid onto the stool next to the girl in the boots because that is where he always sat.  Rudy came over and greeted him with his usual half smile and plunked down his pint.  Peter noticed the girl was drinking a dirty martini, one of those drinks the “hip” young people who were taking over Greenpoint liked to order, and that she was sucking on an olive in between sips.  He didn’t know what came over him but after a few swallows he decided to talk to her.

     “First time at Rudy’s?”

     “Huh?”

     “I’ve never seen you here before.  You live in the neighborhood?”

     “Me? I live on India Street.” She had an accent of some kind, but he couldn’t place it.

    “How long?”

     “How long what?”

    “How long you been living here?”

     “Five months.”

     “Where’d you move from?”

     “Manhattan.” She turned from her drink and gave him a quick once over.  “What about you?”

     “Here.”

     “The bar?”

     “No, Kent St.” 

     “I’ve never been here before,” she said.  “I was always afraid to come into a place that’s so, you know, local, but I was walking around the neighborhood because I just had to walk, and I saw this place and decided I really needed a drink.” With that she downed the rest of the martini, swallowed hard, and sat still for a moment until her face contorted, her shoulders began to shake, and she burst into tears.  She leaned onto the bar, burying her face in her hands, and Rudy caught Peter’s eye, lifted his eyebrows and gave a quick surreptitious nod towards her.  Peter looked down into his glass, deciding to ignore Rudy’s silent comment. He was intrigued by the girl who seemed to be around his age, and as he lowered his head to take another sip of beer, and in the mirror behind the counter, he observed her reflection between the liquor bottles.  Eventually, she lifted her head and begin dabbing at her eyes with a wad of crumpled tissues, and when he tipped his glass and felt the familiar bitter brew bathe his tongue, it tasted like his own tears might if he ever shed them.

 The girl stuffed the wad of tissues back into her purse and caught Peter staring at her in the mirror. She sniffled a couple of times and then she turned to him.  Her eyes though red-rimmed were large and round, and oddly, the same color as the aged bourbon in the bottle rack.

     “I’m sorry. I need to pull myself together. I don’t usually do things like this. I’m just having a really bad day. My prick of a boss fired me by e-mail. My roommate is away on a business trip and my boyfriend…” Her lips began to quiver.  They were a deep pink, pillowy and plump with sharply defined tan edges that looked as though a meticulous artist had drawn them with care.

     “He—we were together for five years—broke up with me because he says he’s not ready for commitment.”  Peter watched the beautiful lips pout then turn downward, and he grew afraid that she might start crying again.  But instead, she waved Rudy over, “Bartender, I’d like another one, please.” Her diction was polite and formal. This time Peter caught Rudy’s eye when he shot him a bemused glance because it was strange. A girl like that in a bar like that crying and talking like that at 4’oclock on a Friday afternoon?

     “What are you doing here?” she suddenly asked Peter.

     “I come here after work every day.”

     “Where do you work?”

     “In a bakery.”

     “Which one?”

     “Gura’s.”

     “The one across from the subway station? The one with the awesome donuts?” Peter nodded and smiled a little at the compliment.  “I go to that bakery all the time. Before work.” Her lower lip trembled again. “But I’ve never seen you there. There’s usually an older lady.”

      “I work in the back.”

      “What’s your name?”

      “Peter.”

      “Last name?”

      “Gura.”

      “Oh, so you’re the owner.” She sounded pleased to have made the connection.

      “You could say that.” And Peter found himself warming up to her even more because of her interest in the bakery.

     “So, what’s your name?”

      “Anna Sexton.”

     “Anna is my mother’s name! The lady who waits on the customers.”

     “Really? What a coincidence, but I guess it’s a pretty common name.” She turned on the stool and gave him a full-blown smile that transformed her face from clouds to sunshine. He reeled back a little when he saw just how pretty she was— amber eyes with velvety black irises, skin the color of buttercream with a sprinkling of cinnamon—freckles— across her prominent nose, a  gap between her front teeth which he instantly imagined probing with the tip of his tongue. There was something different about her looks, something exotic, but he couldn’t quite figure out what it was.  Rudy placed another drink in front of her.  She said, “Thank you,” took a bill out of the leather purse she held on her lap and set the money down on the bar.  She did not pick up the glass right away. Now that they had started, she seemed eager to talk.

     “The donuts, what are they called?”

     “They’re called “paczkis.“

     “Potcheese?”

     “No, potch-keys”

     “Oh,” she laughed a little. “I’m usually good at languages, but maybe Polish is the exception.  Do you speak it?” 

     “I know some words and I can understand a lot of it. It’s mostly the old people and the ones who just came here that actually speak it all the time. My parents and grandparents were born here, so we never spoke it at home except for words for relatives and food and stuff.”

   “Like potch-keys?”

   “Yeah,” he grinned.

   “When I first moved here, I couldn’t get over it.  I thought I was back in Poland.

    “You’ve been to Poland?”

     “Yes, have you?”

Peter sipped his beer and glanced across the bar. The traditional Polish music that had been playing softly in the background suddenly blared in his ears. He hadn’t really been anywhere.  It had never seemed like a problem. Now he felt ashamed of the fact.

     “No, no. I’ve never actually been out of the country.”

     “Really?” Anna seemed surprised.  She turned towards him again as if to get a better look.

     “You’ve traveled a lot?”

      “Yeah, I’ve been all over. My dad is a diplomat. I actually went to Poland with my mum, though.” She noticed her drink and took a sip and then as if fortified by the alcohol, she proceeded to tell him about her mother’s relatives who had died in Auschwitz, where many non-Jewish Poles had died as well, she added. So, she was Jewish, Peter thought.  She told him they toured Warsaw because her relatives had been in the ghetto. She said the whole city was rebuilt and was beautiful.  She gushed about the Chopin tour that she and her mother had taken and loved because they both played the piano.  She said they had even visited Czestochowa and viewed the Black Madonna, whom, she explained, the Polish people revered as their Queen since she had protected them time and again since the 15^th Century from attack and occupation.  Peter’s mother had a reproduction of the Black Madonna in the living room, and it was amazing to think that this Jewish girl at Rudy’s knew more about it than he did.  Rudy came by and took away his empty glass and set down another full one. Peter looked at Rudy and after listening to Anna’s story,  it was if he was seeing the familiar bartender with his dome of a head, sparse gray hair and slightly florid complexion for the first time. 

     “I’m guessing people in the neighborhood were pretty upset back when the Polish president was assassinated.

     “Assassinated?  Wasn’t it a plane crash?”

     “That’s what they said, but my dad told me the diplomatic community believed the Russians planted a bomb that caused the plane to crash.  It’s crazy.  They killed him, his wife and all his cabinet members. They were flying to Russia because it was the 70th anniversary of the massacre of thousands of Poles by Soviet forces during WWII.  The plane went down in a Russian forest.  So, what do you think?”   How do you know all this?  He was thinking.

     “I hate planes. They’re always crashing,” he said, feeling instantly embarrassed to have revealed his fear. 

     “Not so much.”

     “It seems so unnatural.”

“What does?”

“Flying.”

     “You have to trust the aerodynamics.”

      “The what?” His ignorance made blood creep up his neck and into his face. He hoped she didn’t notice he was blushing.

      “You know, the science behind flight.  I was practically born on a plane. My mother’s family lives in England and my father is Jamaican.”  Jamaican? So that was why she looked like that. Now he got it. She was black!  His eyes traveled from her hair to her eyes to her nose to her lips. He felt a mixture of excitement and dread as his realization sunk in, but she seemed completely unaware that her casual comment had rearranged the planets in his solar system and that he was doing something he had never to his knowledge done before. It had never occurred to him to even look twice, much less have a conversation with a black girl. There had always been an unspoken prohibition against it. 

He imagined Anna going into the bakery and wondered how his mother reacted when she bought donuts. Did she stiffen the way she sometimes did when the bell on the door jingled and a colored person stepped into the small shop exclaiming about the good smells inside?  He had always noticed the way his mother placed their change on the counter instead of in their palms, as if what made them black was contagious. But maybe she thought Anna was white, like he did. He wondered what his mother would say if he told her that he met a black girl who knew the story of how Russian troops retreated from Warsaw in 1920 when they saw an image of the Black Madonna in the clouds.

     “So why do you live here?” He asked.

     “I went to Columbia for college and grad school, and I met my boyfriend, my ex-boyfriend,” she sniffed, but angrily, not tearfully this time, “so I decided to stay.” She took a long draught of her drink. When she raised her glass, her slim small-boned hand made him curious about the rest of her body, and he noticed that her bright orange nail polish was flecked with gold and made her fingertips glint like tiny suns. She drained then lowered her glass. The olive that had been at the bottom was in her mouth now, and he imagined fishing it out.

     “Oh my god, I drank so much,” she said suddenly. “It’s feel like trains are crashing inside my head. Don’t get the wrong idea about me. I never do this.”

     “This is a bar,” he answered.  She rocked forward a little bit, gripped the curved edge of the bar and then she laughed, a rippling chortle that seemed to bubble up from what he imagined was a rich chocolate spring inside her.   

     “You’re right. You’re right,” she said still chuckling.

     “Are you going to be okay getting home? Can I take you home?” he asked, lightly touching her knee before he was aware that he had done it.

     “You mean you want to come home with me?” She turned to him, leaned forward and looked directly into his face squinting her big round eyes into slits and screwing up her brow as if he had spoken in Polish and she was trying hard to comprehend.  His throat tightened with a fear that she would get angry or might even slap him like some feisty heroine in those old movies his grandmother had liked to watch on Saturday afternoons when she babysat him in her apartment upstairs.  But as he held his breath, Anna exhaled heavily, which made him gasp, and then her breath, suffused with vodka, became his breath, and for the briefest of moments, the two of them were one.  She looked into his eyes, and it was as if the murky interior of Rudy’s place became an open expanse of beach brilliantly illuminated by a tropical sun.  Everything was still.  He felt the sun’s rays warming him from the inside out. 

Then she jerked away like a current had passed through her, grabbed her purse and began frantically rummaging around in it.  At last she pulled out a slim cellphone, stabbed at it once, brought it to her ear and said, “Hullo” in a very loud voice. The other men in the bar all turned around to look. The next thing Peter knew she had slid off the bar stool and was wobbling swiftly towards the entrance in her high-heeled boots.

 She hurled her thin body against the door and for a few seconds actual daylight invaded the tavern as she slipped out.  When it slammed shut the old men and Rudy burst out laughing. Peter saw her standing outside with her back against one of the big oblong windows, her head bent down, the phone pressed against her ear.  He shrugged for effect because he knew the men were watching.  But inside he felt the cave go dark again. Anna began to walk away, and Peter watched her curly head move across the screen of the window.  Rudy said something in Polish to the other men.  Then he came by to pick up the money she’d left on the bar.

     “That one got lost, eh?”

“What do you mean?” Peter said. But he knew what Rudy meant. Rudy didn’t bother answering. He turned his back and walked to the cash register.  Peter, surprised at how the remark had stung him, retaliated with a glance that was a poison dart of hate.  Suddenly the door opened again.  A slice of daylight at her back, Anna rushed in and grabbed her coat off the hook by the door and then she darted back out, the vintage lamb’s wool jacket trailing like a slaughtered animal behind her. She got as far as the second window before she turned, peered inside and with the phone still in her hand waved to Peter.

 Peter was still for a few seconds, collecting himself. He pictured an active Call of Duty screen in his head and felt the controller in his hands and he took out a few of the enemy before he reached into his pocket, pulled out his wallet and left money for his drinks on the bar.  He went to the restroom. It stunk of piss and smoke, and the floor in front of the urinal was muddy and wet. When he came out Rudy was serving a couple of construction workers and the old men had turned back to their card game.  Earlier when he had entered Rudy’s, Peter felt like he was returning home, but now as he retrieved his jacket and pulled the door open to leave, he felt like he was fleeing an alien country.

He was always startled by the fact that it was still daytime when he left the bar in the spring and summer, but today when he stepped outside the sunlight blinded him the way it might have if his pupils had been chemically dilated. He walked towards Kent Street in a daze imagining every woman he approached was Anna. He saw a white poodle in the distance and mistook it for her coat. When he reached his own corner, he did not turn but kept walking until he found himself on India Street.

He entered the block scanning both sides of it.  Cars were parked tightly. A construction project had opened up a wound in the blacktop in the middle of the block, with dirt and debris piled alongside. A blond woman pushed a child in a stroller.  An elderly man walked painstakingly along the buckling pavement with a cane. Peter had no idea where Anna lived. He looked up at windows that were either shaded or curtained or empty. He walked until the street ended and the Pulaski Bridge offered a crossing into the next borough.

Once he was on the bridge, the Manhattan Skyline materialized like Oz in the distance and when he reached the crest, he stood poised above the streets and parks and buildings and roads of Brooklyn on the north side and Queens on the south. He stopped and peered into the inky Newtown creek where he saw reflections of white clouds disintegrating. He looked up at those clouds, searching for a sign, seeking the face of a black Madonna. What he saw instead was the slim silver fuselage of a jet airplane with the word American written on it.