shuffling to an early shift somewhere, the lucky ones with jobs.
“What are you doing this afternoon, Buck?” John Kelly asked.
“Nothing, I guess.”
“Not nothing. You’re going to do something with me,” he said with a devilish look in his eyes. “I’ll come find you.”
He walked off, whistling, his hands stuffed in the pockets of his faded dungarees. The big brother. The man of the house. My new best friend.
* * *
WHEN I GOT to Gertie’s, the smell of food drew me to the kitchen. I found Flo at the big stove frying bacon and eggs in a cast-iron skillet. She looked up, brushed a long, errant strand of blond hair from her face, and said, “Gertie gave me a fine account of last night. That was quite something.”
I didn’t want to tell her how hard it had been listening hour after hour to John Kelly’s mother screaming as she struggled to deliver the baby.
“You helped Shlomo with his paper route?”
“All done.”
“Then you must be hungry.”
“I’m okay.” The truth was, I could have eaten an elephant, but I didn’t want to take Flo’s breakfast.
“Nonsense. I’ll just pop a little more bacon on and crack another egg. Would you like toast? Do you drink coffee?”
We ate together, just the two of us, at the table. It felt intimate and special.
“Where’s Gertie?” I asked.
“She took some blintzes to the Goldsteins.”
“Blintzes?”
“It’s kind of a Jewish pancake, stuffed and rolled.”
Some of the men my father delivered hooch to were Jewish, but I didn’t know much about what that meant.
“Is everybody on the Flats Jewish?”
“Not quite everybody.”
“So you and Gertie are Jewish?”
“Not me. Confirmed Catholic. You ask Gertie if she’s Jewish, she would probably say no.”
“She stopped being Jewish?”
“I don’t think you just stop being anything. She doesn’t go to synagogue anymore.”
“Synagogue?”
“It’s like church for Jewish people.”
“Do you still go to church?”
“Sometimes.”
“You haven’t given up your religion?”
“You’re certainly full of questions. Are you religious yourself, Buck? Is that where all these questions are coming from?”
“Religious?”
I let the word sit on my thinking for a bit. For me at that moment, religion was the hypocrisy of the Brickmans’ Sunday services. They’d painted a picture of God as a shepherd watching over his flock. But as Albert had bitterly reminded me again and again, their God was a shepherd who ate his sheep. Even the loving God that Sister Eve believed in so profoundly had deserted me time and again. I didn’t believe in one god, I decided. I believed in many, all at war with one another, and lately it was the Tornado God who seemed to have the edge.
“No,” I finally said. “I’m not religious.”
Gertie walked in then, returning from delivering the blintzes. “I just saw Shlomo,” she said. “He seemed pretty beat. You look like you could use a good sleep, too. When you’re finished eating, get some shut-eye. Don’t worry about helping with the breakfast crowd. We’ll do just fine without you.”
“You could use some sleep, too,” Flo said.
Gertie waved off the suggestion. “Later.”
I carried my plate and fork to the sink, rinsed them, and when I turned back, watched with surprise as Flo took Gertie into her arms, held her tenderly for a moment, then kissed her long and lovingly.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
WE BREATHE LOVE in and we breathe love out. It’s the essence of our existence, the very air of our souls. As I lay on the bunk in the old shed behind Gertie’s, I thought about the two women and pondered the nature of the affection I’d witnessed. Flo was a beautiful flower, Gertie a tough mother badger, and I tried to make sense of the love they shared. I hadn’t known that women could love women in the way I’d fallen in love with Maybeth Schofield. With every turn of the river since I’d left Lincoln School, the world had become broader, its mysteries more complex, its possibilities infinite.
Gertie had roused my brother and Mose and Emmy to help with breakfast, but I’d been allowed to stay abed. The smell of the shed reminded me of the old tack room where Jack, the pig scarer, had imprisoned us. It was twice as large as the tack room and held two bunks, where Elmer and Jugs slept when they weren’t locked up in the county hoosegow. Mose and Albert had shared one of the bunks. Emmy had taken the other, but she’d given it up to me. I could hear the sounds from the Flats, the call of a ragman—“R-a-a-gs! R-a-a-gs! Newspapers! Bones!”—the creak