Читать книгу The Sharp End of Life - Dierdre Wolownick - Страница 9

POLISH WAS THE SECRET language of grown-ups in my extended family as I grew up in Jackson Heights, Queens, in the 1950s. They could talk about us kids even when we were right in front of them, confident we wouldn’t understand. The mumblings in the kitchen, the overheard pillow talk in bed, the whisperings in the front seat of the car—all the important, not-for-kid conversations were in Polish.

Which, of course, just made me eavesdrop even more intently. If I really listened closely to the grown-ups around me, whether I was playing or drawing or reading, I could pick out verbs, action words. Descriptions. I could tell if they were talking about a girl or a boy, if it was present or past, good or bad. By four or five, I could usually pick out the gist of what they were saying about us.

I never let on to anyone that I understood them. That part was easy, since none of the adults talked to me, or to any of us kids. They talked about us. Conversation was something that happened between adults; kids just played, preferably out of sight or quietly. Those were the rules.

But the rules in our house were different than at other kids’ houses. My mother needed me to be her legs, and sometimes her arms. The great polio epidemic of the twentieth century had claimed her as a baby. She couldn’t run, couldn’t walk on an uneven surface, couldn’t carry anything heavy that might throw her off balance. She’d beaten all the odds just by having my brother and me—that was her conquest. When she called, we came running, even as very small children, knowing she couldn’t run after us. Carrying us or lifting us was a task left to my father, at least when he wasn’t away at work.

I was the girl, so chores were my domain (boys did only minimal chores; boys were king). As soon as I was old enough to understand her directions—four years old? five?—I did all the dusting, the vacuuming, reaching things in the cupboard, running up or down the cellar stairs for whatever she needed. I rarely spent time at anyone else’s house. Instead I read, or played the piano, or painted where I could hear her call, and listened.

Listening became what I did best, whether for a melody, a chord, my mother’s call, or a new verb I’d never heard. So I became more and more privy to the secret language of adults as I grew, and no one knew. My brother never got to the point of understanding Polish. But then, I couldn’t memorize baseball scores like he did. Everyone had their particular skill. I knew that even then.

When I was five, two burly men carried the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen up our front stoop and into our living room. My mother said it was a Baldwin piano. The rich brown wood gleamed golden in the sun as they labored to get it up the twelve cement and slate steps. I’d never seen anything quite so large, or beautiful. As they placed it in the front corner of our living room, I touched some of the keys. They looked the same as the keys on my mother’s little accordion, but the sound that came from them was much more impressive. That day began the love affair that would save my life so many times over the next few decades.

Soon after we got the piano, my mother started showing me how to play the same old Polish melodies she played on her accordion, teaching me to listen and figure out how it should go. I used the same skills I used as a language learner: listen, discern some of the sounds, make sense of them, use them.

From my mother, I learned to play by ear, and from the nuns at school, I learned to read notes—a magic, secret code—and follow the instructions written by people long dead in places far from New York. After a few years, though, the nuns had no more to teach me: I was on my own. It would turn out that I was a far more demanding teacher than they had been.

IN HIGH SCHOOL, AT least at the beginning, I’d bring a new friend home now and then. The kids in my classes came from all over New York City, even as far away as Staten Island. What an adventure, taking a ferryboat to school every day! When I started high school, at thirteen, it was challenging enough just to take the subway from Queens into Manhattan, to the High School of Art & Design on Fifty-Seventh Street.

Even walking to and from school was an education. I saw people doing jobs I’d never heard of behind plate glass windows, or holding meetings as they walked or bought breakfast out on the sidewalk. I watched how they built skyscrapers through holes in the wooden walls that separated Manhattan’s sidewalks from construction zones. I crossed paths with actors and singers I recognized. It was a different world from Jackson Heights, and I relished every difference and every opportunity to learn about the larger world.

My mother loved meeting the friends I brought home. To someone housebound like her, they must have seemed fascinating—from different parts of the city or the world, different cultures, backgrounds, languages. She’d ask question after question about them and their life, and get them to talk about the places she would never see. What kid wouldn’t love that? And I would listen. And serve more cookies. And wait to have my friends to myself.

Sometimes she wanted to sketch them, do a charcoal or pastel portrait. What kid could resist being the star of a portrait? It was flattering, and different, and none of them ever said no.

And I waited.

My mother’s parties were like that, too. Everyone loved to party at our house. My mother knew how to draw other people out, to make sure they had fun. So my friends loved my mother, were flattered by her interest in them, and never seemed to notice that they had very little time to spend with me when they came to my house.

Having friends never became part of my life.