Читать книгу Outnumbered - Mandi Eizenbaum - Страница 7

2

I should start my story at the beginning. Or, at least, my beginning. The real beginning that actually remained shrouded in silence almost until the very end. But the truth was always there, always taunting at me from the stars up above. And it was in the numbers. There might have been some miscalculations along the way, I may have spent decades in the dark, but in the end, it all added up. History, family, beginnings—everything always adds up in the end.

I was born Maxwell Simon Stein on April 14, 1941. That’s the fourteenth day of the fourth month of the century’s forty-first year. Repeating numbers. Between the superstitious beliefs in the numerology system of my Jewish ancestors and the influence of the unique Chinese Charada system in our culture, numbers always meant something. Many people seemed to believe that I was born with the antsy and mischievous spirit that was so like my father. But my father, whose death remained a mystery to me for decades, died a month after my mother gave birth, and by the time Mamá had gotten around to officially recording my existence at the city hall in Havana, we had lost all links to my father—or so I was led to believe. Mamá had registered my birth with only her maiden name, Chekovski. Margot Chekovski (everyone simply called her Mimi) had ended that chapter of her life and sealed it with her own final act of closure.

Mamá had been in labor with me for only forty minutes. It was, evidently, an excruciating forty minutes for her, though—a legend my grandfather never let me forget. It might have been a quick delivery, but there was no doubt from the very beginning that I would forever be a challenge.

People in our community who knew my real father, Gabriel Stein—and everybody knew him—claimed that I had inherited his gregarious and natural charm. They also claimed we both had “the same sense of virtue, a restless curiosity, and boundless energy,” whatever that meant. Some people suggested that I was born under a lucky star. They would say things like, “Gaby, may his memory be a blessing, must be looking down from heaven above and taking care of Mimi and Max!” I wanted so much to believe this chisme from our gossipy neighbors and friends. I remember those nights as a young child when Mamá would tuck me into bed and I would look up into the inky-black Caribbean sky searching for the brightest star. I willed my father to be up there in the heavens, looking down at me, watching over me. I never got to know him on earth, but I had developed a lasting relationship with him from a celestial distance. I might have been young and naïve, but in those bursts of electricity, I was convinced that every twinkle in the black night sky was my dear departed father winking down at me. And my boyish insecurities kept me praying that he would stay with me as I grew older.

Gaby Stein, the young man that was my father, had been adored and respected in our small Jewish community, La Colonia Hebrea, in Havana. He was the only kosher baker in the neighborhood, a trade handed down from his father and his grandfather in the old country, and he would deliver the Sabbath bread himself every Friday afternoon through the small and tightly linked Jewish Havana neighborhood, peddling around on his ratty tricycle with a wooden wagon rigged behind its back tires. Gaby, a humble and gregarious man, would sing songs and ring his rusty bell through the streets, greeting everyone by name with a bright smile and a quick wink. Charming and generous Gaby would often leave fresh bread and pastries at the houses of families who couldn’t afford to pay him. Most of the “Jewbans” who had settled in Havana had more than enough money and food, but there were weeks that were a bit rough for some, and the mantra of our wanderings had always lingered and sustained us all the same: If we don’t take care of our own, who will take care of us?

On the night of my thirteenth birthday, after I was called to the altar in the synagogue to read my bar mitzvah portion in the Torah in front of our entire community, my mother gave me a gift—my father’s gold necklace with a small Jewish star hanging from it.

“It’s a very special gift, Max. Your father wore it every day since he was a little boy, and I know he wanted you to have it when you turned thirteen.” I remember Mamá’s words whistling through puffs of exasperated grunts. She didn’t speak much, especially about my father, so I hung on every word she ever spoke about him. I wondered if she was proud of my performance that night in the synagogue. And if my father had listened proudly from above.

By that time already, Mamá didn’t trust me much. I really didn’t give her much reason to trust me though, and I couldn’t blame my mother for her misgivings about me. I don’t think she ever trusted anyone, really. “You better not lose this,” she warned me, as if she expected me to do just that.

But wear that necklace I did; I never took it off, and I developed a restless habit of twisting that gold star incessantly between my skinny fingers. My fidgeting was just one more additional thing that always drove Mamá crazy.

When I was barely fourteen years old, I daringly snuck into my mother’s bedroom to rummage through her closets and drawers. I snooped often. I never knew exactly what I was looking for—clues, links, anything that would explain all the mysteries of my family. Be careful what you look for, you may not like what you find.

Mamá was so guarded and silent, so I searched for her also the only way I knew how. But the only thing I ever discovered among her random collection of junk was a lingering, stale smell of old relics that could only have held any meaning to my mother—a frayed scarf patterned with pink and yellow flowers, some old pieces of gold jewelry that she never wore in public, and a pipe still stained with dried-up tobacco residue. But one day I found something that really caught my eye. Shoved way back in the corner of a drawer in her nightstand, hidden under a bunch of old papers and empty medicine bottles, I found a black-and-white photograph with crinkled edges. I knew instantly it was a photo of my father.

I was told dozens of times that he had been a gentle and sensitive soul, and I could easily capture that kindness seeping from the noble man in the photo. He wore a straw trilby hat poised coolly on his head and his apron was clearly crusted with baking flour. But he stood tall and dignified with his tricycle in front of his shop with the words “Stein’s Bakery” stenciled in bold blue letters across the glass storefront. His eyes sparkled like two pools of cool water. It was clear to see in those eyes the warmth and compassion and optimism that was my father. I flipped the photo over, and on the back, my father had written in his slanted European handwriting, “Para Mimi, mi unica corazón de melón.” For Mimi, my one and only melon-heart.

A poet or a comedian? I filled with a longing to know him for myself. I bet we would have been great pals. The photo’s dedication was dated March 14, 1941, a month before my birthday and two months before my father’s death. Repeating numbers one and four again. As a young and rambunctious kid, I was already too curious for my own good. I pinched the photo and hid it in my room under my pillow. One day, I will be rich and respected like my father. Everyone will love me and be proud of me too.

Mamá never questioned the missing photograph. It wasn’t until the eve of my fifteenth birthday, though, with the gold star hanging around my neck, that the twinkling stars of the night skies started whispering to me. I was deftly aware that Gabriel Stein was always going to be with me.

My father’s untimely death made neighbors and friends gush with pity for me and Mamá. What was a young mother with a baby to do on her own? They meant well, I’m sure. Gossip, after all, was as natural to La Colonia as breathing air. It was everyone’s way of letting you know that they cared. It was the glue that bound us together. But I grew to resent their two-cent pity, just as Mamá and Abuelo did. What did they know? Anyway, Mamá and I were not on our own—we had each other.

The community blather always got under my skin and gnawed at my young brain. No one ever talked openly about my father; but I swore I would show them all what I, Max Chekovski Stein, was really made of. The inspiration of my father watching me from above and occasionally whispering words of wisdom to me…sometimes I could feel him rattling around in my veins like a ghost trapped in a dark attic.