“I think it’s a spirit, Dellie.”
Mr. Chalker flashed that wide smile of his, meaning, “Not really, but we’ll talk. There’s something right about it.” His teeth were bright against the dark of his skin.
I was happy just being in the alley with him. I didn’t see the bad on the way.
“A spirit?” I smiled back. I already had the tooth fairy in my life and, thanks to Mr. Chalker, I knew who that was. “Are we talking about fairies leaving change for me?”
“You know what I think about that, Dellie. I’ve been around some corners in my life and never seen a one of them.”
People meant well, but Mr. Chalker was against fibs. “They’re blindfolds,” he said. But, even without a blindfold, I didn’t see the trouble blowing in.
Two weeks back, my tooth fell out, and Dad said the tooth fairy was coming, Bubbie, my grandma, nodded. She was part of it. But Mr. Chalker clued me in. I caught Dad putting a dime under my pillow when he thought I was asleep and spied Bubbie peeking in from the door.
“Mr. Chalker warned me about this,” I said.
Dad plunked the dime in my palm.
“My favorite daughter,” he laughed, like there was more than one of me, which told me I did right and made me feel better than if there really was more than one daughter to love.
Bubbie laughed too, and blew me a kiss.
I was born on Dad’s birthday. “My best present ever,” he told Mr. Chalker, and my lungs pushed out at me.
“Your friend Mr. Chalker is an autodidact,” he said as we walked upstairs to our apartment.
Except the banister, everything in the hallway is made of marble. It was from when rich people lived there, my mother said. “You know automatically,” she said.
"Call me mother," she said.
I knew the words automatically, autograph and automobile. But autodidact?
“Do you know what that means, Dellie?”
No way, but I did after he explained it, and he was right. Mr. Chalker read books. He taught himself all kinds of things.
Dad knew Latin, so big words and fancy endings came natural to him He said, “Hippopotami,” not “,,,uses.” “Autodidact” was just part of it.
When his job at the Post Office was done, he came home for supper, took the train back into the city and taught math and physics in night school. He and Mr. Chalker talked about that, and Dad always came away shaking his head. “Nor rhyme nor reason,” he said, same as with Mom’s screaming.
About Mom that meant, ”I don’t get it. What’s wrong with her?” He never knew what she was yelling about. “There’s nothing to holler at,” he’d say. “We’re doing what we can.” Then she’d scream more.
About Mr. Chalker, “Nor rhyme nor reason” meant “How did he learn all that?”
Mr. Chalker was very smart, just like Dad and Ms. Monroe, my teacher. Dad thought he should be something else than a super, which I don’t get. He’s the best super in the world. But that wasn’t enough for Dad.
When he wasn’t in the hospital, he was the best dad. He took me to Prospect Park, which has a zoo. Its panther is as black and shiny as anthracite. There’s a botanical garden, too, and sometimes he took me to the movies or the Brooklyn Museum, which is full of Egyptian things from four thousand years ago. They have a statue of King Pepy, sitting on his mom’s lap, and they are holding hands, which tells you how things should be. That’s how it was with Dad and me.
If he was home when my nose started bleeding, which happened all the time, he picked me up, ran down all the stairs and around two corners to the doctor’s office. But being a great dad wasn’t enough for him either.
He wanted to be better, but Mom’s screeching got to him. Last week, she was yelling at Bubbie, her mom, who is the best baker. Her family, the Skrumnis, owned a bakery in Bialystok where they invented the kuchen. That’s why people call them Bialys. But Mom was mad about something as usual. She pushed Bubbie down onto the couch, and Dad stepped between them. He closed his fist, which stopped the pushing. But he couldn’t stop the screeching.
Mom just tired out after a while and walked away.
“I’m sorry, Dellie,” he said, like it was his fault, and checked himself into the hospital again.
The teachers from night school and the people who worked with him at the Post Office sent nice cards, but they didn’t help.
If not for Mr. Chalker, Ms. Monroe and Bubbie, I’d be done.
On Sunday, she took me and the cards to visit Dad at the hospital. I waited outside, and he stepped out into the caged in balcony on the second floor and waved them at me. They were very nice cards, with a rainbow from the teachers and roses from the Post Office, but, to be honest, I didn’t like it. The nurses wouldn’t let me in, and those caged in balconies reminded me of the zoo.
Dad’s no panther, and without him, I was stuck with Mom. She hung a belt in the kitchen closet and like it was all my fault somehow reached for it every time her life turned sour, which was all the time.
But my biggest trouble came from that spirit business.
Mr. Chalker pursed his soft lips and said, “There’s something we might as well call spirit in the world, Dellie, and this, leaving pennies outside Miss Flint’s apartment for you, is part of it. You’ve got special spirit yourself, little gal.”
“I do? Where?”
He cupped my cheeks in his giant palms, that the insides are the color of my own skin, and kissed the air at me. “Right here, sweetheart. You got nothing to worry about.”
“I’m worried about my dad, Mr. Chalker. He’s all caged in.”
Mr. Chalker drew back. “It’s complicated,” he said. “People see caged in, Dellie, but I think he’s keeping the world caged out.”
Caged out? Of what? It didn’t make sense to me, but Mr. Chalker’s eyes got shiny, and I knew he was thinking deep and meant well. His white teeth gleamed behind his turned down smile like light hitting snow. Even in the basement they gleamed, and like I said we were outside now.
The coal truck had come, and Mr. Chalker was keeping us out of the basement until it was all delivered and the dust settled down.
“He’s got a fine spirit, your dad. Just like you, Dellie. But sometimes that means troubles in this troubled world.” He picked me up, tossed me in the air and set me down again. “That fine spirit is why you’re so light, sweet heart.”
Light nothing. I gained five pounds this year. But Mr. Chalker was more than smart. He was very strong. He put his work gloves on and pulled broken sinks off the wall. He lifted toilets off the floor and set new ones in. Between times, he got lights and plugs working again. Not just for lamps or washing machines; for driers, too, which, ‘Don’t touch me,” he said. If you grab a hot drier line or a person holding it, it can burn you or knock you back ten feet. On garbage days, Mr. Chalker carried loaded trash cans all the way down the alley to the curb.
But his touch was like a pillow. For all his strong, he was better than ice cream on a hot summer day.
We stood in the alleyway and watched the delivery man roll his barrels up, swing the chute open and pour coal down. Of course some pieces fell off on the way. It was a tough job. But he was good at it, and good things are nice to watch.
When the delivery was done Mr. Chalker signed off on it and tossed all but one chunk of fallen coal down the chute. He brought that piece back to me.
“Anthracite, Dellie.” He rolled it around for me. “It’s the best coal there is. Give it a feel.”
It was smooth, hard and shiny. Made you think of glass, but you couldn’t see past the black.
“Anthracite burns clean,” he said.
It felt clean, wasn’t a bit dusty, but when we went downstairs finally black powder coated the floor.
“There’s anthracite, and then there’s bituminous. Bituminous is softer.”
He sprinkled water on the dust and pushed his broom slowly, so as not to raise any.
“It cheapens on down to peat. Can you say bituminous, Dellie?”
“Bituminous,” I said smiling, “anthracite, peat” - because I knew what would follow. Not exactly, but in the end.
Mr. Chalker reached into his pocket. “Peat burns dirty. Some places, the poor use it to cook and keep warm. You’ve got to feel bad for them. It’s not good for the air they breathe, but they can’t afford better.” He drew his fist out of his pocket, opened it up and--wow!—five cozy nickels in his palm. “Peat, lignite, bituminous and anthracite. Now guess where lignite goes.”
“Between peat and bituminous.”
“And which is best?”
“Anthracite. It’s hard and burns clean.”
Mr. Chalker turned my palm up. “No wonder you got a spirit leaving pennies for you. You’re a bright gal, Dellie. Here’s a nickel for peat, a nickel for lignite, another for bituminous and two nickels for anthracite. Do you know why?”
“Because anthracite’s worth twice what they are.”
He tapped the tip of my nose. “And you skate twice better than your friends. But you skin your knees. You don’t look for cracks careful enough. Step over them, Dellie.”
Mr. Chalker knew everything. I stayed later than usual because the coal truck set us back. But there was still time. All it meant, I’d be waiting less for my friend Hemdin. I climbed back up to the courtyard, walked to Miss Flint’s side and just like always looked for pennies outside her apartment. It was a tiny one bedroom, just next to the archway that led from the sidewalk to our court.
She was as bony as my legs, Miss Flint, with steel rim glasses on her skinny nose. Her lips were thin, and she dressed all in black. Right away, her curtain moved. If I looked up, the curtain would drop back quick, so with the corner of an eye I caught her watching and didn’t let on.
I found one penny at her door, another by the rose bush, a third by the steppingstone near her garden patch, and I could feel her smile. I’d find three pennies one day, four another, sometimes up to ten. Put them together with Mr. Chalker’s nickels, Dad’s dime and the change I found on sidewalks by keeping my eyes down, and I could buy ice cream from the Good Humor man almost every day, a Sunday cup once in a while, which is a layer of peanuts and chocolate over vanilla ice cream. That was the best, and chocolate over vanilla ice cream pops were next.
After Miss Flint, I walked to Hemdin’s apartment, waiting by the door most days while she finished her bacon and eggs. Hemdin’s mom’s red hair curled down over her forehead in long bangs. She was big out front. When she leaned forward her cross swung at you, and when she straightened up it swung back, catching between her breasts half the time. She blew her hair out of her eyes with her bottom lip out, freed the cross and asked if I wanted bacon or a piece of toast. I always said, “No, thank you,” but it was too late for that this day. Hemdin was done. We got to school just on time and slipped into our desk chairs a minute before Ms. Munroe walked in.
She handed back our arithmetic, with a hundred at the top of my page, tying me with Hemdin, who was especially good in English, and Neilie Markman, who was good at everything. On the wardrobe side of the room, from where I could see blackbirds landing and taking off from the electric lines outside, I won the spelling bee. Hemdin came in second and Neilie third.
How come those birds are okay on hot wires? I thought between turns at spelling. I’ll ask Mr. Chalker first thing.
At recess, I beat the fastest boys as usual, and kids cheered.
Neilie, who came in second, said, “It’s her skinny legs. They’re easier to move.”
Maybe so, but that didn’t change who won.
“She wins on roller skates, too,” Hemdin said.
Ms. Munroe’s eyes went wide. “Is that true, Dellie?”
“When I don’t fall it is.”
That’s the kind of day it was. We got home, jumped rope—which, I can’t do Double Dutch, but Hemdin can—and skated until the Good Humor man drove up, ringing his bell. I bought me an ice cream pop, said so long to my friends and walked under the archway to Miss Flint, who was looking out her window for me. When I showed she clapped her hands, disappeared and opened the door. She curtsied, and I curtsied back.
“Good afternoon, Miss Dellie.”
“Afternoon, Miss Flint.”
It was the usual hello, but there was something nervous about her. She kept blinking and fussing with her dress, which, there was nothing to fuss about. It fell straight down.
“Is that a popsicle you’re eating?”
“An ice cream pop. Bubbie doesn’t like colored ice.”
“Your grandma is smart. She gave me six pieces of strudel yesterday. Delicious. You must be very proud.”
“I am, Miss Flint. She does things with just one eye in her head.”
“I know. Her wretched husband before he ran away.” She pursed her lips over her perfect teeth. Usually she didn’t talk bad about things, but that was where she was today. I didn’t care for it, but, hey.
“Your mom is very lucky to have Grandma helping her.”
“She is. Bubbie cooks, bakes and goes shopping with me. We walked home in the rain last week and got sopping wet. Laughed all the way.”
Miss Flint nodded. “I see what goes on. Does she do dishes, too?”
“I wipe, and help her hang out clothes when she does the wash. When I don’t eat, she sits me up on the kitchen counter and feeds me. Like a little bird, she says.”
“Yes, I see her hanging the wash.” Miss Flint pursed her lips, set our dainty flower decorated teacups out, poured, put the flowery teapot in the middle of the table and filled the flowery creamer with milk. “Sugar, Dellie?” She took the top off the flowery sugar bowl. “A nice piece of strudel with your tea?”
Every piece of Bubbie’s strudel is nice. I hunger for it but said, “No thank you.” Those were the only pieces Miss Flint had, and I had Bubbie.
“Very well, Miss Dellie.” She fetched her Social Tea Crackers. “We’ll share these as usual.”
“Thanks.” I didn’t say it, but Social Tea Crackers weren’t part of the deal today. They’re good, but I had ice cream. She dipped and worked a cracker in her mouth like her teeth couldn’t chew, and I worked my ice cream bar without dripping a drop.
“How do you afford that ice cream, Miss Dellie?” Miss Flint said. “Your family’s not rich because of your dad. Is it those pennies outside?”
“Sure, and the change I find. My Dad gave me a dime for this tooth. And Mr. Chalker? He gives me nickels. Five today. That’s a quarter, Miss Flint.”
“Indeed it is. Were you in the basement with him, dear? I happened to look out and saw you coming out the door.”
“I was.”
I smiled. Happened? She couldn’t fool me. She was waiting for me to find those pennies and saw me come out late.
“What did you do down there, Dellie dear? Did you and Mr. Chalker talk?”
“You bet.”
“And did he touch you?”
“Sure. And, you know, Miss Flint, it felt very nice. He has soft hands that know how to cup your cheeks and things. I have a special spirit, he says, and he lets me feel things now and then.”
Miss Flint put her hands on her face. “He touched you? He touches you where it feels special, dear?”
“You bet, Miss Flint. Mr. Chalker knows just what to do.”
She covered her mouth. “Oh, Dellie. Don’t go down in the basement again. It’s not good for you.”
Coal dust? I thought. Relax. Mr. Chalker’s ahead of you.
She took my hands in her own cold hands and pressed her thin lips together. “Do you see that flag on my wall?” she said.
“I do. It covered your beloved, who died saving Saigon, Miss Flint.” She pointed to that flag at least twice a week. I had all her words memorized. “They folded it in neat triangles and gave it to his mother, and she gave it to you. She handed it to you because he was the love of your life. And still is.”
“Dellie, dearest!” She pulled her lips up over her perfect teeth, took her flowery napkin out of her lap and cried in it. “I want such love for you. Please.”
Next morning as Mr. Chalker and I hauled our first trash can out, before I had time to ask about the blackbirds, two policemen got out of their car and walked up to us. I heard something behind me, turned and two more were there.
“Are you Dellie?” one said.
“That’s me all right.”
“Frank Chalker?”
“Francis, yes.”
“Is it true, what Miss Flint told us, Dellie?”
“Huh?”
“Did Mr. Chalker touch you in the basement and give you money for it?”
“Not for,” I said, “but, sure. He touches me all the time, and when I get things right, he gives me change.”
The policeman covered his eyes.
Mr. Chalker held his hands up, palms wide open, as if to say, Hey, past what’s outside we’re all the same. “You got this whole thing wrong,” he said.
Wrong? I didn’t get it, but then the policeman said, “You’ll have to come with us, Francis Chalker, You have a right to stay silent and a right to an attorney. If you can’t afford one, the court will appoint one if you wish. We warn you, anything you say may be used against you. Is there anything you want to say?”
“You got it wrong is all. I love this little girl.”
“And I love Mr. Chalker,” I said.
The policemen looked at each other. The one who came up with the talker and the young one wrote in their pads. Then the young one took handcuffs off his crowded belt, asked Mr. Chalker to put his hands behind him and snapped the handcuffs on.
“Hey, that’s not right,” I said. “Mr. Chalker is good.”
But they walked him to their car, covered his head getting in and drove off. I was left with six full trashcans that wouldn’t make it to the curb.
I saw Miss Flint peeking out but too shook to bother about the pennies went straight to Hemdin’s.
Her mom blew her bangs up. “Is it true, Dellie?” She fingered her cross. “Miss Flint told me everything. It was her duty, she said.”
“True?”
“Did you go down in the basement with that janitor?”
“Mr. Chalker? He’s my friend. Of course I did.”
“Oh.” She put her hand to her chest, sat down and crossed her legs. Then she looked at me through the bars of her bangs and got up again. “Hemdin won’t be going to school with you,” she said.
“Are you sick, Hemdin?”
“No, I’m not sick. What’s wrong, Mom?”
Her mom bit her lip. There’d be no more walking to school together. “Ever again.”
Before class started, Ms. Munroe took me out in the hall. Her smile turned down like Mr. Chalker’s when we talked about Dad being in the hospital, like I was hurt or sick. “You’re my favorite, Dellie,” she said. “I don’t care what you did.”
“Did? What did I do?”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s not your fault.”
“What’s not my fault?”
“If you want to talk, I’m here,” she said. “I’ll always be here for you.”
Then she walked back in.
Half an hour later I got called to the Principal’s Office. Mr. Hartwig, a fat hairless little man with fingernails so clean they looked polished if you didn’t know better, stood up. Men don’t polish their nails, but there you go. He checked his fingertips and stared at me. I had a two week suspension, and he hoped I was satisfied.
“Satisfied with what? What did I do?”
Never mind, he knew all about it. Parents had been calling him, and the police. It was no use trying to hide. He was shocked, though he blamed the janitor, really.
“Mr. Chalker? For what? He’s a very great man.”
That did it. He took me by the collar and walked me to an exit.
“I called your mother and told her to come for you, but she was busy. You’ll have to walk home alone,” which is not allowed during school, but there you go again.
When I got there, the belt was on the table. I opened the door, she picked it up and—wham--whacked my face with it.
“Oh!”
My skin squished together, like a hundred bees bit my cheek, and hot blood flooded in.
Not satisfied, she came backhand.
“Ow!”
Lucky she didn’t hit my eye or nose. She pulled her arm back for another swipe, but Bubbie heard us, rushed in and stepped in between.
“Stop,” she said. “The child suffered enough.”
Mom smashed the table with the belt, and stomped out.
Bubbie turned to me. “Come, Dellie.” She picked me up, sat me on the counter and put ice and ointment on my cheeks. When I felt better a little she took me outside.
Just being with Bubbie helps. She wrapped her arm around me, the closest thing to Mr. Chalker’s soft hands, and we walked the neighborhood--all the way to Forest Park, where the swamp has pollywogs and frogs.
We stopped at a bench there and sat down together.
“Fresh air,” Bubbie said. “It airs things out.”
“Like on a clothesline?”
“Like clothes on a clothesline. Why not?”
“I don’t know, Bubbie.”
“Don’t know what, darling?”
“Why not. Or anything. What’s going on? Everybody hates me, and they took Mr. Chalker away. He does everything right.”
She looked at me. “With one good eye it’s hard to see. What did you do, Dellie?”
“Nothing. I didn’t do anything.”
“Did Mr. Chalker touch you?”
“He always touches me.”
“Where?”
“In the basement, and sometimes outside.”
She put both arms on my shoulders and set us face to face. “Where on you, Dellie.”
“My arms, my hands, sometimes my cheeks.”
“Which cheeks?”
“These.” I went to pinch myself, but it hurt. “On my face, Bubbie. What’s going on?”
“Miss Flint and the police think otherwise.”
“About what?”
“Did you tell her different, Dellie?”
“I didn’t tell her anything.”
That’s how it went, with Bubbie asking questions I could answer and me answering until it came out that I did say some things. I remembered what Miss Flint said, too, and Bubbie clicked her tongue. We stretched out everything that happened till it was paper thin, like that strudel-dough Bubbie spreads on her fingertips so you can almost see through it.
Then she got up. “We’re going to get this right.”
It felt like years had passed, but it was just after noon. We walked to the police station, which is big. Its white stucco face and giant door blocked the way like, man, you can’t get in there. If you ever did you would never get out, it seemed. But Bubbie turned the knob and the door swung open for us.
“Pardon,” she told the lady at the desk. “We have to see somebody important today.”
“I’m important.”
“It’s about the Shvartza. The Bedford Avenue super in your jail. You arrested him this morning.”
The lady looked at her book. “Francis Chalker? What about him?”
When Bubbie told her, the lady whistled. “Is this the girl?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Mr. Chalker is good. They got everything wrong.”
She put her hands up. “Wait here. I’ll get the sergeant.”
The sergeant was tough. His mouth and eyes turned down like their ends were lead, and he hardly opened his lips to speak. I blinked just looking at him. It was like we did something wrong instead of him.
But Bubbie didn’t care. With her bad eye crumpled up she looked tough herself. But her way was full of love. People aren’t what they look. They’re what they are inside.
He asked us if he could record what we said, signaled the officer with the pad, pointed at my cheeks and said, “What’s that about?”
“Her mother,” Bubbie said, “but that’s not what we’re here for.”
As she went on the other officer stopped writing. Even the sergeant was shook. “Is all that true, little girl?”
It was so true and stretched out that you could count your change through it.
They fetched Miss Flint, holding her black little purse against her black hangy-down dress, and sat her down across from me.
It didn’t take long. She remembered different from what was, but she understood better after I straightened her out.
“When I said, ‘Lets me feel things,’ I meant anthracite. Coal, Miss Flint.”
The sergeant wiped his mouth. “Free the man, Mitchell, and tear the booking up,” he told the guy with the pad. “We’re done with this mess.”
Bubbie waved a finger. “You meant well, but you’re not done, sergeant. You did the girl dirt. People think what’s not true. You’ll be done when you make that right.”
The sergeant raised his hands.
“And you, Florence,” Bubbie said. “You’ve got to straighten things out, too.”
Miss Flint pulled her purse to her chest, nodded and left right away.
While waiting outside for Mr. Chalker, Bubbie kissed my head.
“I survived pogroms. We hid in the corn fields while the Cossacks tore our village up. A clown with lockjaw doesn’t bother me.”
When Mr. Chalker came out, she took his hands. “I’m sorry,” she said, like it was her fault somehow, which it was just the opposite.
Mr. Chalker shook his head. “I’m sorry too, but you’ve got nothing to be sorry about." He thanked her for straightening things out.
Then he turned to me, and after asking about my face—“Her mother hit her,” Bubbie told him—he said, “What did you tell Miss Flint that made them do this to us, sweetheart?”
“Nothing, Just how wonderful you are. You know just how to touch me, I said.”
He looked at Bubbie and raised his eyes, like, yeah, they understood something that I didn’t. That was okay with me. Mr. Chalker was free. That’s all that mattered to me.
The sergeant must have phoned the principal right away because the school called Mom before we got home. My two week suspension was over, and she left the belt in the closet for a change.
Next day, I was back in class again. But when I visited Mr. Chalker early on as usual he held up his hands. “We can’t, Dellie,” he said. “We’re friends for life, but things change. I gave my notice, little gal. I’m leaving. Lots of buildings need tending to. But you’re staying. I don’t want them talking about you.”
It was like taking the air out of my balloon. I was done with Miss Flint’s place and didn’t want to risk calling on Hemdin. So I walked to school alone and hung out in the little garden at the edge of the yard and met a praying mantis there that when I held out a finger it climbed on and we looked at each other like good friends, like it understood what was happening and turned its head this way and that to say it was sorry for me.
After a while, I realized that I was staying too long with it, set it on some sorrel leaves and rushed to class.
Ms. Munroe didn’t say a word about my being late. Instead, she hugged me. Then she took me in and said, “Dellie. What happened to your face?”
I’m no tattletale. “I walked into a belt,” I said.
Her eyes teared up, but she forced herself to smile at me. She took my hand and kissed it. “Let’s all clap for Dellie, children. We’re all proud of you.”
But I’m not proud of me. Win a race, that’s one thing. But this? Everything’s changed. I’ve got Bubbie and Ms. Munroe still, and Dad and Mr. Chalker in my heart. But not with me--see what I’m telling you?
I miss them every day.
Albert Wachtel writes and teaches at Pitzer College, one of the Claremont Colleges in Southern California." His books include THE CRACKED LOOKINGGLASS: JAMES JOYCE AND THE NIGHTMARE OF HISTORY; MODERNISM, CHALLENGES AND PERSPECTIVES; CRITICAL INSIGHTS: "A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN", and CRITICAL INSIGHTS: JAMES JOYCE.