INVOKING MABEL

Invoking Mabel
by stephen d gross

Just before my eighth New Years Eve, Mom, Grandma, Grandpa and I took a train from New York to Florida. I loved the heat and smell of old leather inside the Yellow Checker, and the gritty snowdrifts we skidded through on the way to Penn Station. We were heading down to Miami to visit Grandpa's brother, Pinchas, who spent half the year in Florida, and the other half shmoozing with his Magyar buddies who worked at his "cloak" factory in White Plains. (I'd heard Transylvania was near Hungary and I knew from the movies Transylvanians wore cloaks.)

The Champion and the Silver Meteor, replicating horizontal Chrysler Buildings on wheels, were the pride of the Atlantic Seaboard Railway, and the pair of crack streamliners made the New York-to-Miami run a thrilling adventure. We were aboard the aerodynamic Champion, which was permeated by a distinctive aroma - shoe polish, southern cooking, chicory coffee, and headrests marinated in Wild Root Cream Oil and Bergamot. The soulful, steely rhythms cranked out by the big driving wheels was the big train's personal liturgy, and in its lifetime, it had transfixed many a moonlight traveler.

I remember awakening in the quiet syncopation of a dawn spiced with honeysuckle and magnolia, and sticking my head out into a toothy chill which had morphed into something soft and balmy while I slept. Still dazzled by all this when we pulled into Jacksonville four hours later, my excitement frothed at the prospect of hopping off the train and feeling Florida beneath my feet. I couldn't wait to touch my first palm tree, inhale warm Gulf breezes scented with mimosa and coconuts, feel sticky, humid air thick and sweet enough to eat with a spoon. I'd read volumes about the South and particularly about Florida since I learned we were coming down here. There were thousands of things I wanted to see and touch - the Everglades and Okeefenokee, gators, Bok Tower, creamy-white beaches, Cypress Gardens, Tropical Hobbyland. Painted against a backdrop of gulf stream-heated water, Art Deco beach front hotels with names like Saxony and Essex House, shells and jellyfish, pelicans and barracuda - I thirsted to check all of it out, even if I was going to begin my safari on Jacksonville's tired, splintery train platform.

We had a twenty-minute layover, so I made my way across the dog-eared boardwalk looking forward to my inaugural taste of Florida drinking water. Cool, sweetly tropical, it geysered up from the spout to greet me. From a nearby bench painted green I heard a clucking. There sat an elderly black man with a disapproving look, gently waggling a long, gnarly forefinger without lifting his hand from his knee. I remember thinking the finger looked like the right front leg of Aunt Rose's mahogany Steinway upright - the one Bucky, the Chow, liked to work over to keep his teeth sharp. Wondering why he had a problem with me helping myself to water, I followed his bobbing head to the wall above the drinking fountain where, in green block letters, someone had stenciled, "Colored". Nearby was another drinking fountain which appeared to be just like the other - except for the white block letters which spelled: "White". I looked over at the weathered man who'd executed the bobbing and waggling, and saw above the bench on which he was sitting another sign reading "Colored" in the same swamp-ooze shade of green. Immediately, I forgot about the palm trees and went looking for Mom. I had questions. I needed answers.

She filled me in on the local skinny. "That's the way they'd arranged it in Florida and New York people didn't have much to say about it." They could say all they wanted, she explained, and some people didn't know when to shut up about it, but it was their Florida, and they got to set it up the way they wanted it to be. And people were still allowed to leave Florida and move elsewhere, if they didn't like it. I asked Mom if Mabel knew about this.

Mabel Dewey was the lady who helped clean our tiny four-room apartment in Washington Heights twice a week. She scrubbed for Grandma, she spruced for Aunt Blanche, and she'd been attending, along with her husband, Earl, our family's weddings, bar-mitzvahs and funerals for a long time. Considering I was not quite eight, Mabel had been a member of our family for more than twice as long as I had. I enjoyed lunch with her every Tuesday and Thursday from the time I was three, and we sometimes gave her a lift home in Dad's sky-colored '49 Mercury. (I loved that powder blue!) to the lovely house she and Earl owned in the north Bronx.

I couldn't imagine Mabel not being able to share a bench with me or drink from the same fountain. I felt ashamed, as if somehow I'd been tricked into betraying her. I was glad she wasn't there, for I imagined the words jumping off the wall and slapping her across the face. It wasn't that I was being noble - I didn't have the sophistication to affect an attitude of nobility. Nor was I, at seven, fully aware of the racist message borne by the words. But the suggestion of this forced separation from the woman I considered my surrogate mother was very disconcerting. It left me with an insecure feeling. I wondered if Mabel knew and if she did, how she felt about all this. I wondered why someone didn't just come along with a paint brush some night, and paint over all those words. I wondered a lot of things. Mom explained that Mabel was from North Carolina and considered herself lucky to be living in New York. She told me that there were so many reminders about how North Carolinians had it arranged, they didn't even bother to paint signs. Everyone automatically knew which benches and drinking fountains were "Colored" and which ones were "White".

I thought about all of this a great deal, but I didn't have any trouble falling asleep because I'd been awake for much of the last two days and nights. The neighborhood in Miami where Uncle Pinchas lived had a placid, dreamy retirement-community feel to it, and when I awoke early the next morning, I was anxious to explore the neighborhood without any thought of danger. The streets all had names like Neptune Drive, Surf Avenue, Mermaid Blvd. and Seahorse Row. Sunwashed, ocean-breeze fresh and aromatic, the neighborhood's houses looked like they'd been lovingly colored with enormous pieces of chalk in my favorite pastel colors. Lush, perfectly-tended landscaping sequined with brightly-hued blossoms graced every residence. I imagined the chalk artwork being redone after each rain.

I'd walked for fifteen or twenty minutes when the first human I'd seen that morning approached me from two blocks away. He was on the same side of the boulevard that I was walking on and he ambled slowly as he went. I could see he was frail and elderly and his skin was the color of a horse chestnut. When the distance between us closed to about a half-block, he seemed to take notice of me for the first time. Then he did what I considered a peculiar thing. He changed his direction and shuffled slowly across the wide boulevard before continuing to travel in the same direction in which he'd been headed. I didn't think I'd looked threatening. I was not quite eight years old and small for my age. I wasn't carrying anything that looked like a weapon. What had I done now?

When I returned home, I asked mom, who seemed more concerned that I finished my Wheatena before it became lumpy and cold. We'd had some big tiffs over that - her trying to get me to choke down sodden lumps of cold cereal. The rubbery mounds congealed in my little throat and once they did, there was no way I could get them down. Try explaining that to the one who springs for the Wheatena. She seemed reluctant to talk about the old man who crossed the street but I wanted to know why he had and what it was that I'd done. Finally she explained that it was because I was White - and a kid - and he wasn't. Maybe he'd been kicked in the knee by little white kids in the past, or maybe he'd heard 'stories' and was old and wise enough to steer way clear of potential trouble, but, she said, I, personally, hadn't had much to do with it - other than being born White and being in the same general vicinity. I felt really bad about this. I think it was one of my earliest experiences with Guilt.

I tried to climb inside the man's head and see his line of reasoning. I pictured passing close by him and stumbling over a crack in the sidewalk. The scenario unfolds: As I fall, I brush against his pant leg and crash against the concrete sidewalk yelling in pain. Pitchfork wielding retirees come spilling out of their candy cane cottages, lurching toward the victim and his attacker in fuzzy-bunny slippers, poly cabana suits and pink terry robes. Pushing walkers before them, they advance menacingly. With all the evidence of the "crime" heaped before them on the sidewalk, all that's left is to string the brutal attacker to the nearest lamppost with a length of that orange nautical rope that comes in 50-foot rolls from the Piggly-Wiggly. I could understand why the poor man was terrified. No wonder he had crossed the street. I decided if I ever had a similar encounter, I would be the one to do the street-crossing. If anyone was going to trip and fall, it was only fair that it be me.

Not only was I experiencing the exhilaration of swimming in the ocean in December and learning about exotic plants and creatures I'd never seen running around New York, but I was receiving lessons concerning other topics as well. I'd written postcards to several of my schoolmates and a letter to dad, who was at home in New York waiting on tables in a Garment District dairy restaurant. I felt like I should write Mabel as well. I was greatly disturbed by some of the lessons I was receiving and felt a need to talk with her about it. When she cleaned house for us, I noticed Mom made it a point to be there to help her. Mom referred to Mabel as her "psychiatrist" and all the while Mabel was in our apartment, she and mom kept up a constant stream of animated chatter. Sometimes the two of them would spend an hour or more in the kitchen, elbows on the Formica table, blowing on hot cups of Lipton's Tea, lost in earnest conversation. Mom always looked better and sounded less tense after her sessions with Mabel. Sometimes I wished Mabel would come see us more than twice a week. At the moment, I felt I wanted very much to sit with her, drinking tea and having a long talk.

Mom and I had a really great time visiting Uncle Pinchas with Grandma and Grandpa Katz. Knowing nothing about the malignant havoc ultraviolet rays wreak on bare skin, we basked for hours in South Florida's famous sunshine getting darker than we ever imagined we could in New York's more northerly latitudes. Mom was born with a healthy dose of Melanin in her system and the equatorial rays stained her a dark walnutty burl. Tante Pauline (she and Mom shared the same name) was a wonderful cook, specializing in Hungarian treats like Pugaches and Schliskas (dumplings), and we enjoyed a healthy sampling of Only-in-Florida experiences.

We watched a Seminole wrestle a sleepy alligator out of a turgid pool and send him back to sleep by rubbing his belly while people from Gary and Newark threw nickels of gratitude at him. A tiny monkey ran up my mother's arm and flashed a grin causing both of them to suffer brief hysterics - and I saw an albino peacock strut around and spread wide his snowy tail feathers. I'd tasted fresh coconut and gnawed on Florida sugarcane, eaten tangerines from Uncle Pinchas' back yard, and I'd even been to the movies. Mom and I saw "Harvey" , starring James Stewart, and "King Solomon's Mines" in which Stewart Granger avoided being trampled in what was the best animal stampede in movie history. I fell in love with a freckled redhead from Poughkeepsie named Martha, and whenever I see cocoa palms illuminated from below with pink and coral lights, I think about her and wonder if she ever pauses while playing with her grandchildren, and thinks of me. Except for a postcard telling her what a great time I was having, I hadn't written Mabel because it was very difficult to put what I felt into words. I was looking forward to my regular lunches with her. In many ways, I missed her more than I missed Dad. There were important things we needed to talk about. It was the day before we left to return to New York that the strangest thing of all happened, and I still haven't sorted through and catalogued all the feelings I experienced because of it.

Mom wanted to pick up a few Florida souvenirs for people back in New York, so Uncle Pinchas dropped us off in a section of Miami where there were gift shops, department stores and restaurants that catered to both tourists and locals alike. Public transportation was designed for easy comprehension and a Dade County bus ran within a block of Uncle Pinchas' house. We finished our shopping with good-humor - there had been lots of kitschy things to gawk at - much of it crude, some gratuitous, some outrageous, all tropically-themed. The imaginative use of shells and coconuts, bamboo and palm trees was inspiring. After a couple of hot corned beef sandwiches (with a Dr. Brown's Cream Soda) at Wolfie's, we lugged our gifts over to the bus stop to wait for our ride home.

Buses ran frequently and they were usually half-empty. Arms piled high with packages, we climbed aboard one and after Mom dropped her money into the fare box, we plopped down behind the driver. Close to the door, the seats would make it easier to spot our stop and we'd have less schlepping to do. Nobody likes schlepping, especially when burdened with packages. Noisily settling ourselves, we couldn't make out the driver's words - we just heard him mumbling something. Preparing to lurch out into the slow-moving traffic, the driver spoke again: What he said was: "Move to the back of the bus, please". Having never heard these words spoken before, Mom and I looked around to see who it was he'd spoken to. We felt embarrassed and we wanted the recipient of this creep's remark to know we shared their mortification. Haltingly, we looked around, but we didn't see anyone changing seats. There weren't any dark-skinned people sitting in the front of the bus, either. In fact, of all the people sitting in the bus' nose section, our skin was the darkest.

"Ma'm, kindly move to the back of the bus, please", droned the driver, impatiently. Mom and I looked at each other awash in disbelief. Was this boorish Cracker speaking to us? Over his shoulder, out of the corner of his slack, froggy mouth - he's issuing orders to us? Telling us where we should sit? Scarlet rushed lava-like beneath Mom's very deep tan as she tried to process and figure out how to deal with the message we were receiving. I think she summoned up some of the conviction she'd learned from Mabel. She hurled her 4-foot-eleven-inch, 96 lb. frame at the driver like Thor's hammer and proceeded to verbally eviscerate him for 20 or so minutes. Her tirade would have been longer but she smoked too many Camels and didn't have much lung power. Snapping at him like a rabid terrier, she verbally lacerated his shapeless white hide, turning him into a stain of pink Jell-o too dismayed and confused to drive. Except for Mom's gushing heat, the bus was uncannily silent. Even the sounds of the traffic around us had been swallowed, lost in the vacuum created by Mom's fury. Anxious to stop this banshee from chewing him up alive, mortified at having made what he considered a terrible mistake, the driver tried to apologize. Having had her say, her lips pressed tightly together to keep them from quivering, Mom gathered up her mountain of gifts and hustled me to the rear of the dusty bus where we plopped ourselves down amid a small sea of approving, sweaty. mostly black faces.

It's rare that someone manages to push Mom's buttons the way that driver did. They're hidden away and hard to find. I replayed the incident dozens of times in the following weeks, trying to figure out exactly what it was that lit her fuse.
Living her entire life in New York City, the youngest of four kids born to Hungarian immigrants, Mom was raised with nurturing protection and love. She wasn't a Jewish Princess, but she didn't take to people telling her where to sit, either. Except that was only part of what triggered her reaction. The driver had obviously believed her to be a Black lady and I don't think she liked that a bit. Did she resent being mistaken for Black? I don't think so - it had happened a few times before and she always considered it a compliment. She loved being thought of as "exotic".

I think part of her reaction was due to the demanding tone in which the driver had "ordered" her to the back of the bus. He could have been speaking a foreign language for all it mattered, but his tone and demeanor were, to Mom, insultingly rude. She didn't allow anyone to speak to her this way because, in her eyes, she never, ever provoked or was deserving of such behavior. And she would be damned if she would permit this swine-swilling, red-neck to cop an attitude with her. Mom had dealt with loutish people before and she'd more or less regarded their loutishness as a disability to be pitied. She'd been firm, polite - terse, even snappish - but this was the first time I'd seen her impersonate a volcano. I viewed the scene over and over, and finally decided to have a heart-to-heart with her and see if even she knew what had angered her so.

"It was a little of this and a little of that", she stonewalled. We laughed about the driver's abashed reaction - how badly she'd shaken his closed-minded Cracker reality. Then one morning a few days later, she told me she'd been pondering the incident. "You know", she confided to me, "what really bothered me when we were being assaulted by that fat jerk's hatred was, I thought of how much I loved Mabel - and what a good friend she's been" - her hand shook just a little as she lit one of her Camels - "and how she's always been there for us." "It was almost like I could feel Mabel standing there saying, 'Well, Pauline? You gonna do anything about this?' "I could actually feel for a second or two, the kind of stuff she - her people - have had to put up with. "How, especially in the South, they're subjected to prejudice on a daily basis. But I'm ashamed to say I see it in New York all the time, too!" Her eyes got a little wet behind her wing-framed prescription sunglasses. Her voice rose as she spoke. "They get it all the time, almost every where they go, in restaurants, in businesses, taxicabs - with most everything they have to deal with - and you know what they do? They take it! " "They keep their mouths shut because that's the easiest way to get through the day. It's what causes them the least heartache." I was amazed. This was already the longest speech I'd ever heard Mom make, and she wasn't finished yet! "But I'm not a Negro!" (That was the word she used back then). "I don't have to put up with that crap! I can scream and yell about it as loud and as long as I like! I'd like to see them do something to me - just let 'em try!"

I know it sounds Frank Capra-Movie sappy. Almost like Henry Fonda-as-Tom Joad making his little speech in "Grapes of Wrath". The one that goes, "....every time there's a cop beatin' up a guy, or a family with hungry kids, I'll be there!" But her feelings were genuine - she didn't have any other kind. And it was scary, seeing Mom wax so emotionally about something other than Birth and Death. Although she talked intimately with Mabel about a thousand things, she never once told her about what happened on the bus in Miami. She talked about how fine it was to escape the icy-gray chill of New York's winter, and how the little monkey had run up her arm, but I think she was too embarrassed to talk about the Bus Incident. Embarrassed for all the world's racism, for all the meanness and the lack of compassion. Besides - she didn't want Mabel to think she was patting herself on the back for speaking out - on who's behalf? She wasn't quite sure. After all, she knew Mabel Dewey preferred to do her own speaking in her own words. She did quite a bit of it and it was just one of the many things that she did really well.