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"So I says to my sister" SPLAM, the pork chops tightly bundled in butcher brown paper hit the top of the porcelain counter with a force that made more than a few of the babushka covered, gray and thinning heads of hair flinch. Tony looked out at the small clutch of customers who gathered each day around this time to purchase the main course for that night's dinner. He shifted his eyes. taking in the full crowd, measuring the attention of those on the other side of the bright white meat counter before finishing his thought. He then kicked sideways at the sawdust spread out behind the counter to absorb the blood, evening out a clotted mass. "Not the one with the brother in law, the other one" The butcher, eyebrows clinched in on his nose, made a sweeping emphatic gesture with his ever present grease pen to drive that point home. "The one with the brother in law."
Anya was loosing track. It happened whenever she found herself in the middle of this crowd. She was tired, exhausted really, the only one on the paying side of the meat counter who still worked, still had to go out and earn a living.
"Imagine, a woman like you, working like this." The strong, steady voice of her husband bounced around inside her. "For that, I'm truly sorry." The widow flicked at her head, like she was brushing away a few strands of errant hair.
"ANYways" the butcher pontifically continues. "There's no way I'm gonna let happen to me what happened to him." Tony's moon face brighten considerably as he unfurled his thick brow and opened up to the next customer. "What'll it be tonight Missus Stneski? What's my competition want me to put on HIS table?" He winked at the old woman who blushed ever so slightly at Tony's theatrical flirting.
"Two of the chops. I was gonna get some kilbas but those chops looked so plump"
"Two of my thick plump chops it is." He slide the glass door aside, wiped his hands on the bloody apron and reached into the tray of meat just brimming with hand cut selections he had placed at the front of the glass case and made it look as if he was searching for the plumpest two.
Anya knew of Tony since he was this high, hiding behind his grandfather's bloody apron back at the old butcher shop, back in the neighborhood, the one around the corner from the house she stilled lived in over on 147th. But the boy didn't want any part of that small store business. After the War, he went straight to the new A&P and waited it out until one by one, all the little stores closed up and the A&P was all that was left. That boy watched his daddy close down the family business, never once setting foot inside after he took up with the chain store. Now, fifteen years later, they all came to him. Now he was the Butcher.
"So my genius of a brother in law," Tony pulls himself up out of the counter, back in his mood. "This is the one over to 55th street, down by the Mill on the Broadway side of Fleet, the one married to my sister" Tony continues with the meat in one hand while the other rips a sheet of brown butcher paper from the roll, places it on the scale, thumping the meat on top so hard that the arrow bounces violently from side to side. "The genius waits so long after the first one moves in that he's now frantic, frantic to get out of there before any more of THEM decides to move in." The arrow on the front of the scale is given no chance to settling in on any specific weight. Tony yell's out "That'll be a buck twelve up to the counter." He gives the old woman another wink, eyebrows again in the up position as he scribbles on the price before handing the package of meat over the counter.
Anya looked around to see where she placed in line. There was no formal queue, just the familiarity of the neighborhood and the lack of energy on this side of the counter that kept things in an orderly manner. The automatic ticket dispenser, standard A&P issued equipment, was pushed aside with a faded number one still waiting to be plucked. Just two more customers, the widow Klowski.and old Mr. Linkas
Tony starts in again.
"Once one moves in, the whole neighborhood drops in value just like that." he was able to snap his fingers loud even though they were covered by the pulverized fat that gave a sheen to the butcher block, the wooden planks behind the counter and anything else that would attract the globular molecules released and splattered about by the whole process of butchering meat..
Tony looked right at Anya, like she knew this brother in law, like they sat next to each other in church, like he was looking for a nod or something to personalize his building argument against what, Anya still had no idea.
"Look what they did to Euclid Avenue. Old John D must be twirlin' round his grave."
Anya was saved when the widow Klowski ordered up a pound of stew meat. The eyebrows broke apart and preacher Tony was replaced by butcher Tony. "Will that be a slow simmerin' stew Mrs. Klowski or something you want to whip up fast like? Cause I got just the meat for the job behind this counter, you name it."
"Simmerin'" the widow Klowski was never one for wasting words.
"ANYways, them coloreds, or should I say NEgroes, isn't that what they want to be called now, they keep getting closer and closer. Before you know it, bam, we're all living like sharecroppers." By this time the stew meat was all wrapped in paper and Tony was handing the marked over the counter top.
"Ah the coloreds. It always gets down to them colored." Steve piped in again, causing Anya to return flicking at her hair.. "It's like I always told them at Fisher, give me one colored guy over a roomful of Irish any day, they work, make no trouble. Them Irish, they make trouble even when there's nothin' to make trouble about. It's them Irish you gotta look out for."
"Tony" the store manager barked sternly while standing off to the ever encroaching packaged meat section of the department. The butcher turned toward him, shrugged his shoulders as if saying what, returned to the task at hand
"Mr. Linkas, what'll it be.?" Before the old man could answer Tony added ."All this cold weather we've been havin', all the way up to spring now, don't let 'em fool you now Mr. Linkas, it's on account of them Russian bastards." It was okay to swear in mixed company in this neighborhood as long as it was in conjunction with everyone's favorite enemy, the communist hoard plaguing the homeland. The topic had been deftly shifted "All them satellites, that sputnik flyin' around up there. And then the A-Bomb test. They're up to somethin' Mark my words. If Krushkev has his way, it'll be just like livin' in Siberia."
Tony looked over at Mr. Ogden, the manager, nodded and turned back to his customers.
"A chop. Get me one of those chops, Tony." Mr. Linkas pointed a pale bony finger at the aforementioned tray of meat.
Two more old women crept silently up and into the gathering. Anya knew the first one, but couldn't remember her name. Steve use to dance the polka with her after her husband died. Now both of our husbands are gone. She looked at the woman and nodded her head.
"It's Estelle Klien, Anya, Eddie Klien's widow only she ain't a widow, he's just run off with a Hungarian woman from over at the Hi Fi, that place we went a few time over by Our Lady/'
Anya was furiously flicking her hair, trying to get him to stop.
"What'll it be missus." Tony barked good naturally then asked. "Is there a fly in her or sumthin;?
"No, just just a , an itch, Tony, just an itch." She was embarrassed being so near to Estelle Klien but quickly regained her composure. "City Chicken Tony, two City Chickens." Anya paused and put a stern face on, half to stop Steve from making a quick return visit and half because of the way Tony had startled her. "You make sure you have the Kielbasa for next weekend, we all want the fresh, enough for our families." Anya was emboldened by number, especially if those joining her resolve resided outside of her head
Tony smiled the same smile his grandfather had and leaned across the porcelain counter. "I'm making more than enough and I'll make a little extra if you and the girls" he swept the bewildered Mrs. Klien and another missus who just came on line into the discussion and once again looked side to side to see if he had there complete attention before continuing. "Come over to my house on Monday after Easter and we have a big sausage party in my garage. Hey, my wife works during the day so whatda say lady's? I'll show you all a good time or my bane ain't Tone Z!"
He winked as only Tony the Butcher could wink, a wink that made Anya long for the neighborhood that was slipping further and further away.
Maybe Tony "Z" was right. Anya was thinking to herself as she stood in front of the full length mirror attached to back of the front hall closet door, maybe the Russians were shooting weather rays into space. Cleveland had been in a deep freeze all winter There had been a few fits and starts like the three, four days in early March when it warmed just enough to melt down a few layers of snow. But it all came back, the cold, the drafts in the house, the heating bills she hated to think about. At least it wasn't snowing any more.
She couldn't remember a Palm Sunday that had been this cold.
Winter had a stranglehold on the front hall closet, choking off spring with stray mittens, boots and other items her grandchildren had left behind. It was just too cold to bring down spring from the attic. She had to push on the door to make sure the latch caught. When she was sure the door would stay shut, Anya walked back down the hall through the kitchen donning her maroon babushka, pulling on her matching knit gloves as she went.
By the time she made it to the backdoor, Anya was prepared to face the brisk winter/spring morning. In the 38 years they had lived here, Anya left the house through the front door only twice. The first day and then the day of the funeral. The front door was for company, strangers. The back door was for family.
It was early, sunrise early as Anya crossed the threshold and walked out onto the back porch. The crisp sun surprised her and made her squint down, sun spots dancing in her eyes, before she had a chance to turn and lock the door. After rattling the knob to make sure it was closed, something she could and today had to do from memory, she locked the door and this time, before turning to face what she believed would be the first true glorious day of the spring 1961, she made sure to keep her eyes down and out of the sun. Last but not least, Anya checked her pocketbook one last time to make sure she hadn't forgotten the offerings, the scheduled one for this Sunday and the special one because it was Palm Sunday. Feeling the small familiar envelopes, she snapped shut the purse clasp and confidently but carefully stepped off into the day.
When her eyes came back, she noticed, for the first time in months, the grass. Maybe it was because of the way the morning sun splashed across her back yard, coming full out of the east like it did when spring finally arrived, that coaxed some color out of winter. There was still a fair amount of snow clinging to the side of the garage, the back fence and all the other nooks and crannies where the sun took its time getting to, but from the house to the flower bed back in front of the fence, it was grass - and that was a good sign. It wouldn't be long before her roses and geraniums were exploding with color all over.
Out on the sidewalk, warmed by the glorious sun and filled with the faith reaffirmation of Palm Sunday, the day when Jesus had such a strong believe in his father, such a faith in his divinity, that he rode straight into Jerusalem knowing he was doomed, Anya walked with her eyes taking in the neighborhood. But unlike her savior fulfilling ancient prophecy with an eye firmly on heaven, Anya kept an eye on the giant limestone slabs of sidewalk placed with such a grand air of permanence over 30 years ago. Elm roots crushed up from below and the pliable stone proved no match for the dramatic extremes of Midwestern weather. Even though she walked these sidewalks every day, Anya felt it best to keep an eye on the path ahead. Better to be safe than sorry. After the first thaw, these sidewalks had a habit of changing daily. On a day such as this, a day of new beginnings, Anya thought it odd that she had outlived her sidewalk.
Our Lady of Chiztahova, Anya's destination, dominated the neighborhood. It was one of the last all stone Gothic style churches built by the Cleveland Diocese. Tall, majestic, the bell tower reached far above the rows of two and a half story houses, keeping the watchful eye of God on the hard working Polish folk who called these streets home. It was Polish, all right, almost 100%. Immigrants and first generation families fell together in this village within a city when work in the mills was thrown open. Too many orders and too few Irish. They had to hire the Poles. They had no choice.
The mills. If you listened carefully you could hear the clangs and whistles punctuating the steady back din of men working. The mills brought money, stability and planning to a people who had never before thought beyond the next planting season. The mills also brought dust, grime, soot so fine you couldn't see it until it dried white sheets gray. The women quickly learned never to hang out the wash if the west wind was blowing.
Like everything else around, the church carried the residue of the giant blast furnaces. What once was light colored stone that almost shone in the reflected light of day now absorbed that same light into the dark stain it had become.
Anya took notice that there were no signs of children in the neighborhood. No stray balls in any of the front yards she was walking past, no tricycles left outside, nothing to indicate that there was any sense of rejuvenation, nothing even remotely connected with the young was strewn about any of the yards she passed. It was as if that pied piper had come to Cleveland and whisked all their children away.
Here, right here in this parish, Our Lady of Chiztahova had to combine classes at the elementary school. Half the building was no longer in use. Time was when kids would burst out of the two story brick and window building but now, they just trickled. Now there was talk downtown about closing the school after this year.
The rustle of old leaves from last fall caught her attention. Everywhere she looked, there was a sense of lethargy, things seemed to be running down, wearing away. It wasn't just the sidewalks or the leaves, though there shouldn't have been this many leaves blowing around. There never use to be. It was more. Mr. Stinci needed gutters, there were puddles beneath one of the down spouts, a sure sign of trouble to come. Mrs. Wenieniski bushes hadn't been trimmed. Grotesque shoots violated the still visible trim line. Why had she just left it over the winter. Why, Anya asked herself, had she not noticed before.
Like urban cavities left unfilled, the store fronts buried here glared empty on almost every corner back inside the village within the city, back behind Harvard Ave. There had been at least ten little shops tucked into the neighborhood. Gone. Zwebieski's was the last to go. And they had been gone for over three years now. She stopped and peered into the dark window. The old butcher block was still there, back by the idle meat locker. A couple of empty shelves was all that was left of the orderly collection of groceries Mrs. Zwebieski kept for her little clutch of customers. Anya remembered the old woman, "Old woman, she was 20 years younger than I am today" she chuckled to herself. Mrs. Zwebieski had taught her how to cook like a wife. How to buy meat and more important in those days, how to make it last, how to get the most for your money, how to keep your husband full. "Try getting that over at the A&P " she heard herself say.
"Ah, silly old woman. You think too much. You think too much. Stevie will bring the kids today. You think too much." She mumbled to herself as she made an empty gesture with her free hand. at the empty shop. Anya left the old store behind and pulled her coat tight, turned the corner and walked into the shadowy side of the street toward what she prayed for, salvation
By the time she reached the Church, Anya felt empty. When she was waiting for services to start, she felt nothing. When once she felt her spirit sore every time she walked into the vestibule, today...... She tried hard to remember the last time she had felt the spirit, felt the joy. "Forgive me father," she prayed as she knelt into a pew, "I don't understand." Anya was almost convinced that the Holy Spirit had abandoned her Parish.
During mass, Anya raised her eyes and looked out over the congregation, something she could never remember doing before, and noticed how still it was. There were no baby's crying. No young mothers scurrying to the back of the church to change a full diaper. No fathers shushing rambunctious children. No young men stood solemnly at the back of the church slyly eyeing the blushing virgins sitting close to watchful parents. Even the priest was ancient. And there was only one altar boy, Anya couldn't remember the last time a young man said mass.
All she saw was knots of old people huddled in silent, lonely worship. And on Palm Sunday when there should have been faith brimming everywhere, Anya looked and saw people waiting on death.
Right before the readings from the Gospel, a shaft of early morning sunlight split and became multicolored as it suddenly streamed into the cavernous church through the beautiful, familiar stained glass windows. The energy made the dust hanging in the air start to dance. No one except Anya seemed to notice. It was the only sign of life she saw in the massive church.
Why did everyone have to leave? Over the years all the sons, all the daughters just stopped coming. Sure when they first married and moved on, they would return and attend church with the family, make a Sunday of it. But now? No one cared to worship in the church where they had been Baptized, received first Communion. She couldn't remember the last time Stevie had brought Colleen and the kids home for Church. Now they worship the lord Jesus Christ at St. Clemens, the parish in Lakewood with the elementary school bursting at the seams. And they didn't say a Polish mass.
Like clockwork he started in.
"Ma, ya gotta strike quick. Ya gotta take control." Anya's son, her baby boy, paced back and forth, from the dining room door into the kitchen and back through the doorway, all wound up just like his father would get when squawking about those "Irish bastards" down at the mill.
Colleen, for her part, sat quietly off to the corner behind the kitchen table watching as her cigarette smoke curled up to the ceiling. The two boys were in the basement, riding around on the tricycles they had gotten as a gift from Grandma last Christmas. Muffled giggles of mayhem rose up from the furnace vents on the baseboards.
"Look Ma, I got this friend, he's in real estate. He says we gotta act fast or we're gonna be left behind. Do you wanna be left behind?"
Stevie, Steve, they both always had friends in this, friends in that. Anya marveled at how many things, traits really, the two Steve's shared.
"Come on, Ma." He approached her with hands out in front, palms up.
Colleen flicked the ash off her cigarette, Anya looked across the table and watched as the ash fell, landing half in half out of the ceramic tray.
"Are you listening? This is important ya know, I don't think you should be taking this so lightly." Stevie paused to grab a cigarette from his wife's pack sitting on the table and began using it as a pointer. "Phil, that's my friend, he says they're gonna be here before you can say Jack Robinson." He glanced over at Colleen to see if this particular allusion was sufficient enough to cause her to take notice. One eyebrow arched upward. Stevie's brilliance had been acknowledged.
Anya, however, was mystified by all this talk about they.
"Ma, Phil tells me he can work out a swap. You see his company, Regal Real Estate, that's where he works. This Regal Real Estate company, they buy houses all over the Cleveland area. He's got this great idea that you swap this house here for a double over in Lakewood. Almost straight up. The best part is the people upstairs, there's an old couple up there now, they pay all the taxes, the mortgage and your electric bill." He paused for a moment to let it sink in before he went for the close.
"Ma, you don't need all this!" Her baby made a grand sweeping motion, encompassing all the space and room that was created once Steve, Stevie and Mary had all left her.
"Ma, you liked Lakewood. Remember the festival at St. Hedwigs last summer? It was nice, not like here back before the war, but..." he paused, searching for more points to make.
"And here's the best part." Colleen noticed that he was positively aglow now. "One of them national magazines," he glanced down at Colleen as he passed her by once again. "I think it was the Post, just named Lakewood the safest city in the whole US of A."
Stevie looked but saw no visible reaction from his mother but did notice she was starting to splick her fingernails. Splick, splick, splick. But Stevie was on a mission. He ignored this annoying habit that under other circumstances would have sent him completely over the edge.
"You'll be closer to me and Colleen. Yea, it'll be easier for you to help us with the kids. Ma, they love you so much and you... You're all the way over here...."
Stevie was cut short as the sound of a tricycle crash landing and the wail of an injured toddler drifted up from the basement tricycle road rally. Anya was the first to her feet. She was yelling down to the kids in her worried voice to "Play nice, play nice," as she scurried down the stairs to see how serious it all was.
By the time she reached bottom, the boys were laughing again, racing around the support polls like they were at the Indianapolis 500 or something. Seeing that nothing on her little darlings was broken, Anya walked over to the winter setup for her geraniums. She stepped up to the shelf Steve had built, what was it now, 25 - 30 years? Here, she could touch the very first one she put in the ground. She cut, transplanted, nurtured these geraniums for years. Even Steve, burly, blustering Steve loved the explosion of colors Anya coaxed out of the hard, steel-touched city soil. Why would she ever want to leave? How could she ever leave?
That Monday, after Palm Sunday, Anya sat on the express bus that each day hop scotched the white travelers passed the colored neighborhoods. She dared to lift her eyes and glance out the window. The street, Broadway Ave., and the store fronts and side streets stretching back to neighborhoods looked just like her Harvard Ave. except the people were dark, all shade of brown.
She looked back to the front of the bus and tried to ignore what was passing just outside her window. She shut her eyes and started to hum a Chopan tune but all she saw now was Stevie and Colleen at the kitchen table telling her how horrible "they" were, how property values would plunge and how awful it would be living with "them".
All this talk of coloreds and losing houses. Stevie pleading to move over by him. And it had to be now, right now, before it was too late, the coloreds were getting ready to move here, here where she lived. Anya knew nothing about these people. In all the years she took the bus to work at the hospital, she never noticed the dark faces in the neighborhoods she rode through to get to St. Alexis hospital. But now, the dark shapes that blurred by on the other side of the bus windows had taken hold of her.
"It's the Irish, Anya, they're the one's that'll find a fight in a phone booth. You can trust them colored fellas, they work hard." Steve was back to add his two cents.
She remembered, about two or three weeks ago, catching the eye of one woman, about her age, weary and stooped, just waiting at a corner bus stop. The bus Anya was riding stopped at the light but then continued on without opening the door. It wasn't an express stop. They looked at each other in that moment, eye meeting eye, two old women waiting for something to happen in their lives. And then it was over and the colored woman was gone, left behind in a black cloud of diesel exhaust.
Her mind was reeling.
Tony Z over to the A&P popped in and she heard him say, "The coloreds, oh excuse me, they want to be called Negroes, there comin'. Hell they're already on the other side of Harvard. You know that's only blocks away. I'm lookin'. Yes siree folks, I'm lookin'."
Nothing had changed, but everything was different.
That night, as Anya rinsed off the dish washing suds, she started to feel uneasy. She was getting short of breath, a tightness rose in her chest and a dark feeling of helplessness swept over her, frightening her like nothing had since she found her Steve slumped over in the kitchen chair that to this day stood propped against the wall by the doorway. Even her two grandchildren, the two boys who made it a point to be everywhere at once, stayed away from this chair, his chair. Anya let the large cast iron frying pan that she had just fried-up pork chops in slip from her hands, plopping back into the sink, splashing water everywhere. Startled, she backed away from the sink, instinctively feeling behind her for her chair. It was where it always was, on the side of the table that made it easy for her to navigate between the stove, the counter top, the ice box and the table. She sat down backward, away from the table facing out toward the rest of the kitchen.
For the first time since she was a girl of 17, she couldn't see his face. That strong loving face that had grabbed her up and then taken care of her for all those years was lost in the memory stream. Tears tumbled down her cheeks, gathering in the scar tissue below her chin, the scar that Steve still kissed even though it looked so horrible. She buried her face in the damp kitchen apron and cried like she hadn't cried in years.
What should she do? All that talk at the A&P. All the talk of Negroes. All the talk of getting out while the getting was good. She wanted to shut it all down, put it all away and just go back. What, dearest Jesus, had she done so wrong to be left so alone at a time like this?
Now she was having trouble staying focused on even the simple things that surrounded her. Nothing, nothing looked familiar. The curtains, the counter top, the white metal kitchen table, nothing looked the same. She felt like she had been somehow transferred into someone else's home. A dark, deep feeling of dread swept over her as she began to believe that this wasn't her house, that she and Steve had never been, that her whole life had been a dream. Anya slumped into her chair, dazed, waiting for some stranger to burst in, demanding to know what she was doing in their kitchen.
And then, the soft, gentle sound of a long forgotten waltz pierced through her fog. The radio that she had turned on when she started to fix supper was set to the station that played the Polish Hour. The show, their show, that still broadcast every night from 6:00 to 9:00, nudged her safely back into today. It was one of their melodies, a lovely melody that for the life of her she couldn't remember what the title was. Funny, it didn't matter as long as she had her sweet, sweet memories alive. Steve's strong hands held her gently as they twirled round and round whatever dance floor they found themselves on any of the hundreds of Saturday nights they spent together. When they danced, and they danced whenever they could, even when everything around them was going bad, he would stare into her eyes and smile like he was holding on to his own little piece of heaven on earth.
They danced through the house their first night all those years ago. She continued to twirl round and round in her mind, wet hands reflexively drying on her apron. When the waltz was over, she got up from her chair and walked from the kitchen down the hallway toward the front door. A new song, a lively funny polka, changed the tempo and the mood of the house just like that. Anya opened the front door and walked out onto the full length porch of their house, their home, taking the polka with her. She smiled as she drank in the mill-tinged fresh air of spring that had been a part of her life for almost 40 years.
She looked up and then down East 147th, bracing herself for what was to come. Late last summer almost every Elm on the street got the Dutch. All of those lovely trees, more than half of what was now there, would soon be gone. They had Oaks and Maples over in Lakewood, Stevie had said.
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