MATZO TACOS – THE BOOK
MATZO TACOS
Mauricio Gerson and Mindy Gibson
Chapter One: The Day Before
Mexico City, 1963
The day before the day my life changed in a very bad way was a beautiful day, a study in perfection. The sky was blue, the clouds white and puffy, birds were singing. It was a jump for joy, happy to be alive, kind of day, the kind of day that made you want to kick up your heels and dance right down the street, shake hands with strangers, hug your neighbors, a real zippy doo-dah, Fred and Ginger whirling, twirling, feather boa, kite flying kind of day. It was a day to put a soundtrack on, a day I could watch, over and over and over, the thrill of undiminished by the repetition of viewing. This is how I remember that day. I think it is the way people often recall the days, hours and minutes before the most awful things happen to them, the contrast between the regular time and the horrible time so drastic in our minds that the former must be gilded and perfect to balance the charred remains that are the remnants of the latter.
In truth, it was a normal, average okay day, a Saturday, the Sabbath, which meant little in my house as far as traditional Jewish observances go. In the secular ways that were common among many acculturated Jews in Mexico City, my parents were very busy every Shabbat, which is exactly what you were not supposed to be on that singular weekly day of rest and reflection.
There was no Saturday morning schul, no restrictions about driving cars or driving in them. They didn’t cease using electricity or even stop working although usually they did reserve the weekends for more pleasurable endeavors. My parents were social, very social and most every weekend, both Sunday and Saturday were busy. That Saturday the occasion was the Aboumrad wedding and my mother and father were both very, very busy ignoring Shabbat to get ready.
The Aboumrads were our neighbors and, like my parents, first generation immigrants to Mexico but unlike us, they were not Jewish but were Arabs, Lebanese-Christians or more accurately Christian-Lebanese, the Lebanese being the more significant to them. The Aboumrads were also the very successful owners of many businesses who would one day not long after this open their very own bank.
The Aboumrads lived on our block and like many Arabs, they were clannish, members of a tightly bound community that rarely socialized with outsiders. The Gersons, my family, were wealthy, successful business owners as well and like most Jews, very clannish too. The majority of my family’s social and business time was spent with our own kind so it was not our Jewishness or their Arab-ness that made the two families’ relationship unusual, but the insular nature of both groups that made it remarkable.
The friendship had begun seven years earlier when we’d moved in diagonally across the street from their double-lot home in Lomas, one of the most exclusive neighborhoods in the entire city. Alfredo Aboumrad took to my father quite quickly, most everyone did, and it wasn’t long before they were playing in the same neighborhood poker game – the Jewish one. Week after week my father won his money at those games yet Alfredo, who never liked losing at anything to anyone at any time, continued to play but losing to my father he didn’t mind so much, such was my father’s general affability.
“Easy come, easy go and so it will from you,” Alfredo would laugh, knowing the money would ultimately end up in the coffers of a casino somewhere in Las Vegas. As lucky as my father was when playing his friends in Lomas, when it came to the tables in Vegas he lost badly -and often. In Vegas his losses, that would be devastating to many, had their perks. Upon arriving in the city, courtesy limousines spirited my parents to the city’s poshest hotels. Bellman scurried to transport their bags up to the very special rooms the hotels comped, and without needing to check-in, my father would head for the tables as fast as his polished Gucci loafers could carry him, gliding elegantly across the plush casino carpets to his seat at a high stakes poker game. Once relieved of his friendly Lomas poker game winnings he would dip into his own pocket and lose even more. My father didn’t intend to lose but didn’t mind it either. He never lost more than he could easily afford, which was quite a lot.
Many who came from nothing, as my father had, couldn’t bear to part with a penny if it wasn’t necessary, their frugality of necessity becoming a frugality of fear that the newfound good fortune would depart as miraculously as it had arrived. My father was not one of them. Grateful for his fantastic life; a successful business that provided worldly wealth and comfort, the love of a beautiful wife and four bright, healthy kids, he had no intention or expectation any of it would ever change. If he couldn’t handle losing some coin in Vegas on occasion, or every visit, well, what a joyless life that would be.
Jose Gerson had begun life with his parents and siblings in the town of Vinnytsia, situated on the left bank of the Bug River in Eastern Europe, the town and its peoples defenseless victims of repeated power struggles, violence and persecution, existing in constant fear and despair. “That”, my father would say, “THAT, was joyless.” Losing money you could well-afford to live without, well that was joy itself.
The legacy of Vinnytsia and the Jews who lived there through the centuries was the story of so many towns in that part of the world and that of the many Jews scattered there. In the sixteenth century the town of Vinnytsia was controlled by the Podolia government and protected by two castles. The first recorded evidence of Jews being among its citizens is from 1532. No surprise to any Jews in the modern world, there is evidence of persecution and violence being perpetrated on said Jews by Tartars and Cossacks as early as that same century. During the Cossacks’ uprising against Polish rule, when the town was taken and pillaged by the Cossack’s chief hit man, Chmielnicki Bohden and his followers., the Jewish inhabitants of Vinnytsia were massacred. Not long after, Vinnytsia was retaken by Polish troops after which it fell yet again to the power of the Cossacks and Tatars, its rule changing hands in this way, many times over.
The town suffered further when the Haidamacks rampaged in 1768. The mission of these paramilitary bands was to disrupt the social order in Polish Ukraine. Robbing and murdering Jews was, as usual, part of their agenda. By that time there were no protecting castles or protecting anything so the eighteenth century Jewish and Catholic Vinnytsia citizens, also often victimized, sought refuge in a local Jesuit college.
By 1774 Vinnytsia was temporarily occupied by the Turks, and by the end of the eighteenth century was almost entirely ruined. About one hundred years later, Vinnytsia whose population of nearly 24,000 had become a fairly significant industrial presence in the area. Jewish community comprised more than half of the town’s residents had established thirteen synagogues, a Jewish school, and a Jewish hospital. The ancient industry of alcohol distillation, to which the town owes its name continued and most of the important distilleries were Jewish owned.
In April of 1905, a drunken mob of mostly part time army reservists invaded Vinnytsia, demolishing the Jewish stores and severely beating any Jews they caught in the streets. Used to such attacks, the Jews had formed organized self-defense forces and this time they fought back, repelling the drunken mob with injuries sustained on both sides. Although order was eventually restored by non-Jewish local police and official military, this was Vinnytsia life in Russia-Poland-Russia and, my ancestors knew, it always would be.
In 1919 with World War I just ended, Josef Stalin and his particular brand of Communism was on the rise. The pogroms my people had suffered through for so many decades of Cossack rule would only become worse, to replaced by new and evermore heinous subjugations and violence.
My great uncle by marriage Nathan, was the first to make the break, leaving everything in Vinnytsia and heading to California with his wife Miriam. Miriam’s brother, my grandfather Abraham, was more cautious and stayed behind with his wife, my Bubbe Feige. Nathan and his wife Miriam settled in Los Angeles and sent Feige and Abraham letter upon hyperbolic letter touting all this new world had to offer. Abraham wasn’t convinced. Nathan was predisposed to embellishment so could he really trust? Many years passed. The quality of life in Vinnytsia worsened and finally Abraham understood that leaving was necessary. When he finally came to this decision America’s expansive borders had closed and my grandfather and his family were locked out but all was not lost. They soon learned that next door, just a little to the south lay another option – Mexico.
Booming after its own recent revolution, the doors of the developing country were flung open wide allowing in all who wished to enter. Still the same careful man, Abraham didn’t pack up straight away but sent his oldest son, my great-uncle Samuel, to check out the situation. Would this Mexico thing be as good as Nathan’s letters said America was?
By foot, carriage and train, Samuel made his way from their village in Russia to the Netherlands to board a ship from Amsterdam to Veracruz. It was good Samuel wrote back. At least it was good enough, better than where they were. Not long after, Abraham, his wife Fanny, and the four other sons; Solomon, Leon, Peshke, and my father, Yashmak, made their way across the Atlantic to join him. Soon after their arrival in Mexico, the family began to adapt to the new surroundings. Solomon stayed Solomon and Leon stayed Leon but Peshke became Pedro and Yoshke, the youngest, would become Jose. Their mother Feige was now Fanny and the Mexicanization of the Abraham Gerson family had begun.
Abraham and his sons started a textile business, that would become so successful it would grow to become other businesses, an empire of sorts that included real estate development, construction materials manufacturing and banking so much so that all of the owners and their families could live wonderful lives in the new country. Each of Abraham’s sons found nice, European immigrant descended Jewish girls, married them and bought luxurious homes in the lushly landscaped, affluently populated neighborhood of Lomas, the social equivalent of Beverly Hills but without the movie stars. The Gersons’ houses were all large and, from the outside, unassuming. All of them hidden by high walls and locked gates, to protect from intruders but also to conceal their good fortune from the ‘unberufen’, evil eye, of the envious who might wish us harm. Although they’d not made it to America to settle, by the time, my cousins and siblings were born, the Gerson brothers and their spouses had the financial resources to go to the states as tourists whenever they wanted. The “Jose branch” – that was us – went often; to shop in New York, Houston, and Los Angeles, and to gamble in Las Vegas.
This Shabbat Saturday, where I begin my tale, “El Chino”, the oldest Aboumrad son was getting married to Virginia Abud, a girl chosen for him many years earlier when their parents arranged the match. Just as arranged marriages were traditions, so it was that Alfredo Aboumrad Jr. was called as he was. In his culture it was said that every man has three names: one by which his parents call him; another, by which he is known to the outside world; and a third, the most important, the name which his own deeds have procured for him. Alfredo Aboumrad Jr. whose hooded eyes were slightly slanted was called El Chino, “The Chinese Guy”. Victoria and El Chino were about to be married as wealthy Arabs should be, with a traditional, extravagant wedding. Their families would be hosting 1,000 – yes one thousand – relatives and friends at a celebratory luncheon in the Aboumrad mansion’s fabulously landscaped gardens, which were of course, also hidden by high walls and gates, purely for safety, not unberufen-phobia.
My father’s unberufen tactics were learned from his father. Abraham’s was so fearful of being targeted by the envy of a malicious “friend” or stranger, he avoided ostentatious displays of wealth at all costs. It suited his low key personality and he was not one to dismiss superstition that had been passed on for generations. He knew good fortune could bring about horrible things and made sure his children knew it too. My family was bemused that other Jews, especially Americans, didn’t live by unberufen rules. How brazen and ignorant those Jews in American were, we thought, to flaunt and parade the abundant fruits – and cars, and houses, and clothes, and jewelry – of their labor, most often reaped from hard work, education and intelligence, but perceived by those outside the tribe to have been won through trickery, thievery and greed. It was brash and, often, tasteless. Still, as ostentatious as American Jews were, they were no match for wealthy Arabs and there was no better time than a wedding for flamboyance.
Knowing that most of the women at the wedding would be decked out like Christmas Trees, bejeweled beyond the social expectations for a backyard “comida” or luncheon, even if it was a wedding, my mother would make sure that along all the puffery and glitz, she’d be the one to notice. Because the Arab women would wear very bright colors, she’d chosen a stunningly elegant, off-white suit with a pencil skirt that hugged her well-formed hips and a hem tastefully ending just above the knee. Martha, as I often thought of her, but never called her, had purchased the suit two week’s earlier in Houston during our most recent shopping trip to the States.
My father had sent my sister Nancy, my mother’s mother, Mania, and me to partake in the three-day shopping spree. Martha found the suit at Neiman Marcus. Unconcerned with the “needless markup” the store was known for, she bought it. She had known it was “the outfit” the minute she laid eyes upon it. Beautifully tailored, sophisticated and fashioned of extremely fine, delicate wool, the outfit was high-style. A waist-length, “very Jackie Kennedy” jacket was what first caught her eye, that…and the trim. The sleeves, collar and even the jacket’s four button front closures were covered in real leopard. She quickly found a matching leopard pillbox hat. I’d sat on the dressing room floor while she posed in the department store mirrors, tilting her head this way and that, turning and discerning, she knew she’d draw stares. I was in awe.
The morning of the wedding, my mother stood before her own trifold mirror, adding a pearl necklace, pearl earrings and her amazing pearl ring, the large center stone surrounded by marquis cut diamonds. I watched from the doorway. She looked beyond beautiful! My father opened the triangle formed by the three mirrors to ask her, as he always did, to adjust his tie. It was the new one she had so considerately purchased for him at Neiman’s the same day.
I watched him look at her and saw his jaw drop. He almost gasped. It pleased me that he thought she was as gorgeous as I did. It made me happy, and safe, that they were so in love with each other still. He told her that they were so dressed up no one would believe they were going to a backyard wedding, on a Saturday afternoon. He moved close and put his hands on each side of her small waist.
“You look stunning Martha,” he’d said.
She’d stroked his freshly shaven cheek. I liked how her perfectly manicured shell pink nails, and the diamond and pearl ring twinkled, even in daylight.
“So do you, Jose.”
My father bent to kiss her forehead knowing better than to muss her highly styled hair or her freshly applied make-up. He turned toward the master bedroom door.
“My lady?” With his right hand he motioned gracefully toward their exit.
My mother slipped her hand through the crisp triangle of his crooked left arm and he winked at me as they passed. They walked like that, arm in arm down the stairs and across the street to make their entrance.
As the wedding commenced at the Aboumrad’s, party activity began at our house too as our servants hurried to get set for the post-wedding poker game my father had arranged. He played in two poker games on a regular basis. In one, the men were all Jewish, the other was a mixed bag. Mr. Aboumrad played in the latter. When the wedding reception wound down, the men from that game, all of whom were invited to the wedding, would slip out, the groom’s own father included, and, out of sight of other departing guests, they’d scurry across the street to our house to play poker all night. The games took place in our family room downstairs. When it was Jewish poker night, the women would come along and hang out together upstairs in the formal living room, eating, drinking coffee, and mostly yakking the night away until their husbands’ game was over. But this wasn’t that game and so even though our servants only had to get ready for the men, there was still a lot of work to be done.
Sitting at the top of the stairs I waited for my cousin Alex to call and collect me for our own little party – the pick-up baseball game we played in the street in front of our houses. From my vantage point I could see the front door. I heard my brother Jack, the oldest of the four of us, calling out to our cook. He was, he told them, ravenously hungry and I’d noticed, becoming extremely lazy of late so couldn’t be bothered to put together his own snack and probably wanted to mooch off the poker game spread. I could hear clanging of pots being pulled from racks and cabinets but didn’t smell any food yet. Jack would probably leave the kitchen disappointed. I imagined him peering into the giant porcelain bowl, disappointed to find only raw masa harina, waiting to become dough that our cook would turn into tortillas. Her wet hands would shape the masa into golf ball sized orbs and roll them until smooth before flattening them into thin, pancake sized discs she would then cook on the enormous cast iron skillet or comal that sat on the stove, hot and ready. I knew the tortillas wouldn’t be cooked until just before the game so they were fresh for the poker players. Vegetables were probably already washed and draining in large colanders. The chopping sounds I heard meant the cook and her helpers were doing prep work, expertly dicing onions and mincing cilantro for the salsas and guacamole. I knew that if lazy Jack looked in the refrigerator he’d find smoked salmon but all the bagels had been eaten. I’d had the last one for breakfast.
In the dining room, the good china and freshly polished silver were already laid out on the table. Porcelain serving bowls and crystal decanters were lined up along the buffet and freshly pressed cloth napkins were piled high on a silk covered dining chair waiting to be pushed through sterling napkin rings.
“It’s unbelievable,” he said pushing past me to get down the stairs.
“What is?” I asked. I smacked a brand new baseball over and over into my brother Jimmy’s old mitt. I liked the thump the ball made as it landed in the glove’s well-worn webbing.
”There isn’t a thing to eat in there.” Jack waved a half-consumed banana toward the kitchen and shook his head. “I mean no food, all this work and no one in this house is getting married today.”
“It’s poker night,” I said, without looking up or stopping.
“Aaah, ‘the yentas’, Jack liked to call the wives of the poker players matchmakers because my mother’s friends always had some daughter or niece or second cousin’s wife’s sister that would be perfect for him. They couldn’t help themselves. Jack was too good-looking not to try but they didn’t realize they had no chance. My brother wasn’t interested in “nice Jewish local girls”. He preferred visiting American ones better, easier to get into bed and then they were gone, back to the States, fun, easy, no commitments.
“Nah, it’s not Jewish poker night. It’s the other one. No matchmakers tonight. You don’t have to stay away.”
Jack chuckled. “I won’t be here in either case little guy. It’s Saturday night. I’ve got plans.”
“I’m sure you do.” I smiled and nodded knowingly even though I really didn’t know anything. But I could imagine as much as any 10 year old might. Jack continued down the stairs to grab the newspaper from the table by the front door.
My biggest brother certainly enjoyed the privileges of his well-funded lifestyle. Jack did not inherit the unberufen gene. It was not in his make-up to pass on the more expensive, sportier car, the better-woven wool blazer, the Italian shoes bought in New York and, especially lately, the chicly attired young women who traveled in Mexico City’s best circles and hung around the hottest clubs. But at almost 18 years of age, he had no interest in dating rich Jewish girls when there were so many Americans available. And he was quite an attraction to them too. Jack was a fun guy. I appreciated his snarky remarks and even his somewhat abrasive personality. He seemed so much older than he used to be and was, I realized close to leaving the house. I made a conscious decision to enjoy the infrequent attention he gave me.
The telephone rang and I rushed to answer. It was Alex. I didn’t see Jack anymore so I started to leave. He was probably in the upstairs family room engrossed in the paper. Nevertheless, as if my whereabouts concerned him, I yelled “I’m going to play baseball.” If he answered, I didn’t hear it. I ran down the stairs banging into our newest maid, Isabel, coming up the steps carrying a huge basket of clean laundry. “Sorry,” I sang out as the heavy green lacquered front door banged shut behind me.
When I reached the corner I saw that many of the regular players had arrived. Several were playing catch while others stretched or just sat on the curb lazily chewing gum and waiting. Alex was outside his gate joking around with his chauffeur Manuel. I was anxious to play and happy to see that the chauffeurs had started to gather. The game could start.
We’d tried to play kids vs. chauffeurs a few times but after several embarrassing defeats everyone decided it would be better to split the adults and create two mixed teams. It wasn’t that some of the boys weren’t impressive; they were, although I myself was not a threat. Still even collectively we were no match for the more talented, very much larger, faster, stronger, grown men. Of all of them, Manuel was the best and I hoped to be on his team every week. He was, far and away, the best hitter and an awesome outfielder with an amazing arm. Manuel could throw someone out at home on a deep fly ball eliminating the sacrifice fly threat. He’d saved quite a few games with that arm. I don’t know how far the outfield was from home plate and, in retrospect, since we were playing in the street, it couldn’t really have been that distant. So maybe Manuel wasn’t as unbelievable as I remembered but we thought he was. Alex’s two sisters were enamored of Manuel too. Very good-looking, he had a beautiful white, wide, amazing smile. Sara and Raquel blushed whenever he flashed it for them. Of course, I wasn’t gushy over him the way they were. Well not exactly.
After the chauffeurs had dropped off their employers, many of them heading to the Aboumrad’s party, we lined up and the two captains picked by coin toss selected their players. I didn’t get Manuel and was selected for the ‘away team’. We had to bat first.
Not the most talented hitter, I was always anxious waiting for my turn to bat, at the bottom of the line-up, always near the bottom. I sat cross-legged on the sidewalk grass. I didn’t expect to bat until the second or third inning. I wiped my sweaty palms on my pants and realized I hadn’t changed into play clothes. I was wearing the new ones we’d bought at Sakowitz in Houston, when I’d gone shopping with Martha, my grandma and Nancy, only a few weeks before. It was warm for autumn in Mexico City and too hot for these pants but I really liked them. I had been too anxious to wait until the weather cooled to wear them but I knew I shouldn’t have been playing baseball in them.
The sound of bat hitting ball, a loud thud more than a crisp crack, startled me. I looked up to see Jackie Kahan’s hit float into right field. My team was having a great inning, loading the bases with the first three batters and now with just one out, we already had two runs and the bases were still loaded. My younger cousin Mark was playing in right field that day. He was three years younger but insisted on playing and neither Alex nor I had the heart to tell him he couldn’t. Manuel was out in center and I saw him running hard trying to get to the ball but even the fabulous Manuel couldn’t get there in time. The ball bounced softly out of reach of Mark’s halfheartedly outstretched glove. The runners on second and third headed home.
I shook my head. Mark really ought to be playing first, or not at all. If I were honest with myself I would have admitted I liked Mark to play with us. I looked good by comparison. Jackie’s cousin Joe Kahan had been on first base, hit by a pitch, and counting on Mark’s inept play he hadn’t even bothered to tag up and ran straight for third. Joe, a little bit chubby, huffed his way to second and thus, even so early in the game, batting eighth I was up: runners on first and second, two out.
At the plate I wiped my hands on my new pants. Then I wiped the handle of the bat on the pants. Then I propped the bat against my crotch as I’d watched professional’s do on TV and wiped my hands again. I stepped out of the box. I stepped back in and then stepped out once more. I took a deep breath.
Fernando, a chauffeur pitcher, stepped off the mound. “You ready or what?”
“Ready for whatever junk you got,” I yelled. I was short and not very good but I had attitude.
“You’re in for it now Chaparro!”
That guy always called me Chaparro, “shorty” and it never failed to piss me off. I was a little small for my age, okay a lot small, but that kind of insulting nickname was totally uncalled for. Unlike my father, my older brothers, my sister and even my maternal grandmother, I wasn’t athletic by nature. I would never play any sport competitively. In later years I would work out regularly at the gym with my best friend Samuel and, in fact, became extremely dedicated to those workouts, but for reasons I didn’t see at the time.
At ten, I was nothing to be reckoned with. I was no Hank Greenberg I thought to myself. Actually, I didn’t really know who Hank Greenberg was. I’d been told he played in the 1930’s and 40’s and my father talked about him whenever Jews and sports were said in the same sentence, which wasn’t often. But, at that moment, with everyone waiting, it was the thought of the mythic Greenberg who came to mind. I was going to smash that ball out of there, down the avenue, to the next neighborhood!
I took the first pitch – a ball, and the second pitch – a strike. I waited for something solid, down the middle. I didn’t get it and watched the third pitch whiz by just a little high and a little outside. The fourth pitch was the one. I knew it before that jackass Fernando even threw it. I was out in front of the fat, slow curve by a mile. Two and two. The next pitch was in the zone, just slow enough for me to see it. I couldn’t get all the way around on it but heard the contact and began running like crazy for first base. I may not have been skilled but I was fast. I ran like the wind, a fierce, intense, destructive wind. The ball bounced softly back to Fernando who fielded it easily and, mockingly I’d say, waited for me to make it two thirds of the way down the line before tossing it softly to Alex manning first. But I wasn’t giving up. I kept running as hard as I could. I purposely knocked into Alex using all my body weight. He held on, easily. I was out. End of inning.
I walked off, tripping over the wooden wedge we used as the first base marker. On the way down, even before I hit the ground, I heard that sound, the unmistakably dreadful sound of high quality, woolen pants with a 100% silk lining, bought and altered overnight in a high end department store in Texas, tearing. Not a seam opening, not a zipper separating but the raw ripping sound fabric makes when it tears where it wasn’t made to tear – right across the knee. Standing up I wiped my filthy hands on the thighs as if I didn’t care. I wasn’t hurt. The pants were now filthy too. That was better. I thought the dirtiness of the pants could distract my mother from the fact of their true and permanent ruination. I tried to look unperturbed. I saw Manuel saunter in from center. Alex patted me on the back and walked to his curbside dugout. Fernando smirked. “Nice one Chaparro”. I gave him the finger and turned, walking away to get my glove like I just didn’t care. I was dead anyway. My mother was going to kill me.
MATZO TACOS
Chapter 2: The Day Of
Mexico City, October 20th 1963
When the game had ended I was afraid to go home. Instead, I went to my cousin’s house and called my own for permission to sleepover with Alex to delay the inevitable ugly scene the ruined pants would trigger. Even if it was just for one evening, I prayed for a reprieve. The phone rang and then finally the maid picked up. No, they weren’t home she told me. I hung up and 20 minutes later tried again, still not there. I continued to call every 20 to 30 minutes until my parents finally returned from the wedding. When I heard my mother’s voice, I wavered. I could throw myself on the mercy of the court but from a the distance of Alex’s house next door with no visual evidence in hand, my mother’s reaction might be more reasoned. I wavered back instead asking, in the most wheedling, obsequious voice I could muster, if she’d let me sleep over.Tired from the party, she agreed more quickly than I’d imagined. A brief reprieve but better than none. I knew that eventually, when she saw the very new, very expensive and very badly ripped pants, a severe punishment would be inevitable. I imagined the yelling, the grounding, the guilt and the shame, and shuddered.
The next morning I woke very early. I hadn’t slept well and several times through the night found myself awake, staring into the darkness, fearfully trying to devised a plan for the pants. Finally it had dawned on me. I would leave Alex’s in the wee hours, early enough that I could sneak into the house unnoticed even before the household help had risen. Like a tiny mouse, I could scurry upstairs to my room, quickly change my clothes, and hide the torn pants. Visualizing my room I’d realized it wasn’t much of a plan since I couldn’t figure anything out beyond the sneaking. With so many people always in the business of my room, cleaning it, putting away clothes, organizing closets and drawers, keeping my limited life in order, I had no certain place to stash the pants where they’d go unnoticed. The garbage came to mind. Surely, with so many other new pairs of pants, my mother wouldn’t remember this particular one. Hah! That was fantasy. My mother might not remember school friend’s names or whether I’d had my breakfast on any given day, but she could name and describe in great detail every single item of clothing I owned as well as tell you when and where it was bought, and how much it cost. She might not notice this pair’s absence immediately but eventually there’d be a family event or party when she’d suddenly remember them and decide they were ideal for that particular occasion. I needed a better end game.
Then it hit me – Adelita! My nanny was an amazingly skilled seamstress. Could she fix the pants? Yes. But could she do fabric magic to render that terrible tear unnoticeable? Could that horrific gash be made undetectable? No, I realized. It was not possible to sew the pants well enough. There would be a seam where there wasn’t one before and even buried in the pattern of the busy plaid, my mother’s eagle eyes would notice. It was impossible to sneak anything by her. Many years later, I’d revise that belief to “almost impossible”. Temporarily, I could hide the pants in the back corner of my closet. It would be Sunday and so the household help had the day off. Further, because it was Sunday our whole family was going to my Grandma Mania’s in Condesa, as we did every week. We’d have a traditional Jewish meal and I’d have time to figure out a next step.
Sundays were neither the beginning of Shabbat nor the end so I don’t know why we had what other Jews would consider a Shabbat dinner on Sundays but that is what we’d always done and I looked forward to those dinners all week. I loved visiting Mania, having the whole family together, even my often absent teenage siblings and there was the food too. Oh the food! Even though I wasn’t one for eating very much, I ate a lot at those Sunday dinners, relishing every morsel. Sundays were lovely. I had to leave my thoughts of the pants behind. If I wavered and fessed up my mother would be pissed off and an angry Martha could ruin everyone’s day. I knew that if I did it while we were at my grandmothers, Mania and do her best to diffuse the situation but I didn’t want her to have to. I was really in a pickle.
My Grandma Mania was my mother’s mother. She was a formidable, imposing and vibrant woman whose Hebrew name, Malka, meant Queen. At sixty two she was still six feet tall in stocking feet and in impeccable health. She never missed doing 30 minutes of exercise did every morning nor her annual physicals at the Mayo Clinic. She took the time, trouble and money to fly to Minnesota for these rather routine doctor’s visits because Mayo had the best reputation. I don’t know if it actually was the best but my family thought so, and so did many others in their circles, and that was enough. With my family, even the somewhat more modest Mania, it was important that things we had and did were ‘the best’. The best chicken for the soup, the best doctors for our health and the best pants in Neiman Marcus which was the best store in the U.S. making it the best store in the world.
Every year when Mania went to Mayo she’d impress the hospital staff with her special stunt. Standing atop two telephone books, she’d reach down and touch the floor with flat, open hands never allowing the tips of her long strong fingers to cheat, not even a little bit. If imagining it doesn’t sound difficult, just try it. As Mania told it, the nurses there were always astonished. Each year some new, young girl who’d never seen Mania’s stunt before would imagine that she could do it herself. More than once Mania told us how she’d leapt in to save the “dear girl” from toppling right onto her head.
But my Baby Mania, as I called her, wasn’t only about physical fortitude, she had internal fortitude as well. Did he just say “Baby Mania”, you’re asking yourself. I know that calling my grandmother Baby sounds really, really, really weird but bebe was the closest Spanish approximation to bubbe, the Yiddish word for Grandma. The Spanish word bebe translates to the English word ‘baby’ and so it happened. I suppose this type of odd diminutive occurs in other multilingual families or perhaps it was just ours. But back to my Baby Mania who was a fantastical mix of brain and brawn with a passion for both intellectual and cultural pursuits.
Born in Bialystok, then part of Russia and home to the famous bread creation – the bialy – in case you aren’t from New York…or Mexico City, Mania learned to speak in Russian and, as in almost every Jewish household in the diaspora, learned Yiddish at the same time. By the time she’d married and had given birth to my mother, Bialystok had become part of Poland so it was fortunate she’d already learned to speak that language too. To those idioms, Mania later added German and then even Esperanto. The ambitious creator of the seriously flawed, and failed new era language, Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof, who desired to create a true international language no country or people could claim as its own, was himself from Bialystok, likely spurring Mania’s interest.
At the age of 24 Mania thrust her innate practicality aside when she met Julius Moscovitz a suave heartthrob from Vienna. Julius was unbelievably handsome and possessed the fatal mix of characteristics that has felled many a sensible young woman; he was an artist without, as the saying goes, two dimes to rub together. They studied Esperanto together believing intrinsically in its potential to change the intercultural dynamics of the world, and all the while Mania reveled in Julius’ aesthetic proclivities and bohemian veneer, losing all sense in the recesses of his creative soul. Mania fell in love for the first time and no different than so many others, it was fast, hard and, like Esperanto, doomed to failure.
Ironically, conceding to the conventions of the times, they’d actually married and the indigent young couple lived together in Mania’s parents’ large home. It was there that they conceived and birthed a healthy child. Even more ironic is that the progeny of this bohemian duo was My mother. It was also in that family home that my Baby Mania had finally come to her senses and despite his pathetic pleading, told Julius that their marriage was over.
A few years after the liberation from Julius, pogroms and growing anti-Semitism drove Mania and her family from its Russian-Polish home. In 1927 they hopped a ship headed for Mexico and once there Mania became conversationally fluent in Spanish and reasonably proficient in English too. Mania never saw my biological grandfather Julius again. The last information about him the family received was during World War II and they learned he was still in Europe. Later, when the war ended, Mania tried but never found information about what happened to him. We all believe him dead but where, how, and when, we would never know and didn’t want to consider too much.
Mania married for the second time. She met Boris Eidelman not long after arriving in Mexico. After they married he legally adopted my mother and together the happy couple opened a tailor shop in downtown Mexico City. My mother didn’t even know Boris was not her biological father until her teens when a gossipy school friend told her. To Boris, my mother was his child – their only. A few years after they married, Mania became pregnant. They’d been married a few years when Mania, a few months pregnant, was in a car accident. She was not seriously hurt but her unborn baby was killed and she was unable to bear children thereafter.
Despite the tragedy, I was told it remained a good marriage until sometime after my mother and father married when Boris started to go “insane”. Out of nowhere he asked my grandmother for a divorce to which she eventually acceded. A few months later he wanted them to get married again and after months of insisting and pleading my grandmother gave in only to find herself faced with the same troubles a few months later when Boris again asked for a divorce. Mania complied once more after which he asked her to marry him again for what would be the third time around. By that point, my grandmother was seeing a gentleman named Mr. Steider whom she liked very much and instead of going back to Boris, she married him.
Perhaps Boris could not live without Mania, maybe he was truly insane, maybe depressed, probably bipolar but I suppose it doesn’t really matter. The end was the end no matter the cause. Boris committed suicide before I was born and the only grandfather I knew was Mr. Steider. That is what I called him when I saw him every Sunday at the family meals. Mania had been married for more than 20 years when Mr. Steider passed away after which Mania married Mr Polov, a gentleman she met in the park. I don’t know how that romance transpired but it was be her last – she was in her seventies. Mania Moskovitz -Eidelman-Steider- Polov was Mania Polov when she passed. It wasn’t until many years after her death that I put the pieces together and realized that my strong, seemingly invincible Baby Mania was afraid of being alone. I thought it was only right that had always managed to find someone to be with her. An amazing lady like my Baby Mania should not have had to live afraid.
That Sunday, I was anxious to get to her house to visit with her and eat the fatty, peasant food she prepared so well. The youngest of her grandchildren, I was on the small side with a tiny, finicky appetite to match but that day I was uncharacteristically ravenous. I had left Alex’s house so early I hadn’t had breakfast and, once home, secreting away the pants was my priority. Now that they were temporarily handled, I could only think about the food. Most of my family raved about the appetizer – gefilte fish, made from scratch. It was good but my favorite was the second course of chicken soup and Mania’s special matzo balls with their surprise inside. A large and delicious crispy chicken skin gribene.
It is my contention to this very day, with many, many matzo balls literally under my belt, that my grandmother made the most tantalizing, delectable indescribably delicious matzo balls in the entire world. I know some will argue that they like their matzo balls with teeth, a little firm to the bite, some like them even harder than that and to each his own but I would argue that this is not a matzo ball at its best. Mania made her matzo balls very, very light and fluffy, perfectly round and luscious with the rich, cholesterol laden goodness that only rendered chicken fat can impart. Sure, some other cooks can do this but Mania’s matzo balls were all that plus more. They each had a special surprise inside. Hidden at the center of each golden orb was my gribene surprise; chicken skins that had been cooked down until crisp. Sautéed with onions the fatty treat is usually added to chopped liver, spread on matzo the way cream cheese is eaten on bagels, or added to still warm chopped hard-boiled eggs – also one of my favorites it should be noted. But the gribenes cooked inside Baby Mania’s already perfect matzo balls was true low brow culinary perfection. She particularly loved to make them for my father who she affectionately called by his Jewish name -Yoshke. My dad always asked for seconds and sometimes even thirds. Between the two of us we really could pack them away and Mania always made plenty extra.
Our Sunday meal was always four courses. The gefilte fish or chopped liver, then the soup to be followed by a roasted chicken or sometimes beef braised with carrots and honey adding a touch of sweetness to the already rich dish. Mania’s loved her sweets including the wine she made herself. Every year right before the Jewish holidays she fermented crushed grapes in large glass tanks. For weeks at a time she’d taste and test until satisfied. When the wine was ready she would serve it, telling us the ‘vintage’ which to her meant the exact time the wine had been aged – 20 days, 13 weeks, seven months. She made so much it would usually last the entire year of Sundays. On those rare occasions when the last year’s wine was gone and the new wine wasn’t ready, she’d reluctantly offer the Manischewitz she always kept in the house for such emergencies. Instead of fermentation times Mania would offer apologies throughout the meal. I disliked both wines equally and could never tell the difference.
I successfully entered the house unnoticed, quietly opening the massive, green lacquered wooden door and with shoes in hand so they wouldn’t clap against the marble floors, I tiptoed my way into the large foyer, paused under the staircase and waited. It was quite a few hours to the meal at Mania’s and my stomach was growling. I tensed hoping the noise wasn’t loud enough for anyone else who might be awake to hear. I’d have to grab a snack after hiding the pants. I had started up the stairs when I heard the jarringly loud ring of the telephone, startled I almost dropped my shoes. It was early for phone calls on any day but especially early on a Sunday morning. I heard Adelita quietly tell another servant she was going to wake “La Señora Martha”. This was odd. Everyone knew better than to wake my mother unless it was really important. Adelita’s hushed urgent tone alarmed me and I knew something bad was on the other end of that phone line. My father’s parents came to mind. In their mid-seventies, both of my paternal grandparents were sick with Alzheimer’s, although it wasn’t called that then. One of them must have died. I stayed in the hallway. Concerned about the call but still conscious of my predicament, I was careful to keep my leg straight to best conceal the ripped fabric. Adelita walked right by me, very fast, not even acknowledging my presence, intent on her mission to wake my mother. I followed quietly staying far enough behind not to be noticed.
In my mother’s bedroom Adelita first opened the curtains, the jarring daylight breaking across the rumpled bed illuminating my sleeping mother and the empty rumpled space beside her. My dad wasn’t there. His poker games often ran so late into the night they didn’t end till morning but it was already after eight. I remembered that my parents needed to get up early to attend the unveiling of a matzeiva. Their close friend Florencia had lost her father the year before and, as was tradition, the matzeivah, tombstone, was to be “unveiled” that day marking an official end to the Jewish year of mourning the immediate family had observed. My father must have decided to go to the unveiling himself. He always sought to do kindnesses for my mother so it was not unusual for him to handle family obligations alone and let her sleep. He spoiled her. I could imagine his explanation, “She looked like an angel sleeping and I couldn’t wake her up that early in the morning.” Maybe he had left for the cemetery and then gone to the golf course for his Sunday game.
My father had become, if not obsessed, very, very focused on his golf game and his commitment had been paying off. Determined to improve his handicap, he was preparing intensely for another tournament. The year before, in the first official tournament held by the BellaVista Golf Course, he’d earned second place in the “B” Category and this year he was determined to win first place which would allow him to move up to the “A” category, the highest amateur level. After that, he could play professionally. I heard the servants saying my father had been gone about two hours when the call came in. He’d had just enough time to attend the unveiling and get to the golf club.
My mother stepped out of her bedroom and called for all of us.
“Jack, everyone, come in here.” Her voice, usually low and measured, was quivery.
Yawning and crusty–eyed, my brothers and sister emerged from their rooms and assembled in the hall. No one found it odd that I was already there, wide-awake and fully dressed in the same clothes I’d worn the day before. Gathering us into her room my mother motioned for us to sit on the rumpled bed from which she’d just risen. My siblings didn’t have any clue what this was about, their sleepy faces expressionless. But I was prepped. I knew bad news was coming. Someone was dead.
My mother steeled herself, “The golf course just called. Your father isn’t feeling well. I need everyone to come with me so please get ready quickly. Jack, you’ll drive.” She turned her back on us and marched to her closet, quickly pulling on a pleated skirt beneath her robe.
I didn’t understand this. What was she saying? No one said a word as we turned our backs and headed single file toward the bedroom door. First one in, the last to leave, I heard a grating hiss behind me that I thought was the sound of her skirt’s side zipper. Recalling the sound later I realized it was not metal on metal but the raw sound of restrained hysteria exhaled between gritted teeth.
Standing in the upstairs guest bathroom I would be able to hear everyone when they were ready to go so I slipped in, leaning back against the door I’d closed behind me. I shut my eyes and concentrated very, very hard. Arms tight to my sides, my fingers crossed and curled into tightened fists, I prayed. I’d never prayed casually or often and so had no ritual or special stance. I didn’t bow my head like in synagogue and of course, being Jewish, would never kneel. I just stood, spine straight, muscles clenched squeezing my crossed fingers harder and harder talking inside my head, my plea faster and more urgent with each recitation.
“Please God, please, please, please don’t let anything happen to my Dad. He’s such a good guy; don’t let anything bad happen to him. I never ask you anything and I’m not even asking you anything for me now but for my Daddy. Please protect him God. Please.”
Deep in my chant I didn’t at first hear my mother start down the stairs calling us to come until all of a sudden her voice was so loud I jolted from my trance-like state and ran down the stairs to join them. Jack was already in the car, ready to drive. We didn’t know what we were going to find at the golf course but my mother’s silent, streaming tears gave us permission to fear the worst. No one spoke. Everyone sobbed.
Arriving at the golf course, Jack drove straight toward the clubhouse and the large group of people gathered at its entrance. I saw several of my father’s friends in the crowd. Before the car was fully stopped my mother was out the door, running inside, screaming.
“Where is he? Where is he? Take me to him,” Then, softly, “please.”
A man we didn’t know pointed her to the men’s dressing room. Other men tried to stop her but she pushed her way past, Jack and Jimmy following. I slipped in right behind while others successfully held Nancy outside. The body was on a bench, a white sheet covering everything but the feet. My mother went down on her knees and bent over the body sobbing in a way I’d never heard anyone cry before. I began screaming and when I didn’t stop two men pulled me out. As I was dragged away I could see my brothers standing to the side. Jack was very still, tears running from his eyes. Jimmy stood stoic, angry.
Outside the locker room door, Nancy was crying still not knowing anything more than she had in the house or in the car.
“What happened,” she asked. “How is he?’
I could not answer. I couldn’t do anything but cry.
“Mauricio! Can’t you hear me? What happened?”
It was a silly question. She knew. My hysteria, my mother’s anguished screams and the odd behavior of the men in the hallway had told her everything. I couldn’t help her.
One of our cousins, also named Mauricio, was standing in the crowd. Just seventeen, the “other Mauricio” “el Otro Mauricio” as he was called by our immediate family, rose to the occasion. Normally goofy and awkward, he approached confidently. Stepping between Nancy and me he placed a hand on the small of each of our backs and guided us through the crowd at the clubhouse doors and into the parking lot.
“Nancy, your dad has gone to heaven…with God,” the other Mauricio told her.
Nancy screeched.
There was a lot of screaming and screeching that day.
I shook, balled up fists tight at my sides. It wasn’t just Jimmy, I was angry too. Why had “el otro Mauricio” said that? It was an odd, weird thing for a Jew to say. My father wasn’t in heaven. Christians believed in heaven but Jews, we, did not. I only knew a little bit about the Jewish afterlife from Hebrew School and very unlike most things Jewish, it was discussed little even when death came around. What I had been told was that dead Jews stayed dead, buried in the ground in wooden caskets not to impede the “ashes to ashes” mandate. The burial had to take place within twenty four hours of the demise unless it was Shabbat and then the mourners waited another twenty four. Sunday was not Shabbat so my father would be put in the ground the very next day. After that all the dead Jews would stay in that ground until the promised Messiah came and then they, exactly like the story of Jesus – the Jew, would ascend to some place or other. Also I knew Jews shouldn’t be cremated because they needed their bodies for this journey. Not a very comforting philosophy in the immediate aftermath of death. The concept made no more sense to me then, than it does now. I had many questions about these concepts but, as with so much of Judaism, the questions more frequently led to more questions than they ever did to answers. What if you died burning in a fire? You couldn’t ascend? That didn’t seem fair. And, by the way, what body? What body do you have left after lying in the ground for days, weeks, years, millennia waiting for the Messiah to show up? Jewish afterlife belief was so incomprehensible that many Jews talked about heaven and the meeting with God just like Christians the only difference that Jews weren’t particularly anxious to get there. Heaven was not our greatest aspiration. Medical school, law school, a Nobel prize for science yes, heaven… not so much.
And at that moment at the golf course, I, the younger Mauricio whose father was lying dead on a bench in a locker room, was not thinking of heaven or messiahs or ascension. I was hating the other Mauricio. I hated him for saying that stupid Christian nonsense. I didn’t want to think about stupid Jewish nonsense or that stupid, awful, ugly word – dead. The word I couldn’t say not even to my own sister whose father was my father. Even though I had seen it for myself just a few minutes earlier, had seen my father’s feet sticking out from under the sheet that covered his face, had watched my mother keening over the lifeless body, even though I’d seen it and knew it my cousin’s words made it really real and I hated him for it.
But I didn’t hate the other Mauricio as much as I hated God. I hated God who had heard me in the bathroom, had listened to me, a little boy beg and plead, asking just one little thing, that He care for my father who was such a good man, who did such good things, who everyone loved. This cruel, terrible, awful thing that was God, had let my father die. No, He made him die and in doing so He had refused to answer my one true prayer.
Then I saw it. Then I understood. God wasn’t evil. Of course not. What I then knew and would know forever and ever and ever was that he hadn’t actually heard me pray. It was really quite simple. There was no God and that was that.
When we returned to the house, cars had already surrounded our entire block. The large lacquered green wooden door was opening and closing allowing a steady flow of people to enter. It felt like such a short time since we had left the country club. How had word gotten out this quickly? The death news phone chain was amazingly expeditious. The thought of entering my own house where my father had lived and where he’d been, until just a few hours ago, comfortable and happy, was overwhelming. I would go in and my father wouldn’t be there. In his place there would be all these people – relatives, friends and acquaintances, some strangers to me and none of whom would be as destroyed by the events of that day as I and my own family. Nancy stepped out of the car first. Her brown hair hung limply around her face, her cheeks were drawn and sallow, eyelids splotchy, her nose red. She looked horrible. She reached for my hand and together we started up the walk.
On this Sunday like all the others my baby Mania had cooked and prepared all morning and much of the night before. Early afternoon came and she waited for us to show up and when we didn’t she waited some more. Mania had been waiting for hours and after repeated calls to the house were answered by strange people, and then familiar people who responded to her questions with strange responses, she had had enough. She had lived long enough in awful times to know when something wasn’t right and when something was very wrong. This was very wrong. She got into her car and drove herself the twenty miles to our house in Lomas.
When she pulled up to the house and saw all the cars she became frantic, double-parking at the curb outside our home’s high stone walls. She had run inside heading directly up the stairs to my parents’ bedroom. On the floor, a body lay covered by a white sheet, white Yahrzeit candles burning at the four corners of the body, one at each foot and one at each shoulder. Mania walked slowly around the body before kneeling to lift the sheet exposing the face.
“Yoshke!” she screamed, “Oh God, no, Yoshke!” She threw herself across his body, shouted incomprehensibly and kissed my father’s stone cold face over and over.
I know this because I’d followed her up the steps and stood at the bedroom door watching. It was also my first look at my father’s dead, blu-ish white, expressionless face and it shocked me. My grandmother’s grief paralyzed me. I don’t know how long I stood there or who it was that came into the room to lift my grandma off the body but at the door that same person encircled my shoulders with a free arm and turned me away from my father, guiding me through the door toward my own bedroom. Some of my cousins were in there sitting on my bed and suddenly I remembered the day before, the ball game, the rip in my pants. I looked down. It was still there but was now even worse. My mother hadn’t noticed.
Sometime later I was at Alex’s house once again, this time having been ordered to sleep there and stay until the next afternoon. Through that terrible night I kept hearing the other Mauricio’s words as Nancy and I were driven away from the golf course. “Nancy, your father is in heaven with God.” Over and over, he just wouldn’t shut up with that. He had said it and things like it again and again on the whole ride. “God takes the good people and makes them angels. That is why he has taken your father to heaven.” Nancy hadn’t said anything. She just cried until she stopped crying and then started crying again. It wasn’t until I saw my grandmother with the body that I realized I knew what I’d thought was for sure. God wasn’t dead. God hadn’t ever been alive. God didn’t exist because if he did he wouldn’t have let this happen. God wasn’t real, just something people made up to make them feel better when terrible things happened. There was no heaven and with no heaven, no after-life and no angels – no God, none at all.
I couldn’t explain what I felt at the moment of thinking that, but there was some sensation that responded to my pain. It wasn’t a ghost or spirit – as per the above there were no such things. It felt more like a piece of my body inside me and it was, I decided, a part of my father that was left on the earth. It made no sense considering my new atheist convictions but that didn’t matter. I talked to the stirring, the piece of my father that still existed somewhere. I started talking to it that night and have continued talking to it all my life. I confide in it and trust that somehow something is in there. I don’t know what it is but I know it isn’t God.
The Day After – Monday, October 21, 1963
All the mirrors in the house were covered. During Shiva, a weeklong official time of mourning and prayers, Jews in the immediate family of the deceased cover all the mirrors in their homes. Some say it is so that the mourners concentrate only on their grief and are not concerned with their physical appearance while others say it is so that the mourner does not see their own faces twisted with grief therefore increasing their pain. Contradictory it would seem but likely it is both together that make sense. Jews are nothing if not conflicted.
Once again, people and cars surrounded my house but that morning of the funeral there were hundreds along with the large black limousine right out in front. Alex’s family’s maids told me I was forbidden to leave the house so I peered through the curtains to see what I could see. The rest of my family was going to the funeral which included stopping first at the Yiddish school, my school. They were going and my father’s body was going too.
When I finally returned home later that day, still wearing my ripped pants, I walked past what seemed like hundreds of people who were filing into and out of my house. Everyone was there except my Dad and god.
