My Mother Was Nuts Read Online Free Page A

with my brother and sister, but the truth was, I barely knew them. Nearly nine years older than me, Garry was always sick or injured. The list of his known allergies ranfourteen pages. He once said that he began to write because it was something he could do in bed while he was itching or throwing up. But I was still a little kid when he started at DeWitt Clinton High School, where he immersed himself in a variety of interests ranging from playing the drums to writing about sports for the school paper.
    Ronny was six years ahead of me. Once she hit her teens, our age difference seemed even bigger. She lied about her address so she could get into the co-ed Evander Childs High School. She became boy crazy, and then I became an afterthought to her. If she did pay attention to me, it was because she needed an excuse to get out of the apartment. She would take me to the swings at the Oval, the park where her friends hung out. Then she would flirt with the boys and forget about me.
    She also changed my life by teaching me how to cross the street on my own. The Grand Concourse was too big and too busy for a kid to cross on her own. Once I started going to PS 80, though, I had to get myself to and from school. My mother wasn’t going to wake up early to take me. She had Ronny take me to the corner and show me how to ask an adult for help. You went up to someone who looked normal and shouted, “Hey mister! Cross me?”
    That’s what all the kids said. “Cross me? Cross me?” We were like little chirping birds.
    Crossing the Grand Concourse was literally a rite of passage, a key to independence and exploring the rest of the neighborhood. St. Phillip Neri Church was down the block, Ciro’s Bowling Alley was across the street, and nearby was Jerry’s Pizza, which had a fire every week. On Jerome Avenue, there was a shop for everything, including meat, pickles, hosiery, hardware, candy, nuts, vegetables, bagels, shoes, and curtains. We got chicken soup at Schweller’s Deli, and Scheff’s was our bakery. You want to know heaven? Walking home while eating the warm heels from a loaf of freshly baked seedless rye, sliced.
    The Woodlawn-Jerome el rumbled past our building. Up on anearby hill was a shrine where Crazy Joseph from Villa Avenue saw the Virgin Mary one day when we all were playing. I’ll never forget that day. Jo-Jo suddenly dropped to his knees and started to pray. He’d seen the Virgin Mary, he explained. Most of us didn’t even know who the Virgin Mary was. But soon, people came by the busload to see the spot. A shrine was made, and we sold holy dirt for a dollar.
    I never knew boundaries, never paid attention to ethnicities or skin color. I lived on the border between the Jewish neighborhood (the Parkway) and the Italian-Catholic neighborhood (Villa Avenue). I was in the smart classes with the Jewish kids, but I went to school on the High Holy Days and sat in class with the Italian kids, cleaning the board and the erasers. People didn’t know what we were in terms of religion or ethnicity, and neither did we.
    To this day people think we’re Jewish, but Garry was christened Episcopalian, Ronny was Lutheran, and I was confirmed in a Congregationalist church. Why such diversity? My mother sent us anyplace that had a hall where she could put on a recital. If she hadn’t needed performance space, we wouldn’t have bothered.
    It got even more confusing later on when we went to a kosher Jewish summer camp. We all had to go to services. We read prayers, blessed the bread before each meal, and lit candles and blessed the wine on Friday nights. Ronny and I could
baruch
like nobody’s business.
    Identity was never an issue for me. I embraced being from the Bronx. To me, it was the center of the universe, at least the only universe that mattered. I grew up never knowing north, south, east, or west. I only learned uptown, downtown, and “We’re going to Alexander’s.”
    Alexander’s was a department store, and for us,