The New Neighboorhood

THE NEW NEIGHBORHOOD

by

TOM DURKIN

 

 

Brian trudged home from school to the new neighborhood where he knew few people his age and had no friends even among those. He had just finished the fifth grade at St. Joseph’s School when the Dineens moved from Morningside Avenue to upper LaSalle Street between Amsterdam Avenue and Broadway. Grace, his mother, thought it best to keep Brian and his sisters in the parish school where they grew up, the school all their friends attended, rather than transfer them to Corpus Christi school where they knew no one.

Most of the other Catholic children living on LaSalle Street walked south for five blocks to the more progressive Corpus Christi school. And a few youngsters of inexact religious loyalty attended PS 43, four blocks to the north along Amsterdam Avenue.

The public school and Corpus Christi finished earlier each day than did St. Joseph’s, and neighborhood youngsters from those schools were usually hanging around Levine’s candy store on upper LaSalle Street by the time Brian came home.

At first Brian’s passing the candy store went unnoticed. But toward the end of September, one of the neighborhood youngsters, a short, wiry boy, about twelve, called Brian over as he was walking by.

“What’s your name,?” he asked.

“Dineen,” Brian answered, offering an outstretched hand and a gentle smile to the smaller boy. “Brian Dineen.”

The bantam ignored both of Brian’s overtures.

“Brian Din-e-e-n, is it? And where do you live, Brian Din-e-e-n,” he asked, looking back over his right shoulder to be sure the group of youngsters outside Levine’s was still watching.

“In the third house up there,” Brian replied, pointing to an apartment building further up the street. “The one with the red doors. And where do you live?”

“Have you been living here long, Brian Din-e-e-n?” the smaller boy asked ignoring Brian’s attempt at friendliness.

“We moved in the middle of the summer from over on Morningside.”

“Well now, Brian, I’m Billy Tighe and I’ll most likely forget your name, so I’ll call you Fatso. Do you hear that? Fatso. That’s a good name for you. And when you hear me call you Fatso, I hope you’ll smile at me like you did just now, and say ‘hello Billy.’

“Now get along,” he said, dismissing Brian and watching the larger boy continue up the street to his home.

The dozen youngsters standing outside Levine’s, mostly boys between nine and twelve years old, snickered their approval of Billy Tighe’s performance.

Brian did not like being called Fatso. And it troubled him that he failed to tell the smaller boy how he felt about being called that name. If Billy Tighe had been nearer his size, Brian thought, he might have responded. But, then, if he was forceful about it, that could lead to fighting, and fighting, he knew, was wrong. His mind raced with the things he should have said to the young showoff, but didn’t.

Over the next several weeks, the name calling intensified as more of Billy Tighe’s friends, joined the ridiculing when Brian walked by. It became an afternoon ritual. Names the youngsters called Brian grew more personal, then more insulting and then more hurtful.

Brian tried to avoid the daily confrontations by quicken his pace as he walked past the crowd. But the snickering and giggling increased as his movements, exaggerated by the heavy arch support shoes he wore, appeared more comical to his tormentors. That plan was soon abandoned by Brian as a failure. Next he tried ignoring the crowd each afternoon as he walked by. He focused his mind on thoughts about school, or the altar boys, so he wouldn’t have to hear them. That didn’t help much.

Brian began to dread the ordeal more as each day went by. He became angry at his mother who, he believed, was responsible for this whole problem because she didn’t transfer him to Corpus Christi when they first moved to the neighborhood. With each passing week, it took longer and longer for Brian to come home from school, as he explored different ways to avoid walking past the crowd.

The West End Lumber Yard on lower LaSalle Street became a favorite stopover for Brian. And for a while, his thoughts of the taunting youngsters disappeared. Brian stood at the big sliding wooden doorway through which delivery trucks entered the yard once or twice a week, and he would watch Dave Spafford, the man who operated the powerful table saw, mill lumber to size. He was fascinated at the ease with which Mr. Spafford handled the large, unwieldy pieces of lumber, and how the millwright could look at an order sheet on the clipboard, make adjustments to the saw, and then mill a complete order from memory.

When Brian’s interest could no longer be satisfied from afar, he ventured further into the lumber yard until he was close enough to speak with Mr. Spafford.

“You can stand here if you don’t get in the way of my work,” the millwright cautioned Brian, “I wouldn’t want to see you hurt.”

Brian welcomed the chance to see the millwright working up close. His early, hesitant questioning of Mr. Spafford developed into longer, more relaxed conversations between the two.

They talked about hard woods and soft woods, and about veneers and woodgrains, and about ripsaws and crosscuts. Brian never imagined there was so much to know about wood, and he was eager to learn more. Mr. Spafford let Brian take different wood scraps home for carving and, when he had some, thin strips of ash or clear pine Brian could use to make the crossframe of a sturdy kite.

Twice in one week, when Brian saw a large crowd of youngsters in front of Levine’s, he walked a few blocks out of his way, over to Moylan Place, up to Broadway and then back down LaSalle Street, to avoid confronting them. This defense measure was short lived, once the crowd at Levine’s found out about his detour.

The candy store crowd learned they could get Brian to cry if they taunted him long enough or voiced insulting remarks about other members of his family. Getting Brian to cry became the new daily goal for some of the gang. As the school year wore on, Brian learned to steel himself against their tauntings, and without Brian’s tears fueling their delight, that pastime, too, lost much of its satisfaction for them.

It might have ended right then from lack of interest, if it hadn’t been for Frankie Toomey. Taller and thinner than Brian, but the same age, Toomey, was one of the leaders of the crowd.

Toomey would run slowly after Brian, giving Brian what might appear to a passerby, a fair chance to run away and escape from him. But Brian’s running from Toomey served to magnify his clumsy, artless gait, which heighten the amusement for the others. Toomey would then increase his speed, overtake Brian, and deliver a swift, well-directed blow of his clenched fist to Brian’s shoulder with all the force he could muster.

One afternoon in late January, when Toomey’s attack was over and Brian was rubbing his aching shoulder, James Medrano, another ten year old, who became Brian’s first friend in the new neighborhood, asked Brian: “Why do you put up with Toomey and his friends.

“Why don’t you fight back? You’re big enough, you know,” Medrano said.

“If you put your weight into a punch, you’d have Toomey reeling into the middle of the street and be finished with him and his friends once and for all.

“Toomey picked on me last year because I’m a Mexican and my brother beat him up the next day,” James said, “He hasn’t bothered me since.”

“Its wrong to fight back,” Brian said. “That’s what they teach us in school, and that’s what mother taught me at home from the time I could walk.

“You’re supposed to turn the other cheek, James?” he added. “And besides, when you’re my size, there’s always the chance you’ll hurt somebody.”

Brian did not convince Medrano with his moral pleading, and Medrano continued to plot a strategy for him. Brian tried not to listen to such talk, it was heresy to him. But Brian felt better knowing that James Medrano cared about what happened to him. He felt no one else did.

* * *

Lent was a time of reflection and penitence for Catholics. Starting with the distribution of ashes to the faithful on Ash Wednesday, the level of ritual activity gained intensity throughout the next seven weeks culminating in the celebration of Christ’s resurrection on Easter Sunday.

Holy week, the most solemn period of the Lenten season, was also the busiest time of the year for the altar boys who worked in the sanctuary during these rituals.

When the Three Hours Agony at St. Joseph’s Church finished on Good Friday afternoon, Brian hung up his surplice and cassock and started home. From lower LaSalle Street where that street angled into 125th Street, Brian could see Toomey and his friends waiting outside Levine’s. His spirits began to wither. He lost heart almost completely when he got to the lumber yard and read the sign on the door announcing that it had closed at noon for the Easter weekend. Brian threw up what was left of the simple lunch of toast and milk he had eaten earlier. His legs felt rubbery and his hands shook as he wiped the soured milk and toast from the front of his brown leather jacket.

Toomey spotted Brian as he walked past the open vegetable stand at the bottom of upper LaSalle Street, and nudged his buddies. Brian continued up the street, not changing his pace, praying quietly that on a day as solemn and holy as this, Toomey and his friends would have the decency to leave him alone and let him go by without bothering him.

As Brian passed the candy store, Toomey began his slow motion run, signaling the others that the game was on once more.

James Medrano, sitting with his sister on the stoop, two houses up the street from Levine’s as Brian hobbled past, shook his head in anticipation of what he thought was about to happen. He yelled to Brian, more out of frustration than anything else: “Dineen, for a guy who’s so smart with the books, you’re about the dumbest mick I’ve ever met.”

To Brian’s fear-filled mind it might as well have been the Almighty who spoke, because the sheer survival message contained in what his young Mexican friend said, took complete hold of him and nothing else made sense.

Without thinking about what he was doing, Brian, swung his body to the left, as if he had been in training for this moment. In a swift, rising arc, Brian’s right arm extended like a ramrod. His fist, knotted into a tight, hammer-like club, came around just in time to kiss the laughing, on-coming–and unsuspecting–Toomey squarely on his finely shaped nose. Brian felt the crush of bone and cartilage beneath his fist as Toomey’s face came to a sudden stop. The blood gushing from Toomey’s face, splattered both boys.

With the crossing and glazing-over of Toomey’s eyes following the single blow, Brian knew his ordeal was finally over.

Toomey dropped to the pavement in a daze and then, as if driven by primitive instinct, Brian was astride Toomey, swinging with his right hand, while holding Toomey’s face in position with his left.

“Tell me you’re sorry, you blackguard,” Brian yelled, his right fist still venting his anger, “and maybe I’ll let you go.”

Theresa McMahon, a neighbor who lived in the apartment next door to the Dineens, and Helen O’Connor, from the first floor, were passing down the street at the time of the encounter. Shocked by the violence she was witnessing, Mrs. McMahon turned to her companion and said: “Do you hear the language coming out of that Dineen boy and see what he’s doing, and on Good Friday too, God forgive him!”

“I wonder if his mother knows how he behaves on the street and what a filthy mouth he has on him?” replied the other. “If he was mine, I’d whip his little arse until he learned to behave himself and act like a gentleman in public.”

Toomey’s friends, no longer laughing, gathered in a circle around the pair. They heard Toomey assure Brian, in as strong a voice as he could work up, that he was sorry, and that there would be no more teasing. Brian got to his feet leaving Toomey where he lay and, as he turned toward his house, he saw the smiling face of James Medrano winking at him. Brian also saw the looks of shock and disbelief on the faces of the two older women. He realized the ordeal that just ended was only a prelude to what was in store for him when the report of the neighbor women reached his mother. Brian returned the wink to James Medrano with a wave in friendly salute, and went on home.

THE END