Jennie and the Diamond Ring

“Genug shoen – enough already. I’m making good money with the taxi. You don’t have to schlep with the cart all the way up to Lexington and 1-2-5 every day,” Izzy would say to his mother-in-law every morning.

“Vy not?” she’d say. “Vat else I can do?”

Along with thousands upon thousands of other Jews, Isidore had fled Russia before the revolution. With his parents and brothers and sisters, he made his way from Minsk across Europe, via Budapest and London, and landed at Ellis Island in 1913. They stayed in Charlotte, North Carolina for a while, where he worked at a junk yard and drove a motorcycle. Then they went to Calgary while waiting for American naturalization. Iz learned to be a projectionist there. As soon as they got their U.S. papers, they set up in New York. That’s where Iz married Fannie in 1922. He drove a cab and was doing pretty well for those days.

Fannie’s family was in the garment business. Her mother Jennie, a tiny woman, had been taking a pile of end-pieces from their sewing shop every night. She’d load up a cart with them the next morning and push it to Harlem. Black women would buy the cast-off fabric and use it to make potholders, scarves or even socks.

But it was driving Iz crazy.

“Why? Why? Genug shoen, Jennie.” Sure, when he was a projectionist, the pocket money she brought home from the end-pieces helped. But as a taxi driver working double-shifts he didn’t need it any more. He had gotten married, had two kids. His father died and he was supporting his family and his mother-in-law in their rented apartment. She didn’t need to push the cart any more and he didn’t want her to.

But it gave her something to do every day and she wasn’t going to give it up without a fight. She wasn’t even going to give it up with a fight, the one they’d have almost every night when he’d come home from his long day behind the wheel, shuttling fares across the Bronx and Brooklyn and Manhattan.

One day Jennie came back from Harlem and was emptying the cart when she saw it: A spectacular diamond wedding ring. A gold band with three prongs held a big flawless stone, must’ve been at least a carat and a half, maybe two. On the inside of the band was the engraved inscription: “To Marcella From C. Love You Always.”

“Hmm,” Jennie said to herself. “It must have slipped off the finger of one of the black ladies.”

She put the ring in a piece of fabric and tucked it into a pocket of her purse. She re-stocked the cart with that day’s new end-pieces and went to bed.

The next morning, as she approached Lexington and 125th, she saw a woman standing on the corner, with body language displaying some signs of anticipation. The woman didn’t wait for her to get all the way down the block – Jennie’s tiny steps and advancing age made for a slow trip. The woman walked forward to meet her.

“I was so afraid you’d never come back,” the black woman said. “I’m so glad to see you.”

“My son-in-law, he doesn’t vant me to come no more. But I like it. Vat else vill I do? But he says I don’t make enough money. It’s not vorth it, he says. He doesn’t vant me out pushing the cart. Oy vay, ve fight about it every night.”

“Do you remember me from yesterday?”

Jennie didn’t really. There were a lot of women coming to look at the fabric every day. And she was getting old. She grimaced and shrugged.

“I was looking through your cart. I lost my ring yesterday. I thought maybe you found it later?”

Jennie smiled. The woman’s eyes widened with something beyond relief in reaction. But it wasn’t over. There would have to be authentication.

“Desc-rrr-ibe it,” the tiny Jewish woman commanded the large black woman. Jennie rolled the ‘r’ with her Yiddish accent.

The black woman remained calm.

“It has a gold band and three prongs and it’s engraved “To Marcella From C. Love You Always.”

Jennie opened her purse and plucked the piece of fabric holding the ring out of the pocket and handed it to the black woman.

“Here it is,” she said.

The black woman opened the fabric and saw the ring. She looked at Jennie for a few seconds with something like bewilderment. Then she walked away.

“Hmmph,” Jenny said to herself. “You’d tink a ‘tank you,’ maybe?”

It was Shabbat. Jennie went home for the Friday night prayer. The men went to synagogue in the morning and the women prepared the lunch. The weekend passed. Iz begged Jennie not to walk the fifteen blocks back to Harlem anymore. For the first time, she thought about it.

“Maybe he’s right,” she said to herself. “I am getting old.” But then she realized how bored she’d be. And a couple of bucks a week allowed her to buy a pin for her granddaughter and a toy car for her grandson every now and then. “Maybe a few more months,” she said. “Maybe I quit ven the vinter comes.”

She pushed the cart slowly down the block toward Lexington and 125th on Monday morning. But something was happening. Things seemed different.

There was a crowd of black women there and it looked like they were waiting for something.

They were waiting for her. About a dozen of them, maybe more.

As soon as she got to the corner, they crowded around her cart and started buying the cast-off fabric pieces faster than she could count the money. Instead of selling six or seven pieces for nickels and dimes, she unloaded the whole cart. Suddenly, about five dollars worth of coins was weighing down her purse.

When the crowd cleared, she saw the woman whose ring she’d returned the week before, standing across the street, observing the scene with her arms crossed.
Marcella nodded to her. Jennie nodded back.

The same thing happened the next day and the day after that.

Marcella had gone to church on Sunday and told the story of the ring. She was the leader of the choir.

“So I want all the women in this church to go down to the corner whenever you can and buy the fabric from the honest Jewish lady who gave me back my ring.”

When my grandfather Iz heard the story he put his hands over his face.

“Oy gevalt! Now she’s never going to stop with the fershlugginah cart!”

And so my great-grandmother Jennie pushed that cart up to Lexington 1-2-5 every day until she couldn’t push it anymore.

Boys in the Van (Prelude to 'In Love With Lana')

Sean and Mike were standing at the curb in front of their elementary school, waiting for me to pull up in the van like I did at three o’clock every day and drive them to the private school where I worked so they could do crafts and music or just play until their parents picked them up and took them home.

It looked like they were grinning as they got in. They might’ve even been suppressing giggles. Something was going on.

They were both seven. Sean had a missing front tooth and he climbed up on the passenger seat in the front. Mike had a blond helmet of hair and sat in the back seat, taking the middle position so he could see us. The two boys were looking at each other as I pulled away.

Sean unbuckled his seat belt and stood up as we pulled out from the residential neighborhood onto the boulevard. He was a little hyperactive, so his moving around like that didn’t surprise me. But I had the feeling they were planning something.

“Hey, bus driver!” Sean said. That’s how the kids got my attention, by shouting “Hey, bus driver.”

“Yeah, Sean?”

“Do you have a girlfriend?”

“Yeah, I have a girlfriend,” I answered.

The boys both started giggling. Sean with his big gap-toothed grin, put his arms around an imaginary girl and started humping her.

“Do you fuck her?” He shrieked with laughter and Mike started laughing, too. They kept laughing and laughing and Sean kept humping the imaginary girl. They looked at each other and they laughed harder.

So that was their plan. To ask me if I fucked my girlfriend. They were having a great time.

“Do you fuck her?” Sean said again. “Do you fuck your girlfriend, bus driver?”

I smiled.

“Yeah, I fuck her.” They started howling. I was driving down Ventura Boulevard, past restaurants and a park and an upscale shopping mall with two seven-year-olds who were cracking up at the thought of me fucking my girlfriend. I waited a little while for them to calm down. Then I asked them:

“You know the best part?”

“What’s that?” Mike asked as his laughter shifted down into giggles.

“Remember – WE’RE NAKED!” I shouted.

They went wild. Sean was screaming and Mike was drooling and pounding the van seats.

“We Get Naked And We FUCK!” I shouted.

They could barely breathe through their hysteria. They were wheezing and convulsing.

I had forgotten what it was like to be seven. But then I remembered. I waited for them to calm down. I turned right onto the boulevard. They were regaining their composure, but one of them would burst out with a blubbering laugh and then the other would follow. When I thought the time was right, I decided to get them going again.

“Wanna hear somethin’ else?” I asked.

“Yeah! What? Tell us! Tell us? What? Tell us!” they demanded. “Tell us!”

“You know what she does sometimes?”

“What? What? Tell us! Tell us!” They were both standing up, waiting for the next part, knowing that it was going to be good.

“Sometimes …”

“What? What? Tell us! What? Tell us!”

“She puts my wiener in her mouth and she sucks on it!”

They practically exploded. Snot was bubbling out of Sean’s nose. Mike’s chest was heaving. He threw himself across the back seat and was kicking the door of the van.

I didn’t wait. I struck:

“And you know what else? You know what sounds she makes when we fuck? She goes: Ooh! Ooh! Ah! Ah! Aiiee! AIEEE! YEAH! OH BABY! YEAH! OH! OH! OH!”

Sean fell on his knees and was pounding his head against the seat. Mike doubled over and clutched his stomach. They were both screaming. Sean’s face was turning cherry-red and he was pulling his hair. Mike was wheezing and tears were streaming down his cheeks.

Thing is, I didn’t really have a girlfriend anymore. We had broken up for the last time a few weeks earlier.

But that’s another story.

It isn’t all that funny, though.