TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 77

Sat Dec 2 08:34:05 PST 2006

December 2, 20000006

Dear Folks,

	Today, I'm supposed to meet the piano 
movers at the old house.  They will pick up my 
beautiful old piano (1876) and carry its pieces 
down the 39 steps to the street, load it 
carefully on a van and take it to their storage 
facility where it will sit until Meyshe, Feyna 
and I find permanent digs.  When Feyna and I met 
the realtor at our old house, just to see what 
the workmen had done to "fix it up for sale", and 
view the "staging", the first thing I noticed was 
that the damn stagers had moved the piano. 
Without my permission, they just moved it from 
one end of the living room to the other.  That 
got to me.  This is a delicate old instrument and 
needs to be treated carefully.  Who knows how 
they moved it?  I feel attached to this piano in 
the same way that I feel attached to my cello. 
It is a friend.  Or she is a friend.  This piano 
is definitely a lady.  The piano tuner who used 
to come and tune her, loved and coveted that 
piano.  He used to refer to her as a grand old 
lady.  So today, this not so grand old lady will 
meet the movers to move the grand old lady to her 
storage facility.  What a thing to do to a grand 
old lady.

                         *******************************************

Love fumbles

	For the second year in a row, Dana and I 
returned to Na'ame, the Labor Zionist Youth camp 
in Southern California.  Dana decided to stay a 
whole month, but I was satisfied with two weeks. 
The year between the two summers had passed 
without correspondence between Bobby Suberi and 
me.  He was my boyfriend the first year, the son 
of the cook for the camp.  Decades later, I heard 
on the radio about a mid eastern restaurant run 
by a Suberi, and I knew who that was.

	The bus ride to the camp took all day. 
We left early in the morning and proceeded down 
California and into the windy mountain roads 
northeast of Los Angeles.  I was anxious to see 
Bobby.  All the thoughts you would expect me to 
have, I had.  Will he remember me?  Will he still 
like me?  Will I recognize him?  Does he have 
another girlfriend?  What will he be like this 
year?  Will I still like him?

	Camp romances are a breed unto 
themselves.  You are stuck in the same place, 
with boundaries around a smallish plot off in the 
country.  The rules are all different.  The faces 
different.  The authority figures are all new and 
everything is more casual than school.  Then, at 
camp, you are expected to enjoy yourself.  That's 
why you are there.  The very opposite applies to 
the school year.  There is no homework at camp. 
There are no parents, no usual family dynamics, 
and it goes on twenty four hours a day.  You are 
cooped up in the great outdoors with the other 
campers.  Hierarchies must be figured more 
quickly than at school.  The whole situation has 
an unreality to it.  You are suspended from your 
usual life and are operating in a totally 
different world.  And it only lasts a couple of 
weeks.  You are in a rush for it to last forever.

	The year before, Bobby and I were the 
item in our age group.  How we got together, I 
really don't know.  We just found ourselves with 
our hearts pounding and our eyes fixed on each 
other.  We spent every moment we could together, 
even though there was still that uncomfortable 
proscription against fraternizing with the 
opposite sex at that age.

	When I got off the bus, I looked for 
Bobby.  Since he was staff family, he'd already 
been there for a few weeks.  So he was a deep 
cinnamon brown, that luscious Yemenite skin.  I 
found him there meeting the bus, probably 
awaiting me as I had been awaiting him.  We 
looked at each other and felt awkward.  Here was 
the moment.  We talked as I carried my things 
down to this year's tent, graduated from the 
stucco dormitories where the younger campers 
stayed.  He helped me hoist the heavier bags.  He 
deposited them in the tent.  The weather was the 
usual sweltering dry heat pounding on us from all 
around.  There was no escaping it.  I sat down on 
my cot and thanked him for carrying my bags.  He 
muttered something boy like and ran off to help 
his mother in the kitchen.  I'm sure I used to 
know the Hebrew word for kitchen and mess hall, 
but it's since evaporated.  All I remember is the 
words, "Meetz, b'vakeshah", which meant, "juice, 
please".  And then there is, "bet kevreet", or, 
"house of seats", --  the communal bathroom.

	For the rest of the day, Bobby Suberi 
didn't show up, and at dinner, he ate with the 
other members of the staff.  Something was up. 
He didn't come around.  This remained the case 
for several days.  Then on the dusty dirt path 
leading to the central hall, we bumped into each 
other.  He was with a few of his tent mates.  I 
was nearly apologetic.

	"Why are you not being with me this year?"

	He burst into a little boy's screaming 
fit.  "I don't like you anymore!"  His friends 
stepped back, giving him space to rant. 
Evidently, they knew the story, and I gathered by 
the way Bobby kept checking the looks on his 
friends' faces that much of his performance was 
for them.

	"In fact, I don't know what I saw in you last year!"

	I was overwhelmed.  What had I done 
differently?  What had I done wrong?  I felt the 
tears welling up.

	"Now all I see in you is a big belly 
button staring me in the face!"  He laughed, then 
turned tail and ran off with his companions.

	I remember at the time thinking him at 
least ineloquent, but that didn't shave any grief 
off of the experience.  For no apparent reason, 
other than my pupik, which he'd never seen, Bobby 
Suberi didn't love me any more.  In fact, now, it 
seemed he hated me.  I went directly to my tent 
and flopped onto my cot, bereaved.  I opened my 
journal and wrote long and sad odes to Bobby 
Suberi, pages of adolescent moanings to the 
beloved's eyebrow.  "But I love you so, Bobby. 
Why hast thou done this to me?  Willst thou never 
love me again?  I am thine forever.  Until 
Shabbat is on a Monday."  I cried until I fell 
asleep.  I poked around for the rest of the day, 
confiding in my tent mates, weeping on my 
counselor's shoulder.  The next day came with its 
rigourous schedule of activities: Hebrew lessons, 
avodah (work), dance, lunch in the mess hall, 
then rest period.  I did all this like an 
automaton, going through the motions, but my 
heart was elsewhere.  At rest time, I was 
relieved to go back to my tent, my private cot, 
and my private journal to write away more of my 
zenith of sorrows.  I looked under my pillow for 
my journal, but it wasn't there.  Then I heard 
rattlings over the P.A. system.  Instead of the 
usual deep adult voices issuing instructions or 
information, there were little boys.  They were 
giggling.  They read to us from one end of the 
camp to the other.

	"But I love you so, Bobby." in mocking 
tones.  "Why hast thou done this to me?  Willst 
thou never love me again?"  They were having a 
fine time, passing the book between them, and in 
the spirit of socialism, taking turns reading 
from it.  "I am thine forever.  Until Shabbat is 
on a Monday."  They raised their voices and 
elbowed each other in the ribs.  "This is for 
Tobie," Bobby's voice.  And then he blew his best 
raspberry.

	I was horrified and furious and in agony, 
and humiliated.  I wanted my journal back.  One 
of the counsellors interrupted the boys' 
festivities on the air waves, and shut off the 
P.A. system.  I headed up to the office to call 
my mother.  And while I sat there, crying 
hysterically into the phone that I wanted to come 
home,  please, let me come home now, the 
counsellor came into the crying room and 
deposited my journal onto my lap.  From my 
vantage point now, I see that my mother was put 
in a difficult position.  She had paid for camp 
already and probably couldn't get a refund. 
Letting me come home (and how was I going to get 
home is another question) would have wasted all 
that hard earned cash.  And wouldn't it be better 
for her to tough it out?  Shouldn't she try to 
heal up and enjoy herself?  The world doesn't 
hinge on a twelve year old boy's eyebrow.  I 
stayed.  And I kept my journal hidden.  And I 
disliked Bobby Suberi intensely.

	The next  year when I got off the bus, 
Bobby was there waiting for me.  He put out his 
hand to shake mine and said, "Friends?"  I told 
him to go to hell.

	"She hates me!" he shouted in apparent disbelief.  "She hates me!"

                         *******************************************

-- 

Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net