TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 73

[Tobie Shapiro]

November 28, 200000000000006


Dear You,

	So there were two bicycles padlocked to 
the work bench in the garage at the house that 
got sold.  It required Feyna to come by with her 
keys to get them loosed and take them away.  We 
made an arrangement with the realtors to come see 
the house and collect the bicycles at the same 
time.  There seems to be a problem, though.  The 
bicycles disappeared.  The garage is bare.  Naked 
of bicycles.  The realtors asked villainman if he 
knew about this and he reported that he had the 
bicycles carted off and donated to Goodwill.  He 
claimed I'd been warned three times by my lawyers 
to remove all goods or they would be disposed of. 
Funny thing.  I wasn't notified even once.  And 
it was common knowledge that we wanted to collect 
the bicycles.  They belonged to Feyna and Meyshe. 
Feyna in particular put a lot of work into her 
bicycle.

	Wouldn't it have been the right thing to 
do to tell me, or tell my lawyer if telling me 
was too painful, that the bicycles were going to 
be carted off.  And what right did he have to do 
that?  A phone call.  He returned a box of 
magazines to me.  I wasn't warned about the 
magazines either.  Feyna and Meyshe are both very 
upset.  Feyna says she's going to trace the 
bicycle because it had identifying tags on it for 
tracing it if it should get stolen, and she 
considers this theft.  She wants to see the old 
man in jail.  Meyshe just says he hates him, and 
wants me to tell him.  Honestly, is there 
anything else this man can do to alienate his own 
children?  I'm sure he'll figure it out and do 
it.  Can't leave any stone unturned.  I'm furious.

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An accident

	I was three years old, sitting in the 
front seat of the car.  My mother was driving 
through heavy bumper to bumper traffic in 
Washington, D.C.  My sister was sitting in the 
back seat amusing herself.  It was raining, and 
it was already dark outside.  I don't remember 
where we were going, nor why we were out and 
about, but I do remember looking out the front 
window as the houses passed by.  They were all 
attached, one front door and stairs chock-a-block 
with the next front door and stairs.  The windows 
looked out identically onto the street.  This was 
in the days before seat belts.  We all bounced 
around inside the cars without anything to keep 
us from shooting through the windshield in an 
accident.  Those were perilous times, were they 
not?

	I was watching the car in front of us, 
the license plate with the little light above it, 
shining down to illuminate the numbers and 
letters.  Everywhere, the red brake lights were 
reflected in the wet streets, and the white 
headlights coming from the opposite direction 
shone in our eyes, blinding us for instants at a 
time.  The traffic lights hung out over the 
intersections: Green, Orange, Red.  We were 
creeping along in traffic.  Then the car in front 
of us stopped fast, their brake lights flashing 
bright red.  My mother stepped on the brakes, but 
nothing happened.  We just kept moving forward, 
and at five miles an hour smacked into a taxi cab 
that was in front of us.  The impact threw me 
forward off of my seat.  My forehead hit the 
windshield and I felt the glass break.  All 
around my head the sharp ripples of broken glass 
spread out to the ends of the windshield, like 
lightning.  After I hit the windshield, I was 
thrust back to the seat and lay there crying.  My 
mother scooped me up in her arms and turned 
around to instruct my sister, in the back seat, 
to follow her.  But Dana had fainted in the back 
seat, and my mother had to put me down and tend 
to her.  Dana woke up almost immediately and 
began to howl.  So now, she had two screaming 
children in the car.

	She took us both up the front stairs of a 
brown stone house, and she rang the bell.  An 
ancient woman came to the door and let us in.  It 
was a dimly lit house with vast expanses of 
Persian rugs spread out on the floor, their 
elaborate patterns fascinating my eyes.  To the 
right of the living room was a brightly lit 
kitchen.  There was a telephone on the wall.  And 
my mother called for help.  Soon, the firemen 
came traipsing through the house and carried me 
out to the ambulance.  My mother stayed with me, 
and my sister, to her great delight, got to sit 
on the fireman's lap in the front seat.  The 
sirens shrieked and moaned and the lights flashed 
bright in the darkness.  I saw the red and white 
lights cast their beacons over the fronts of the 
houses as we screeched through traffic.

	In the hospital, they took an X-ray of my 
head.  I sat next to my mother, dazed and 
dumbstruck.  The doctor put me up on a table and 
pinned the X-ray up on the lighted box on the 
wall.  Grown up things were said back and forth 
between the grown ups.  I was unbroken and 
released from the hospital.  I don't remember a 
ride back home.  I don't know how we got home 
because the car was out of commission.  Did we 
take a taxi?  We were a one car family, so my 
father couldn't have come to fetch us.  The rest 
is just a blur.  But the old ladies in their 
house with the Persian carpets remains vividly in 
my mind.  My recovery was swift.  My mother says 
there was something wrong with the car's brakes. 
There was a struggle between the insurance 
company and the automobile manufacturer.  That I 
know from listening to my mother tell the story 
from a grown up's vantage point.  To me, it was a 
magical frightening evening full of lights and 
sirens, strange people, broken glass and the hum 
of the insides of a hospital.  The practical 
matters were all taken care of by the adults. 
They knew how to glue broken incidents back 
together.


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Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net