TheBanyanTree: more stories again

[Tobie Shapiro]

September 15, 20000000006


Dear Each and Every One,

	I have heard that I should continue, so I'm just following orders.

 
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	There was an oboist in the Berkeley High School Orchestra by 
the name of Joel Bartlett.  He was funny looking, had a roundish 
face, peppered with acne, pale skin and black hair.  He was the son 
of a Unitarian Minister.  Joel befriended both Yvonne and me in a 
thorough way.  Here is a tale of his cluelessness, arrogance and 
delusion.  One day, during Joel's courtship of me, he took me up to 
Tilden Park to his favourite secret place.  There was a tree and a 
spot to sit under it.  We sat there at the base of the tree, and Joel 
went on about how he'd taken no one else up there to his secret 
place.  No one but me.  He pointed out a spider who was working hard 
on its web.  He may have kissed me.  Of course, I told this all to 
Yvonne who got a look of sarcastic disbelief on her face.  It turned 
out that Joel had just taken Yvonne up to Tilden Park and shown her 
his secret place, told her he'd never taken anyone else up there, and 
pointed out the spider making its busy web.  He may have kissed her.

	What did the moron think?  That we wouldn't confide in each 
other?  That our being best friends was not a hindrance to his game? 
We went to him and told him he was hurting feelings and that he had 
to make a choice.  He thought about it for a while and said he'd made 
his choice; he wanted both of us.  We told him that that may be what 
he wanted but he was going to wind up with no one at all, which is 
ultimately how it turned out.

 
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	My grandparents had a house on Del Sur Avenue in San 
Francisco, right at the foggiest corner in the city.  Outside, in the 
front garden was a bench  in front of the rose bushes, the rose 
bushes that I still have a cutting of - it grows wildly.  On the 
bench was a concrete painted sculpture of a black boy sitting with 
his hands in his lap.  His hands were in position for holding a 
fishing pole, but the fishing pole was missing.  There it was, a 
piece of bigotry incarnate, the white smiling teeth behind the thick 
pink lips, sitting there wasting a day fishing.  Now, I have to look 
back and wonder who manufactured these things, the happy pickeninny, 
lolling through life.  Did they produce them by the hundreds, the 
thousands?  And who painted them?  Happy pickeninnies working for 
slave wages?  The little black boy disappeared.  The first time he 
disappeared it was a big mystery to my grandparents.  They had 
unthinkingly placed this insult on their front lawn, or more likely, 
they'd inherited it from the people who lived there before them.  How 
do you hunt for a stolen negro statue?  You can't drive around town 
yelling out your window.  The police recovered it, and it was placed 
back on the bench in the garden.  Pretty soon it disappeared again. 
After that, either my grandparents saw some light or they tired of 
chasing it down, because it never was replaced again.  That left the 
young concrete girl on her tiptoes looking into the bird bath.

 
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	One summer, my grandparents went off to Europe without Aunt 
Belle, Gramma's little sister.  Belle was a fierce and fiercely 
dissatisfied woman.  Something was always wrong with her spot on 
earth, and she complained bitterly, sarcastically.  In order to leave 
Belle for their trip without the guilt associated with quasi 
abandonment, they decided to put up an ad for a college student at 
San Francisco State to rent out the room in the basement.  This 
student was going to keep Belle company.  I don't know how Belle 
would have done alone.  She had moved in with my grandparents only 
six months after they were married, and remained for the next 72 
years, outliving my Grandfather by four years, and Grandmother by 
two.  The college student turned out to be Jane Ikahara, an Hawaiin 
japanese.  To me, she just looked Japanese, and I never did factor in 
the Hawaiin influence, in spite of its being obvious.  I mean, Jane 
taught Dana and me to do the Hooki Lau, a hula dance popular at the 
time.

	"We are going to a Hooki Lau
	Hooki hooki hooki hooki hooki Hooki Lau.
	Everybody loves a Hooki Lau
	Where the mau mau and the kau kau make a luau.
	We throw our nets, out into the sea
	And all the amu amu come a swimming to me.
	We are going to a Hooki Lau
	Hooki hooki hooki hooki Hooki Lau."

	We wanted grass skirts for this, and Jane was a great teacher 
because I remember it to this day.  Jane was a music student.  She 
had a beautiful voice and could accompany herself on the piano.  When 
we went over to Grama and Grampa's house, we'd dash down into the 
basement to listen to Jane talk or sing or to watch her study.

	When she'd arrived, she was grossly obese, and Aunt Belle put 
her on a diet.  She had Jane pose by the fireplace in the living room 
holding one of the fire irons at an angle to the floor way in front 
of her.  And as Jane lost weight, Belle took more photographs.  There 
is a series of photographs of Jane descending in size from that era.

	Jane met John Nakaue at school, I think.  He was an Okinawan 
Japanese, not from Hawaii, and Jane's parents had a serious problem 
with his lineage.  Jane was supposed to date and be interested 
exclusively with Japanese Hawaiins.  But she was dating John against 
her parents' wishes.  Our family was outraged at the prejudice of her 
parents, the narrow mindedness.

	Jane came to all the family occasions and Jewish ceremonies 
that our family held throughout the year.  It never occurred to me 
that she felt outnumbered in the crowd of Jews busy at their faith, 
or the famiily busy at being neurotic.  She was just one of us, part 
of the package that came along with Grama, Grampa and Aunt Belle. 
One of the family occasions was a dinner at the smorgasbord at the 
Claremont Hotel.  I'm not sure if this was after a concert of mine, 
or if it was some other reason, but the whole family was sitting down 
to exotic fare.  John and Jane were seated together.  At one point, 
John, staring off into the distance, and obviously daydreaming, 
opened his mouth and said, "Please pass the marriage."  Then he 
turned red and everyone had a good laugh.

 
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-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net