TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 133

[Tobie Shapiro]

January 27, 20000000007


Dearests,

	Meyshe's occupational therapist took him 
to see Berkeley City College on Wednesday.  It's 
a big new building in downtown Berkeley.  He 
loved it.  He came home with catalogues and 
fliers and began marking all the classes he 
wanted to take.  Art classes mostly because they 
don't have a music department.  I cringe.  No 
music department.  He's excited about college. 
I'm excited about it too, but in a different way. 
I worry about his trip to the campus on public 
transportation.  Everything would be fine until 
something went wrong, and then it would be a 
disaster.  For instance, what if he missed his 
stop.  He can't deal with crises.  It would be a 
crisis and he'd fall apart.  This means the big 
guy has to have a cell phone, so he can call me 
if he gets into trouble.  Can I afford this?  I 
am so worried about money matters.  I've got a 
big chunk of money in the bank waiting to plug it 
into a house, but it isn't enough money to buy a 
house in Berkeley.  DO YOU KNOW WHAT REAL ESTATE 
IS LIKE IN BERKELEY?!  Everything costs over a 
million dollars.  There are junk houses out there 
for a million dollars.  It's shameful.  So, I'll 
have to take on a mortgage.  Now where is my 
monthly funding coming from?  Disability, the 
little amount the kids get from social security 
as adult disabled people.  Then there is supposed 
to be a special needs trust funded by my ex, 
villainman, so that there would be money for 
raising Meyshe and Feyna, but he is refusing to 
fund the trust with enough money to make any 
difference, and he wants to trade that for 
spousal support and child support.  So a couple 
thousand dollars a month will turn into a couple 
hundred.  When villainman retires, I'll get part 
of his pension.  This mother is scared.  The kids 
have a couple hundred in medications every month 
alone, and at least a hundred a week in lessons. 
Oy.  I can't go on.  This is Shabbos and I have 
to keep it clear.  No more worries.  I banish 
them.  Until tomorrow.  Tomorrow, we go to the 
vault where our possessions are stored and 
rummage through to find certain items we are 
missing sorely.  It will cost me plenty.  They 
have assigned three men to meet us there and 
fling around the crates and furniture.  Two hour 
minimum.  There goes $340 clams.

	What did I say about banishing the worries?




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In the boonies

	Alice Ratcliff played the violin very 
well.  In junior high school, we were paired off 
frequently to rehearse music together.  She was 
the third, I think, of six Ratcliff children. 
Her father was an architect, the son of the 
famous Walter Ratcliff whose signature 
architectural vision shines out from many bay 
area official buildings and grand homes.  He was 
the principal architect in designing Mills 
College - beautiful collonnades and grand 
entrance ways, lots of windows, elegant and 
soaring.  Alice's father was also a reknowned 
architect.  The firm was well known and the 
dynasty highly respected.  So, let's get this 
succinct.  Alice's father was an architect. 
Alice's mother, likely as not, was pregnant.

	They lived in a house her father had 
built on Panoramic Way, one of the narrowest, 
twistiest streets in Berkeley that climbs up to 
the top of the hills.  It is impossible to 
navigate Panoramic Way.  If a car meets you 
coming from the opposite direction, someone is 
going to have to back up a long long way to let 
the other one pass.  Some of the hairpin curves 
are impossible to swing in one try.  You have 
really to want to live on that street if you are 
going to survive it.

	In junior high school, Alice and I were 
close friends.  One of us was going over to the 
other's house after school on a frequent basis. 
Alice had a sunny personality and was an 
optimist, which mystified me.  My people were not 
sunny.   We were cloudy with a chance of showers, 
and we were not optimists, either.  There was 
always a reason to rue something, and always 
plenty of room for mourning over our miserable 
lot.  So Alice was a healing salve on the mortal 
wounds of my upbringing.  Her family was unusual, 
even bizarre, in that according to Alice, her 
parents loved each other.  Who had ever heard of 
such a thing!?  She once told me that all six of 
them suspected that their parents could hardly 
wait for them to grow up and leave home so they 
could be alone together.  They seemed remarkably 
free of the sturm und drang that I was used to.

	The family had a pet spider monkey named 
Daisy May.  Daisy May exhibited all the tell tale 
psychological motivations of a human being.  When 
she was angry, she would throw her feces around 
her cage.  When she was jealous, she would rattle 
the bars and scream.  And Alice knew how to get 
Daisy May inflamed.  She told me to pretend to 
choke her, so we put on an act for Daisy.  It was 
a lousy act, but it worked beautifully.  I 
grabbed Alice around the throat, faked shaking 
her head around.  Alice gave out gasping noises. 
Daisy May went wild, jumping up and down and 
hollering bloody murder.  It wasn't nice of us. 
But it was a good illustration of monkey 
behaviour.  Evidently Daisy May got jealous if 
any outsider was friendly with the Ratcliffs. 
And according to Alice, monkeys just got worse as 
they got older.  They got crotchety, finicky, 
snappish, surly and forgetful.  Daisy May was 
getting older.  I was a little afraid of her. 
She was too human.

	Alice's father, being an architect, had 
designed and built a country home for the eight 
of them up in Mendocino county near the ocean, 
out in the boonies, about two hundred miles north 
of Berkeley, the foggy forests of California. 
The country house had a main common area and then 
a connection to the sleeping quarters.  The kid 
all slept in bunk beds, and there were extras for 
guests.  Alice invited me up to the cabin, and I 
accepted.

	We drove up with Alice's older sister, 
Polly, and Polly's friend whom we called, simply, 
"Applebee."  The drive is about five hours 
because of the windy mountain roads, and we were 
going to set off early so we could be there by 
the mid afternoon.  But traffic being what 
traffic is, and slow starts being a hallmark of 
large families trying to move forward, inch at a 
time, we didn't get out of Berkeley until early 
afternoon, and by the time we hit the curly 
mountain roads, it was dusk.  It was also raining 
badly, voluminously.  The rain came down in 
sheets as Polly tried to navigate the narrow 
curving road, the headlights hitting the fog 
straight on, and lighting up only a cloud.  Then 
as we were in our third game of "ghost", the 
windshield wipers gave out.  We were in the 
middle of nowhere and it was Sunday to boot.  We 
looked for a gas station, Polly driving while 
sticking her head out the open window.  We found 
a gas station.  It was a tiny, one pump affair at 
one of the rare intersections on the way up.  But 
of course it was closed, and we all thought of 
bedding down for the night inside the car, 
waiting out the storm, and then continuing.  But 
there was no guarantee of it letting up.  How 
long would we be stuck there?

	"Won't your parents get worried when it's 
late and we haven't shown up?  We kind of have to 
keep going, don't we?"

	"They probably wouldn't even notice, 
we're such a crowd, but you're right,"  Polly 
admitted.

	We had to improvise.  We found a skein of 
string lying on the ground in the gas station 
lot, and we confiscated it.  We cut off one 
length of string, tied one end to the windshield 
wiper in front of the driver and ran the other 
end of it through the driver's window so Polly 
could hold onto it.  Then we cut off another 
length of string, tied one end to the same wiper 
blade and ran the other end of it through 
Applebee's window so she could hold onto it. 
They got their pulling in sync, and alternated so 
the windshield wiper worked manually.  Alice and 
I made up a little work song so that Polly and 
Applebee could stay in rhythm.

	"Pull Polly
	Pull Applebee
	Pull Polly
	Pull Applebee
	Pull Polly
	Pull Applebeeeeeeeee
	Pull Polly
	Pull Applebee"

	We sang that all the way up the mountain 
road until it evened out and we turned off to the 
cabin.  We made it at eight o'clock at night, all 
of us soaked and thrilled out of our gourds.

	We ate a cold leftover dinner and dragged 
our bags to the sleeping barracks.  Alice 
directed me to the bottom bunk and she took the 
top one over me.  We slept so soundly that 
nothing could have awakened us, except the other 
Ratcliffs shouting, "Wake up! Breakfast!"  I got 
up out of the bunk and my feet nearly stuck to 
the floor it was so cold.  I got dressed inside 
my sleeping bag, and we rushed to the commons, 
leaving puffs of breath in our wake.

	Alice and I took a walk in the woods, and 
we came across a pile of bones.  We could only 
guess at what sort of animal they belonged to, 
but it was an exciting find.  We went back for a 
shovel, pail and spoons, and returned to recover 
the rest of the bones.  We dug into the wet earth 
and scrubbed at the bones, removing soil from 
around them with the spoons.  Pretty much, we 
stole away with an entire skeleton in the pail. 
We thought we should clean it and bring it to Mr. 
Williams' science class when school got back in 
session.  We decided that the thing to do would 
be to boil the bones in water until all the 
flesh, fur and connective tissue fell off of 
them.  It took hours.  And while our stew was 
boiling on the stove, we took another walk 
outside past the neighbors who owned acres and 
acres of land.  We walked alongside a huge field, 
the perimeter contained by a wooden fence.  It 
seemed the property went on forever, and we 
nearly forgot it was there.  Could anyone own 
such an expanse?  After a while a horse trotted 
up to the fence and ambled alongside us, snorting 
and whinnying.

	"That's a crazy horse," Alice commented. 
"It chases people.  The owners have to keep it 
inside the fence.  It bites."  Just as she said 
this, we strolled past an open gate.  The horse 
excused itself from its pasture land and escaped 
through the opening.  Then it drew a little bead 
on my head.  Or did I start running first?  I 
raced away back down the road the way we came, my 
body pumped full of adrenalin, my legs working 
faster than they'd ever worked before.  The horse 
followed in noisy pursuit.  I could hear its 
hooves tramping the dirt, and its breath, heavy 
and purposeful.  I was being pursued by a crazy 
horse.  Where was I going to go for safety?  A 
woman driving a station wagon approached.  I have 
no idea how fast she was going, but I headed 
straight for the door, yanked it open and dove 
into the front seat.  Then I apologized to the 
bewildered woman, explained breathlessly that the 
horse was intending to kill me.  I ducked down in 
the seat as if I thought that the horse, if it 
saw me, would open the door after me and pull me 
out by its teeth into the street.  I told the 
woman where I was staying.

	"Oh, the Ratcliffs.  A friend of the mob?"

	I couldn't answer her.  She drove me up 
to the front door.  The horse was nowhere to be 
seen.  Maybe at that moment it was tearing poor 
Alice to shreds, or holding up a liquor store.  I 
entered sheepishly, ashamed of my cowardice, and 
crawled to the barracks where I lay down on top 
of my bunk and pouted vigorously.  Soon enough, 
Alice came in.  She sat on my bed and looked at 
me dolefully with huge sad eyes and a face of 
mock misery.  I smiled.  We went to the kitchen 
to make a batch of brownies.  We ate the batter.



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-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net