Saved by a Song

Dolly Baruch

Rotund jovial Mr. Blankenship hated and loved my mother. Mother more often than not inspired only love among men. She had that deep dimple in her left cheek. Her curly hair was cut in the latest postwar style. Her short and voluptuous figure, so well dressed with an impeccable fashion sense and a very few dollars that she learned from her days as a salesgirl in the original Filene’s basement in Boston, drew admiring glances from men everywhere. She was, after all, only 32. When a federal law was passed in 1947 banning the use of public funds for religious purposes, she had the opportunity to be a crusader for her Jewish daughters in an overwhelmingly Christian Peoria. As president of the local B’nai B’rith and she knew what she had to do.  Had to march into Webster School and confront the principal. So he hated her because she made herself known as an uppity Jew who came to protest the school’s requirement for prayer, Christian prayer, to start the day. Loved her because then he would be known as an advocate for the new law among his cronies (and because she was so cute). “Well of course we will make separate facilities for her to use during morning prayers,” he declared.

Mother left the principal’s office. He was considerably less jovial as he attended to the rest of his daily duties. She had thoroughly discombobulated him by doing her duty as an activist, as a mother, as a law-abiding citizen. Mr. Blankenship was taken aback by her complacent grin, that of a cat that licked the cream. It brought out her dimple and this fearless deed filled her with satisfaction. She had done right for her girls and as B’nai B’rith president. The fallout for me did not concern her, or him, for that matter.

Mother had heard me whispering “In Jesus’ name, amen” over my breakfast cereal, repeating what we recited in first grade in Salinas. She had given me strict instructions ever since then. “Don’t say those words out loud. Don’t sing their Jesus songs. Our religion does not believe in Jesus. Don’t even whisper them, just move your lips.” Not in second grade in Boston or at Loucks School in Peoria, or at Webster School did I ever again invoke that magic incantation.  I mouthed the words but didn’t mean them, didn’t really understand any of it anyway, why I shouldn’t say them when every other kid in school did? Why were Jews so different? What could be bad about saying Jesus, that sweet looking baby in the cradle I’d learned to call a manger? I barely registered the morning prayer anyway. It meant nothing to me, no more than the peculiar prayer I stumbled through whenever bidden – “Sh’ma Yisrael.” 

Prayer was not in my vocabulary. We never prayed at home, except for Passover. Oh, and a couple of times a year for unknown reasons, mother would light Shabbos candles and prepare a special Friday night meal. But prayer? Not for me, no matter how serious a child I was, glasses forever falling down my nose, too small socks falling down into my shoes, hair flyaway curls no matter how tightly my mother braided it into pigtails. No, my passions were books, the radio, an old wind-up Victrola with a bunch of worn 78s, Yiddish comics, great operatic tenors, Richard Tucker and Jan Peerce, and a maddening number of Hawaiian ukulele songs, which turned out to be my father’s favorites and which my mother banned from her presence.

So what was the big deal about prayer at school? Well, it was a big deal. One day in spring, mysteriously, as soon as I arrived at my classroom, my gray haired teacher, whom I loved, buxom Mrs. Fahey took me by the hand down the hall to the janitor’s closet. She had a set of keys with her and unlocked the door. I had never even peeked in this room before. Occasionally, we might see the janitor, a wiry small man with a natty small black mustache in his gray uniform wielding a huge push broom down the hall, or perhaps carrying a large metal bucket filled with water, but look in his closet? It was simply off limits for any third grader. My teacher sat me down in a child sized chair pushed up to a child sized table, handed me a protractor and some crayons and colored paper. “I’ll be back to get you after prayers,” she said. “I’ll just close the door now.” And she left me there.  Alone.  In the Janitor’s closet. Was I being punished? What had I done?

Just about the time I was going to have to decide whether I should start wailing like a baby or to play like a good girl with the protractor, she was back. After taking me by the hand, locking up the door and stashing the keys in her dress pocket, we walked back to the classroom. Thirty-five children looked at me as I entered the room. I couldn’t look at them. I was so embarrassed. I didn’t know if they were impressed that I had been excused from prayers or jealous or unconcerned, but I was certain that being singled out and taken to the janitor’s closet would not make me any friends. I did not know my mother had caused this dislocation. I was completely in the dark, much like I was in the dimly lit janitor’s closet. I was ashamed, but I hadn’t done anything, at least not this time. I didn’t even know that my banishment was connected with being Jewish, and had I known, I still wouldn’t have understood what it was about. For Pete’s sake. I was eight years old.

But this day, as if it were divine compensation for my humiliation, I was thrilled that my favorite part of the week, when Miss Anne Dooley came to teach us music, was the very next activity in our classroom. Mrs. Fahey, for all her motherly attributes and her loving attention to each of her students, could not sing a lick. But she could play the piano, crashing chords loudly for Miss Dooley. The whole class was head over heels in love with Miss Dooley. She had an adorable Irish face, brownish curls, and a sweet singing voice. She knew how to please her students and almost never chose songs we didn’t like. Her special treat was to pick out one classmate who had done really well, who had “sung out” in the patriotic song selection, to choose the next song. Today, it was Little Black Sambo (well, that’s what I called him to myself – Robert Smith was a small child who had very dark skin, short kinky hair, big lips, big eyes – the very picture that illustrated my copy of this childhood classic). “Robert,” said Miss Dooley. “You’ve sung out ‘America the Beautiful.’ You get to choose the next song.” Robert stood proudly beside his desk. He stuck his little chicken chest out and began to belt out the words to a song we all knew, but it wasn’t in our songbook. He just kept it up until he was finished. “I’d love to get you, on a slow boat to China, all to myself, alone. Get you and keep you in my arms evermore. Leave all your lovers, weepin’ on a faraway shore. Out on the briny, with the moon big and shiny, meltin’ your heart of stone. I’d love to get you on a slow boat to China, all to myself alone.”  Astounding. The whole class was stunned. So was Miss Dooley. And Mrs. Fahey. But I was saved. All we talked about the rest of the day was Robert Smith’s sensational rendition of “Slow Boat to China.”

Nobody said a word to me about the janitor’s closet. Not that day or ever. Not my teacher. Not a classmate. Nor did my mother.  I always worshipped my mother. She never did any wrong in my book when I was a child.  If I had even imagined that my mother would do this, I might have tried to confront her - but really, as a child of my parents, even had I known my mother's invovlement, I knew I would have hell to pay if I had criticized or even questioned why she had done this. No, it was undoubtedly better for me to have been innocent of the reasons for my daily extradition.

I would have called it a conspiracy of silence had I known the terminology. It had become just a matter of fact. Mrs. Fahey took me by the hand to the smelly janitor’s closet every morning and handed me a protractor, some crayons and some paper, and after prayers, six minutes later, she brought me back to the classroom. Every day for the rest of the year.

I never did feel I fit in anywhere. My family had one set of standards from their own experience – that the world was “antisemitin” – and the rest of the world had another. Banishment to the janitor’s closet. Well, of course. I was an outlier, never quite fitting in, seldom feeling consequential and on the other hand, not quite made of common clay.