THE AWAKENING

Another Story From The Stoop
By
Steve Bernstein

I woke up with a start. I hopped off the top bunk and found myself half dressed with a baseball bat in hand. I slept with it under my mattress. I landed on my feet and started running through the apartment and out the door. I wasn’t quite awake, wasn’t asleep either when I heard the scream. No one else in my family heard it-just me. I was 15. I knew without really knowing how I knew, my father was in trouble. Not the same old drunken, arguing, yelling, antagonizing trouble we were used to. Not the scared to move, scared to talk, scared to dream trouble we kids and my mom faced every day. Not the fights in the street for me or the defending my sister or brother or meeting my mom to walk her home from work trouble. Not the working for my dad and not knowing if I’d make it home, or what crazy character he was going to leave me with or have me work with or what bar or whorehouse I’d be waiting for hours on end for him to finish with his “business” so we can maybe make it home in one piece kind of trouble. This night the trouble was different. You see, I was so connected to my father that I knew what he wanted, how he wanted it and when, before he ever had to tell me. It’s how it is, I’m told, when a kid is brought up by an alcoholic. You’re brought up trying so hard to make your parent happy, to meet his approval to gain his love and attention. Problem is, his thoughts, goals, dreams and aspirations for you are so impossible to attain and so insane to even think about let alone try to accomplish. Funny thing is, we do it anyway. Some of us not only try, we make it. Scary. I was one of those kids. I worked in his construction business from age 11-performed like a man! Better than a man. I had to. I had to show everyone up. I had to always do the impossible. That’s why I always found myself in such confusing roles. What was I? Tough street kid? Good son and brother? Good student? Athlete? Child wonder. It was tough in the Bronx during the 60’s. No two ways about it. Couple the war in the street with the war in my home and the war in my head-I had all I could do to keep it together. And together I kept it-for all of us.

When I hit the hallway, I took the stairs 4 at a time ‘till I hit the dark lobby 4 flights down. I made a sharp turn to the right at the bottom landing, heading towards the back door to the alleyway. As soon as I turned I skidded and slipped on what felt like keys and coins and a viscous fluid-I couldn’t tell for sure, it was almost pitch black. I reached out for the door as I regained my feet and ran down the alley to the street. I didn’t know where I needed to go, not consciously anyway. I hit the corner and started down the hill towards the school yard, when I saw him. It was my dad. He was moaning, out of breath and bleeding from his gut. He was holding his stomach yelling and going on and on about how he chased ‘em and “they didn’t even get a fuckin’ dime”. Meanwhile the knife was sticking out of his belly and he leaned on me when I walked him over to the stoop in front of our building. I Dropped my bat and let him lean on me so I could ease him down gently on the step. He was drunk as usual, but this time they got him. Couple of junkies tried to roll him. He fought them off and chased ‘em down the block. They got a way, not before ramming an 8 inch knife through his gut-just missed the bowel the doctor later said.
By the time I got him to the stoop, people were coming out into the street. My old man was making quite a racket. Someone yelled out they called the police, another yelled “don’t matter they don’t come here anyways”. By then my mom, brother and sister were out on the stoop as well. My mother was an emergency room nurse. She worked a few blocks away from our neighborhood. It was eerie; I looked at the faces of my family, looking for a sign, looking for something. Something that would tell me what I was supposed to feel, supposed to act like. I got nothing. We were all blank. People were now gathering ‘round, some trying to help, most just gawking. A guy down the street said “screw the ambulance; I’ll drive you to the hospital-get in”.

It was a busy night at Morrissania Emergency Room. A Gunshot wound and an axe assault were ahead of us. The doctor, if you want call him that came out and assured us we would be next-to “just hold on”. He didn’t look like a doctor. He looked like more like maybe my cousin who was a couple years older than me. Looking back, he was just a kid really. Nothing seemed to matter at this point anyway, everything was so surreal. I remember what stands out in my mind more than anything that night is when my dad looked up at me from his cot they wheeled in to the waiting room as we were waiting for the doctor to see him. There was a bare light bulb hanging from a cord overhead. He looked up into my eyes, just mine, reached his hand up and grabbed mine as I looked down on him, who for all I knew could be at death’s door- he said very clearly and very coherently after a night of moaning and garbled, drunken, shocked speech-“Steve, we’re going to get ‘em. When I get out of here, we’re going to get ‘em. As I looked down on my old man lying there, I heard a little voice in my head screaming at me. It said, “why aren’t you feeling anything? They then wheeled him away.

Over the next several weeks I found myself feeling really good. I moved up in the world. I truly was the man in the house. I had usually given about half of my earnings to my mother. At the time, I had 2 jobs. I worked for my old man on weekends and I was a messenger downtown after school. I gave her all my money. The job my father was doing just before he was stabbed was remodeling a fancy boutique on Madison Avenue. He had been doing work for a high end architect who had proven to be quite a decent man. While my dad was laid up, Lenny, the architect paid my mom weekly paychecks to help us out. The other great thing to come out of this was that my father was sober.

It took a few months for my dad to recover fully. During that time, he did nice things, stayed home and helped us out. I was proud of him, proud to be his son. One time, my dad was on the stoop talking to neighbors when me and my buddy were walking down the block. He had the habit of sitting in one of those beach folding chairs while he was recuperating. We stopped and talked a little, then continued down the street. When we were about a block away, a kid leans his head out the window and spits at us. Of course it hits me right on my head. I kind of knew this kid-he was always looking for trouble. I got so pissed off, I ran up to his apartment, banged on his door and when his mother answered I uncharacteristically, yelled and screamed and told her to warn him to never do that again. Looking back, things for the first time were feeling safe, with my dad in a different place than ever before, and a peace that our family experienced for the first time. I guess I got cocky. Well, me and my buddy continued on our way. We went down to the bodega to get a soda. When I got back to my stoop, I was telling my dad what happened, when out of nowhere all of a sudden, he reaches up out of his chair, and grabs my arm so hard downward that I hit the sidewalk face first flat on my belly. Simultaneous with that I felt air moving behind my head and a noise like swoosh in my ears. This kids father, a gangster came out looking for me to let me know he didn’t approve of the way that I complained about his son spitting at me. He swung at my head with a bat. My father probably saved my life. Had my father been his old self, probably half cocked or wishing he was, he never would have been able to talk to this guy the way he did. He never would have been able to calm him down and let him know that I was just a kid, got a little angry at this son and let bygones be bygones. What he would have done is got into it with him-and it would have been ugly. Yeah, it was a great couple of months. I met my dad for the first time. The dad I want to remember.

The day came. My dad was up and around. He went down to the job to see what was happening. He was back. I started working with him again, picked up where we left off.
I was doing well, learning different trades, learning to work with all kinds of people, learning about life. I was feeling good.

I knew he was drinking when he pulled up to me in his old van in the street and said “get in, we got work to do”. I was playing stick ball and felt as usual, embarrassed by his drunkenness. Whether I wanted to admit it or not, I couldn’t hide it from my friends anymore. The lies, the stories, the shame-they knew how it was for us-they knew he was a drunk. Sometimes, some of the guys would say- “we never knew if we would ever see you again” after different scenes in the street.

He said “I told you, that night in the hospital, we were going after them, I’m ready now”.
I slithered into the seat and said o.k. We drove around for weeks. All different neighborhoods, all different times. Some of those times, as much as I vowed never to be like my father, I wished I was drunk too. Anything to get away from that nagging, relentless, aching fear I walked around with. I saw my old man peer into hallways, look in the stores, scrutinize faces on the street. We went out for a long time when eventually it stopped. I couldn’t help but wonder, dread and agonize over if and when we did find them. Thank God we never did. Life was back to usual. I met my mom to walk her home. I defended my brother in the street and at school and protected my sister. I worked two jobs, gave half my money to my mom, worked with my dad and we all lived in fear. One thing changed though. My mom came home one day and said we’re moving. She said “I found a nice place in the North Bronx to rent”. We knew my old man would have real trouble moving. He didn’t do anything that required change too well. I was both encouraged and depressed. Sad to lose my street friends and encouraged that my mom is starting to step up to the plate. We moved that spring. I said goodbye to my friends-told them I’d still be around-after all, I work for my dad and the shop is in the building-they knew I was selling out. On moving day, the moving van was loaded up as was my father’s truck. We all loaded into it when I realized he was drunk. I said to my mom and brother and sister to get out we will not drive with him while he was drunk. They stayed in the truck-didn’t want the hassle. I took the bus.