Chicken Soup for the Jewish Soul by Jack Canfield

Author:Jack Canfield
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
ISBN: 9780757396427
Publisher: HCI, The Life Issues Publisher
Published: 2010-08-29T16:00:00+00:00

Upstairs at the Rialto

Prejudice is the reason of fools.

Voltaire

Lucille came to work for us when we moved from an apartment to the house my father built in 1950. There was more to care for in a house, and with help, my mother could still work in my father’s haberdashery. It seemed a long way from the store to home. At first, we took the bus, which cost a nickel, but when we got tired of waiting for it we just walked. Lucille always used the bus because she lived “on the other side of the tracks” and that was much too far for walking.

All the “colored” people in our town lived “on the other side of the tracks” as if that was why it was there. The railroad was our Mason-Dixon line. Once or twice, when I went with my father to drop off ironing at Lucille’s house, I remembered movies I’d seen of poor “colored” people in the South, and I felt sad that Lucille had to live in almost as bad a way. All the tiny frame houses needed painting and some had rusty gas tanks at the side. The yards were full of old cars and stoves and broken-down chairs. The first time I went there, I felt embarrassed for Lucille because I thought she must feel that way. Then, I was vaguely bewildered. I couldn’t understand why the difference between the way we lived and the way “colored” people lived was so stark, so absolute, one side of the tracks from the other. One time I asked my father about this. He said, “That’s just the way it is.”

My parents were not overtly racist, especially not my mother. She loved everyone. But she and my father were products of their time, so my mother, like all the other Jewish women in town who had maids, referred to Lucille as her schvartza (black). “She’s such a wonderful schvartza!” she would say of Lucille. “She’s like a member of the family.”

Lucille was tolerant of such insults, not that my mother called her that directly. Once, when I was eating lunch with her, I blurted, “My sister says I shouldn’t eat with you ’cause you’re colored!” Lucille smiled and kept on munching her peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Another time, I asked why her hands, which fascinated me, were brown on one side and pink on the other. She laughed and said, “’Cause that’s how God made ’em!”

I loved the touch of those hands when they wiped my mouth clean or caught me when I slipped from the jungle gym. I felt secure with my hand in Lucille’s. For all her slightness of frame, she had a power and authority that made me feel safe.

So one day when my mother said I could go to the movies with Lucille, I was wildly happy because there was something I wanted to do very badly, and I couldn’t do it without her. I wanted to sit in the balcony at the Rialto Theater.

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