A Season of Miracles Read online

  Mrs. Catalano was nattering on, and said, "Of course, we will all be off from school to celebrate the birth of the Savior, which we call Christmas and the little Jewish children call Hanukkah."

  "No." said Sammy, under his breath. He looked around at the other Jewish kids. They sat impassively. There was no sign of outrage on their faces. Irv just sat there and took it. And Sheldon Weinberg, and Miriam Glass, and Murray Melzer. They said nothing.

  Then, Sammy said "No" in a conversational tone. Then "No" a little louder. The children sitting near him began to look at him. Mrs. Catalano was lost in her own discourse.

  "No," said Sammy. "No. NO. NO. And NOOO!"

  Startled, Mrs. Catalano, reacted typically. "Samuel Itzkowitz, please stop your yelling. I don't know what's bothering you, but you are spoiling it for the other children."

  Sammy arose. "You are bothering me, Mrs. Catalano. Hanukkah is not what we call Christmas. Hanukkah is a wonderful holiday that happened before there was ever a Christmas. And the worst thing is that none of the other kids says anything. The Jewish kids sit here like they don't know the difference, and the rest will believe a lie for their whole lives. And Christmas is not just decorations and presents. Why are you lying to us? Or are you just stupid?"

  The class gasped as one. Mrs. Catalano's face became red with rage and embarrassment, for she truly did not know any better, and was angry at Sammy for exposing her.

  The Jewish kids rolled their eyes. They had been taught over the years that invisibility was the best way to survive, and now their cover was blown.

  "Samuel Itzkowitz, your behavior is disgraceful! You will go down to Mr. Sullivan's office immediately. But first, you will apologize to me and the class."

  "NO! No, Mrs. Catalano. You will apologize to us for lying or for being stupid. You will say you're sorry for telling us things that are not true. Then I will go."

  The class was riveted. They had never seen such a display of defiance. Nor had Mrs. Catalano. She was barely able to get the words out. "All right, then. You stay here. I am going to get Mr. Sullivan."

  She left the room. The class stared silently at Sammy. Irv finally managed to speak. "Sammy, sit down! Don't be a shtunk. Say you're sorry and get it over with. You'll be in a lot of trouble."

  "Irving, I'm surprised at you. You never take anything from the kids on the street. How can you sit here and take this?"

  "Sammy, this is different. This is school. You gotta be good. You can't make trouble."

  "Irv, you don't understand. Hanukkah is a holiday that is about not taking it from bums and bad guys. We fought then, and we always fight when we have to. I have to do this."

  Just then, a red-faced Mrs. Catalano led a redder-faced Mr. Sullivan into the room. Sullivan attempted an opening.

  "Okay, Samuel, what's this all about? You have upset your teacher and insulted her in front of the class. I think you owe her an apology, and then we can get back to normal."

  Sammy's face assumed a firm appearance. He spoke evenly, but there was a quiver in his voice.

  "Mr. Sullivan, I didn't mean to make trouble. But Mrs. Catalano insulted every Jewish kid in the class, maybe every one in the world. She said that we call Christmas 'Hanukkah,' and that we celebrate it. It's not true. And she never talks about what Christmas is supposed to mean, only what presents you can get. She owes the class an apology."

  Mrs. Catalano looked at Mr. Sullivan with a "See what I told you?" look. Mr. Sullivan cleared his throat and put on his Voice of Authority.

  "Samuel, apologize to your teacher and get back to your seat. This has gone far enough."

  "No, Mr. Sullivan, I can't do that. I'm right."

  "Now look, either you listen to me, or I'll have your parents in here, and I'll keep you after school for a month!"

  Sammy set his jaw. He said nothing, but his eyes spoke for him. They flamed defiance. Sullivan turned on his heel and left the room. From somewhere in the room came a muffled, "Holy cats!"

  Mrs. Catalano stood tapping her foot for a while, then tired of that and sat down. She tried to get an arithmetic lesson started, but she might as well have been trying to teach to someone in a coma for all the attention she was getting. She went on bravely, but it was no use. All minds and eyes were fixed on Sammy, standing with his arms folded at the front of the room.

  About an hour later, a humiliated Mrs. Itzkowitz, with Mrs. Feigenbaum in tow, entered the classroom. Sammy sighed and relaxed. He explained to his mother in a mixture of Polish, Yiddish, and English what his situation was.

  She begged him, in the same mixture, to sit down and be a good boy. She said that it was not good for guests in America to act this way. She was terrified that they would throw the family out of the country, or worse. She appealed to his emotions.

  Mrs. Feigenbaum begged him in Yiddish not to make a scene. She was afraid that the other kids would take it out on Irving and Marsha.

  He held firm. She turned to Mrs. Itzkowitz with a hopeless shrug. Mrs. Itzkowitz turned to Mrs. Catalano with a helpless shrug. Mrs. Catalano turned to Mr. Sullivan with an angry shrug. The principal threw out his arms in a frustrated gesture.

  Sammy re-crossed his arms, unmoving.

  The class was dismissed. Mr. Sullivan and the three women got down to serious negotiations, including threats, pleadings, promises, and rational arguments in several languages, Mrs. Catalano having resorted to Italian at a tense moment.

  Sammy's position was unchanging: he demanded an apology before him and the rest of the class. Mr. Sullivan lost his temper and grabbed Sammy's wrist. Sammy squirmed away, and ran across the room, and the principal advanced toward him. Panicky, Sammy reached into his pocket and pulled out his Boy Scout knife. He thumbed open a blade and put it up to his own throat.

  "Don't move," he yelled, "or I'll kill myself!"

  Sullivan stopped in his tracks, and Mrs. Itzkowitz fainted. The principal said, "Well, this is a police problem, now."

  Although school had been dismissed, most of the kids hung around outside the building in anticipation of something momentous. Despite several instructions from various officials, they did not disperse.

  A few police cars had been added to the scene, and several cops barred the door of the school. Upstairs, in the one lit schoolroom, Sammy stood with a knife against his throat. Before him were his parents, the superintendent of schools for Brooklyn, and the police chief of the local precinct. The chief had just finished listening to Sammy's story, which he had told in a calm and reasonable way. The chief asked the others to leave, and spoke to Sammy alone.

  "Sammy, you are making a lot of people very upset, and you could hurt yourself. You don't want to hurt yourself?"

  "No, sir." The knife bobbed against his neck as he spoke.

  "What do you want?"

  "You know. I told you. I told everybody for about six hours now. It's easy."

  "Look, son, Mrs. Catalano has been home for a long time. She may never be the same again. She spits every time someone says your name. Your mom and pop are about nuts, and the mayor has called twice. Can't you go home and we can talk about this tomorrow?"

  "No, sir. If I leave now my parents will cry and change my mind tonight, and I will never get my apology. Mrs. Catalano will hate me and give me bad marks. The kids will think I'm crazy. I will hate myself."

  The chief rubbed his face. "Sammy, if you don't leave, I'm going to call in a couple of big officers and they will take you out of here by force."

  "Sir, I will kill myself." Sammy moved the knife slightly, and a trickle of blood ran down his neck.

  The chief's eyes popped. "Okay, okay. Stop that! What can we do to end this mess?"

  Sammy thought for a second. "I want to talk to Jackie Robinson."

  The chief didn't bat an eye. "I have to go make a phone call."

  Sammy was alone for the first time in hours. He wanted to cry. He wanted to throw himself into his mother's arms. He wanted supper. And, oh! how he wanted to pee. He wiped the blood
from his neck with his handkerchief, and then he cried. It was almost like being back in the hole again, only this time he was alone.

  About forty-five minutes later, there was a commotion in the hall, and the chief came back into the room. Sammy quickly brought the knife back to his neck. Following the chief was a large black man, lithe and broad-shouldered. It was Jackie Robinson.

  "Here you go, Sammy. I'll leave you two alone."

  Sammy's eyes bugged. "Is that really you, Mr. Robinson?"

  "Yes, Sammy. I was at a Boy's Club dinner in the Bronx, and they got me here in a squad car with lights and sirens. This is certainly an unusual situation."

  Sammy removed the knife from his neck, folded it, and sat down. Robinson squeezed his huge frame into a desk next to him. Sammy began to weep.

  Robinson took out his handkerchief, and gave it to the boy. After a minute, Sammy said through his tears, "I saw you steal home against the Cubs. You went three-for-four and stole two bases."

  "Yeah, I remember that game. That was the day one of my own team called me a name. I went out of my way to prove something."

  Robinson cleared his throat, and his face took on a serious look.

  "You know, Sammy, you did a very bad thing."

  Sammy nodded. "Yes, Mr. Robinson."

  "You can call me Jackie, if you want to."

  "Thank you, Mr. Robinson."

  Robinson suppressed a smile. "Sam, your life is very precious, and to a lot of people. It's terrible to make that kind of a threat. It disrupted your class, made your teacher cry, scared everyone else, and your mother, well..."

  "Yes, sir, I know. I never meant to hurt myself, honest. But I was...I had..." Sammy waved his hands, helpless to explain.

  "You felt that you had no choice. I've felt that way, myself."

  Sammy's face lit up. "I knew you would understand. You know how I feel."

  "Tell me what's bothering you, Sam. Tell me your story."

  Sammy told him everything. The root cellar and the muffled Christmas carols for his birthday. The day he saw the sun for the first time. The camps, and the GIs, and the little tree, and the knife, and the tattooed numbers. His trip to America, and his idea that this whole country must be a wonderful dream, because nothing could be like this for real. And the Dodger games, and Joe DiMaggio, and Coney Island. The Hanukkah story and the tree in Rockefeller Center, and nothing for him, or his people, and Mrs. Catalano's final insult. Not her mistake, but her inability to apologize for it, as though it really didn't matter.

  Robinson listened, nodding his head, and sometimes sighing. When Sammy had finished, Robinson was quiet for a moment. Then he spoke.

  "Sammy, when I started to play ball with the Dodgers, my boss told me that I would be insulted every day, in ways that I could not even imagine. He told me that if I fought back, as almost any man would, I was not the man for him. I was to do the Christian thing, and turn the other cheek.

  "I have been turning my cheeks so much that my neck is out of joint. I still don't know whether I am doing the right thing, but I have my little ways of getting even. And sometimes a team-mate will do something kind and brave, and that helps a lot.

  "You must do what you think is right. But you also must consider what this will do to the folks around you. Not because it might make you change your mind, but because everything on earth has its price, and you should know what it's going to cost you.

  "The problem here is that you can't get any satisfaction from this. There is no way you can make your point, and the world seems to be against you, even your parents and friends.

  "I am not a philosopher, not a minister or a rabbi, but I sure know what you're going through. And I may be just a ball player, but people listen to me because I can steal bases. Let's see if we can get their attention."

  "Mr. Robinson, can I pee first?"

  A little while later, Jackie Robinson and Sammy Itzkowitz emerged from the schoolhouse door, Robinson's large dark hand engulfing the boy's small white one. There was a mob of kids, parents, the odd curious ones, and all those who are attracted by the sensational. The two walked out to the sidewalk, and a bunch of reporters pushed against the cops at the schoolhouse door.

  Robinson raised his hand, and began to speak.

  "This is my friend, Sammy Itzkowitz. He has been in this country less than a year, and his last home was a displaced persons camp. Before that, he lived in a hole in the ground, because some folks were brave enough to hide him there from the Nazis.

  "His birthday is Christmas Day, and he has always felt close to Christmas because of that. When he came to this country, he found out that we celebrate Christmas in a big way. So big, that it smothers everything in its path. It smothers his holiday, Hanukkah, a story about fighting back against tyranny, and a miracle of light against darkness. It even smothers our ability to remember why we celebrate Christmas.

  "Sammy loves Christmas, and he taught me a few words of a Polish carol he heard as a little kid. But he doesn't want the world to forget the other celebration at this time of year. If the birth of Jesus gave us freedom from sin and death, the Maccabees gave Mary and Joseph the hope of living without fear. The two holidays are entwined in ways we have forgotten.

  "Just like Mary and Joseph found refuge in a stable, and gave birth to a son that changed the world, Sammy's parents found refuge in a cellar, and gave birth to a son that changed my way of looking at Christmas. I think that he should be thanked for giving us a brave and loving gift.

  "This world is weary of fighting. Maybe it's time to refresh our spirits, and figure out what's really important. Sammy is a little miracle, and miracles are what this season is all about."

  Robinson picked Sammy up, put him in his mother's arms, whispered something in his ear, listened to Sammy whisper something back, turned and entered a police car. In a moment, he was gone.

  "What did he say to you, Sammy?" asked the chief.

  "He said, 'Light a candle for me, Sammy, and come to see the Dodgers on opening day. Happy Hanukkah.' I told him that he was my Wise Man, and the same to him."

  The next day, Mrs. Catalano apologized to Sammy and the class, and Sammy apologized to her. They hugged each other, and the kids cheered. That year, the classroom featured a menorah alongside the manger scene. And Sammy lit the candles.

  That year, Sammy insisted on a menorah in a window on every side of his apartment, so the candles could be seen from all directions, high above the streets of Brooklyn.

  The End

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  About the Author

  Ed Goldberg was born in The Bronx, New York. A college dropout in 1962, he attempted to do stand-up comedy, unsuccessfully. He moved to Washington, DC, 1973, wrote features and reviews for various local papers, covering pop culture, punk-rock, jazz and theater.

  In 1991 he moved to Portland, Oregon, finished Served Cold, winner of the 1995 Shamus Award, and Dead Air, set in Portland. His third novel, True Crime, (as "Alan Gold") was published in February 2005. True Faith was published in January 2007.

  He reviews movies and interviews authors on KBOO-FM, writes essays and book reviews for Black Lamb, and is a classical DJ on Portland's KQAC-FM.

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