WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.940 align:middle line:90% 00:00:02.940 --> 00:00:05.070 align:middle line:90% There's a lot coming up. 00:00:05.070 --> 00:00:11.830 align:middle line:84% The Writers at Work next reading will be one week from tonight 00:00:11.830 --> 00:00:18.570 align:middle line:84% in this auditorium with a reading by Rick Bass. 00:00:18.570 --> 00:00:22.260 align:middle line:84% The Poetry Center is going to have 00:00:22.260 --> 00:00:29.850 align:middle line:84% the great pleasure of benefiting from a special reading on March 00:00:29.850 --> 00:00:32.610 align:middle line:90% 4. 00:00:32.610 --> 00:00:37.730 align:middle line:84% Emmy award actors Anthony Zerbe and Roscoe Lee Browne 00:00:37.730 --> 00:00:41.360 align:middle line:84% are going to do readings from great figures 00:00:41.360 --> 00:00:46.820 align:middle line:84% in American literature, T.S Eliot and many others. 00:00:46.820 --> 00:00:49.430 align:middle line:84% And that will be at the Arizona Inn. 00:00:49.430 --> 00:00:53.270 align:middle line:84% That benefit is being arranged for the Poetry Center 00:00:53.270 --> 00:00:57.470 align:middle line:84% by Jill Francis, and she's going to be sending out a flyer soon. 00:00:57.470 --> 00:01:00.220 align:middle line:90% 00:01:00.220 --> 00:01:03.870 align:middle line:84% There's also another special that's coming to town. 00:01:03.870 --> 00:01:11.040 align:middle line:84% Florence Marshall, an actress who was the original-- 00:01:11.040 --> 00:01:13.950 align:middle line:84% was the daughter in the original production 00:01:13.950 --> 00:01:17.610 align:middle line:90% of The Little Foxes in 1930s. 00:01:17.610 --> 00:01:24.300 align:middle line:84% She's coming to town to do a benefit for the Women's 00:01:24.300 --> 00:01:26.670 align:middle line:84% International League for Peace and Freedom, 00:01:26.670 --> 00:01:29.850 align:middle line:84% and she's doing the Belle of Amherst. 00:01:29.850 --> 00:01:33.190 align:middle line:84% And that will be at the Unitarian church on Friday, 00:01:33.190 --> 00:01:35.220 align:middle line:90% March the 9th. 00:01:35.220 --> 00:01:38.910 align:middle line:84% So I don't have enough copies of this newsletter to give to you, 00:01:38.910 --> 00:01:40.942 align:middle line:84% but if you didn't get one, you might give us 00:01:40.942 --> 00:01:42.900 align:middle line:84% a call if you'd like to be on our mailing list. 00:01:42.900 --> 00:01:44.640 align:middle line:84% We'll be happy to send things to you. 00:01:44.640 --> 00:01:47.450 align:middle line:90% 00:01:47.450 --> 00:01:49.010 align:middle line:90% We have a real treat tonight. 00:01:49.010 --> 00:01:52.400 align:middle line:84% Two super ladies are going to read for us. 00:01:52.400 --> 00:01:55.340 align:middle line:84% They're both here on the faculty of the creative writing 00:01:55.340 --> 00:01:56.720 align:middle line:90% program. 00:01:56.720 --> 00:01:59.660 align:middle line:84% Vivian Gornick teaching in nonfiction and Mary Elsie 00:01:59.660 --> 00:02:02.330 align:middle line:90% Robertson in fiction. 00:02:02.330 --> 00:02:04.610 align:middle line:84% Vivian Gornick books of nonfiction 00:02:04.610 --> 00:02:10.669 align:middle line:84% are Fierce Attachments: A Memoir, Women in Science, 00:02:10.669 --> 00:02:16.650 align:middle line:84% Portraits from a World in Transition, Essays in Feminism, 00:02:16.650 --> 00:02:19.790 align:middle line:84% The Romance of American Communism, 00:02:19.790 --> 00:02:26.020 align:middle line:84% and In Search of Ali Mahmoud, an American Woman in Egypt. 00:02:26.020 --> 00:02:30.580 align:middle line:84% She co-edited with Barbara K. Moran, Women in Sexist Society: 00:02:30.580 --> 00:02:33.760 align:middle line:84% Studies in Power and Powerlessness. 00:02:33.760 --> 00:02:37.140 align:middle line:84% She was a staff writer on the Village Voice between 1969 00:02:37.140 --> 00:02:42.640 align:middle line:84% and '77 and she's published over 200 articles, essays, 00:02:42.640 --> 00:02:44.940 align:middle line:84% and reviews for such publications 00:02:44.940 --> 00:02:48.480 align:middle line:84% as the nation New York Times, Washington Post, 00:02:48.480 --> 00:02:51.090 align:middle line:90% And The Atlantic. 00:02:51.090 --> 00:02:53.190 align:middle line:84% She recently served as a visiting poet-- 00:02:53.190 --> 00:02:55.530 align:middle line:90% a visiting professor. 00:02:55.530 --> 00:03:00.030 align:middle line:84% My tongue just goes about what it's used to. 00:03:00.030 --> 00:03:02.770 align:middle line:84% As a visiting professor at the University of Houston. 00:03:02.770 --> 00:03:05.814 align:middle line:84% It's a very great pleasure to introduce Vivian Gornick. 00:03:05.814 --> 00:03:09.132 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:03:09.132 --> 00:03:13.410 align:middle line:90% 00:03:13.410 --> 00:03:15.650 align:middle line:90% Hi. 00:03:15.650 --> 00:03:18.500 align:middle line:84% I'm going to read to you from Fierce Attachments. 00:03:18.500 --> 00:03:22.240 align:middle line:84% This is a memoir that I wrote about two years ago. 00:03:22.240 --> 00:03:24.080 align:middle line:90% It was published two years ago. 00:03:24.080 --> 00:03:28.140 align:middle line:84% And it's a story that I tell about my mother, myself, 00:03:28.140 --> 00:03:31.850 align:middle line:84% and a woman who lived next door to us when I was a child, all 00:03:31.850 --> 00:03:33.830 align:middle line:90% the years I was growing up. 00:03:33.830 --> 00:03:36.170 align:middle line:84% When I set out to write Fierce Attachments, 00:03:36.170 --> 00:03:38.300 align:middle line:84% I thought the story was all in the past 00:03:38.300 --> 00:03:40.820 align:middle line:84% and that I would just write chronologically 00:03:40.820 --> 00:03:46.070 align:middle line:84% of what had happened then and bring us up to now. 00:03:46.070 --> 00:03:51.410 align:middle line:84% But I discovered-- and the woman next door was dead. 00:03:51.410 --> 00:03:53.600 align:middle line:84% So she wouldn't be with us in the present. 00:03:53.600 --> 00:03:56.180 align:middle line:84% But I discovered along the way that I 00:03:56.180 --> 00:03:59.720 align:middle line:84% had a lot of unfinished business with my mother, which 00:03:59.720 --> 00:04:05.480 align:middle line:84% wouldn't lend itself readily to a story told in the past. 00:04:05.480 --> 00:04:07.370 align:middle line:84% And after a lot of agonizing and a lot 00:04:07.370 --> 00:04:10.190 align:middle line:84% of difficulty about how to solve what was essentially a writing 00:04:10.190 --> 00:04:15.470 align:middle line:84% problem how was I going to put the two together 00:04:15.470 --> 00:04:20.010 align:middle line:84% this ongoing struggle I had now in the present 00:04:20.010 --> 00:04:23.150 align:middle line:90% and this story of the past. 00:04:23.150 --> 00:04:26.690 align:middle line:84% Finally, after a lot of agonizing, 00:04:26.690 --> 00:04:30.320 align:middle line:84% hit on this, my mother and I walk. 00:04:30.320 --> 00:04:33.890 align:middle line:84% We walked all our lives together in the city of New York 00:04:33.890 --> 00:04:35.600 align:middle line:90% where we both live. 00:04:35.600 --> 00:04:40.550 align:middle line:84% And I discovered one day amusing myself and my troubles 00:04:40.550 --> 00:04:42.800 align:middle line:84% over not being able to get on with my book 00:04:42.800 --> 00:04:45.170 align:middle line:90% that I told the story of a walk. 00:04:45.170 --> 00:04:48.260 align:middle line:84% I sat down and I wrote the story of a walk 00:04:48.260 --> 00:04:50.450 align:middle line:90% to myself at the typewriter. 00:04:50.450 --> 00:04:53.660 align:middle line:84% And I realized what I was doing, which was this. 00:04:53.660 --> 00:04:55.790 align:middle line:84% I was recounting the fact essentially 00:04:55.790 --> 00:04:58.790 align:middle line:84% that when my mother and I walk, she 00:04:58.790 --> 00:05:01.278 align:middle line:90% tells me stories from the past. 00:05:01.278 --> 00:05:03.570 align:middle line:84% And of course, she only has a certain store of stories. 00:05:03.570 --> 00:05:05.940 align:middle line:84% So she tells the same story over and over again. 00:05:05.940 --> 00:05:07.970 align:middle line:84% The thing that was different was every time 00:05:07.970 --> 00:05:09.920 align:middle line:84% she told the story I'd be a few years older 00:05:09.920 --> 00:05:12.800 align:middle line:84% and I would ask another question. 00:05:12.800 --> 00:05:17.480 align:middle line:84% So her story remained the same, but my questions altered. 00:05:17.480 --> 00:05:21.740 align:middle line:84% And I understood then that essentially 00:05:21.740 --> 00:05:25.880 align:middle line:84% was what I was doing here, I was asking the question 00:05:25.880 --> 00:05:27.590 align:middle line:90% of what had happened. 00:05:27.590 --> 00:05:31.400 align:middle line:84% And I would keep on asking it until I got the answers. 00:05:31.400 --> 00:05:37.100 align:middle line:84% So I devised this structure in which we walk in the present 00:05:37.100 --> 00:05:39.560 align:middle line:84% and I tell the story of the past. 00:05:39.560 --> 00:05:41.030 align:middle line:90% And it goes back and forth. 00:05:41.030 --> 00:05:43.730 align:middle line:84% And about a third of the way through the book I understood 00:05:43.730 --> 00:05:48.200 align:middle line:84% that eventually, these two sets of women, 00:05:48.200 --> 00:05:51.080 align:middle line:84% those who are walking now and those who had lived then 00:05:51.080 --> 00:05:55.650 align:middle line:84% would have to account for themselves to each other. 00:05:55.650 --> 00:05:58.110 align:middle line:84% And that is what I hope the book accomplished. 00:05:58.110 --> 00:05:59.780 align:middle line:84% So what I'm going to do is skip around. 00:05:59.780 --> 00:06:01.880 align:middle line:84% I tell you this only because I have 00:06:01.880 --> 00:06:05.060 align:middle line:84% chosen to skip around the book, but I'm 00:06:05.060 --> 00:06:06.275 align:middle line:90% going to follow that pattern. 00:06:06.275 --> 00:06:08.150 align:middle line:84% We're going to walk and I'm going to tell you 00:06:08.150 --> 00:06:09.590 align:middle line:90% the story from the past. 00:06:09.590 --> 00:06:13.130 align:middle line:84% And it's not in chronological order as I wrote it, 00:06:13.130 --> 00:06:14.330 align:middle line:90% but you get the idea. 00:06:14.330 --> 00:06:17.930 align:middle line:90% 00:06:17.930 --> 00:06:21.380 align:middle line:84% "I'm eight years old, my mother and I come out of her apartment 00:06:21.380 --> 00:06:24.380 align:middle line:90% onto the second floor landing. 00:06:24.380 --> 00:06:27.530 align:middle line:84% Mrs. Drucker is standing in the open doorway of the apartment 00:06:27.530 --> 00:06:30.140 align:middle line:90% next door smoking a cigarette. 00:06:30.140 --> 00:06:32.720 align:middle line:84% My mother locks the door and says to her, 00:06:32.720 --> 00:06:34.580 align:middle line:90% What are you doing here? 00:06:34.580 --> 00:06:36.560 align:middle line:84% Mrs. Drucker jerks her head backward 00:06:36.560 --> 00:06:38.480 align:middle line:90% toward her own apartment. 00:06:38.480 --> 00:06:39.890 align:middle line:90% He wants to lay me. 00:06:39.890 --> 00:06:43.550 align:middle line:84% I told him he's got to take a shower before he can touch me. 00:06:43.550 --> 00:06:45.980 align:middle line:90% I know that he is her husband. 00:06:45.980 --> 00:06:48.450 align:middle line:90% He is always the husband. 00:06:48.450 --> 00:06:48.950 align:middle line:90% Why? 00:06:48.950 --> 00:06:49.670 align:middle line:90% He's so dirty? 00:06:49.670 --> 00:06:50.960 align:middle line:90% My mother says. 00:06:50.960 --> 00:06:54.050 align:middle line:84% He feels dirty to me, Mrs. Drucker says. 00:06:54.050 --> 00:06:56.990 align:middle line:84% Drucker, you're a whore, my mother says. 00:06:56.990 --> 00:06:59.540 align:middle line:84% Mrs. Drucker shrugs her shoulder. 00:06:59.540 --> 00:07:02.480 align:middle line:84% I can't ride the subways, she says. 00:07:02.480 --> 00:07:04.700 align:middle line:84% In the Bronx, ride the subway was 00:07:04.700 --> 00:07:08.210 align:middle line:90% a euphemism for going to work. 00:07:08.210 --> 00:07:11.930 align:middle line:84% I lived in that tenement between the ages of 6 and 21. 00:07:11.930 --> 00:07:14.880 align:middle line:84% There were 20 apartments, four to a floor. 00:07:14.880 --> 00:07:17.870 align:middle line:84% And all I remember is a building full of women. 00:07:17.870 --> 00:07:20.310 align:middle line:84% I hardly remember the men at all. 00:07:20.310 --> 00:07:24.290 align:middle line:84% They were everywhere, of course, husbands, fathers, brothers-- 00:07:24.290 --> 00:07:26.880 align:middle line:90% but I remember only the women. 00:07:26.880 --> 00:07:29.930 align:middle line:84% And I remember them all crude like Mrs. Drucker, 00:07:29.930 --> 00:07:32.420 align:middle line:90% or fierce like my mother. 00:07:32.420 --> 00:07:35.420 align:middle line:84% They never spoke as though they knew who they were. 00:07:35.420 --> 00:07:38.390 align:middle line:84% Understood the bargain they had struck with life. 00:07:38.390 --> 00:07:41.420 align:middle line:84% But they often acted as though they knew. 00:07:41.420 --> 00:07:45.020 align:middle line:84% Shrewd, volatile, unlettered, they 00:07:45.020 --> 00:07:48.020 align:middle line:90% performed on a Dreiserian scale. 00:07:48.020 --> 00:07:52.400 align:middle line:84% There would be years of apparent calm, then suddenly an outbreak 00:07:52.400 --> 00:07:54.680 align:middle line:90% of panic and wildness. 00:07:54.680 --> 00:07:57.770 align:middle line:84% Two or three lives scarred perhaps ruined 00:07:57.770 --> 00:08:00.350 align:middle line:90% and the turmoil would subside. 00:08:00.350 --> 00:08:04.700 align:middle line:84% Once again, sullen quiet, erotic torpor, 00:08:04.700 --> 00:08:07.430 align:middle line:84% the ordinariness of daily denial. 00:08:07.430 --> 00:08:10.580 align:middle line:84% And I-- the girl growing in their midst, being 00:08:10.580 --> 00:08:13.280 align:middle line:84% made in their image, I absorbed them 00:08:13.280 --> 00:08:17.990 align:middle line:84% as I would chloroform on a cloth laid against my face. 00:08:17.990 --> 00:08:22.130 align:middle line:84% It has taken me 30 years to understand how much of them 00:08:22.130 --> 00:08:24.650 align:middle line:90% I understood. 00:08:24.650 --> 00:08:27.050 align:middle line:90% My mother and I are out walking. 00:08:27.050 --> 00:08:30.590 align:middle line:84% I ask if she remembers the women in that building in the Bronx, 00:08:30.590 --> 00:08:32.600 align:middle line:90% Of course, she replies. 00:08:32.600 --> 00:08:35.360 align:middle line:84% I tell her I've always thought sexual rage was 00:08:35.360 --> 00:08:37.520 align:middle line:90% what made them so crazy. 00:08:37.520 --> 00:08:40.730 align:middle line:84% Absolutely, she says without breaking her stride. 00:08:40.730 --> 00:08:41.758 align:middle line:90% Remember Drucker? 00:08:41.758 --> 00:08:44.300 align:middle line:84% She used to say if she didn't smoke a cigarette while she was 00:08:44.300 --> 00:08:45.758 align:middle line:84% having intercourse with her husband 00:08:45.758 --> 00:08:48.200 align:middle line:84% she throw herself out the window. 00:08:48.200 --> 00:08:50.420 align:middle line:84% And Zimmerman on the other side of us? 00:08:50.420 --> 00:08:53.030 align:middle line:84% They married her off to him when she was 16. 00:08:53.030 --> 00:08:54.620 align:middle line:84% She hated his guts, she used to say 00:08:54.620 --> 00:08:55.880 align:middle line:90% if he'd get killed on the job. 00:08:55.880 --> 00:08:57.170 align:middle line:90% He was a construction worker. 00:08:57.170 --> 00:08:58.490 align:middle line:90% It would be a mitzvah. 00:08:58.490 --> 00:09:00.740 align:middle line:90% That's Yiddish for blessing. 00:09:00.740 --> 00:09:02.780 align:middle line:90% My mother stops walking. 00:09:02.780 --> 00:09:05.660 align:middle line:84% Her voice drops in awe of her own memory. 00:09:05.660 --> 00:09:09.440 align:middle line:84% He actually used to take her by physical force, she says. 00:09:09.440 --> 00:09:12.110 align:middle line:84% Would pick her up in the middle of the living room floor 00:09:12.110 --> 00:09:14.390 align:middle line:90% and carry her off to the bed. 00:09:14.390 --> 00:09:17.330 align:middle line:84% She stares into the middle distance for a moment, 00:09:17.330 --> 00:09:20.600 align:middle line:84% then she says to me, the European men, 00:09:20.600 --> 00:09:23.600 align:middle line:84% they were animals, just plain animals. 00:09:23.600 --> 00:09:26.360 align:middle line:90% She starts walking again. 00:09:26.360 --> 00:09:28.610 align:middle line:84% Once Zimmerman locked him out of the house. 00:09:28.610 --> 00:09:29.570 align:middle line:90% He rang our bell. 00:09:29.570 --> 00:09:31.070 align:middle line:90% He could hardly look at me. 00:09:31.070 --> 00:09:33.830 align:middle line:84% He asked if he could use our fire escape window. 00:09:33.830 --> 00:09:35.420 align:middle line:90% I didn't speak one word to him. 00:09:35.420 --> 00:09:37.940 align:middle line:84% He walked through the house and climbed out the window. 00:09:37.940 --> 00:09:39.350 align:middle line:90% My mother laughs. 00:09:39.350 --> 00:09:42.080 align:middle line:84% That fire escape window it did some business. 00:09:42.080 --> 00:09:43.903 align:middle line:90% Remember Cessa upstairs? 00:09:43.903 --> 00:09:45.320 align:middle line:84% Oh, no, you couldn't remember her. 00:09:45.320 --> 00:09:48.260 align:middle line:84% She only lived there one year after we moved into the house. 00:09:48.260 --> 00:09:50.570 align:middle line:84% Then the Russians were in that apartment. 00:09:50.570 --> 00:09:52.760 align:middle line:90% Cessa and I were very friendly. 00:09:52.760 --> 00:09:55.040 align:middle line:84% It's so strange when I come to think of it. 00:09:55.040 --> 00:09:57.350 align:middle line:84% We hardly knew each other, any of us, 00:09:57.350 --> 00:09:59.760 align:middle line:84% sometimes we didn't talk to each other at all. 00:09:59.760 --> 00:10:01.590 align:middle line:84% But we lived on top of one another. 00:10:01.590 --> 00:10:03.710 align:middle line:84% We were in and out of each other's houses. 00:10:03.710 --> 00:10:06.800 align:middle line:84% Everybody knew everything in no time at all. 00:10:06.800 --> 00:10:11.000 align:middle line:84% A few months in the building and the women were well intimate. 00:10:11.000 --> 00:10:13.400 align:middle line:84% This Cessa, she was a beautiful young woman, 00:10:13.400 --> 00:10:15.320 align:middle line:90% married only a few years. 00:10:15.320 --> 00:10:17.000 align:middle line:90% She didn't love her husband. 00:10:17.000 --> 00:10:18.600 align:middle line:90% She didn't hate him either. 00:10:18.600 --> 00:10:20.150 align:middle line:90% He was a nice man, actually. 00:10:20.150 --> 00:10:22.070 align:middle line:84% What can I tell you, she didn't love him. 00:10:22.070 --> 00:10:23.480 align:middle line:90% She used to go out every day. 00:10:23.480 --> 00:10:25.500 align:middle line:84% I think she had a lovers somewhere. 00:10:25.500 --> 00:10:28.190 align:middle line:84% Anyway, she had long black hair down to her ass. 00:10:28.190 --> 00:10:29.390 align:middle line:90% One day she cut it off. 00:10:29.390 --> 00:10:31.400 align:middle line:90% She wanted to be modern. 00:10:31.400 --> 00:10:33.390 align:middle line:84% Her husband didn't say anything to her. 00:10:33.390 --> 00:10:35.030 align:middle line:84% But her father came into the house, 00:10:35.030 --> 00:10:36.890 align:middle line:90% took one look at her cut hair. 00:10:36.890 --> 00:10:39.650 align:middle line:84% Gave her a slap across the face, she saw her grandmother 00:10:39.650 --> 00:10:41.270 align:middle line:90% from the next world. 00:10:41.270 --> 00:10:43.100 align:middle line:84% Then he instructed her husband to lock her 00:10:43.100 --> 00:10:44.600 align:middle line:90% in the house for a month. 00:10:44.600 --> 00:10:47.300 align:middle line:84% She used to come down the fire escape into my window 00:10:47.300 --> 00:10:48.680 align:middle line:90% and out my door. 00:10:48.680 --> 00:10:51.410 align:middle line:90% Every afternoon for a month. 00:10:51.410 --> 00:10:55.010 align:middle line:84% One day she comes back and we're having coffee in the kitchen. 00:10:55.010 --> 00:10:57.650 align:middle line:84% I say to her, Cessa, tell your father 00:10:57.650 --> 00:11:00.230 align:middle line:90% this is America, Cessa, America. 00:11:00.230 --> 00:11:02.000 align:middle line:90% You're a free woman. 00:11:02.000 --> 00:11:04.340 align:middle line:84% She looks at me and she says to me, 00:11:04.340 --> 00:11:06.590 align:middle line:84% What do you mean tell my father this is America, 00:11:06.590 --> 00:11:07.880 align:middle line:90% he was born in Brooklyn. 00:11:07.880 --> 00:11:15.050 align:middle line:84% [LAUGHTER] My relationship with my mother is not good. 00:11:15.050 --> 00:11:19.080 align:middle line:84% And as our lives accumulate, it often and seems to worsen. 00:11:19.080 --> 00:11:21.330 align:middle line:84% We are locked into a narrow channel 00:11:21.330 --> 00:11:25.110 align:middle line:84% of acquaintance, intense and binding. 00:11:25.110 --> 00:11:27.900 align:middle line:84% For years at a time, there is an exhaustion, 00:11:27.900 --> 00:11:30.510 align:middle line:90% a kind of softening between us. 00:11:30.510 --> 00:11:35.070 align:middle line:84% Then the rage comes up again hot and clear, erotic 00:11:35.070 --> 00:11:37.770 align:middle line:84% in its power to compel attention. 00:11:37.770 --> 00:11:40.470 align:middle line:90% These days it is bad between us. 00:11:40.470 --> 00:11:43.140 align:middle line:84% My mother's way of dealing with the bad times 00:11:43.140 --> 00:11:47.550 align:middle line:84% is to accuse me loudly and publicly of the truth. 00:11:47.550 --> 00:11:50.730 align:middle line:84% Whenever she sees me, she says, You hate me, 00:11:50.730 --> 00:11:52.500 align:middle line:90% I know you hate me. 00:11:52.500 --> 00:11:54.030 align:middle line:84% I'll be visiting her and she'll say 00:11:54.030 --> 00:11:55.860 align:middle line:84% to anyone who happens to be in the room-- 00:11:55.860 --> 00:11:58.980 align:middle line:84% a neighbor, a friend, my brother, one of my nieces, 00:11:58.980 --> 00:11:59.940 align:middle line:90% she hates me. 00:11:59.940 --> 00:12:03.180 align:middle line:84% What she has against me I don't know, but she hates me. 00:12:03.180 --> 00:12:05.660 align:middle line:84% She is equally capable of stopping a stranger 00:12:05.660 --> 00:12:07.660 align:middle line:84% on the street when we're out walking and saying, 00:12:07.660 --> 00:12:08.493 align:middle line:90% This is my daughter. 00:12:08.493 --> 00:12:10.680 align:middle line:90% She hates me. 00:12:10.680 --> 00:12:13.260 align:middle line:84% Then she'll turned to me and plead, What did I do to you, 00:12:13.260 --> 00:12:15.390 align:middle line:90% you should hate me so? 00:12:15.390 --> 00:12:17.010 align:middle line:90% I never answer. 00:12:17.010 --> 00:12:20.580 align:middle line:84% I know she's burning and I'm glad to let her burn. 00:12:20.580 --> 00:12:21.270 align:middle line:90% Why not? 00:12:21.270 --> 00:12:23.130 align:middle line:90% I'm burning, too. 00:12:23.130 --> 00:12:26.580 align:middle line:84% But we walk the streets of New York together endlessly. 00:12:26.580 --> 00:12:28.860 align:middle line:84% We both live in lower Manhattan now. 00:12:28.860 --> 00:12:33.630 align:middle line:84% Our apartments a mile apart and we visit this by walking. 00:12:33.630 --> 00:12:37.500 align:middle line:84% My mother is an urban peasant and I am my mother's daughter. 00:12:37.500 --> 00:12:39.990 align:middle line:90% The city is our natural element. 00:12:39.990 --> 00:12:43.620 align:middle line:84% We each have daily adventures with bus drivers, bag ladies, 00:12:43.620 --> 00:12:45.930 align:middle line:84% ticket takers, and street crazies. 00:12:45.930 --> 00:12:49.020 align:middle line:84% Walking brings out the best in us. 00:12:49.020 --> 00:12:52.530 align:middle line:90% I am 45 now and my mother is 77. 00:12:52.530 --> 00:12:54.810 align:middle line:90% Her body is strong and healthy. 00:12:54.810 --> 00:12:57.900 align:middle line:84% She traverses the island easily with me. 00:12:57.900 --> 00:13:00.000 align:middle line:84% We don't love each other on these walks, 00:13:00.000 --> 00:13:03.840 align:middle line:84% often we are raging at each other, but we walk anyway. 00:13:03.840 --> 00:13:06.600 align:middle line:84% Our best times together are when we speak of the past, 00:13:06.600 --> 00:13:08.700 align:middle line:84% I'll say to her, Ma, remember Mrs. Kornfeld? 00:13:08.700 --> 00:13:10.350 align:middle line:90% Tell me that story again. 00:13:10.350 --> 00:13:13.800 align:middle line:84% And she'll delight in telling me the story again. 00:13:13.800 --> 00:13:16.500 align:middle line:84% It is only the present she hates. 00:13:16.500 --> 00:13:19.080 align:middle line:84% As soon as the present becomes the past, 00:13:19.080 --> 00:13:21.900 align:middle line:84% she immediately begins loving it. 00:13:21.900 --> 00:13:23.880 align:middle line:84% Each time she tells the story, it 00:13:23.880 --> 00:13:28.140 align:middle line:84% is both the same and different because each time I'm older, 00:13:28.140 --> 00:13:31.020 align:middle line:84% and it occurs to me to ask a question I didn't 00:13:31.020 --> 00:13:32.520 align:middle line:90% ask the last time around. 00:13:32.520 --> 00:13:35.470 align:middle line:90% 00:13:35.470 --> 00:13:39.520 align:middle line:84% The Bronx was a patchwork of invaded ethnic territories. 00:13:39.520 --> 00:13:41.860 align:middle line:84% Four or five square blocks dominated 00:13:41.860 --> 00:13:45.760 align:middle line:84% by Irish or Italians or Jews, but each section 00:13:45.760 --> 00:13:49.240 align:middle line:84% with its quota of Irish living in a Jewish block or Jews 00:13:49.240 --> 00:13:51.400 align:middle line:90% in an Italian block. 00:13:51.400 --> 00:13:54.520 align:middle line:84% Much has been made of this change rung on the New York 00:13:54.520 --> 00:13:56.050 align:middle line:90% neighborhood register. 00:13:56.050 --> 00:13:59.980 align:middle line:84% But those who grew up running the Irish or Italian gauntlet 00:13:59.980 --> 00:14:02.800 align:middle line:84% or being frozen out by Jewish neighbors 00:14:02.800 --> 00:14:05.500 align:middle line:84% are not nearly so marked by their extra portion 00:14:05.500 --> 00:14:09.100 align:middle line:84% of outsidedness as they are leveled by the shared street 00:14:09.100 --> 00:14:10.240 align:middle line:90% life. 00:14:10.240 --> 00:14:14.290 align:middle line:84% Our family had lived for a year in an Italian neighborhood. 00:14:14.290 --> 00:14:17.050 align:middle line:84% My brother and I had been the only Jewish children 00:14:17.050 --> 00:14:20.350 align:middle line:84% in the school, and we had indeed been miserable. 00:14:20.350 --> 00:14:22.660 align:middle line:90% That's all miserable. 00:14:22.660 --> 00:14:25.270 align:middle line:84% When we moved back into a Jewish neighborhood, 00:14:25.270 --> 00:14:27.520 align:middle line:84% my brother was relieved at no longer having 00:14:27.520 --> 00:14:30.160 align:middle line:84% to worry that he'd be beaten up every afternoon by kids 00:14:30.160 --> 00:14:32.020 align:middle line:90% who call him the Jewish genius. 00:14:32.020 --> 00:14:34.420 align:middle line:84% But the outline and substance of his life 00:14:34.420 --> 00:14:36.850 align:middle line:90% were not fundamentally altered. 00:14:36.850 --> 00:14:39.310 align:middle line:84% The larger truth is that the otherness 00:14:39.310 --> 00:14:42.340 align:middle line:84% of the Italians or the Irish or the Jews among us 00:14:42.340 --> 00:14:44.710 align:middle line:90% lent spice and interest. 00:14:44.710 --> 00:14:48.010 align:middle line:84% A sense of definition and exciting edge 00:14:48.010 --> 00:14:52.810 align:middle line:84% to things that was openly feared but secretly welcomed. 00:14:52.810 --> 00:14:56.380 align:middle line:84% Our building was all Jewish except for the one Irish family 00:14:56.380 --> 00:14:59.710 align:middle line:84% on the first floor, one Russian family on the third floor, 00:14:59.710 --> 00:15:02.050 align:middle line:90% and a Polish superintendent. 00:15:02.050 --> 00:15:04.035 align:middle line:84% The Russians were tall and silent. 00:15:04.035 --> 00:15:06.160 align:middle line:84% They came and went in the building in a manner that 00:15:06.160 --> 00:15:07.720 align:middle line:90% seemed mysterious. 00:15:07.720 --> 00:15:11.500 align:middle line:84% The Irish were all thin and blond, blue eyes, narrow lips, 00:15:11.500 --> 00:15:13.060 align:middle line:90% closed faces. 00:15:13.060 --> 00:15:16.150 align:middle line:84% They too were a shadowy presence among us. 00:15:16.150 --> 00:15:18.550 align:middle line:84% The super and his wife were all so quiet. 00:15:18.550 --> 00:15:21.130 align:middle line:84% They never spoke first to anyone. 00:15:21.130 --> 00:15:24.010 align:middle line:84% That's the main thing, I guess about being a few 00:15:24.010 --> 00:15:27.760 align:middle line:90% among the many it silences you. 00:15:27.760 --> 00:15:29.860 align:middle line:84% My mother might have been silenced, too, 00:15:29.860 --> 00:15:32.350 align:middle line:84% had she remained living among the Italians, 00:15:32.350 --> 00:15:35.770 align:middle line:84% might have snatched her children up in wordless anxiety when 00:15:35.770 --> 00:15:38.110 align:middle line:84% a neighbor befriended one of us, just 00:15:38.110 --> 00:15:41.170 align:middle line:84% as Mrs. Cassidy did whenever a woman in our building 00:15:41.170 --> 00:15:45.100 align:middle line:84% smoothed the hair of one of the Irish blondes. 00:15:45.100 --> 00:15:47.800 align:middle line:84% But my mother was not one among the many. 00:15:47.800 --> 00:15:49.870 align:middle line:84% Here, in this old Jewish building, 00:15:49.870 --> 00:15:52.720 align:middle line:84% she was in her element, had enough room 00:15:52.720 --> 00:15:55.180 align:middle line:84% between the skin of social presence 00:15:55.180 --> 00:15:59.680 align:middle line:84% and the flesh of an unknowing center in which to move around, 00:15:59.680 --> 00:16:03.430 align:middle line:84% express herself freely, being warm and sarcastic, 00:16:03.430 --> 00:16:07.060 align:middle line:84% hysterical and generous, ironic and judgmental. 00:16:07.060 --> 00:16:08.860 align:middle line:84% And occasionally what she thought 00:16:08.860 --> 00:16:12.160 align:middle line:84% of as affectionate, that rough bullying style 00:16:12.160 --> 00:16:17.740 align:middle line:84% she assumed when overcome with the tenderness she most feared. 00:16:17.740 --> 00:16:19.750 align:middle line:84% My mother was distinguished in the building 00:16:19.750 --> 00:16:24.640 align:middle line:84% by her unaccented English, and the certainty of her manner. 00:16:24.640 --> 00:16:28.120 align:middle line:84% Although our apartment door was always closed, 00:16:28.120 --> 00:16:31.240 align:middle line:84% a distinction was made between those educated enough 00:16:31.240 --> 00:16:34.120 align:middle line:84% to value the privacy of a closed door. 00:16:34.120 --> 00:16:38.170 align:middle line:84% And those so peasant-like, the door was always half open. 00:16:38.170 --> 00:16:41.530 align:middle line:84% The neighbors felt free to knock at any time. 00:16:41.530 --> 00:16:44.920 align:middle line:84% Borrows small kitchen necessities, share a piece 00:16:44.920 --> 00:16:47.410 align:middle line:84% of building gossip, even ask my mother 00:16:47.410 --> 00:16:51.250 align:middle line:84% to act as arbiter in an occasional quarrel. 00:16:51.250 --> 00:16:53.110 align:middle line:84% Her manner at such times was that 00:16:53.110 --> 00:16:56.650 align:middle line:84% of a superior person embarrassed by the childlike behavior 00:16:56.650 --> 00:16:58.960 align:middle line:90% of her inferiors. 00:16:58.960 --> 00:17:02.170 align:middle line:84% Oy, Zimmerman, she would smile patronizingly 00:17:02.170 --> 00:17:06.160 align:middle line:84% when Mrs. Zimmerman beside herself over some slight real 00:17:06.160 --> 00:17:09.460 align:middle line:84% or imagined came to tell her of the perfidy of one 00:17:09.460 --> 00:17:11.650 align:middle line:90% or another of our neighbors. 00:17:11.650 --> 00:17:13.569 align:middle line:90% Such foolishness. 00:17:13.569 --> 00:17:17.109 align:middle line:84% Or, That's ridiculous, she you would rap out sharply 00:17:17.109 --> 00:17:21.530 align:middle line:84% when a tale she considered baser ignorant was repeated to her. 00:17:21.530 --> 00:17:23.859 align:middle line:84% She seemed never to be troubled by the notion 00:17:23.859 --> 00:17:26.589 align:middle line:84% that there might be two sides to a story 00:17:26.589 --> 00:17:29.620 align:middle line:84% or more than one interpretation of an event. 00:17:29.620 --> 00:17:32.890 align:middle line:84% She knew that compared with the women around her, 00:17:32.890 --> 00:17:35.680 align:middle line:90% she was developed. 00:17:35.680 --> 00:17:38.440 align:middle line:84% A person of a higher thought and feeling. 00:17:38.440 --> 00:17:40.870 align:middle line:84% So what was there to think about? 00:17:40.870 --> 00:17:43.850 align:middle line:84% Developed was one of her favorite words. 00:17:43.850 --> 00:17:46.300 align:middle line:84% If Mrs. Zimmerman spoke loudly in the hall 00:17:46.300 --> 00:17:49.630 align:middle line:84% on a Saturday morning, we sitting in the kitchen 00:17:49.630 --> 00:17:53.260 align:middle line:84% just behind our apartment door would stare, stare 00:17:53.260 --> 00:17:54.220 align:middle line:90% at each other. 00:17:54.220 --> 00:17:57.400 align:middle line:84% And inevitably, my mother would shake her head 00:17:57.400 --> 00:18:01.060 align:middle line:84% and pronounce an undeveloped woman. 00:18:01.060 --> 00:18:04.030 align:middle line:84% If someone made a crack about the schvartzes, that's 00:18:04.030 --> 00:18:06.820 align:middle line:84% Yiddish for Blacks, my mother would carefully 00:18:06.820 --> 00:18:11.380 align:middle line:84% explain to me that such sentiments were undeveloped. 00:18:11.380 --> 00:18:13.240 align:middle line:84% If there was a dispute in the grocery 00:18:13.240 --> 00:18:15.670 align:middle line:84% store over price or weight, again, 00:18:15.670 --> 00:18:18.280 align:middle line:84% I would hear the word undeveloped. 00:18:18.280 --> 00:18:20.980 align:middle line:84% My father smiled at her when she said undeveloped, 00:18:20.980 --> 00:18:24.280 align:middle line:84% weather out of indulgence or pride I never did know. 00:18:24.280 --> 00:18:27.100 align:middle line:84% My brother on his guard from the age of 10 00:18:27.100 --> 00:18:29.750 align:middle line:90% stared without expression. 00:18:29.750 --> 00:18:33.400 align:middle line:84% But I, I absorbed the feel of her words 00:18:33.400 --> 00:18:35.990 align:middle line:84% soaked up every were you accompanying gesture 00:18:35.990 --> 00:18:40.160 align:middle line:84% and expression, every complicated bit of impulse 00:18:40.160 --> 00:18:41.660 align:middle line:90% and intent. 00:18:41.660 --> 00:18:45.200 align:middle line:84% Mama thinking everyone around was undeveloped, 00:18:45.200 --> 00:18:48.080 align:middle line:84% and most of what they said was ridiculous, 00:18:48.080 --> 00:18:52.370 align:middle line:84% became imprinted on me like dye on the most receptive 00:18:52.370 --> 00:18:53.320 align:middle line:90% of materials. 00:18:53.320 --> 00:18:55.840 align:middle line:90% 00:18:55.840 --> 00:18:58.300 align:middle line:90% We're walking up Fifth Avenue. 00:18:58.300 --> 00:19:00.440 align:middle line:90% It's a bad day for me. 00:19:00.440 --> 00:19:04.510 align:middle line:84% I'm feeling fat and lonely trapped in my lousy life. 00:19:04.510 --> 00:19:06.820 align:middle line:84% I know I should be home working and that I'm here 00:19:06.820 --> 00:19:10.510 align:middle line:84% playing the dutiful daughter only to avoid the desk. 00:19:10.510 --> 00:19:13.990 align:middle line:84% The anxiety is so great, I'm walking with a stomach ache. 00:19:13.990 --> 00:19:17.140 align:middle line:84% My mother is always knows she can do nothing for me. 00:19:17.140 --> 00:19:20.080 align:middle line:84% But my unhappiness makes her nervous. 00:19:20.080 --> 00:19:22.660 align:middle line:84% She is talking, talking at tedious, 00:19:22.660 --> 00:19:25.450 align:middle line:84% obfuscating length about a cousin of mine 00:19:25.450 --> 00:19:28.030 align:middle line:90% who was considering divorce. 00:19:28.030 --> 00:19:32.050 align:middle line:84% As we near the library and Eastern religionists, 00:19:32.050 --> 00:19:35.890 align:middle line:84% shaved head, translucent skin, a bag of bones 00:19:35.890 --> 00:19:39.160 align:middle line:84% wrapped in faded pink gauze darts at us, 00:19:39.160 --> 00:19:43.120 align:middle line:84% a copy of his leader's writings extended in his hand. 00:19:43.120 --> 00:19:46.480 align:middle line:84% My mother keeps talking while the creature in gauze flaps 00:19:46.480 --> 00:19:47.590 align:middle line:90% around us. 00:19:47.590 --> 00:19:52.480 align:middle line:84% His spiel is steady buzz in the air competing for my attention. 00:19:52.480 --> 00:19:55.090 align:middle line:90% At last, she feels interrupted. 00:19:55.090 --> 00:19:57.190 align:middle line:90% She turns to him. 00:19:57.190 --> 00:19:58.300 align:middle line:90% What is it? 00:19:58.300 --> 00:19:59.420 align:middle line:90% She says. 00:19:59.420 --> 00:20:01.090 align:middle line:90% What do you want from me? 00:20:01.090 --> 00:20:02.530 align:middle line:90% Tell me. 00:20:02.530 --> 00:20:03.820 align:middle line:90% He tells her. 00:20:03.820 --> 00:20:05.500 align:middle line:90% She hears him out. 00:20:05.500 --> 00:20:07.570 align:middle line:84% Then she straightens her shoulders, 00:20:07.570 --> 00:20:12.610 align:middle line:84% draws herself up to her full 5 feet 2 inches and announces, 00:20:12.610 --> 00:20:16.210 align:middle line:84% Young, man, I am a Jew and a socialist. 00:20:16.210 --> 00:20:19.330 align:middle line:84% I think that's more than enough for one lifetime, don't you? 00:20:19.330 --> 00:20:24.980 align:middle line:84% [LAUGHTER] The pink gown boy man is charmed, 00:20:24.980 --> 00:20:27.620 align:middle line:90% and for a moment bemused. 00:20:27.620 --> 00:20:30.080 align:middle line:84% My parents are Jews, he confides, 00:20:30.080 --> 00:20:32.750 align:middle line:84% but they certainly aren't socialists. 00:20:32.750 --> 00:20:37.040 align:middle line:84% My mother stares at him, shakes her head grasped my arm firmly 00:20:37.040 --> 00:20:40.100 align:middle line:84% in her fingers and marches me off up the Avenue. 00:20:40.100 --> 00:20:41.450 align:middle line:90% Can you believe this? 00:20:41.450 --> 00:20:42.440 align:middle line:90% She says. 00:20:42.440 --> 00:20:46.250 align:middle line:84% A nice Jewish boy shaves his head and babbles in the street. 00:20:46.250 --> 00:20:49.950 align:middle line:84% A world full of crazies, divorce everywhere, 00:20:49.950 --> 00:20:52.280 align:middle line:90% and if not divorce, this. 00:20:52.280 --> 00:20:55.730 align:middle line:90% What a generation you all are. 00:20:55.730 --> 00:20:57.650 align:middle line:90% Don't start, Ma, I say. 00:20:57.650 --> 00:21:00.200 align:middle line:84% I don't want to hear that bullshit again. 00:21:00.200 --> 00:21:03.320 align:middle line:84% Bullshit here, bullshit there, she says, It's still true, 00:21:03.320 --> 00:21:06.620 align:middle line:84% whatever else we did, we didn't fall apart in the streets 00:21:06.620 --> 00:21:10.460 align:middle line:84% like you're all doing, we had order, quiet, dignity, 00:21:10.460 --> 00:21:14.670 align:middle line:84% families stay together and people live decent lives. 00:21:14.670 --> 00:21:15.930 align:middle line:90% That's a crock. 00:21:15.930 --> 00:21:17.790 align:middle line:90% They didn't lead decent lives. 00:21:17.790 --> 00:21:19.152 align:middle line:90% They lived hidden lives. 00:21:19.152 --> 00:21:21.360 align:middle line:84% You're not going to tell me people were happier then, 00:21:21.360 --> 00:21:23.040 align:middle line:90% are you? 00:21:23.040 --> 00:21:24.750 align:middle line:90% No, she capitulates instantly. 00:21:24.750 --> 00:21:26.370 align:middle line:90% I'm not saying that. 00:21:26.370 --> 00:21:28.440 align:middle line:90% Well, what are you saying? 00:21:28.440 --> 00:21:32.460 align:middle line:84% She frowns and stops talking, searches around in her head 00:21:32.460 --> 00:21:34.770 align:middle line:90% to find out what she is saying. 00:21:34.770 --> 00:21:36.390 align:middle line:90% Ah, she's got it. 00:21:36.390 --> 00:21:39.810 align:middle line:90% Triumphant, accusing, she says. 00:21:39.810 --> 00:21:43.290 align:middle line:84% The unhappiness is so alive today. 00:21:43.290 --> 00:21:46.140 align:middle line:84% Her words startle and gratify me. 00:21:46.140 --> 00:21:49.260 align:middle line:84% I feel pleasure when she says a true or a clever. 00:21:49.260 --> 00:21:52.860 align:middle line:84% Thing I come close to loving her. 00:21:52.860 --> 00:21:55.590 align:middle line:84% That's the first step, Ma, I say softly. 00:21:55.590 --> 00:21:57.630 align:middle line:84% The unhappiness has to be made alive 00:21:57.630 --> 00:21:59.820 align:middle line:90% before anything can happen. 00:21:59.820 --> 00:22:02.280 align:middle line:84% She stops in front of the library. 00:22:02.280 --> 00:22:04.780 align:middle line:84% She doesn't want to hear what I'm saying, 00:22:04.780 --> 00:22:07.710 align:middle line:84% but she's excited by the exchange. 00:22:07.710 --> 00:22:10.320 align:middle line:84% Her faded brown eyes, dark and brilliant 00:22:10.320 --> 00:22:14.280 align:middle line:84% in my childhood brighten as the meaning of her words 00:22:14.280 --> 00:22:18.150 align:middle line:90% and mine penetrates her thought. 00:22:18.150 --> 00:22:22.950 align:middle line:84% Her cheeks flush and her putting soft face hardens wonderfully 00:22:22.950 --> 00:22:24.630 align:middle line:90% with new definition. 00:22:24.630 --> 00:22:27.250 align:middle line:90% She looks beautiful to me. 00:22:27.250 --> 00:22:30.900 align:middle line:84% I know from experience, she will remember this afternoon 00:22:30.900 --> 00:22:33.510 align:middle line:90% as a deeply pleasurable one. 00:22:33.510 --> 00:22:36.240 align:middle line:84% I also know she will not be able to tell anyone 00:22:36.240 --> 00:22:38.820 align:middle line:90% why it has been pleasurable. 00:22:38.820 --> 00:22:42.360 align:middle line:84% She enjoys thinking only she doesn't know it. 00:22:42.360 --> 00:22:45.940 align:middle line:90% She has never known it. 00:22:45.940 --> 00:22:49.180 align:middle line:84% A year after my mother told Mrs. Drucker she was a whore, 00:22:49.180 --> 00:22:51.100 align:middle line:84% the Druckers moved out of the building 00:22:51.100 --> 00:22:55.030 align:middle line:84% and Nettie Levine moved into their vacated apartment. 00:22:55.030 --> 00:22:58.000 align:middle line:84% I have no memory of the Druckers moving out or of Nettie 00:22:58.000 --> 00:22:58.870 align:middle line:90% moving in. 00:22:58.870 --> 00:23:02.320 align:middle line:84% No truck or moving van coming to take away or deposit 00:23:02.320 --> 00:23:04.060 align:middle line:84% the furniture, dishes, or clothes 00:23:04.060 --> 00:23:06.070 align:middle line:90% of the one or the other. 00:23:06.070 --> 00:23:08.440 align:middle line:84% People and all their belongings seem 00:23:08.440 --> 00:23:10.390 align:middle line:84% to evaporate out of an apartment, 00:23:10.390 --> 00:23:13.000 align:middle line:84% and others simply took their place. 00:23:13.000 --> 00:23:16.270 align:middle line:84% How early I absorbed the circumstantial nature 00:23:16.270 --> 00:23:18.160 align:middle line:90% of most attachments. 00:23:18.160 --> 00:23:20.170 align:middle line:84% After all, what difference did it really 00:23:20.170 --> 00:23:23.440 align:middle line:84% make if we call the next door neighbor Roseman or Drucker 00:23:23.440 --> 00:23:24.520 align:middle line:90% or Zimmerman. 00:23:24.520 --> 00:23:28.150 align:middle line:84% It mattered only that there was a next door neighbor. 00:23:28.150 --> 00:23:31.360 align:middle line:84% Nettie, however, would make a difference. 00:23:31.360 --> 00:23:33.850 align:middle line:84% I was running down the stairs after school rushing 00:23:33.850 --> 00:23:36.130 align:middle line:84% to get out on the street when we collided 00:23:36.130 --> 00:23:37.870 align:middle line:90% in the darkened hallway. 00:23:37.870 --> 00:23:41.930 align:middle line:84% The brown paper bags in her arms went flying in all directions. 00:23:41.930 --> 00:23:44.640 align:middle line:84% We each said, oh, and stepped back. 00:23:44.640 --> 00:23:48.100 align:middle line:84% I against the staircase railing, she against the paint 00:23:48.100 --> 00:23:49.480 align:middle line:90% blistered wall. 00:23:49.480 --> 00:23:52.870 align:middle line:84% I bent blushing to help her retrieve the bag scattered 00:23:52.870 --> 00:23:56.770 align:middle line:84% across the landing and saw that she had bright red hair piled 00:23:56.770 --> 00:24:00.130 align:middle line:84% high on her head in a pompadour and streaming down her back 00:24:00.130 --> 00:24:01.900 align:middle line:90% and over her shoulders. 00:24:01.900 --> 00:24:04.180 align:middle line:84% Her features were narrow and pointed. 00:24:04.180 --> 00:24:07.960 align:middle line:84% The eyes almond shaped, the mouth and nose thin and sharp, 00:24:07.960 --> 00:24:11.330 align:middle line:84% and her shoulders were wide, but she was slim. 00:24:11.330 --> 00:24:14.290 align:middle line:84% She reminded me of the pictures of Greta Garbo. 00:24:14.290 --> 00:24:16.390 align:middle line:84% My heart began to pound, I had never 00:24:16.390 --> 00:24:19.120 align:middle line:90% before seen a beautiful woman. 00:24:19.120 --> 00:24:22.000 align:middle line:84% Don't worry about the packages, she said, go out and play. 00:24:22.000 --> 00:24:22.877 align:middle line:90% The sun is shining. 00:24:22.877 --> 00:24:24.460 align:middle line:84% You mustn't waste it here in the dark. 00:24:24.460 --> 00:24:26.080 align:middle line:90% Go, go. 00:24:26.080 --> 00:24:28.780 align:middle line:84% Her English was accented like the English of the other women 00:24:28.780 --> 00:24:32.440 align:middle line:84% in the building, but her voice was soft, almost musical, 00:24:32.440 --> 00:24:34.990 align:middle line:84% and her words took me by surprise. 00:24:34.990 --> 00:24:38.290 align:middle line:84% My mother had never urged me not to lose pleasure 00:24:38.290 --> 00:24:41.560 align:middle line:84% even if it was only the pleasure of the sunny street. 00:24:41.560 --> 00:24:44.350 align:middle line:84% I ran down the staircase excited. 00:24:44.350 --> 00:24:46.900 align:middle line:90% I knew she was the new neighbor. 00:24:46.900 --> 00:24:49.840 align:middle line:84% A Ukrainishe redhead married to a Jew. 00:24:49.840 --> 00:24:55.900 align:middle line:84% My mother had remarked dryly only two or three days before. 00:24:55.900 --> 00:24:57.790 align:middle line:90% Seemed impossible. 00:24:57.790 --> 00:25:01.240 align:middle line:84% Everything about Nettie proved to be impossible. 00:25:01.240 --> 00:25:04.600 align:middle line:84% She was a Gentile married to a Jew like no Jew 00:25:04.600 --> 00:25:06.040 align:middle line:90% we had ever known. 00:25:06.040 --> 00:25:10.090 align:middle line:84% Her husband was in the Merchant Marines. 00:25:10.090 --> 00:25:12.280 align:middle line:84% It was during the middle of the Second World War, 00:25:12.280 --> 00:25:15.460 align:middle line:84% and no Jew was in the Merchant Marines as everybody knew, 00:25:15.460 --> 00:25:17.110 align:middle line:90% but he was. 00:25:17.110 --> 00:25:19.750 align:middle line:84% Alone most of the time and apparently free 00:25:19.750 --> 00:25:21.940 align:middle line:84% to live wherever she chose, she had 00:25:21.940 --> 00:25:25.270 align:middle line:84% chosen to live in among working class Jews who offered her 00:25:25.270 --> 00:25:27.670 align:middle line:90% neither goods, nor charity. 00:25:27.670 --> 00:25:30.700 align:middle line:84% A woman whose sexy good looks brought her darting glances 00:25:30.700 --> 00:25:32.740 align:middle line:90% of envy and curiosity. 00:25:32.740 --> 00:25:35.740 align:middle line:84% She seemed to value inordinately the life 00:25:35.740 --> 00:25:37.960 align:middle line:90% of every respectable dowd. 00:25:37.960 --> 00:25:41.950 align:middle line:84% She praised my mother lavishly for her housewifely skills. 00:25:41.950 --> 00:25:45.370 align:middle line:84% Her ability to make small wages go far, always 00:25:45.370 --> 00:25:47.470 align:middle line:84% have the house smelling nice and the children 00:25:47.470 --> 00:25:49.210 align:middle line:90% content to be at home. 00:25:49.210 --> 00:25:52.960 align:middle line:84% As though these skills were a treasure, some precious dowry 00:25:52.960 --> 00:25:56.350 align:middle line:84% that had been denied her and symbolized a life from which 00:25:56.350 --> 00:25:58.120 align:middle line:90% she had been shut out. 00:25:58.120 --> 00:26:00.910 align:middle line:84% My mother, secretly is amazed as everyone else 00:26:00.910 --> 00:26:03.550 align:middle line:84% by Nettie's allure, would look thoughtfully at her 00:26:03.550 --> 00:26:07.330 align:middle line:84% when she tried, often vaguely incoherently to speak 00:26:07.330 --> 00:26:09.130 align:middle line:90% of the differences between them. 00:26:09.130 --> 00:26:11.707 align:middle line:84% And would say to her, but you're a wife now, 00:26:11.707 --> 00:26:12.790 align:middle line:90% you'll learn these things. 00:26:12.790 --> 00:26:13.510 align:middle line:90% It's nothing. 00:26:13.510 --> 00:26:15.160 align:middle line:90% There's nothing to learn. 00:26:15.160 --> 00:26:17.440 align:middle line:84% Nettie's faced would then flush painfully 00:26:17.440 --> 00:26:19.510 align:middle line:90% and she'd shake her head. 00:26:19.510 --> 00:26:24.040 align:middle line:84% My mother didn't understand and she couldn't explain. 00:26:24.040 --> 00:26:26.110 align:middle line:84% Rick Levine returned to New York two months 00:26:26.110 --> 00:26:28.210 align:middle line:84% after Nettie had moved into the building. 00:26:28.210 --> 00:26:32.080 align:middle line:84% She was wildly proud of her tall, dark, bearded seaman-- 00:26:32.080 --> 00:26:34.360 align:middle line:84% showing him off in the street to the teenagers 00:26:34.360 --> 00:26:36.640 align:middle line:84% she had made friends with, dragging him in 00:26:36.640 --> 00:26:40.300 align:middle line:84% to meet us, making him go to the grocery store with her. 00:26:40.300 --> 00:26:43.540 align:middle line:84% And she became visibly transformed. 00:26:43.540 --> 00:26:46.870 align:middle line:84% A kind of illumination settled on her skin. 00:26:46.870 --> 00:26:50.200 align:middle line:84% Her green almond eyes were speckled with light. 00:26:50.200 --> 00:26:52.720 align:middle line:90% New grace touched her movements. 00:26:52.720 --> 00:26:56.770 align:middle line:84% The way she walked, moved her hands, smoothed back her hair, 00:26:56.770 --> 00:27:01.690 align:middle line:84% there was suddenly about her an aristocracy of physical being. 00:27:01.690 --> 00:27:03.040 align:middle line:90% Her beauty deepened. 00:27:03.040 --> 00:27:04.750 align:middle line:90% She was untouchable. 00:27:04.750 --> 00:27:07.840 align:middle line:84% I saw the change in her and was magnetized. 00:27:07.840 --> 00:27:09.670 align:middle line:84% I would wake up in the morning and wonder 00:27:09.670 --> 00:27:12.730 align:middle line:84% if I was going to run into her in the hall that day. 00:27:12.730 --> 00:27:15.470 align:middle line:84% If I did, I'd find an excuse to ring her bell. 00:27:15.470 --> 00:27:17.800 align:middle line:84% It wasn't that I wanted to see her with Rick. 00:27:17.800 --> 00:27:21.190 align:middle line:84% His was a sullen beauty, glum and lumpish. 00:27:21.190 --> 00:27:23.200 align:middle line:84% And there was nothing happening between them 00:27:23.200 --> 00:27:24.460 align:middle line:90% that interested me. 00:27:24.460 --> 00:27:27.610 align:middle line:84% It was her I wanted to see, only her. 00:27:27.610 --> 00:27:29.290 align:middle line:90% And I wanted to touch her. 00:27:29.290 --> 00:27:32.230 align:middle line:84% My hand was always threatening to shoot away from my body 00:27:32.230 --> 00:27:34.780 align:middle line:84% out toward her face, her arm, her side. 00:27:34.780 --> 00:27:36.440 align:middle line:90% I yearned toward her. 00:27:36.440 --> 00:27:39.730 align:middle line:84% She radiated a kind of promise I couldn't stay away from. 00:27:39.730 --> 00:27:42.940 align:middle line:84% I wanted, I wanted, I didn't know what I wanted. 00:27:42.940 --> 00:27:46.420 align:middle line:84% But the elation was short lived hers and mine. 00:27:46.420 --> 00:27:48.700 align:middle line:84% One morning a week after Rick's return, 00:27:48.700 --> 00:27:50.140 align:middle line:84% my mother ran into Nettie as they 00:27:50.140 --> 00:27:51.910 align:middle line:90% were both leaving the house. 00:27:51.910 --> 00:27:53.830 align:middle line:90% Nettie turned away from her. 00:27:53.830 --> 00:27:54.680 align:middle line:90% What wrong? 00:27:54.680 --> 00:27:55.540 align:middle line:90% My mother demanded. 00:27:55.540 --> 00:27:56.200 align:middle line:90% Turn around. 00:27:56.200 --> 00:27:57.550 align:middle line:90% Let me see your face. 00:27:57.550 --> 00:27:59.680 align:middle line:90% Nettie turned toward her slowly. 00:27:59.680 --> 00:28:03.250 align:middle line:84% A tremendous blue black splotch surrounded her half 00:28:03.250 --> 00:28:05.350 align:middle line:90% closed right eye. 00:28:05.350 --> 00:28:08.440 align:middle line:84% Oh my God, my mother breathed reverently. 00:28:08.440 --> 00:28:10.030 align:middle line:84% He didn't mean it, Nettie pleaded. 00:28:10.030 --> 00:28:10.990 align:middle line:90% It was a mistake. 00:28:10.990 --> 00:28:13.120 align:middle line:84% He wanted to go down to the bar to see his friends, 00:28:13.120 --> 00:28:14.180 align:middle line:90% I wouldn't let him go. 00:28:14.180 --> 00:28:17.380 align:middle line:84% It took a long time before he hit me. 00:28:17.380 --> 00:28:22.060 align:middle line:84% After that, she looked again as she had before he came home. 00:28:22.060 --> 00:28:25.000 align:middle line:84% Two weeks later, Rick Levine was gone again, this time 00:28:25.000 --> 00:28:26.590 align:middle line:90% on a four month cruise. 00:28:26.590 --> 00:28:29.110 align:middle line:84% He swore to his clinging wife that this 00:28:29.110 --> 00:28:30.880 align:middle line:90% would be his last trip. 00:28:30.880 --> 00:28:32.440 align:middle line:84% When he came home in April, he said 00:28:32.440 --> 00:28:34.300 align:middle line:84% he'd find a good job in the city and they 00:28:34.300 --> 00:28:36.220 align:middle line:90% would at long last settle down. 00:28:36.220 --> 00:28:38.150 align:middle line:84% She believed that he meant it this time 00:28:38.150 --> 00:28:41.410 align:middle line:84% and finally she let him pull her arms from around his neck. 00:28:41.410 --> 00:28:43.150 align:middle line:84% Six weeks after he had sailed, she 00:28:43.150 --> 00:28:45.010 align:middle line:90% discovered she was pregnant. 00:28:45.010 --> 00:28:47.260 align:middle line:84% Late in the third month of his absence, 00:28:47.260 --> 00:28:50.290 align:middle line:84% she received a telegram informing her 00:28:50.290 --> 00:28:52.690 align:middle line:84% that Rick had been shot to death during a quarrel 00:28:52.690 --> 00:28:55.660 align:middle line:84% in a bar in port somewhere on the Baltic Sea. 00:28:55.660 --> 00:28:57.790 align:middle line:84% His body was being shipped back to New York 00:28:57.790 --> 00:29:00.640 align:middle line:84% and the insurance was in question. 00:29:00.640 --> 00:29:03.760 align:middle line:84% Nettie became intertwined in the dailiness of our life, 00:29:03.760 --> 00:29:05.980 align:middle line:84% so quickly, it was hard later for me 00:29:05.980 --> 00:29:07.900 align:middle line:84% to remember what our days had been like 00:29:07.900 --> 00:29:09.940 align:middle line:90% before she lived next door. 00:29:09.940 --> 00:29:12.280 align:middle line:84% She'd slip in for coffee late in the morning, 00:29:12.280 --> 00:29:14.110 align:middle line:84% then again in the afternoon and seemed 00:29:14.110 --> 00:29:16.600 align:middle line:84% to have supper with us three nights a week. 00:29:16.600 --> 00:29:19.570 align:middle line:84% Soon, I felt free to walk into her house at any hour 00:29:19.570 --> 00:29:21.700 align:middle line:84% and my brother was being consulted daily 00:29:21.700 --> 00:29:24.700 align:middle line:84% about the puzzling matter of Rick's insurance. 00:29:24.700 --> 00:29:27.250 align:middle line:84% It's a pity on-- how my mother kept saying, 00:29:27.250 --> 00:29:31.480 align:middle line:84% a widow, pregnant, poor, abandoned. 00:29:31.480 --> 00:29:34.210 align:middle line:84% Actually, her unexpected widowhood 00:29:34.210 --> 00:29:39.220 align:middle line:84% made Nettie safely pathetic and safely other. 00:29:39.220 --> 00:29:41.050 align:middle line:84% It was as though she had been trying 00:29:41.050 --> 00:29:44.740 align:middle line:84% long before her husband died to let my mother know 00:29:44.740 --> 00:29:49.150 align:middle line:84% that she was disenfranchised in a way Mama could never be, 00:29:49.150 --> 00:29:52.600 align:middle line:84% perched only temporarily on a landscape Mama 00:29:52.600 --> 00:29:54.070 align:middle line:90% was entrenched in. 00:29:54.070 --> 00:29:56.980 align:middle line:84% And when Rick obligingly got himself killed, 00:29:56.980 --> 00:29:59.860 align:middle line:84% this deeper truth became apparent. 00:29:59.860 --> 00:30:02.530 align:middle line:84% My mother could now sustain Nettie's beauty 00:30:02.530 --> 00:30:05.350 align:middle line:84% without becoming unbalanced, and Nettie 00:30:05.350 --> 00:30:07.840 align:middle line:84% could help herself to Mama's respectability 00:30:07.840 --> 00:30:09.640 align:middle line:90% without being humbled. 00:30:09.640 --> 00:30:13.420 align:middle line:84% The compact was made without a word between them. 00:30:13.420 --> 00:30:16.270 align:middle line:84% We got beautiful Nettie in the kitchen every day, 00:30:16.270 --> 00:30:19.360 align:middle line:84% and Nettie got my mother's protection in the building. 00:30:19.360 --> 00:30:21.370 align:middle line:84% When Mrs. Zimmerman rang our bell 00:30:21.370 --> 00:30:24.730 align:middle line:84% to inquire snidely after the shiksa, 00:30:24.730 --> 00:30:28.390 align:middle line:84% my mother cut her off sharply, telling her she was busy 00:30:28.390 --> 00:30:30.850 align:middle line:84% and had no time to talk nonsense. 00:30:30.850 --> 00:30:33.190 align:middle line:84% After that, no one in the building 00:30:33.190 --> 00:30:35.815 align:middle line:84% gossiped about Nettie in front of any of us. 00:30:35.815 --> 00:30:39.010 align:middle line:90% 00:30:39.010 --> 00:30:43.440 align:middle line:84% It rained earlier in the day, and now 1:00 in the afternoon 00:30:43.440 --> 00:30:47.940 align:middle line:84% for a minute and a half, New York is washed clean. 00:30:47.940 --> 00:30:51.420 align:middle line:84% The streets glitter and the pale spring sunlight. 00:30:51.420 --> 00:30:54.660 align:middle line:84% Cars radiate dust free happiness. 00:30:54.660 --> 00:30:58.020 align:middle line:84% Storefront windows sparkle mindlessly. 00:30:58.020 --> 00:31:01.170 align:middle line:90% Even people look made anew. 00:31:01.170 --> 00:31:03.930 align:middle line:84% We're walking down 8th Avenue into the village. 00:31:03.930 --> 00:31:05.910 align:middle line:84% At the corner of 8th and Greenwich 00:31:05.910 --> 00:31:08.610 align:middle line:84% is a White Tower hamburger joint where 00:31:08.610 --> 00:31:11.640 align:middle line:84% a group of derelicts and permanent residents 00:31:11.640 --> 00:31:14.640 align:middle line:84% entertain visiting out-of-towners 00:31:14.640 --> 00:31:18.720 align:middle line:84% from 14th Street, Chelsea, even the Bowery. 00:31:18.720 --> 00:31:23.130 align:middle line:84% This afternoon, the party on the corner often raucous 00:31:23.130 --> 00:31:25.620 align:middle line:84% is definitely on the gloomy side, 00:31:25.620 --> 00:31:28.380 align:middle line:90% untouched by weather renewal. 00:31:28.380 --> 00:31:32.820 align:middle line:84% As we pass the restaurant doors, however, one gentleman detaches 00:31:32.820 --> 00:31:36.330 align:middle line:84% from the group takes two or three uncertain steps 00:31:36.330 --> 00:31:38.520 align:middle line:90% and bars our way. 00:31:38.520 --> 00:31:41.400 align:middle line:90% He stands swaying before us. 00:31:41.400 --> 00:31:45.870 align:middle line:84% He is Black, somewhere between 25 and 60. 00:31:45.870 --> 00:31:47.910 align:middle line:90% His face is cut and swollen. 00:31:47.910 --> 00:31:49.980 align:middle line:90% The eyelids 3/4 shut. 00:31:49.980 --> 00:31:53.370 align:middle line:84% His hair is a hundred filthy matted little pigtails. 00:31:53.370 --> 00:31:55.680 align:middle line:84% His pants are held up by a piece of rope. 00:31:55.680 --> 00:31:58.920 align:middle line:84% His shoes are two sizes too large, the feet inside them 00:31:58.920 --> 00:31:59.790 align:middle line:90% bare. 00:31:59.790 --> 00:32:02.730 align:middle line:84% So is his chest visible beneath a grimy tweed 00:32:02.730 --> 00:32:06.210 align:middle line:84% coat that swings open whenever he moves. 00:32:06.210 --> 00:32:09.330 align:middle line:84% This creature confronts us, puts out his hand palm up 00:32:09.330 --> 00:32:11.340 align:middle line:90% and speaks. 00:32:11.340 --> 00:32:14.490 align:middle line:84% Can you ladies let me have $1,000 for a Martini? 00:32:14.490 --> 00:32:16.380 align:middle line:90% he inquires. 00:32:16.380 --> 00:32:19.530 align:middle line:84% My mother looks directly into his face. 00:32:19.530 --> 00:32:21.360 align:middle line:84% I know we're in an inflation, she 00:32:21.360 --> 00:32:24.240 align:middle line:84% says, but a $1,000 for a Martini. 00:32:24.240 --> 00:32:25.590 align:middle line:90% His mouth drops. 00:32:25.590 --> 00:32:28.020 align:middle line:84% It's the first time in God knows how long 00:32:28.020 --> 00:32:31.230 align:middle line:84% that a mark has acknowledged his existence. 00:32:31.230 --> 00:32:33.120 align:middle line:84% You're beautiful, he burbles at her. 00:32:33.120 --> 00:32:34.620 align:middle line:90% You're beautiful. 00:32:34.620 --> 00:32:37.050 align:middle line:84% Look on him she says to me in Yiddish. 00:32:37.050 --> 00:32:38.940 align:middle line:90% Just look on him. 00:32:38.940 --> 00:32:42.240 align:middle line:84% He turns his bleary eyelids in my direction. 00:32:42.240 --> 00:32:45.840 align:middle line:84% What she say, he demands, what she say. 00:32:45.840 --> 00:32:49.140 align:middle line:84% She said you're breaking her heart, I tell him. 00:32:49.140 --> 00:32:50.250 align:middle line:90% She say that? 00:32:50.250 --> 00:32:51.540 align:middle line:90% His eyes nearly opened. 00:32:51.540 --> 00:32:52.860 align:middle line:90% She say that? 00:32:52.860 --> 00:32:53.760 align:middle line:90% I nod. 00:32:53.760 --> 00:32:55.230 align:middle line:90% He whirls at her. 00:32:55.230 --> 00:32:58.140 align:middle line:84% Take me home and make love to me, he croons. 00:32:58.140 --> 00:33:00.780 align:middle line:84% And right there in the street in the middle of the day, 00:33:00.780 --> 00:33:02.730 align:middle line:90% he begins to bay at the moon. 00:33:02.730 --> 00:33:04.920 align:middle line:84% I need you, he howls at my mother 00:33:04.920 --> 00:33:06.960 align:middle line:84% and doubles over his fist in his stomach. 00:33:06.960 --> 00:33:08.730 align:middle line:90% I need you. 00:33:08.730 --> 00:33:10.620 align:middle line:90% She nods at him. 00:33:10.620 --> 00:33:13.110 align:middle line:90% I need, too, she says dryly. 00:33:13.110 --> 00:33:17.520 align:middle line:84% Fortunately or unfortunately, it is not you I need. 00:33:17.520 --> 00:33:21.390 align:middle line:84% And she propels me around the now motionless derelict. 00:33:21.390 --> 00:33:25.650 align:middle line:84% Paralyzed by recognition, he will no longer bar our progress 00:33:25.650 --> 00:33:27.330 align:middle line:90% down the street. 00:33:27.330 --> 00:33:30.390 align:middle line:84% We cross Abington square and walk into Bleecker Street. 00:33:30.390 --> 00:33:32.910 align:middle line:84% The gentrified West Village closes around 00:33:32.910 --> 00:33:36.150 align:middle line:84% us makes us not peaceful but quiet. 00:33:36.150 --> 00:33:38.910 align:middle line:84% We walk through block after block of antique stores, 00:33:38.910 --> 00:33:41.520 align:middle line:84% gourmet shops, boutiques, not speaking. 00:33:41.520 --> 00:33:44.760 align:middle line:84% But for how long can my mother and I not speak? 00:33:44.760 --> 00:33:47.700 align:middle line:84% So I'm reading the biography you gave me, she says. 00:33:47.700 --> 00:33:48.970 align:middle line:90% I look at her puzzled. 00:33:48.970 --> 00:33:51.690 align:middle line:84% And then I remember, oh, I smile in wide delight. 00:33:51.690 --> 00:33:53.400 align:middle line:90% Are you enjoying it? 00:33:53.400 --> 00:33:55.440 align:middle line:90% Listen, she begins. 00:33:55.440 --> 00:33:59.040 align:middle line:84% The smile drops off my face and my stomach contracts. 00:33:59.040 --> 00:34:01.530 align:middle line:84% That listen means she's about to trash 00:34:01.530 --> 00:34:03.060 align:middle line:90% the book I gave her to read. 00:34:03.060 --> 00:34:05.025 align:middle line:90% She's going to say, what? 00:34:05.025 --> 00:34:05.820 align:middle line:90% What's here? 00:34:05.820 --> 00:34:07.500 align:middle line:84% What's here that I don't already know? 00:34:07.500 --> 00:34:08.400 align:middle line:90% I lived through it. 00:34:08.400 --> 00:34:10.320 align:middle line:84% I know it all what can this writer tell me 00:34:10.320 --> 00:34:11.580 align:middle line:90% that I don't already know? 00:34:11.580 --> 00:34:12.300 align:middle line:90% Nothing. 00:34:12.300 --> 00:34:13.920 align:middle line:84% To you, it's interesting, but to me, 00:34:13.920 --> 00:34:16.050 align:middle line:84% how can this be interesting to me? 00:34:16.050 --> 00:34:18.389 align:middle line:84% On and on she'll go, the way she does 00:34:18.389 --> 00:34:20.520 align:middle line:84% when she thinks she doesn't understand something 00:34:20.520 --> 00:34:23.130 align:middle line:84% and she's scared and she's taking refuge 00:34:23.130 --> 00:34:26.310 align:middle line:90% in scorn and hypercriticality. 00:34:26.310 --> 00:34:29.460 align:middle line:84% The book I gave her to read is a biography of Josephine Herbst, 00:34:29.460 --> 00:34:30.870 align:middle line:90% a '30s writer. 00:34:30.870 --> 00:34:33.150 align:middle line:84% A stubborn, willful, raging woman 00:34:33.150 --> 00:34:35.880 align:middle line:84% grabbing at politics and love and writing. 00:34:35.880 --> 00:34:36.780 align:middle line:90% In there punching. 00:34:36.780 --> 00:34:39.449 align:middle line:84% Until the last minute Listen, my mother 00:34:39.449 --> 00:34:43.170 align:middle line:84% says now in the patronizing tone she thinks conciliatory. 00:34:43.170 --> 00:34:45.690 align:middle line:84% Maybe this is interesting to you, but not to me. 00:34:45.690 --> 00:34:46.960 align:middle line:90% I lived through all this. 00:34:46.960 --> 00:34:49.020 align:middle line:84% I know it all, what can I learn from this? 00:34:49.020 --> 00:34:49.530 align:middle line:90% Nothing. 00:34:49.530 --> 00:34:52.110 align:middle line:84% To you, it's interesting, not to me. 00:34:52.110 --> 00:34:54.810 align:middle line:84% Invariably when she speaks, though, my head 00:34:54.810 --> 00:34:55.860 align:middle line:90% fills with blood. 00:34:55.860 --> 00:34:58.740 align:middle line:84% And before the sentences have stopped pouring from her mouth, 00:34:58.740 --> 00:35:01.080 align:middle line:90% I am lashing out at her. 00:35:01.080 --> 00:35:02.250 align:middle line:90% You're an ignoramus. 00:35:02.250 --> 00:35:05.490 align:middle line:84% You know nothing, only a know nothing talks the way you do. 00:35:05.490 --> 00:35:07.500 align:middle line:84% The point of having lived through it as you say 00:35:07.500 --> 00:35:09.310 align:middle line:84% is only that the background is familiar, 00:35:09.310 --> 00:35:10.680 align:middle line:90% so the book is made richer. 00:35:10.680 --> 00:35:12.450 align:middle line:84% Not that you could have written the book. 00:35:12.450 --> 00:35:15.450 align:middle line:84% People 1,000 times more educated than you have read and learned 00:35:15.450 --> 00:35:17.670 align:middle line:84% from this book, but you can't learn from it. 00:35:17.670 --> 00:35:21.600 align:middle line:84% On and on, I would go thoroughly ruining the afternoon 00:35:21.600 --> 00:35:23.400 align:middle line:90% for both of us. 00:35:23.400 --> 00:35:26.160 align:middle line:84% However, in the past year, an odd circumstance 00:35:26.160 --> 00:35:28.410 align:middle line:90% has begun to obtain. 00:35:28.410 --> 00:35:32.310 align:middle line:84% On occasion, my head fails to fill with blood. 00:35:32.310 --> 00:35:35.190 align:middle line:84% I become irritated, but remain calm. 00:35:35.190 --> 00:35:37.230 align:middle line:84% Not falling into a rage, I do not 00:35:37.230 --> 00:35:39.670 align:middle line:84% make a Holocaust of the afternoon. 00:35:39.670 --> 00:35:43.150 align:middle line:84% Today, it appears one of those moments is upon us. 00:35:43.150 --> 00:35:45.580 align:middle line:84% I turned to my mother, throw my left arm 00:35:45.580 --> 00:35:48.970 align:middle line:84% around her still solid back, placed my right hand 00:35:48.970 --> 00:35:52.240 align:middle line:84% on her upper arm and say, Ma, if this book is not 00:35:52.240 --> 00:35:53.800 align:middle line:90% interesting to you, that's fine. 00:35:53.800 --> 00:35:55.060 align:middle line:90% You can say that. 00:35:55.060 --> 00:35:56.710 align:middle line:90% She looks coyly at me. 00:35:56.710 --> 00:36:01.630 align:middle line:84% Eyes large, head half turned, now she's interested. 00:36:01.630 --> 00:36:03.455 align:middle line:84% But don't say it has nothing to teach you? 00:36:03.455 --> 00:36:04.330 align:middle line:90% There's nothing here? 00:36:04.330 --> 00:36:06.730 align:middle line:84% That's unworthy of you and the book and me. 00:36:06.730 --> 00:36:09.070 align:middle line:84% You demean us all when you say that. 00:36:09.070 --> 00:36:11.650 align:middle line:84% Listen to me, such wisdom, and all of it 00:36:11.650 --> 00:36:14.200 align:middle line:90% gained 10 minutes ago. 00:36:14.200 --> 00:36:19.720 align:middle line:84% Silence, long silence, we walk another block, silence. 00:36:19.720 --> 00:36:22.570 align:middle line:84% She's looking off into that middle distance. 00:36:22.570 --> 00:36:26.590 align:middle line:84% I take my lead from her matching my steps to hers. 00:36:26.590 --> 00:36:31.030 align:middle line:84% I do not speak, do not press her, another silent block. 00:36:31.030 --> 00:36:35.140 align:middle line:84% That Josephine Herbst, my mother says, she certainly carried on, 00:36:35.140 --> 00:36:36.220 align:middle line:90% didn't she? 00:36:36.220 --> 00:36:38.633 align:middle line:90% Relieved and happy I hug her. 00:36:38.633 --> 00:36:40.550 align:middle line:84% She didn't know what she was doing either, Ma, 00:36:40.550 --> 00:36:42.430 align:middle line:90% but, yes, she carried on. 00:36:42.430 --> 00:36:44.620 align:middle line:84% I'm jealous, my mother blurts at me. 00:36:44.620 --> 00:36:45.730 align:middle line:90% I'm jealous. 00:36:45.730 --> 00:36:47.920 align:middle line:84% She lived her life, I didn't live mine. 00:36:47.920 --> 00:36:50.690 align:middle line:90% 00:36:50.690 --> 00:36:54.860 align:middle line:84% Mama and Nettie quarreled, and I entered City College. 00:36:54.860 --> 00:36:59.030 align:middle line:84% In feeling memory, these events carry equal weight. 00:36:59.030 --> 00:37:02.060 align:middle line:84% Both inaugurated open conflict, both 00:37:02.060 --> 00:37:05.630 align:middle line:84% drove a wedge between me and the unknowing self. 00:37:05.630 --> 00:37:08.840 align:middle line:84% Both were experienced as subversive and warlike 00:37:08.840 --> 00:37:10.460 align:middle line:90% in character. 00:37:10.460 --> 00:37:13.220 align:middle line:84% Certainly, the conflict between Nettie and my mother 00:37:13.220 --> 00:37:17.450 align:middle line:84% seemed a strategic plan to surround and conquer. 00:37:17.450 --> 00:37:20.870 align:middle line:84% Incoherent as the war was, shot through 00:37:20.870 --> 00:37:24.740 align:middle line:84% with rage and deceit, its aims apparently confused 00:37:24.740 --> 00:37:28.670 align:middle line:84% and always denied, it never lost sight of the enemy. 00:37:28.670 --> 00:37:33.050 align:middle line:84% The intelligent heart of the girl who have not bonded to one 00:37:33.050 --> 00:37:35.300 align:middle line:90% would be lost to both. 00:37:35.300 --> 00:37:38.570 align:middle line:84% City College as well seemed no less concerned 00:37:38.570 --> 00:37:41.030 align:middle line:84% with laying siege to the ignorant 00:37:41.030 --> 00:37:44.090 align:middle line:84% mind if not the intelligent heart. 00:37:44.090 --> 00:37:48.650 align:middle line:84% Benign in intent, only a passport to the promised land, 00:37:48.650 --> 00:37:52.260 align:middle line:84% City, of course, was the real invader. 00:37:52.260 --> 00:37:54.530 align:middle line:84% It did more violence to the emotions 00:37:54.530 --> 00:37:57.740 align:middle line:84% than either Mama or Nettie could have dreamed possible. 00:37:57.740 --> 00:38:01.160 align:middle line:84% Divided me from them both provoked and nourished 00:38:01.160 --> 00:38:05.780 align:middle line:84% an unshared life inside the head that became a piece of treason. 00:38:05.780 --> 00:38:10.280 align:middle line:84% I lived among my people, but I was no longer one of them. 00:38:10.280 --> 00:38:13.250 align:middle line:84% I think this was true for most of us at City College. 00:38:13.250 --> 00:38:16.340 align:middle line:84% We still use the subways, still walk the familiar streets 00:38:16.340 --> 00:38:20.030 align:middle line:84% between classes, still return to the neighborhood each night, 00:38:20.030 --> 00:38:22.190 align:middle line:84% talk to our high school friends, and went 00:38:22.190 --> 00:38:24.200 align:middle line:90% to sleep in our own beds. 00:38:24.200 --> 00:38:26.450 align:middle line:84% But secretly, we had begun to live 00:38:26.450 --> 00:38:29.870 align:middle line:84% in a world inside our heads where we read, talked, 00:38:29.870 --> 00:38:33.020 align:middle line:84% thought in a way that separated us from our parents. 00:38:33.020 --> 00:38:36.020 align:middle line:84% The life of the house and that of the street. 00:38:36.020 --> 00:38:38.330 align:middle line:84% We had been initiated, had learned 00:38:38.330 --> 00:38:41.720 align:middle line:84% the difference between hidden and expressed thought. 00:38:41.720 --> 00:38:45.560 align:middle line:84% This made us subversives in our own homes. 00:38:45.560 --> 00:38:48.440 align:middle line:84% As thousands before me have said, for us 00:38:48.440 --> 00:38:50.780 align:middle line:90% it was City College or nothing. 00:38:50.780 --> 00:38:53.810 align:middle line:84% I enjoyed the solidarity those words invoked, 00:38:53.810 --> 00:38:57.200 align:middle line:84% but rejected the implied deprivation. 00:38:57.200 --> 00:39:00.350 align:middle line:84% At City College, I sat talking in a basement cafeteria 00:39:00.350 --> 00:39:03.230 align:middle line:84% until 10:00 or 11:00 at night with a half dozen others 00:39:03.230 --> 00:39:05.510 align:middle line:84% who also never wanted to go home. 00:39:05.510 --> 00:39:08.900 align:middle line:84% To Brooklyn or the Bronx, and here in the cafeteria, 00:39:08.900 --> 00:39:11.300 align:middle line:90% my education took root. 00:39:11.300 --> 00:39:13.820 align:middle line:84% Here, I learned that Faulkner was America, 00:39:13.820 --> 00:39:16.310 align:middle line:84% Dickens was politics, Marx was sex, 00:39:16.310 --> 00:39:19.730 align:middle line:84% Jane Austen the idea of culture that I came from a ghetto, 00:39:19.730 --> 00:39:22.310 align:middle line:84% and D.H. Lawrence was a visionary. 00:39:22.310 --> 00:39:24.920 align:middle line:84% Here my love of literature named itself, 00:39:24.920 --> 00:39:28.250 align:middle line:84% and amazement over the life of the mind blossomed. 00:39:28.250 --> 00:39:31.640 align:middle line:84% I discovered that people were transformed by ideas, 00:39:31.640 --> 00:39:33.440 align:middle line:84% and that intellectual conversation 00:39:33.440 --> 00:39:35.420 align:middle line:90% was immensely erotic. 00:39:35.420 --> 00:39:37.640 align:middle line:84% We never stopped talking, perhaps 00:39:37.640 --> 00:39:39.470 align:middle line:90% because we did very little else. 00:39:39.470 --> 00:39:43.070 align:middle line:84% Restricted by sexual fear and working class economics, 00:39:43.070 --> 00:39:46.280 align:middle line:84% we didn't go to the theater and we didn't make love. 00:39:46.280 --> 00:39:48.860 align:middle line:84% But certainly we talked so much because most of us 00:39:48.860 --> 00:39:53.870 align:middle line:84% had been reading and bottled up silence from the age of six on. 00:39:53.870 --> 00:39:56.720 align:middle line:84% And City College was our great release. 00:39:56.720 --> 00:40:00.050 align:middle line:84% It was not from the faculty that City drew its reputation 00:40:00.050 --> 00:40:01.730 align:middle line:90% for intellectual goodness. 00:40:01.730 --> 00:40:04.490 align:middle line:84% It was from its students, it was from us, 00:40:04.490 --> 00:40:07.580 align:middle line:84% not that we were intellectually distinguished, we weren't. 00:40:07.580 --> 00:40:10.730 align:middle line:84% But our hungry energy vitalize the place. 00:40:10.730 --> 00:40:13.940 align:middle line:84% The idea of intellectual life burned in us, 00:40:13.940 --> 00:40:17.990 align:middle line:84% while we pursued ideas we felt known to ourselves and to one 00:40:17.990 --> 00:40:18.890 align:middle line:90% another. 00:40:18.890 --> 00:40:22.160 align:middle line:84% The world made sense there was ground beneath our feet. 00:40:22.160 --> 00:40:24.440 align:middle line:84% A place in the universe to stand. 00:40:24.440 --> 00:40:27.110 align:middle line:84% City College made conscious in me 00:40:27.110 --> 00:40:31.520 align:middle line:84% inner cohesion as a first volume. 00:40:31.520 --> 00:40:33.470 align:middle line:84% I think my mother was very quickly 00:40:33.470 --> 00:40:36.320 align:middle line:84% of two minds about me and City, although she 00:40:36.320 --> 00:40:39.530 align:middle line:84% had wanted me to go to school, no question about that. 00:40:39.530 --> 00:40:43.160 align:middle line:84% Had been energized by the determination that I do so, 00:40:43.160 --> 00:40:46.400 align:middle line:84% instructed me in the middle of her first year of widowhood 00:40:46.400 --> 00:40:49.700 align:middle line:84% to enter the academic, not the commercial course 00:40:49.700 --> 00:40:51.170 align:middle line:90% of high school study. 00:40:51.170 --> 00:40:54.500 align:middle line:84% And was even embattled when it became something of an issue 00:40:54.500 --> 00:40:56.450 align:middle line:90% in the family. 00:40:56.450 --> 00:40:59.330 align:middle line:84% Where is it written that a working class widow's daughter 00:40:59.330 --> 00:41:00.560 align:middle line:90% should go to college? 00:41:00.560 --> 00:41:02.960 align:middle line:84% One of my uncles said to her, drinking coffee 00:41:02.960 --> 00:41:05.300 align:middle line:84% at our kitchen table on a Saturday morning 00:41:05.300 --> 00:41:08.420 align:middle line:84% in my senior year in high school. 00:41:08.420 --> 00:41:10.550 align:middle line:84% Here it is written, she had replied. 00:41:10.550 --> 00:41:13.370 align:middle line:84% Tapping the table hard with her middle finger. 00:41:13.370 --> 00:41:14.780 align:middle line:90% Right here it is written. 00:41:14.780 --> 00:41:16.730 align:middle line:90% The girl goes to college. 00:41:16.730 --> 00:41:17.330 align:middle line:90% Why? 00:41:17.330 --> 00:41:18.350 align:middle line:90% he had pursued. 00:41:18.350 --> 00:41:19.880 align:middle line:90% Because I say so. 00:41:19.880 --> 00:41:20.690 align:middle line:90% But why? 00:41:20.690 --> 00:41:22.340 align:middle line:84% What do you think will come of it? 00:41:22.340 --> 00:41:23.400 align:middle line:90% I don't know. 00:41:23.400 --> 00:41:25.850 align:middle line:84% I only know she's clever, she deserves an education 00:41:25.850 --> 00:41:27.170 align:middle line:90% and she's going to get one. 00:41:27.170 --> 00:41:28.280 align:middle line:90% This is America. 00:41:28.280 --> 00:41:31.220 align:middle line:84% The girls are not cows in the field only waiting for a bull 00:41:31.220 --> 00:41:32.420 align:middle line:90% to mate with. 00:41:32.420 --> 00:41:34.940 align:middle line:84% I stared at her, where had that come from? 00:41:34.940 --> 00:41:40.220 align:middle line:84% [LAUGHTER] The moment was filled with conflict and bravado. 00:41:40.220 --> 00:41:43.700 align:middle line:84% She felt the words she spoke, but she did not mean them. 00:41:43.700 --> 00:41:46.730 align:middle line:84% She didn't even know what she meant by an education. 00:41:46.730 --> 00:41:48.980 align:middle line:84% When she discovered at my graduation 00:41:48.980 --> 00:41:51.110 align:middle line:84% that I wasn't a teacher, she acted 00:41:51.110 --> 00:41:53.120 align:middle line:90% as though she'd been swindled. 00:41:53.120 --> 00:41:56.210 align:middle line:84% In her mind, a girl child went in one door 00:41:56.210 --> 00:42:00.380 align:middle line:84% marked college and came out another marked teacher. 00:42:00.380 --> 00:42:02.420 align:middle line:84% You mean you're not a teacher, she said to me. 00:42:02.420 --> 00:42:05.810 align:middle line:84% Eyes widening is her two strong hands held my diploma down 00:42:05.810 --> 00:42:07.790 align:middle line:90% on the kitchen table. 00:42:07.790 --> 00:42:09.902 align:middle line:90% No, I said. 00:42:09.902 --> 00:42:11.860 align:middle line:84% What have you been doing there all these years? 00:42:11.860 --> 00:42:12.685 align:middle line:90% She asks quietly. 00:42:12.685 --> 00:42:17.380 align:middle line:84% [LAUGHTER] Reading novels, I replied. 00:42:17.380 --> 00:42:20.560 align:middle line:84% She marveled silently at my chutzpah. 00:42:20.560 --> 00:42:23.560 align:middle line:84% But it wasn't really a matter of what I could or could not 00:42:23.560 --> 00:42:25.150 align:middle line:90% do with the degree. 00:42:25.150 --> 00:42:27.820 align:middle line:84% We were people who knew how to stay alive. 00:42:27.820 --> 00:42:30.280 align:middle line:84% She never doubted I would find a way. 00:42:30.280 --> 00:42:35.380 align:middle line:84% No, what drove her, and divided us, was me thinking. 00:42:35.380 --> 00:42:37.660 align:middle line:84% She hadn't understood that going to school 00:42:37.660 --> 00:42:41.980 align:middle line:84% meant I would start thinking coherently and out loud. 00:42:41.980 --> 00:42:44.740 align:middle line:84% She was taken by violent surprise. 00:42:44.740 --> 00:42:48.700 align:middle line:84% My sentences got longer within a month of those first classes. 00:42:48.700 --> 00:42:52.720 align:middle line:84% Longer, more complicated, formed by words whose meanings 00:42:52.720 --> 00:42:54.490 align:middle line:90% she did not always know. 00:42:54.490 --> 00:42:57.940 align:middle line:84% I had never before spoken a word she didn't know. 00:42:57.940 --> 00:43:01.060 align:middle line:84% I had never-- or made a sentence whose logic 00:43:01.060 --> 00:43:02.860 align:middle line:90% she couldn't follow. 00:43:02.860 --> 00:43:07.000 align:middle line:84% Or attempted an opinion that grew out of an abstraction. 00:43:07.000 --> 00:43:08.950 align:middle line:90% It made her crazy. 00:43:08.950 --> 00:43:12.070 align:middle line:84% Her face began to take on a look of animal cunning 00:43:12.070 --> 00:43:14.590 align:middle line:84% when I started a sentence that could not possibly 00:43:14.590 --> 00:43:18.070 align:middle line:84% be concluded before three clauses that hit the air. 00:43:18.070 --> 00:43:22.720 align:middle line:84% Cunning sparked anger, anger flamed into rage. 00:43:22.720 --> 00:43:24.503 align:middle line:90% What are you talking about? 00:43:24.503 --> 00:43:25.420 align:middle line:90% She would shout at me. 00:43:25.420 --> 00:43:27.160 align:middle line:90% What are you talking about? 00:43:27.160 --> 00:43:28.210 align:middle line:90% Speak English, please. 00:43:28.210 --> 00:43:29.890 align:middle line:84% We all understand English in this house. 00:43:29.890 --> 00:43:31.240 align:middle line:90% Speak it. 00:43:31.240 --> 00:43:32.860 align:middle line:90% Her response stunned me. 00:43:32.860 --> 00:43:33.970 align:middle line:90% I didn't get it. 00:43:33.970 --> 00:43:35.920 align:middle line:84% Wasn't she pleased that I could say something 00:43:35.920 --> 00:43:37.000 align:middle line:90% she didn't understand? 00:43:37.000 --> 00:43:38.900 align:middle line:84% Wasn't that what it was all about? 00:43:38.900 --> 00:43:40.428 align:middle line:90% I was the advanced guard. 00:43:40.428 --> 00:43:42.220 align:middle line:84% I was going to take her into the new world. 00:43:42.220 --> 00:43:45.340 align:middle line:84% All she had to do was a door what I was becoming. 00:43:45.340 --> 00:43:47.710 align:middle line:90% And here she was refusing. 00:43:47.710 --> 00:43:51.040 align:middle line:84% I'd speak my new sentences and she would turn on me 00:43:51.040 --> 00:43:54.160 align:middle line:84% as though I performed a vile act right there at the kitchen 00:43:54.160 --> 00:43:55.720 align:middle line:90% table. 00:43:55.720 --> 00:43:58.240 align:middle line:84% She, of course, was as confused as I. 00:43:58.240 --> 00:44:00.100 align:middle line:84% She didn't know why she was angry 00:44:00.100 --> 00:44:01.730 align:middle line:84% and if she'd been told she was angry, 00:44:01.730 --> 00:44:02.920 align:middle line:90% she would have denied it. 00:44:02.920 --> 00:44:05.110 align:middle line:84% Would have found a way to persuade both herself, 00:44:05.110 --> 00:44:07.000 align:middle line:84% and any interested listener that she 00:44:07.000 --> 00:44:09.190 align:middle line:84% was proud I was in school, only why did I 00:44:09.190 --> 00:44:10.720 align:middle line:90% have to be such a show off. 00:44:10.720 --> 00:44:13.340 align:middle line:84% Was that what going to college was all about? 00:44:13.340 --> 00:44:15.580 align:middle line:84% Now take Mr. Lewis the insurance agent, 00:44:15.580 --> 00:44:17.260 align:middle line:84% an educated man if ever there was 00:44:17.260 --> 00:44:20.350 align:middle line:84% one got a degree from City College in 1929. 00:44:20.350 --> 00:44:23.620 align:middle line:84% 1929 mind you, and never made you feel stupid. 00:44:23.620 --> 00:44:25.690 align:middle line:84% Always spoke in simple sentences, 00:44:25.690 --> 00:44:28.120 align:middle line:84% but later you thought about what he had said. 00:44:28.120 --> 00:44:30.700 align:middle line:84% That's the way an educated person should talk. 00:44:30.700 --> 00:44:33.142 align:middle line:84% Here's this snot nosed kid coming into the kitchen 00:44:33.142 --> 00:44:34.600 align:middle line:84% with all these big words, sentences 00:44:34.600 --> 00:44:36.850 align:middle line:90% you can't make head or tail of. 00:44:36.850 --> 00:44:39.430 align:middle line:90% I was 17, she was 50. 00:44:39.430 --> 00:44:43.120 align:middle line:84% I had not yet come into my own as a qualifying belligerent, 00:44:43.120 --> 00:44:45.640 align:middle line:84% but I was a respectable contender. 00:44:45.640 --> 00:44:48.490 align:middle line:84% And she naturally was at the top of her game. 00:44:48.490 --> 00:44:51.790 align:middle line:84% The lines were drawn and we did not fail one another. 00:44:51.790 --> 00:44:54.070 align:middle line:84% Each of us rose repeatedly to the bait 00:44:54.070 --> 00:44:55.720 align:middle line:90% the other one tossed out. 00:44:55.720 --> 00:44:58.900 align:middle line:84% Our storms shook the apartment, paint blistered 00:44:58.900 --> 00:45:02.170 align:middle line:84% on the wall, linoleum cracked on the floor, glass 00:45:02.170 --> 00:45:03.850 align:middle line:90% shivered in the window frame. 00:45:03.850 --> 00:45:06.100 align:middle line:84% We barely kept our hands off one another 00:45:06.100 --> 00:45:09.610 align:middle line:84% and more than once we approached disaster. 00:45:09.610 --> 00:45:12.460 align:middle line:84% One Saturday afternoon she was lying on the couch. 00:45:12.460 --> 00:45:14.620 align:middle line:90% I was reading in a nearby chair. 00:45:14.620 --> 00:45:17.440 align:middle line:84% Idly she asked, what are you reading? 00:45:17.440 --> 00:45:20.350 align:middle line:84% Idly I replied, a comparative history 00:45:20.350 --> 00:45:23.980 align:middle line:84% of the idea of love over the last 300 years. 00:45:23.980 --> 00:45:27.390 align:middle line:90% She looked at me for a moment. 00:45:27.390 --> 00:45:29.220 align:middle line:84% That's ridiculous, she said slowly. 00:45:29.220 --> 00:45:32.010 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] Love is love. 00:45:32.010 --> 00:45:33.720 align:middle line:90% It's the same everywhere. 00:45:33.720 --> 00:45:35.850 align:middle line:90% What's to compare? 00:45:35.850 --> 00:45:37.682 align:middle line:84% That's absolutely not true, I shot back. 00:45:37.682 --> 00:45:39.390 align:middle line:84% You don't know what you're talking about. 00:45:39.390 --> 00:45:40.530 align:middle line:90% It's only an idea, Ma. 00:45:40.530 --> 00:45:42.700 align:middle line:84% That's all love is, just an idea. 00:45:42.700 --> 00:45:45.600 align:middle line:84% You think it's a function of the mysterious immutable being, 00:45:45.600 --> 00:45:46.590 align:middle line:90% but it's not. 00:45:46.590 --> 00:45:49.410 align:middle line:84% There is in fact no such thing as the mysterious immutable 00:45:49.410 --> 00:45:50.580 align:middle line:90% being. 00:45:50.580 --> 00:45:52.440 align:middle line:84% Her legs were off the couch so fast. 00:45:52.440 --> 00:45:54.000 align:middle line:90% I didn't see them go down. 00:45:54.000 --> 00:45:56.340 align:middle line:84% She made fists of her hands, close 00:45:56.340 --> 00:45:58.050 align:middle line:90% your eyes tight and howled. 00:45:58.050 --> 00:46:01.530 align:middle line:84% I'll kill you, snake in my bosom, I'll kill you. 00:46:01.530 --> 00:46:04.530 align:middle line:84% How dare you talk to me that way. 00:46:04.530 --> 00:46:06.300 align:middle line:90% And then she was coming at me. 00:46:06.300 --> 00:46:10.860 align:middle line:84% She was small and chunky, so was I, but I had 30 years on her. 00:46:10.860 --> 00:46:12.810 align:middle line:84% I was out of the chair faster than her arm 00:46:12.810 --> 00:46:15.750 align:middle line:84% could make contact and running, running through the apartment. 00:46:15.750 --> 00:46:19.110 align:middle line:84% Racing for the bathroom, the only room with a lock on it. 00:46:19.110 --> 00:46:20.700 align:middle line:84% The top half of the bathroom door 00:46:20.700 --> 00:46:22.860 align:middle line:90% was a panel of frosted glass. 00:46:22.860 --> 00:46:25.140 align:middle line:84% She arrived just as I turned the lock 00:46:25.140 --> 00:46:27.060 align:middle line:90% and couldn't put the brakes on. 00:46:27.060 --> 00:46:29.880 align:middle line:84% She drove her fist through the glass reaching for me. 00:46:29.880 --> 00:46:33.780 align:middle line:84% Blood, screams, shattered glass on both sides of the door. 00:46:33.780 --> 00:46:36.240 align:middle line:84% I thought that afternoon, one of us 00:46:36.240 --> 00:46:38.850 align:middle line:84% is going to die of this attachment." 00:46:38.850 --> 00:46:40.020 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:46:40.020 --> 00:46:40.590 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:46:40.590 --> 00:46:43.940 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:46:43.940 --> 00:46:50.071 align:middle line:90%