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PARTISAN REVIEW
life's foundation. If my own father could do that, without reason, to a
nice boy, why couldn't the Baldies scalp and/or kill me, a nice girl?
After that there was nothing my parents could say to comfort me, and
bedtime remained for me a dreadful ordeal in which I'd franticaDy con–
sider defensive strategies - scarves, caps, socks, sneakers. Sunglasses.
Years later I discovered, of course, that the Saint Brendan's boys'
tales were largely made up. Over the years, comparing notes with Bronx
cognoscenti more knowledgeable than I about our greatest gangs, I
learned that the Baldies were indeed bald thcmselves but only cut you or
killed you - no scalping; the Guineas were "golden" because they
thought themselves dazzling and rare among the dregs of the borough.
But back then, when I was eight and nine, I believed all of the Saint
Brendan's boys' stories, which seemed to me objective statements of a
terrible and likely fatc.
And then there were the Russians. Wedged in with my worries
about my father's eruptions, my mother's retaliations, the gangs' ad–
vances, were my anxieties about another front of attack - an air attack
by the Russians. In anticipation, every day at school our teachers would
teD us to take cover. "Take cover, class," they'd say, speaking lines from
a mandated city-wide script, and we would dive beneath the oak desks,
contorted and silent.
For my classmates, I'm sure, those were purely terrifying moments, as
they prepared for what they believed to be likely invasion, bent in two,
protected only by a slab of wood from the red bricks, which, along
with flame and radiation, were sure to tumble in on them. For me,
though, they were complicated and confusing. Both of my parents, anar–
chists characterologically and too disorganized to be Party members,
were nonetheless, ideologically, communist sympathizers who did not
believe for a second that the Russians were coming in any shape or form,
by bomb or boot. I was uncertain what to think. Sometimes I believed
my parents; sometimes I believed my teachers. At home, wanting domes–
tic calm, I'd say things like, AD they want is peace, the Russians. And if
they were OK, my parents would pat my head. At school, above all, I
wanted to believe what everyone else believed and to shed the associa–
tion with my odd family. At school, then, I'd be the first to dive be–
neath the little desk, and there, watching kids kiss the cruc ifi xes and
medals and stars of David and mezuzahs that hung around their necks,
I'd make my own gestures toward prayer. I'd bow my head and say
things like, Please, God kill the Russians and keep us safe. And there in
the dark room, in the darkened space at the bottom of the room,
listening to the fast shallow breathing of my classmates, I'd feel myself
freeze in terror and my own breath coordinate with theirs in small
