Christ killer, George Leggett muttered under his breath.
Again, You Jews killed Christ. We
were playing touch football. My first thought was I had no alibi. Maybe I did
and it slipped my mind. Who could account for their whereabouts 2000 years ago?
Then Russ Demetrius
shouted it at me and he shoved me against the chain link fence. One-handed
touch can escalate into near-tackle when tempers flare. I was the glue-fingered
receiver having stretched to make a circus catch for a touchdown. I was 15 in
1948 and this was my first and last encounter with anti-Semitism.
The two of them
attended Our Lady Queen of Martyrs, a parochial school, a couple of
neighborhoods away. I guess they needed motivation to play and an excuse for
losing. Perfectly understandable. I’m sure a few minutes in the confessional
booth would work wonders.
I grew up in a
bubble. It was the time of Four Freedoms
as depicted in the posters of Norman Rockwell displayed on Post office walls
and in schoolrooms. Unlike today, Brotherhood was all the rage. My classes were
well represented with refugees. They were usually the best students. In spite
of language barriers the foreign-born were the ones who skipped.
Fifty years later I
learned that Kew Gardens was a destination for asylum-seekers. My world was
sufficiently Jewish to delude me into thinking it was an accurate microcosm.
We were playing that
day on the grass area of Kew Forest School, a private property whose fence we
had all scaled. The game was interrupted
when I spotted the head-master of the school strolling down the hill before he
spotted us. Instantly we all ran for cover behind a portion of the building
which jutted out hiding us from view.
Suddenly we were
all trespassers, partners-in-crime, in violation of some covenant if not
commandment. Guilt joined us.
Jewish guilt was a
worthy rival for Catholic guilt. They could finger their beads and do the
arcane mumbles. I had to deal with my mother’s gevalts, her litany of aggravations. I might have been better off
complicit in the Jesus caper, however, by now I suspect the statute of
limitations would be in effect.
A few years later
our president-elect would be attending this same school along with other boys
and girls of privilege. Who knows what infractions they committed or what distortions
were bred in the bone giving license to bragging, bullying and worse?
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