Before My Life Began Read Online Free Page A

“C’mon, Sol. Someone will hear.”
    I looked at the ground where my father’s spit had gone, and it seemed to me that the mounds of paper that had risen almost to my knees by now were ocean waves. I imagined myself standing at Coney Island, knee-deep in the water, holding my father’s eyeglasses in my hands while he swam out, arm over arm, to get cooled off, and I saw how frightened I was, that if he went too far he might disappear under the waves and never come back.
    A few feet away from me Marvin Ellenbogen, who lived downstairs from us in our building, was going around picking up bunches of confetti and streamers with his hands and stuffing it all into an A & S shopping bag. I stared at him for a while—things seemed quieter somehow—and then I hunted around until I found a bag and I did the same. I pushed over to Marvin and raised my bag up over my shoulder and tossed the whole thing at his face and this time the stuff sprayed out beautifully. For a second I found myself wishing that Tony Cremona could be there to see, and when I thought of him, my heart bumped. Then I threw the bag away and just started scooping up as much paper as I could hold in my hands and arms and heaving the stuff at Marvin while he did the same back to me. I lost sight of my mother and father, but that was just as well, I figured, because I knew my father would probably have had that sour look on his face again by this time. I knew that he was probably beginning to think that when Abe came home from the Army he would have to quit his job at Gordon’s and go to work for him again, no matter how much he didn’t want to.

2
    O N THE MORNING that Lillian called to tell us Abe’s troopship had arrived and that she was going to have a big welcome home party for him that night at her house, my mother and father were near the end of one of their fights. I’d heard some of it between dreams—it was about money again, and how my father didn’t earn enough but still kept forbidding my mother to get a job—and when I went to the bathroom in the morning my father’s small blue canvas satchel was at the door. Whenever I saw it waiting there by itself I knew he wouldn’t be coming home after work. He did that sometimes, and stayed in a hotel for a few nights or with one of his two brothers. Usually, he’d explain to me afterwards, he left home not to punish my mother for anything she’d done to him but because he felt her life would be happier without him in it.
    He was still home when the call came. My mother and I were eating breakfast and listening to “Rambling with Gambling.” Through the window at the end of the kitchen I could see bands of snow about an inch high on the railings and stairs of the fire escape, white on orange, and I narrowed my eyes and stared, to see if the snow was perfectly level or if it had begun to melt in places.
    My mother turned the radio down, and as soon as she got the news about Abe—the phone was on the wall between the table and the icebox and she put one hand over the mouthpiece and whispered to me that Abe was home but that we couldn’t say hello to him because Lillian said he was asleep—tears started down from her eyes, sliding along the crease lines around her mouth.
    She asked a lot of questions about how Abe looked and how he was feeling—it was January 1946, five months since the war ended—and if he’d asked about her. She apologized to Lillian for crying like an idiot, and while she carried on I thought of all the drawings I’d saved up for Abe and of which ones I would take, even though I knew that taking them would mean showing them to him in front of other people.
    â€œIs it really true this time?” I asked when she hung up.
    â€œIt’s really true.”
    She switched the radio off and stuffed the antenna wires that came out of the back—the copper showed through in spots, smooth orange