Princess of Passyunk Read online

  oOo

  “It was the prayer,” said Yevgeny. “I’m sure of it.”

  And Nick snorted. “Yeah. What makes you think it was that stupid old baseball?”

  Ganady declined to remind his brother that that stupid old baseball had come to him, indirectly, off the bat of B. Thompson—3B, New York Giants—or that Nikolai, who had been sitting next to him in the stands and who had leapt as zealously as he had to glove it, had then proclaimed that any true Phillies fan would have thrown it back, it having come off an enemy stick.

  “Maybe it was both,” murmured Ganady.

  The three were slouching east on Wharton toward Saint Casimir’s, dragging their feet at the prospect of school on such a spring day. The Baseball was in Ganady’s book satchel. It had, in fact, not left his person since the episode at the opshprekher’s.

  “Things are new here,” said Nikolai. “They’re different than they were in the old country. But Baba and her old friends try to hang on. That’s why they’re Jewish and we’re Christian.”

  “Da was a Christian in the old country,” argued Ganady. “Only Mama’s family was Jewish.”

  “She converted when she married your dad?” Yevgeny asked.

  “Yeah. I guess his family wasn’t too keen on him marrying a Jewish girl,” Ganady said. “Of course, Mama’s family wasn’t too keen on her marrying a goy either. Especially since she got to be goy, herself.”

  “Shiksa,” Nick corrected. “I’m glad we’re Catholic. All those food laws—no pork; no shrimp; no lobster—what’s that? Fish on Friday I can deal with.”

  “But she believed, didn’t she? In our Lord Jesus, I mean.”

  Ganady shrugged. “She wanted to marry my Da. They were in love. I’m pretty sure she believes now. I mean, she got baptized and all. She goes to mass and takes communion. I don’t know about then. They only knew each other two weeks when he proposed.”

  “You should hear how Baba nudzhes because our house isn’t kosher.” Nick raised the pitch of his voice in warbling mimicry. “‘It’s so I never can tell what I’m eating. I could every day be breaking the kashris and I wouldn’t know.’”

  “I thought your mom and dad grew up in the same town.”

  “They did. But she lived in the Jewish part and he lived in the Catholic part, so they never met until they got on the boat to America. Mama says it was the magic of moonlight and waves. Baba says it was because everybody but Mama was below, seasick, and nobody was there to keep an eye on her.”

  Ganady wobbled a little inside at the thought of his parents staring into each other’s eyes and crooning Polish love songs to each other.

  Nick laughed aloud. “And that music she listens to! Accordions and clarinets and stuff.” He gave his little brother, who had played clarinet since the age of nine, a mocking grin.

  “Wow,” breathed Yevgeny. “Just like Romeo and Juliet.”

  Ganady ignored mention of the clarinet, but thought of Romeo and Juliet gave him pause. “Yeah. I guess so. It’s no big deal. Not like they were at war with each other or anything. Not like Montagues and Capulets.”

  “War?” asked Nick. “What war? What’s a Capu—Capu...?”

  “Yeah, but their love brought them together. Just like in the movies or something. That’s keen.”

  “It’s soppy, is what it is,” said Nick, forgetting about wars, Capulets, and Baba’s fondness for klezmer music.

  “Did she really say that about the magic of moonlit waves?” asked Yevgeny. “Your mom, I mean.”

  Ganny nodded. “You should have seen her face—all dreamy.”

  Nick chortled. “Can you picture our Ma and Da going all ga-ga over each other? Staring into each other’s eyes? ‘Oh, Re-bec-ca, my princess! Oh, Vi-tal-y, my little galobkie!’”

  “I bet they’re still in love, huh?”

  “Yeah,” Ganady said, and felt an inexplicable bubble of contentment rise up under his heart to pop.

  “That’s keen.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Really soppy.”

  The stern face of Saint Casimir’s stopped them in their tracks and put an end to conversation. The Three took a deep breath in unison and entered through the artfully wrought gates.

  oOo

  Ganady was much bothered by his lack of understanding. It seemed to him that in the case of the opshprekher’s blessing, some force was at work. It was a peculiar force, inconsistent or indecisive or perhaps simply impartial, like God. It didn’t make Ganady, or anyone else in the family, any less Catholic, but it did keep Baba happy for another year and content to live in a non-kosher household.

  Ganady thought that perhaps his attendance at synagogue was a result of the opshprekher’s charms and chants. Even Yevgeny’s speaking Yiddish and being allowed to set foot in a Jewish house of worship might be attributable to it.

  The baseball, he reasoned, by being on his person, might have protected him from any further effects of the opshprekher’s ministrations. Of course, that didn’t account for all of the years he had not had the baseball with him.

  Perhaps he had been protected those years by virtue of not listening. Perhaps the working of such spells or incantations as an opshprekher used required the target to pay attention. He had read a little bit about Voodoo in a comic book, though, and was fairly certain it didn’t work that way.

  He racked his brain trying to recall those other visits. Might he have had something else with him that protected him from the full effects of Armin: his rosary, a prayer card, a crumb from the Eucharist?

  “Is an opshprekher really a kind of wizard?” he asked Baba. “Do his blessings really work?”

  “Of course, they work. How should they not work? You see how we’re all healthy. We’re all together. It was an opshprekher’s blessings that helped bring us to this country, Ganny. They helped your father set up his machine shop. They keep us all together.”

  “But wouldn’t God just do that anyway?”

  “Sometimes it helps to have someone speak to God for you, someone who knows His special ways.”

  “So Armin’s blessings are just to keep us safe?” Would she admit to having the opshprekher try to exorcise her family of Catholicism?

  “Yes, and other things,” she said.

  “Do those blessings work, too?”

  Baba smiled. “I believe so.”

  “But, how can you tell?” he wanted to know.

  “Some blessings are invisible, Ganny,” Baba said. “You must have faith.”

  Ganady didn’t tell her Mr. O had said the same thing about his time windows. He wondered why it was that blessings were more invisible these days than they used to be back in Biblical times, and therefore required more faith. He put the question to Baba.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Well, there used to be angels and burning bushes and plagues of frogs and manna from heaven and pillars of fire. Why don’t those things happen today? And why aren’t there prophets like Isaiah or Moses or saints like Peter and Paul?”

  She looked Baba Yaga at him and said,”Have you ever been lost in South Philly?”

  He shook his head.

  “Have you ever been starving on the zibete?”

  Again, he shook his head, wondering how anyone could starve on Seventh Street since it was only three blocks from Izzy’s deli. Even if one had no money, the food would be freely given, without even a promise of repayment.

  “Then for what do you need a pillar of fire or manna from heaven, Ganady Puzdrovsky?”

  He opened his mouth, staring at her like a startled cod.

  “Ah!” his Baba said, nodding at him. “But if you were to ever need those things...”

  Later, lying in bed, he gazed at his old baseball by moonlight, turning it in his hands. It was, itself, a tiny scarred moon with a squiggle of black where Eddie Waitkus had autographed it. It wasn’t a pillar of fire or a burning bush or even a crumb of heavenly bread, but it seemed to Ganady that, by its very kismet, there was
something miraculous about it. He wondered if there was someone who could tell, someone like Father Zembruski.

  Four: Three Magi

  Most Tuesdays after school Ganady helped Father Zembruski about the sanctuary, which afforded him the opportunity to ask questions. Unfortunately, he had no idea what questions to ask. He certainly couldn’t picture himself offering Father Z his old baseball and asking, “Father, do think this is a miracle baseball?”

  Instead, he asked, “Father, does God do miracles any more?”

  To which Father Z replied, “What do you mean?”

  Ganady, standing before the altar of Saint Stan’s clutching a box of votive candles, realized that the Father was startled, and couldn’t help but wonder why a question about miracles—which, according to the Bible, were the Heavenly Father’s stock in trade—should be so disconcerting.

  “Well,” Ganady said, “there used to be miracles all the time. Moses did them, and Jesus did them, and all of Jesus’ disciples did them. But we don’t. And there used to be prophets everywhere—like Isaiah and Moses and Ezekiel. I was just wondering where they all went. And angels—people used to see angels all the time, but I don’t know anyone who’s seen an angel. Do you know anybody who’s seen an angel, Father?” Here, he ran out of wind.

  Father Z paused in his laying out of candles and peered at his altar boy over the tops of his glasses. “What sort of miracles did you have in mind, young man?”

  Ganady licked his lips nervously, hoping he wasn’t being disrespectful or rude. Maybe the lack of present-day prophets was something the Church didn’t like to talk about.

  “Well, the Israelites had pillars of fire and smoke to guide them in the desert. Why aren’t there pillars of fire and smoke now?”

  The Father smiled, and Ganady relaxed greatly. “Perhaps because God is an original thinker.”

  Ganady didn’t understand at all what that meant, and his face must have shown it, for Father Z laughed at him. Then he explained, “A pillar of fire can be seen by a great number of people from a great distance, don’t you see? And Moses had a great number of people to lead, didn’t he?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, there you have it, don’t you? While you and I might need guidance, we certainly don’t need a pillar of fire, now do we?” He gave Ganady’s shoulder an avuncular pat.

  “Yeah. That’s kind of what my boobeh—um, I mean, my grandmother said.”

  “Your grandmother is a wise woman, Ganny. What we’re both saying is that God guides us as we need to be guided, you see?”

  “But what about miracles? It seems like we need miracles as much today as we ever did. Why aren’t there miracles these days?”

  Father Z’s eyes got very wide and round behind his thick lenses. “Who says there are no miracles? Surely, there are miracles.”

  Ganady was immediately alert. “There are?”

  “Surely.”

  “Like what? Like being raised from the dead? Like walking on water? Or parting the Dead Sea?”

  Father Z looked as if he might laugh again. His mouth twitched and his eyes crinkled.

  “That’s the Red Sea—and, no, I have never seen water either walked upon or parted. But...” He left the altar to sit in the lowest stall of the choir and Ganady followed, crushing the box of votives against his chest.

  “But,” the Father continued, comfortably seated, “I have seen a child brought back from almost certain death.”

  Ganady sat down beside Father Zembruski and balanced the misshapen box on his knees. “Who?”

  “You know Ilyana Chichak, yes?”

  “Sure. She teaches second grade at Saint Casimir.”

  Ilyana Chichak was the youngest, prettiest teacher in all of Saint Casimir’s, and one of the few wedded to neither Church nor man. Every boy Ganady knew had a crush on her and every girl copied her hair, her walk, her smile and the way she tossed her head when she laughed.

  “When Ilyana was a little girl, she became very ill with the scarlet fever. The doctor did what he could, but it was all for nothing. Poor little Ilyana got sicker and sicker. The doctor—his name was Ivanovitch—called me and said, ‘Father, this child is going to die. Come shrive her.’

  “Well, I went, you see. And when I got there, Ilyana’s grandmother said she must try a cure her own grandmother had taught her. No one had listened to her before, you see, but now that it was a last hope, we listened. The grandmother said to me, ‘Father, you must pray and you must not stop praying until she is healed or in heaven.’ Then, while I prayed, they took this poor little child and put her first in a bath of hot water, then of cold. They did this, I don’t know how many times.

  “I prayed for hours and then the doctor came to me and put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Father, you can stop.’ ‘Is she dead?’ I asked. ‘Come see,’ the doctor told me. So I went with him. And there was little Ilyana sleeping peacefully, her fever broken. And I said to the doctor, ‘Now I must pray for thanks.’”

  Ganady was much impressed. He now knew someone to which a legitimate miracle had happened.

  “This happened right here in South Philly?”

  “Oh my, no. Doctors here would never try such a thing, would they? No, that happened in Poland. Her family came to America the year after. We were on the ship together. That was, oh, twenty-three years ago, surely.”

  Ganady experienced the sudden deflation of hopes he hadn’t known he had.

  “Have you seen any miracles in Philadelphia?”

  Father Z’s graying brows knotted eloquently above his horn rims. He scratched behind his ear. “No.”

  “Do you think there could be miracles here?”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  “Nikolai says old-world magic doesn’t work here,” Ganady confided. “He says America is too practical for miracles.”

  Father Z’s hand fell lightly on his shoulder. “Miracles, Ganny, take faith.”

  “Yeah, Baba said that, too.”

  “I should like to meet this grandmother of yours. She sounds like a very spiritual woman.”

  “She doesn’t believe in Jesus,” Ganady blurted. “Yevgeny’s afraid that means she’s going to hell. But she fears God and she always does what’s right.”

  Ganady decided it would be best not to divulge to the Father that Baba annually hired Armin the opshprekher to exorcise her family back into the synagogue.

  “Ah,” Father said, in knowing tones, and squeezed his shoulder. “Don’t worry, Ganny. Much may happen in a person’s life. Your grandmother is in God’s hands, but you can pray for her soul. And you can have faith that God will hear your prayers.”

  Ganady wandered away from Saint Stan’s bemusedly pondering his extraordinary circumstances. Baba was trying to pray her family back into the faith of their fathers so they would be safe on the Day of Judgment. Father Z seemed to think Ganady wanted to pray his Baba into the Church so she would be safe on that same Day.

  Was this what he meant when he spoke from the altar about spiritual battles? Ganady could not accept that he should be embattled against his Baba. It was unthinkable. He didn’t mind using his prayers to protect himself from being exorcised, but to invoke Church magic to convert her from her faith—it didn’t seem right.

  Ganady wandered several blocks both mentally and physically, fetching up on the steps of the Megidey Tihilim. He paused there in the street and wondered if it would be worthwhile to ask his questions about miracles, magic and such of Rabbi Andrukh. If he did ask, might he receive a different answer?

  As he stared up at the thick doors in deep thought, turning The Baseball in his pocket and ever so gently biting the tip of his tongue, those very doors opened and who should appear but Rabbi Andrukh himself, rag in hand. He proceeded to apply the rag to the front doors, spreading a sheen of oil over the stained wood.

  Ganady stood transfixed. Clearly the Rabbi had not seen him there, and he didn’t know if he should call attention to his presence or remain silent. If
he held perfectly still, he reasoned, the Rabbi might even take him for a police call-box.

  Even as Ganady had the thought, the good Rabbi glanced up from his polishing and said, “Well, Ganady Puzdrovsky! I didn’t see you there!” He chuckled and shook out his rag. “Truth to tell, I took you for a police call-box, but I recalled no police call-box just there. I had to look in case God or the city of Philadelphia had wrought some sort of miracle.”

  Well, Ganady had no choice but to accept that Rabbi Andrukh’s timely appearance, his mention of miracles, and his coincidental words about call-boxes amounted to a sign from God. Clearly, he was to ask the Rabbi.

  “Are you coming in?”

  “Yes, sir.” Ganady came up the steps into the dark warmth of the synagogue.

  “And for what have you come to shul on a Tuesday? Nothing is wrong with your Baba, I hope?”

  “Oh, no, Rabbi. It’s only that I have a question.”

  “A question?” The Rabbi looked puzzled, his auburn brows meeting above a prominent nose.

  A presidential nose, Ganady thought. He looked like a young Abraham Lincoln, which was appropriate, for his given name was Ibrahim.

  “I have a few things to do about the sanctuary, but I can try to answer your question,” said Ibrahim Andrukh.

  Ganady very quickly found himself in possession of yet another box of candles—tapers, this time.

  “So what is this question you have?”

  “Well, I was wondering if God still does miracles and if He ever does them in Philly.”

  Rabbi smiled, just as Father Z had done, as if the question were somehow amusing. “What sort of miracles did you have in mind?” he said, echoing Father Z further.

  It was the second time today Ganady had heard the question and realized that he really had no clear idea of the answer.

  “I was just wondering, I guess: if the Israelites had pillars of smoke and fire and the saints and apostles...well, if they had those things, what do we have? I mean if you needed some help or protection or something magical to happen, would it?”

  Rabbi Andrukh gave Ganady such a long and searching look that he thought his soul must have turned completely inside out.