“Asparagus …Makes Me Cry” ©2012
Like a dream sequence…revisited.
Without a warning the sight of my plate triggered remanences.
It was of a childhood friend, Gloria Bernstein…that was forever stamped on my soul.
Tonight, I had steamed asparagus & cooked spaghetti for my lonesome supper.
I pictured the first time I ever ate asparagus, was in her family’s tiny canary-yellow painted kitchen, on Powell Street, in Brownsville. I was invited to eat-over by my school chum.
Mrs. Bernstein served us spaghetti topped with Del Monte tomato sauce, with canned asparagus, long side it on the same plate.
The avocado-green cut stalks, from a can, were exotic vegetables to me, & with spaghetti no less!
How unique a dinner that was for me, so unlike, my mama’s usual heavy, greasy fare. It so impressed…I still remember that meal, in that old-fashioned, windowless kitchen.
Gloria their only child playful, mischievous and funny.
She was not an ordinary, mousy…boring Brownsville girl, like the rest.
That’s why I adored her! She & I were not a part of “the clique” …nor did we care to be. We were free to roam about old Brooklyn, after school…unwatched. Those were the safe, innocent days of the nineteen -fifties.
Gloria was my best friend & muse in my elementary P.S. 184 days.
On one of our adventure treks, behind The Old Holland Steel Plant, in our private club, she confided this deep secret to me, “I'm adopted. My papa & Mamma deny it… even since I told them I saw it on a certificate I found hidden in their dresser. It disappeared suddenly…but they insisted that it was a phony & I didn’t understand what I read.
“YOU ARE OUR BIRTH CHILD”!
When I told my mama her secret she declared, “Impossible…why Dee-Dee, dear she looks just like her mother”!
One steamy early day, during school break, Gloria came to get me.
She hugged me while chuckling with glee.
“My mother gave this $5.00 bill…let’s go to Coney Island”. (That was the fun mecca of Brooklyn youth). “Lucky girl you”! I cried.
Off we ran for what would be…one of the thrilling days, ever!
We were just 10 years old.
Onto the long subway ride to Coney Island.
The subway fare was a nickel each. The old “IRT” line didn’t go straight there. We had to change trains to the “BMT” line. The trip took an hour and a half.
We chatted and sang, the whole trip in anticipation of the excitement and fun ahead of us.
When we arrived, we were starved! So, we hit the dense crowd for Nathan’s for frankfurter, fries and cokes. The franks were 10 cents, each.
Now we girls were ready for all the rides and games of the Coney Island Midway.
First the daring cyclone roller-coaster, then the electric cars where we purposely banged into the other cars…screaming in delight.
We hit the balls at the game-stand, knocked over the wooden figures and i won a stuffed monkey. This was followed by pink clouds of cotton candy.
The fun house’s distorting mirrors and slippery floors made us giggle before the slowly moving Ferris Wheel beckoned.
Gloria and I did whatever our young hearts desired.
When we had just 10 cents left for the subway home, after ice-cream.
By that time, we were so nauseous and exhausted. One of us threw-up…but I can't remember who.
The next day, a distraught Mrs. Bernstein phoned my mama sobbing.
“I don’t know what to do with Gloria. She stole $5.00 from my purse…I’m at my wits end.
Do you know that they went to Coney Island, all by themselves to spend it all?
We got as they say, good and punished.
Need I add Gloria and I, thought… it was worth it!
(We children of Brownsville were not spoiled for much frivolous pleasure…remember our parents were hard-working immigrants, who couldn’t afford to).
The 2 of us remained pals thru the end of the sixth grade.
The day Gloria got her first period, she ran to my house to tell me.
In disbelief, I followed her into our bathroom, where she showed me her soiled kotex that was anchored with a sanitary belt.
A few weeks later, I got my own first period…we were both 12 years old.
Gloria and I, graduated from P.S.184, that June of 1951.
She and I were then sent to different jr. high schools
We rarely saw one another…new schools, new friendships.
Then I heard her father died of a sudden heart attack. Financially and perhaps emotionally unstable Mrs. Bernstein sent Gloria back to the same orphanage, where she had gotten her as a baby.
I went to visit my old friend in “The Home” in East New York.
She held on to me, while tears ran down her cheeks, “See Dee-Dee, I told you I was really not their kid”.
Writing about this memory, 60 plus years later…I’m sobbing like I'm 14 again and so sad for my friend.
I was understandingly upset every time I visited her, until my family moved us out of Brooklyn.
Still, I can’t eat asparagus, (especially with spaghetti), without wondering what ever happened to my girlfriend Gloria Bernstein.
P.S. This is the only time I written a story and use a “real person’s” name, etc.
Wouldn’t it be a wonderful end to my dream sequence…if someone read this, (out there) & …tells her I still think about her…
