Saturday Night VI
by Joel Deutsch
“Jojo, quit your squirming over there, do you mind? I was almost asleep, and then you had to start bumping your behind up against that sack of yours, and all those cans and bottles got to rattling around like somebody was putting out the trash.”
“For Christ’s sake,, lady, Cut me some goddamned slack,” grumbled Jojo. “I’m just trying to get comfortable without my feet sticking out one side or the other so the whole world can see me.”
Elizabeth had no such problem. Huddled behind the other concrete planter four feet from Jojo, she was so small that her stained brown children’s-sized sleeping bag with the red flannel liner was invisible unless you stepped into the storefront synagogue’s little forecourt. And the two-wheeled shopping basket in which she kept all her worldly belongings, with its collapsible handle, fitted neatly between her and the back of the planter.
Earlier that day, Elizabeth had taken a seat beside Jojo at the counter of the kosher lunchroom that Jojo called the Jew restaurant and ordered the same chicken leg, string beans and rye bread special with coffee that Jojo was wolfing down, himself. They had recognized each other from the streets, of course, and gotten to talking.
When the subject of sleeping arrangements came around, as it usually did in a homeless conversation, she had told him about the rabbi who allowed her to camp in front of his synagogue, and mentioned that there was another open slot, and maybe he’d like to try it. She admitted she had reservations about sharing her territory, but said that Jojo had always seemed a decent sort to her, and having a man for protection, not that anything was going to happen, felt like a good idea.
The five and a half years since his pilgrimage from Florida had slid by in a beer-muddled haze. Jojo had heard there were fishing operations all up and down the southern California coast, from Long Beach below to Port Heuneme at the north end, and plenty of jobs. Which turned out to be true. Trouble was, he couldn’t hold onto anything. It was the drinking, of course. Jojo intended with all his heart to reform. But he simply lacked the wherewithal required to coordinate those intentions into an actual plan for getting sober. And nobody wanted a drunken, belligerent Jojo on a shrimping trawler 10 miles offshore hours before dawn, misbehaving in the unearthly green glow of the fish attractor floodlights, or antagonizing their charter clients on a sportfishing day cruise.
On just such a voyage, out of San Pedro, he had tried to grab a rod and reel rig a little too roughly from a middle aged black customer , the only non-white with a group of lawyers who were drinking a good bit more than he was, Jojo being not a binge drinker but a measured one, meaning to show him how to use it properly. The man had tried to grab his equipment back, and the two of them had toppled to the deck and mixed it up until two other crew members pulled them apart. The African-American fisherman turned out to be a Los Angeles Superior Court judge. Word of the incident got around, and that was the last time any skipper or fleet boss would hire Jojo onto anything that floated.
And so now here he was, dead tired and seriously drunk, just wanting to get comfortable before he let himself go ahead and pass out, being bossed around by some black bitch. Although he had to admit she seemed pretty decent, giving him a place to lay himself down and everything, and her round little milk chocolate face, even with its one missing upper tooth, was more attractive than the ravaged visages of most of the females he knew in their punishing world.
“There’s no call for you to be getting vulgar with me, Jojo,” chided Elizabeth sleepily. “And there’s no REASON in the world to BE TAKING the name of the Lord in vain. When I hear such meanness of spirit come spewing right out of you like that, it makes me feel such pity that I start in praying on you for the sake of your soul.
Jojo fumbled and tugged at his scavenged comforter until he was rolled into it like a mummy entombed with its legs bent at the knees. “Save your praying for somebody else, Elizabeth. I don’t need prayers. I just need TO GET me some sleep.”
“I’ll pray on you anyway, Jojo, said Elizabeth, undaunted. “Somebody’s got to, and it may as well be me.”
Jojo searched his drunken brain for a good snappy comeback, but his head was already settling onto the rolled-up pants-pillow.
Then the front door of the synagogue swung open and electric light spilled out. He managed to lift his head again and look back over his shoulder. Two men, one tall and thin, the other short and a little heavyset, emerged from the building and let the door swing closed behind them, leaving the forecourt dim again in the weak peripheral glow of the nearest street lamp.
“Shalom, Elizabeth,” said the shorter man, whose voice sounded to Jojo like that of someone in his boyish forties. “. Good evening to you.”
“Hi, Rabbi Seinfeld,” said Elizabeth.
“It’s ‘Schoenfeld,’ Elizabeth,” the rabbi corrected, “not Seinfeld. if it were Seinfeld, like the TV star, I’d be rich enough to buy this building and the one next door, break through the wall and build a beautiful new house of worship. We’d have a sanctuary with enough seats for a congregation five times as big, a women’s balcony so beautiful that the men would complain of reverse sexism, and stained glass windows direct from the craftsmen of Jerusalem.”
“Sorry,” Rabbi Schoenfeld,”” ,” said Elizabeth. I keep forgetting.
“I’m not offended in the least,” Elizabeth,” said the rabbi. “It trips up a lot of people. I had an uncle Bernie, may he rest in peace, who got so tired of explaining how to pronounce the family name , not Shinefeld or Shernfeld or Sheenfeld, that he went to court and had it changed to Shane. Bernie Shane. Like the cowboy in the old Western. So I see you have a new friend here tonight.” He indicated Jojo with a look in his direction.
“I thought you said it would be okay for one more person to sleep here,” replied Elizabeth. If it’s a problem—“
“It’s no problem at all, my dear. I was just surprised to see someone new. I meant what I said. I believe in the Jewish concept of tzedakah, the obligation to serve our fellow human beings with compassion. In the Book of Deuteronomy, we are told to love the stranger, because we ourselves were once strangers in the land of Egypt. we have a duty to provide what we’re able to , even if it’s nothing but a few square feet of space in which a person can safely go to sleep. Your friend is as welcome as you are, don’t worry. So tell me, what’s his name?
“I can speak for myself,” piped up Jojo, hoping his words weren’t actually coming out as surly and slurred as they felt in his mouth. “Jojo. My name’s Jojo.”
“Excuse me Rabbi,“ said the other, “but “I was kinda hoping I’d get to talk to you before I had to go home.”
Jojo could tell by the tall one’s voice that he was young, 18 or so. But he was dressed like a senior citizen at a funeral. Black suit, white shirt, no tie, a hat with an old-fashioned crown and brim, also black. What did you call those? A fedora, it came to him. The kind of hat he remembered seeing businessmen wearing in downtown Atlanta when he was a little boy, 50 years ago.
The rabbi was dressed nearly the same, except that the graceful drape of his own suit was a far cry from the way the kid’s outfit hung on his tall frame like a sack. The younger man was clean shaven, and the rabbi wore a full, dark beard, neatly trimmed, not like the wild-thatched men Jojo had seen gathered in front of other synagogues around the neighborhood who looked like the Islamic terrorists. And instead of the old coot headgear, all the rabbi wore was a little round knitted-looking skullcap.
Hold on, Alex,” said the rabbi to the younger man. He had to look up to address him. “I’ll be with you in a second.”
“you can call me Sasha,” Sasha had encouraged the rabbi. “All my friends do.” But he didn’t really mind that the rabbi hadn’t taken him up on the invitation. After all, Alex was the name he’d used officially in public school, for years. Besides, it seemed as if every apartment building In West Hollywood harbored at least a couple of Sashas. Once, he had cracked himself up imagining some Russian woman standing out on her apartment balcony, calling out for Sasha to come home, and a hundred Sashas, from schoolboys to husbands to ancient doddering dedushkas, assembling on the street beneath her and looking up to see what she wanted. Unfortunately, at the moment this comical vision had come upon him, he’d been sitting in his fifth period 11th grade AP English class, and the substitute teacher, probably accustomed to contending with rougher, more intransigent students than Advanced Placement types, had sent him to the office of Vice Principle Ms. Ishiyama when he couldn’t stop laughing.
“,”I’m Rabbi Schoenfeld,” said the rabbi. Pleased to meet you, Jojo.”
“Same here,” managed Jojo, feeling as if he ought to say something more, something to express his gratitude for the rabbi not 86′ing his ass right out of there or calling the cops on him. But he was too tired and too drunk, and so he just stopped fighting to stay conscious. “Same here,” he repeated, and his head dropped again onto the makeshift cushion and his eyes fell closed. Noting this, Rabbi Schoenfeld turned again to Elizabeth and started chatting with her.
Sasha half listened. Once the woman had been a schoolteacher. Or a Sunday school teacher. Been a mother, had a family. Then there was something about an abusive husband. something about a son in the Army, a son in prison, something about a sick mother in Tennessee. Against the backgdrop of Elizabeth’s story, Sasha thought about the unanticipated turn his own life had taken that summer.
To be continued….