few seconds, I watched it move. Papa further unlaced my barely scuffed, black high-top Buster Brown shoes and loosened the tongue. With a firm, determined grip, he took the shoe in his right hand and slid my foot partway in, just past my toes and instep. I remember how Papa pushed harder; I had to avert my eyes. I was embarrassed, but not sure why.
I looked down and saw my father’s brown oxfords, which he cleaned and spit-shined daily. I was fond of those shoes. I remembered all the nights I had peered out from under my bedcovers at Papa’s shoes. He would come home late as usual from work and tiptoe into the room that Ben, Myer, and I shared. Then he would bend over and give us each a kush on the forehead. I looked forward to the predictable, soothing squeak my father’s shoes made on our wooden bedroom floor. It was a talisman of safety, a blessing, a sound that reminded me things were secure in that dimly lit room. When I heard that sound, I could let myself fall backward through space into sleep. That’s a feeling I haven’t had too often in my life. That evening sitting in our kitchen I wondered how my father saw my shoes. From the look on his face, and the way he was straining, they seemed more like a curse.
Over the years, when I recall how my father struggled with those shoes, it reminds me of the tale of Jacob’s wrestling match with the angel that I’d learned when I was a little boy in chader—Jewish School where we went to study Monday through Friday after school and on Sunday. In that Bible story Jacob scuffles with a seraph and won’t stop grappling until the angel blesses him. Watching this unfold, God laughs. He changes Jacob’s name to Israel, which means “you who struggle with God and prevail.” Though Papa was single-minded and strong, it was impossible for him to have known that was the beginning of a lifelong wrestling match with an invisible menace he would not and could not win.
“Papa,” I asked, trying my best to connect with him and lessen the distance I felt growing between us, “when your shoes didn’t fit, did your father get mad?” My father was so focused on what he was doing that he didn’t say a word.
I knew I must have done something very wrong. Only two Mondays before, after school, Mama and I had gone to Givens and I had picked out a pair. In those days it was the only place to buy kids’ shoes in El Paso. Two months before, when Mr. Silverman measured my feet, he couldn’t believe that I was only in the second grade. I liked the attention and felt proud to be big for my age.
Upon our return, Silverman looked surprised and muttered, “Das ist ungaublich.” My mother shot him a disapproving look. When she paid Mr. Silverman, pulling coins from her purse, she’d looked at me and frowned. “These have to last you until Pesach,” she said.
I remember worrying that the salesman must have given me a smaller pair by mistake or maybe when I had walked through a puddle of water in front of the Azar’s house on the way home from school the day before they had shrunk.
“Stand up on that foot, Jake.” Papa tried and tried to force my foot into the small opening, but it was no use. He pushed so hard his face turned red. I pushed, too. I felt that forcing my foot into that tight leather shoe was imperative for the family’s survival. I knew that shoes were expensive. I imagined that if my parents spent all of their butter and egg money on me, Ben and little Myer would have to go without. Maybe the family would starve. I knew I was lucky to even have shoes. After all, some of the kids at Vilas School went barefoot.
“Ouch, that hurts, Papa,” I said, no longer able to keep silent. Papa sighed, sat up, and wiped the sweat from his brow. I felt guilty that I’d hurt my mother and father by not wearing my shoes at least until spring, as I knew I ought to. I was comfortable with oughts and shoulds. In those days they defined my world, like the North Star. “I’m sorry; sorry I made you buy those awful shoes for me, Papa,” I started to cry.
Papa reached up and put his right hand on my shoulder. I knew he wanted to comfort me, but he must have felt strangely unequal to the task. I know Papa was uneasy with his sense of inadequacy in the face of my sadness.
“It’s nicht gaferlach mien kind. It’s not so important,” he said. But I didn’t believe him. My father didn’t know how to tell me that he wasn’t angry; he was frightened. Papa just sighed, picked up the shoes, and stared out of the window into the moonless night. I stood there for a few seconds, waiting for him to turn around. Then I silently retreated to my bedroom. I wondered if Papa would give me a kush that night.
The next day, Mama and I made our way to Givens.
“You two, again?” Mr. Silverman said in a loud, overly familiar voice.
I avoided his eyes by watching the salesman’s belly shake as he spoke. I smiled to myself and thought, It moves like the jelly on top of Mama’s gefilte fish.
For the second time in a month, my mother and I sat silently in front of the eager seller of shoes. Silverman had been selling shoes and boots in west Texas since the turn of the century. He was like a walking ledger, a veritable shoe maven. If you asked him, he could recite by heart the shoe sizes and preferred styles of most of the men, women, and children that made up the tiny but growing Jewish community in El Paso, Texas. But he had never encountered a customer like me.
Silverman measured my feet, shook his head as if he were having a conversation with some unseen audience, and quickly disappeared through the worn, velvet curtains that hid the stockroom. Within a few seconds he came through those curtains with the exuberance of an actor bounding on the stage for an encore. He cradled several boxes as he made his way to where Mama and I sat.
Silverman presented the same style high-tops that I had just outgrown. I looked up to see my mother biting her lower lip, which I would come to recognize as a telltale sign that she was worried. The pride I had felt at being “big for my age” a few short months before had disappeared. It was replaced by foreboding. Not knowing what to do, I closed my eyes tightly and descended, inside; a lifelong way I had of escaping. Sitting in Givens, embarrassed and worried, I sought refuge in an inner world where I longed to find something to soothe me. But no comfort materialized out of that murkiness.
As if he couldn’t tolerate the vacuum, Silverman filled it with chatter. “This is a first for us,” he said, looking over his spectacles and down his nose. “I mean I’ve never sold so many shoes to one kleiner bocher (little boy) in so short a time. Chaa, Chaa.” He laughed with a German accent. I wondered if he was laughing or struggling for air. “What are you feeding this boy, Mother Erlich?”
I squirmed and Mama’s jaw clenched. Silverman’s loud voice was a magnet for attention in that small store. He, like many others over the years, seemed unaware of my increasing anguish. Another mother, this one towing a little girl who wore a yellow bonnet, craned her neck to see what all the fuss was about. The cashier and another salesman, like deserters from the Foreign Legion, left their posts to see what was happening. That was the first time I remember drawing a crowd. I couldn’t wait to get out of there. I felt mortified. At that point, I would rather have gone barefoot.
Unfortunately, I would become a constant visitor to Givens Shoes. Within a few years, Givens could no longer accommodate me; I would bust out of even the largest shoes in El Paso. At great expense for any family, I would have to have shoes custom made.
XXXX
Two months and four pairs of shoes later, I sat on Dr. Epstein’s leather-covered exam table. In those days, he was the best doctor in town. My mother and father flanked me, sitting on uncomfortable iron chairs that had been painted white. I was nervous. I subtly scanned my parents and sensed their apprehension.
“Dr. Epstein came by the store last week. I sold him a zeiger. He should be on time,” said my father, trying to lighten the mood in the sterile examination room. “Then again, maybe the watch is already kaputt.” He smiled at me. I forced myself to grin back.
“Once in Poland during an influenza outbreak, when I got deathly ill, they made me take kerosene,” said Mama, frantic for something to talk about. I recall that I grimaced, imagining what kerosene tasted like. I wondered if Dr. Epstein would prescribe it for me.
“Weh es mir, Dora!” said Papa, rolling his eyes. “Are you trying to scare the poor boy?”
Mama