My fourth-grade teacher burst into our classroom, her face twisted as though the room smelled of decay. She told us a Jew passing her had spit on the sidewalk, narrowly missing her shoe. She then turned to me–the only Jew in the class–and said, “I’ll fix you, you little Christ killer.
Two weeks later, Miss C happily announced that everyone was being promoted but a boy who did nothing but stare out the window and me.
I ran home, threw myself into my mother’s arms and told her I had been left back. My mother drew me even closer, asking “How can that be? You’re always getting perfect report cards!” I told her Miss C said I was being left back because I was a Christ-killer.
My mother–a devout Irish-Catholic– pulled away from me, saying, “You must have done something terrible to be called that! Tell me what you did!”
She was staring at me as though I had tracked something unwelcome into our home. For the first time in my life, I felt my mother might push me away if I asked her to take me in her arms again.
My mother kept pictures of Mary among her personal belongings. Some of our happiest moments together were spent just looking at Mary’s face. Mary’s tenderness seemed to caress and soften my mother. But there was no hint of softness on my mother’s face now. Did she possibly believe Miss C, that I could kill Mary’s son!
My mother turned away, saying we would talk to my father when he returned from work. My father was a non-observant Jew who left to my mother the modest religious training I received.
I had been baptized and frequently attended Mass with my mother. I’d never been to a synagogue, but I was a Goldfarb, looked more like my father than my mother, and enjoyed visiting my father’s vibrant Jewish family.
A priest I admired told me I lived in the heart of two wonderful worlds. Judaism was rarely mentioned by either of my parents, but there were hints my grandfather, my father’s father, would soon talk to me of its significance in my life.
The moment my father walked through the door, my mother ordered me to tell him what had happened. I was surprised he knew what a Christ killer was, but he did. He grabbed my shoulder and seemed ready to strike me. He said “Only the worst Jews are called Christ Killers. What did you do!”
The two people I was certain would rush to support me were as angry with me as Miss C was. The very words Christ killer seemed to convince them I had done something evil in that classroom. I pulled free of my father’s grip and ran into the bedroom I shared with my younger brother and my aunt, my mother’s sister.
I buried my face in the pillow so I wouldn’t be heard sobbing. I had come home certain my mother would say, “ I’m going to your school to speak to someone in charge. Calling a ten-year-old child a Christ-killer and not promoting a boy with perfect report cards! Come with me; we’re going right now! ”
Instead, she left me alone to suffer agony that would stab me again a lifetime later when I lost my wife of nearly seventy years.
Returning to school in the fall brought a fresh wave of pain. Every class from kindergarten through sixth grade paraded to their classrooms. When my former classmates, now fifth graders, marched past I couldn’t look at them. I stared at my feet until the last of them had gone. I followed a line of strangers to my fourth-grade classroom where teacher and students would expect little from the older boy who had been left back.
There was a moment when it seemed all this could change. Our next-door neighbor worked in my school’s kitchen. She knocked on our door, exclaiming she had good news. She beamed as she told us teachers who had awarded me perfect report cards in the past were questioning why I had been left back. Someone in the principal’s office would have to listen to teachers confident they could call upon me when no one else knew the correct answer.
I quickly learned Miss C’s hatred of me ran deeper than the good wishes of teachers who tried to help me. Every Friday, students assembled in the auditorium to recite the Lord’s Prayer and The Pledge of Allegiance. My school was in the heart of the Little Italy neighborhood of the Bronx and students didn’t have to be told our teachers took the Prayer and Pledge very seriously. Nobody chatted or joked as we recited. It was the Lord’s Prayer that gave Miss C another opportunity to punish me.
Along with almost everyone else in the auditorium, my eyes were closed as I concentrated on capturing every syllable of The Lord’s Prayer. I was surprised when the prayer suddenly stopped and the auditorium became silent. I opened my eyes and looked up to see Miss C standing on the stage, pointing at the students.
She called out my name and I realized it was me she was pointing at. She began shouting, “You were laughing while the rest of us were praying to God. You proved again you didn’t deserve to be promoted!”
Teachers no longer asked why I had been left back. Grades were one thing, God was another. I was going to repeat fourth grade.
As the months passed, we stopped talking about school. My parents treated me as though I had come into their lives not ten years ago, but on the day I was left back. There was a distance between my mother and me I had never experienced before.
I could see they were waiting for me to admit I had done something so vile I deserved to be left back. But, I had done nothing to confess to.
I had been left back for only one reason; My mother might be Catholic, but my name was Jewish and Miss C saw me as one of the killers of Christ.
The wall dividing my parents’ bedroom from mine was thin and the headboards of their bed and mine were inches apart. Couldn’t they realize Miss C had killed something in me, my love of school. They had to hear me weeping myself to sleep every night.
I treated my mother and father differently too. I knew I couldn’t depend upon them to protect me from other adults. I would have to find ways to count on no one but myself. I wasn’t going to spend the rest of my life apologizing for something I didn’t do.
It would have been easy for me to give up and let strangers tell me who I was. I feared someone looking at my school records would say, “He was left back; he has to go to a vocational school.”
Being left back also hardened me. I would never again be someone’s victim. I would plan my own path to the future and follow it to the world I deserved to live in.
The ten year old boy I was began taking his first steps along that path. The ninety-six year-old man he became has chosen to follow the path blazed for him by the boy who never gave up.
Bob’s articles have appeared in The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle and in Next Avenue, the publication of the Public Broadcasting Service. His book, “What’s Stopping Me From Getting Ahead?” was published by McGraw Hill and is in five languages.
