Judith Meyerowitz

by Judith Meyerowitz

As a very small child, Jasmine had watched her grandmother fold the piece of cloth into a rectilinear shape and knot it on top of her head. It looked like a crown. It was very old. She loved to hear the story again and again of how it had been passed down from generation to generation. However, she never saw her mother wear it. When she asked her why, she would firmly say, “We are in America. Not Africa! We are in the North. Not the South!”

As she entered her teenage years, Jasmine was increasingly drawn to the beauty of the headwrap and curious about how it was made. Threads of multiple colors intertwined to create the traditional design. Her eyes followed with wonder the thin black and green cone shapes which rose into the gold and red sky. She thought about the weaving process.

She had watched with fascination on YouTube, men working the loom. The threads of different colors wrapped around their toes, the red brown soil and sweat of Africa mixed in with the colors.

She couldn’t figure out the spacing of the design. It was as if the weavers’ bodies knew where to place the threads, as if their feet danced the rhythm of mathematics. It was a striking piece of Kente cloth from Ghana.

Jasmine’s family was part of the Great Migration. Her great-grandparents had journeyed from Mississippi to Chicago following WW1, while the headwrap had journeyed from Africa to the South with slavery. It had gone from expressing African identity to symbolizing white power and enslavement.

She had seen the headwrap taken over once again by white America in the form of “Black Mammy” in old pancake ads and on servants in old movies. She felt demeaned not only as an African American but as a young African American woman.

She struggled with her own thoughts while also trying to understand her mother’s discomfort. She was in America and the North but how she saw herself was bound to the history and diaspora of her people. She had recently seen an exhibition on representing the Black model at a local art gallery. The theme was portrayed over time and between continents- Europe and America. She read the introduction: the purpose was to “explore aesthetic, political, social, and racial issues”. Beautiful and strong women looked out at her from the walls in headwraps.

Jasmine had never worn the headwrap. She went to the mirror and as if part of her body memory, her grandmother’s movements came back to her. She completed the crowning knot and got on the “L” that would bring Jasmine to her first class at the University of Chicago.

Judith has taken several writing and poetry study groups since joining. She thanks Voices and particularly the members of the Flash Fiction writing workshop for which this piece was written.

by Judith Meyerowitz

Four men ages forty-eight to eighty-three enter the night together. They are a band of brothers, related not by blood but by experience and homelessness. Banished from the kingdom, three huddle together while another lies down nearby. Having no home, they seek a safe dry place and sleep outside the city walls.

The four pass around a cheap flask and the moon reflects off the surface, a swig of whiskey their remaining comfort.

They recognize a young man from the streets, as much outcast as they from the towers of granite.

He is yelling crazily and brandishing a pipe:

“This is my land. Get out of my country. “

The metal object glistens in the moonlight. He raises it above and crashes it down on their heads.  

The four fall through the night.

Never to awaken

Suddenly out of the dark, an odd figure emerges cloaked in silver armor. All are blinded by the shimmering silverlight as if a mirage.  

He wears a chain mail necklace made from soda can tabs, tin plates show through beneath. He draws his sword— an umbrella with metallic spokes poking through. He wears his helmet— a shoebox adorned with foil and pieces of colored glass.

An urban knight on a quest for justice, his mission to avenge the deaths upon the Bowery. He rides through the streets of lower Manhattan on his bicycle, shielded by a garbage can lid, sweeping by the powerless who alone can visualize him.

They cheer as he chases the devil dressed in black, still holding the pipe with the blood of brothers and slays him under a full moon.

This work was developed for the Writing Workshop study group in the fall of 2019 and Judith thanks the coordinator and its members. The work is in memory of the four homeless men murdered as they slept on the Bowery in October of that year.

 

 

 

 

 

 

by Judith Meyerowitz

Gulliver uncurled from sleep twitching, sensing this would finally be the day. He took his time to go through careful preparations: first having a bath, methodically washing every nook and cranny of his lean and muscular body. Then he did the same stretches he did every morning.  Lastly, he drank a bowl of cold milk to give himself the energy he would need.

Gulliver had often looked out the window at the world below, but everything was so small. He had to get closer. From an early age, he was known to be extremely curious. It came naturally to him, as much a part of him as his breathing. He was sorry. He couldn’t wait to say goodbye. He was too excited about setting off on his travels. As soon as the door opened for the delivery guy, he executed his plan to slip out. He was fast, very fast and had surprise on his side. It worked! He was on the other side of the door for the very first time. And ran, and ran—smack into a wall. In fact, all he saw were walls, every which way he turned. Then he couldn’t believe his eyes— one of the walls separated right in front of him, like magic. He was scared, but his curiosity got the better of him. He stepped into what looked like a box, but in a few seconds, he felt himself falling. Was he going to have to use one of his nine lives?  Suddenly, the box came to a stop and the walls separated once more.

He ran as fast as he could again but he found himself caught between glass and feet and going in circles. Suddenly, he was propelled out of the revolving door onto the street and it took him a little while to come to his senses. He was met by a parade of marching feet. He barely escaped in time by jumping off funny little stone ledges. Surprisingly, they were his height and magically they seemed to keep the marching feet in line.

Thinking he was safe, he didn’t see the metal monster with wheels bearing down upon him; Gulliver is paralyzed. In the nick of time, he was shoved and grabbed by the scruff of the neck, roughly pushed out of the way. A very skinny, black furry thing yells: “Stupid! Get out of the way! Hasn’t anybody taught you to cross the street?” “Wha…Wha…What is a street?” asks a shaking still terrified Gulliver.

“Were you born yesterday?” the furry thing says gruffly. He doesn’t know that Gulliver has never been out of the apartment nor spoken to a furry thing. “A quick survival lesson for the streets: always dodge moving monsters and hide behind not moving ones. Zig and Zag. Got it!”

All Gulliver can do is gulp and say, “Thanks!”

“C’mon! Follow me. There’s still time for lunch.” Everyday at noon a lady left some scraps a few blocks away. It wasn’t the sumptuous feast of milk and tuna Gulliver had at home, but his travels had made him hungry. He understood now why he could see the bones on his new friend. They were in luck. After eating, he showed Gulliver a slab of concrete on which to stretch out and nap in the sun. Later, the street wise cat had some parting words: “Remember, always land on your feet!”

Gulliver had learned that travels come with risk. He had terrifying moments but also new exciting experiences. This couldn’t have happened had he played it safe looking down from his window. And he wouldn’t have made a friend. He zigged and zagged and made it back through the magical revolving door and walls that separated. He dodged the feet of the delivery guy, and quickly slipped back into the apartment unnoticed, as the door closed behind him.

Gulliver climbed up on the window seat and thought of his adventure. He had a Cheshire smile on his face.

Judith Meyerowitz is a licensed psychologist. She currently volunteers as a disaster mental health counselor for the American Red Cross and as a docent for The Metropolitan Museum of Art. This piece was developed in the Spring 2018 writing workshop and is in memory of our classmate Joanna Anderson.

by Judith Meyerowitz

It is 1926 and in a week Theodora, or Dora as she was known to her friends, would be 25, nearly as old as the century.

Every night, her circus act could be seen under the tent in Coney Island. She had been doing the show now for seven years! The crowds began to grow when the subway station was completed in 1920.

Dora took pride in being a modern young woman, living in the most exciting times in New York. She had just had her hair bobbed, as was all the rage. It was important for her to be in style. She had a plan for making this birthday trend setting. She led a life of risk-taking, making a living engaging in daredevil stunts such as being shot out of a cannon. She drew inspiration from the daring of the presidential namesake her parents had greatly admired. She wanted to live up to their dreams for her. Like TR, Dora was short in stature, a plus in her line of work, but full of spirit and heart. Standing within a few feet of her you could feel the electricity. Dora’s eyes burnt with an intensity which mesmerized people.

She lived as large as the roaring decade. Nights were spent in Harlem at the jazz clubs and the New York Theater on W.125th or in the speakeasies downtown. She could be seen in her sleeveless, sleek fitting, silver lame tasseled gown, with requisite matching neckband and headband with feathers. Dora enjoyed being out in the cabaret world, especially when she was recognized. She was not averse to sipping bootleg green absinthe in smoke filled private booths with heavy red velvet drapery.

She loved to go out dancing and even entered some of the dance marathons. She caught Houdini’s act as often as she could. Dora didn’t know what to make of the irony of his recent death from appendicitis after all the high risk moments that he had survived.  She thought of herself, too, as an escape artist, for those seconds of flight, freed from the ties to earth. However, when she came hurtling down physically, she crashed emotionally as well. Dora shook it off and thought of her next performance. She also had her gang, a group of friends with whom she partied all night after the show.

Dora lived in a time of outrageous activities. She watched newsreels of New Yorker Alvin Kelly sitting on a pole in Hollywood for 13 hours and 13 minutes. She chuckled to herself, “An act like that would be hard to top.” During her death-defying feat, the audience watched and gasped to see fuchsia silk shorts whizz by as she arced over their heads, shot from a cannon.

What did Dora see? As she flew through the air, she saw a blurred snapshot of the Speigeltent that was crafted in Belgium and brought to the Brooklyn amusement park. Then she saw nothingness. The beige of the canvas was softly out of focus and her dream state began. She knew what was to come—colors a kaleidoscope of stained glass, with hard edges, frighteningly distorted by speed. Lastly, those mirrors, everywhere, surrounding her, upturned faces watching, reflected tens of thousands of times. She thought, “In the unspoken silence did they wait for failure or triumph?” Dora awoke from the recurring dreamlike state when she hit the safety net. But seeing the sawdust covered, hard ground rise up, did not erase those thoughts.

Over the roar of the crowd, she thought back to the beginning. Dora was born into the life of a circus performer. Her parents were renowned aerialists. The crowds came to see them defy the limits, to balance on each other and on the bicycle, which trembled on the wire. Without a safety net! Two years ago, she looked up and watched them fall off the wire out of the night sky.

She could hear her heart pounding, keeping rhythm with the drumming below. Although she had done this act countless times, she never stopped seeking the attention, lights, rhythmic clapping from the audience below. She could feel their eyes upon her. She also imagined her parents’ eyes upon her. On that energy she flew, that sensation lasting mere seconds, thrilled her and carried her to a wished for reunion with her parents and living up to her daring name.

Now she needed another attention grabbing feat which would set apart her twenty-fifth birthday. She had just the place in mind. It is one which will take her from the inside familiarity of the cannon to an entirely different, more open setting and will push her death defying behavior to the limit.  In ways she didn’t understand, each night Dora revisited and overcame her parents’ early deaths. She carried the burden of keeping the family name in lights. These needs underlined Dora’s intensity. She was driven to raise the ante.

The day of her birthday, Dora travels early in the morning north from New York City by train and then transfers to a boat. It is summer, but she is surprised by the strength of the wind and coldness of the mist that hits her in the face, as she approaches the drop-off point. She is soaked even before the stunt begins. Her assistants help her to enter the enclosure. It is reminiscent of the inside of the cannon but her thoughts race ahead to the wild fury of the pouring water. This will be the last image that she sees as the barrel lid is closed and the ropes holding it are freed. More rapidly than anything could have prepared her for, but more slowly than her screaming mind can stand, she is crashing to the bottom of Niagara Falls. On her twenty-fifth birthday, Dora has become the youngest person to go over the Falls in a barrel and survive!

Judith Meyerowitz is a licensed psychologist. She currently volunteers as a disaster mental health counselor for the American Red Cross and as a docent for The Metropolitan Museum of Art. This piece was developed in the Spring 2018 writing workshop and is in memory of our classmate Joanna Anderson.