Frog

3. Frog’s Nanny

This is how he remembers it. He shits in his pants. Actually, it starts with him coming up to her — his memory of it always starts with him coming up to her and pointing between his legs. She says something like “Did you make doody in your pants?” He nods. Remembers nodding, not speaking. “Doody in your pants again?” Nods. Next thing he remembers she’s pulling him into the bathroom, then that he’s in the bathroom, long pants are off his legs, she slips his underpants off with the shit inside it, and holding the clean part of the underpants pushes the shit into his face. Then she picks him up by his underarms, holds him in front of the medicine chest mirror and tells him to look at himself. He doesn’t want to. He’s crying. “Look, I’m telling you to look!” He looks. Shit all over his face. Looked like hard mud. Just then he hears his father’s voice. “Hello, anyone around?” He starts squirming in her arms to be let down. He wants to run to his father to show him what she did. He knows what she did was wrong. She lets him down. He runs out of the bathroom, through what they called the breakfast room into the kitchen where his father is. He points to his face. His father starts laughing very hard. That’s all he remembers. Scene always goes blank then.

“Frieda’s coming today,” his mother said on the phone. “She particularly asked me to see if you could be here. I’d love for you to be here too.” “I don’t know if I can make it,” he said. “Please do though. She’ll be here at noon. She’s always very punctual, to the point most of the times of getting here ten to fifteen minutes early. I’m taking her out to lunch. Would you like to join us?” “Now that I know I can’t do.” “Dobson’s — for fish. She was thrilled with it the last time. Raved and raved. Even had a glass of wine.” “No, thanks, Ma. If I come I can only spare an hour. Getting there and back will take another hour, which is really all I can spare. Two. Total.”

He tells his wife that his mother called before. “Frieda’s visiting her for the day. Both want me to be there. For lunch too, but that I’m definitely not doing.”

“Your old nanny? What was the story you told about her — what she did to you?”

“What? Every morning rolling down my socks in a way where I could just hop out of bed and roll them up over my feet? Actually, she did that the night before. Left them at the end of my bed along with my—”

“Not the socks. The feces in your face. How’d that go again? I remember your father was in on it too. In the story.”

“He laughed when he saw me.”

“What do you think that was all about?”

“More I think of it, maybe he really did think it was funny. Here’s this kid of his running up to him with shit all over his face. He had a great sense of humor — No, he did. And for all he knew I might have tripped and fallen into it and maybe that’s what he thought was so funny. His kid tripped head first into shit.”

“But later he knew. You told him, didn’t you? You were pointing, crying. And you told your mother later — you must have, or he did — but they still kept her on.”

“Frieda was a gem, they thought. She ran the house. Kept the kids disciplined, quiet when necessary and out of the way. Three boys too, so no easy task. She gave them the time to do what they liked. Work, play, go off for a week or weekend whenever they wanted. Cruises, and once all summer in Europe. And she wasn’t well paid either. None of the nannies then were.”

“But she did lots of cruel things like that feces scene. She beat you, hit your face. Smacked your hands with a spatula that you said stung for hours later.”

“That was Jadwiga, the Polish woman who replaced Frieda when Frieda married.”

“Sent you to bed without your dinner several times.”

“Both of them.”

“Twisted your wrists till they burned. Right? Frieda?” He nods. “Face it, she was a sadist, but your parents permitted it.”

“Look, you have to understand where she came from and the period. As for my parents, who knows if they didn’t think that discipline — her kind — and it probably wasn’t an uncommon notion then — attitude, belief, whatever — was what we needed. The kids. And OK, since they didn’t want to discipline us like that themselves — didn’t have the heart to, or the discipline for it or the time — she got anointed. Appointed. That wasn’t intentional. I’m not that smart. Or just was tacitly allowed to. Anyway, Frieda came from Hanover. 1930 or so. A little hamlet outside. My father hired her right off the boat. Literally, almost. She was here for two or three days when he got her from an employment agency. And that had to be the way she was brought up herself. Germany, relatively poor and little educated, and very rigid, tough, hard, disciplined years.”

“What did your father do after he stopped laughing? Did he clean your face?”

“I don’t remember, but I’m sure he didn’t. He would never touch it. The shit? That was Frieda’s job. On her day off, my mother’s.”

“Can you remember though?”

“Let me see.” Closes his eyes. “She put me down. I’d asked her to. Your know all that. I ran into the kitchen. I see him coming, and then he’s there. He’s got on a business suit, white shirt and a tie. His office was in front of the building, you know.”

“Yes.”

“So it could have been around lunchtime. He came back to the apartment for lunch every workday. Did it through a door connecting the office and apartment.”

“The door’s not there now, is it?”

“On my mother’s side it is — in the foyer — but she had that huge breakfront put up in front of it. On the other side it was sealed up when he gave up the office. I don’t know why they didn’t have the door sealed up on their side. Would have been safer from break-ins and more aesthetic. Maybe he thought he’d start up his practice again when he got well enough to. But after he gave up the office it was rented by another dentist. A woman. He sold her most of his equipment. And he wouldn’t have been in a business suit then. White shirt and tie, yes. He wore them under his dental smock on even the hottest days. So now it makes me wonder. It was definitely a business suit I saw. A dark one. He must have come into the apartment through the front door, not the office door. It was probably a Sunday. Frieda got her day off during the week and a half day off on Sunday right after lunch. So I don’t know. Maybe it was one of the Jewish holidays. He could have just come back from shul. But where were my brothers? They could have gone with him and were now playing outside. And my mother? She would have been in the kitchen cooking if it was a Jewish holiday. That was the time — the only time, just about, except for Thanksgiving and I don’t know what — my father’s birthday? her father visiting? which he did every other week till he died when I was six, through I don’t ever remember seeing him, there or any other place — when she really went at it in the kitchen. The other times it was fairly quick and simple preparations and, occasionally, deli or chow mein brought in. Maybe we were going to my father’s sister’s — Ida and Jack’s — in Brooklyn for dinner that night. We did that sometimes. She cooked kosher, if that’s the right expression, and my father, raised on it, still fancied it, especially on Jewish holidays. Anyway, he approached. I was around three or four at the time. So if it was a nursery school day and not a serious Jewish holiday and I wasn’t home from school because I was sick — but she never would have put shit in my face if I were sick — then it was the afternoon. My nursery school for the two years was always in the morning. But what about my father’s business suit? Let’s just say he closed the office for the day and had a suit on because he’d just come back from a dental convention downtown. He’s there though. I see him coming through the living room into the kitchen. I run through the breakfast room — where we never had breakfast, except Sunday morning, just dinner — to the kitchen. The kitchen was where we had breakfast and lunch. Frieda’s behind me. I don’t remember seeing her, just always sensed she was. I hold out my arms to him. I’m also crying. I don’t remember that there, but how could I not be? I think a little of the shit was getting into my mouth. I don’t remember smelling it but do tasting it a little. All this might sound like extrapolation, exaggeration — what I didn’t smell but did taste. But I swear it’s not. Anyway, to it. Arms are out. Mine. I’ve a pleading look. I know it. I had never felt so humiliated, soiled, so sad, distressed — you name it. Dramatic, right? I’m telling you,” opening his eyes, “I felt absolutely miserable and this had to be evident to him. So maybe when he saw me he took that kind of defense — laughter — rather than deal with it, try to comprehend it. But maybe not. Maybe he did think I tripped into it. So even though I was so distressed his first reaction might have been ‘Oh my God, Howard’s tripped into shit.’ Maybe he thought it was our dog Joe’s. Or dirt. That I’d been playing in one of the backyard planters, or that it was paint on my face. Clay. But no play clay’s that color. Maybe it does get that way when you mix all the colors up. Anyway, my arms are out. Let me try to get beyond what I’ve so far can’t remember about it. Past the blank.” Shuts his eyes. “Arms. He’s there. Kitchen. I run to him. Frieda’s behind me. Sense that. I’m crying. Have to. Pleading look. He laughs. Blank. Blank.” Opens his eyes. “No, didn’t work. Most of my real old memories end like that. Like a sword coming down. Whop! Maybe hypnosis would get me past, but I tend to doubt those aids. Or can’t see myself sitting there, just submitting.”

“But your mother. Didn’t she say it never happened?”

“To me, yes. She says it happened to Alex. He says it did happen to him but nothing about a kitchen or pair of pants, which she seems to remember hearing he did it in, or my dad. That he was in a bathtub by himself — one of the first times. Till then he had always bathed toe-to-toe with Jerry, but Frieda throught they were too grown-up for that so had it stopped — when he suddenly shit. Two big—”

“Come on, spare me.”

“So he called out that he’d just made kaka in it. Frieda came, grabbed some of it out of the water and put it in his face. He said he never kakaed again in the tub or anywhere but in the potty, or at least that he doesn’t remember being anything but toiletized after that.”

“How about you?”

“I don’t know if what Frieda did to me stopped me from having kaka accidents or even was the last time she put it in my face. I do think it happened to me. For sure. Memory of it’s too vivid for it not to have happened, but I guess that doesn’t have to be the case.”

“So, are you going to see her?”

“Yes, I think so, you mind? I had Olivia two hours today, so I’ve at least done part of my daily share. When I come back I’ll take her to the park or something and you can get back to work.”

He goes to his mother’s. Has the keys, lets himself in. “Hi, hi, it’s me,” he says, walking through the living room. They’re having coffee and cookies in the kitchen. Frieda sees his mother look up at him and smile and turns around. “Oh my, look who’s here,” she says. “What a nice thing to do,” and holds out her arms. He bends down and kisses her cheek while she hugs him around the waist. Still that strong scent of that German numbered cologne she always wore. He wondered on the subway if he should bring the shit incident up. If it did happen to him or has he been imagining it all this time? If he has been imagining it, that’d say something about something he didn’t know about himself before. But he’d never bring it up. It would embarrass her, his mother, ultimately him. Or immediately him, seconds after he asked it.

“You didn’t bring the little one,” Frieda says. “Or your wife. I never met them and was hoping.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t even think of it. Maybe no time to. When my mother called you were coming, I just ran right down.”

His mother asks if he wants coffee. “Black, I remember, right?” Frieda says.

“Always black,” his mother says.

Frieda talks about her life. He asked. “As I told Mrs. T., we’re still living in the same small house in Ridgewood and we’ll probably die there. That’s Ridgewood Brooklyn, you know, not Queens. There, just over the line, it’s always been very different. But our area’s been much improved. Young people are living in. Excuse me, moving. Many good whites, blacks, Spanish — hard-working people, with families, and honest. You’d like this: some artists, even. For years we couldn’t go out on the streets after six. Even during the days it was dangerous sometimes. We needed escorts — you had to pay for them; they simply didn’t volunteer — just to go shopping.” The same high reedy voice, trace of a German accent. Must be a more accurate way — a better way — to describe the distinctiveness of it, but it’ll do for now. “Martin is as well as can be expected for someone his age.” He asked. “He still does all the baking at home. Breads, rolls, pies, cakes — he does one from the first two and one from the second two every other day. I don’t understand how we stay so thin, and he still only uses real butter, a hundred percent. The baking company gave him a good pension, and with the Social Security we both get — Dr. T. helped set it up for me. I really wasn’t eligible to be paying for it at the time, but oh my God, could he finagle. For good reasons mostly, I’m saying, for he knew we’d need it later. So, we live all right and have no complaints other than those every old person has. But Mrs. T. looks wonderful, thank God,” and she knocks twice on the table. “Such a tough life, but she never changes, never ages. She’ll always be a beautiful bathing beauty and a showgirl, which she only stopped being, you know, a few years before I came to work for her. She’s amazing,” and squeezes his mother’s hand. “The parties you gave then — I still see them in my head.”

“That’s what I just told you about yourself,” his mother says. “Look at her. Everything’s the same. She doesn’t age.”

“No no no no.” She closes her eyes modestly. Those stove hoods for eyelids. Not stove hoods but something like them. Roll tops of roll-top desks. Her sister is very sick. He asked. “She lives with us now. She has since Fritz died. I don’t want to say this, but it’s possible she won’t live out the year. Age is awful, awful, when it gets like that.”

“Awful,” his mother says. “No matter how good you feel one day; at our age, the next you could snap, go.”

Her nephew married and moved to Atlanta and bought a house. He asked. “They want to have children. Buy a house after you have a child, Martin and I told them, but they wanted one first. He’s an air controller, went to a special school for it. Six to six for months. We loaned him five thousand dollars of our savings for the house. After all, he’s our only nephew and we love him, and his wife is like our only niece. So he’s like our only son in many ways. You were like one of my children when I worked here. I can still see you pulling your wagon down the street. Red, do you remember?”

“I do if he doesn’t. It said Fire Chief on the sides.”

“I don’t remember that,” Frieda says, “but it probably did, since it was that color red. A very fine wagon — very sturdily made — and with a long metal handle he pulled. You were so small you couldn’t even carry it up to the sidewalk.”

“It was even almost too heavy for me,” his mother says. “We got it from our friends the Kashas. It was their son Carl’s.”

“They were so old then they must be both dead now.”

“He did about fifteen years ago. Bea — Mrs. Kasha — moved to Arizona and I never heard from her again.”

“Too bad. Nice people. But I’d do most of the carrying up the steps for his wagon. The neighborhood was very safe then so we’d — your mother and I — let you go by yourself to the stores you could get to without crossing the street. Think of anyone letting their child do that today. He wasn’t even four.”

“He was so beautiful that today he’d be kidnapped the first time.”

“You’d have a note in your hand. It would say this, when he went to Grossinger’s, which is where he wanted to go most: ‘Three sugar doughnuts, three jelly doughnuts,’ and perhaps some Vienna or their special onion rolls and a challah or seeded rye. You had a charge there, didn’t you?”

“At all the stores on Columbus. Gristede Brothers. Hazelkorn’s kosher butcher. Al and Phil’s green grocers. Sam’s hardware and so on. But sometimes we gave him money to buy. Shopkeepers were honest to a fault then, and when he did carry money I think the note always said to take the bills out of his pocket and put the change back in.”

“It would have had to. So you’d go around the corner with your wagon and park it outside the store. Then you’d go inside and give the note to the saleslady, who was usually Mrs. Grossinger—”

“She passed away I think it was two years ago. She had a bad heart for years but never stopped going in every day.”

“Oh, that’s too bad; a very nice lady. I hope the store was kept up. There aren’t any good home bakeries where we are.”

“Her son runs it and even opened a branch store farther up Columbus.”

“Good for him. So Mrs. Grossinger or the saleslady would give you whatever was on the note and you’d put the bags in your wagon one by one and start home. But sometimes I got so worried for you, or your mother did where she’d send me after you, that I’d follow you all the way there and back — maybe he was around five when he did this, what do you say?”

“I’d think at least five,” his mother says.

“But this was how I was able to see all this. Not worried you’d be kidnapped. Just that you might cross the street. You never did. He was a very obedient boy, Howard. But once I found you sitting on the curb — you must have done this a few times because more than a few times a doughnut or roll was missing from a bag — eating one. Then he’d come home. I used to watch you from the street. You know, sneak up from behind car to car so you wouldn’t see me following you. If someone saw me doing this with a boy today they’d think I was trying to kidnap him and I’d be arrested, no questions asked. But everyone around then knew I was your nanny. Then you’d leave your wagon out front and go into the building and apartment — the doors were always unlocked during the day — and ask me or one of your brothers or your mother to help you bring the wagon downstairs.”

“What a memory you have.”

“I don’t remember most of that,” he says. “Going into Grossinger’s for sugar and jelly doughnuts I do, but no note or wagon. Sitting on the curb eating a roll or doughnut I’ve no mental picture of, I think, other than for what other people’s accounts of it have put into my head.”

“Believe me,” Frieda says. “If you did it once, shopping with your wagon, you did it a dozen times. And when you got home, first thing you always asked for was one of those doughnuts or rolls or the end slice of the rye bread if it was rye. With no butter on it — no spread. Just the bread plain.”

“I remember liking the end slice then. The tiny piece — no bigger than my thumb — but which was usually left in the bakery’s bread slicer. In fact, I still have to fight my wife for it. At least for the heel of the bread, since it seems all the bread we get comes unsliced.”

“How is Denise?”

“Fine.”

“She’s wonderful,” his mother says. “As dear to me as any of my children, that’s the way I look at her, terrible as that might be to say.”

“It isn’t. I’m sure Howard loves to hear it. And your daughter?” she says to him. “Olivia? You really should have brought her.”

“Next time, I swear.”

His mother asks Frieda about her trip to Germany this summer, her first time back there in about forty-five years. Then she starts talking about the European trip she took with his father more than twenty years ago and especially the overnight boat ride their tour took down the Rhine. It was in this room. His father walked in from there, he ran up to him from there, arms out. From where he’s sitting — different table and chairs but same place, the small kitchen alcove — he sees it happening in front of him as if onstage. Two actors, playing father and son. “Frieda” must still be offstage or never gets on. He’s in the first row, looking up at them, but very close. Or sitting level with them, three to four feet away, for it’s theater-in-the-round. The two actors come from opposite directions — the father from stage left if that’s the direction for Howard’s left, the son from stage right. They stop, the father first, about two feet from each other. He points, with his arms still out, to his face. The young actor playing him does. He’s asking for help, with his pointing and expression. He wants to be picked up or grabbed. The shit doesn’t smell because it’s makeup. The young actor gives the impression he just tasted a little of it. But he’s not going to throw up. Howard didn’t then, far as he can remember, and that’s not what the young actor’s face says, though he does look as if he’s just gagged. The father bursts our laughing. He’s wearing the same clothes his father wore that day. Dark suit, white shirt, tie. Howard doesn’t recognize the son’s clothes. The father continues to laugh but now seems somewhat repelled by him. Scene goes blank. Curtain comes down. He’s left looking at the curtain. Or if it is theater-in-the-round, which it resembles more: blackout, and when the house lights come on thirty seconds later, the actors have left the stage. “Frieda,” he says.

“Excuse me,” she says to his mother. “Yes?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to break in like that, but there’s something I’ve often wanted to ask you about from the time when I was around five.”

“You wanted to ask me it since you were five?”

“No, I mean, what I want to ask you about happened, or I think it did, when I was around five.”

“Howard,” his mother says, as if saying, since they had talked about it a few times, not to ask it.

“What is it?” Frieda says. To his mother: “What’s the big mystery?”

“No mystery,” Howard says. “Just that your memory’s so good — phenomenal, really — that I wondered if you could remember it for me from that time.”

“Why don’t we keep it for lunch,” his mother says. “I want you to join us. Frieda already told me she wants you to come too. Have anything you want.”

“Let me just finish this, Mom. I don’t think, if I’m gauging her right, she wants me to ask this, Frieda. Thinks it might offend you. Believe me, that’s not my purpose. Whatever happened so long ago is over and past, period. We all — anyway, if it did happen, you were probably doing something — I know you were — that you thought right or necessary. Or just required for what you were hired for, or something. I’m not getting this out right — and I meant by that nothing disparaging about you, Mom — but just know I’m not asking this with any harm in mind whatsoever. None.”

“What could it be? The mystery gets bigger and bigger. That I slapped you a few times? I’m sorry for that. I never wanted to. But sometimes, sweet and darling as you were, and beautiful — he was such a beautiful child, everyone thought so — you got out of control, like all children can. Out of my control.”

“That’s true. They could be something.”

“I had three very wild boys to take care of sometimes, so sometimes I had to act like that. Rough. Mean. Slap one or the other. I always tried for the hands or backside first — to get control or they’d run over me. I had a lot of responsibility taking care of you all. Your mother understood that.”

“I did. I wouldn’t have accepted outright slaughter, but certainly corporal punishment is needed sometimes. You must do it with Olivia from time to time, spank her,” she says to him. “Later, against your better judgment, you might even slap her face a couple of times. You’ll see. Children can get to you.”

“I don’t know. If I did, I’d have Denise to deal with.”

“She too. Calm as she is, and reasonable, she’d—”

“No, never. Not her, take it from me.”

“But with Howard,” Frieda says, “I just hope you’ll have forgiven me by now. But if it had to be done sometimes, it had to be done.”

“Of course. I’m not saying. But I was talking of once when you — at least my second-rate memory tells me this — when you pulled my hair and a big chunk came out. Did it? Where I walked around with a big bald spot for about a month?”

“I don’t remember that.”

“Neither do I,” his mother says.

“To be honest, I do remember once putting filth in Alex’s face. He was in the bath. He made in it. Number two. I felt I had to teach him somehow not to. I don’t like it now. But that was about the worst I ever did, I think. In ways I don’t like most of it now, but then I was so much younger, a new foreigner here — well, you know. Also, since your parents didn’t object, and I always told them later what I did, I felt I had their approval. Am I wrong, Mrs. T.?”

“You had it. I’m not going to deny it now. Not for putting filth in their faces — this is the first I can remember hearing of that — but as Howard said, it’s past, finished. But no matter what happened, all my boys couldn’t have turned out better.”

“Did anything like that ever happen in my face?” he asks Frieda. “In the bathtub? Anyplace?”

“No, you? You were toilet-trained earlier than the others, so it never got necessary. A year earlier than either of them. By the age of eighteen months, if I’m not wrong. Two years at the most, and that’s for both things. You probably had the advantage of seeing them go to the potty on their own, and maybe even scolded or punished for doing it in their pants. So you followed them, did what they did or were supposed to — going to the toilet.”

“That’s the way it usually is,” his mother says.

“He was ahead of the other two in many ways like that. Reading. Writing. Manners at the table. It could be just the reverse with the youngest, but wasn’t with him. Dressing himself. Almost everything. Remember how you let him eat at the adult table, rather than here in the kitchen with me, two years before you let the other two?”

“Maybe because he was the last, and to give you a break from it finally, we let him join our table.”

“No, I remember. Because he ate. Because he didn’t drop things on the floor or talk loudly and interrupt at the table. He was a dream child. Active and a bit of a rascal at times, yes, but that’s not so bad if it’s not too often. But sweet, good-natured, helpful most times — a real young gentleman with a much older head than his age. If I had had children, boys or girls, I would have wanted them to be the way you were more than like your brothers. They were good, but you were almost perfect to bring up. You listened and watched. And what I did to Alex in the tub was the only time I think I ever did anything like that. I can’t really remember it happening another time, before or after.”

“I don’t remember being toilet-trained so early. Well, of course I wouldn’t, but it’s interesting to know.”

“He was a dream child,” his mother says. “You never said it before, but I always knew you had a special place for Howard over the others.”

“I did, but not by much, you understand. They were all wonderful. I felt very lucky with the family I ended up in. But maybe Howard was just a little more wonderful. A little.” She smiles at him, reaches out to touch his cheek and then kisses it. He hugs her.

On the subway ride home he tries to remember the incident again. First of all, it happened. He knows it did or is almost a hundred percent sure. He runs to his father. First he walks bowlegged to Frieda, points to his crotch. She knows what it is, takes his hand and pulls him into the bathroom. She takes down his pants. His shoes — she takes them off, socks with them. Then she takes off the underpants carefully so the shit stays in them. She says “This will teach you never to do it in your pants again.” That’s new, but he thinks he just imagined she said it. Her face is angry. It was probably a thick shit, not messy. She puts it into his face. He cries — screams — and she picks him up and holds him in front of the mirror. He sees his face with the shit on most of it. Just then he hears his father. “Hello, anyone around?” Something like that. He squirms to get down, is let down, runs to him. She says “Go on, show him, and don’t forget to tell him what you did.” That’s also new, but he really seems to remember it. His father’s coming into the kitchen from the living room. Is in the kitchen, he is too. His arms are out. His father looks at him and bursts out laughing. He continues to look at him and laugh very hard.