"One is devoured by Time, not because one lives in Time, but because one believes in its reality, and therefore forgets or despises eternity."
—Mircea Eliade
by Zvi Baranoff
I grew up in a sort of false suburb on the edge of a city. The neighborhood border was also the municipal border. On the other side of the dividing line, a few blocks to the west, were the row houses of the city. In our nominally suburban neighborhood, the houses were all duplexes, each surrounded by a small, neatly trimmed and somewhat personalized lawn with a chain link fence around a small backyard.
Further east, beyond our neighborhood, across highways, through neighborhoods, and beyond our access, there were true suburbs with large lawns, big houses, swimming pools, country clubs, cul-de-sacs, and all the other trappings of privilege that we could hardly imagine.
I must have been around five years old. I hadn't started school yet. My mother was still trying to keep me tied to her apron strings but the threads were frazzling. I managed to slip loose more and more. I was the youngest of the children that ran wild and unsupervised through the neighborhood.
Malka was the undisputed leader of that pack of aspiring hooligans. She was the oldest of the crew, at the awe-inspiring age of eleven. Malka ruled over us with intimidation. She understood us with intelligence and cunning. She led us because of her infinite creative capacity for stimulating adventure.
Our play at elaborate games extended across property lines and over fences that we climbed without fear and with little respect for concepts such as private property or personal privacy. Gardens, garages, the grocery store parking lot, construction sites, and an open field that was destined soon to be an elementary school were all our juvenile domain.
It was summertime, with long days and none of the daytime regulated by schooling or parental demands. Our days were absorbed in variations of mock warfare. We had begun this particular day singing while marching about the neighborhood, single file. We were arranged in order of height. I was, of course, the tail of the parade. At the top of our lungs we sing-song chanted the words of our marching anthem, with a special shouting emphasis on the word “dick” as Malka had taught it to us.
“Does your DICK hang low?
Can you swing it to and fro?
Can you tie it in a knot?
Can you tie it in a bow?
Can you throw it over your shoulder,
like an Oriental soldier?
DOES YOUR DICK HANG LOW!”
When we were all tired of that, we transitioned to other forms of mischief and mayhem. We practiced coordinating aim and strength by throwing rocks at an abandoned building. Malka was the only one of us to have ever actually broken a window of our target house. This fact provided definitive proof to the Divine Nature of her dominance. Whichever of the horde that threw a rock deemed by Malka to be the most true would be elevated to be her lieutenant for the day, with the ability to lord the authority over the rest of us. The introduction of the random opportunity for individual cruelty was an incredible incentive. Malka would, when it served her interest, rein in her lieutenant, presenting her predictable tyrannical powers as a just and benevolent alternative to the less practiced amateur terror of her acting lieutenant. This was a daily epic challenge for the older and stronger of us. Of course, my being the youngest and the smallest, I stood no chance in this particular test of skill. Nonetheless, I watched my elders and learned tricks and techniques daily.
We were engaged in a most seriously challenging game of Hide and Seek. In spite of being the youngest of that crew, I was accomplished at the art of subterfuge and avoiding detection.
I was laying in a drainage pipe, as snug as a bug. It hadn't rained for a while. The soil accumulated at the bottom of the pipe only held the slightest amount of moisture. The vague hints of mustiness was comfortably reassuring. I was comfortable enough in that drainage pipe to doze off that warm sunny day.
For more than a year, an incredibly realistic series of dreams began to dominate my sleep, recurring several times a week. The dreams ranged from the mundane to terrifying. In these otherworldly experiences, the rhythms, rituals, and languages were all very foreign to my waking reality and yet comprehensible to my sleeping self. In my sleep I spoke fluently a guttural tongue that I later discovered to be Yiddish, a language shared by most of the inhabitants of the village setting for these dreams.
Over the following years the frequency of these dreams decreased, but the intensity, vividness, and the realism of these certainly didn't decrease in the least. The angst that these dreams generated actually increased as I aged, perhaps because I began to understand more background of the ethereal occurrences that I eventually called the Shtetl Dreams.
In that drainage pipe, as I slept, a disturbing dream took hold. I was walking past a building with onion-shaped domes decorated with swirling mysterious symbols. It was many years later that I understood the building to be a church and that the incomprehensible squiggles to be Cyrillic lettering.
I heard the rough voices shouting “Zhyd!” I had no clue as to what that word meant. However, I clearly understood that the men and boys shouting were a danger to me. I ran with all my strength, evading those that were pursuing me, until I found a safe place to conceal myself.
Then, another call grabbed my attention, voices from another time and a different continent. “Olly, olly, oxen free!” The cry echoed and reverberated as more voices joined in, picking up the refrain, the familiar and non threatening voices of the children of my neighborhood.
I was muddy and bruised. My clothes were ripped. There was a faint odor of dog waste. My pants were wet and stained from urine. I must have peed myself while sleeping in that pipe. I was in no mood to show myself when I heard the traditional all clear signal. I wallowed in self absorption and self pity, unwilling to move from the protective shell of the spot where I was embedded. Evening was setting in. The other children were each finding their way to homes, families, suppers, and baths. Their voices were gone and only Malka continued to shout “Olly, olly, oxen free!” while looking for me, her lone lost sheep.
I looked out through the opening of the drainage pipe. I could see Malka walking about and heard her calling my name. I remained quiet and unmotivated. Then, she was on her hands and knees, looking into the end of the pipe and directly at me. She reached her arms in and I crawled forward and into her outstretched arms.
Once I was out in the fresh air and on solid ground, Malka looked me up and down, silently judging and analyzing the mess that I was. I stood there, looking up at her with tears rolling down my chubby cheeks.
Malka took a handkerchief from her pocket and wiped the tears away. Then, she moistened the handkerchief with her spit and used that to remove mud from my face. Following that, she tidied me up the best she could, straightening my clothing, buttoning my shirt and tucking it into my pants. She wiped away the mud and piss as best as she could, and brushed down my wild hair with her fingers. Malka kissed me on my forehead and told me to go home, which I promptly did.
