"Joey," I whispered to my cousin seated beside me, "what does 'seig-heil' mean?
Why did those people keep yelling that to the man on the platform?"
"Shhh," Joey said. "This week's episode of Captain Preston is starting. Talk to me about it after the movie."
His mother was my father's sister, and his family and mine shared an old, large, red-brick house. They lived downstairs and we lived upstairs. Joey was too smart to have many friends; they thought he was weird. He got along great with me, though, because I adored him. He knew everything.
"So what does it mean?" I said again as Joey and I were leaving the movie house.
"Um, it's German, I think," was all he said.
"That man scared me." I said. "He was so loud, and kept yelling things I couldn't understand, and then he'd yell "seig-heil", and the people yelled "seig-heil" back. It was crazy, don't you think, Joey?"
"Naw," Joey said. "He's just the new leader in Germany. Nothing to be scared of . Besides, we're lucky--the big Atlantic Ocean is on one side of us and the even-bigger Pacific Ocean is on the other. We're safe here. Nothing to be scared of."
If Joey said so, then it was so, and I stopped worrying. That was when I was six years old. Joey was eleven.
Joey and I went to the Saturday matinees almost every week, and saw more and more of that foot-stomping man. Kids started making fun of him when he appeared on the screen. With left index finger between nose and lip, and right arm raised high they would shout, "Heil Hitler!" I thought it was fun, too.
My mother's parents, although American citizens, were living in Italy. They always planned to come back to America, but somehow my grandfather kept dragging his feet. A letter came for my mother one day, and I heard her read it to my father.
"There is talk of conscripting eighteen-year-olds," my grandmother wrote. "War is closer every day. Your brother will be eighteen soon. If he serves in the Italian army, he will lose his American citizenship forever."
"My uncle is coming to live with us," I told Joey the next day. He's coming from Italy because he doesn't want to lose his American ship."
"Don't be so stupid," Joey said. "You mean his American citizenship. If he has to become an Italian soldier, he won't be American anymore. My mother told me that he was coming. She said he will sleep upstairs in the attic with me and Larry." Larry, Joey's big brother, and Joey slept in the large room on the third floor.
My father went by train to New York to meet my uncle when his ship arrived from Genoa. We sat up late into the night, waiting for them to come home--my mother, me, Joey, his mother and father and brother. I thought it was like a party. My mother and my aunt had made lots of good food. "He will be hungry, poor thing," my aunt said.
"Joey, why is he poor?" I asked.
"He's not; they just feel sorry for him because he had to leave his mother and father."
"Joey, what do people from Italy look like?" I asked.
"They have really white teeth. That's because they don't eat store-bought bread," Joey said.
I was excited to see this Italian uncle of mine. As it turned out, Joey was right. His teeth were very white.
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"They call him the Umbrella Man," Joey told me, "because he always carries an umbrella." We were watching He lived with us almost a year and a half, and then my grandparents and the rest of their family came over, too, just about the time Chamberlin was telling the people in England that he hadGenoa. Italian uncle came from Genoa to New York by ship. My father took a train to New York to meet him, and brought him home to us. We were all sitting up late at night, waiting. My father finally phoned from Pennsylvania Station in town. "We're here!" he said.
"I wondered if my grandparents comes ever closer here," she wrote. "Already there is some talk of conscripting eighteen-year-olds." My grandparents, although American citizens, were living in Italy. They always planned to come back to America, but my grandfather kept dragging his feet on it.
"I hate to ask," my grandmother's letter went on, "but could your brother Sandrino come to live with you in America? He will be eighteen soon, and if he serves in the Italian army, he will lose his American citizenship forever."
My father had my mother cable my grandmother immediately that of course her son was welcome. That is how I found myself one evening, at a very late hour, with my mother and Joey and all his family, waiting for my father to bring my Italian uncle home. My father had gone by train to New York to meet the ship from Genoa.
"What do people from Italy look like?" I whispered to Joey.
"They have strong white teeth," he said, "because they don't eat store-bought bread."
Joey was right about my uncle's teeth. They were indeed white. He was thin and shy, and wouldn't let me call him "zio" (uncle), because he said he was too young. He didn't look young to me, just scared. About the time Chamberlin in England was declaring "peace in our time," my grandparents came over with the rest of their children, and my uncle left our home to move in with them.
Later, we ourselves moved into our own house, and I no longer saw Joey every day. Sometimes on weekends, my mother would put me on the trolley, and I would be allowed to go by myself to the old house which Joey and his family now filled top and bottom. I would run all the way up the hill from the trolley stop to Joey's house, breathless to see my aunt and all the family again, but mostly I could hardly wait to see Joey. I always had a million questions for him to answer.
Parents didn't hire sitters much in those days. If they couldn't take their children along, or if relatives couldn't watch them, the family stayed home. One December Sunday afternoon, my mother said she wanted to see the new movie, "Smiling Through" starring Norma Shearer, so we all climbed into our car for the short drive to the theater -- my father, my mother, my little sister, and me. I thought grown-up movies were a bore. I much preferred the Saturday afternoon movies I used to see with Joey when we lived in the big red-brick house.
We were so proud of our shiny green Chevy. We were proud of our father, too, who had taken driving lessons not two months before and had surprised us with a new car--our first ever. We were coming out of what my father called "hard times." Things were little-by-little getting better. We had our own small six-room house, and now an automobile. I was eight, going on nine, and eager for life to unfold. I still longed for the protection of Joey's daily advice on everything, and occasionally had the need to seek out his wisdom, yet I was weathering our separation well. My father and mother looked worried at times when they talked of what they read in the Sun Telegraph, or of what Lowell Thomas had to say at quarter-to-seven in the evening over the radio, but it had little effect on my world. Now from the back seat where I sat with my sister, I heard a voice on the car radio, but was not paying attention to what it was saying.
I saw my father take his eyes from the road and turn to my mother. "It's war for sure now!" he said. My mother started to cry softly.
I remembered the dread engendered by that newsreel of some few years past. It was the same dread I was feeling now. We never did see the movie, but returned home in almost total silence.
In school the next morning, Miss George, our teacher, led us in orderly file into the gym for an all-school assembly. Most of us had heard our parents' discussions of yesterday's news, and we were hushed and subdued as we took our assigned places in the bleachers.
"We are here to listen to a radiocast from President Roosevelt," Miss Ross, our principal, said. "He will be speaking to the whole nation." She didn't have to tell us to listen quietly. There was little sound in the gym save that of the President's voice over the airwaves, telling us about the day that would live in infamy. He told us that Japan had given our country no choice but to join our allies and declare war on the evil forces in Europe and Asia.
The Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor, and, alas, Joey did not know everything in the world there was to know after all. From now on, I was on my own.