Shards of a Lost Life

by Gary Beck

I had trouble containing my excitement on the bus ride from my house to my new summer workplace, the Neighborhood Community Center. Just before my sophomore year in high school ended I saw an ad on a bulletin board for junior counselors at a day camp. I called, got an appointment for an interview, went, made a good impression and got the job. This was important to me for many reasons. The biggest was it got me away from the gang five days a week.

In my early childhood my family had been homeless for years, staying with family or friends, with me sleeping on a couch, if I was lucky. We stayed with one friend of my mother’s and her older son bullied me unmercifully. I was always blamed when I defended myself. Life changed when my family bought an attached house in a nice neighborhood. I don’t know where they got the money, because they always told me we were poor. My father always took out his frustrations and failures by beating me regularly, which made every day difficult. I went to a new school where everyone had been in the same class since first grade. I was an outsider. But I was used to that. The real problem was some left back older dummies in the class who bullied and hurt me even though I fought back. I could never figure out why the teachers never saw them hurting me, but saw everything they thought I did wrong.

But I made new friends on the block and by the end of my first year it was like I was always there. Of course we had our arguments and fights, but we made up later and harbored no resentments. We played seasonal sports, the best were football and baseball, followed by hockey. Years later I realized it was like small town life coincidentally in a big city. I had an urgent need to earn money because my father wouldn’t give me any. So at age eleven I got a job delivering a local newspaper, The Brooklyn Eagle. I was the youngest and smallest delivery boy. The big boys bullied and harassed me and I fought back enough until they left me alone. It was a harsh introduction to the carnivorous world of work, not much different than school, but at least I got paid.

I got up every morning at 5:00 a.m., rode my bike to the paper depot, folded my papers, put them in my bag and by 5:30 I was on the street, tossing the papers onto the stoops of the enlightened readership. Two years later the demise of the Brooklyn Eagle ended my ride. I graduated from the 8th grade when I was thirteen and blessedly said goodbye to the louts who tortured me. That summer a neighbor got me a job as an office boy in a big law firm, Warwick and Legler. I worked for John Foster Dulles, who I later learned was a powerful player in Republican circles. I was politically ignorant and didn’t recognize the status of Mr. Dulles and no one bothered to educate me. There were the usual bullies among the office boys, but I dealt with them, did my chores and by the end of the summer job in the last week of August, I felt I learned a little how to interact with sophisticated adults.

Just before I started high school in 1951, we lost our house. It was the worst news I ever got in my life. Sure. It wasn’t perfect living here, but compared to everywhere else I had lived it was close to human. My friends and I had the usual conflicts about important things, like who dropped the ball, or who was out at the plate. But we got over the arguments, mostly without fighting and continued the game, or it resumed the next day. None of my friends knew of my secret shame at home where my father hated me. If my friends came to the house he was real nice, until they left. Then he’d yell and curse me, but at least I had stopped him from beating me anymore.

I felt awful. I had gotten used to almost living like a normal kid. I even forgot my problems for short periods of time. Now I was losing it all. I would have to say goodbye to my friends, I didn’t know how. And there was no one I could ask. There wasn’t a single adult I trusted or could talk to. In fact I couldn’t talk to my friends about personal things. So everything that had been good was over. At least mom told me we’d be moving to an apartment, so we wouldn’t be homeless again.

We moved to a new neighborhood and the apartment was in the worst house on the block. The first day there I was confronted by some kids who belonged to a gang. They beat me up and told me they’d keep doing it. I was used to beatings. My father had beaten me regularly until I confronted him with a hunting knife when I was eleven years old and forced him to stop. He still yelled and cursed me, but it was nothing compared to his former attacks. He never hit my mother, but she was worn down by his verbal assaults. I had hated her for not protecting me from him, until I realized she couldn’t deal with him. Now I felt sorry for her.There was no one who could help me. I was getting beat up every day and they were getting meaner and nastier, so I joined the gang. I hated it. None of them were trustworthy, none of them were loyal and they’d turn on you in a minute if you annoyed them. But the beatings stopped. I had my secret life at home reading wonderful books that I could escape into and temporarily forget how much I hated my life. One thought was I knew things could always get worse. Despite my isolated condition I had seen glimpses of a bigger world. With no one else to turn to it was up to me to find a better future. The job as a junior counselor will keep me away from the gang. I’ll find a way to leave them before the summer is over.