Max Read Free Page B

unaware of any other reality; and as he accepted this, he also accepted his mother’s anger and irritation. He tried to protect her. He wrote notes for his sister Freida, thirteen months younger than he, to bring to school, and he lied to his mother about his truancy. When it caught up with him after a visit from the truant officer, he accepted his mother’s slaps and her tongue-lashing.
    â€˜You’re a bum,’ she told him. ‘You’re a little bum.’ But her rage was weakening; she was emerging from the miasma of despair. Days and weeks had gone by since her husband’s death, and still they survived and there was food on the table.
    â€˜I do what I got to do,’ Max told her. ‘I’m not a bum, Mama.’
    â€˜Twelve years old with whores!’
    â€˜I don’t do nothing with whores, Mama. I sell them tickets.’
    â€˜Mr Greenbaum says you pimp for them.’
    â€˜He’s a liar! I’m not a pimp.’ He hated the word. He had understood the finances of pimping and prostitution since he was eight years old. It was all part of the streets, and even if he had been less than clear about the emotions and desires that went with the oldest profession, all of it existed within walking distance of his home, where pimps and prostitutes abounded. Once he had guided a customer to Suzie Brinkerhoff, but only once, and Suzie had given him a dollar. Suzie was a large, voluptuous woman in her mid-thirties, with peroxide-dyed blond hair. She was sentimental. She knew the story of Sarah Britsky and her six children, and she adored Max. She was so sentimental that her eyes brimmed with tears every time Max approached her with tickets, for in her eyes Max was not a scrawny little boy but the image of the thoughtful and selfless lover she had never known as well as the wonderful child she had never given birth to. She was indifferent to his ragged clothes and his gutter speech; she clothed him in her own fantasies. And she always bought whatever tickets he offered, cheerfully paying two dollars for a pair. When other prostitutes made obscene remarks to Max, Suzie told them to keep their lousy mouths shut, and she said to Max, ‘Stay away from them lousy whores, because they stink with social disease.’ Then she proceeded to deliver an explicit lecture on the nature of syphilis and gonorrhea, leaving nothing out and describing the prognosis of both diseases with fervor and color.
    In a way, she adopted Max. ‘He is my mascot,’ she told the other whores, and the market for his showcard tickets broadened. At the same time, he added to his bagel business. Most of the loft factories were barred to him, but he did manage to find two more places to add to his clientele, Garden Dresses and Birdie Blouses. In each instance he had to bribe the janitor, yet within months after his father’s death, Max was selling a thousand bagels a week, which yielded him, expenses deducted, a net profit of about eight dollars. The first week after his father’s death, leaving aside the income from the stolen watch, he presented his mother with nine dollars. The second week, it had increased to twelve dollars, and the third week, he brought home fourteen dollars and sixty cents, more than his father had ever earned – and with this, retaining his capital for the bagel business. Not every week was so profitable, yet from week to week, the six Britsky children and Sarah, their mother, managed to eat and pay their rent.
    Sarah relented. The incomprehensible miracle of a skinny, wiry twelve-year-old boy keeping them from death and starvation had to impress her. She shouted at Max less frequently, and her slaps and anger were directed toward the other children. And once, with tears in her eyes, she managed to say to Max, ‘Thank you, thank you.’
    Yet Max had seen her, on many occasions, showing the love and tenderness that one would expect from a mother, but directing it