Aunt Leah, Aunt Sophie and the Negro Painter

Aunt Leah, Aunt Sophie and the Negro Painter

Under the lemon, the goblet, the plate of grapes, painterly,
late cubist, by a wPA artist — “the Negro” —
her sister knew in Chicago, my Aunt Leah sits:

“Your father giving his atheist mother
a religious funeral with that schmuck rabbi — why?”
She taps her cigarette, neat fingernail, puts it down,
points the back of her head at the painting.
“Your Aunt Sophie wanted you to have it.”
Her cigarette smokes up a thin blue-gray plume.

Sophie was a Socialist. “Communist,” Aunt Leah says,
tilting her recliner. “I was the Socialist. Sophie went
to the Peekskill Robeson concert with the Negro painter.”
She blows smoke-ribbons up past her eye. “They got
beat up, mobs, cops, nightsticks. I gave them tea —
they came over after. The painter’s head was sticky
with blood.” Leah exhales nostril-smoke at her chest.
“T laughed at them. ‘What did you expect?’ I said.”

Last time I saw Sophie she was in bed
at the constant care center, cursing
at O,J., fiddling with the edge
of her bedspread. The room stank
of medicine. The painting hung
gray-blue over the Tv.

I hoist up from my chair in Leah’s home,
look where the palette knife or artist finger
touched wet canvas. I cock my head
side to side; window sun reflects off
the frame-glass, blots out the fruitbowl.
Leah says,

“It’s student work, 1938. Sophie told him
‘go out to the street, paint your people.’
So he did. And never got famous.
Communists were wrong about
art and everything else. That’s how Stalin
became a monster and messed everything up —”

To stop another lecture on the purges
I tell Leah how my sister promised
to take my cat while I was on honeymoon;
then, day of my wedding, wouldn’t. “I don’t
remember why. She screamed. I screamed.
I made my parents do it. My mother’s allergic,
so what, it’s their fault, they raised us.”

I’m six. 1974. Somebody’s New York apartment,
white rug, many people. They say “schmatte.” They say
“schmooze,” they say “schwarze.” They wear
bead necklaces, interesting belts, plastic white
sunglasses propped on their heads. Nixon’s
resigning on black-and-white Tv. He says
nobody gave him anything except a dog.
I climb on Sophie’s lap. She smells like olives.
She’s drinking a martini. “And,” I say to Leah,
2004, “I said something. What did I say?”

“You said ‘poor Nixon,” Leah says. “‘Nobody
gave him anything but a little puppy dog —
didn’t he have a mommy and poppy?’ Nixon’s dog speech
was before you were born. You’re remembering
arerun. You were on my lap, not Sophie’s. Sophie
was flirting with Arthur.”

1980, Leah and Sophie voted for Reagan.
My father wouldn’t speak to them for six months.
Now he tells me the good side
of Ariel Sharon. I don’t speak to him much. ,
Leah says: “Arthur was her first Republican.
After Sophie married him, she was happy
for awhile.” Leah lights a cigarette off her

burnt-down cigarette — curlicues
of smoke. She says: “I just can’t understand how
your father became a Conservative Jew.”

I say, “I haven’t spoken to my sister
for four years. Iam unreasonable —
sometimes. I have a hot temper —
sometimes. But Iam not envious, Iam not
entirely uncharitable,
at all times I try to behave as if I realize
the world does not revolve around
my feelings. Above all, Iam
not deranged, I do not take out
my problems on other people’s cats.”

Leah says, “Sophie thought you were like her.
Do you think you’re like her?” She puts
her cigarette in the ashtray, I pick it up,
take my first drag in 10 years. It burns. Aches.
Sour, it stings. “People still buy his
paintings,” Leah says. “For historical
value, I guess. I don’t know what he was to her.”

Leah twists her head. “Just take it now,” she says.
I take down the painting. Leah wipes her eyes.
“T don’t know why I’m crying.
If she came in this room now Id leave.
If she opened her mouth, I’d slap it.”