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Pardon

AuthorHouse

Chapter One

Well here I am again; it seems like a revolving door. I never thought that I was going to be in prison this long. I've got a loooong way to go with a lot of time for thinking and putting things together. This cold dungeon is called Solitary Confinement. They put me in here for doing what is not allowed beyond a shadow of a doubt in this prison or in any other institution, which is selling drugs. They gave me three hundred and sixty-five days. Boy, this is hard. It is so cold down in this dungeon, but it brings me back to a cold, cold morning in the Lower East Side when my father woke my brother, Freddy and me up.

I was about ten years old at that time and I was so happy, because my Dad, my brother and I were going to the market place. I loved going to the market place. You got to see and touch all those beautiful things, like lots of brightly colored oranges, apples, bananas and other exotic fruits, along with carrots, tomatoes, smelly onions and all sorts of different vegetables. There was the butcher cutting and grinding up all kinds of meat and slicing thick juicy steaks and pork chops. Then there were the smells, every booth and store had its own unique and wonderful aromas. Even the fish man had the wonderfully distinct smells of fresh fish, I loved watching him cut the heads and tails off of the fish and make them into fillets. Oh, that was so beautiful. I couldn't wait to go to the market place, and do all those wonderful things that kids do, to live for the moment and just enjoy life, everything for a kid is a game. I mean everything. It was exciting to see the live fish swim around in the buckets and drums. When no one was looking, I would reach down and put my hands in the water touching and feeling the fish swim all around. I would play with the fish until the man yelled at me, "Hey, take your hands out of that barrel!"

Freddy and I used to try to play hands off, we would have elaborate games that we invented that no other kids did, and we really enjoyed ourselves playing our secret games. One day my father dressed us up and said, "We're going to go to the market place and I want both of you to behave." See, my Dad used to take the little ones, Freddy and me, every time he would go to the market place. This would happen like four times in a year because for the rest of the other eight months my Dad was an alcoholic. He would drink, and there was another problem with my Dad, he was an epileptic. He would get epileptic attacks. Whenever he would get an epileptic attack, he would stop drinking. It was like a set time that he would stop drinking. He would drink for eight months and stop for four months. This happened for years and years.

Before we left, my Dad said, "Now mijo (ira puerta) bien." [Translation] "Now son, I want you to start to behave well (in the market place)." See, I was the troublemaker in the market place. Freddy was a troublemaker but not as bad as I was.

As we were walking down, I remember my Dad saying, "Look, at those people." When we looked, there were some drug addicts hanging all around the corner. Not as many drug addicts as we see now, as drugs were just starting to invade New York City. Unfortunately, their invasion also included the Lower East Side. They were in a corner sitting down and would close their eyes and jump up and open their eyes. I asked my Dad, "Why is this guy sleeping in the streets?" My Dad replied, "He's not sleeping, he is motaio which means he is drugged. "La mota lo tiene loco." [Translation] "The drugs have him crazy." I see this man go up and just before he hits the ground he opens his eyes and goes right back at attention. He will do it again and again. This was happening at numerous corners as we walked to and through the market place. My father stopped and looked up to heaven and said, "Dios queda mis hijos" [Translation] He said, "God, take care of my children." Finally we arrived at the market place. Freddy and I immediately started looking under the fruit and vegetable stands and counters for quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies. Change would often fall under there, and since the adults were too big, it was up to us little people to go under the tables and pick up all of the lost change. Usually, Freddy and I would find some treasures but sometimes we didn't, because some big people would go underneath and take all of the change out before we got there. As we were treasure hunting, my Dad asked, "How about some cherries?" We said, 'Yeah!" "How about some peaches?" We said, "Yeah!" "How about some apples?" and we said, "Yeah!" Then he would name all different fruits and the vegetables and we would say "yes, yes, and yes."

We always came home with our shopping cart full with all sorts of delicious food and cool stuff. Before we got to the house, our father would reward us for being good. Dad would give us a peach or a plum or something else that was delicious. One day we were in the market place and I wanted two peaches, I took one from the bag without my father seeing it and I quickly ate it. Then I choked on the pit from the peach. It choked my little throat and I oh, I thought I was going to die. My father started banging me in my back but I was still choking, so he grabbed me and reached in my mouth and took the pit out of my throat. He looked at me and smiled, and said, "That's for being disobedient." I never forgot that day. "That's for being disobedient," when we are disobedient, bad things happen to us, however, it never soaked into my mind that disobedience brings problems in our lives, Sometimes it even brings death in our life. We went back and I remember that my father looked at me one day and I said, "What happened ... I ... I ... I didn't do nothin' wrong. Whatever it is I didn't do it." Because I used to get blamed for everything, but then, I used to do everything, mostly. My Dad said, "You know, when I see you, I see a leader. I know that you are going to be the leader of this family. I don't know how. I don't know when. But one day they are going to depend on you, and when I pass away I want you to watch over the family." I didn't understand what he was saying at that time, so I ran outside and joined Freddy, Georgie, and my sister, Iris on the fire escape. We were looking at the cars and would name the cars and say, "That car is gonna be mines" and "That car is gonna be mines" and "No, that car is gonna be mines" and so on, and we continued to play the game "your choice of a car". However, I never forgot what my father said to me; it would be many years later when I finally understood what he said.

Chapter Two

My father gathered us around and he wanted to know what we wanted to do when we grew up. He asked Freddy, "What do you wanna do when you grow up?" Freddy said, "I want to be a lawyer." He asked Georgie. Georgie said he wanted to be a cop - a police officer. He asked Iris and she said, "I wanna have a good husband and have kids - lots of kids." He came and asked all thirteen of us, when he got to me, the baby, he asked, "And what do you wanna be?" I stood up, stuck my chest out and said to him, "I wanna be a gangster." He said, "A gangster? No, you wanna be a doctor." "Nah," I said, "I wanna be a gangster." See, it was because I used to watch the movies with George Raft, Humphrey Bogart and James Cagney; all those guys really impressed me. I...