Patterns
by
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“I saved you a chair,
Coral.”
“One more word from you, and
I’ll send everyone home.” She yanked at
his shirt collar.
I won’t have a birthday.
The threat of betrayal
crushed him.
As he stumbled backward,
trying to regain balance, his hand was torn from Coral’s; and he could feel how
her fingers clutched for his along the receding palm.
Outside, the little girl
looked in at balloons that hung from the ceiling, the crepe paper streamers;
her eyes followed the movement of other children.
His mommy bent down and
hissed in his ear: “You’ll have to give back all the presents.”
He backed a few steps into
the foyer.
To Coral, his mommy said, “I
am sorry, little girl, but you’ll have to go home.”
The pain in Coral’s eyes
grew deeper than Mikey had ever known.
His heart was torn:
“Mommy,” he whimpered,
begging for the girl.
“Go and play with your
friends, Mikey!”
Coral held out the gift
which she had carried.
“I picked it myself,” she
said.
“You don’ never give nothin’
to white trash!” The fat, black hand
struck it away; the box flew and crashed against the far wall of the corridor,
and they all heard something crack inside.
He could see moisture gather
at the bottom rims of Coral’s eyes.
She said, “But I love you,
Mikey.”
He said nothing.
“Hush up, chile.”
The black woman pulled
herself absolutely erect until she stood, outside the door, glaring at his
mother with hatred and savage pride; she did it slowly as if her whole body
ached.
Mommy said, “Maybe, we’ll
invite you next year.” As she said it,
she closed the door.
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About the Book
Why would a middle-class, white male defend a young
black girl from a gang of racist thugs?
Michael, who is hospitalized for his efforts, is not sure either. Patterns,
is Michael’s memoir and journey toward understanding.
Dr. Jitomir, the author, is a practicing Jew while
his wife is a fundamental Christian.
Together, they have five daughters: one is Hispanic; one is
African-American; three are of mixed European and Native-American descent. The author is familiar with bias in all its
forms; he knows from experience what causes bigotry, how it must be confronted
and precisely what is necessary to end it.
Those are the themes of this book.
About the Author
While waiting to win the Nobel Prize, Dr. Jitomir
has sometimes killed time by teaching English anywhere anyone world hire
him. In a career which has lasted much,
much too long, he has taught junior-high through university and at the Elmira
Correctional Facility (maximum security), which is exactly where his own
teachers, back in Brooklyn, told him he would wind up. Currently, Dr. Jitomir is a full professor
at Corning Community College where he has taught for twenty-four years, and he
would like to stop. The author and his
wife Susan a lawyer, college professor and blond bombshell if ever there was
one own and run a sixty-three acre farm (a piece of stony soil surrounded by a
rising sea of debt) in a place that is actually named Beaver Dams.
Dr. Jitomir has published short stories in the
United States and Europe and is the author of two other books, a work of
literary criticism and the novel I Should
Live So Long. Patterns is the
author’s second novel.