----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- My mother held my hand because she had to. The #31 bus was waiting across busy South Orange Avenue and we couldn’t miss it. I was too little to run fast so she grabbed my hand. Actually she grabbed my wrist, her fingers wrapped tightly around and ran with me. I never felt her hand in mine, just a rough tug and in moments it was over. She shoved me ahead of her, rushing me up the bus steps as my little legs struggled with each precipitous step. She dropped her coins in the box and they jingled loudly as they disappeared. She quickly surveyed the scene and nudged me toward a seat. We sat next to each other on our way to shop at Bamberger’s and Hahne’s in downtown Newark. I was four years old. ----------------------------------------------------------- My father was not a timid man. He spoke his mind often and in a loud voice. He was not a tactful person and was not afraid to rock the boat to get a reaction. His language was peppered with profanity, and he was impatient with what he as clear stupidity and nonsense in people. And he was especially opinionated when it came to religion. My father was a proud agnostic. He hated organized religion and said all religions were "full of shit and intolerance." He would rant frequently about how hypocritical and money-hungry the Catholic Church was. He would remind my mother, who by the way, went to mass every Sunday with her rosary beads in hand, that just because she frequented Sacred Heart Church, her kids still attended public school.
THE BUS RIDE 
by paula galloway
We sat in a double seat, facing forward near the bus driver. I leaned my head against the window trying to see out, but it was impossible. I shifted and pulled my legs underneath me in order to get a better view of our journey, straightening my yellow summer dress over my knees and being extra careful not to scuff my black patent leather shoes. Although I had taken this trip with my mother many times before, it still felt new each time. My mother talked to anyone she could strike up a conversation with, anyone but me. I didn’t care. I was on an adventure and out of our cramped apartment where I would constantly be under her feet and unknowingly wanting her attention.
The #31 traveled down a major artery that ran straight to downtown Newark. Both sides of the Avenue offered retail businesses with brightly colored storefronts and enough room to have adjacent parking lots. My favorite was Tom’s Pork Store. Everyone within two blocks could smell Tom making his homemade Italian sauce in the large vats in the back of the store. It was a real treat when my mother would buy his fresh sauce and homemade ravioli for dinner.
There was always the hustle and bustle of people on the move. They reminded me of the hard working and fast moving ants that lived in the ant hills in our garden. From my seat I could also see large houses with wrap around porches and whose first floors contained doctors and dentists offices. The big etched double glass doors with the long metal handles required strong hands to enter. I remember passing the Bradley Court Projects, now called public housing, where my mother would comment about the “poor people” who lived there. As I look back on those times, we were one tiny step above those “poor people.”
We would pass Vailsburg Park, a beautiful expanse of lawn dotted with dogwood, maple and large oak trees with a playground that had the longest slide in the world and ball fields where my brothers played baseball. Once our bus passed under the Garden State Parkway overpass with the cemetery on the left, the neighborhood slowly changed. There were long stretches where the businesses seemed to monopolize the street and where apartments appeared above them. No stately houses, but many empty, garbage strewn lots. There were more auto parts and a few car dealerships, candy stores, small supermarkets and hardware stores. The closer to downtown Newark we got, the more run-down the neighborhood seemed to get. I remember seeing black men sitting on beach chairs outside their apartment doors, drinking bottles of beer and black women in flip flops walking with toddlers clinging to their skirts while fanning themselves with dime-store fans to cool themselves from the oppressive summer heat. These bus rides afforded me a peek into the lives of black strangers doing much the same things as we did on our own block, just farther away.
I considered myself a traveler since these bus rides were like vacation trips for me. I could never see these wondrous slices of life if I had stayed on my block, sitting on the stoop or watching TV.
This same scenario was played out on the number 54 bus on 18th Avenue, although this was the bus of choice for my mother since she knew far more people on this route. This was the bus she took to work. On her days off, she would bring me along with her to go shopping. She had no choice - we had no babysitter. She would always pick out a dress for me to wear and my shoes were always clean and shiny.
But, I was a thorn in her side. Without me, she would have been free to have lunch with her friends from the stationery department in Kresge’s where she worked or she could meet her lover, our family doctor. But instead, I became her unwitting companion on her quest for personal validation. Because my father paid little attention to her in the house, other than to berate her for nearly every one of her actions, my mother chose to escape in any way possible on her days off – anything to get her out of that apartment, even if it meant dragging a child along. The frustrations heaped on her by my father would in turn be directed at me for the smallest of infractions – not walking fast enough or a smudge of dirt on my white sock that would cause her embarrassment in front of her new travel acquaintances. Her look of disdain at my appearance would cause me to flush with humiliation and I would instinctively turn my head toward the window.
But these hurts were soon forgotten once I could lose myself on the bus ride to Newark. I liked the #54 bus better. It began its route at the Ivy Hill Apartments about 15 minutes before it came to our stop at 18th and Vermont Avenues. My mother knew many people from the Apartments and she loved to meet up with them on the bus. I loved it too because she would take her focus off of me for the 45 minutes it took to go downtown. As long as I could hear the background chatter of my mother and her friends amid the constant cranking of the bus motor, I was free to anticipate each sight, rounding one corner to see the Italian bakery and smell the fresh bread and the beauty of the Roman Catholic church a couple of blocks away with its blue and white statue of Mary guarding the front. As the bus moved slowly past the church, I would stare at the Virgin Mary and could swear her eyes were following me, reassuring me that at least she loved me and that I would be all right.
And even in the dead of winter with all the bus windows closed, I knew when we were close to Jimmy Buff’s. I could still smell the aroma of the Italian hot dogs, sausages and peppers and onions as we neared the corner where Jimmy Buff’s sold their famous sandwiches. Lines of people snaked around the corner of the store as they waited to buy the delicious, greasy pizza bread sandwiches. There were occasions when my mother, on our return trip, would get off the bus to buy Jimmy Buff’s for our dinner that night. My absolute special part of that side trip would be the free piece of pizza bread the man behind the counter would give to me - a small, soft triangle of pure heaven. After our purchase we would get on the next #54 bus headed for home, our dinner bag holding no secrets as to its contents. I couldn’t wait to see my father’s face when he saw what we had brought him.
No matter which bus we took to go shopping, my mother managed to drag me half way around Newark. But as our shopping trips would near their end, her mood seemed fraught with frustration and impatience. Her grip on my wrist tightened and her jerking movements signaled to me that the bus stop was near and I was walking too slow. The anticipation of going home was too much for her and for me, too, but for different reasons. She would time our bus ride home on the 54 to coincide with her friends’ leaving work so that she would have companionship on the way. Once on the bus, I was left to my own thoughts as she deposited me in my seat and only spoke to me to remind me when our stop was coming up.
We usually arrived home just ahead of my father. My mother would drop her packages in the corner of her bedroom and begin to prepare supper. I would anxiously await my father’s return and when I heard his footsteps coming up the driveway, I would run into the hallway to meet him. He would look tired, but no matter what mood he was in, I would run to him for a hug and a kiss. He would smile and greet me with his pet name for me. “How’s my little teacup” he would ask. Fine, daddy I would say, as he took my hand in his, gave it a little squeeze as we walked into the kitchen.
My father could never be called a hypocrite. When my mother came home from Sunday mass and handed my father the Church bulletin to read, his response was not surprising. “Throw that shit out,” he shouted. “Nothing in there interests me.” What irked him the most about the bulletin was the bold, typewritten box calling one’s attention to the bottom of the page. It would announce each week what the collection plates brought in on Sunday and directly underneath that amount, how much money was still needed for a new school. “Our kids don’t go to Catholic school and I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay a penny toward building a new one,” he told my mother. Sacred Heart Church on South Orange Avenue in Newark was in the process of replacing their ancient, crumbling elementary school with a more modern one and needed money from its parishioners to achieve this goal. Each week at mass, they would pass the collection plate with a special emphasis from the priest to add just a few more dollars toward the reconstruction fund.
Living in a household with one parent who said a rosary if you farted lest you be sick and the other who abhorred anything remotely religious was a tug-of-war with no winner in sight, just another thing my parents did not have in common and which they chose to argue about. The more my mother would attempt to recount some pearl of wisdom from the priest’s sermon, my father would silence her by saying that his own definition of religion was that it was a personal relationship and should not be dictated by a mortal spouting rehearsed doctrine. My father put up with my mother’s Virgin Mary statues and the crucifix over her dresser. He also had to endure my mother praying on her crystal rosary each night in bed, putting the holy beads under her pillow when she finished. My mother had to endure my father’s constant criticism of the religion she practiced. Acceptance was not a virtue possessed by either one of my parents.
Of course, my mother insisted that all three of her children be baptized, and receive the Sacraments of Communion at age seven and Confirmation at age twelve. My two brothers and I went through Catholic instruction taught by strict nuns on Sundays after mass. Cramped together in tiny, wooden desks with our prayer books unfolded before us, we were in constant fear of these looming, black-clad women whose faces were scrunched by too tight habits.
We were made to memorize page after page of religious questions and answers: Who made you? God made me. Why did he make you? Because he loves me. Where is God? God is everywhere, and so on and so on. Communion instruction was easy. The nuns told us what to expect. As you knelt at the altar, the priest would say “Body of Christ” as he leaned over with a host in his hand. Open your mouth to receive the host, but not too wide. Bow your head, hands clasped together, say “Amen” and gently rise and head back to your pew. Do not chew the host. I was seven years old and happy about wearing a new, fancy white dress and veil and white patent leather shoes. I felt beautiful and hoped that God would think so as well. I have pictures of that day, but none with my parents. My mother probably took the pictures while my father was off somewhere having a cigarette.
When I was twelve, I was again in catechism classes to prepare for the sacrament of Confirmation. Back then I could remember hundreds of questions and recite each answer correctly. I would study for hours, having my mother quiz me on each question. On Confirmation day when the Bishop walked down the aisle in church pointing to kids in the pews to stand and answer his questions, I prayed he wouldn’t choose me because I was terrified. He didn’t. But after being confirmed, I thought, “all that memorizing for what – he never even looked in my direction.” I remember my father was in church that particular day because my mother must have threatened him with something. After the ceremony, when I was newly confirmed for about ten minutes, my father echoed my thoughts back to me – "you see, teacup, you memorized all that stuff for nothing.” Teacup was my father’s pet name for me. My mother turned and shot him one of the fiercest looks I had ever seen. Considering my father's discomfort in that setting and what he saw as the hypocrisy of the day, he must have been inwardly raging at my mother for dragging him there. Churches are for weddings and funerals he used to say and this event was neither.
My father's disinterest on that day served as a reminder going forward to question religion and not to follow blindly religious doctrine. It annoyed my father that in public school we were forced to bow our heads and say the Our Father. And as I got older, I shared his annoyance at the numerous ways religion started to infiltrate every aspect of life. While my mother tried drilling into our heads along with the nuns in catechism the importance of religious instruction, my father would be just as insistent about one’s behavior in life. “Treat everyone the way you want to be treated – follow the Golden Rule. You don’t need a bunch of Catholic mumbo-jumbo to figure it out.” And the thought of confession troubled my father. What does a 7 year old do to be made to feel guilty enough to confess to a priest? Not put their toys away?
My father must be rolling over in his grave with all of the sex abuse scandals that recently rocked the Catholic Church and their deliberate cover up and covert transfers of pedophile priests. Even though my father disliked priests, my mother had high hopes for my brother, Gary, pushing her own holy agenda and nudging Gary toward priesthood. “You can help people in their time of need,” she would say. Gary later became a mortician and in a funny way was able to help people in their time of need.
In a recent Sunday New York Times article, there was a story that would have totally pissed off my father. I thought of him immediately while reading it. It was titled, “Rocking the Boat: the man with the Bible.” It was about a preacher, Bible in hand, who would ride the Staten Island Ferry and preach to the commuters on board. These people wanted nothing more than to read their papers and drink their morning coffee, but the preacher insinuated himself among the commuters who were minding their own business and would start to preach. These riders had to ask the police on board to move the preacher to another part of the boat. This is the kind of behavior that my father could not understand, the verbal rantings of a man who believed he had all the answers, especially after the preacher’s statement: “There’s no way to avoid hell and not to tell these people would be criminal”. The hell to avoid would be a ferry with that preacher on it.
My father’s religious skepticism and his firm belief in the separation of church and state has influenced my life tremendously. My husband and I practice no religion. Even though we were married in a Protestant Church 24 years ago, we have not felt the need to attend services. Since my religious upbringing was not clearly defined after age twelve, I felt no urgent need to pass this uncertainty on to my children. My husband’s upbringing was just the opposite of mine; he was immersed in Southern Baptist doctrine. Daily prayer at meals was part of his life, and arguing with your parents was not acceptable. We decided to raise our children to practice the “golden rule”, to be compassionate, thoughtful and sensitive human beings. And so far it has been smooth sailing. My father would have been proud.
by Paula Galloway 