#42 Gave Me Comfort

Once upon a time, over half a century ago, I was a guileless, color-blind, free from all prejudices, white child with a magnificent black-skinned doll.

My parents and I lived in an apartment complex in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn. Both sides of my family have Scandinavian roots, primarily Norwegian, and in those days the “Norsk” ghetto in Brooklyn was a thriving part of the borough. My introduction, as a preschooler, to prejudice involved the antipathy, if not hatred, Norwegians expressed toward Swedes, the bordering country to the east from which Norway gained independence in 1905, and the country that granted German forces access to Norway during both World Wars.

My parents’ Norwegian friends were, with few exceptions—my father one of them—Brooklyn Dodger fans. My Dad was a Yankee fan, and took as much pride in being a “Bronx Bomber” fan as he did in not being a fan of “Dem Bums” from Flatbush. Spirited, fun-loving exchanges often resounded within the walls whenever social gatherings occurred. Mentioning the Yankees was akin to bringing up anything Swedish without incurring the humorless wrath of Norwegians toward Swedes! I was drawn out by the playful energy of their social group. I didn’t understand the conversations, but I was fascinated by the people’s animated gestures and laughter. Friends of my parents would often come to wherever I nibbled on a treat, or corral me as I romped around the room, and suggested I looked like a true-blue Brooklyn Dodger, a comment my father greeted with Bronx-like distain then dismissed as wishful thinking. I was his son, and therefore a Yankee, born to cheer the pin-stripe-wearing Bronx Bombers.

When I was four we moved thirty miles north to Hastings-on-Hudson, a small river town in Westchester County where my parents had purchased their first home. In addition to acquainting themselves with their new suburban community they maintained the Brooklyn connection by hosting occasional Saturday night potlucks and waffle dinners with church friends from the city. Familiar faces were welcome as I adapted to new surroundings and the anticipated arrival of a sibling.

It was on one of those nights that I was “introduced” to Jackie Robinson. Else and Rachael Helgestad, twins who loved getting my father’s goat about his Yankee allegiance, smuggled a Jackie Robinson doll, #42 in full Dodger uniform,  into my bedroom where I lay sleeping.

Awakened by their giggling and the doll’s unexpected presence at my head, I sat up, and though groggy, grabbed the doll’s shirt and walked through the lighted hallway and downstairs into the room full of guests. My father’s jaw dropped when he saw the “Jackie doll” and the pleasure on my face. Someone stated what everyone, but me, knew—that number 42 was the first Negro to play in the major leagues. His color didn’t matter to me, though I was curious. What did matter was that he looked every bit the baseball player I’d begun dreaming of becoming when “I was big.”

I had childhood asthma, and on nights when my breathing was too labored to lie down I’d be propped up against the headboard, supported by pillows with a picture book and “Jackie” to keep me company. On the nightstand next to me a steam vaporizer increased the humidity in the bedroom to ease my breathing.

One night ,while tucking me in, my mother knocked into the vaporizer spilling scalding water on my right leg. Our neighbor, Gert, a nurse who’d been having coffee with her in the kitchen heard my mother scream and came upstairs. The two of them carried me into the bathroom to minister to the burn, which meant peeling off my pajama bottoms including several patches of  skin. I don’t remember crying, but I do recall my skin’s discoloration, a pinkish color, in stark contrast to the black-skinned Jackie Robinson doll I clutched to my chest.

During subsequent years my loving parents, in their brokenness, communicated in subtle ways that Jews were not to be trusted, the Pope and Catholics wanted to eliminate Protestants, and that Negroes and other people of color were indolent and lazy, preferring to be on welfare than to work. During these pre-teen years their “whispered,” behind closed doors prejudice muted the voices of my teachers and face-to-face experiences at school where a message of tolerance and acceptance was extolled.

I imagine that prejudice gets passed down from generation to generation in many families, including my own. Lately, I’ve wrestled with those thoughts and feelings, often reflecting back to the black doll that gave me comfort while gasping for breath, and over time the prejudicial thoughts and feelings dissipated, replaced by those of tolerance and acceptance.

I recall my introduction to Shylock’s words in The Merchant of Venice: “Hath not a Jew (Catholics, African Americans, Latinos, Asians, and women, etc.) hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?” These words of Shakespeare, a man clearly ahead of his time, helped me further break the generational cycle of racist thought and fear with which I’d been raised.

Finding the courage to unlearn the erroneous lessons taught by those I loved, and who loved me, has been a lifelong journey—one whose beginnings involved #42.

Once upon a time a guileless, colorblind little white boy snuggled with a black-skinned doll. As we move into Advent and this holiday season, I am grateful to those who got my father’s goat and gave me that wonderful black doll, but also for my parents’ love. And my Christmas wish is for a world of increasing tolerance and acceptance.

by