Tubulent Years
by Pat Onorato
(Chapter 1)

“I’ll show him. I’ll show him. That sonuvabitch Jew Swartz.” Jenia cried. “ He’s got it coming. Yelling at me again in front of all my customers in the middle of lunch hour. Who the hell does he think he is, anyway?”

Slivers of rain rushed down her face beside her tears of despair, ”Mama, where are you when I need you?” she silently implored.

Then her thoughts switched abruptly to the slums of the East Bronx, New York, in the late 1930’s and 1940’s where her mother, Tina, lived with her boyfriend, Sal, who tormented, beat, and abused Jenia and her sister, Dorothy, for more than 12 years. Rarely a day went by in their young lives that he didn’t find a reason to whip them with his belt or punish them in one sadistic way or another. She remembered how she and her East Bronx girl’s gang would snuggle up in the corner of the junkyard, light a cigarette, and pass it around for each to inhale profusely. The street kids made solemn oaths to keep shared secrets to themselves. Jenia once told them about Sal catching the mouse in his wire box trap, holding two live electric wires to the metal box while making the girls watch the tiny mouse squirm, squeak, and go belly up. Sal just laughed. The girls screamed in horror.

She tried to shake thoughts of Sal’s cruelties out of her mind by recalling the events that had sparked her off earlier in the day. Overhead, a ferocious looking black cloud appeared to be descending. Perfect, she thought sardonically, marching onward as the cloud erupted above her with a roar that nearly jerked her off the ground, “Goddam. Damn!”

A couple of nuns scooted past her. Jenia lowered her head to avoid eye contact. She wanted to be a nun when she was in her early teens. She attended confession every Saturday with Dorothy and mass every Sunday. She loved church and God. It seemed to be the one retreat where she was free of the turmoil and anger around her; but time has taken its token.

Glancing at the dignified sisters, she made the sign of the cross, whispering, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, amen … God forgive me but that Jew guy is driving me crazy.”

The nuns, dressed in full habit, kept their heads bowed and sheltered under a black umbrella without noticing Jenia. “Thank God they didn’t hear me,” she whispered, “For sure I would have had to say 1000 Hail Marys and 1000 Our Fathers!”

To the east, in the heart of the business garment district, torrents of hail furiously bounced off the windshields of crawling cars. Shining through the darkness, illuminating the hustle and the bustle of the day’s end, a bright slit of sun squeezed its way across the tall, vertical gray city buildings. It cast lively silhouettes framed by a half-moon rainbow, stretching its circle-like- aura over the cement slab horizon. While clouds roared angrily above, releasing torrents of wet hail on the glass-like sidewalks, people darted like little ants in and out of doorways trying to shield themselves from the sting of relentless pellets, holding umbrellas or crumpled newspapers over their heads. The work traffic began to line up bumper to bumper as the teenager scuffed defiantly through the splashing bubbling puddles. People brushed past her, disappearing into alcoves and buildings.

"Fuck them! The bastards!" she sobbed, shoving the scurrying figures away from her. “I wish I was dead, goddam dead!”

A cigarette stub, barely lit, sagged between her fingers. The other fisted hand lay rolled in the pocket of her fading navy pea-coat with two missing buttons near the neckline. Her flimsy water drenched satin skirt clung to her thighs reminding her of the many nights she lay sleeping in her own urine, wetting the bed until she was almost 13. The rainwater squished through her open-toe shoes. Deliberately, Jenia slid her foot across the raging water, splashing it up her bare legs. A car skidded around the corner spraying her as she stepped off the curb. “Shit! What next?”

“Goddam. Damn!” Just as she turned on Spring Street a trolley car stopped. She never took the trolley but this time Jenia thought about it for a moment, then raised a newspaper above her head and scooted past the transit car without breaking the pounding rhythm of her pace, the clicking of her cleats as they snapped against the crystal pavement.

Jenia’s head pounded with the fury of her thoughts. He did it again, the asshole did it again … and at a noon hour when the Corner Café was jam- packed with people standing, waiting. He didn’t have to call me a slob, she ranted, who the hell does he think he is ... the fat pig ... that Swartz, damned Jew. I always did hate Jews. Thinks he’s God or somebody. I’ll show that bastard. I’ll show him. He’s always yelling around, walking with that wet stinking ugly cigar stub hanging out of his fat lips.

Son of a bitch! That's what he is, she ranted on in her dialogue with herself. So is his son... A fairy mama’s boy busting in our argument cuz his papa was there to protect him...he sure got brave all of a sudden. What nerve saying I always mix the orders up.... Goddam it! I always get my orders right!

He's the one who screws them up. They getcha working like a fucking nigga even when it ain't busy; it’s fill the juices, scrub the shelves, fill the sugars, scour the tables . . . shit! I'm tired, fed up."

Jenia became aware of her heels clicking again… just like her mama’s used to. As a child, hanging on to her mother's skirt, she’d look up at her, listening attentively to the clicking. Even now she could hear her Mama Santina’s New York accent as she kept repeating... like a broken record, "If ya step on the lines in the cement ya break all the devil's dishes." Jenia carefully balanced herself on the cement lines as though walking a tightrope, "Damn Devil, Damn! I'll break every one of his fuckin’ dishes!"

A flash of lightning bolted through the sky, brightly illuminating the darkened city for a moment. A cloud burst caused her to cringe. Hail, the size of pellets, whipped at her face and clothing. She flipped the cigarette butt into a street puddle and watched it sail alongside the curb down the street. Wringing wet, sniffling, and pulling her sticky skirt from her thighs, she glanced up to see the Angel's Flight dual-trams, one chugging its way up the incline to Bunker Hill and the other creeping down the steep grade back to Temple and Hill Streets, where the Café stood.

Jenia’s thoughts shifted to the day she and Anna rode the Flight for what seemed like a thousand times singing Judy Garland’s “Ding, Ding! Ding! Went the Trolley”; then they switched to different folk songs each time they rode up and down the bumpy tracks, “Go tell Aunt Rhode, Go tell Aunt.”.. Jenia breathed hard and deep; relaxed for a moment, then leaned to the left crushing her foot on the pavement seam to perform her ritual with the devil.

She recalled the fun it was to be with Anna when the two of them skipped over to Broadway for lunch at Clifton’s Cafeteria, where the organ played continuously; the sounds of water trickling off the man-made cave- like cliffs inside the restaurant, the music and all. Anna loved the soothing lights and sound of music inside the tourist attraction.

“Man, that’s really something,” Jenia said of the little private room one could step into, just like a confessional booth in the Catholic Church, with dim lighting and soft music. “Makes you feel like you’re all dressed up kneeling at the altar getting the Holy Sacrament,” she told Anna one day.

Crossing Alvarado Street, Jenia passed through a brilliant strip of sun that lit the dark skies for a moment.

Swartz! That fuckin’ Jew, her thoughts continued. Who the hell does he think he is ... “Get that counter wiped clean right now,” he had yelled to her at lunch hour, across a room full of customers. A heavy maze of clouds lingered above her head like a black cloak of death waiting in limbo for her. “Go ahead, dump on me, you son of a bitch, everyone else does,” she fumed.

Just because he owns the place... he’s always dumping on me…you might as well too. It’s always something to do … not a moment’s rest ... sweep the floors, spark up the pie cases, empty the refrigerator ... mop the floors ... shine the silverware. Jesus Christ, he never shuts his fat ugly pig mouth.

Pushing into a doorway, packed with people who were shielding themselves from the rain, she snapped loud enough to be heard, “A perfect day, just goddam perfect!” Some rain dodgers smiled, others turned away quickly slipping out into the puddles.

Again, her cleats hammered away at the ground; the ones Kenny the shoemaker nailed on yesterday saying, ”Now you be careful there young lady, these things are slippery.”

He must be a goddam psychic or something, she thought. Guess he knew what he was yapping about, she reasoned as the cleat took a slide, throwing her off balance. Damn! Fuckin cleats!

It wouldn’t have been so bad if he would of just waited until lunch hour was over ... yelling at me in front of all my customers...the fat pig...that damned Swartz ... he ain’t nothing but a friggin runt Jew!

A frantic shove sent Jenia reeling around to face a short stocky man wearing thick horn-rimmed glasses and carrying a broken umbrella. Instinctively, Jenia threw up her arms as he quickly ducked into the alley, Afongul!" she yelled smashing her right hand into her left biceps, “Afongul! Fuck you!”

The haunting sounds of her mother’s cleats grew louder and louder... the fighting and screaming sessions with her mother rang through her head...”Devil. Damn Devil,” she cried.

Up ahead loomed the quaint adobe apartment building where she shared a flat with Anna, an artist 10 years her senior. It glistened as though adorned in a halo and studded with sequins, seeming to rejoice as streaks of filth drained down its walls. She thought, it’s about time God cleaned up this mess. The day Kilroy died, fer chrissake, that was the last time it rained in Los Angeles.

“Now Jenia, did you change your underwear? You wouldn’t want to have an accident and let everybody know how dirty you are, would you? I don’t think God would like that,” her mother use to warn Jenia every day of her life.

One would think God could keep his own house clean instead of worrying about me getting caught wearing dirty underwear, Jenia mused as she walked up the stairs. Groping her way through the unlighted alcove that lead to their two-room studio, she pushed at the antique oak door with her shoulders, forcing it open. “Fuck the door, too,” She sobbed as she knocked over the floor lamp upon entering.

Thoroughly disgusted with her job, her boss, the Café and the goddam devil, she cried out, “Mama, damn you, damn you.” Jenia and her mother, Mama Santina, known by friends as Tina, locked horns whenever they were together for more than five minutes; theirs was a constant battle, with her mother wielding iron-fist control over her.

Punching her, swearing at her, and most times falsely accusing her, “You’re a butana. Do you hear me? A butana… A bum… I’m going to beat the shit out of you, you goddam stupid liar, bum!” Tina’s suspicions grew worse as the years passed.

As Jenia grew older and reached her mid-teens she was already a strong 5'6" and looking every bit 22 years old with her bleached strawberry blonde hair, flashy clip-on earrings, high heels and wearing her mama’s dresses. She was a beauty, and Tina lived each day in fear of losing her grip on her. Jenia’s thoughts returned to the present.

“Son of a bitch! Some day they’re gonna fix that friggin’ door.” I’ve had enough … enough of being pushed around. Now I’m going to fight back. Ain’t nobody going to push me around no more. Not that fat pig Jew or his fairy son, not Anna’s asshole boyfriend, Lee, who’s always butting in when I’m with her. Not no one. Least of all not him, or that Swartz Jew … no more.”

The small apartment she shared with Anna smelled damp, depressing. Jenia passed through another shady alcove leading to the living room, modestly furnished with a couch, some orange crates filled with Anna’s books, books thought to be left-wing in 1946.

Anna, an educated artist and political activist, followed her ambition to bring worldwide equality to America. She was a budding painter of oils. Some of her large impressionistic art dominated the small but cozy room, where a Murphy bed rested inconspicuously in one wall.

Snapping the third button off her peacoat, Jenia threw her purse and coat on the armchair, pulled down the Murphy bed and sat up on it for a second, face in hands she fell backwards, staring at the ceiling. Shifting her eyes around the room, wondering if she should draw the curtain to keep out the slim stream of annoying light that fell on her face, she found herself staring at the picture on the wall in front of her. Jenia’s attention focused more clearly than ever on Anna’s painting above the sofa, one she had seen many times but never gave it any thought until now. It was done in blues, grays, blacks and greens; it portrayed frail looking men, mouths drooped open in agony, with wide empty eyes, bare from the waist up. Their boney fingers, dripping in blood, clinging to barbed wire . … Its’ caption, ‘Gentiles Only’.”
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xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxAbout Jenia
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx(Author's Biography)

Jenia, raised in an Italian ghetto slum area of the East Bronx, knows about brutality, hatred, crime, and violence. A product of Hell’s Kitchen, the quick-tempered, gang leader’s mother was an eccentric, domineering, matriarch, Mama Santina, who ruled the roost with iron–clad fists. After Santina’s husband was put in prison she hooked up with an abusive live-in boyfriend, Sal, who terrorized and dominated Jenia and her sister.

Small, petite, and feminine, Dorothy, who was four feet six inches and the eldest of the two sisters, faced daily ridicule by neighborhood bullies who called her “midget.” Jenia, a tall, strong, tomboy became her sister’s keeper, protecting her from the cowardly street hoodlums and hecklers; she could be seen on any day, in the street, the cellar, or a city park wrestling and boxing a couple of the rowdies to the ground.

The cellars and public parks of the city, where the gangs hung out, were her playgrounds; a thieves treasure of juvenile delinquents, unruly mobs, and other punks bartering their stolen or illegal stash. .She fights a desperate downhill battle at home and in the streets for survival. A truant at ten years old, Jenia was able to steal candy and comic books but she found odd jobs to buy her cigarettes, which were kept behind the candy store counters, unreachable to thieving waifs. With her Bronx girl’s gang, the Amazons, she would shuffle through stores stealing things, while proprietors kept a weary eye on them.

When World War II took Sal into the army, Tina met Joe Lambriazo. At the end of the war they married. The family moved to Los Angeles, California, Tina, Joe, Dorothy and Jenia. In Los Angeles Jenia’s life of crime, on a road leading to a dead end, was intervened by a woman ten years her senior , Anna, who takes the uncouth girl on a gripping journey through a culture and society unimaginable to her; concerts, operas, political rallies, parties. The fast paced compelling saga begins with fate grudgingly relinquishing its power to destiny as Jenia is reborn in her new struggle to boost herself up by the bootstraps and get a high school diploma.

Jenia, accepting her deadly impoverished and painful fate, an uneducated street fighter, working as a waitress, dishwasher, and bus girl, lacked vision for the future. One day she screamed, “ I ve had enough of this shit! I gotta get outa here!”

The inspirational story begins with Jenia, furious, storming out of the restaurant, swearing, fists clenched, ready to fight the world. Anna, an artist and liberal political activist, leads Jenia on a whirlwind life-changing journey toward higher education, one filled with the fiery anguish of the post-war turbulent years, when communist witch hunts dehumanized the nation and McCarthy’s henchmen lurked behind every corner of America.

Turbulent Years is a searing account of the two young women, drawn from opposite sides of the cultural pendulum, a mentor and a truant, whose lives cross in an unpredictable act of fate. Anna and Jenia struggle to understand the inequities of their restless segregated world. A compelling revelation of Anna’s indulgent love and patience in working with the potential misfit, who is filled with bitterness and malice, while trying to instill self-esteem into a socially unconscionable young woman. It is about the progressive Americans of the mid-40's who, in light of human injustices, feverishly worked toward building a better, more equitable country for all races and religions. Jenia, agonizing within herself to overcome learned bigotry and hatred, crosses forbidden cultural boundaries to befriend a biased black woman and a gay black man, to raise her station in life, and to educate herself at Polytechnic Evening Adult High School.

“ Turbulent Years” is an inspirational epic based on a true story ... a story of real people ... of unsung heroes.

Pat Onorato was born in 1930 in the Bronx. During the Korean War Pat joined the United States Air Force, W.A.F.’s, which she writes about in another novel edited, copyrighted, and ready to publish , “Sound of Marching Women.” While in the Air Force, Pat took USAFI courses and attended the University of South Carolina evenings. Upon discharge she continued going to night school for the next 13 years to earn her journalism degrees. A photojournalist, she began her writing career in 1962 as a public relations representative for Community Chest at a time when it changed its name to United Way. When United way merged with 12 Chapters of the Red Cross, Pat became public relations director for the Verdugo Hills, San Fernando Valley, and San Vicente areas. Her feature stories were published throughout California and in many business publications. By 1965 she moved on to edit local newspapers; Valley Publications which consisted of the Studio City Graphic, Sherman Oaks Sun, Woodland Hills Reporter, The Encinian and the Canoga Park Chronicle; also, the North Valley Mail, Sylmar Breeze and the San Fernando Sun. In 1966 she created her weekly community tabloid paper, The Newhall Saugus Record Press, and in 1968, The Mobile Press and Travel News. It was at this time Pat’s unique satire column., “ Off the Record by Pato,” was picked up by several local newspapers. The recipient of many community awards for her voluntary work beginning with promoting Everywomen’s Village in Van Nuys, California ,and including trophies for her work at the Encino Youth Center, Valley Teen Center, American Legion in Newhall, Big Bear Elks Club, and, her most coveted treasure, a plaque recognizing her by Sigma Delta Chi as Outstanding Journalism Alumnus Woman of the year.

By 1973 she had sold her publications, purchased a 32 foot motor home and traveled across the country with her friend and partner, Darian, three dogs and two cats. They settled down in 1977 in Southern California’s 4-Season Resort area of Big Bear Lake where Pat became advertising manager and entertainment editor of the Big Bear Life and Grizzly. In 1981 she earned her State of California Real Estate license, and in 1982 her broker’s license. She opened two offices in Big Bear. To effectively farm for listings, she began a monthly advertising magazine, The Mountain Desert Researcher, which she continues, today, to publish and distribute to parts of So. California.

Pat Onorato makes her fictional writing debut with “Turbulent Years.” She spent four decades as a photojournalist, editor/ publisher of newspapers, magazines, and writing her column, “Off the Record by Pato,” a humorous brow-raising satire.