“Git Down” Abie

If a man only moves through the night and no one sees him, does he even exist?

 

Such a man was Abraham Greenstein, a.k.a. “Git Down” Abie.

 

Let’s go back to when Abie was a young boy growing up with his parents on Waverly St. in the Mile End district of Montreal. They lived next to the Jewish People’s School. Not that it was of any importance.

 

Abie was a shy and fearful child… very shy… and very fearful. He was the only child of Holocaust Survivors Max and Sophie, or Motel and Shusie as they were known before changing their names in order to appear more Canadianized. They tried to get him to be more outgoing. More confident. More comfortable around people. To make friends. At least one friend. Oh, how they tried. Didn’t help. Nothing they did helped. If anything, as he grew older, Abie became even more withdrawn. While kids in our neighborhood were playing outside, Abie was content to stay home, in his room, with the blinds drawn, reading comic books and creating imaginary battles with his toy soldiers. Was he really content? Perhaps not. Occasionally we would see him looking down at us from his second floor window. Things were perhaps not as he wished them to be, but they were what they were.

 

Abie was pretty much the same at school. He never raised his hand to answer questions, responding only when called upon. Hardly ever spoke to his classmates. During recess he would always stay at his desk. Always. Abie was a loner.

 

One day the fire bell rang at school. That was the signal for teachers to shout “desks everyone” which was the signal for all the students to get down on the floor and curl under their desks. I never quite figured out how they knew it wasn’t a fire which would have meant that we should line up and evacuate. They somehow knew that this time it was a drill of how to protect ourselves in case of a nuclear attack. Sure, hiding under desks would work. Much the same way that a glass of water would douse a forest fire. Maybe even less.

 

When the ringing started, Abie was at his desk daydreaming. Not paying attention. Nothing unusual there. The teacher, Miss Prew, whose profile no doubt led to the expression “school marm”, yelled “desks everyone”. We all dropped down. All of us except for Abie. He continued to sit on his chair and doodle. She shouted again, but Abie went on doodling. How was he to know that she was talking to him? After all, she had never spoken directly to him before. When Abie didn’t respond the second time, Miss Prew, with full military bearing, and patting the sides of her tightly bound hair, which would remain in place even during Dorothy’s tornado in Kansas, marched up to his desk, and in a voice shrill and loud enough so that passersby on the street might have heard her, shouted directly in his ear, “Abie get down!” And a second time, “Abie get down!” At this point he was pretty sure she was talking to him, so under the desk went Abie.