A MAN NAMED HENRY

Years ago, when I was growing up in Brooklyn, there lived on the bottom floor of my apartment building a man named Henry. Henry was a gentle soul, was good with the kids on the block and never bothered anyone. Being children, we were unaware that Henry was retarded, something I was unaware of and used to wonder why he never spoke much.

His Mom was the person that did the janitorial services for the absent landlord, who lived in another apartment. Her name was Lena, a jovial kind of Italian lady, with an accent. She had a beautiful daughter named Marianna, who I hear later became a nun, and another son who became an engineer. He was called Manfredo, or Duke. Duke taught me how to catch a baseball, how to throw it, and held a fascination to me in what he did with his life. In my mostly Italian neighborhood, if you got through high school: you were well educated; Duke went to college. He was an engineer. He was looked at with pride and respect in the neighborhood. He, along with my Uncle Frank were two men I looked up to, they went to higher education. I wanted to be like Duke, educated.

Duke would come home from work at night, see his brother and before passing him, kiss him! It was not unusual to kiss each other in an Italian family. His affection went beyond his brother, as his sister would be playing with my younger sister, he would stop, asked something in Italian. She would smile and give him a hug around his neck and up the steps he went.

The education I received from Henry and from this wonderful family taught me the most. Henry's lesson stayed with me forever.

Henry was uneducable; he spent his day leaning against the framework of the front entrance of the apartment. He had one hand in a pocket and one foot crossed over the other, perpendicular to the ground. He spoke gently and with a lot of kindness in his voice. His eyes were far away, and he always watched us little kids playing on the sidewalk. Being a ham, I would perform for him and try to make him laugh, sometimes succeeding. Once we even tried to get him to play with us, without success.

Then one day in my fantasy world, I was running down the street on the sidewalk. As I ran, I came to a cellar door that was level with the walk. It had an automatic door opener, and I ran to step on it, it started to open up. The metal doors started like butterfly wings to open as I my foot stepped down. Falling in, I hurt my head and I was in pain and couldn’t move. My leg was caught in the mechanism and I couldn’t get it out. Then suddenly the doors started to close! My pants started to rip as the door whined to close. Just then, a huge hand reached down and tore me away from the mechanism, and as I looked up to see whose hand it was, I heard the doors slam shut.

The sense of relief was not as great as the sense of surprise in seeing Henry, carry me over to the stoop where we lived, setting me down and getting my Mother.

When I went upstairs that afternoon, my Mom told me about Henry. She explained why he never went to work, and that he had problems learning. It confused me, since I couldn’t speak Italian yet he could speak Italian and English!

The next day, and many days thereafter, I would ask him how to say a word from English to Italian, and he would tell me! Retarded, maybe. His kindness went beyond his capacity. I wish some who can learn, who can show compassion, could be a lot more like Henry.