The Day the FBI Came Knocking
Mara Kurtz
Word Count 823
On a hot summer night in 1950, we were eating dinner in the kitchen and listening to a Dodger game on the radio. Dessert would be the mocha layer cake on the counter for my ninth birthday.
When the house phone rang, my mother jumped up. I could hear Fran, my friend’s aunt, who lived downstairs. “There’s a man at my door who says he’s from the FBI. I’m alone with Edwina, and I’m afraid to let him in.” My mother said we’d be there right away.
On the way down in the elevator, I asked my father, “What is the FBI?” He said, “It’s the government’s police in Washington. DC. They catch people who do bad things and put them in jail.”
We could see the agent dressed in a dark suit waiting at the door at the end of the hall. In Fran’s living room, he took three folded pieces of paper from his pocket and said, “A crime has been committed in this building. These letters were found in the mailbox of Mr. and Mrs. Press, who live in Apartment 6B.” Nodding at Edwina, he continued, “they are signed with this young lady’s name and contain threats and curse words that appear to have been written by a child. I looked at my friend sitting on the couch holding her Aunt’s hand. Small tears crept down her cheeks.
He opened the letters and began to read them aloud. The moment I saw the pale green pages, my hands and feet turned to ice.
“Dear Mister and Misses Press, you are terible people. You are mean do not deserve to live here. Go to hell.” Signed, Edwina Harris
“Dear Mister and Misses Press, everyone hates you so musch. You are terible and stupid shit. We will fix you soon.” Signed, Edwina Harris
The last letter was surprising because everyone in the building was Jewish.
“Dear Mister and Misses Press, you are catholic bastards. Noone likes you because you are bad people. You will be sorry. Drop Dead.” Signed, Edwina Harris.
The agent said they were obviously written by a child and asked Fran whether her niece was responsible. Fran said she didn’t own a typewriter and Edwina would never use those horrible words. Then he turned to me, “You must know all of Edwina’s friends. I want to know the names of all the children in the building whose parents own typewriters.” Holding the list, he told us he was going to see whether any of the typewriters were a match. I wondered what “a match” meant. As we sat nervously waiting, my father called me into the kitchen. With a very serious expression, he said, "I want you to tell me whether you had anything to do with the letters. We have the little portable that you like to play with. You must tell me the truth.” I replied, “No, Daddy, I swear I didn’t do it.”
The agent returned and said he’d gone to every apartment and not found any information. But when my father excused himself, saying he’d forgotten something upstairs, I suddenly felt myself shaking.
After a few minutes, he returned, holding a sheet of pale green stationery with typed words on it, and said, "My daughter wrote the letters. I checked our typewriter, and the characters are a perfect match.”
My hands and feet felt numb. As my heart raced, I could barely breathe. But I managed to blurt out, “It wasn’t just me. Alan Cohen did it too. All day long, his mother says, ‘The goddamn Presses’ never stop bitching about my kids making noise.” She hates them.
The agent said, “We’re going up to the Cohen’s apartment right now.”
When Alan’s mother and stepfather were shown the letters, his Mother began to scream. She called me a stinking little cunt and said the letters were all my fault.
Alan’s stepfather took off his belt, pushed him onto the couch face down, and began to hit him across his back. Listening to his screams, I cried, terrified that I would be sent to jail in Washington.
Back in our apartment, I walked past the box with my birthday cake on the counter, feeling sad that I would have none that night. My sweet father was very angry about the letters and even angrier that I’d lied to him. I thought he might even spank me, something he’d never done. But my mother pulled me behind her and said, "Max, she’s just a little girl, and she didn’t know what she was doing. She’s had a terrible day, leave her alone.” Then she helped me to put on my pajamas, kissed me, and tucked me into bed.
Leaving the room, she stopped and turned to me. “I just want to ask you a question. Why did you call the Presses’ CATHOLIC BASTARDS?
“I didn’t think it was a nice thing to call Jewish people,” I answered.
*
Mara is a graphic designer, photographer and illustrator and founder of Mara Kurtz Studio. Her work has been published in numerous publications including Metropolis, New York Times Magazine, New York Magazine, Conde Nast Traveler, Travel and Leisure, and The Wall Street Journal. She has been a Professor at Parsons School of Design,The New School, NYU and School of Visual Arts since 1990. She is a graduate of New York University and Parsons School of Design. She received an MA from The New School in 1995. The Rock Hill Pictures, a book of Mara's documentary photographs, was published in 2012.