THE MAN IN THE d**k TRACY HAT,
by Elizabeth Zelvin“Your mommy is a Commie! Your mommy is a Commie!”
My little sister Alexa was crying as she stumbled up the block toward me, no more than a couple of houses ahead of the pack of jeering boys. One of them threw something, I couldn’t see what. It hit her in the back. She stopped short, cast a scared look behind her, and wiped her nose on the sleeve of the white blouse Mom had ironed so carefully for her that morning.
“Your mommy is a Commie!”
“Kill the Commies!”
“Go back where you came from!”
Like me, Alexa came from right here in Queens, but what did those jerks know? Their parents read Life magazine and saw Senator Joe McCarthy on the television and believed every word. Lumpenproletariat, my dad called them. Lumpen was a good word for
