Outnumbered

By Mandi Eizenbaum

An epic tale of one man’s strength, courage, and luck -

plus a haunting family secret that spans an ocean and sixty-five years.



“Some people suggested that I was born under a lucky star. I wanted so much to believe this chisme from our gossipy neighbors and friends. I remember those nights as a young child when Mamá would tuck me into bed and I would look up into the inky-black Caribbean sky searching for the brightest star.”

Max grows up in a broken home with persistent health issues, an abusive stepfather, a weak mother, and a few questionable friends. Max’s young life is nothing more than a mess of troubles and mysteries. Regardless of his bonds to family traditions, Max finds some solace on the streets of Havana, carousing with his compadres and playing the charada numbers that bring him a steady string of good fortune on the local lottery. But he is eventually sent off to America on his own to start a new life and to find his real fortune. After all, how long can Max hinge all his hopes and dreams on his lucky stars and vague heavenly whispers? Can random wagers continue to bring Max the success and worth he always dreamed of?

It isn’t until he is confronted with his family’s long-hidden secret that Max begins to discover what luck and true value is all about.

This is the story of Max Chastine, a man who tries to outnumber and outrun life’s lucky and not-so-lucky twists of fate. Born into a unique culture of a tight (and often judgmental) Jewish community in Havana, Cuba, Max is forced to figure out his place in the world and convince everyone, including himself, of his true value and worth.





Love and family—can that combination be beat?

Will secrets of the past continue to haunt?

Can success really be measured in numbers?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newman Springs Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Sep 2, 2020
• ISBN: 9781648012518

Book preview

1

Señor, señor, what’s the matter with you? the pear-shaped waitress asked. Her whole face puckered like she was sucking on a sour lemon. The young woman dug her long, red fingernails into my shoulder and shook me hard. It looks like you saw a ghost! Are you okay, señor? she repeated.

It wasn’t the first time someone said that to me. The ghost of my late father truly did follow me everywhere. I never met the man, but his words were as aware and persistent as if he were right by my side, lurking in my head and casting a protective shadow over me. But all the secrets, the silences, the numbers, the haunting echoes—it was all too much now. The latest emptiness and grief were only making my anxiety worse. Much worse.

The panic-stricken screech from the waitress broke me out of my trance. Instinctively, my left hand fluttered to the gold chain around my neck, and my right hand fumbled with my pocket where I carried the faded, crinkled photograph of my father. Squirming out of the waitress’s clutch and shifting my weight in my seat, I shrugged my shoulders and leaned forward over the table.

Yes, I’m fine. Can you just bring me a glass of water? I stammered. A heavy tear escaped the corner of my eye as the jittery waitress hurried away.

And where is Gabby? I exhaled. I crossed my arms over my chest and scrutinized the wasted minutes ticking away on my watch.

My daughter, Gabby, was a spitting image of her mother in so many ways. They were both constantly running late. It’s a funny thing about time. When you’re young and live in the day, time seems to go on and on for eternity. But when you’re older and try to appreciate each precious moment of life, time seems to be fleeting and provisional.

I grabbed the crusty sugar bowl from the center of the table and fidgeted with the sugar packets that were randomly crammed in.

A familiar voice began humming in my ears, Claire’s tone-deaf melody chastising my incurable impatience. After forty-one years of marriage, her words still clung to me like the Caribbean sun hangs onto the horizon at dusk. Don’t count the minutes, Max. Make the minutes count. Her words of infinite wisdom swirled in my mind for what seemed like hours, until my attention finally drifted back to the sugar packets in my trembling hands.

Oh, my sweet Claire! How I miss you! My breath shuddered, and I choked as the words spilled from my lips. A sudden gust of wind blew the drizzling rain against the restaurant’s windows and sent a shiver of cold sweat down my spine. I feel like shit! I barked out loud. I didn’t recognize myself anymore. Claire would not have approved of my curmudgeonly manners.

I bowed my head and squeezed my eyes shut. There was no way for me to relax. I crossed my legs and uncrossed them four times in the next twenty-six seconds. My swollen fingers fiddled with the chain around my neck, my paling face reflected in the mirrored walls around the restaurant from a dozen different directions. My hair looked grayer than I remembered, there was a deflated sag in my shoulders, and bags of swollen dark skin protruded from under my eyes.

When did I get this old? I thought. Maybe I should just go home.

A warm hand brushed my upper back and sprung me out of my melancholy stupor. A soft whisper floated near my ear, and a wet kiss landed on my stubbly cheek.

Finally made it through all the traffic, chimed Gabby. She had all of her mother’s sweet innocence and charm, and now Gabby hastily threw her purse over the back of her chair and plopped down hard in her seat.

I glanced at my watch again, 11:11 a.m. What were the chances of these repeating numbers? Gabby threw her head back and clapped her hands together. She looked as restless and empty as I felt. She squinted her sad golden eyes and gaped at me. Our eyes locked.

Gabby sized me up quickly and sighed. Are you eating enough, Dad? You don’t look so good! Gabby faked a smile, a smirk that made her look like she was holding back a burp. Her voice was sensible and serious, yet I knew she was holding in the same pain and grief that I was feeling. No child should have to feel the loss of a parent. You should have stayed over last night, Dad. Did you finally get some sleep at home? Gabby scrunched the space between her plucked eyebrows.

She knew me too well, and just like Claire, she constantly worried about me. Neither one of us was getting much sleep these days.

My chest is hurting more than usual, but it’s nothing I can’t handle. I’ll be fine, I lied, not totally convinced myself if this time I would really be okay.

Stop with the whining, I berated myself inside my crowded head. Shouldn’t I be the one comforting my daughter?

I picked up the sugar packets strewn all over the table and carefully began arranging them back into their crusty bowl again. An old Celia Cruz song screeched out over the din in the room. Azucaaaa! shrieked from the overhead sound speakers.

I couldn’t control the burst of laughter that escaped my pouting lips. Oy vey, the irony!

I hate to bring it up again, Dad, but I need to be sure. Are you totally sure you’re okay with Jason and me going on our trip? I mean, we could always go next year.

No, we should never put off a happy occasion, I snapped. Then, softening my voice, I added, I know the timing stinks, but this is your honeymoon we’re talking about.

It hasn’t even been a month, Dad, and I don’t want to leave you alone. Not now, Gabby muttered. She pressed her lips together in a slight frown and dabbed at the corner of her eye. God, I miss her so much!

Gabby’s words stung my heart. I miss her too, angel. The words caught like a clump of sand in my throat, and my trembling hands went up to my heaving chest. I gasped for air, every breath rattling in my weak lungs. Enough talk about postponing your honeymoon, Gabby. It’s all set and you two are going, I croaked.

Try to pull it together, Max. My wet eyes darted around the noisy restaurant.

Where’s that water I asked for? I yelled out for our waitress and then glanced back at Gabby. Today, let’s just try to enjoy our breakfast together.

Havana, Cuba

1941-1958

2

Ishould start my story at the beginning. Or, at least, my beginning. The real beginning that actually remained shrouded in silence almost until the very end. But the truth was always there, always taunting at me from the stars up above. And it was in the numbers. There might have been some miscalculations along the way, I may have spent decades in the dark, but in the end, it all added up. History, family, beginnings—everything always adds up in the end.

I was born Maxwell Simon Stein on April 14, 1941. That’s the fourteenth day of the fourth month of the century’s forty-first year. Repeating numbers. Between the superstitious beliefs in the numerology system of my Jewish ancestors and the influence of the unique Chinese Charada system in our culture, numbers always meant something. Many people seemed to believe that I was born with the antsy and mischievous spirit that was so like my father. But my father, whose death remained a mystery to me for decades, died a month after my mother gave birth, and by the time Mamá had gotten around to officially recording my existence at the city hall in Havana, we had lost all links to my father—or so I was led to believe. Mamá had registered my birth with only her maiden name, Chekovski. Margot Chekovski (everyone simply called her Mimi) had ended that chapter of her life and sealed it with her own final act of closure.

Mamá had been in labor with me for only forty minutes. It was, evidently, an excruciating forty minutes for her, though—a legend my grandfather never let me forget. It might have been a quick delivery, but there was no doubt from the very beginning that I would forever be a challenge.

People in our community who knew my real father, Gabriel Stein—and everybody knew him—claimed that I had inherited his gregarious and natural charm. They also claimed we both had the same sense of virtue, a restless curiosity, and boundless energy, whatever that meant. Some people suggested that I was born under a lucky star. They would say things like, Gaby, may his memory be a blessing, must be looking down from heaven above and taking care of Mimi and Max! I wanted so much to believe this chisme from our gossipy neighbors and friends. I remember those nights as a young child when Mamá would tuck me into bed and I would look up into the inky-black Caribbean sky searching for the brightest star. I willed my father to be up there in the heavens, looking down at me, watching over me. I never got to know him on earth, but I had developed a lasting relationship with him from a celestial distance. I might have been young and naïve, but in those bursts of electricity, I was convinced that every twinkle in the black night sky was my dear departed father winking down at me. And my boyish insecurities kept me praying that he would stay with me as I grew older.

Gaby Stein, the young man that was my father, had been adored and respected in our small Jewish community, La Colonia Hebrea, in Havana. He was the only kosher baker in the neighborhood, a trade handed down from his father and his grandfather in the old country, and he would deliver the Sabbath bread himself every Friday afternoon through the small and tightly linked Jewish Havana neighborhood, peddling around on his ratty tricycle with a wooden wagon rigged behind its back tires. Gaby, a humble and gregarious man, would sing songs and ring his rusty bell through the streets, greeting everyone by name with a bright smile and a quick wink. Charming and generous Gaby would often leave fresh bread and pastries at the houses of families who couldn’t afford to pay him. Most of the Jewbans who had settled in Havana had more than enough money and food, but there were weeks that were a bit rough for some, and the mantra of our wanderings had always lingered and sustained us all the same: If we don’t take care of our own, who will take care of us?

On the night of my thirteenth birthday, after I was called to the altar in the synagogue to read my bar mitzvah portion in the Torah in front of our entire community, my mother gave me a gift—my father’s gold necklace with a small Jewish star hanging from it.

It’s a very special gift, Max. Your father wore it every day since he was a little boy, and I know he wanted you to have it when you turned thirteen. I remember Mamá’s words whistling through puffs of exasperated grunts. She didn’t speak much, especially about my father, so I hung on every word she ever spoke about him. I wondered if she was proud of my performance that night in the synagogue. And if my father had listened proudly from above.

By that time already, Mamá didn’t trust me much. I really didn’t give her much reason to trust me though, and I couldn’t blame my mother for her misgivings about me. I don’t think she ever trusted anyone, really. You better not lose this, she warned me, as if she expected me to do just that.

But wear that necklace I did; I never took it off, and I developed a restless habit of twisting that gold star incessantly between my skinny fingers. My fidgeting was just one more additional thing that always drove Mamá crazy.

When I was barely fourteen years old, I daringly snuck into my mother’s bedroom to rummage through her closets and drawers. I snooped often. I never knew exactly what I was looking for—clues, links, anything that would explain all the mysteries of my family. Be careful what you look for, you may not like what you find.

Mamá was so guarded and silent, so I searched for her also the only way I knew how. But the only thing I ever discovered among her random collection of junk was a lingering, stale smell of old relics that could only have held any meaning to my mother—a frayed scarf patterned with pink and yellow flowers, some old pieces of gold jewelry that she never wore in public, and a pipe still stained with dried-up tobacco residue. But one day I found something that really caught my eye. Shoved way back in the corner of a drawer in her nightstand, hidden under a bunch of old papers and empty medicine bottles, I found a black-and-white photograph with crinkled edges. I knew instantly it was a photo of my father.

I was told dozens of times that he had been a gentle and sensitive soul, and I could easily capture that kindness seeping from the noble man in the photo. He wore a straw trilby hat poised coolly on his head and his apron was clearly crusted with baking flour. But he stood tall and dignified with his tricycle in front of his shop with the words Stein’s Bakery stenciled in bold blue letters across the glass storefront. His eyes sparkled like two pools of cool water. It was clear to see in those eyes the warmth and compassion and optimism that was my father. I flipped the photo over, and on the back, my father had written in his slanted European handwriting, "Para Mimi, mi unica corazón de melón." For Mimi, my one and only melon-heart.

A poet or a comedian? I filled with a longing to know him for myself. I bet we would have been great pals. The photo’s dedication was dated March 14, 1941, a month before my birthday and two months before my father’s death. Repeating numbers one and four again. As a young and rambunctious kid, I was already too curious for my own good. I pinched the photo and hid it in my room under my pillow. One day, I will be rich and respected like my father. Everyone will love me and be proud of me too.

Mamá never questioned the missing photograph. It wasn’t until the eve of my fifteenth birthday, though, with the gold star hanging around my neck, that the twinkling stars of the night skies started whispering to me. I was deftly aware that Gabriel Stein was always going to be with me.

My father’s untimely death made neighbors and friends gush with pity for me and Mamá. What was a young mother with a baby to do on her own? They meant well, I’m sure. Gossip, after all, was as natural to La Colonia as breathing air. It was everyone’s way of letting you know that they cared. It was the glue that bound us together. But I grew to resent their two-cent pity, just as Mamá and Abuelo did. What did they know? Anyway, Mamá and I were not on our own—we had each other.

The community blather always got under my skin and gnawed at my young brain. No one ever talked openly about my father; but I swore I would show them all what I, Max Chekovski Stein, was really made of. The inspiration of my father watching me from above and occasionally whispering words of wisdom to me…sometimes I could feel him rattling around in my veins like a ghost trapped in a dark attic.

3

Saul Posternik, my mother’s second husband, seemed to be the answer to our problems. At least, that’s how