by Sally Koslow
“Lily Shiel, stop. We must avoid lice. The rule. Compulsory. Your hair will be trimmed every other week. Now stand still.” After each gust of words, I got a good shake, and could smell onions on her breath.
I closed my eyes while the women took to my head. Tendrils, a shade between ivory and straw, fell by my feet like thick worms. I needed no mirror to know I now looked like a plucked chicken ready for the Friday night pot. When I opened my eyes an older girl, tow-headed with widely spaced teeth, had appeared and swept the fallen hair—mine and everyone else’s—into a pile. She was not, like us, bald. Hair covered her ears, just. “Don’t worry,” she said, the corners of her mouth turning up in a half smile. “When you turn twelve, you’ll be allowed to grow your hair.”
To reach twelve I would need a second lifetime.
From here we were told to strip naked and two by two, bathe in the steaming water. The soap stung and gave off a stink. As we scrubbed with the bristly brush until our skin became as reddened as Matron Weiss’s cheeks, we watched her dump out our parcels and suitcases, gather the clothes in her capable arms, and toss them in another tub of suds. After careful inspection, she set aside Kichel, my wooden doll, while my brush, comb, shoes, and socks landed in the bin. “What about my dress?” I whimpered. It was blue, handed down from Mama to Sarah to Esther, worn by one of us on every Shabbos I could remember.
“It will be returned, washed and ironed,” Matron Weiss said.
On Pesach I heard the story about slaves. Is that what I was being turned into? I stood, naked, until the older girl, whose name I learned was Mildred, handed me a towel and pile of clothes. Though it was July, I was to wear woolen bloomers and an undervest, dark stockings, and a serge dress with sleeves that buttoned to the wrists. There were stiff brown boots, well worn, that laced to the ankles and a woolen nightdress sturdier than the gown I’d brought along.
We trailed the matron up a wide staircase and into a hall where we were told to take places at the longest table I had ever seen. While a rabbi said a kiddush and a motze, I searched for Morris on the other side of the eating hall. I failed to find him. The boys looked identical, dozens and dozens of boiled eggs with yarmulkes atop black shirts.
Supper was brown bread, butter, and milk. I had eaten nothing since tea and bread in the East End that morning, and could have gobbled three portions, but there were no extra helpings. “You missed dinner—it was at half-past twelve,” Mildred explained. It was now six. After the meal the rabbi swayed as he led a prayer with many ya ya yas. The children—there must have been more than two hundred—shouted “amen” and then there was a clatter as we got up from our benches, pushed them under the table, and lined up two by two. Some were laughing. Mildred held my hand tight as we walked to the other side of the building and entered a shul. From the girls’ balcony, I searched for Morris. He was nowhere I could find.
For every night I could remember, I had been the schmaltz between the challah of one sister’s plump limbs and the sharp angles of the other’s knees and elbows. I had never slept in a cot of my own, or been tucked between sheets stiff as cardboard. I no longer felt like Lily Shiel of Stepney Green. I had become a character in a book that many decades later I learned might have been written by Dickens or Brontë, had their given names been Chaim and Chana. I did not expect my story to have a happy ending.
From somewhere far away in the building, a clock chimed midnight . . . one . . . two . . . but sleep failed to come. The bedroom, which Matron Weiss called a dormitory, was on the top floor of the building, airless and filled with a racket of crying, sniffling, and snoring. Fifty girls, all missing someone. For me it was Tatte, my sisters and brothers—Morris, especially—and even my mother, though she’d tossed me aside like moldy cheese. I felt abandoned, terrified.
God stays closest to those with broken hearts , Tatte used to say. I held back my tears and repeated those eight words.
Chapter 7
1920
At the orphanage, we lived by gongs. Six, rise from your cot, wash with icy water, and slip into a mouse-colored uniform. Six-thirty, gulp cocoa thin as rain. Scarf down bread smeared with dodgy margarine. Seven, scrub floors and pots and pans. Eight, prayers. Nine, go to class, and on and on until evening prayers, supper, and the chime that announced lights out, and the cycle began again. As a bed-wetter, I was exiled to a special dormitory, and swatted whenever Matron sniffed my straw bed in the morning and declared that I’d pissed. Were it not for Shabbos afternoons, when we were left in a park for a few hours, all two hundred of us might as well have been prisoners, separated from the world by a high fence and—until we turned twelve—our baldness. The shearing of heads was not, I discovered, merely a strike against lice. It marked us, should we have the chutzpah to escape.
When I was allowed to grow my hair, it sprouted unevenly, like an old potato. I was scrawny and itched with a rash. My nose never stopped running and my hands were red and rough from chores. After the muckety-mucks emerged from their long black limousines for a yearly visit, some orphans got a pat on the head, but when the trustees saw me, they hurried by. This confirmed what I guessed. I was hideous.
I was also sly. Drawn by the aroma of meat pies—delicacies eaten by the teachers, matrons, and headmaster, but never us—I learned how to steal from the kitchen in order to satisfy my unremitting hunger, though when I liberated a pear from the sukkah I was caught and received a caning on my bare bottom. I found the punishment not altogether unpleasant. On Saturdays, Morris and I stood outside the cinema near the park, looking tragic until a woman gave each of us a penny to see the matinee, a double billing. A cowboy galloped across the Great Plains of America and parents in gleaming houses kvelled at children, even when they disobeyed. I thought I was witnessing heaven, which I knew about only from poetry, since our religion didn’t coddle us with the lure of after-life incentives. Our rewards were few, but I aimed to bag them all. I competed in every sport and excelled at my studies. I won top prizes for both Hebrew and writing and was chosen to read my composition, “Why England Defeated the Huns,” in front of the entire orphanage.
“It’s do or die with you, Lily, isn’t it?” Matron Weiss asked after I won a sixpence for reciting “The White Man’s Burden” by Kipling, which took me just two days to memorize.
“Thank you, ma’am.” I curtsied. But where has doggedness gotten me? I remained an ugly girl in an orphanage.
“You have a good brain,” she added. “If you continue to work hard you might become”—she paused—“a typist,” hitting on the word as if she were banging the exclamation point key. For an instant I pictured myself wearing a starched blue shirtwaist and patent leather shoes, walking to a spotless office in one of the buildings I’d glimpsed during a trip to the dentist, where we were taken twice a year. I would turn out important letters, stopping midafternoon for tea in a cup without cracks. At day’s end I’d retire to a tidy bedsit with its gas heater glowing like a grin. I would never shiver in the clammy cold. But faster than lightning, the image faded.
When I was fourteen I was called to the matron’s office. I expected to finally be awarded the opportunity to take a scholarship test. After all, I was the only student who’d been allowed to skip a grade. When Arthur Balfour declared that one day Palestine would become a homeland for our people, I alone was chosen to write him in thanks. I’d been appointed prefect and sat at a table of honor in the dining room.
The matron, however, said coolly, “Lily, I must convey sad news.”
I gasped. “Is something wrong with Morris?” Last week, a boy had died from meningitis.
“Oh no.” She fluttered a gnarled hand. “Nothing of that sort.”
Perhaps I would have to wait to take the test. I could do that. Only a fool lived in an orphanage for years and failed to develop patience.
“You mother has fallen ill. She requested that you be dismissed to nurse her. I knew you’d hoped for a scholarship . . .” Her voice trailed off.
Disappointment c
urdled into self-pity, to disgust, to outrage. Despite occasional visits, Mama remained a stooped, jumpy stranger who cleaned public toilets and still couldn’t speak or read English. Did she even read Yiddish? The sixth commandment was one from which I had long felt entitled to be exempt, but clearly in this matter, I had no choice.
“You will leave in two weeks.”
I stood motionless and unmoored. Matron Weiss rose from her chair, walked to my side, and placed a hand on my arm. “Remember this, Lily Shiel. Destiny is what you make of fate.” I wanted to laugh at this platitude, though years later I recognized that it might be the most practical advice I would ever receive.
Orphanage policy required girls to be discharged with a functional wardrobe of their own making. I began a flurry of sewing, at which I excelled almost as much as at cricket, where the team I led trounced the boys. I finished two long-sleeved black dresses with removable white bibs, a high-necked flannel nightgown, thick grey bloomers, and muslin vests. A brassiere, which I could plainly use now, was not on the list. I was also presented with a tweedy coat of indeterminate color and my first hat, a navy straw with a blue ribbon sailing down the back.
The day I left, the other girls, teachers, and Morris lined up to wave me off. In turn, the matrons shook my hand and repeated, “ Gay ga zinta hate.” This translated to “go in good health.” What I heard was, “good riddance.”
“I love you, Lily,” my brother whispered in my ear as we hugged. As a boy, he was not required to serve his mother.
I left the Asylum and boarded the first of four buses that would return me to Stepney Green. Instead of freedom, I felt fear. Several hours later I reached the tenement of Rivkah Shiel and rang the bell.
“ Kumen in,” a voice mumbled.
The basement flat where my mother had moved was barely bigger than a closet, with the smallest and oldest coal stove I’d ever seen. I could see that I would be even colder than at the orphanage. The room smelled like unwashed armpits and rotting meat. Huddled on a hard chair in the corner, my mother was ashen from her thin, frizzy hair to the pallor of her skin.
“Mama, how are you?” I choked out the Yiddish.
“ Yeder mentsh hot zikh zayn pekl,” she muttered. Everyone has her own burden. I thought of nothing to say in response. I tried to summon compassion but found a fortress of resentment. I was bright enough for a scholarship that could lead me to respectable employment and a bigger world. Instead, I was sentenced to care for a stranger who had called me back from my abandonment only when she needed an indentured servant.
After I dutifully offered to make her a cup of tea, I pleaded exhaustion, changed into my nightgown, and fell asleep on a lumpy chair. In my dreams I declaimed my victorious essay in front of the whole orphanage, but my sleep was short. I was rousted by someone who hoarsely whispered my name.
“Get up, goddamn it,” he said. “Get up, you lazy cunt.”
A burly man smothered my mouth with a hairy hand as I shrieked, “Oh, my God,” sure my heart would stop.
“Shut up, will ya?” he hissed.
I pushed him off me, shouting, “ Gay avek,” and pummeled the intruder’s chest with both fists. “Go away.” I screamed again, tasting my terror.
The man’s breath was rank with a smell I soon learned was beer. “The duchess doesn’t recognize her own family,” he snarled.
Thick neck. Scraggly mustache. A long nose with a bump. Heavy spectacles. The man’s voice triggered an image of wiry eyebrows and a bristly beard. Tatte. Where was my protector now? And my sisters, who I soon learned had each married and moved north?
“Which one are you?” I asked, suspiciously. I barely remembered that I had older brothers.
The man bent close and planted a kiss on my cheek. I twisted away in disgust. “I’m Heimie, and you’re in my goddamn bed so move your bloody arse. Go sleep with Ma.”
I stumbled to the tiny room where my mother moaned and coughed, half awake. I climbed into the bed, careful not to touch her, less because I worried about waking an invalid than revulsion at the thought of contact. A window, covered with newspaper, leaked frosty air. In the darkness I saw my breath.
The moth-eaten blanket that offered the room’s sole warmth was too skimpy to cover both of us. Drowning in self-pity, I put on my coat and moved to the edge of the bed. From the other room, Heimie’s snoring matched the throb in my head. Silently, I begin to recite.
Take up the White Man’s burden
Send forth the best ye breed
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need
When dawn arrived I attempted to muster a self-image of epic sacrifice. I can do this, I told myself, thinking of martyrs in my limited exposure to literature. My goodwill lasted for almost a day. My mother expected me to shop, cook, and clean. I didn’t begrudge the first task, since it allowed me to leave the flat, even if the surrounding slums were overrun with vermin, dung, and men who hooted at my bouncing chest or, if they were bold, brushed up against me. But I knew nothing about cooking, having only been in the orphanage kitchen to steal. And though I had plenty of experience cleaning, I was so fueled by ill will that I made intentional blunders. Despite her weakness, my mother berated me continually for my slipshod efforts. Even my dusting offended her.
I tolerated her screeds only because she was too weak to accompany them with beatings, and because her chiding was vastly preferable to the worst of my burdens: nursing. It was stomach cancer, Heimie told me. This required me to cleanse an abdominal hole, the result of a surgery, and that was the more pleasant part of the task. I was also expected to launder her shit-soaked bandages. I would sooner sell myself in the street than perform this loathsome duty. After each washing, I heaved into the loo, again and again.
Such was life at Stepney Green. Not only did my mother shout orders, Heimie did as well, and his were louder. At night when he returned from his factory job, my brother handed over an empty jug to fill with beer from the pub, where stinking boozers made rude remarks about my bum as well as my breasts.
“Bugger off and git it yourself, you pig,” I yelled one evening. Already fershikkit, Heimie raised a hand to slap me, but when he saw me stand my ground, he backed down.
I sensed a constant looming readiness to lunge, which eventually he did. A jury of my peers might say I deserved his attack. I hated that my mother expected me to scour the cobblestones outside our door, where every neighbor could literally look down on me with ridicule. As I scrubbed, I pictured myself accumulating accolades at the orphanage. I was no dirty skivvy. But my memories failed to distract me from my comedown.
One day I refused to clean, and my mother slapped me across the face. A dybbuk straight from one of the folktales I loved took charge of my hand and did the same to her, a dying woman wasted away to eight stone. I could feel the flat of my hand cracking her cheekbone. At this moment Heimie walked in and found our mother crouched and crying. As I ran from him in shame he chased me, yelling, “You fucking twat” for all to hear.
I was startled and horrified by what I had done, and there was no place to hide in a flat the size of two horse stalls. Heimie hammered me with his fists as my mother begged him to stop. Blood dripped on the floor, and I felt a pain in my jaw before I slumped into darkness.
The next morning I tried to apologize. “Leave me alone,” Mama moaned. “You’re no daughter. I don’t want you. Gal kukken afen yam .” Go shit in the ocean. I returned to the orphanage.
Two days later I was on a train to Brighton, where a teacher had found me a job as an under-housemaid—the lowest on the rung—in a seaside mansion owned by two spinsters. Every day I scrubbed their basement floor and front steps, shined twenty brass fixtures as well as my employers’ shoes, cleaned nine rooms, served three meals, and washed the dishes. I ate in the kitchen, was allowed no visitors—though I had none to invite—and was forced to enter and exit through the back door.
On Thursdays from two to six, my work life suspended when
I was allowed to stroll on the boardwalk. I always stopped to buy and read Peg’s Paper. It featured two versions of the same tale. A peer of the realm hung around places where someone like me might trip over him and the two would fall in love or, after a hoity-toity education, a well-born virgin was polished off in France, presented to the king and queen, and married to a viscount or an earl. The plots might vary by the odd stable boy or lord, but the endings were happily-ever-after identical.
One day a young man saw me reading and asked me my age. “Eighteen,” I said, adding a few years. Where did I live? Never before had I brought my daydreams to life, but I said that my home was a mansion down the road. He offered a ride on his motorcycle and dropped me there. While I saw him laugh when the parlor maid scolded me for ringing the front door, I didn’t care. Telling lies, I discovered, was no harder than breathing. People believed them, as long as you spoke with conviction.
I idled in this job for months when a letter arrived from Heimie, demanding my return to Stepney Green. Our mother had reached the end. I left with a reference that I tossed in the trash. I vowed to never again clean any toilet except my own.
A few weeks later my nose was buried in a newspaper when I heard a small sigh. Almost incuriously, I checked the bedroom. My mother, pale as milk, had tumbled to the floor and was feebly thrashing her limbs. I was struggling to lift her when she expired in my arms.
I had never seen death, which I learned attracts a crowd. Quickly, the flat burst with neighbors who seemed to care more for sorrowful, doomed Rivkah Shiel than did I, who felt like I was in an audience at a play, seated in the last row. People with names I had never bothered to learn saw to it that the body was removed, and following Jewish custom, arranged for burial the next day. I refused to attend the service, nor did I find out who paid for the casket—Heimie didn’t have a pence—or where my mother was laid to rest.
