Along Hester Street she went, under the Third Avenue Elevated Railway—the El, Micha called it. Another wonder, she thought, but when she looked up, she got an eyeful of soot. The steel girders were all black with dirt. And that was America, she thought, from a distance it was a wonder, with pretty buildings and railways in the air; but up close you saw the rats and the children in their bare feet and rags, and the railway made you choke. And everybody was all bent over with their poorness, their hands veiny and blue, their collars pulled up round their grimy faces.
“We’re not going to be like that,” she whispered to Liberty. “This is not going to be your life, bubeleh. Your daddy and I, we are going to make you like a queen. I promise.”
She stopped outside the kosher butcher down on the corner. She stared, imagining the good taste, the feeling of fullness inside. A long time since she had felt that way. “Tomorrow is Shabbas, we got to have a nice meal. You know what is Shabbas? It is the special holy day God gives us so that we can rest. We light all the candles in the house, and we get nice things to eat. Oh, I know we don’t have much, but we got each other. We got each other, and no one is ever going to take you away.”
She hoisted Liberty up to her shoulder, loved how she fitted into the notch of her neck and her chin, the ticklish warmth of her breath on her skin. She felt the child’s arms tighten reflexively around her neck. She looked down at the little girl’s eyes. She could look forever into them. Such adoring, such trusting.
She had heard her sisters talking about the love they had for their husbands. Etta said it was like a real thing to her, an ache inside her, in her belly, not in her heart like the songs said. And now Sura felt it too, watching the child, looking into her eyes she felt this same twisting inside.
For a moment, it was like the hawkers all up and down the street had gone quiet, the press of people and pushcarts and dirt and noise disappeared; there was just her and her little baby, and nothing else existed in the whole world.
What was she to make of this, this newfound happiness, happiness like she had never known? It was a miracle.
Her little Liberty, she was a gift from heaven; in this big press of strangeness and people and loudness, she was hers, a nest of happiness and belonging snuggled against her, and the smell of her was sweeter than anything else in this whole big America.
There was rust bleeding all down the sides of the freighter. A mist of rain drifted across the wharf. The foreman had formed them into a long chain, teams of two men snaking from the dock to the warehouse to heft the burlap sacks of brown sugar up from the hold. A week now, and Micha dreaded every load. Every sinew in his back was raw and screaming. Cannot keep doing this, he thought. But if I don’t, what will little Liberty and my Sura have to eat for Shabbas?
Still another hour before the final whistle, someone said. Most of the others were bigger men than him, Irish and schvartzes; they laughed and called him a skinny Jew at first, and other things he didn’t understand, but now they gave him a sort of grudging respect for the way he kept at it. Most of what they said he didn’t understand, even though he studied English hard at night school. The foreman said to him, don’t you understand plain English, but it wasn’t plain English, not the way they said it.
But here they went with the sacks now: one, slide the hook in; two, lift; three, swing it around; four, toss it to the next man. Up they went, in a rhythm, no time to rest again until the last sack, or the big schvartze he worked with would swear and kick at him for being too slow.
He had to break Shabbas to keep the job. But what was more important, his Sura and his baby having something to eat or what the Reb would say about him? Uncle Max had told him he would find him something better as soon as he was out of the hospital. He had to hold on until then.
What a place he had come to, his hands raw with cuts and blisters, chapped red and numb. But not always will it be like this, he told himself. Already he was learning some English, and Uncle Max promised him one day he was going to be a somebody, a mensch, like the ones he saw driving a motor car.
At last the whistle sounded, and the other men headed for the bars on Tenth. Lately they had taken to asking him along too, but he always said no and caught a horse car across town to the new Grand Central station and then took the El home. But today, instead of going straight to the Elevated, he walked a block to where the old hotel used to be. It was a blackened shell now, boarded up to stop the hobos getting in. He could still smell the burned wood, even after all these weeks.
The fire escape was still there, swaying in the wind, the back wall all that was still standing. If he closed his eyes, he could see it all happening again, feel the iron stairs buckling underneath him, hear her screaming. Whenever he played it over in his head, as he did every night when he got into bed and closed his eyes, he remembered looking up, seeing her hands beating at the window. Had she been in the bedroom all along? Perhaps she had been in there all along, asleep, or perhaps even drunk? Why hadn’t he gone in to look for her?
He put his collar up against the rain and walked, head down, toward the station. He put his aching bones on the Third Avenue Elevated and stared out the window as it rattled back down this brown brick of America. She’s dead now, and you have her baby. What sort of a man are you?
He walked a little faster down Delancey because he knew Sura and Liberty would be waiting for him at home.
Home: the top floor of a tenement with line upon line of laundry flapping between the fire escapes. Not so much washing today, though, just a few weary rags hanging sodden in the wind. He and Sura lived right at the top for the cheaper rent. Micha stopped at the foot of the dank stairs to gather his strength for the long climb up. Such creaking and shouting coming from up there; the Irish and the Italians didn’t know about quietness. Everything was shout, shout, shout.
He took a breath and started up, pausing to catch his breath again at every landing until he got to the top floor.
He threw open the door. For all his tiredness, how could he forget to smile when he saw them, Sura there sitting on a wooden crate, feeding their baby her bottle. Such a wonder it was to see them.
And what she had done to the apartment since she had come from Russia. She had scrubbed it top to bottom, washed the grime from all the windows, pasted down the wallpaper where it hung down, put up pictures from the newspapers over the holes in the plaster.
She had even persuaded Tessie Fischer next door to give her an old spring mattress, had put it over four empty herring pails she got from the street, so now they had a proper bed. Then she found a potato barrel, put some clean newspaper over it, and they had a table. What a lucky man he was to have a wife like this. He had worried that she would be gloomy when she came to America and found this same dirt and poorness and hard work, just like in Russia; but no, he had never seen her so happy. It was because of Liberty, of course. Whenever Sura looked at the baby’s face, her eyes shone with happiness.
“Bubeleh,” she said when she saw him. “How was your day?”
“Today I shoveled ten sacks of gold off the street.”
“Only ten?”
“I could have got more, but I wanted to leave some for your brother-in-law Benno when he comes.”
“Sit down, I made some latkes for supper, and my gefilte fish you like so much.”
As he ate, she talked about the price of the baby clothes in the stalls; everything was so much gelt in this America, so she had bought herself needle and thread and some cotton and wool to make their clothes herself, like she did at home, while their little bubeleh was sleeping. If she had a fancy sewing machine, she said, she could make clothes for everyone in the street.
“A sewing machine is expensive,” he said.
“It can pay for itself.”
“Now it’s nonsense you are talking. Nothing pays for itself! We will wait and see. Perhaps when Uncle Max finds me a new job, we will have enough money then.”
“Until then I will use needle and thread, like at home.
It is what our Zlota does while her Ari is at his studies at the yeshiva. You know, here in America, lots of other families work in their apartments sewing clothes. That Tessie Fischer sews shirtwaists, and you should see, she is nothing at it. You cut all my fingers off, I could sew better.”
“Is it that you don’t think I can give you what you want?”
“You gave me Liberty,” she said. “You gave me everything I want.” She put a hand on his. “I don’t mind you are not millionaire,” she said. “We are the richest people in all America!”
He smiled at her, felt something he had not felt in a long time, something he had never felt since he had come here to this America.
He felt proud.
Afterward he heated water on the little coal-burning stove, and Sura gave Liberty her bath. As she dried her off, he read the newspaper, though he always had one eye on his wife and his daughter—his little daughter—because it made him feel like the king of the world.
“Why you always got your head stuck in the newspaper?” Sura said.
“I’m learning me the English. It is important I learn fast so that Uncle Max can get me a good job.”
“So, what did you learn last night?”
“Well, it’s not just the words you learn, you must also learn how to say them, because they say everything backward in America. Like if you want to say what, then the teacher tells me first to say ‘ooh what,’ or otherwise it comes out ‘vhat.’” He pointed to his lips to show her the difference. “If you say ‘vhat,’ they make fun. If you remember to say ‘ooh what,’ like this, they still make a little fun, but not so much.”
“So everything they spell with a w, you have to say ‘ooh’ first.”
“It is hard, some words sound so much the same. Like the number three. In my class, we all say ‘tree,’ but in English, ‘tree’ is like what you get apples from.” He showed her with his tongue. “You have to say like this: ‘th-ree.’ And spelling. Don’t start me on the spelling.”
“You talk English good. You learn everything so fast, Micha.”
“When I talk English perfect, then I will be happy.”
Sura finished drying Liberty off with a raggedy towel she had bought that day off one of the pushcarts on Delancey. Micha went back to his newspaper to practice his reading. There was a grainy photograph of a rich man wearing very nice clothes. He read the words fire and Grand Central Hotel and sat up a little straighter.
He felt the blood drain from his face.
He laid the newspaper aside and stood up. “I must go to night school.” He looked around, turned a complete circle in the middle of the room. “Where is my coat? I can’t find my coat.”
“It’s right there, in front of you.”
“Ah, who put it there?”
“You did, bubeleh. Are you all right?”
“I’m all right.”
“Nothing will go wrong, will it?” Sura said.
“What’s that you’re saying, bubeleh?”
“Nothing can go wrong, can it? Not now. Promise me.”
He forced a smile. “I promise.”
“You will have a big shop, like in Russia, and we will have a motor car and a nice house for Liberty to grow up.”
“Yes, yes. Everything is going to be all right.”
She beamed. “Good,” she said.
He kissed his wife on the head and went to the door. Sura lifted Liberty’s hand in hers and waved to him. He forced another smile and waved back.
He hurried off to night school, his head spinning. “Everything is going to be all right.” He wished now that he hadn’t read the newspaper. If he didn’t read about it, would it all go away?
Of course it will all go away. No one knows anything about the baby, I am the only one who knows, and I will tell no one the secret, not even Sura. If someone really wanted little Liberty, then why did they let her mother cry like that all alone in the hotel?
No, he would just forget all about that night, and then everything would be perfect, and no one would suffer or be angry with him.
Just forget.
12
Micha woke in the middle of the night, rolled over to check that the baby was breathing, put his face close to her mouth, not satisfied until he felt the flutter of breath against his own cheek. It frightened him, this devotion; he had never loved anything like this, not even Sura. And it had happened so quickly.
His baby girl.
He dressed in the dark and kissed little Liberty on the head, then his wife. Sura murmured and rolled over and wrapped her arms around his neck so that he had to pull himself free. He was gone, then, down into the dank street. Already the pushcarts were there, the hawkers shivering and smoking cigarettes and arguing and schmoozing.
He walked, head down into the wind, toward the Elevated. His back ached, his muscles screamed. He didn’t think he could face another day at the dock, but he would—he had to. He would do it for Sura and for Liberty; for them he would do anything, anything.
Dearest Vati. Dearest Mutti. I am writing to you with such gladness in my heart, I cannot tell you.
She stared at the words she had written. But what could she say? No one could know, not yet. Little Libby—that was what she called her now—lay on her back on the bed, gurgling and trying to suck her toes. Such an adorable baby. Sura smiled just from looking at her.
She could not tell them all the truth, that she was a foundling, have them all think of her little girl as a whore’s castoff. Well, Etta wouldn’t, but her vati, not so sure. So before she told them anything, she would have to think carefully, would need to write everything down so that she did not forget. Etta had given her a journal before she left. “This you must keep,” she had said. “Write in it every day so that when I come to America, you will not forget anything, and you can tell me it all.”
There were only two entries in it so far; she had started writing on the boat when she left Tallinn, but then she got seasick and forgot.
She ripped out the pages she had written in and licked her lips. This will be my private and secret diary, she thought. On this left side I will write everything she does; and on this side I will write about the pretend life she will have, the life I will make up, the life I will tell everyone else.
So I do not forget.
This is what I will do: I will write in here today’s date. And three months from now, I will write to Vati and Mutti and tell them I am going to have a baby. By the time they come from Russia, Libby will be all grown, so no one will ever know that there is a year missing.
It will be our secret, Micha and mine.
The end of another day.
One of the schvartzes lingered after the whistle, leaning against the sugar sacks. He lit a cigarette, offered one to Micha, and he took it. Sura didn’t know about this, the cigarettes. She didn’t need to know. It was all part of learning to be American.
They smoked in silence. Micha closed his eyes, almost groaned aloud at the ache in all his muscles. But he had done it, he had got through another day.
“You’ll get used to it,” the schvartze said. “Takes a while is all.”
The man crushed the stub of the cigarette under his boot heel and wandered off, hands in his pockets. Micha took his time to finish his cigarette, too tired even to go home. But finally, he tossed his butt in the oily water and began walking toward the gates.
There were two men standing there; one of them was obviously a boss, by his suit and his frock coat and derby. The other was his uncle Max, his hands still in thick white bandages.
“Micha,” Uncle Max said. “How are you, boychick?”
“Getting by, thanks, Uncle Max.”
“There’s someone I’d like you to meet.” He turned to the man in the frock coat, who leaned on his cane and offered him a curt nod. His face was familiar.
“This is Mr. George Seabrook. He wants to talk to you about the fire. Shall we have a drink somewhere?”
The tavern smelled of stale beer. Hard faces turn
ed and stared at them as they walked in. This was a working man’s bar, not a millionaire’s place. Men in overalls and flat caps drank stout and ate hard-boiled eggs, dropping the shells on the sawdust floor.
The bartender didn’t look pleased when he saw them, and Micha wondered if he would throw them out, until Seabrook put a note on the bar and said to him, “Keep the change.” The man nodded then and jerked his head toward a little alcove at the back.
They pushed aside a curtain and went through. The alcove was warmed by a cast-iron stove in the corner and reeked of tobacco and spilled liquor. There were photographs of longshoremen on the walls.
They sat down. George Seabrook removed his gloves and dropped them in his derby. The barman brought them a pitcher of stout and drew the curtain shut behind him as he left.
“Can you do it, my boy?” Uncle Max said. “I can’t hold anything yet.”
Micha poured from the pitcher, handed the millionaire his glass first. Then he held his breath and waited. The man sat there, legs crossed, holding the derby in one hand, jiggling the silk gloves. Micha could almost see his reflection in the man’s boots. At home, he probably had a dozen schvartzes to polish them for him.
“I told Mr. Seabrook you were there the night the Grand burned down.”
Micha nodded and said nothing.
“No one else you tell about this,” Uncle Max added.
Micha picked up his stout, then put it down again. “What’s this about?” he said to Max, switching to Yiddish.
“Mr. Seabrook’s wife was in the fire, my boy. She was the one on the top floor with the little babe in her arms. You remember her?”
“Sure I remember, Uncle Max. But what do you mean, his wife? She was with another man, a real momzer, I remember.”
Uncle Max swallowed so hard his Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat like a cork in a bathtub. He looked at the millionaire type, then back at Micha. “Not all wives are good girls like your Sura,” he said so softly Micha could barely hear him.
Loving Liberty Levine Page 6
