The Arrogant Years

by Lucette Lagnado

  But that was only at the end. For much of the performance, I stomped around the stage hurling insults and commands and requiring everyone to kneel. I was sure that everyone in the congregation would take notice.

  Of course, it wasn’t everyone’s attention I craved: There was only one person who really mattered. I was expecting Maurice to be there, of course. Marlene, his older sister, was directing the play and his younger sister Diana had a part. I figured I would finally have his undivided attention if not his heart.

  I kept practicing and practicing my lines, while Suzette egged me on in my feverish need to sparkle and shine and stand out. Make the most of your lines she’d say during one of her frequent phone calls from Queens, where she lived in a small apartment with a roommate. Even if you have a minor role, even if you are only a little soldier, my sister would tell me, try to be the most important little soldier.

  We had been rehearsing for weeks, and our play was the talk of the women’s section since only little girls—the ragtag group of us from behind the divider—were being cast, tapped to play an assortment of biblical characters as well as courtiers and kings, ministers and magistrates. All of my friends were in it, and competitive as I was, I kept thinking that with my juicy role, I would steal the show.

  I was dressed up to look like a Middle Eastern potentate. My long dark hair was hidden beneath a turban, or what I hoped would pass for a turban. It was actually a little brown knitted cap from Woolworth’s on Eighteenth Avenue, but Dad had lent me swatches of gold and silver lamé from the big brown box of fabric samples he kept on top of the radiator, little bits and pieces of material he used for his new work as a textile broker. I had wrapped them around the hat, giving it a festive, regal look. My father was still a tie salesman, trolling the streets and subway stops for customers, but he was trying to build up a more respectable sideline dealing with the remnant stores of Lower Manhattan. Every day he walked from one fabrics shop to the next, offering to get them yards of silk or a shipment of velvet and showing off the samples that came in pretty little squares.

  For my costume I wore my father’s brocade dressing gown from Cairo. I had found it, neatly folded, in one of the twenty-six suitcases we’d taken when we’d left Egypt, several of which were around the house. It was in perfect condition; my father had never worn it here in America. But it was so immense that I had to hoist it up and tie the belt around me twice. Still, I loved marching up and down our apartment, Dad’s old robe trailing to the floor, imperial in my yards and yards of sumptuous royal blue brocade.

  As Haman, I was portraying a thoroughly sinister character, one of the most reviled figures in Jewish history. I reveled in the part when there, in the midst of my euphoria, I found myself plagued with nagging doubts: Why had I been chosen to play Haman? Why was I the one cast as a monster, a sadist of epic proportions?

  Suddenly, the casting seemed rigged. My friends had landed far more sympathetic roles. Miriam, the rabbi’s oldest daughter, had been tapped to play Esther, the lovely queen who fasts and prays and manages to persuade her husband, the king, to foil Haman’s evil plot. Celia was playing Queen Vashti, the king’s strong-willed first wife who defies her husband by refusing to dance naked in front of his ministers.

  Mrs. Menachem, the show’s producer, couldn’t bring herself to say the word naked. She told us instead that Queen Vashti was summoned to appear in a “bathing suit.” That only made us more curious, of course: What kind of bathing suit did a woman wear in biblical times—a bikini?

  Gracie had landed the key role of King Ahasuerus, the ruler of all Persia. Her father, who owned a small factory on the Lower East Side, had sewn an elaborate costume of embroidered red velvet with gold trim that made her look stately and formidable. Marlene’s sister, Diana, was playing a holy man.

  Suddenly, I understood: This was Mrs. Menachem’s little revenge. Marlene was directing the play in her usual earnest manner, but Mrs. Menachem was clearly in charge. And now, with this Jewish passion play, it was as if she had figured out a way to let the entire world know that I was arrogant and rotten to the core—exactly like my character.

  In her eyes, I was increasingly lost to the outside world. I had fallen prey to forces beyond the Shield of Young David and its divider that were hurtful and corrosive and corrupt. I was becoming an American.

  After the debacle a couple of years earlier, when my mother pulled me out of the House of Jacob girls’ academy after a week, Mrs. Menachem had continued to push for me to attend a religious school. It was the only way, she warned Mom, to stop me from assimilating, to halt the process of acculturation that would take me away from all that she and my family and our small congregation held dear.

  Mrs. Menachem was rigid and single-minded and extraordinarily focused. She was sure of her faith, sure of her traditions, sure of her ideas, and above all sure of what she wanted to avoid: any creeping influence of the outside world.

  Hence her decision to put on a play coinciding with Purim. The holiday production was keeping me and all the other little girls busy and more connected than ever to the Shield of Young David. I was already at synagogue every single Saturday morning and most Saturday afternoons, and I attended the Hebrew school downstairs several evenings a week. Now, I was also coming for rehearsals. Any free time I had was centered around the compound on Sixty-Seventh Street.

  And that, of course, was the point.

  My mother found Mrs. Menachem and her worldview compelling. She’d come home from synagogue and muse out loud about the benefits of la yeshiva. She gingerly asked me if I would like to try the House of Jacob girls’ academy again. Perhaps we had been too rash to give it only a few days.

  But she never really pushed it. Her passion was reserved for the elegant private lycée and girls’ schools of Manhattan, not a small parochial institution in Borough Park. If I couldn’t be at the Lycée Français de Bab-el-Louk in Cairo, she dreamed of seeing me at the Lycée Français de New York. Deep down, the prospect of a religious Jewish school in Brooklyn left her cold.

  Still, the fact that Suzette, her oldest, showed no desire to move back in with us filled Mom with despair and made her worry more about me. What was happening to our family in America? In Egypt, a young girl moving out was simply unthinkable. A daughter was expected to remain in her parents’ home until the day she married, and this business of living on your own—so prevalent among American women—was horrifying to her, every bit as distressing as it was to my dad. That’s why, more than two years after Suzette had left home, Mom still hadn’t made her peace with it—with time, she seemed to grow even more upset.

  Yet it wasn’t that my sister had totally vanished from our lives. On the contrary, Suzette swooped down on Sixty-Sixth Street from her latest Queens high-rise every couple of months, often with gifts in hand. We’d feel so hopeful those afternoons as the conversation flowed and sparkled, and any sign of tension was gone.

  Then she’d leave again and the house felt silent and empty—emptier than when she hadn’t been there at all.

  I never asked Suzette whether she’d be attending the play. I knew my sister could never overcome her revulsion of synagogues, and religion generally, even for the sake of watching me in my starring role.

  Even on the major holidays, my sister didn’t come. I’d set a chair for her at the table on Passover or the Jewish New Year, hopeful she’d put in an appearance for the lavish meal, but then when she didn’t show up, Mom would lament that we were in a ruinous land and perhaps the only way to shield pauvre Loulou from ruination was to dispatch me immediately—immediately—to la Yeshiva.

  On the other hand, Suzette loudly berated these religious institutions almost as evil cults, ready to snatch anyone who came within their grasp and brainwash them into dressing as they did, believing as they did, living as they did, marrying as they did.

  She needn’t have worried.

  I had neither the soul nor the temperament nor the fashion sense of a yeshiva girl. I had no intention o
f wearing long skirts and long sleeves and a wig or getting married at eighteen. And the only cult I was susceptible to following was the cult of Emma Peel.

  This was my time to be vain and flamboyant: My arrogant years had begun. I was extraordinarily conscious of what I wore and how I looked. I’d recently gone to our beauty salon around the corner on Twentieth Avenue with a picture of Mrs. Peel. This is the style I want, I told the startled beautician, handing her the photo of the Avenger, her lustrous auburn shoulder-length hair brushed to the side and away from her forehead. When I walked out, I was sure I resembled my heroine.

  I wasn’t a refugee girl whose parents didn’t know how they were going to pay the rent from one month to the next. I wasn’t the witness to a disintegrating household. I was the fearless television seductress, taking on brutal enemies and defeating them with my physical and intellectual prowess even as I dazzled them with my wardrobe.

  Suzette helped feed the fantasy. On my birthdays, she would arrive with a mountain of white boxes from Macy’s filled with trendy, opulent clothes that conjured up Emma Peel and her effervescent 1960s fashions. We’d spread them out like treasures all over my bed—Carnaby hats, plaid miniskirts, jaunty vests, turtleneck sweaters—and I’d try them on one by one.

  In the same way that I was meticulously planning my Haman costume, I was also fussing about what I would wear after the play, like some Broadway star preparing for her grand entrance at the after-theater party.

  Mom cast a cold eye on my excess of vanity; she was capable of flying into a rage about my passion for clothes.

  “Des tas de chiffons,” she’d cry contemptuously when she was in one of her somber moods—a bunch of rags. She would urge me to please, please not be so frivolous. She was terrified that I was growing up superficial and self-absorbed. And she, the former beauty, the Ava Gardner look-alike who had captured my father’s heart with her delicate brunette features, loved to tell me that beauty counted for nothing at the end.

  I needed to study and read books and focus on my schoolwork because all the rest, particularly ces chiffons—wouldn’t matter.

  As if to set an example, she never wore makeup, shunned high heels, and had no use for jewelry. Her wardrobe was stark and simple and crushingly unassuming—a skirt and blouse, or a plain dress purchased from La Eighteen for a few dollars. I never saw her open the flask of Chanel No. 5 César gave her as a birthday gift, or wear the string of pearls he’d bought her when he’d felt extravagant and had a bit of money to spare from his earnings at Continental Grain.

  For adornments, there was only the slender wedding band on her finger—no necklaces, no bracelets, no gold chains or rings or pins. What other women, even women of humble means, took for granted as part of the kingdom of being female, Edith shunned. There wasn’t a single lipstick in the house, not one bottle of nail polish.

  As if she weren’t self-denying enough, the approaching Purim festival—meant to be joyous—was another fast day for Edith. She would be emulating the tender Queen Esther, doing without food and water to incur God’s favor, pleading with him to void Haman’s evil decree. My mother was always acting out her own sense of suffering and martyrdom on the stage of our family, starring as it were in her own passion play.

  As the production neared, it became fodder for endless conversations with the other little girls behind the divider.

  After prayers were over, I’d rush home for a fast lunch and then begin making the rounds of my friends and costars. First stop was Diana’s house on Twenty-First Avenue, where I tended to walk each week, hoping to catch a glimpse of Maurice.

  To my despair, he seemed unaware of me; those times he did acknowledge me, it was only in the most passing, distracted way.

  Still, I would linger in my friend’s cozy red-frame house, on the lookout for Maurice. My friend and I waited for him to appear as we chatted and played beneath an old antique coffee table, our little enclosure beyond the reach of the adults who came and went and generally ignored us, consumed with their important adult affairs. But now, with the play, it was as if the roles were reversed—our own lives had acquired an extra measure of zest, and the rest of the world, even this adult world we craved, seemed pale and lackluster.

  Diana’s home was a multigenerational household. Her grandparents lived downstairs while my friend’s brainy, colorful family resided in a spacious apartment upstairs. Marlene was often around, and I’d chat with her about favorite novels we were both reading. I loved Linda, the oldest, the rebel, who never joined us at the Shield of Young David. She was edgy and tart-tongued and witty. The elderly grandparents were deeply moving figures who looked as if they’d stepped off the boat from Syria. One crucial member was missing—the father. Like my own sister’s departure, his absence wasn’t a topic of conversation. The rule among the women and children of the Shield of Young David was to avoid painful subjects.

  Ours was a gossipy culture to be sure, but a rather gentle one. It wasn’t like at the Big Shul, the old Syrian congregation whose members lived and died on rumors. There, a person’s misfortunes became the topic of endless banter, peppered with requisite expressions of sympathy. “Hazeet”—poor fellow—they’d say, or its variant, “Hazeeta,” poor girl, then resume trading sordid stories with even greater relish.

  After visiting Diana, I would walk over to Celia’s house. Madame Marie was always ready with a plate of freshly baked cookies and all the soda I could possibly drink. She outdid herself around the Purim holiday, and her platters of honeyed Moroccan delicacies—hand-delivered to select friends—were the talk of the congregation.

  I was too nervous to eat; Celia and I spoke intently on the particulars of our roles and costumes. Her younger brother Moshe quietly watched us but was rarely included in our games or conversations. He wanted to be our friend, that was clear, but we ignored this sweet, awkward little boy who spoke with a stutter. He persisted in hovering around us, whether in his sister’s room or on the edges of the women’s section, and it was as if he preferred the intimacy of our little enclosures to the open space of the men’s sanctuary.

  My last and most important stop was to see the Cohen girls. Gracie and her sisters Esther and Rebecca were my safe haven, and I liked to end the Sabbath with them, journeying to their home on Twentieth Avenue. They lived in a small apartment on top of a storefront, all seven family members crammed into a handful of rooms. Their father, Abraham Cohen, owned the building and rented out the space downstairs to an Italian social club where mysterious groups of men gathered each day for card games and small cups of espresso and God knows what else, since 1960s Bensonhurst was known as a hub for the Mob.

  Upstairs, order reigned; Mrs. Cohen ran a strict household. Each of the girls had to do what my own mother never asked of me: lots and lots of chores, from making beds to setting the table and washing the dishes.

  The sisters were in constant motion, even when we were engaged in intense conversations about the play. In the midst of our chat, Gracie would be on her feet wiping the table or Esther would suddenly sprint to the kitchen to mash avocados for guacamole. There were two other sisters, Leah, the oldest, and Margarita—Maggie—the youngest, and both were “mentally retarded” in the parlance of the day. Leah seemed fairly engaged, but the little one, blond and delicate, was lost in her own world, a sweet helpless soul who’d wander over to us and smile, her head moving from side to side.

  It was a close family despite the hardships. If Abraham and Adele Cohen suffered from having five daughters to raise, two of them disabled, they never complained. The father had a special bond with Maggie; the pair were often together, walking hand in hand. Because Mr. Cohen was a man of few words and Maggie was unable to say very much, they had a perfect entente.

  I’d sit with the sisters in the main living area until the room became dark and the sun set and the Sabbath was over; only then did the Cohen sisters switch on the lights and life resumed once again.

  After my sister left home, Mom became increasingly a
ttached to Marlene. The lovely young girl was all that her own daughter wasn’t: observant when Suzette had lost her religion, traditional when Suzette scorned tradition, content to sit beside us every Saturday behind the divider when Suzette would never set foot inside the Shield of Young David, let alone pray in its women’s section.

  “Marlene est un ange,” Mom would exclaim. Marlene was an angel.

  There was even an odd physical resemblance.

  Both Suzette and Marlene had thick dark hair they wore in a pageboy, dark eyes, and a similar pale complexion. One afternoon, when I was on Bay Parkway, I stopped to examine the delectable chocolates on display in the window of Barton’s Bonbonniere, the store that was very popular in our neighborhood because every single treat it carried was strictly kosher. I peeked inside the store and to my amazement I thought I spotted my sister standing by the cashier.

  Was she paying us a surprise visit? Was she bringing us a gift of chocolates from Barton’s? I waved frantically and started crying, “Suzette.” Then I realized to my confusion that it wasn’t my sister at all; it was Marlene doing a bit of shopping.

  Marlene had been coming to the Shield of Young David since she was a little girl, when the synagogue was new. It functioned as an annex to the crowded Big Shul next door. Of course, the elder Syrians, those aristocratic men from Aleppo and Damascus whose wives came dripping in furs, gold bracelets up and down their arms, had been praying at the Big Shul for decades. They weren’t going to budge, but they welcomed the chance to send their children and any overflow crowd next door.

  Marlene felt at home there from the start, and the synagogue became her playground. She and the other children would retreat upstairs to the roof during services where they’d run and play and jump high above the rest of the neighborhood. No one sought to warn them of the dangers and, indeed, none of them felt any danger. That was the wonder of the Shield of Young David: It always seemed safe, even on the rooftop.