Have I Got a Story for You

by Ezra Glinter

  Born Sarah Rabinowitz in the town of Belaya Tserkov, in present-day Ukraine, Kaufman attended high school in Kiev and university in Geneva. In 1909 she married Yiddish writer Michael J. Kaufman and moved with him to Berlin, where he studied medicine. Their daughter Bella, later known as Bel, was born in Berlin in 1911.

  Around 1912 the family moved to Odessa, where there was a burgeoning Hebrew and Yiddish literary community. Ten years later, following the Russian Revolution, Kaufman and her family escaped from the USSR and immigrated to America, where they settled first in the Bronx and then in Newark, New Jersey.

  Kaufman’s first published writing was a remembrance of her father in the Forward, but she soon began contributing short stories as well. Over the next three decades she published approximately two thousand such pieces, mostly dealing with twentieth-century Jewish American life. Although these stories made her a well-known figure to the readers of the Forward, none of her writing was ever translated or collected into books.

  The selection of pieces included here, mostly dating from the 1960s, deal with the lives and problems of a wide cross-section of first- and second-generation immigrants, including women, children, and the elderly. In such pieces Kaufman demonstrated her ability to capture the concerns of the full spectrum of Forward readers, from teenagers going on first dates to grandmothers delighting in their newborn grandchildren.

  At Prayer

  (APRIL 30, 1929)

  Translated by Ri J. Turner

  SOREH-FEYGE, AS SHE was called in the old country—here in America they call her Mrs. Merliss—woke up this morning in a particularly bad mood. For days now, she has gotten out of bed grumpy, bitter and gloomy. In fact, why deny it—almost the whole time she’s been in America (nearly a year now) she has felt downhearted: practically since the very first day. She doesn’t like it here. How can that be? She herself doesn’t know. She is supposedly surrounded by kin, by her very own flesh and blood, and yet . . .

  Her daughter-in-law Lizzie is, apparently, the same old stocky, goodhearted, foolish Leah’ke—yet she is also somehow not the same. She’s gotten a little too smart here, and it irritates her mother-in-law. Back in the old country, she used to look up to Soreh-Feyge. “Mother-in-Law, what’s your opinion? Mother-in-Law, how do you feel about it?” But here, a different kind of “Mother-in-Law” comes out of her mouth. “Mother-in-Law, you don’t know a thing about it, everything is different here. Mother-in-Law, that’s not the way they do it in America.” And Soreh-Feyge hears the derision in her voice.

  Yes, that’s how it is—Soreh-Feyge, who was always the clever one, seems to have turned into a fool here. No matter what she says, the grandchildren burst out laughing. The older one looks down and makes a strangled face, and the younger one snorts openly into his fist, choking on his laughter—despite the fact that their father Benny fixes them with a warning glare. In those moments, it seems to Soreh-Feyge that even Benny’s eyes flicker with glints of mockery. Yes, she’s become a fool in her old age, the clever Soreh-Feyge! They started laughing at her the moment she stepped off the ship—“that old grandma with a kerchief on her head.”

  Anyway, why the Devil did she come to live with them? Who needs her here? She should have lived out her years in her old familiar shtetl. 38 All right, so her husband died and left her alone—so what? She really wasn’t lonely there. The whole town knew her and respected her.

  And here? Her son and daughter-in-law invite guests—in English they call it a “party”—and every person who walks through the door is some kind of . . . well, they’re not Jews and they’re not gentiles. Only the Devil knows what they are. You think there’s any logic to it? Some of them don’t even understand Yiddish! But none of them drives her crazier than that old harridan, the shiksa 39 with the shorn head—only the Devil remembers her Jewish name—who makes herself out to be some kind of aristocrat, and calls Soreh-Feyge nothing but Mrs. Merliss. For her part, Soreh-Feyge is willing to swear that back in the old country the old biddy used to wear a wig.

  Her son, Benny, likes to explain that every country and every land has its own customs, and that the treyfniatshke 40 still keeps a perfectly kosher kitchen . . . a likely story! Soreh-Feyge wouldn’t accept even a glass of tea in that house! Even at her own daughter-in-law’s she keeps a separate kitchen—east, west, and never the twain shall meet. She has her suspicions about all those glasses and jars stamped like medicine bottles from a pharmacy: “Kosher.” No, she puts no stock in that . . .

  Every morning when she prays the morning service with her good old Korbn-minkhe prayer book 41 in hand, Soreh-Feyge pleads with God to forgive her if something in the house is less than kosher—after all, no matter how hard she tries, she’s no match for America!

  But it’s strange. Even the prayer service isn’t what it was at home—the prayers themselves are somehow foreign. Maybe it’s because she’s perpetually irate—or because the room in which she prays now is so different from the room in the old country where she prayed for so many years. She tries to focus on her prayers, but she cannot. Against her will, her eyes flit critically from one object to another. Why did the children feel the need to squander so much money? Her heart sinks when she looks at the mirror on her dresser. What use is a mirror to an old bag like herself? They probably bought it in order to have a laugh at her expense.

  She looks out the window with eyes full of accusation. Boys are running around in the street, making a racket—sheer chaos! Such slovenliness! A memory flashes before her eyes: the dear old alleyway at home, paved with dust, with an eternal mud puddle in its midst. Her heart clenches as if seized by an icy fist. Hot tears drip onto the old prayer book, and all the letters run together until Soreh-Feyge can’t make out a single word. How strange that even the prayer book itself, her old Korbn-minkhe which she has used for so many years—even the prayer book is no longer what it once was. It looks somehow out of place in its new environment. Such an old prayer book! Back at home it hadn’t looked quite so old.

  “Mother-in-Law! You really should get a new prayer book one of these days,” her daughter-in-law said at one point. But Soreh-Feyge shot her a contemptuous look and called after her, “Once a fool, always a fool . . .”

  The more she prays, the more her heart fills with a dried-out acrimony. Towards whom? Towards all of them . . . her silly daughter-in-law, her son Benny, the mirror on the dresser, the old treyfniatshke harridan (God only knows what her name used to be), and maybe even towards the Master of the Universe Himself, who seems to have abandoned her in her old age.

  Nevertheless, she will pray! To spite them all, she will pray! Let them laugh at her—but this is the one thing that not one of them dares take away. This is hers!

  “No, I won’t let you have this!” she barks, stabbing the tabletop with her finger. “I’m not giving this up! It’s mine!”

  And quick-quick, her bloodless lips whisper the dried-out words of the prayers, which fail to refresh her soul—instead, they only exasperate her more.

  But then, abruptly, as if remembering the necessary words at long last, Soreh-Feyge raises her turbid eyes to the ceiling, and with her whole heart speaks passionately to God Himself.

  “Master of the Universe! Master of the Universe! May they all die a horrible death!”

  And she feels immediately that a stone has lifted from her heart, and everything is already much more bearable.

  A Country Girl

  (JULY 1, 1952)

  Translated by Ri J. Turner

  IT WAS RIVELEH’S idea to spend the summer on a farm. She herself had grown up on a farm, surrounded by forests and fields.

  Three years had passed since she had come to New York. She, Riva (or Riveleh, as they called her), had been married for two years—very unhappily married. For her, a country girl, marriage to a city boy was no trifle. It was just as her aunt had predicted, the New York aunt who had taken Riveleh in.

  Something had happened to Riveleh at home: a simple farm boy had courted her,
but her parents weren’t willing. Riveleh had argued and wept, but they had beguiled her with the grandeur of the city, the promise of a new life . . .

  So she, the poor relation, had come here to live with her rich aunt. She had understood on the very first day that it was a trap—a despicable trap.

  Her aunt was pleasant, hospitable. But a chill radiated from her hospitality—the chill of pity. And Riveleh could not tolerate anyone’s pity.

  The aunt tried to impress her bumpkin niece with the wonders of urban life. “You see,” she boasted, “we don’t have to milk cows here—instead, a bottle of milk pops up every morning behind the door. And do you see this pot? It cooks without water. And this one . . .”

  Riveleh looked on and thought of her home in her village: in the background the forest, in the foreground the wide meadow and the river where she used to rendezvous with her sweetheart.

  When she first arrived in the city, Riveleh was a curvaceous girl with ruddy cheeks. Her aunt took on the task of “turning her into a person.”

  “Don’t eat that, Riveleh, you’re already too fat. Here in the city, people prefer the slender look . . . Don’t sulk like that, Riveleh! Here in the city, people prefer girls who are cheerful . . .”

  In short order, Riveleh saw that her beloved auntie would just as soon be rid of her. Perhaps for that reason, she let Irving, her English teacher, give her a kiss.

  Her aunt looked thoughtful when Riveleh told her about it. Then she said, “I don’t get the impression that you two are serious.”

  But when Irving began coming over every evening, Riveleh’s aunt called her into her room “to have a chat.” She said: “You are the daughter of my only sister, and I am responsible for you. I don’t think that a match with Irving is going to bring you happiness. You are not his equal!”

  Riveleh wept. She thought to herself, “I don’t think this is an auspicious match either. But after all, I can’t say ‘Dearest Auntie, it’s you yourself who are pushing me out the door into the arms of the first man who will have me . . . ’”

  Not knowing that her words were tearing open an old wound, her aunt continued her speech. “It would have been best if you had married someone from your village!”

  That evening, Riveleh lay in her city bedroom, “equipped with all the latest conveniences,” and wept bitterly, remembering her friends from home—and one of them in particular.

  She decided to marry Irving. “He’s a good man!” she reassured herself. “I just don’t understand him that well yet. After all, he’s a city boy . . .”

  Riveleh strove with all her might to become a city girl—to lose weight, to smile constantly like her new friends, and to bake delicious pies for her husband.

  By the end of the first year, she could chatter along with the best of them, and her husband was satisfied with her. But she continued to cower before her aunt’s pitying gaze. Apparently, Riveleh’s aunt didn’t find her slenderness convincing—nor her laughter.

  In the winter months Riveleh was preoccupied with housekeeping, and her husband spent his time at work. But summers were more difficult. Irving had his summer vacation, and she, Riveleh, could think of nothing to say to him.

  “He’s a good person!” Riveleh tried to convince herself.

  She got thinner and scrawnier—not on purpose this time. It just happened.

  When the second summer came along, she was afraid it would be just as bad as the first. She longed for familiar landscapes—she remembered the sound of birdsong in the early summer mornings, and the way the fragrance of the forest permeated everything, and the cascade of pinecones falling from the trees . . .

  She cried silently, out of earshot of her city husband. He would call her a “country girl,” the way he did anytime he was dissatisfied with something about her.

  And Riveleh reflected upon how fortune had deceived her. Lady Luck had offered her a fine, noble person in the form of the peasant boy who had stirred her first womanly feelings. But in the end, the fickle Lady had swapped him for another. (Oh, how thrilled her country parents were by her “good fortune”!) This second man played a skillful game of tennis and baseball, but—Riveleh admitted it to herself for the first time—he was an utter bore.

  “What shall I do? What shall I do?” Riveleh wrung her hands. Just then, an idea flashed into her mind. Why not travel with him to a farm? On a farm they would understand each other better, they would get closer to each other, deep in the woods, next to a murmuring brook . . .

  So they went. They went to a farm that he knew of, not far from New York City.

  How Riveleh’s heart pounded when they arrived at the farm! How many sweet memories rushed through her mind! There were the cows! Dear, sweet cows! She, Riveleh, had gone three years without seeing a cow. What a darling cow! And so similar to her old cows at home, my God! A rooster was crowing somewhere . . .

  “And here we are!” said Irving, leading her to a house. A group of people were sitting on the porch. The men were in short trousers and the women sported knickers—and the whole group was playing cards.

  Everyone greeted Irving as one of the gang, and the hosts were overjoyed to see him—not least the farmer’s daughter, a tall girl with brightly painted lips.

  Riveleh looked around: “So . . . where is the brook?” she asked Irving.

  “The brook? Right! . . . But you can only get there in a car!”

  “And the forest? Where is it?”

  “The forest? The forest is back in your old village!” he laughed. “Go on, put on an outfit like the ones they’re wearing. This crowd doesn’t like country styles.”

  A few days passed. Tennis! Ball! Cards! Irving found it all terribly exciting, and steered the farmer’s daughter around the place right under Riveleh’s nose. Riveleh escaped to the barnyard every chance she got, to visit the cows and the chickens. There she wept silently—she mourned the past and she mourned her present loneliness. She was a stranger, even more so here than in the city.

  As she reminisced, the desire to flee overtook her—to flee back as soon as possible, to flee home.

  Riveleh decided to write to her aunt. She wrote a long letter, acknowledging that her aunt had been right, she should not have married Irving. She was unhappy, and would her aunt please take pity on her and explain how to recover her freedom—how to separate from her husband?

  Her aunt answered with a long letter of her own. She wrote quite affectionately that she, Riveleh, was the daughter of her only sister, and therefore the responsibility for Riveleh’s good fortune lay upon her shoulders. To recover her freedom was impossible: it would be too expensive. Thus wrote her aunt. She, Riveleh, must accustom herself to her new life and forget all this foolishness. And if Riveleh didn’t like it there on the farm, she, the aunt, could recommend another place with more conveniences. There they had a special porch for sunbathing, and every room was equipped with hot and cold running water. It would be just like being in the city . . .

  To Go, or Not to Go?

  (OCTOBER 12, 1960)

  Translated by Ri J. Turner

  LIBBY WAS IN a fix.

  It was the first time in her eighteen years of life that she had been asked on a date. The date was supposed to be in a bachelor pad down a back alley. No one could be allowed to find out about it—not Papa, not Mama, not her older sister. Especially not her older sister!

  The day drew nearer, and Libby had not yet decided: should she go or not go?

  She wanted to go so badly! For the first time in her life, she wanted to be alone with a boy—with Billy, as she liked to call her twenty-two-year-old beau.

  She felt she would die from the anguish of thinking about it. What should she do? If she went, they’d certainly kiss and neck in a secret corner, hidden from the rest of the world. But she was afraid. She was afraid of all of it: What if she met an acquaintance on the stairs? What if her parents were to find out? What if her older sister were to guess?

  Her older sister! On the morning of that
fateful day, she looked at Libby with suspicion in her eyes.

  “How come you’re so dressed up?”

  “I’m not dressed up!” Libby’s skin mottled white and red. “Quite the opposite! I’m . . .”

  “Indeed, the opposite?” Her sister’s eyes pierced her like cold daggers. After all, the two of them shared a room, and she, Libby, had nowhere to escape from her sister’s severe gaze.

  “Why aren’t you eating? Are you ill?” Her mother felt her forehead at dinnertime. And her father muttered into his plate, “What do you expect? She runs around for days on end, scarcely showing her face at home.”

  Libby’s heart sank. She had been on the verge of asking permission to “see a movie with her girlfriends” that evening . . .

  What should she do? Her throat filled with suppressed tears. How unlucky she was!

  The minutes ticked away, faster and faster. Soon it would be evening . . . But suddenly a strange calm descended upon her. Well, it wasn’t meant to be, apparently. Maybe it was better this way? She had heard so much from her mother—and in a different vein, from her older sister—about the kinds of misfortunes that can happen to girls when they aren’t cautious and visit fellows in their apartments. She got chills thinking about it—all those ruined young women!

  Not meant to be! Oh well . . . so she would stay at home, lie down on the sofa to read a book. The appointed moment would pass, and that would be the end of it. It wasn’t meant to be!

  Libby lay down on the sofa, picked up a book, and began to read. But Billy’s face swam up between the lines. The letters looked like his eyes, and the lines of text—his whiskers. Her heart pined for the lost kisses.

  She peeked over at her sister, who was lying on her bed, also reading. Phooey, if not for her sister!

  But then she had an idea. What if, for example, her sister were to fall asleep? Just a little longer staring at her book, and she surely would! “Sleep! Sleep!” Libby sent the thought at her sister.