Ellis Island: Three Novels
Page 10
“You can stay and help us,” Leah said.
“That’s women’s work,” Nessin complained. He made a dash out the door, and they could hear his footsteps clattering down the stairs.
With an indulgent shrug Leah searched through one of the family’s bundles of clothing and pulled out two aprons, handing one to Rebekah. They tied them over their long skirts, rolled up their sleeves, and got to work.
By the time they had finished, the walls, the floors, and the kitchen furnishings reeked with the acid smell of lye soap, but everything was spotlessly clean.
Anna, round as a dumpling squeezed in at the middle, appeared bearing an iron pot filled with a fragrant mixture of chicken and vegetables. Squeaking with cries of delight, she hurried to the kitchen, put down the pot, and threw her arms around Leah. “Oh, how glad I am you’re here!” she exclaimed and burst into tears.
Anna swept Sofia close, too, laughing with her, sobbing, talking, and snuffling. “Come here, Rebekah! Rebekah, my darling!” Aunt Anna shouted, and Rebekah joined the hugging, remembering with happiness how she had always loved her aunt.
Anna finally drew away. “We have much to talk about,” she said, “but there are other things to bring over—dishes and utensils and challah bread, fresh out of the oven, and a potato kugel, especially for little Sofia! Come with me. You can all carry something.”
By the time they returned to their flat, Elias and Jacob had returned. Nothing was said about the success of their errand, but both men glowed with such expressions of joy and satisfaction that Rebekah knew one problem had been solved.
It was not until the meal was finished that Anna suddenly looked surprised and asked, “Here we have been talking and talking, and I haven’t stopped to ask, where is Nessin?”
“He went out to look at the neighborhood,” Leah said. “If the food is cold when he comes in to eat, it’s nobody’s fault but his own.”
Anna smiled. “Nessin must be nearly grown,” she began. “Is he still getting in and out of mischief?”
Just then Avir appeared in the doorway, his outdoor hat on his head. “Elias,” he said, “you and I are going to talk to some men who have used furniture for sale, and I have heard where we can get two good, used Singer sewing machines to add to your own.”
As Elias quickly stood, wiping his mouth on his napkin, Avir said to his wife, “You and Leah will have time to talk later tonight, Anna. Right now you’re needed to lend a hand with the finishing on some coats.”
Anna jumped to her feet even faster than Elias had, and Rebekah watched the three of them leave. There was such a constant demand with the business that already she resented it. Life shouldn’t be all work. There should be time to think, to study, to dream. She thought she sounded like her grandfather and hoped he was safe.
“Let me tell you what happened,” Jacob said in a rush of excitement. “They were very helpful at the HIAS office. They sent us to the synagogue on East Broadway to speak with a Rebbe Schwartz. I am enrolled in his yeshiva and will start my studies with him on Monday. The cost is much less than Papa had thought it would be.”
He waited until Rebekah and Leah were through shrieking and hugging him, and said, “The people of HIAS told us about other schools, too. There is a public school for younger children less than six blocks away, where Sofia can be enrolled. In New York children must be sent to school. And, nearby, there is a Hebrew school she can attend later in the afternoon. Nessin can study English in evening classes, and when he’s ready to pass his exams for all his subjects in English, he can enroll in City College.”
Leah sucked in her breath. “How can we possibly manage the expense of all this study?”
“Mama,” Jacob said, “the public schools in this country are free! The classes at the center are free for those who otherwise couldn’t afford them. And the Hebrew school for Sofia will cost just a few pennies a week.”
Free! Rebekah thought. She hadn’t dared to dream that classes would be free!
Leah put her hands to her cheeks. “All this schooling can’t be possible, Jacob. It is a luxury even for free right now. Avir has contracted for a great deal of work, and we must do it.”
“But not Sofia!” Rebekah cried, her heart hammering with excitement. “And Nessin’s school would meet in the evening, not during the day!”
“That’s right, Mama,” Jacob said.
Swept up in her children’s excitement, her eyes sparkling, and her cheeks reddening, Leah said, “Well, then, we will see that Nessin takes evening classes and Sofia is enrolled in public school. Hebrew School will come later. Your father and I need to think, to plan. This is all happening too fast.”
“Will there be school for me, Mama?” Rebekah clasped her hands together tightly under her chin and held her breath, hoping … hoping …
Leah’s eyes widened. “You, Rebekah? But you are a fifteen-year-old girl—nearly grown. The schools are for young men and children.”
Rebekah reached for her mother’s hands and held them. “Mama, I want an education more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my whole life. I want to be a teacher. Someday I want to go to college, too—to the City College Jacob told us about …”
Jacob interrupted. “City College is for males only.”
Rebekah begged, “Please, Mama? Please say I can go to evening classes with Nessin and prepare for training to become a teacher.”
The amazement in Leah’s expression faded, and she stared at Rebekah with bewilderment and sorrow. “Rebekah,” she said, “what are you thinking of? We will all be working long hours. How can you be so selfish that you’d ask your parents to spend money on an education for you? In a few years you’ll marry and raise children, and an education would be nothing but a useless waste of money.”
“No!” Rebekah cried as her dream became even more important. “I’ll need an education.” She fought to regain control and added in a calmer voice, “Even if someday I do decide to marry and raise a family, I’d be a better wife and mother if I had an education.”
Leah’s eyes narrowed with hurt, and Rebekah winced, knowing there was nothing she could say to repair her heedless words.
“I don’t believe what I am hearing from my own daughter,” Leah answered. “If you decide to marry? If you marry? Of course you will marry when your father and I think it is the proper time to arrange it. Would you want to spend your life dependent on your brother Nessin, living in his home and helping his wife as a penniless old maid who had to be taken care of?”
Rebekah spoke quietly, aware that her mother would be upset. “With an education I wouldn’t have to be taken care of, Mama. If I were a teacher I could support myself and even help give money to you and Papa.”
Leah struggled to her feet, angrily smoothing down her skirts as she walked away from the table. “You don’t know what you are talking about,” she said. “I don’t know where you got such foolish ideas. I don’t want to hear any more of this talk.”
“But, Mama …”
“Hush, Rebekah. I have too much on my mind. You have always been my good girl. Don’t turn on me now.”
“Could we talk later?”
“Very well, later. We will talk about it at some time in the future.”
Rebekah nodded. Perhaps nothing she could say at this time would change her mother’s mind, but she was determined not to give up.
At that moment the door burst open, and Nessin thundered through the flat and into the kitchen. His collar was torn, his hair hung over his forehead, his yarmulke was gone, and a large bruise colored his chin.
Leah gasped and cried, “Nessin! What has happened to you?”
“Italians,” Nessin answered. He turned on the water spigot and held his head under it. Then he shook his hair, as though he were a puppy, and groped for a hand towel to dry his face.
“What is that supposed to mean?” Leah demanded. “You have been fighting, haven’t you?”
“I had to,” Nessin said, “or a gang might have killed me
.”
“Where did this happen?” Jacob asked. He handed a towel to his brother.
“In their ghetto,” Nessin answered. His glance shifted from Jacob to Leah. “I was just walking, just looking around. I didn’t know there were boundaries—Jews in one place, Italians in another, Irish over there. But there are, and I walked into a street owned by an Italian gang, and they chased me.” He rubbed his chin. “They were fast, too. Faster than I was.”
“You were alone?” Jacob asked.
“At first, but I was almost back in Jewish territory so I began yelling in Yiddish, and a couple of boys heard, and they came to help me.” For the first time Nessin smiled, and he rubbed the knuckles of his right hand. “We put up a good fight, and some of them are going to remember it.”
“Ach!” Leah cried. “There will be no more fighting!”
“Not unless they ask for it by coming into our territory,” Nessin insisted. “Now I’ve got friends here, and we’ll look out for each other.”
“You’re in a gang?” Jacob asked quietly. He stopped abruptly as Nessin gave him a warning look, but Leah was so upset she hadn’t heard Jacob.
“Nessin! Listen to me!” his mother demanded. “I said there will be no more fighting, and I meant it.”
“But if I have to defend myself …”
“You will not have to defend yourself if you are busy with work during the day and lessons in the evening,” she said. “Pay attention and Jacob will tell you about the night-school classes and a place called City College.”
Nessin listened, but he didn’t look pleased. When Jacob had finished, Nessin muttered, “Work all day and school all night? I’ve got to have some time for fun.”
Oh, why couldn’t Nessin have been the girl and I have been the boy, so that I could have the education he doesn’t want? Rebekah wondered. It isn’t fair!
“Mama,” Jacob said as he darted a pointed glance at Rebekah, “when are you and Rebekah going shopping for food?”
“Food!” Leah said, her mind diverted to a more immediate problem. “Of course we must buy food, and candles, and wine for Shabbas. There is supper to prepare, bread to bake …” For a moment her eyes narrowed with fear, and she asked, “Rebekah, you can speak English, but do you think you can deal with the merchants? How will we know if their prices are fair? What if they try to cheat us?”
Rebekah took her mother’s hand. Leah had always been secure in knowing how to take care of her family, but it was in a country where she understood the customs and the language.
“It’s all right, Mama,” Rebekah said. “The two of us will manage. We may make a few mistakes, but it won’t take long for us to learn the merchants’ ways.”
Only a few minutes later Rebekah and her mother had changed into street clothes, added their shawls and kerchiefs, and begun their walk to Hester Street.
As they dove into the crowded cluster of carts and shops Rebekah stopped to look at the bright-colored fruit in the nearest stalls. A large bunch of bananas lay in a golden mound. “I wonder what those taste like,” she said.
“Don’t bother to wonder,” Leah said as she nervously eyed the shouting, clamoring people around them. “They’re strange-looking things. No matter what Avir said, they may not be kosher.”
The owner of the cart turned from a customer and answered in Yiddish, “Kosher? Since when haven’t bananas been kosher?”
Leah gulped in surprise, then stammered, “You speak Yiddish.”
The man made a wide sweep with both arms and said, “Everyone here is Yiddish. What do you expect, you come to a Yiddish community? You are from Romania? Poland? Never had a banana? Buy bananas. You’ll like them. Buy potatoes. I’ll give you the lowest price on potatoes.”
“How much are your potatoes?” Leah countered and when he told her she answered, “I’ll look around.”
“My prices are lowest. I’ll match any other price you’re offered,” he insisted, and the two of them entered into a spirited discussion of the prices of not only potatoes, but onions, cabbage, and carrots.
When the peddler finally countered with a final price and insisted he could go no lower, Leah turned to Rebekah and asked, “How much would this American money be at home?”
At home. Rebekah’s throat tightened as the words called up a picture of the marketplace, of her mother’s heaped market basket, and the warmth of the kitchen as her purchases were changed into mouthwatering stews and broths and fragrant loaves of bread. She and Chava would beg for a taste of bread, fresh from the oven and … Oh, how she longed for her friend Chava and for the comfort of her childhood home.
“Rebekah?” her mother repeated, and Rebekah hurried to translate the amount.
Leah nodded with satisfaction, handed Rebekah the shopping money—instructing her to pay—and headed toward a store in which plucked and drawn chickens, their feet tied with string, hung in the window as a sign they were kosher.
Rebekah stuffed the produce in the large market basket they had borrowed from Anna and hurried after her mother.
“Shopping here is not that hard,” Leah said and chuckled. “I was so afraid everyone would be speaking English.”
“Mama, you won’t do all your shopping here,” Rebekah said. “There are other stores in which people will speak English.”
Leah gave a toss of one hand. “There are enough shops in this place where people speak the language I speak. Why should I struggle to learn a language that is hard for me to learn?”
“English is the language of this country, Mama,” Rebekah protested. “Since we are going to live here, you’ll want to learn the language.”
“Yiddish is the language I know,” Leah insisted. She briskly stepped ahead, entered the shop with the chickens in the window, and—with confidence—launched into a discussion in Yiddish. She was obviously pleased when the butcher understood her and replied with a smile.
Rebekah fought back her irritation, reminding herself that her family had been in the United States only a short while, and her mother was still afraid of the differences in their way of living.
Rebekah glanced around the shop at the women who dressed exactly as they had in their former countries. This wasn’t what Rebekah wanted. She thought of the women she had seen wearing hats and fitted skirts and nipped-in jackets. Was that what university students wore? She realized she hadn’t left her country to come to a new one and follow the old ways.
By ten that night a motley collection of furniture and equipment had been delivered to the Levinskys’ flat. Lumpy, plush-upholstered, horsehair-stuffed sofas and chairs; hard, straight-backed wooden chairs; a cutting table; sewing tables; and three sewing machines were in place in the living room. On the table were piled spools of black thread, scissors, pins, and the precut pieces that would be sewn together for the boys’ pants. A badly weathered armoire in which to hang clothes and a wooden bedstead had been put into each of the two bedrooms, and rope lacings had been strung between the planked sides of the beds to support their thin mattresses of cotton batting.
“I wish I had my feather bed,” Sofia murmured.
“Be glad for what you do have,” Leah told her. “Your brothers will have to sleep on the sofas.”
Uncle Avir burst in to wish them a good night’s rest and gave them an alarm clock.
“There will be no charge for the clock,” Avir said, proud of his generosity. “If you set it for five, you’ll have time to eat breakfast before starting work. I have assigned two of my workers—brothers from Poland—to you from now on. They’ll arrive at six each morning, and on the first day they’ll make sure you understand the assembly procedure.”
“I understand what you told me,” Elias said, “but I have a suggestion.” He held up two of the pieces that would be joined to make a pair of pants. “The seams will lie flatter and hold much longer if we sew double French seams instead of single, unfinished seams.”
“Nonsense! French seams would be a waste of time and money!” Avir said.
“In this case your customer is only a merchandiser who will sell these pants in his stores. He wants a profit, and we want a profit. And as far as the boys who wear these pants, they’ll never be able to tell you if they’re satisfied or not, because you’ll never see them. It’s important that you do things as I’ve explained, Elias, so we can finish the order by the end of the week. We won’t be paid until after the work is done. Do you understand?”
Elias nodded, and Avir left them with another wish to sleep well.
“I am a tailor,” Elias murmured, as though he were speaking to himself, “not someone who carelessly stitches a cheap pair of pants. I have always enjoyed working with fabrics of quality. Avir is the one who doesn’t understand.” He studied the rough material that was still in his hands, and his face twisted into a look of disgust.
Long after Rebekah had spread a pair of Leah’s feather comforters on one of the mattresses, tucked Sofia in between them, and climbed in next to her, she thought of what her father had said. None of us really understands any of the others, she thought. At least, no one understands me and what I want.
But she remembered that somewhere in New York City there was someone who had understood. Aaron Mirsch. She and Aaron had promised each other to work to make their wishes come true. Rebekah crooked the little finger of her right hand and could almost feel the pressure of Aaron’s finger against it.
“All right, Aaron,” Rebekah whispered into her pillow. “If there’s a way, I’m going to find it.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE loud jangling of the alarm in her parents’ room woke Rebekah, and she staggered out of bed, dressing quickly. In the dim early morning light, she took her turn at using the privy in the alley in back of the house and washing her face and hands in the basin Leah had set up at one end of the kitchen.