Goldie finished peeling her potato, then reached for another and another. After she added egg and flour and onion to the bowl of chopped potatoes, she grabbed Sylvia’s purse from the kitchen table, returned to her window chair, and zipped the envelope into the side compartment of her sister’s bag. She watched Hannah and Sylvia emerge from behind the big slide in the middle of the park; Sylvia put out her hand, and Hannah grabbed it. From the way they tilted their heads, Goldie knew they were sharing a laugh, a good giggle. And nobody knew better than Goldie how warm it felt on the inside of Sylvia’s laughter.
September 1935
Goldie
Goldie thought she might plotz if she had to wait one more second to tell Sylvia the big news. Every few minutes, she peered out her living room window, waiting for her sister to come help her prepare her first Rosh Hashanah feast.
She fluffed her new chair, delivered fresh from Zellen’s Furniture Store just in time for this important lunch. If Sylvia ever got here, she would help whip up cabbage rolls, three kinds of kugel, brisket, and of course Mama’s icebox cake. The men would eat until their paunches strained against their belts, and the aunties would squirm in their girdles, pledging to eat bread and water for days after the meal. But Goldie and Hyman wouldn’t announce their news to the family, not yet, too soon.
She could see everything from the new chair, including willowy Sylvia finally waltzing down the street. Rays of sunshine poked through an umbrella of elm trees, catching the reds and golds in her hair as she moved in and out of the light. Her narrow shoulders drooped from lugging shopping bags brimming with last-minute items Goldie had asked her to pick up at Saltzberg’s.
Marshall Plotkin broke from a game of kick-the-can to give Sylvia a big hello. She used to babysit for half the boys on the west side of Milwaukee before she married that Irving. Back then, Goldie didn’t share her sister’s enthusiasm for children; she preferred to meet her girlfriends at Walgreen’s to gossip over chocolate phosphates and French fries. But now, everything had changed. Goldie was going to be a mother.
Zelda Greenberg waddled out of the bottom half of Goldie and Hyman’s duplex and stopped Sylvia to look into her grocery bags. Sylvia, too polite to end the conversation, smiled and nodded for what seemed like hours while Zelda nattered on, probably kvetching about her corns; she was always kvetching about something.
By the time Sylvia let herself into the kitchen, Goldie’s impatience had gotten the better of her. She got up, fluffed the indentation of her body from the chair, and walked toward the kitchen.
“You’re too nice to Zelda Greenberg, she probably asked you how much you paid Saltzberg for the groceries. She’s got real nose trouble,” Goldie said as she pulled a place setting for Zelda from the breakfront in her dining room. Calmer now that her sister was here, she savored the anticipation of sharing her secret, just like she used to love sharing a string of black licorice at the matinee.
Sylvia retrieved a pound of ground beef and a bunch of parsley from a shopping bag and placed them on Goldie’s kitchen table. “Isn’t collecting strays what you’re supposed to do on Rosh Hashanah?” She started giggling; her laughter, thick as honey, filled the room.
“What? What’s funny?”
“Birdie Finkelstein’s cement cakes.”
Goldie couldn’t contain her smile; she could never stay sore at Sylvia for long. “Mama said Birdie dropped one of her honey cakes on her foot and broke her toe.”
Goldie and Sylvia shared a good laugh.
“I’ve got a surprise for you.” Sylvia set a bowl on the counter. “From my garden.”
“A farmer we’ve got in the family.” Goldie peeled away the tinfoil and nearly gasped at the mound of perfectly shaped raspberries. “We’ll put them in the applesauce.”
“Whatever you like.” Sylvia’s eyes — Mama’s eyes, gray and slightly bulging — shone with pride.
Goldie couldn’t hold in her news any longer; she patted her belly and smiled big. “You’re not the only one with a surprise.”
Sylvia paused for a second, and then her eyes widened and she pulled Goldie to her body and hugged her tight. “Mazel tov, mazel tov.” She sniffled.
Tears of joy. This was exactly how Goldie wanted it to be when she told her sister she had killed the rabbit. She reached deep into the pocket of her housedress and pulled out the crisp white handkerchief Sylvia had given her for her last birthday.
Sylvia examined the embroidered pink roses and inscription: Always, Sylvia. “It’s too pretty to use.”
“Go ahead, blow already. We’ve got work to do.”
Sylvia blotted her upper lip, leaving a small dot of pink lipstick. “I’ll take it home and wash.”
Neither sister would speak another word about the baby. Mama had always warned them that gloating, or even discussing their good fortune, was a sure way to attract the evil eye, especially when it came to babies. Goldie used to think this was mishegas from the old country, but best to be careful anyway. She certainly wouldn’t dare mention Grandma Hannah’s sterling silver baby spoon, smuggled from Minsk. Goldie had always figured that Sylvia would have the first baby because she was older, so she’d get the spoon first, but now Mama would give Goldie the spoon after the first baby came, of course, and she and Sylvia would pass it between them. Like Grandma Hannah and Mama, like Goldie and Sylvia, all the babies in the family would take their first bites from this treasure.
Goldie took her sister’s cool hand. “Come, let’s start on the cabbage rolls already. Once Hyman comes home, he’ll want what to eat, and that will be that.” She gave Sylvia a head of cabbage and plopped the ground beef in a cast-iron skillet.
“How many people will we be?” Sylvia asked, cutting out the core of the cabbage with a long knife.
“You and Irving made twelve, and now Nosy Pants Zelda, that’s thirteen.”
Sylvia cast her eyes down and began separating cabbage leaves. “Irving can’t…Irving’s not coming.”
“What?” Goldie put her hands on her hips, steadying herself against a fresh wave of Irving anger.
Sylvia smoothed out the cabbage leaves with her slender fingers. “His boss don’t know from Rosh Hashanah.” She spooned ground beef into the flattened leaves and folded them into envelopes.
“Twelve, then. One batch will be plenty.” Goldie pursed her lips as she retrieved a large pot from her bottom cabinet. “Here, help me with the sauce.” She handed Sylvia two cans of tomatoes and a can opener.
Sylvia stared at the beige linoleum tiles and shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “I won’t be coming either. Irving doesn’t want I should go by myself.”
Goldie felt like Sylvia had slapped her. How could her own sister not show for her first Rosh Hashanah feast? A thick silence hung between them as Goldie diced an onion. The smell tore through the kitchen like a brush fire.
Sylvia minced garlic and parsley, passing the correct amount of each ingredient to Goldie, as both sisters had always done for their mother when she cooked and baked.
“Keep stirring. It’s too gloppy. I’ll be back in a minute,” Goldie said, and handed her wooden spoon over to Sylvia.
Sitting on the sliver between the twin beds she and Hyman had pushed together to make their queen, Goldie pondered her embarrassment of riches: a baby on the way, Mama’s first grandchild to eat from Grandma Hannah’s spoon, a breadwinner like Hyman who made a good living even during a depression and remembered to buy his wife a box of chocolates for her birthday, and now the honor of preparing Rosh Hashanah lunch. What did Sylvia have? A no-goodnik Irving. Who cared if he looked like Errol Flynn? He liked his schnapps too much, and his “deals.” He was probably in trouble again, didn’t want to face Uncle Seymour. Probably owed him money.
It had always been this way with scrawny Sylvia. Mama had told Goldie that she was the strong one and that she had to watch out for Sylvia. In kindergarten, Goldie — just a grade behind Sylvia — beat Sari Coppel up for calling her sister Bug Eyes and
teasing her about her slight lisp. Mama scolded Goldie for fighting, but Goldie knew that she didn’t really mean it. She never felt more proud of herself than when she fought her sister’s battles.
She stuck her hand under Hyman’s mattress and pulled out her knippel. So the baby wouldn’t have the fanciest buggy on Fifty-first Street. An ugly memory jumped into Goldie’s head. The one time Hyman said that Irving might actually get rich from one of his “deals,” something to do with liquor. Goldie hadn’t felt happy for her sister at all.
She returned to the kitchen to find Sylvia arranging cabbage rolls in a pan.
“That’s a nice batch,” she said, and slid the brown envelope into the pocket of her sister’s dress.
“I…we…can’t.” Sylvia bit her lip.
“Mahjongg. You know I’m a big shot with the tiles. Come. Brew a cup of coffee for the icebox cake.”
“Irving is picking me up in a few minutes. I’ll make the cake at my house and bring it over.”
“A few minutes?” Goldie’s heart sank again. This was not turning out anything like she had planned. Her morning with Sylvia was ruined, thanks to Irving.
“Maybe I can come for Rosh Hashanah. I’ll ask again,” Sylvia offered.
Goldie shrugged.
Sylvia touched her index finger lightly against Goldie’s belly. “Mazel tov,” she said again, and tears sprang to her eyes.
In spite of her disappointment, Goldie was moved. She ran hot water over the greasy skillet until she could no longer hear Sylvia’s heels clicking against the linoleum steps that led to the landing of the duplex. Wiping her hands on a towel, she returned to her new chair and peeked out the window. Irving stood at the gate, grinning at Sylvia. So cocky, that one. And too handsome. Sylvia caressed Irving’s cheek with one hand and with the other stuffed the fat envelope into the breast pocket of his finely tailored suit. He slipped his arm around her shoulders, which now drooped under the weight of a new debt.
September 1937
Sylvia
Sylvia’s feet swelled in her pumps — Irving didn’t approve of those frumpy tie-up shoes, even for a cooking day — as she trekked an extra seven blocks to buy bananas for Goldie’s toddler, Simon, along with a few “while you’re there pick me up some…” items. The handles of her shopping bags left red creases in her fingers, and her shoulders ached.
Even before she married a man who couldn’t afford to spend two months of grocery money on a brisket, Sylvia had known that she would never make Rosh Hashanah, even though she was the eldest. Let Goldie have the spotlight — she’d practically begged Mama to allow her to recite all four questions the first Passover she knew how to read. Sylvia’s stomach burned, though, when she thought about Goldie’s first Rosh Hashanah feast, and how she’d schlepped to Saltzberg’s when she should have stayed in bed recovering from her miss. So much blood she’d lost. Ten weeks, she figured from the womanly calendar she kept in her jewelry box. She had thought about telling Goldie, but how could she? Goldie was bursting with her own news; she was carrying little Simon. Sylvia was happy for her sister, but God strike her dead for not being able to bear Goldie’s big smiles over her perfect kugels and the new life growing inside her. She’d fasted for an extra hour that Yom Kippur for lying to her sister about Irving making her stay home from the lunch.
Rosh Hashanah used to be Sylvia’s favorite holiday. Mama and her sisters would begin planning the menu the minute Uncle Seymour wolfed down the last Passover macaroon. And then, the week before the first night of Rosh Hashanah, Sylvia would help her mother polish the silver, wiping the metal until it turned shiny. She loved presenting Mama with a sparkling kiddush cup or candlestick.
Sylvia caressed the slender handle of the spoon in her pocket; its metal ridge moved up and down against her leg as she walked. Goldie was expecting her second child on Thanksgiving Day, and Sylvia knew she should have given her sister Grandma Hannah’s baby spoon for Simon. Soon Sylvia would turn thirty, too old for babies. Besides, Irving said no more trying; two accidents, that was enough. He sent his girl Katie Flanagan from the office to teach Sylvia about the rhythm method. The nerve. She knew he used to shtup Katie before he and Sylvia got serious. She swallowed her humiliation, felt it lodge in her stomach, where Dr. Klein told her that an ulcer was forming.
“Heads up, Sammy!” The sound of Marshall Plotkin’s man-boy voice interrupted her thoughts. She watched him throw a baseball to one of his friends. So big they’d gotten. Marshall would be embarrassed if the lady who used to wipe his tush bothered him when he was with his friends, although she did catch his eye and smile.
She glanced up through the elm trees, and sure enough Goldie was waiting at her post, her fancy chair, with Simon on her lap. Just to utz her little sister, Sylvia gave Goldie’s downstairs neighbor, Zelda Greenberg, an extra-warm smile, and poor widowed Zelda, whom Goldie had no patience for, climbed all over her. Zelda wasn’t so bad. Sylvia wanted to offer to help her pluck her eyebrows; she’d shaped one so oddly that it always looked raised.
“Nu, Sylvia, that sister of yours got you running around town?” Zelda glanced inside Sylvia’s shopping bags and then snuck a quick peek at Sylvia’s flat belly, her questioning eyebrow arching further toward the top of her head.
“Happy New Year to you, Zelda.” Sylvia climbed up the steps to Goldie’s door, now wanting to be rid of Zelda altogether.
Goldie greeted her sister with an extra place setting for Zelda in her hands. “Did she at least offer to bring anything this year?”
“You can invite her if you want.” Sylvia spoke without emotion. The last thing she needed was Zelda staring at her belly all afternoon.
Goldie gave her a look but said nothing.
“Come here, my little Simon.” Sylvia plunked down her bags and took her nephew in her arms. “I brought you a banana.”
Goldie rubbed her belly. “I’m going to put him down for his nap.”
“Go nap yourself. Tell me what’s left to make.”
When Sylvia opened the Frigidaire to put away the groceries, she saw that Goldie had already prepared the cabbage rolls, kugels, and briskets. What was she trying to prove, that one?
Goldie reappeared in the kitchen and smiled sheepishly. “In case the baby should come early. I’m already so big; I had to take off my rings.” She held up her fingers, normally fleshy, now as swollen as little kishkes.
Sylvia shook her head, but she couldn’t help feeling a surge of love toward her sister. So pigheaded and strong and generous. Too often these warm feelings escaped through what Dr. Klein called “the hole” in her stomach, making room for jealousy over Goldie’s babies and her sweet, honest Hyman Solonsky. Sylvia could never have married an immigrant, much less someone with pockmarks and an underbite. And so serious! He worked like an animal selling insurance. His debit routes were successful because he had this way of listening to a person like what they said was important, and he did right by Goldie, and that was what mattered.
“Come, I haven’t made the icebox cake yet.” Goldie nodded toward the Frigidaire.
“It’s a good day to make meringue, not too humid.”
“You got eggs?” Goldie asked just as Simon started to cry.
“Go. I’ll start the cake.”
Sylvia took the spoon out of her pocket. She had shined it up good for Goldie, rubbing her felt cloth around the bowl — just big enough to fit into a baby’s little pink mouth — then down the long, skinny neck to the handle, where she slid the cloth onto the engraved Hebrew letter hey, the first letter in Grandma Hannah’s name. She could practically hear her mother’s words: “Your grandmother Hannah, allah vashalom, smuggled this in her petticoats. It’s yours, for your baby.” She’d opened Sylvia’s hand and placed the spoon in her palm. But that was before Goldie’s pregnancy and the rhythm method and Katie Flanagan and Sylvia’s discovery that Irving didn’t want to work for anything, even a baby. Mama died before she found out that Goldie was pregnant with Simon, probably assuming that
Sylvia would eventually bear her a grandchild. Better that Mama not know from her daughter’s trouble.
Sylvia stuffed the spoon back into her pocket, took out Mama’s old green mixing bowl, and began pulling ingredients from Goldie’s cupboards: flour, sugar, vanilla, chocolate, soda. The hand grater she used to sliver the chocolate dug into her fingers, already sore from lugging the shopping bags. When Goldie came in and rested a warm hand on Sylvia’s back, Sylvia caught a whiff of the pickled herring on her sister’s breath and Simon’s toddler drool on her clothes; the smells were strong, yet innocent, just like Goldie. Her face, normally heart-shaped and full, looked doughy and red. The corner of a brown envelope poked out of the pocket of her housedress.
Sylvia thought about the yellow silk shift she’d seen in the window of Gimbel’s and how perfect it would look for the holidays with the matching hat and bag. Or they could buy a new davenport; the springs of their pullout were practically bruising her thin legs every time she sat down. But she didn’t have the nerve to make herself a knippel; she knew she would slip the money into Irving’s pocket, next to a napkin with some tootsie’s lipstick kiss. She’d pretend that the money just found its way there, that this endless borrowing didn’t cost her. In blood. And for a while he would make her feel like his Sylvie again.
She looked away when Goldie slipped the envelope into Sylvia’s pocketbook. Part of her wanted to tell Goldie that she was doing just fine, thank you very much, and that she didn’t need her sister’s charity, and that Goldie could run her own errands from now on. But out of the corner of her eye, she also noticed that the envelope looked a little slimmer than usual.
Sylvia fought the urge to assure Goldie that Irving had a big deal cooking and he’d pay her back soon. She slid her left hand into the pocket of her dress, burrowing her fingers deep into the satin lining to stroke the spoon, and reached for the sifter with her right; the flour fell like snow into the mixing bowl, green as Katie Flanagan’s eyes.
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