“Making pockets, Chanah,” my father said, “it’s not the same like cutting jazz bows.”
“How do you know till you give it a try?” my mother said. “Pockets is with tveet. Jazz bows is with silk. It’s both cloth. All you have to do is with the cutting knife, you follow the chalk marks. Here.”
My mother picked up one of those ugly knives I had seen on the cutting tables of bankrupt Seventh Avenue dress firms to which the staff of Maurice Saltzman & Company was sent almost daily to audit the records for the receiver. My mother thrust the knife at my father. He winced back in the wheelchair, shoved out both hands as though to ward off an assassination attack, and managed to seize the black bone centerpiece with both hands.
“Then like this,” my mother said. “Watch.”
She leaned over the cutting table. I noticed there was a row of nails set in the wood all along the top edge of the plank and another set in along the bottom edge. The nails stood about two inches up from the wood. Stretched tight between the nails at the top and the nails at the bottom was a series of strings dividing the thick pad of silk into a sort of miniature football gridiron.
“These things here, these cords,” my mother said. “I rubbed them with chalk. Watch.” Delicately, with thumb and forefinger, she lifted one of the tightly drawn pieces of string. When it had come up from the silk about two inches, she allowed the string to snap back to the silk. A small puff of chalk dust rose in the air. My mother lifted the string again and held it in the air so my father could see what had happened. The silk was now marked by a neat white line running from the nail at the top of the cutting board to the nail at the bottom.
“What you do,” my mother said, “you snap all these cords, one by one, until the whole silk it’s marked with straight lines. Then with the knife you start cutting, one line at a time. When you finish with the cutting, I take the cut pieces over here.” She went to the Singer and tapped the small nickel-plated hand wheel. “I sew them into the long belts, the little pockets, for the women when they come to pick them up to take them home for ‘turning.’ It’s easy,” my mother said. “You cut. I sew.”
My father looked around the room.
“Yesterday it was a place to eat on Friday night,” he said. “Today it’s a factory.”
“From eating on Friday night,” my mother said, “you don’t get rich.”
My father looked down at the ugly knife in his lap. When his head came up, his cheeks looked a little more shrunken. When he spoke, he sounded a little weaker.
“On Friday night,” he said. “The candles. Where will you bentsh licht?”
“It doesn’t say in the Torah God will throw you out of heaven if you light the Shabbes candles in the kitchen,” my mother said. An edge came into her voice. “On East Fourth Street I once had a chance for a life, and I lost it. Now here on Tiffany Street I have something I thought I’d never have again. I have a second chance. I’m not going to lose it. You hear me? I’m not going to lose it. Not a second time. You’ll cut silk, or you won’t eat. You hear?” My father reached out and touched the pad of silk. “On East Fourth Street,” he said, “I used to walk two miles to the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society on Lafayette Street to write out the papers to bring people over from Europe. Here, on Tiffany Street, I sit in a wheelchair and I cut jazz bows.”
“That’s America,” my mother said. Down on East Fourth Street I had slept in the tiny back storage room, tucked snugly into a small bed next to the wooden keg in which my father fermented the Blue Concord grapes for the Passover wine. Here on Tiffany Street I slept on the floor of a jazz bow factory. My father and I finally had something in common.
“Ma,” I said, “can I go back into my room tonight?”
“Certainly not!” Sebastian Roon called in from the kitchen. I had not heard him come into the apartment. He now came into the front room, peeling off his coat. “Selfishness is most unbecoming to you, Benjamin,” he said. “I’ve had a frightfully exhausting day, lining up our outlets.”
“They’ll take?” my mother said.
I was only mildly surprised to hear her utter the two words in English. I didn’t doubt that before long she would know as many as Mr. Lebenbaum, Henry Ford, or Harvey Firestone, and in her spare time would be quoting Shelley. “Every bloody jazz bow we can produce, and more if we can produce them,” Sebastian Roon said. “They’re so eager, they said if our first delivery is up to standard we won’t have to advance our own money to buy the silk. They’ll provide the silk for us.”
“What means standard?” my mother said. “It means as good as the work they’ve been getting from their other suppliers,” Seb said.
I thought my mother looked puzzled. Then I saw what had invaded her face was not puzzlement but anger. I knew her well enough to understand what was going through her mind. Having learned a few English words, her confidence in her intelligence had led her to believe she knew them all. Seb seemed to grasp this, too.
“It means,” he said in Yiddish, “that if what we give them is as good as what they’ve been getting from other manufactures, they’ll give us for free the silk to work with. Which will be our salvation, I assure you, because my nine hundred dollars won’t last forever.”
“It won’t have to last forever,” my mother said, “and you’ll get it back every penny. They want, you say, they want we should make as good as?”
“Very much so,” Seb said.
“Don’t worry,” my mother said. “We’ll make better.”
It was soon obvious that they would.
I did not know just when every morning my father started cutting and my mother started sewing, because they were both asleep when I left for the office. But they were still at it when I came home at night. My father said nothing. He just worked, and he worked well. His years of experience in the pants shops on Allen Street had made his fingers nimble. His old dedication to doing a job well, his sense of craftsmanship, which had atrophied with inactivity in the wheelchair, started to come back. I may have been reading things into his new look of well-being, but it seemed to me a bit of color had come back into his cheeks.
Even though my mother said nothing either, there was no mistaking her elation. The sense of fear about her new surroundings, the sadness of having “improved” herself out of the pulsing life of East Fourth Street into the sterility of Tiffany Street, the puzzle of having finally achieved a street with trees only to find that staring out at them from her front-room window brought her a sense of despair, the months of floundering around inside her head for an answer, all that was gone. She had found the answer.
Sebastian Roon had brought it to her.
He had brought her much more, of course: the English language. What I could not figure out was when he found time to give her lessons.
He, too, was always asleep when I went to work in the morning. It was my understanding that he spent the day delivering the finished jazz bows to the various outlets downtown with which he had established business relationships, and bringing up to Tiffany Street the bolts of silk for my father to cut. Sometimes when I came home at night Seb was in the living room, helping my father stretch the strings from nail to nail across the silk on the cutting board. From his wheelchair my father could reach only those nails in front of him. For the nails at the top of the board he had to wheel himself around to the other side. He could do this, but it was an inconvenience because the room, which had always been small, was now too cluttered, and wheeling around among the clutter took a great deal of time. Seb’s help saved time. And time, as Seb had taught my mother to say, was money.
The money, of course, was the point. Just as it had been the point of her small bootlegging activities down on East Fourth Street. For a long time I did not know how much of it she was making. I did know two things, however. I knew that Seb had started a savings account for her at the National City around the corner on Intervale Avenue, and had taught her how to use it. And I knew the early evening spectacle in our kitchen every Saturday.
It was the day when Mrs. Groshartig, and Mrs. Klockner, and all the other women who had formerly worked for Mr. Lebenbaum and now worked for my mother, came to our Tiffany Street kitchen to be paid.
They came after sundown, when the Sabbath was over. It was forbidden by Holy Writ to handle money during the Sabbath. Thus it was possible for me to witness the scene because I came home at the same time from the Maurice Saltzman & Company offices to wash up before going off to my weekly date with Hannah Halpern.
Three points impressed me very soon about the way the scene was performed.
First, my father never attended. Long before the women started to arrive, he would wheel himself out to his bedroom.
Second, Sebastian Roon always attended but never participated. He sat at the kitchen table with my mother, watching in silence, playing that salubrious searchlight, his smile, over the scene.
Third, it was my mother’s show. She played it to the hilt.
The women always arrived in groups. Sometimes in a single group. I don’t mean that they gathered at central meeting places and walked together to our house. I mean that as soon as the Sabbath sun started to go down they all set out from their different homes in the neighborhood. Who could blame them? They worked hard for their money. They wanted it promptly. They didn’t run. But they did hurry. As a result, several of them would arrive from different directions at our apartment at the same time.
My mother made them wait in a line that always stretched from the kitchen door out across the foyer, and frequently out of the foyer into the hall. Even though there were four places at our kitchen table, and during this weekly ceremony only two chairs were occupied, by my mother and by Seb, she never asked her employees to sit down. I don’t think it would have occurred to any of my mother’s employees to sit down uninvited.
Not because during this ceremony there was anything forbidding about my mother’s manner. On the contrary. She was always pleasant. And even though she never smiled, because handling money was an intensely serious business, she always managed to convey a jovial heartiness that perhaps only I, washing up at the kitchen sink a few feet from the table, knew was spurious. I’m sure it would never have occurred to any of my mother’s employees to sit down because they must surely have received the impression that there was no time. My mother was a crisp performer.
“Good evening, Mrs. Jakow,” she would say.
In English, of course.
“Good evening, Mrs. Kramer.”
Sometimes in English. More often in Yiddish.
“The book, please,” my mother would say.
Mrs. Jakow would hand over the book. My mother would flip the pages, making notes as she did so on a pad of paper. She made the notes with a pencil. She no longer held it the way a sculptor holds his chisel. My mother now held her pencil the way I held mine. With it she drew a line under her figures and, scowling and moving her lips, she did a swift bit of adding.
“Twelve dollars and ninety cents. Correct?”
“Correct,” said Mrs. Jakow.
It was always correct. My mother’s employees always knew to the penny what they were owed. Just as, when my mother had worked for Mr. Lebenbaum, she had known.
“Okay,” my mother said.
She pulled open the drawer in the kitchen table that, during the rest of the week, contained the Kramer family’s knives and forks. From the drawer she counted out the money she had withdrawn the day before from the National City.
“Five, ten, eleven, twelve, a half-dollar, a quarter, a dime, a nickel.” She looked up. “Twelve ninety, Mrs. Jakow.”
“Thanks, Mrs. Kramer.”
Mrs. Jakow scooped up the money and left.
“Next,” my mother said.
Another woman stepped into the kitchen. The line out in the foyer inched forward.
“Good evening, Mrs. Groshartig,” my mother said.
“Good evening, Mrs. Kramer.”
“The book, please,” my mother said.
She had said it in my presence for perhaps the fourth or fifth Saturday night when, instead of a woman, a man came into the kitchen. Or rather, he exploded into the kitchen. He was not wearing a coat. His unbuttoned vest flopped around his skinny body like shutters on an abandoned house during a storm. He looked wild. I knew who he was. On several occasions, when my mother’s shopping bag full of completed “turning” had been too heavy, I had carried it for her to Mr. Lebenbaum’s store on Intervale Avenue.
“Mr. Lebenbaum,” my mother said. “Since when do you work for me?”
Even though I had noticed the change in her during the past few weeks, her imperturbability on this occasion surprised me.
“The day I work for you,” Mr. Lebenbaum snarled, “I should find in my belly growing a trolley car.”
“A trolley car in your belly, then, you’ll never find,” my mother said. “Because I wouldn’t let a bloodsucker like you work for me if you did it for nothing. Good night, Mr. Lebenbaum. I’m busy.”
“I’m not!” he shouted. “Because you’ve taken away all my workers! If I don’t get them back, I’ll have to close my store!”
“These ladies,” my mother said, “they’re now workers for me, not yours. I didn’t take them away from you. I just told them I’ll treat them like human beings, not like animals. Here by me it’s no more a nickel a shtikl. You want them back? Pay them more.”
Mr. Lebenbaum sent a fearful glance across his shoulder. As though he were a murderer or an embezzler who, after years of successful concealment, was suddenly in danger of exposure.
“I can’t!” he cried. “I have rent to pay on a store! You don’t!”
He was a small man, totally bald, who had made the mistake many bald men make. To compensate for what he did not have on top, he had allowed his hair to grow long at the sides and then combed the strings across the top of his head. It made him look like a Lindy’s waiter.
“I’m forcing you to have a store?” my mother said.
“Not you!” Mr. Lebenbaum shouted. “My wife! She won’t let me cut silk in the house!”
“My husband cuts my silk here in the house,” my mother said. “Maybe what you need, Mr. Lebenbaum, is not a wife but a husband.”
“You’re killing me!” Mr. Lebenbaum screamed. “You’re throwing me out of business!”
My mother shrugged, “That’s America,” she said.
“You dirty rotten—!”
“Here, now,” Sebastian Roon said. He stood up and grabbed Mr. Lebenbaum in two places: the small man’s collar and the seat of his pants. “That will be enough of that, my good man.”
He hustled Mr. Lebenbaum out of the kitchen.
“Next!” my mother said.
7
MY MOTHER’S AFFLUENCE DID not affect her fiscal relationship with me.
The following Saturday night, when I came home, my mother was paying off her last employee. When the woman left, Sebastian Roon stood up, stretched, and yarned.
“My word,” he said. “It’s been quite a week. Benjamin, my boy, congratulations are in order. We’ve earned back the nine hundred dollars I invested, and as of Monday your mother goes into the black.”
“But tonight it’s still Saturday,” my mother said.
She held out her hand. I took the Maurice Saltzman & Company pay envelope from my pocket and handed it over. My mother opened the envelope and counted the two fives and three singles. She handed me the three singles, rolled the two fives into a tight little tube, and shoved the tube into the top of her stocking.
“I asked Seymour to stay and eat,” my mother said. To Sebastian she said, “On Saturday nights to get Benny to eat at home it would take wild horses.”
Seb laughed and said, “Off somewhere painting the town, is he?”
“Painting?” my mother said. “No, on Saturday nights he goes to eat with Hannah Halpern.”
“Oh, yes, you did tell me,” Seb said. “A dazzler?”
“No, a girl,” my mother said. “I
told you she and Benny they go to double features together.”
She made it sound as though we spent the evening cooking up vials of communicable flu virus.
“So you did,” Seb said. “So you did.” He looked at me thoughtfully. Finally he said, “I haven’t tucked into a good double feature for some time. Miss Halpern wouldn’t have a friend, would she?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
I did not like the turn this conversation was taking.
“You could be a good chap and give her a ring and ask,” Seb said. “Couldn’t you?”
I could have said Hannah had no telephone. But my mother was in the room and she knew the Halperns had a telephone. Or I could have said I didn’t want to be a good chap. I wanted to get up into that balcony of Loew’s 180th Street with Hannah Halpern and her knishes. What was this damned Englishman doing in our kitchen on Tiffany Street all these weeks, anyway? Why the hell wasn’t he back in Blackpool where he belonged?
“But, Seymour,” my mother said. “I told you I’m making for you potato latkes. The potatoes, they’re already all ground up.”
“I know, Mrs. Kramer,” Sebastian Roon said. “And jolly good your potato latkes are, too. But a truly smashing double feature, you know. I mean to say, smashing ones are rare, aren’t they? Perhaps I could have the potato latkes tomorrow morning for breakfast? As I did that first Sunday when my uncle died? Eating them on Sunday morning, Mrs. Kramer, adds a dimension to your potato latkes, truly it does.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “You mean tonight I’m still going to have to sleep on the floor in the front room?”
“Not at all,” Sebastian said. “I will happily take the floor if you will call Miss Halpern and get me in on a good double feature.”
Thank God our telephone was out in the hall. I went to it feeling not only furious, but weak and defeated and ashamed. A sucker. That’s what I was, A spineless patsy. When would I learn not to let people walk all over me?
Hannah’s mother came on the phone. “Mrs. Halpern?” I said. “This is Benny Kramer. Could I talk to Hannah?”
Tiffany Street Page 18
