Bittersweet Brooklyn: A Novel

by Thelma Adams

  The full weight of Abie’s words registered like a gut punch. Stepping backward, Annie shoved the candy box under her armpit in order to clutch her belly, which twisted like a contraction. She gasped from the pain and broke into a sweat. It made no sense that Abie told her hardworking husband what to do. And yet, what terrified her was the way it made sense. Abie had never struck her as the lowly newsboy type, kneeling to cut the twine on the paper bundles at dawn and tipping his cap to strangers, subservient. Jesse, on the other hand, seemed more clerk than kingpin.

  Abie raised his eyebrows. “I’ll bet you a silver dollar I’m right.”

  Annie shifted her gaze for reinforcement to Jesse, but he looked away. So it was true. She sensed it in the air, and it strangled her, but she squeaked, “Please, Jesse, tell me he’s lying.”

  “It’s not just me that lied, sister mine,” Abie said, a glimmer of triumph in his eyes and a sneer on his lips. He’d outsmarted her again, the schmuck.

  “Don’t speak to me that way, you killer.”

  Abie just laughed and stroked Thelma’s hair as she clung affectionately to his waist. Annie wanted to wash out his mouth with soap, to slap the smile off his face and feel the righteous sting on her palm.

  Abie sneered. “Like I would answer to your husband, Annie? Look at him: he’s a mensch, too nice for a farbissiner like you, but does he look to you like a boss? I don’t think so. Does he resemble someone who can hold down prime Manhattan real estate?”

  “Abie,” Jesse said, his voiced strained with emotion. “Don’t rock the boat.”

  “It’s already rocking, thanks to that mouth there. I’m tired of your wife’s boot on my neck. She should know where she stands—and it’s not on top of me. You think you can get that lease on Fifth Avenue without a thumb on the scale? You got this racket confused, big sister. Jesse and Louis work for me.”

  “Jesse, tell me he’s lying.” Annie’s husband just shook his head. What had he gotten them into, the weakling? She felt attacked on all sides. “It’s your business—Lazarus and Sons—we signed the papers.”

  “Don’t make a whole megillah out of this, Anechka. Money’s money—it’s all in the family. Roast your chickens and be happy.”

  “Now you’re telling me what to do, too?” Annie felt rage roar up from her guts, a betrayal that included both husband and brother. Her eyes stung as if she’d been slapped. “I won’t be played the fool.”

  “Too late, sugar puss,” said Abie, as he stroked Thelma and stuffed his free hand in his pocket, rocking back on his heels. “Tell her, Jesse.”

  “What now?”

  Jesse swiveled from wife to brother-in-law, alarmed, raising his hands, palms out, before his chest. “Abie, you had to go and open your mouth?”

  “If you could control your wife’s tongue, I wouldn’t have to.”

  “She’s your sister.”

  “What are you keeping from me, Abie?”

  “Read this and weep, Annie: we run numbers. That’s our business, the Italian lottery. Sure, Lazarus and Sons sells papers and shifts girlie rags under the counter, but the big dough comes from the bookie racket. Where there’s cash, there’s always someone trying to steal it from you. So you gotta have muscle, and that’s me. Jesse’s the front. Louis takes orders. We’re a three-man team. If you’re going to survive, you gotta outsmart the competition, and you gotta have a good relationship with the coppers and essere amici with the Italians. It’s a family business—just the family is a lot bigger than you and me and Mama.”

  “That isn’t family.”

  “Like you’re the expert,” Abie said.

  “Better than you,” Annie said, quivering with anger, uncertain whether to pounce or cry. “Did you know, Moe?”

  “I thought you knew,” Moritz said.

  “I didn’t.” Annie turned toward Minzer. “How about you?”

  He shrugged, scratched back his chair, and padded to the kitchen as if walking on eggshells. After a pause, water rushed from the tap.

  No one would make a patsy out of her. Her eyes welled with angry tears as she spat, “You knew about this stabbing before it was in the paper, Jesse? You lied to me to protect that schmuck?”

  “I didn’t want to get you excited, Anechka.”

  “Don’t Anechka me, you. Either you were in or out. Which was it?”

  “You were pregnant. I was protecting you.”

  “Did you hear that, Little Yiddle, yesterday I was pregnant?”

  “Mazel tov!” said Abie. “I didn’t know you were hatching a kid. I just thought you were eating for two like always.”

  “Shut your mouth,” Annie said.

  “Shut yours, you sharp-tongued shrew. Never, ever tell me what to do. Don’t let these pretty looks fool you—I can be way uglier than you ever imagined. Ask Nathan Rothman’s mother.”

  “Are you threatening me in my own house, you coward?”

  “Is it your house? Who pays the rent, sweetheart? You make the rules because I let you—and I’m feeling particularly generous today, having slipped the noose. But don’t cross me. I know who you are. You sent your own brothers to the orphanage, but you burned the baby.”

  “What’s he saying, Annie?” said Mama. “What baby got burned?”

  “I don’t know what he’s talking about, Mama; he’s meshuge,” said Annie, waving her hand as if swatting a fly.

  “I do, Mama,” said Thelma, proffering her scarred thumb. “When we lived—”

  “The only baby I know about,” said Annie, cutting off her sister, “is the one I lost today thanks to you two.”

  “It’s not my fault,” said Thelma, defiant.

  “What, Annie, we lost the baby?” Jesse said with a strangled cry, falling to his knees before his wife. “I’m so sorry. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? How could I tell you with all this craziness? Why do you think I’m still sitting here in my housecoat?”

  “I’m so, so sorry, Anechka.”

  “What did I do to deserve such trouble?” Annie turned to Abie and Thelma. “You’re animals and I’m the one who suffers.”

  “You’re not the only one who suffers, you miserable bitch. If I were the child in your belly, I’d get out, too, while I had the chance.”

  “Take your stinking chocolates and get out!” Annie shrieked, throwing the heavy box at her brother’s head. He dodged and it clocked Louis, who cried out in surprise. Jesse straitjacketed Annie from behind, dragging her backward on her heels as she struggled forward to claw Abie.

  “Ungrateful bitch,” Abie said. “I’m going around the corner to get a corned beef on rye while you cool off. C’mon, Temeleh, it’s my treat. Louis, grab the candy. They shouldn’t go to waste.”

  Chapter 10

  After gorging at the deli, Thelma and her brothers sprawled on the Hooper Street stoop, sucking up the soft April warmth. She’d spread her handkerchief beside her, smoothing out the cotton on the stone step so Abie wouldn’t get schmutz on his new pants. Between sips from his beer bottle, he dug between his teeth with a wooden toothpick. When Abie passed his bottle to Thelma, she took a sip. It tasted sour and disgusting and adult. Abie broke out laughing at the squished-up face she made, so she took a long pull and felt swimmy as she returned the bottle. Behind them, Louis leaned in the doorway, always on watch, his face in shadow. He raised a brown bottle to his lips. They were as full as a wolf pack after decimating a sheep, and Louis burped aloud as if to underscore the point. Thelma, surrounded by her brothers, was feeling triumphant, seizing that rare moment of having a leg over Annie. This was her tribe, her band of brothers. Abie was violent, but he’d never raise his hand against her; he’d always be her defender.

  From their spot beside a row of trash cans marked with the address “372,” Thelma examined the identical limestone apartments across the street that mirrored her own. The building had four stories with a five-step stoop that stuck out like a tongue from its front door. On the top step, a head-scarfed m
other rocked gently, her shoulders slumped, singing the Yiddish lullaby “Lyalkele,” little doll, in a quivery voice to her fussy baby. A small child who could easily have been mistaken for a burlap sack curled at her feet, asleep.

  Above the mother’s head, each level had four arched windows with ornamental bricks fanning out above the frames. Built by an Italian in 1910, the buildings were young, like she was. Thelma liked that, the newness. Gone were the tenements, the rooming houses, the dreariness of charity and the self-loathing it inspired, the warring scents of ammonia and shit and thin chicken broth. Despite all the strife upstairs in 2B, she felt relatively secure on Hooper Street for the first time in her life.

  Looking up, Thelma spied a young boy carefully raising the window sash and exiting backward, sticking one leg in knee britches outside, his foot reaching hesitantly for the first fire escape step, and then the next. He turned around with a cat burglar’s grace, only to have Abie yell, “Hey, Mikey, does your mother know you’re sneaking out?”

  Thelma laughed as a light immediately brightened the adjacent window and a woman in curlers stuck her head out, screeching, “Mikey, get back in the house now!” Before the boy complied, he raised his right fist at the trio across the street and slapped his left hand on the opposite biceps.

  “You made another friend,” Louis said to Abie, laughing.

  “Friends are overrated,” Abie said, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees.

  But not brothers, Thelma thought.

  For a while after that, the trio was agreeably silent, digesting, observing the parade of pushcart vendors returning to their warehouses, couples arguing, cops on the beat. Abie slit the ribbon around the chocolate box, handing it to Thelma, who’d never seen such riches. Two dozen chocolates, squares and rectangles, stars and hearts, nestled in ruffled paper cups. She said, “I don’t know where to start.”

  Abie, without hesitation, grabbed the biggest nut cluster in the very center and placed it in his mouth, sucking the sweetness. “Annie doesn’t know what she’s missing.”

  Louis reached over Thelma’s shoulder and plucked a spherical sweet. “Make mine a cherry.”

  “Caramel,” said Thelma, her teeth sticking together and mangling the word. “Thank you.”

  “Thank Annie for slinging them at my head.”

  “She’d have made a great shortstop,” said Louis. “She still has a good arm.”

  “Then that’s the only thing good about her,” said Abie. “I’d rather be interrogated by the Huns than try to be nice to that hag. There’s no payoff.”

  “Nope,” said Thelma, shutting her eyes and circling her palm above the candies before picking one. She took a nibble and then a bite, and recoiled. “Weird cream—ick! It tastes like medicine.”

  “Spit it out,” Abie said. With his permission, she launched it all the way to the sidewalk. This was what it must feel like to be rich: not only did she have more candy than she could eat in one sitting, but she had the luxury to reject the ones she didn’t like.

  Abie swigged his beer. “Good form,” he said. “If I’d known Annie was going to aim for my head, I would have bought her a smaller box. No good deed goes unpunished.”

  “Annie,” said Louis, shivering as if he were crossing his own grave.

  “Getting on her bad side is more dangerous than fire,” Abie said.

  “Does she have a good side?” Louis asked, and they laughed.

  When it was quiet again and it appeared her brothers were dropping the topic, Thelma said, “Can you imagine: The first thing I remember is my own sister torching me?” Betrayal had been her first emotion, the shock that family could hurt her.

  “What’s left to the imagination? I was there,” said Abie. “Annie was on the warpath that week.”

  Thelma looked over and asked, “Why?”

  He passed her the bottle. “We got the Annie treatment a few days before. She locked Louis and me in the closet,” Abie said. “Mama was at the laundry. Annie wanted to paw the landlord’s boy at the front of the apartment. So instead of watching us, she locked us in the bedroom closet. We banged on the door with our fists, yelling.”

  “‘Let us out!’” Louis said, remembering.

  “Louis hated small spaces.”

  “Still do.”

  “So we sat there in the dark, telling stories until I ran out. Time passed. Louis got more scared.”

  “I swear the closet shrank.”

  “And he started to pass gas.”

  “I tried to hold it in.”

  “He couldn’t. We tried beating the door, but zip. And then it happened: his tuchus exploded, and he crapped his pants.”

  Thelma grabbed her guts in sympathy. Their sister had terrorized all three of them at one point or another, and if not for Abie’s rage, Annie would have crushed them all.

  “God,” said Louis, “it stank.”

  “He was nine years old already.”

  “I was so ashamed I started crying, and that made it more shaming,” said Louis. “I was a big boy. That shouldn’t have happened—shit or tears.”

  “We’re only telling you, Temmy, so you know you’re not alone. Hours passed and Annie opens the door. She geschreis.”

  “She yanks me out by my hair, crying, ‘You stink, you little stinkers!’ Sure I did: crap was running down my legs.”

  “A shit fountain! When Louis stood, crap streamed down his legs and covered his boots. She had to remove his shoes to clean him. When Annie got on her hands and knees, the laces were double knotted and covered in shit.”

  “She ordered Abie to untie them.”

  “I refused, and I wouldn’t let Louis do it. She coughed and gagged and worked the knots, cursing us as if we’d chosen to hide in the closet. And that’s when the landlord’s boy strolled in, took a whiff, and called us betteljuden. She was rabid.”

  “She pinched my balls, she was so angry.”

  “Yeah, and you doubled over, and shit sprayed her hair.”

  “She got what she deserved.”

  Thelma puckered her face. “Disgusting!”

  “But effective,” said Abie. He passed her the bottle. She took a bigger bitter sip. “Enough with the happy memories. So, Temeleh, I hear you came by to visit me in Manhattan.”

  She felt like she’d been caught out of school (which she had). Attempting to sound tough like her brothers, she asked, “Says who?”

  “That horse guy doubles as a lookout.”

  “I saw the blood and I panicked. Abie, I’m sorry.” She remembered the red splash on the sidewalk, the excited crowd, the strange reporter grilling the boys. They hadn’t mentioned Rothman since they’d left the apartment, and she needed to hear Abie’s side of the story. “What did that kid do to you to deserve that?”

  “Deserve? None of my business,” said Abie, sucking his teeth. “The whole thing was rigged. He was a schmuck, but I know a lot of schmucks and I don’t stab them all. Some, but not all, and that Rothman kid was a patsy. He’d been showing up on the street, trying to throw his weight around, spitting on Monk Eastman’s sidewalk. Rothman had been bragging he told the cops, and now he shows up in new shoes and a new coat. The bosses hatched a play. I got my pal Gersh to egg this Rothman on, to build him up as a big man, tell him how I talked tough but I was lily-livered. Then it was just a matter of walking by and he was all full of himself. He took one look at me and burst out laughing, and he called me Little Yiddle—it made it easy to shove the blade.”

  “How could it be easy?” Thelma asked, leaning in, repulsed and curious.

  “Orphanage rules,” Louis said.

  “Someone smacks you, you hit back harder. You gotta gain respect right away, because later it hurts more if you don’t make it clear who’s on top and who’s on the bottom. I wasn’t mad at the kid. I had my orders. It’s the cost of doing business on Fourteenth Street.”

  “At least he lived,” said Thelma.

  “Yeah, but he’s never going to shit straight again. He’s out
of the game.”

  “Don’t you feel bad about hurting him so bad?” asked Thelma.

  Abie scanned the street, then sniggered. “It was him or me.”

  “Yeah,” Louis agreed, “it was Abie or that dirty rat.”

  “You don’t see me crying any tears.”

  Thelma waved a fly off her scabby knee. “I cry all the time.”

  “Yeah, but you’re a girl. You’re supposed to be soft. Not us,” said Abie.

  “Abie and me, we’re hard as nails,” said Louis.

  “Harder,” said Abie. “As if we had any choice.”

  “So, Abie,” Thelma asked, “since when do they call you Little Yiddle?”

  “Since yesterday when Rothman said it—and it landed in the papers.”

  “Isn’t that insulting?”

  “It’s not Handsome, but my gut says it’s gonna stick. And it’s a name—I’m not a nobody anymore.”

  “Are you really the toughest?”

  “Until the next guy . . .”

  “Were you scared?”

  “Shit, yeah—the trick is not to show it.”

  “How do you do that?” Everything Thelma felt splashed across her face, making her vulnerable—especially to Annie. But she didn’t want to harden and crack. She wanted to unfold and figure out just who she was. It seemed to her that Abie had always known exactly who he was—and she envied that.

  “It’s acting. Like the theater.”

  “But how did it feel? Can you teach me?”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “No,” Thelma said. She wasn’t joking. Anxious about his safety, she wanted to know what made him tick so when the time came and the tables were turned, she could protect her brother.

  “Oh, you want the inside scoop, kiddo?”

  “C’mon, Abie, stop stalling.” She pinched his elbow. “Louis knows.”

  “I got blood on my shoes to prove it,” he mumbled.

  “I’ll pay for a shine,” Abie said, rubbing his stubble.

  “Big spender,” said Louis.

  “All right, already, this is how it played. I was antsy and itchy. I’d been sweating it since sunrise. When someone strikes me, I hit back. It’s like—what’s it called?”