Bittersweet Brooklyn: A Novel

by Thelma Adams

  One afternoon Nina yanked Thelma into the bathroom and shut the door. “I’m choking, Temmy. I don’t know who I am anymore.”

  “You’re Nina! Who else would you be?”

  “They’ve taken over my body and I don’t have any choice.”

  “What can I do to help?”

  “I don’t know. Have this baby for me?”

  “Not going to happen.”

  “Is it possible to be smothered by love?”

  Thelma shook her head, not that she’d ever experienced it. Nina’s plea was a message in a bottle—and, after that, the old Nina all but vanished. Feeling abandoned, Thelma resented the situation, but there was no longer any room for her on the couch playing with her friend. She couldn’t fight the black-dressed widows who side-eyed the outsider as they closed the circle around the pregnant child. She didn’t knit. She didn’t sew. And her attempts to cheer her friend up with wicked tales from school brought scowls from their elders and a longing look in Nina’s eyes. “I never thought I’d miss math,” Nina confided before racing to the bathroom with one hand over her mouth.

  The week before Christmas, Nina married Tonio in the modest chapel at Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Her small, round head stuck out of a big, fluffy white dress that suited her like frosting on a plum. With sugary, angelic smiles on their faces, her jealous older sisters surrounded Nina as she approached the groom, who puffed out his sunken chest at the altar, standing beside his brothers as if it were an undertakers’ convention. Thelma felt awkward in her loud polka-dotted party dress borrowed from Trulia, her bra stuffed with socks to make it fit, uneasy about being under Jesus’s roof. Strangers sat beside her beneath his martyred gaze, nailed as he was to the cross above the altar, and confusion set in when those around her knelt during the long Mass. She didn’t know what to do, so she gazed up at the marble Madonna in her niche coddling her infant son and hoped that benevolent lady would be kind to Nina, however skeptical Thelma felt about a life with Tonio. To her surprise, she felt like the woman responded, assuring her that Nina would be fine. Thelma wouldn’t admit to anyone that the Virgin Mary had seemed to address her, and yet it had a calming effect.

  Afterward, the family catered the lasagna dinner, while Tonio’s uncle provided the cake for the church hall reception. One man after the next stood up to toast the couple, praising the sanctity of marriage and the bride’s virtue, while Thelma sat at the children’s table attempting to keep Trulia’s polka-dotted dress clean from the flying food. After the cake, she tried to thread her way to the bride, but she only managed to stick the cash-filled envelope Abie had given her into Nina’s borsa, her satin pouch, before Nina was snatched in another direction by Tonio’s strict father.

  Immediately after the ceremony, the groom moved into the Gigantiellos’ so that the women could usher Nina through pregnancy, leaving little space for Thelma. She couldn’t stifle her anger at Nina for leaving girlhood—and her—behind so suddenly. Without regular visits, Thelma’s bitterness soured their friendship as much as Nina’s exhaustion and the gap in their situations.

  She slunk back to Hooper Street, half a mile and a world away, crawling into bed beside Mama. The springs croaked. She recoiled, afraid of waking the sleeping giant thrashing beside her. It was cruel to notice the whisker that sprouted on a mole above her lip but there it was, waving in the wheeze. On the bedside table, a glass of baking soda and water awaited late-night indigestion.

  Loneliness stuck in Thelma’s throat, and she tried to spit it out. She’d felt secure with the Italians, but now? With her brothers launched in the world, no one understood her here. Moe had seemed to care, but that had been a trick. She’d been a chump. She smacked her forehead. She was a freak, a problem, not a person.

  She missed Mama Allegra’s care. At Nina’s she’d felt wanted. Even if she resented that it had to end, she didn’t entirely blame her friend: their changing bodies betrayed them before they were fully aware of what was happening. Sure, Nina’s sisters had warned the younger girls, but how many times could you tell a child not to scratch an itch? Sooner or later they always did and there would be blood and blisters and scabs, bandages and scars, possibly a kiss to make it feel better, possibly not.

  She needed to unload to Nina, but she cared enough to know that bigger problems plagued her friend. Thelma suspected Nina worried not only about the unborn infant poking her innards with unseen elbows but also about yoking herself to the first boy who walked out with her during the Giglio. She’d gone too far too soon and was too good a girl to deny the consequences. Perhaps there was a shy boy who’d been watching, and waiting, who would have been a partner for Nina a few years down the road. Now he’d never get the chance. Thelma wondered if that might have prompted the fear in Nina’s eyes: that Tonio was a good match for her family but not for her.

  Thelma tried to imagine Nina and her together in the future, with or without babies. Bolstered by Mama Allegra, Nina would be a good mother. Thelma hoped she would be as well, but she lacked Nina’s patience, her obedience—and she had Mama beside her, a constant reminder that she wasn’t good enough. Stuck and frustrated, she feared becoming an adult too soon like Nina but resisted reverting to this stifling childhood. She was a curiosity, not a kid but not yet a woman.

  Over time, awake in the dull, dark hours as Mama slept, Thelma waited for her body to change beneath her cotton undershirt. A few hairs sprouted in one armpit, then the other. The left breast softened and grew, shaming its stunted sibling, still hardly more than a bud above protruding ribs. She would have arisen to pee, drink water, watch the moonrise over Hooper Street—but she feared bumping into Moe, who now came and went at odd, unpredictable hours.

  Mama Allegra had warned Thelma to avoid her stepfather, calling him that harsh word, degenerate, degenerato, which clashed with the mild-mannered daytime Moe. But the apartment was too small to dodge him, and the continued hostility of Annie and Mama that had begun long before the stepfather’s arrival worsened the situation. Mama Allegra had told her to make peace, but how?

  One night, after squashing a relentless mosquito drawn to her sweet blood, she curved into a fetal position and drowsed. She dreamed of running through the Giglio pursued by boys flinging firecrackers. Jerking awake, she stared directly into her mother’s eyes, which conveyed a searing hatred. Mama’s raw hostility slapped her, and she hadn’t had the time to raise her defenses. She considered what Mrs. Gigantiello would do—and sought peace by treating her mother with tenderness. “What’s wrong, Mama?”

  “Nothing,” Mama said, flopping away.

  “Please, tell me, did I do something wrong?”

  “What didn’t you do wrong?”

  Silence snapped between them. Panic spread through Thelma’s chest: she wasn’t good enough. Now Mama would remind her why, gouging her weak spots. She would snap, attack, and prove her mother’s point. The snake ate its tail or, as Mama Allegra explained, il serpente si mangiò la coda. Anger begets anger.

  Upstairs in the neighbors’ apartment, hinges squawked and a couple began sawing against each other. A gasp followed as if someone squashed a cat. Then the door above opened and shut again. She would have giggled if she were with Nina, but not now. “Is this still about Moe? I’m no Mata Hari, Mama. Why didn’t you protect me?”

  “I should have protected him from you!” Mama flipped back toward Thelma, eyes enraged. “I should have thrown you out a long time ago. I was glad you left. You stole him from my bed.”

  “Did you want him here?”

  “He was mine, not yours.”

  She wanted to say who would want you? It was ready to fling off the tip of her tongue, yet she held back. “Then why isn’t he here instead of me?”

  “You ruined him, you slut.”

  The words stung and bees buzzed inside her head so that she could hardly hear what her mother was saying. Breathing deep, Thelma looked up at the ceiling. She struggled to restrain her voice when she wanted to scream and scratch. “Please, Mama,
don’t pick on me. Can’t you see I’m trying to help? I made a mistake. I’m sorry. I can’t change what happened.”

  “You’re still a dirty husband thief.”

  Thelma rose up on her knees and pointed. “You brought Moe into our family, not me. Shouldn’t he have protected me like a father in my own house? If he’s a devil, is that my fault?”

  “How dare you accuse him?” Mama snorted, and then she belched, raising her hand to her sternum. She’d begun to sweat. “Who do you think you are?”

  “I’m your daughter, Mama.”

  “No,” she spat, wriggling back to raise her head on her pillow. “You’re not. Annie’s my daughter.” The young girl yelped, but the mother continued, “She’s loyal. You and the boys do what you want, say what you want, behave like animals, so you get what you deserve. Go live with the Italians, if they’re so fond of you. Get out!”

  “They’re not my family, Mama.”

  “So they don’t want you, either?”

  “Why do you hate me? All I want, Mama, is a little bit of the love you have for Annie. Is that too much to ask?”

  “Yes.” Mama stiffened. “You think you’ve got it rough?”

  She didn’t know how to answer. Yes. She thought she had it rough. Night after night sharing a bed where there was no rest, no affection. Before she’d hungered for something she didn’t know—a mother’s love for her daughter—but now that she knew how it could be, she didn’t know how to get there with her own mother. Part of her insisted it was the mother’s responsibility to create and maintain that connection, but that wasn’t how it was between them. She tried to retreat when she said, “I’m not complaining,” but somehow it came out as defiant.

  Mama sucked her teeth. “You’re always kvetching. Look at you: born in America, clothes on your back, food on the table, a roof over your head, a mother and father, a sister and brothers, and still you piss in the soup.”

  “Mamaleh, I’ll try harder.” She was young, but she could be the bigger person. A little crawling wasn’t impossible if afterward she could stand taller. She was capable of the greater love. “Please, I beg you, what can I say? What can I do to make you love me?”

  “You putz, there’s nothing you can do. You aren’t my daughter.”

  “That’s a lie,” Thelma said, but a blade couldn’t have cut as deep as that rejection. Her mother’s confession shattered Thelma like cheap glass right when she’d tried to compose herself. Mama treated Papa’s death like a personal tragedy, but his loss had devastated them all, and their mother had ignored her children when they needed her most.

  Fatherlessness had defined Thelma. That shadow never disappeared, no matter how high the sun. She hungered for the man she’d never known, the one capable of explaining why she was the way she was. Affection starved, she craved all men, seeking hugs whether appropriate or not. And that was why in those jagged bits of her heart she believed she deserved Moe, the only father she’d known, the man who’d loved her with his hands, not his heart.

  She inhaled shallowly to ease her nausea and then felt suffocated. There was no safe place. She knew neither mother nor father. She was an orphan, unlovable, the sight of her unbearable. She realized that was what she’d always seen reflected in her mother’s eyes: disgust and rejection. They hadn’t bonded because she was nothing to her mother. She would have been better off with Abie and Louis at the Hebrew Home for the Unloved.

  Mama now cried loudest, as if what she’d said hurt her more than it did the broken girl beside her. The girl wept, too, sharing the sagging bed but remaining separate. Thelma could have consoled Mama, offering kindness in adversity. But she desperately needed comforting herself. She was the motherless child. She heard Mama’s voice catching, the muffled trumpet when she blew her nose. From next door, Annie banged on the wall. “Shut up. We’re trying to sleep.”

  “I must have done something horribly bad to deserve such cruelty, but what can a baby do so wrong? It’s not fair.”

  “You want fair, see a judge. Let Abie introduce you,” Mama said. “You always make an elephant out of a fly.”

  “But this is an elephant.”

  Thelma cursed Papa for leaving her with these shrews. She climbed out of bed, left the room, saw Moe sit up on the couch and splay his legs. Speeding past him to the bathroom, she sat on the pot, stood up, splashed water on her face, and returned to bed. She saw Mama’s pale profile, tears reflected in the moonlight.

  Much later, as dawn rose, Mama began gasping for air. She kicked her feet. She clutched her breastbone, coughing wetly.

  Let her die. But Thelma couldn’t.

  “Sit back,” Thelma said, creeping off the mattress and tiptoeing to the bedside table. She stirred the baking soda mixture. Settling beside Mama, Thelma cradled the woman’s head while she drank the chalky liquid, as if Mama were the little sister and she the mother.

  Kindness and caring were her only escape. She would show them how capable she was. Maybe then they’d appreciate her. She had to be better than they were, because if she became like Mama and Annie, what was the point? She refused to let them twist and taint who she was. Reaching over, Thelma grabbed her pillow and propped up her mother. Her head raised, the older woman fell asleep within minutes. As the room got lighter, Thelma curled up, resting her cheek on her praying hands.

  The next morning, she awoke by herself. The sun hung high in the sky; laundry sagged from the clothesline. Her first thought: I’m unlovable. Whatever hope she’d had nursing Mama had faded. She was alone. No one would come and inquire how she was, braid her hair, rub her temples. When she got up, threw on her clothes, and entered the living room, Moe was already gone and she could hear Mama clattering in the kitchen. Seated on the sofa, Annie wrestled Julius’s arm into his sleeve. She glanced at her sister with amusement in her eyes and snorted. “Well, if it isn’t the Grand Duchess Anastasia! Can I pour you your tea, Your Majesty?”

  Chapter 15

  1917

  By the time Thelma was fifteen, Abie and Louis used the Hooper Street address only to register for the draft. They were adults navigating New York, and although Thelma begged to accompany them, their impatient expressions told her she would be a burden in their chaotic outside lives. They claimed they couldn’t protect her and that her moment would come, but the rejection still stung.

  She was anxious for the time when she, too, could leave but, for now, after years of wandering, the family had taken root in Brooklyn. “I’m not going anywhere,” Annie had said with apparent pride, admiring Julius and Adele. Her sister’s declaration seemed more a threat than a promise to Thelma, too young to become financially independent and too sharp (given Nina’s enslavement to an annual pregnancy and the constant demands of small children when she was hardly more than a child herself) to view marriage as an escape.

  She could depend on Annie to be a farbissiner, a grump with a whiplike tongue, but also to keep house and tend Mama. Even when Thelma fled to the Italians, which she did less frequently now that Nina had become a mother with a wife’s responsibilities, she didn’t worry that her folks would disappear in the night—although she frequently wished they would. As for her brothers, they’d typically return for Shabbos supper. On Friday nights, they’d arrive together, hike up their pants, and relax. They’d bow their heads as Mama lit the tapers on the silver candlesticks (a gift from Abie), mumbling the weekly prayers beside Moe, arguing politics and battling Thelma over the wishbone.

  Sometimes Mama reserved dinner, scorching the chicken, but neither son surfaced. A furious Annie would curse those no-goodniks, galling Thelma: Abie was a criminal, corrupting Louis, who, the eldest insisted, wasn’t quiet but slow and impressionable. One was quick with a knife, the other overly fond of guns. Thelma knew that on the street Abie occasionally broke the law, but at home, where it mattered most, he protected her when Annie and Mama didn’t. She felt disloyal if she didn’t defend her brothers. But without allies at the table, she didn’t risk raising Annie’s ha
ckles and becoming her next victim—“Is that a pimple on your schnoz, or is that a room divider?”

  When Abie and Louis did come home, they bore presents, proving they weren’t poor relations: cakes in string-wrapped pink boxes and Joyva chocolate-covered halvah or, responding to relentless nagging, an electric iron for Annie, who craved everything new.

  Recently Louis had quit the newsstand to guard the Grand Theatre’s stage door near Chrystie Street in Lower Manhattan, surrounding himself with chorus girls. He never discussed his personal life, no matter how much Annie grilled him: “Got a girlfriend? She must be blind! When are you bringing her to meet the family?”

  Louis would shrug his shoulders. He stonewalled Annie, preoccupied by the Great War. The German troops advanced while the British failed to take Gaza. He joined public demonstrations, striding to City Hall Park, where, in March, former ambassador James Gerard proclaimed, “We are on the brink of war with Germany.”

  When he turned twenty-one in May, Louis announced his commitment to defend America. In contrast, twenty-three-year-old Abie was in no rush. He claimed he’d had his fill of institutions, whether orphanage or army. Never again would he let anyone tell him when to piss or how to shine his shoes. If his teeth fell out from not brushing after meals, he’d put ’em in a bag and buy new ones.

  While Abie officially referred to himself as a newsboy, he’d diversified. He still protected Lazarus & Sons, where his six-year-old nephew, Julius, had now joined his father hawking papers. Housing the bookie racket opened up a spectrum of criminal activity to Abie, joining the shysters and goniffs operating south of Union Square. And he’d proved with that Rothman kid that he was no pushover.