Bittersweet Brooklyn: A Novel

by Thelma Adams

  “Why don’t you?”

  “I’m entertaining.”

  “That’s a laugh.”

  After that, Mama served a Shabbos dinner on a Tuesday, with Thelma beside her ferrying platter after plate after bowl, carrying enough eats for an army. It included what Annie believed to be Louis’s favorite, sweet noodle pudding with raisins. After everyone else began inhaling the food, Louis waited until Mama approached the table after the last dish had found its place. He rose, walked to her side, drew back her chair, and slid it in behind her.

  “Fancy,” she said.

  “You’re welcome,” he said, returning to his place beside Thelma. Dropping the napkin on his lap, he shut his eyes for a moment, as if praying. He pushed the kugel to the side of his plate, moving the roast chicken thigh to the center. He carefully cut the meat with a fork in his left hand and the knife in his right. He put down his knife, shifted the fork to his right hand and took a bite, chewing it slowly with his mouth shut and then swallowing. The rest of the family stopped to watch, as if he were a giraffe at the zoo. These were not the customary table manners.

  When Jesse offered to fill the guest of honor’s glass with kosher wine, Louis covered the opening with his hand, saying, “I’m in training.”

  “How are they treating you?” Jesse asked.

  “Never better, sir,” Louis said, cutting another morsel of meat. “I’m getting three squares, exercise and fresh air. Now I can load and shoot a rifle. If you follow instructions and keep your head down, you get by easy as pie.”

  Annie shook her head in disbelief. “That sounds too good to be true.”

  He shrugged. “They call me Brooklyn.”

  “Is that an insult?” Annie asked, prepared to be outraged. It sounded like a Jewish slur.

  “They think I’m a loud city boy.”

  “Imagine if they met Abie!” said Thelma.

  “Imagine if we met Abie!” Annie said. “I can’t believe your beloved brother doesn’t care enough to see you. It’s a shonda. How long is your leave?”

  “Twenty-four hours. I have to be on that noon train tomorrow.”

  “This is how it always is with that little schmuck,” Annie said, standing to clear the chicken carcass from the table, “coming and going with no respect for the family. Everything he ruins.”

  “What’s ruined? We’re all here and happy,” Jesse said.

  “Speak for yourself.” Annie’s anger rose into her throat. As she gritted her teeth, her forehead contracted and she felt her blood pressure ascend. She wouldn’t let them do that to her baby. Her earlier sense of well-being evaporated, replaced by hate. Abie was a short, selfish rat who would just as soon smile as slit your throat. He always kept her waiting, even when he knew it wasn’t good for Mama’s health. He couldn’t arrive on time. He couldn’t do what she asked. For once in his life, would it kill him to be a decent brother?

  If there was one emotion she could always count on when his name was involved, it was rage. If it weren’t for him, she’d have peace of mind. “You can’t depend on your Little Yiddle, Louis. If he cared for you, he’d be here. You shouldn’t be seen with him anyway, a good soldier like you. He’s a criminal. He doesn’t deserve your loyalty. He’s not fit to shine your shoes.”

  “I can spit-shine my own shoes,” Louis said. When Thelma began to speak, her brother reached over and rested his hand on hers. She clammed up.

  The slamming of dishes in the sink, the rattling of flatware in their drawer, and the clumping of Annie’s heels as she paced filled the rest of the evening. “Where could that devil be? What is he doing now? He could be dead in a gutter. I can only hope.”

  Annie watched her kids brush their teeth, and then she scrubbed behind their ears with extra vigor until Adele cried out, “Mama, stop, you’re hurting me!”

  “No kvetching,” Annie said. After tucking them in, she went and shut off the kitchen light before going to bed.

  Louis cleared his throat in the dark. “Annie, we’re in here.”

  Switching the light back on, Annie saw Louis and Thelma talking, their foreheads touching. What could they possibly discuss so intensely in her absence? They must have been knocking her—and at her own kitchen table.

  “Shut the lights when you’re done, night owls,” she said, her tone critical as if staying up late was wicked. Even while Annie judged her brother and sister, she resented that their kinship excluded her, making her the odd woman out in her own house. When they were younger, she’d scrubbed behind their ears like she had with her children just now. She’d fed those pishers when nobody else would.

  Annie had sacrificed her childhood for them. No one had taken care of her! She deserved their respect and gratitude, and she was unable to grasp why Louis loved Thelma and not her. It was unfair. What did that runaround slut have to offer that Annie lacked?

  Peeved, she said, “We’re not made of money.”

  As she swiveled away, Annie overheard Thelma whisper, “What are you made of?”

  “Shh,” said Louis, “don’t poke the snake.”

  Annie pivoted, ready to raise a fist and explain who was really the snake around here, but Jesse called out, “Anechka, come to bed.” And she did, crawling under the blankets beside Jesse, who couldn’t sleep without her. She rested her head on his shoulder.

  “Abie doesn’t show and they still love him more than me,” Annie said. “Some people get away with murder.”

  “So what else is new?”

  She took his hand, put it on her belly, and held it there. As the night got quieter, he made her soft promises: “He’s going to go to school, and have his bar mitzvah, and keep on going. He’ll go to college, become a lawyer, marry a girl from a good Jewish family . . .”

  “Become a judge,” Annie said, feeding their shared fantasy.

  “Are there Jewish judges?”

  “There will be.”

  “We’ll name him after my father.”

  “Elias.”

  “He’ll make us proud.” And those were the last words Annie heard until a pounding at the door awakened her. Annie jumped straight up in bed and felt her curlers and patted her night cream. Panic accelerated her heartbeat. Nothing good ever came knocking past midnight.

  “Who died?” Annie asked.

  “Go back to sleep,” Jesse said, “I’ve got it.”

  “It’s the police! I can’t go to jail!” she said, considering her handwriting in the newsstand ledgers. “I have babies.” She rushed into her slippers, struggling to find her robe sleeves as she waddled out of the bedroom while Jesse yanked his pants over his pajama bottoms. Crossing the living room, she reached for the bolt. As she unlocked it, the door burst open. Abie stood there smirking in a black tuxedo, a chorus girl on each arm. The blonde and the redhead, standing six feet tall in silver heels—not counting their feathered headdresses—dwarfed the man. Each dancer carried a champagne bottle.

  The cheeky trio burst into the darkened living room, with Abie flipping the lights on abruptly, illuminating Annie in robe and slippers. “Surprise,” the two stunning women cried in unison as if they were leaping out of a giant cake, their slim arms raised in victorious Vs above their heads.

  The showgirls filled the room with bubbly laughter, fueling Annie’s shame and rage beneath the dime-store cream shmeared across her face. Annie realized it was as if her own shocked reaction were the punch line of the world’s funniest joke. She felt fat and dumpy, unwanted, an immigrant reject destined for the dung heap. The women laughed at her until they bent over and cried. “I told you dames,” said Abie, “was I right or was I right?”

  “Right,” said one.

  “Right,” said the other.

  “Oh, Abie, you are always right!”

  “Do you animals know what time it is?” Annie shrilled as Julius and Adele toddled in and Jesse caught them by their hands to keep them away from their mother.

  “No,” roared Abie, “do you?”

  “The night is young,�
� said the blonde, tossing her head back so that her brilliant yellow feathers brushed the doorframe. She was the kind of woman who made old men thirsty and young men hungry. That was also the kind that irritated Annie.

  “Young is the night—and so are we!” said the throaty-voiced redhead with the green-plumed cap. She shimmied out of her coat, revealing her costume, a mix of jade-colored sequins that snaked over her private bits and sheer netting everywhere else. She was all legs except where she was breasts. She had a beautiful oval face with arched brows worthy of the Roman Colosseum above wide-set, flirtatious eyes, but it went largely unnoticed considering the live flesh undulating below her beaded choker.

  “She’s all but naked,” said Annie.

  “The mystery is all in that but,” said Abie, wiggling an imaginary cigar.

  “How could you?” Annie asked, gripping her robe’s collar to her throat and aching to remove the goo from her face, the metal curlers. She felt hideously ugly. Abie would pay for this night. “There are children here.”

  “There are children everywhere,” said Abie. “These girls are children—aren’t you, babies?”

  “We’re children of the night,” sparkled the blonde in a squeaky voice. She had blue eyes so pale they verged on freakish.

  “Do you want to hear me sing a high C?” asked the redhead. “Everybody says I’m the best singer in the chorus.”

  “Save it, Charlotte,” said the blonde. “First, we have to find Louis.”

  “Louis, come out, come out, wherever you are.” The two women raised their fists in front of their chests like stage mice and wiggled their tails, crouching as if playing hide-and-seek. They knocked on every door, crying, “Louis! Louis!”

  When Charlotte cracked Mama’s door, she sniffed and said, “I think something died in there.”

  As the chorus girl pivoted, Thelma slipped out behind, barefoot, wearing a ratty nightgown. Eyeing Abie, she leaped toward him, wrapping her arms around his neck. “I knew you’d come. They didn’t believe me.”

  “Have I ever let you down, my Temeleh?” Abie said and pulled his younger sister close.

  “Careful we don’t smash your toes, baby girl,” said Charlotte. “These heels are lethal, right, Gloria?”

  “I’ve slayed more guys with these shoes than the French have shot Germans.”

  “Ah,” said Charlotte, “your dancing ain’t that bad!”

  “You’re a laugh riot,” said Gloria, fluffing her feathers and shuffling her feet before a kick–ball change that got a response from the downstairs neighbors’ broom handle.

  “Now, Annie, look at Temmy—that’s a welcome.”

  Annie shook her head. “Maybe you’re not so welcome in my book.”

  “He’s welcome in mine.” Louis left the darkened kitchen, a cigarette hanging from his right hand and a glass of buttermilk in his left. He’d removed his shirt, revealing a muscular chest and arms. “I’d say my brother’s a sight for sore eyes—and these eyes are very sore. What’s home without Abie?”

  “Look what I brung ya,” said Abie. “Your pick: blonde or redhead.”

  “I only diddle brunettes,” said Louis, laughing.

  “Don’t insult the girls,” Abie cautioned.

  “Insult the girls?” Annie asked. These weren’t girls; they were whores. “You bring shiksas into my house and you worry about insulting them?”

  “What’s that, a shiksa?” asked Charlotte. “Is it like a malted milk?”

  “It means angel who doesn’t scream at my ass for breakfast,” said Abie.

  “That’s not what it means,” said Julius. Jesse clapped his hand over his son’s mouth before the kid could explain.

  “It means a goy,” Annie spat.

  “I’m no goy.” Charlotte giggled while rubbing her back against Abie like a bear scratching against bark. “I’m all goyle from top to bottom.”

  “She might be ignorant but not me, sister. I know the poison you spew behind my back, but mock my friends to my face, you may as well insult me. I don’t roll over.” Abie lowered his voice to a growl as he neared Annie.

  “It’s the truth, Little Yiddle.” Annie shrugged. Having crawled under his skin, she paused to consider where to plant the next knife and how to twist it. She found a racket in the middle of the night contemptible. And she realized she had the power to embarrass him as much as he’d shamed her.

  “The truth, Mamaleh, is you’re a bossy battle-ax who’d rather toss your brothers into an orphanage than admit you torched the baby.”

  “Ancient history,” said Annie, sucking her teeth. “You can’t still be angry about that.”

  “Try me, you fat, ugly bitch.”

  She boiled. “Jesse, are you just going to stand there and let him abuse me?”

  “Abie, please,” said Jesse. “Lay off. Don’t talk to my beauty that way.”

  “Who asked you, Newsboy? Move along. This is between me and my sister. Annie, you don’t want to be on my bad side.”

  “Or what, you’re going to stab my belly?”

  “They never charged me.”

  “Like you didn’t do it,” Annie said. “It was in the papers.”

  “Don’t believe everything you read. Like you’re so respectable,” said Abie as he placed his face uncomfortably close to Annie’s so that she could smell his cigar breath. His proximity and his glare threatened her. “Don’t act holier-than-thou just because you married the first sap who liked the way you jiggled his circumcised putz.”

  Annie slapped him, hard.

  “Annie!” Jesse said, shocked.

  Abie laughed. “Is that the best you got? Are you going to burn me next? Lock me in a closet? Rat me out to the police?”

  “I’m going to sit shivah for you,” she said. “You’re not welcome here.”

  “But my money is, you schnorrer. We’re not done.”

  “Yes, we are.”

  “Not until I say so.” He took one step back, popped his cuffs, and, smiling, backhanded her, catching his pinkie ring on her nose. Cartilage crunched.

  The painful blow made Annie’s eyes water. She covered her nose with her hands, feeling shock, anger, shame—and dripping blood. “Jesse,” she said, “punch him.”

  “No need,” said Abie, raising his hands in the air. “We’re even.”

  Her cowardly knight shuffled backward, saying, “I’ll get ice.”

  That weakling, Annie thought, disgusted that he let Abie shame her before the entire family. Raw emotions surged through her. The caged fear that roared inside escaped, exposing the degraded woman in a shabby robe shackled to her mother. She dreaded becoming Mama, stranded on her bed with her aches and pains, despondent and dependent on others. Panicked, she was too ashamed to look at her own children after being beaten.

  Julius said, “That was funny, Uncle Abie. Do it again.”

  “Once is plenty.”

  “Why’d you slap Mama, Uncle Abie?” asked Adele.

  “To make her behave,” Abie said. “Like when she slaps you, my little kosher deli. We’re done here. Louis, grab your stuff. You’re not coming back.”

  “Aces,” said Louis, disappearing into the kitchen to gather his kit.

  “Can I come?” Thelma asked.

  “You can’t go where we’re going.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “A place I got on Marcy Avenue.”

  “C’mon, Abie, we can’t leave the girl here,” said Gloria.

  “Throw on some clothes, Temmy. We’ll be out on the stoop. After you, my beauties,” he said, ushering them out and leaving the door ajar. The popping of a champagne cork echoed in the vestibule. Then came the girls’ tinkly laughter and Abie saying, “Sweet, sweet, sweet ass.”

  Within minutes, Louis and Thelma followed them out, with the younger sister carrying her shoes. Annie slammed the door behind them. She heard her mother call out, “Annie! Annie!”

  “Go to sleep, Ma,” she called, lacking the stomach to cope with Mama.

&nbs
p; “Come to bed, Anechka.” Jesse moved to embrace his wife. She sloughed him off without a thought for how he felt, remembering the stink of Thelma’s burned flesh, the shit stench when she’d unlocked the closet door at the Jungers’ apartment on 106th Street, releasing Abie and Louis. She’d struggled with Mama in pieces—why hadn’t they understood that? She’d only been a kid herself. They’d stolen her childhood. What did she know from raising children? Should she have let Mama go after Papa died and taken to the streets? She alone had united the family. They were here because of her, not Abie. She had to regain control.

  Annie switched off the living room light. Darkness flooded over her. She was agitated and sad in a way that she typically repressed. When she felt this way she lashed out—but at whom now? Abie was an animal, but he hadn’t stuck around to get the punishment he deserved.

  “Anechka, come to bed,” Jesse called from their room, but she ignored him. If he hadn’t busted Abie’s nose for her, he was incapable of improving her mood. Staring out the window, her fingers gripping the sill, she saw a full moon illuminating Hooper Street. She observed the quintet heading toward the Italian neighborhood. Thelma walked in front between Abie and Louis, who was lifting the drink to his lips. Then they began to skip, the three of them, with Thelma leading until they all had the same bouncy rhythm. She could hear their laughter in the wind as they tried to remain in step even as the champagne bubbled over.

  Behind them, the showgirls pranced arm in arm, kicking up their impossibly long legs while passing the second bottle between them. What a waste: opening another container before they’d finished the first. Annie had never tasted champagne. Somehow, if this night had unfolded differently, she might have. It probably tasted sour anyway.

  Alone looking out, Annie resented the closeness of her brothers and sister as they scooted toward fun, their backs to her. Louis was going to war and she hadn’t even wished him luck, given him a photo of the kids to carry. She might never see him again. And what bothered her even more than the possibility that he would die on the fields of France was that she’d hardly known who he really was on the streets of Brooklyn.

  She waited for one of them to look over their shoulder at her waiting in the window, to acknowledge her sacrifice for them. But they didn’t. They couldn’t care less. They hated her—and for a moment she let herself taste that big cup of bitterness.