Modern Girls

by Jennifer S. Brown

  My ears reddened as I guiltily remembered how I’d dawdled coming home, and I said, “It’s not like I can just leave work whenever I feel like.”

  “Leave work? Who said anything about leaving work? I just said everything’s done. Now shush. We need to light the candles.” Ma placed the candlesticks on the thin sideboard crammed between the table and the wall. The room overflowed with furniture: sideboard next to dining table next to couch next to coffee table beside credenza and Victrola. People had to turn sideways to make room for one another, and yet still Eugene and Alfie, with a freshly folded airplane, managed to climb over and under feet as they raced through the small space.

  Bustling through the drawers, Ma said, “Where are those matches?”

  I shot Alfie a look as he ran past, and he surreptitiously smuggled a box of matches from his pocket into my hand as he continued, “Boom boom boom!” He gave me a mildly worried glance, but I winked at him, willing to keep his secret. If Ma knew about Alfie sneaking cigarettes on the street, she’d hide his backside but good.

  “Here they are,” I said, handing her the matches. But Ma was no dip and she looked hard at Alfie; he avoided her eye by rushing into the bathroom.

  “Go ahead and light the candles,” Ma said.

  I struck a match on the side of the box. The wisp of smoke and the crackle of the match head brought me a moment’s relief as it welcomed in the peace of Shabbes. I lit each of the four tall white candles one by one, admiring the silver holders Ma had brought from the Old World, the one treasure her mother had owned, the one thing her mother had sent with her to the New World.

  When the flames stood tall, Ma and I both waved our hands over our eyes, and sang the blessing together. “Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu melkch ha-olam, asher kid’shanu b’mitzvotav vitzivanu, l’hadlik ner shel Shabbes.” With my eyes still closed, I took a deep breath. Ma had taught me that right after the blessing was recited, the gates of heaven briefly opened for the prayers of women. A special moment only for us. Silently I sent up my plea. Please, dear God in heaven. No.

  My solitude was interrupted when I was knocked in the legs by Eugene as he ran past me with his airplane, taking a tumble to the floor. Glancing up, I saw my mother also awakened from reverie. What had she been asking for?

  Shaking her head, Ma said, “All of you! Off to your father for your blessings while I get food on the table.”

  Uncle Heshie rose and scooped up Eugene. “Come on, scamp,” he said, lifting the boy over the back of the couch and handing him to Tateh.

  “Isidore,” Ma called. “Come out for Shabbes.”

  From the back bedroom the three boys shared, Izzy appeared, tall and thin, on the cusp of manhood but still boylike in his movements.

  Ma walked into the kitchen, her limp more pronounced than usual. I followed her in, saying, “I can put things on the table.”

  “Shah, shah. Get your blessing. Then you help.”

  Blessing. I was nineteen years old and still being blessed as if I were nine. I opened my mouth to complain—again—but my mother cut me off before I could start. “Until you are married, you are a child.”

  My hand moved to my belly of its own accord. When she found out, would she still think me a child? When she knew the shame of what I had done, would she even consider me a daughter?

  Retreating to the main room, I waited for my father to finish blessing the boys. When they were done, I stooped unceremoniously so my father could reach the top of my head from his seated position. I was as tall as he was and the whole process felt humiliating. Tateh recited the words in Hebrew. May God make you like Sarah, Rivka, Rachel, and Leah. May God grant you favor and peace.

  Sarah and Rachel hadn’t brought disgrace upon their families. I kissed my tateh and, fighting tears, retreated to the kitchen. Ma held a platter of chicken.

  “I got it, Ma,” I said, and she handed it over. Her steps were uneven. “Is it going to rain tonight?” I asked.

  Ma peered out the window. “Do you see clouds?”

  “No,” I said, walking to the table. “But your leg is bothering you.”

  Returning to the kitchen for more platters, I saw what I would have sworn was a blush on my mother’s cheeks, not that my mother ever blushed.

  “My leg has seen worse things than standing all day cooking.” She turned away from me quickly.

  I stifled a groan. Picking a platter of boiled potatoes with parsley from the counter, I said, “I know, Ma.” I had heard the story so many times I could recite it in my sleep. The czar’s army. The horse trampling her. Her leg that had never quite healed properly. I snuck a look at Ma from the corner of my eye, trying to picture her as a young woman in the midst of a political protest. But it was too hard to imagine. Ma, with her always-flushed face and her doughy figure, could never have been nineteen.

  “Come,” Ma said to everyone. “Dinner.”

  The family gathered. Some Shabbeses three or four guests would cram around the table. Tonight only Uncle Heshie joined us. Ma’s bachelor brother, who lived all the way up in the Bronx, was a Shabbes regular.

  I took my seat next to Eugene, where I could easily help him cut his food and keep him away from Alfie. Those two couldn’t sit together for more than five minutes without turning into fighter planes or battleships or whatever the game of the day was. Across from me were Alfie and Izzy, and Tateh held court at the head of the table. Ma always sat at the foot, ready to dart into the kitchen as needed. She practically ate standing, jumping up and down so often, piling more food on plates, retrieving the forgotten salt, grabbing a rag to clean a spill.

  For exactly two minutes and forty-eight seconds—I had often counted it in my head—the table sat quietly while Tateh recited the blessings over the wine and the challah. And then, the eruption of boys. Hands flew into the platters of food, and—as she did every night—Ma reprimanded. “Boys!” Her tone was stern, but we were all so used to it that we barely paid attention. “Your father and Uncle Heshie first.” Her hand reached out and smacked the wrist of the nearest child, who tonight was Alfie.

  “Ow!” Alfie said.

  “I’ll give you something to ‘Ow’ about,” Ma said.

  I rolled my eyes. Nothing ever changed. Tateh took his time, reaching toward the platters and grabbing one of the chicken legs.

  “Aw, I want a pulke,” Eugene said.

  “There are two,” Ma said.

  “But I want one, too,” Alfie said.

  “You got it last week.” Eugene’s little voice rose to match that of his big brother.

  While the boys argued, Izzy kept his eye on Tateh and as soon as our father’s plate was filled and Uncle Heshie had grabbed a breast, Izzy—without a word—grabbed the other leg, brought it to his mouth, and took a big bite.

  “Not fair!” said Eugene as Alfie said, “Why, I oughta—”

  “Enough!” Ma said. “Stop your bickering. There’s plenty more chicken to go around.”

  Uncle Heshie laughed. “I was hoping for another Braddock-Baer match right at the table.”

  “I’m Braddock,” Eugene said. He sat taller in his seat, puffing his chest.

  “Yes, and I’m Franklin Delano Roosevelt,” Ma said. “Now eat the chicken you have.”

  “But I want dark meat,” Eugene said.

  Ma’s temper was nearing a breaking point, so I took a thigh off the platter and served it to Eugene. I leaned close to him and whispered, “This is better than the pulke. Bigger chunks of meat for a growing boy like you.” So near to Eugene, I breathed in the scent of boy: the salt of his sweat, the faint smell of penny candy lingering on his cheeks, the sweet musk of his skin. For just a moment, the world was right. I kissed him on the temple of his forehead and Eugene looked up and smiled. Sometimes I wished the world could be just me and Eugene. My favorite moments were when he came to me: crawling onto my couch after a bad d
ream, looking for a bandage when he scraped his knee, telling me what happened in the school yard.

  I cut Eugene’s chicken into small pieces. To me, the chicken seemed rubbery and sick, which I knew wasn’t true; Ma cooked the best chicken. Truthfully, I felt rubbery and sick, and I didn’t know how I was going to choke down the meat. I took the paltriest serving I could without attracting Ma’s attention, but Ma’s eyes were on my plate in a heartbeat.

  “You’re too good for the chicken? Eat more.”

  It was easier to place more food on my plate than to argue with Ma. When she wasn’t looking, though, I slipped a few pieces off my plate onto Eugene’s. Eugene waggled his eyebrows at me, so I stuck out my tongue and tried to touch my nose with it, which made him giggle.

  Across the table, Uncle Heshie said to Alfie, “So Baer’s hands have been deemed healthy enough to fight Joe Louis.”

  “Eh, Baer is washed up,” Alfie said. “Give me Braddock any day.”

  “Don’t think you can count him out yet,” Izzy said, and he and Alfie began to squabble back and forth.

  Heshie laughed and winked at me. “Look at these two, fighting about fighters.”

  I smiled, but I couldn’t make the edges of my mouth go up quite far enough as I pushed the chicken about my plate. I didn’t think there was any way to successfully swallow the food and keep it down, so I just pretended to bring a forkful to my mouth.

  At the other end of the table, Tateh took a large bite of chicken and said, “Did you read about those crazy British?”

  “Tateh,” I said. “Don’t talk with your mouth full.” My family ate like we lived in a boardinghouse. I took a chunk of chicken on my fork and cut it delicately into four pieces. My napkin was on my lap and my elbows were off the table.

  Ignoring me, Tateh went on. “They think Eden puts his foot down and Mussolini abandons the idea of war with Ethiopia? Fools.”

  Ma snapped irritably, which meant she hadn’t had a chance to sit with her Forverts. When she did, she enjoyed arguing politics. “I should know what’s happening in Ethiopia? As if I have time to sit and read the whole paper? With a bushel of boys and Shabbes to prepare?”

  I cut each of the four pieces of chicken into four pieces. Sixteen pieces. Could each one be cut yet four more times? Sixty-four pieces, which I could then make into two hundred and fifty-six shreds. How many times could I divide the chicken into fours?

  “Mussolini will not accept economic concessions. He’s looking for farmland,” Tateh said.

  “Mussolini and his buddy Hitler are going to drag us into war,” Uncle Heshie said.

  “Would that be the worst thing?” Ma asked.

  “War is a capitalistic tool, Rose.” Uncle Heshie waved his fork, as if punctuating the air. “We shouldn’t be fighting other nations; we should be banding together to promote the cause of the working class.”

  “The socialist cause is all well and fine, except that fascism is a greater evil than capitalism. Mussolini supports Hitler. I will stand by the socialists right up to the line where Jewish lives are at stake.”

  While I often acted as if the political talk held no interest for me, it was hard to stay silent; politics was in the very air in our house. My parents lived their causes, and I could no more remain ignorant than I could not breathe. While lying on my couch at night, I often picked up the Forverts from the table next to me, and it was difficult to keep my opinions to myself. “Jewish lives are definitely at stake. Did you read that over a hundred thousand people attended Julius Streicher’s anti-Jewish rally in Berlin?” This, however, turned out to be a poor move on my part, as it only drew Ma’s attention to my plate.

  “Dottala, you think I don’t see what you’re doing? Stop playing and start eating.”

  To distract Ma from my food, I set down my fork and knife and announced, “I have news.”

  “News?” Ma appeared alarmed. “What news? Who’s sick?”

  Always it was like this. Assuming the worst, assuming something terrible befell family or friends. “No one’s sick, Ma.” Her pessimism irked me. “Not all news is bad news.” Of course, my real news was as bad as it gets, but I was trying not to think of that.

  “Nu? You have good news? So share already,” Ma said.

  “I would, Ma, if you’d let me get a word in.”

  “Now, now,” Tateh said, ever the calming voice when it came to me and Ma. “What’s your news?”

  At this point, I didn’t even want to tell them, but forced into a corner, I said, “I received a promotion today.”

  “A promotion!” Ma’s face instantly drained of the worry, replaced by a beaming smile. “Bubelah. I’m so proud.”

  The tiniest of smiles crossed my face. “I’m now the head bookkeeper of the office. The girls all report to me.”

  “A head bookkeeper? My daughter the head bookkeeper.” Ma fluttered her hands happily before placing them on her cheeks. She shined with delight. “Wait until Lana hears about this. She was just bragging about her daughter’s new sewing job the other day. Not my daughter! No manual labor for her. A head bookkeeper.” Ma had spent long hours hunched over pieces of fabric and took pride in the fact that I was not working with my hands. In school, whenever Izzy or I brought home a less than perfect grade, she’d say, “You will work with your mind, not your hands! Do better.”

  “Didja get a raise?” Alfie asked.

  Leave it to Alfie to bring up the money. That boy was a hustler, fast on his way to life as a goon, if he didn’t watch himself. He was always scrounging for work, looking to make a dollar. He chopped wood in the street to sell for firewood, which would have been fine if he didn’t spend his earnings on cigarettes and crap games. Trying to turn a buck into a five-spot was his only objective.

  I arched my eyebrow at Alfie. “It’s undignified to discuss finances,” I said. Low-class was what I was thinking, but I knew that would earn a scolding from Ma.

  “Aw, come on,” Alfie said.

  Izzy looked at me. “Well, didja?”

  With a sigh, I said, “I did.” For just a moment I hesitated. “A big one.”

  “How much?” Alfie asked.

  I waited for someone to correct him, but not only did no one do so, they were all looking at me for an answer. “I’ll be earning”—I paused dramatically, wanting to revel in my new riches—“twenty-three dollars and fifty cents a week.” My mind toyed with the numbers. That was $1,222 a year. Every week, I gave my parents $12 of my paycheck. If I now gave them $15 a week, I’d have $442 a year just for me. Enough to have a nice stash of cash for an apartment with Abe.

  “Murder!” Alfie said. “That’s aces, Dottie.”

  “Language, Alfie,” Ma said.

  “Impressive,” Uncle Heshie said, and Tateh glowed with approval.

  A furrow appeared on Ma’s forehead. “Maybe now you’ll save a little?”

  “Ma, I just got the promotion. Let me enjoy it.” Ma could sound like a broken record: “Save a little. Save a little. Save a little.” Truth be told, I wanted to save money, but I couldn’t go about dressed in shmattas. Especially now. A new dress was called for. After all, the ones I owned didn’t seem to fit anymore. I pushed down a rising gag.

  “How are you and Abe going to afford an apartment and all the furnishings if you don’t start saving a little?” Tateh asked.

  “Not you, too,” I said.

  Ma shrugged. “If you don’t want to save enough to get married and start your own family, who am I to say anything?”

  “And yet that never stops you, does it?” Izzy said. His teasing lightened the mood, and Tateh laughed even as Ma sat unsure of whether to reprimand or chuckle. Izzy was filling out; he was taller and less gangly than he had been just a year ago. Though he was seventeen and had graduated high school, in my mind, he was still the little kid in glasses who ran with a bad gang, with Lefty Iskowi
tz and No Legs Grossman. No Legs had wooden stumps and crutches, but he hadn’t let it stop him from being one of the fastest delinquents on the street. But now the gang wasn’t so bad and the boys were growing up. Lefty worked as a foreman at the brass and copper company, and No Legs was learning tailoring. Not many jobs for a man with no legs—he’d been crushed by a streetcar as a toddler—but he had good hands and a gentle way with a needle. Izzy, though, was to start night school in September to earn a law degree. Izzy was in-between, not a child, not an adult, and I felt an unease during his moments of maturity, as he turned into a man I didn’t recognize as my younger brother.

  “Well, this is wonderful. A toast,” Tateh said, lifting his glass filled with sweet wine. “L’chaim.”

  “L’chaim,” we all said, raising our glasses. I tried to hold on to this moment, this joy. Would it be my last? I would have to tell Ma, but not yet. I wanted to clutch this happiness for at least a few days longer. And who knew? Maybe I’d wake the next morning with my courses. Maybe this was all a mistake. A miscalculation.

  And so we continued our meal as Alfie and Eugene gossiped about Will Rogers and the New York Giants, as Tateh discussed union politics with Uncle Heshie, as Ma nervously surveyed the table, making sure everyone had enough. Izzy devoured his third plate of food, while I tried to nibble at the chicken, each swallow accompanied by a hard bone of fear.

  Rose

  AFTER dinner I cleared the table. Dottie jumped up to help, but I knew it was just so she could toss the remains of her chicken in the garbage in hopes I wouldn’t see. As soon as the table was empty, she ran off before I could ask her to dry. Did she think I didn’t see how she cut her meat into tiny pieces as if that would make it invisible? What waste. That chicken could have made a nice salad. But Dottie was such a jumpy girl these days, and a bit of chicken wasn’t worth the fuss.

  At the sink, I washed the dishes, carefully dried each one, and put them away in the fleischig cabinet. The milk dishes and the meat dishes were from the same set; I needed to be sure to return each to its proper cabinet so as not to mix them. How nice it would be to afford another set of dishes, ones that looked so different, you could tell which was fleischig and which was milchig with a glance.