Mrs. Anscher smiled. “No, no. They don’t just stop. They come late and early—they come a little more, a little less—but you will know when it happens. It happens slowly.” She patted my arm. “How old are you? Forty-three? Forty-four? You’re still young.”
Indignant, I pulled my shoulders back and stood taller. “Thirty-nine!” It wasn’t such a lie.
“My apologies. When you’re my age, it’s so hard to tell. But you have nothing to worry about for another ten years or so.”
Forcing a smile, I said, “Thank you, Mrs. Anscher. I appreciate it greatly.”
Holding the handrail, Mrs. Anscher resumed her walk to the first floor. “You may come to me anytime, dear.”
I stood at our door before entering, letting her comments settle over me. There was no surprise. The suspicion had been growing in me. Apparently, it wasn’t the only thing growing in me.
We didn’t deserve this.
Friday nights, the start of Shabbes, were a special time for a man and his wife. Not a Friday night—except when Jewish law disallowed it—had gone by in all our twenty years of marriage that Ben hadn’t fulfilled his duties as a husband. The previous night, before we went to the roof, was no exception. I might be forty-two, but on Friday nights Ben made me giggle like a newlywed.
When I was a young woman, sneaking out into the fields with Shmuel, lovemaking was a loud, boisterous affair. But with Ben . . . That first night of marriage, in his parents’ apartment, pretending to be a young virgin, I longed to cry out with desire, but I bit my lip, and admonished Ben to keep his voice down when it rose a touch too high. A parent in the next room, a lodger in the kitchen, a child at the foot of the bed—never have Ben and I truly been able to be free together.
And now we’d wound the clock back to the start.
I needed to prepare breakfast and lunch for Ben and hustle him out the door so he could make the early Shabbes minyan before going to the garage.
I opened the door, and quietly passing Dottie asleep on the sofa, I went to dress in the bedroom, fighting back a sob.
What had I done?
Dottie
Saturday, August 17
THAT moment of waking on a Saturday morning was a luxury in which to revel. Not long ago, Ma would wake me early on Shabbes to help get Tateh out the door for shul and to take care of my brothers. But now that I worked in an office, Ma let me sleep in, even though the noise of the apartment made it difficult. I loved, in my sleepy haze, listening to her attempts to quietly shush the boys. “Dottala works hard,” she’d say. “Let her rest.” Her voice was always louder than the one she was shushing, but she tried. I could hear Ma at the table, not five feet from the sofa on which I slept, serving breakfast to the boys, who had bounded in loudly from the roof about a half hour earlier.
A thin sheet covered me, and I snuggled into it, happy not to be rushing. My Saturdays were always spent with Eugene, taking him to the pictures or the playground at Tompkins Square Park or the library. Saturday evenings I painted my nails. Already I was thinking about what new color I would purchase—coral? Ruby?
And then I remembered. My situation.
The thought came over me like a chill, and I wrapped the sheet tightly around me, as if to hide my dilemma.
And yet? Listening to Ma say the blessings before eating triggered a thought. Maybe, just maybe, this wasn’t my problem. Maybe I could lay this in the hands of something greater than myself.
I suddenly leaped off the couch, draping the sheet around me. Ma looked up from the table, startled.
“What? A bee stung you?”
“Ma,” I said.
“Never have you moved so fast out of bed. Sometimes I can’t tell which is sofa and which is you—you stay in so long.”
I rolled my eyes and headed to her room.
“What’s with the sheet?” Ma asked. “Suddenly you’re too modest for us to see you in your nightclothes?”
“I’m a grown woman, Ma. I shouldn’t be prancing around in underthings.” The truth was I feared her eyeing my bosom, my stomach.
Making my way into her room, where I kept my clothes on a small rack, I surveyed my garments. What to wear for an appointment with Hashem? I pulled down my most modest dress, which wasn’t saying much—the skirt came to below my knees and the sleeves brushed my wrists, but the scoop neckline wasn’t the most decorous. It would have to do. The last time I’d worn this dress was for the Stein funeral.
As I eyed the zipper, I sighed, and I turned to face Ma’s dresser. Could I do this? With my eyes half-closed so I wouldn’t see her unmentionables, I fished in her top drawer for a girdle. My hands found one, but not before they alighted on the small box. With a quick glance at the door, I pulled out the tin. My future. How wonderful it would be to sit in a classroom, surrounded by numbers. Were there new numbers to learn? New worlds of calculations to discover? I pictured evenings filled with numbers swirling around, multiplying and dividing, leaping along the number line, digits building and snowballing to ever greater sums. I admired the roundness of even numbers in their willingness to halve, the stubbornness of prime numbers in their refusal to divide. I loved the infiniteness of eight stretching before me, no end in sight, and the sturdiness of a five. Rounded nine was maternal, holding within a triplet of threes. But then the thought of maternity brought me crashing back into the moment.
I replaced the tin, shut the drawer, and shimmied into the girdle. Ma was just big enough that the girdle skimmed on easily, which disappointed me; I was hoping it would hide more. But it did enough so the dress slid down my body with barely a struggle.
Before leaving the bedroom, I bolstered myself with a deep breath. There was no way to slip out undetected; I’d just have to deal with Ma head-on.
Ma was cleaning a spill and not looking at me when she said, “Sit and eat.” She glanced up and was clearly surprised. “Did someone die?”
“God forbid, Ma.”
“Why are you dressed like that?”
Walking to the credenza, I opened the glass doors, hunting for my prayer book. “I thought I’d go to shul this morning.”
The silence startled me. Ma looked at me openmouthed, and Alfie and Eugene exchanged nervous glances. Finally Alfie said, “Are ya sick or something?”
Ah, there was the siddur, behind the photo of Ma’s parents. “No, I’m not sick,” I said. My tone was taking the singsong quality of an angry child and I checked myself, readjusting my voice by clearing my throat. “No,” I repeated, “I’m not sick. It’s just been a while since I’ve been to shul on Shabbes and I thought I should go.”
“What about the movies?” Eugene asked.
“We’ll still have plenty of time for the movies when I get back,” I said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
“Wait.” Ma’s voice was firm. I was sure she was about to insist I eat first.
“Ma—” But she interrupted before I could finish my sentence.
“I will come with you.”
“Oh,” I said. Now it was my turn to be taken aback. Ma didn’t go to shul. She sent Tateh while she cooked and cleaned. She went for the holidays, but even then she didn’t stay long, hurrying home to prepare the house. But here she was looking for her own prayer book and a hat suitable for Shabbes.
Alfie shook his head. “Going mad around here.”
“Say,” Ma said, “why aren’t you at shul? Hooligans! Finish your breakfast and head down. If I don’t see you there praying to Hashem, I’ll give you something to pray about later.”
“Look what you did,” Alfie said to me.
I shrugged. It took only a few moments for Ma to change her dress and say, “Let’s go.”
Walking out of our apartment, we made our way down the block. I waited for Ma to cross-examine me, but she looked to be caught up in her own thoughts. Very unlike her. She clutched her prayer book tigh
tly in her hand, and finally, I couldn’t stand the quiet.
“So, Ma,” I started, but then I halted, unsure of what to say. Was I about to confide in her? No. I felt certain I could pray this away. So what was the point of worrying her?
“Yes?” she said, but her eyes remained forward, focused.
“Um.” I scrambled for something innocuous to say. I thought of nothing. “Never mind.”
We walked in silence.
Arriving at our shul, we went upstairs to the women’s section. Down below, we could see a sea of men davening, their bodies swaying back and forth as they hunched over their siddurs, reading the prayers even though they knew them by heart. There was no point looking for Tateh or Abe; they’d been to the early minyan before work. The men here were the ones who worked nights or in the afternoon or the pushcart peddlers who made their own schedules, closing on Saturday so they could observe Shabbes the way it was meant to be: praying at shul, studying Torah, relaxing at home.
The women’s area was much less crowded. Most wore large head scarves as they bent over their prayer books, but a few younger and more modern women merely wore hats, and a handful of older women, wigs.
Ma scanned the balcony. Leaning toward me, she whispered, “Do you see Perle?”
Glancing around, I shook my head.
Ma sighed and sat down. “Oh well.”
Had she come just to socialize? But then Ma opened her book and began praying with a devotion that felt oddly out of character. She was rapt in her intonations, her eyes closed, her body shaking. Taking her lead, I opened my own siddur, and with absolute concentration, I read the prayers softly to myself: Baruch atah Adonai. Sh’ma Yisroel. Kadosh kadosh kadosh. And then, when I reached the silent prayers, I put everything I had into it. The Hebrew letters careened and merged within me, and at the end of the prayer, I continued standing, adding in my own private plea. I closed my eyes, and just repeated over and over, my lips moving but no sound emerging, “Please, dear God, let this be a mistake. Hashem, make this problem go away. Please, dear God, let this be a mistake.”
For two hours Ma and I were lost in our own prayers, and when we were finally done, it was as if we emerged from a deep sleep, refreshed and satisfied.
• • •
THAT afternoon, I was so giddy, I let Eugene talk me into a Boris Karloff–Bela Lugosi movie. I allowed myself to be terrified at The Raven, confident my problem would be solved. At dinner I laughed, and while eating wasn’t easy, the food went down better, which I took as a positive omen. I painted my nails a lovely shade of Sun Rose, before letting Alfie and Eugene coax me into an after-dinner game of pinochle. I fell asleep dreaming of accounting school.
• • •
THE next morning I woke excitedly and ran to the bathroom. With a deep breath, I murmured, “Thank you, Hashem.” I pulled down my underthings and looked.
Clean.
My underwear was completely clean. Not even a spot of blood.
I sat down on the toilet and for the first time—truly, completely, and silently—sobbed.
Rose
Sunday, August 18
NOW that I knew for certain my body had betrayed me, the signs were unmistakable. A sore bosom. An unsettled stomach. My aching leg. My belly protruded, not from too much kuchen, but the way that happened when you were with child for the seventh time. The body remembered the curves and bumps and welcomed them back like an old friend.
In the kitchen, always in the kitchen, I prepared the entrails from Friday for our Sunday night stew. I looked impatiently at the clock, willing it to move faster. On Sunday nights Ben and I attended our kaffeeklatsch, and I longed for time to confide in Perle. A shred of hope persisted that this child wouldn’t take—I had lost babies before—yet if this were truly the third month, then it would appear that this baby would be as stubborn as the others I’d birthed.
Eugene ran into the kitchen, but when he saw me alone at the sink, he suddenly grew shy. “Where’s Alfie?” he asked. The child couldn’t stand to be separated from his older brother, attached to him like an appendage.
“Where should Alfie be? Reading his Hebrew is where he should be. So on the street causing trouble is where he is.”
That Alfie, refusing to study. He would have his hands slapped by the rabbi when he returned to heder knowing less than he did the spring before. Alfie hated going, didn’t like to be confined, but that boy was going to get an education if it killed him. So many of Izzy’s gang had become thugs; heder had given Izzy solid footing, teaching him Jewish ethics. Those boys in heder with him, No Legs and Lefty, also turned into solid citizens. The boys who didn’t go . . . well, they were best avoided. I wanted to keep Alfie away from the gangs. My boys were rough, and the streets of New York were not a safe place for them.
“Thanks, Ma,” Eugene said as he ran off, and I called after him, “Don’t you dare slam that door,” which he was unable to hear for the slamming of the door.
Eugene, what would become of my Eugene? I had so little sense of the boy. Izzy had book smarts. Dottie had math and her Abe. Alfie worried me, but I could see that spark of intelligence in his eyes, the street smarts that made his hands quick and his senses sharp. Alfie was a live wire. He was also my favorite, a fact I tried to hide from the others, but I knew they could feel it, saw the way Eugene watched Alfie and me together. When you come so close to losing someone . . .
But Eugene. Eugene was a stranger. The boy was mature beyond his years, absorbing what went on around him. Yet he was sensitive, aware of every slight, every misfortune. A distance existed between us. I couldn’t blame him. It was entirely my doing. When a child is taken from his mother as a babe—and for an entire year at that!—he’s bound to distrust. He was just a few months old when Joey and Alfie caught polio, and the doctor insisted Eugene be kept away. I had to choose: send my Joey and Alfie to a hospital, where they’d be alone and terrified and most likely ill-treated, or send Eugene to relatives. It was no choice. Eugene was almost eighteen months by the time he came home to me, a mother he didn’t know, a mother who was still mourning the loss of one of her twins.
When he returned, I thought I just needed time. This too shall pass, I repeated to myself over and over, the words my mother had whispered to me as a child. I didn’t understand that time wouldn’t heal this wound, that the mourning would lessen, but the ache would not. After Joey passed, I held on to Alfie with every breath of my body—too tightly, I knew—and he bucked at the reins I placed on him.
The truth is—and this is something I am ashamed to admit even to myself—I considered not calling for Eugene to come home. He had settled in so nicely with Ben’s sister. Kate truly cared for Eugene, and to this day, when Kate comes over, he runs to her and curls into her lap for a snuggle, burying his head in her bosom as he sucks his finger with satisfaction. A twinge of jealousy flickers through me when this happens; Eugene never sits on my lap. But I was so exhausted. Nursing the boys, trying to take care of Izzy and Dottie and Ben, making sure the house ran smoothly . . . I could be forgiven—couldn’t I?—for thinking life would be so much simpler without my youngest son. Dottie took to mothering Eugene, which gave me a quiet relief.
But still the guilt plagued. Every time I looked at my baby boy, I felt the great weight of my sins. I occasionally spoiled him, letting him get away with things Alfie could never have done—an extra candy before dinner, looking the other way at yet another tear in his trousers—as if the mere act of doing could compensate for what I wasn’t feeling.
Was this new baby supposed to be a chance to redeem myself? Or was it a punishment? Eugene was a longed-for child, and yet, I’d failed him. How could I trust I would do better for a child that I didn’t even want?
• • •
AT six o’clock, Ben came home from the garage, exhausted as usual, his clothes blackened and torn. I did more darning for that man than for the three bo
ys put together. “Good evening, my beshert,” he said, giving me a kiss on the cheek.
I playfully slapped him with my dish towel to get him out of my way. “Go. Rest. Dinner will be out soon.”
Ben headed to the bathroom to try to scrub the dirt from his hands, a pointless task. As my father would have said, “Like blood-cupping helps a dead person.” Once he was as clean as he could get, he plopped himself in his armchair and opened the Jewish newspaper I’d left him on the side table.
Bustling about the kitchen, I ensured everything was ready. Then I went into the living room, to set the table. Since the boys weren’t home yet and Dottie was out with her friends, I took the opportunity for a word with my husband.
I swatted at his feet, which were propped on the table. “Feet off,” I said.
“I’m tired, Rose,” Ben said. “Can’t a man rest in his own home?”
“Rest? Yes. But dirty feet all over the furniture? No.” I brushed the table with a rag where his boots had been. When I was done, I surveyed the table, satisfied. As I looked around the room, a rush of pride surged through me. Our home was pleasing, with a brand-new radio and a plush green couch. Religious books overflowed, boasting of the learning of the men in the house. We had the great novels of Aleichem, Mendele, and Peretz, and even some Yiddish translations of Shakespeare and Melville, which I had managed to read over the years. The Victrola played Dvorˇák’s Symphony no. 5, which echoed in the small apartment, making me feel like a fancy uptown lady. But with the pride came a deep fatigue. My entire body felt heavy and my leg ached, so with a sigh, I set myself down on the couch.
As he heard the creak of the sofa spring, Ben looked up from his paper, surprised. But then, looking closer at me, he said, “You’re exhausted.”
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