Not a Nickel to Spare

by Perry Nodelman

  Speaking of Christmas, Pa was mad at Auntie Esther today because of it. She was over for tea and told Ma she put Willie and Joe on the list for the Star Santa Claus Fund. Really! She did! And on Saturday they got the boxes! There was a new sweater and stockings and mittens and candies and an orange for each of them, and Willie got a toy truck and Joe got a ball. Pa says that accepting charity from goyim is bad enough, but even worse, what did Willie and Joe need with Christmas presents of all things? What kind of Jews get Christmas presents? It would never happen in the old country.

  Pa’s probably right. But I have to admit I’m kind of sorry about it, because last week I heard on the radio that all the girls’ boxes have a talking Mama Doll in them this year. I don’t like dolls all that much, but I bet Rivka wouldn’t make a talking doll be a maid.

  December 28

  Yesterday, Gert whined at Ma for hours and hours so she could go to a movie with her friend Ida. They wanted to go to the College Theatre on College Street and see Douglas Fairbanks in Mr. Robinson Crusoe. Douglas Fairbanks is very handsome for an old man. Ma said Gert could go but only if she took me along because I was moping around the house with nothing to do and getting in her hair. Gert agreed and asked Ma for money, and Ma said she only had 10¢ and would that do, and Gert said it’d be enough for both of us. But when we got there, it was 10¢ each. The College Theatre is so expensive, and Gert knew it was all along. She is so mean.

  Gert told me I had to stand there and wait in the lobby while she went in with Ida and saw the movie. I was so furious I almost started to walk home by myself even though it was pitch black out and there might be hoboes or other bad men around and I was kind of scared. But then Mrs. Koslov from the grocery store showed up and asked why I was there and lent me the money to get in. I took the 10¢, but only after Mrs. Koslov promised not to tell Ma. If Ma found out she’d be mad at Gert and then Gert would be mad at me. Ten whole cents! I don’t know how I’ll ever pay it back.

  The movie was okay, I guess, but I was so mad at Gert I wasn’t really paying attention. All the way home I walked behind her and kept stepping onto the backs of her shoes and saying it was an accident. It made me feel much better.

  December 30

  Benny is in a band now. It’s completely ridiculous, because he doesn’t know anything about music and he can’t sing and he can’t play any musical instrument. All he has is a white tuxedo.

  It’s a used tuxedo, and it fits Benny perfectly. He showed it to me. He looks very elegant in it. Benny’s ma found it on a table in front of a second-hand store on Kensington and it was really cheap so she bought it. Auntie Esther is always finding bargains. She’s so poor I guess she has to, just like us — but sometimes the bargains she finds aren’t very practical.

  Since he already had the suit, Benny got Harvey Tischler and some of his other friends who play instruments together and they formed a band. They call themselves Ben Applebaum and the Sons of Rhythm. Since Benny has the tuxedo, he’s the bandleader, and he waves a stick around while the other boys play. Benny says he has no idea what he’s doing, but the boys in the band just try not to watch him too much and it sounds all right.

  Benny gets to be in a band without even playing, while I have to give up music forever because of that crazy Miss Tedde. Life is so unfair.

  1933

  January 1933

  January 1, 1933

  Happy New Year! When you’re Jewish, you’re lucky enough to get a new year twice a year. Or maybe it’s not so lucky, because you get older twice as fast? Or maybe my head is filled with crazy ideas just because I’m just bored and can’t wait for school to start again.

  January 4

  Gert is being very nice to me now — for Gert. Somehow Dora found out about the movies. I wonder if Mrs. Koslov told her. Anyway, Dora took Gert aside and talked to her about it, and Gert told her she was sorry and I think she is, but because of Dora, not because of me. Even Gert can’t help being nice to Dora, and so she’s trying to be nicer to me. Thank heavens for Dora.

  After the holiday, Meyer Eckel came back to school with new shoes but the same old shirt. Miss Douglas wasn’t very nice to him about staying away for so long and said he might fail the grade. But at least he’s there to try. Hannah says the shoes came from the Star Santa Claus Fund. Maybe it isn’t so bad for Jews to get Christmas presents after all.

  January 8

  We have a guest staying in the house with us. It’s Pa’s second cousin, Yankl, from Saskatchewan.

  He looked awful when he came, just awful. He was covered with grimy black soot, and his clothes were ripped and torn and he looked like he needed a shave and a haircut. And he smelled really bad, like he hadn’t had a bath in a year. When Ma and I answered the doorbell, she thought he was just another hobo looking for a handout, and she told me to tell him we didn’t have anything to give him and he should go away. I wish she would learn some English so I don’t always have to go to the door and translate for her. But I didn’t have to translate this time, because he started talking in Yiddish! He said, “Reva, don’t you remember me?” and Ma took a closer look and realized who he was. She knew him from when she was just my age, back in the old country, and he came here once years ago when he first came to Canada. He’s a lot younger than Pa, but he and Pa were always together, Ma says, more like friends than like cousins. Just like me and Benny, Ma says.

  Anyway, Yankl looked a lot different after Ma poured him a bath and lent him some of Pa’s clothes. For one thing, he was a lot skinnier. He told us he looked so fat before because he was wearing all of his clothes at the same time — two shirts, two pairs of pants, a sweater, a jacket and a coat!

  He was wearing all his clothes because he has been riding the rails! He came all the way from Regina by stealing rides in boxcars on trains! No wonder he was dirty! And so hungry, too — he gulped down so many potatoes! Ma kept giving him another helping, and he kept shoving them in. He must have been starving.

  Now he’s upstairs sleeping in my room, and Gert and I have to go sleep upstairs in the attic with Sophie and Dora. Sophie and Dora are sharing one of the beds, and Gert and I will share the other one.

  January 9

  I had a horrible night. Gert hogged all the space and hit me when she rolled over too far. It was truly awful. It’s a good thing that Yankl is here for only a few days. He’s on his way to see his sister in Montreal.

  He’s going there because he can’t find any work in Saskatchewan. It’s so sad. He told Ma and Pa he had a farm near a place in Saskatchewan called Wapella, but he lost it two years ago after there was a drought and the wind blew the soil away and he had a bad crop — and anyway, he says, the price of wheat was so low he didn’t even make enough money from selling the wheat to pay for growing it. He says he and his wife had to live for most of that winter on jackrabbits they caught and Russian thistle, which is a kind of weed that Yankl says grows like crazy even when the wheat won’t. His wife was expecting a baby and I guess not eating very much made her sick, because both she and the baby died before it could be born. He cried when he told us about it.

  Yankl gave up the farm after that, and ever since then he’s been going from farm to farm in Saskatchewan looking for work. Sometimes people had small jobs for him to do, but mostly, they couldn’t afford to hire him and he had to beg for food to keep alive. He figured if he could get to Montreal his sister could help him and maybe get him a job in her husband’s delicatessen or something — but he never got enough money together to afford a train ticket. Then he was in a soup kitchen in Regina a few weeks ago and a man he met there said he was heading that way and Yankl could come with him. Yankl figured he was too old and weak to ride the rails, and he was afraid of slipping under the car while he was jumping to get on it and being run over. But this man said he’d help him, and Yankl decided he had nothing to lose, and that’s how he ended up riding the rails.

  He says riding the rails was no fun at all, and he did nearly slip and fall under the tr
ain. He also got chased by the “bulls” a couple of times — that’s what he calls the railway police, and he says they’re really mean and they like to beat up hoboes. And once he was on a coal-and-water car and a railway worker saw him and turned a hose on him and the water pushed him right off the train. No wonder he looked so awful. He says he had all his clothes on when he came because it’s really hard to jump onto a moving train if you’re carrying a bag or anything. Those ratty clothes are everything he owns in the whole world — except for a wrinkled-up picture of his wife he keeps in his pocket all the time.

  Ma and Pa tried to talk him into staying for a while, but he said no. He’s going to leave tomorrow. I guess he could tell we really couldn’t afford to keep him for long. And he wouldn’t let Pa give him a little money towards getting a ticket to Montreal.

  January 11

  Yankl has gone. He put all his own clothes back on and left. Ma tried to clean up the clothes, but they’re so old and torn they didn’t really look all that different. I’m glad to get my own bed back, but I sure hope Yankl makes it to Montreal in one piece. He is kind of sad all the time, but he’s a nice man.

  Now that she knows about Yankl, I hope that Sophie won’t say such mean things about hoboes anymore. It’s not his fault if he’s poor.

  January 15

  I was a boy again yesterday. Benny sweet-talked me into doing it, and I’m almost getting used to it. The Gelman brothers knew someone who knew someone who needed a band for a dance, so they took the job, and they needed a person to help Harvey Tischler carry all his drums on the streetcar. The boys in the band knew I was a girl, of course, but they made me keep my coat and hat on in case anyone at the dance complained about me being with them.

  Harvey Tischler is all right, I guess, but I hate being around him. He always smells so bad. Benny says it’s because Harvey loves playing street hockey. The boys use frozen horse manure for a puck. I think it’s disgusting, but Benny says, what else can they do if they can’t afford a real puck? Anyway, whenever Harvey sees a good horse ball on the street, he puts it in his pocket to bring home and keep on the porch for the next game. But they always melt a little in his pocket on the way home, which is why he always smells. Benny says the boys call him Harvey the Horseballer. Boys are so strange. I used to think it was just Benny.

  The dance was in a Church of England church. Benny didn’t tell me before we got there, because if he had, then of course I wouldn’t have gone. I’ve never been in a church before. Sure, I guess St. Chris is sort of churchy, but it’s right on our street and it just seems like home. I’ve been going there forever, and they never preach or pray if you don’t count the Bible pictures they have for kids to colour. It felt strange being there, and I hope Pa never finds out.

  Considering they’ve hardly ever rehearsed together or anything, the band was pretty good. The Gelman brothers are great on the fiddle and the sax, and Harv makes a lot of noise with the drums, and Benny looks very handsome in his tuxedo. You can’t even tell how skinny he is. They played “Stardust” and I started to hum along without even realizing it, and had to make myself stop. It’s the very last time I will ever sing.

  January 18

  So much schoolwork! I never seem to have any time to write anything here. Anyway, there isn’t much to write about. Just the same old routine.

  We did get a letter last week from my Uncle Izzy, Pa’s youngest brother. The letter had such an interesting stamp on it, because Uncle Izzy lives in the old country — in Riga, which is the capital city of Latvia. But the stamp said Latvija instead of Latvia — I guess because it’s written in Latvian.

  Uncle Izzy came to live in Canada once, and he stayed here in the house with us. It was back when I was really, really young, and I can’t remember him at all. But Dora says he had a different prayer for everything he did all day long — he even had one for tying his shoes! And Gert says he hogged the toilet room and made it very stinky. She should talk. Anyway, she says she wasn’t the least bit sorry when Uncle Izzy decided he didn’t like it in Canada and went back to Latvia.

  Pa says Uncle Izzy didn’t like Canada because nobody here cares about Cohens and nobody has any respect for the old ways. Pa says he sometimes feels the same way.

  But Sophie says that what Uncle Izzy really didn’t like was that nobody ever listened to him here in Canada. She says he was a real sourpuss who thought he knew everything, and she bets he isn’t happy in Latvia either. She says Uncle Izzy wouldn’t be happy even if rabbis ruled the world and made all the girls wear skirts down to their ankles all the time.

  When he was in Canada, Uncle Izzy must have made some really mean comments about Sophie’s skirts. She’s still mad at him all these years later.

  Uncle Izzy says he’s married now, so I have a new auntie! He sounds very happy. I guess her skirts are long enough.

  Latvia is very close to Germany. It’s strange thinking about someone in your own family being so close to all that trouble. But Uncle Izzy didn’t say a single word about Hitler or Nazis in his letter, so I guess I shouldn’t worry.

  January 20

  At St. Chris today, I overheard one of the ladies who work there talking about Hitler with one of the other ladies. It was Miss McTavish, the thin one with the curly blond hair. Anyway, Miss McTavish told the other lady that The Star says the Nazis are out of fashion in Germany now. Thank goodness. I can stop worrying about Uncle Izzy and my new aunt. I can’t wait to tell Benny.

  January 23

  It’s so exciting! Miss McTavish told me that there’s going to be a Spring Festival this year, and she asked me if I’d like to be in it! She said she wants to find five girls to do a dance for spring to some music called “The Waltz of the Flowers” by a composer named Tchaikovsky. His name sounds Jewish to me. I wonder if he is. Anyway, Miss McTavish played a record of the music for me, and it was glorious. You could just see the flowers dancing. I couldn’t help humming along.

  I said I’d do it! Maybe I can’t be an opera singer, but I can be a ballet dancer, which is even better. That’ll show that crazy Miss Tedde.

  The only problem is, I don’t have any dancing slippers, and Miss McTavish says I can practise without them but I can’t be in the festival if I don’t have them, because of course dancers can’t dance on stage without dancing slippers. She said that maybe she could get some for me if I didn’t have my own, but of course I can’t let her. Pa would kill me. I told her I would get some, but I don’t know how I ever will.

  I told Benny about Hitler being out of fashion and he said the reporters in The Star are just a bunch of meshuggeneh goyim who don’t know what they’re talking about. He’s such a know-it-all. That’s not what he said when The Star had news he wanted to hear.

  January 24

  Pa had a letter from his cousin Yankl today. It took him a while, but he made it to Montreal okay. There’s no work for him in the deli, but he says not to worry. He’s going to look for a job in Montreal for a while, but he doesn’t want to go on relief, so if nothing turns up maybe he’ll take the train back to Saskatchewan — or even all the way to Vancouver. Now he knows how to do it, he thinks that riding the rails isn’t so dangerous after all.

  I hope he’ll be okay.

  January 26

  We had our first practice for the spring festival. Rivka is in it, too, and some other girls I don’t know, but they seem nice for girls who are only in Senior Three.

  Dancing is harder than it looks. Miss McTavish says I’ll find it easier once I get my dancing slippers. The festival isn’t until March. I still have almost two months to get the slippers. Maybe a miracle will happen. You never know.

  Of course Rivka has her slippers already. I don’t care, I’d rather have lots of sisters to talk to than dancing slippers.

  January 30

  I finished reading Phronsie Pepper. It’s my fourth book about the Peppers, and they’re still okay, but I think I’m getting a little tired of them. It was wonderful when they were poor and hap
py and baking cakes in the Little Brown House, but now they’re even happier and everyone they ever meet loves them all to death, especially Phronsie because of her beautiful blond hair, and they are so rich now that it’s ridiculous. They live in a fancy mansion and spend all their time going to fancy parties and talking about how wonderful it was when they were poor in the Little Brown House. I wish I was rich and had a mansion and could spend all my time talking about how wonderful it was when we used to be poor in 29 Leonard Avenue.

  Right now it doesn’t feel very wonderful. We haven’t had a chicken for Shabbes for weeks, and there are hardly any of the potatoes left that Pa bought last fall, and I don’t know what will happen when they’re gone because potatoes are so expensive to buy now in the middle of winter, even wholesale at the Terminal. I don’t see how I’m ever going to be able to pay back Mrs. Koslov for that movie, let alone get dancing slippers. Pa hardly ever even gets the furnace going. It’s very depressing.

  February 1933

  February 1

  Today on the radio I heard that song they play all the time — the sad one about the man who was a millionaire but then he lost all his money because of the Depression. Anyway, I was humming along when I started to think about the words:

  Once I built a railroad, now it’s done.

  Brother, can you spare a dime?

  It’s very sad. But golly, a dime is a lot of money. In our family, these days there’s not even a nickel to spare. Not even a penny. The man in the song has a lot of nerve asking for a whole dime.

  February 2

  Benny came around yesterday with a copy of the Yiddishe newspaper, the Zhurnal, that he got from one of the men in the belt factory. It says that the Nazi man, Hitler, has become the chancellor in Germany! The chancellor is the boss of the whole country! Hitler sure wasn’t out of fashion for very long.