Beyond the Pale: A Novel (36 page)

“You know you have my respect, Mr. Petrovsky. Now let me finish.”

“Finish, finish. It’s my fault. If I could get a promotion—.”

“You’re doing well, you work hard, no one blames you. You’ll learn English a little better and they’ll promote you, you’ll see. We have enough to eat. In a few months, God willing, we can look for a bigger place, I think.”

“A bigger place only means we’ll have more boarders. I know you.”

“We could get a flat on maybe the second floor, with our own bathroom. That would be nice, Isadore.”

“Yes,” he smiled and scratched his mustache. “You should have it a little more nice.”

Bina put down the dress, the stitching done. “Go, lie down. I’ll be there soon.” She washed his dishes, packed up the piecework to exchange for new tomorrow, washed her own hands and face, straightened up a little. Rose and Chava were coming up the stairs with Aaron. They were almost an hour late. They must have stopped somewhere after night school, maybe in one of those cafés. Well, they worked the same as adults, but it was a shame to let girls go around a big city alone at this hour.

You Can Try a
Hundred Things

F
IRST A DOG
got into the trash cans and rolled them against the cobblestones. Some men started fighting in the alley and then I heard the El tumbling through the night three blocks away.

“Rose?”

“I’m almost asleep, Chava. What is it?”

“You know I’m still saving for a ticket so Sarah can come.”

“Sarah?”

“My sister.”

“I know she’s your sister. What about her?”

“I can’t figure out where we’ll put her.”

“Oh,” Rose yawned. “That could be a problem. Are you asking me this because it’s Rosh Hashanah?”

“Probably. I’ve been meaning to for awhile,” I confessed.

She shifted a little on her hip. “Did you ever ask her if she wants to come?”

Did she want to come? “Everyone wants to come to America.”

“That’s because they don’t know what America is like. Gold in the streets.”

“It’s better than being in Russia.”

“Hmm,” she said. “Still, you could ask her.”

“How come you’re always right?”

“How come you always want to talk when I’m falling asleep?”

“I’m sorry, go to sleep. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

Rose was short and round and dark. When I curled around her at night I was curling around a lit coal. I remembered holding Sarah to me, those nights on broken boards in Kishinev. I was the big sister, the protector, her source of comfort. But when I curled around Rose I was the one warming my hands, a homeless girl at a trash can fire, ashamed of my longing, unwilling to go without.
On Rosh Hashanah it is written, on Yom Kippur it is sealed, who shall stay at home and who shall go wandering
. When I was a child in the women’s section of our shul, I imagined that the wanderers were all beggar men. I never thought it could be me. Rose seemed to be able to hear me think, even dream. Why not? Three years, every night. She half woke.

“Your eyes are still open, aren’t they?”

“Yes.”

She turned and pulled my head into her breast. “If you’re restless on New Year’s, you’ll be restless all year. Go to sleep.”

Sleep, she told me, as if she knew everything. We carried old superstitions with us like the seeds from our Russian gardens. Except in New York there was no room to plant cucumbers, only myths. The myths reminded us of Russian tsholnt and we forgot we only had words in our mouths.

“What are you chuckling about?” Rose asked, yawning.

“That was my stomach grumbling.”

She reached behind her to rub my stomach. “You never eat enough, Chava.”

“I eat all I can. Besides, I like feeding you better.”

“You make me fat,” she snuggled her behind into my curve.

“I love you fat,” I whispered, scooping her belly under my palm. She sighed and relaxed. I listened to her breathing gradually return to a gentle snore. Her old nightgown was soft, worn-out cotton, the smell from beneath her arms sweet and sharp, copper and apples. I remembered dropping stones from the bridge into the Byk in summer, watching circles spread on the fast water. Then morning light surprised me.

It was the second day of Rosh Hashanah. Rose had to go to work, but the bindery was closed. Business probably wasn’t so good and they were using the holidays to have an excuse not to pay us.

I walked by myself to the Williamsburg Bridge. Remembering the Byk made me want to look at a river. All right, it made me want to perform tashlikh. Religion was superstition, the opiate, etc., I knew. But all the water in the world was connected. Maybe what I threw into the East River would find its way back to the Black Sea, then turn to rain and fall on Mama’s and Papa’s graves. Can you throw your love into the water as well as your sins?

Most Jews were either working or in shul, though a handful of old men and small groups of women were coming and going on the bridge’s walkway, from the Brooklyn side as well, to do tashlikh, just like me. Maybe not exactly like me—I didn’t even have a prayer book. But I probably had some of the same sins.

The Williamsburg Bridge was its own sin. Its construction, Lena told me, made hundreds of people homeless when their buildings were torn down. A little like a pogrom of progress, burning anything in its path, making Jews take to the roads with everything they owned on their backs, or move in with their relatives and landslayt, crowding more than we were ever crowded in Kishinev. At least it seemed that way. So many people in one building, so many buildings in one block. At home—was missing home a sin I had to empty out of my pocket, or was it part of my connection to my family? My sins. I stood looking down at the river. Moving water carried our sins out to the sea, where they sank, I supposed, into the mud like stones. Centuries of sins at the bottom of the sea. Were they piled down there like pyramids while the fish pressed their bulging eyes up against them?

Fish didn’t sin because they didn’t have free will. I hardly believed in heaven at all, but I remembered asking Papa if animals had souls, and if they didn’t, would we have to be in heaven without them? Wouldn’t God want birds and cows and fish around? Weren’t they all part of the creation? Papa said only a girl would ask a question like that.

“Then teach me,” I said. He just shook his beard. “I don’t have time for all the students I have. You learn from your mother, like a good girl,” he said. Mama answered most of my questions, but she also shook her head about the souls of animals.

“Certain things human beings were not given to know,” she said.

“But the Talmud must have an answer, Mama.”

“I’m sure it does, precious one, I’m sure it does.” Then she’d change the subject or give me a chore.

If I didn’t go to shul, was I committing the sin of not honoring my parents? I had gone the previous night with the Petrovskys. The blowing of the shofar was my favorite part. It sounded so ancient, setting my bones shivering against each other, the same as it did in Kishinev. The praying sounded different here, so many different accents. At home everyone always went to shul, at least all the men did, and the High Holidays were special, new clothes, new beginnings. For most of the people in shul here, like me, it would be the only time they’d go all year. Was that hypocrisy? The anarchists were going to have a dance on Yom Kippur. I thought it would be thrilling to go to a ball instead of hearing Kol Nidre again, but Aunt Bina would be offended. It was one thing not to go to shul, it was another to make fun of those who did. And even if no one at the anarchists’ ball would know I had survived a pogrom, it didn’t seem right.

I didn’t do anything else that dishonored my parents. No, I didn’t think so. Papa wouldn’t like my working or belonging to the union, but I took my place among all the other Jews here by doing these things, and what was wrong with that? Only about Rose, if they knew—but maybe lots of girls loved their friends, their cousins, maybe it was just something Mama had not talked to me about yet. Still, I could have done something more to honor their memory, saved more money for charity instead of buying treats for Rose or going to the theater.

I had such double feelings: I was sure that I sinned but not sure I believed in God. So if there was no God, what was the meaning of sin? If there was no Book of Life opened every year, did we have no destiny? Was it just an accident that Mama and Papa were in the wrong place in the wrong time? What about the real sins, the sins of the people who killed them? Could they get rid of a sin like murder just by emptying their pockets in the river? God took too long to punish murderers. It was no wonder human beings invented vengeance.

I felt a wave of nausea when I thought about vengeance, so I thought about Rose singing the prayers in shul. She had a good singing voice, not too high. She said the services were nice—she got to see other girls, some from her shop, in their best clothes, and the prayers were just prayers, maybe God heard them, maybe not, it couldn’t hurt. She said I thought too much about God. What kind of disbeliever did that make me, anyway?

The cold, gritty winter reclined on the back of the wind circling the Williamsburg Bridge, gathering its force, grinning at the penitents, at me, as I turned my pockets inside out and threw one penny, a handful of breadcrumbs and some lint down to the dirty water.

19 Shevat 5667

Dear Chava,

It was so good to get your letter! We hadn’t heard from you in such a long time I was afraid that you got lost in America. In school we learned it’s almost as big as Russia. I like to look at the map of it.

But I’m not sure I would like to go there. Please don’t think this is ungrateful, because I appreciate so much how you’re thinking of me. I got into the girls’ class at the Russian school here, imagine! And I like it, the classes at least, not always the other girls.

Uncle Elihu and Aunt Shendl wrote from Warsaw that they’re doing well—Uncle Elihu is a partner now in his brother’s hat factory. They said if I wanted to go on to gymnasium, I would have a better chance if I came to Warsaw. Two of their boys are going to get in and their daughters are both engaged to be married. They want to share their good fortune with us, our family, they mean, because we were good to them when I was a little girl. I guess I’m the only one here they can share it with. Esther’s happy having Nathan’s babies. She’s going to have her third at the end of summer and if I stay here I’ll just keep being a nursemaid for them.

I read all your letters again, trying to decide. In America it sounds like life is as uncertain as here. I know a little Polish, and my German and Russian are good. I don’t want to start learning English now. Does it sound like I have too many excuses?

I’ll tell you my heart’s secret. What I really want to do is to be an artist. Please don’t laugh at me! Not many girls are artists, but a few. It’s a new century—everyone says there will be so many opportunities, even for girls. And so much is happening in Warsaw now. At least, that’s what our cousins write.

I know you dream of the revolution, like Daniel. I went to a lecture here by a Jewish artist who said he was one of “the wanderers”—they make art about what people’s lives are really like, not just bowls of fruit. Art can also be part of a revolution, don’t you think so? There’s a school for artists now in Vitebesk. If I do well at the gymnasium, I could go there, maybe, or maybe even to Paris, which is my biggest dream. I never hear about artists in New York, only about work and money, but maybe I’m wrong. I count on you to help me make my decision. Of course I’ve never told Esther my dream. She’s just proud because I do well in school.

I know your heart was always close to mine and I miss that now, but it also makes me think you will understand. Please write soon and tell me you understand.

Always your loving sister,

Sarah

February 15, 1907

Dear Sarah,

Today is my American birthday, the one they gave me at Ellis Island. Sometimes the immigration men get the date at least close, but many times they give Jews Christmas as a joke. They did it to Aunt Bina. Some joke!

Now you are almost fourteen. I went to work in the box factory when I was fourteen. I was going to make sure you went to school as soon as you got here but people are talking about a bad economy. Rose is laid off again. Despite all the anti-Jewish laws in Russia, right now you might have a greater chance of getting your dream there than here.

If Warsaw is really where you want to continue your studies, I’ll send you the money I’ve been saving for your ticket. You should have it for school and you won’t have to rely only on Uncle Elihu. Don’t protest. After all, I know what it feels like to depend on your relatives. I’ve been saving it in a real bank that a Jew owns here on the East Side. I was afraid if I kept it in the mattress that rats, or one of Rose’s brothers, would get it. After three and a half years I have almost forty-five United States dollars! I expect you’ll go to Warsaw after Esther’s baby is born. Is that right?

A dream is always the best thing to have. I hope you will keep this dream instead of letting Aunt Shendl marry you off to the first yeshive boy she can find. But I think you are right about trying to get to Paris. Of course there is art and artists in New York, but the only art I see is on the painted sets for the Yiddish plays we go to when we can. They have a big museum for the rich uptown, and they just opened it on Sunday afternoons so working people might see what’s there. But in my factory we work Sunday afternoons. It’s not so bad, we get Shabbes off instead, and until your letter I wasn’t even curious about what was in their museum.

When I think about your idea, I don’t feel anymore like someone stuck in a factory. I remember that we are all young, and I feel youngness in me, that I can keep trying. You can try a hundred things in your life, and if nothing in those hundred makes you satisfied, you can still go on trying. Art doesn’t have to be just for the rich, as you say. I look forward to seeing this new art you will make.

And somehow I hope we will see each other again. I keep you close to my heart always.