Beyond the Pale: A Novel (37 page)

Your American sister,

Chava

On Essex Street and all throughout our neighborhood, everyone was anxious about money. The rich bosses of the copper mines and railroads were doing things I couldn’t begin to understand, though Uncle Isadore and Harry would argue about “economics” every time they found themselves at the dinner table together. More socialists and anarchists were out on street corners, lecturing us from their soap boxes. Their arguments were appealing to me but Rose had no patience for them.

mm “How is screaming from soap boxes going to change any boss’s mind?” she asked. Part of me agreed, but still I believed working people could do big things if we stuck together, if we weren’t always so tired and afraid.

Tension hit the neighborhood sidewalks like tiny icicles falling somewhere behind you, pop-pop, making you shudder. Aunt Bina never seemed to sleep. The only time I didn’t catch her sewing was if I got up in the middle of the night. Uncle Isadore was still working, but unless Harry was around to goad him, he barely spoke besides clearing his throat and mumbling from behind his newspaper. I missed the way he used to be so opinionated about everything. At Harriman’s shop, we were just holding on. They let two gluers and sewers off already, which put me next in line.

Still, I was working, and not having to go in on Saturdays was fine with me. Since Rose was laid off, she was free too. Working on Saturdays wouldn’t have bothered me—well, maybe a little, if I thought about Mama. No one in New York made their own challah, and even if they did, if anyone caught them feeding pieces to the oven for priests they’d be a laughingstock. I liked that word. Laughingstock. There were stockings, in English, and one could also take stock of something, to consider it. How did consideration fit into a laughing stocking? English was hard to learn. The teacher said English was complicated because so many other languages contributed to it: Irish, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Greek. Even us Jews would probably change it, she said. “Better to change the life than the language,” someone had called out from the back of the classroom, and we all laughed.

“Help me lace up this corset, Chava,” Rose said one Saturday. She dressed slowly.

“You don’t have to wear a corset today. You aren’t even going to shul.” I got up from bed to fumble with the laces. I liked to press my hand against the little ridge of fat that spilled over the top, along her back. I had one corset but I tried to get away without wearing it. What difference did cinching your waist make? It was hard enough to catch a breath in this dark room without restricting my diaphragm. Besides, I liked the way Rose’s flesh lapped and slid on itself. If she wore a slip instead, I could explore her body when we found ourselves alone. The corset was like a wall, the walls of Jericho that kept the Israelites out.

“Just because you think you’re above being stylish doesn’t give you the right to criticize me.”

“I’m not criticizing. But doesn’t it hurt you?”

“Only when you pull it too tight.”

“If you say so.” I brushed the back of my hand close to her underarm.

“Stop, that tickles,” she said. When she turned, her smile was spreading a crescent across her face.

“We should help your mama,” I said, making a flourish as I tied the last bow.

“You’re going to sew?”

“I can do buttons, anyway. Things aren’t so grim she has to work on Shabbes.”

“Since when do you care about Shabbes?”

“I don’t. She does.”

Rose nodded. But when we told her we were ready to help out, Aunt Bina wouldn’t listen.

“You, Chava, have already worked all week, and Rose has been out looking, or basting seams right next to me. That’s enough. I had my boulevard days in Odessa. Now it’s your turn. Go, find something to amuse you.”

“Amuse us! We aren’t children anymore, Aunt Bina.” She smiled as though I was a child to say so.

“All the more reason,” she said. “You girls do plenty around here. I’m sure Monday Rose will find work again. Just go enjoy yourselves, but watch the traffic. You know that Breslau boy got his arm caught under a delivery truck only last Tuesday, crushed so badly they had to cut it off by the shoulder.” She paused and tisked. “Is catching a ball worth an arm?”

“Mama, we’re not diving into the street for balls,” Rose said, patting Bina’s shoulder.

“Well, it’s easy to slip on the pavement in this weather. I only want you to be careful.”

“We’ll be careful, Aunt Bina,” I promised, forgiving her for insisting on these bits of motherly advice. Bina tried to give us each a nickel but I wouldn’t take it. She gave mine to Rose, who shrugged when she caught my glare.

Out in the crowded street we peered over the heads of children building forts in the remnants of dirty snow. Where should we go?

“How about seeing what they do at the Henry Street Settlement House?” Rose asked.

“Why should we go there? We’re already settled,” I said.

She laughed and poked me. “I heard they have playgrounds, lectures, classes for girls, all kinds of things.”

“And I heard it’s all uptown women who come here to do us poor wretches good. You want to be another charity cause?”

“If they’re snobby to us, we’ll leave. They have uptown women at your League, don’t they? They can’t be all bad if so many girls go there. One of the girls in my last shop had a role in a play they put on. It can’t hurt to look, Chava.”

I tried to remember an argument about working-class solidarity from a socialist speech I heard at the park last week, but I got muddled somewhere in the middle. At the League I never saw any uptown women, though everyone said they were there. Certainly none of them would accuse us of being traitors for going to a settlement house; most of the people at these houses, the Jews at least, were socialists. Since Rose was willing to walk that far, I agreed. It was a pleasant day if you lifted your head above the stench of the street, warmth just beginning under the late winter cold, as if the world were blushing.

On Saturdays there weren’t as many pushcarts as usual, but still plenty.

“Dancing fish!” a woman in an old, red shawl called out, “Beautiful live, dancing fish! Jewels on their fins, they’ve got! Your home will be blessed from these carp! Sparkling, dancing fish!”

We smiled at her. I slipped my arm around Rose, two girls out for a small adventure. Down Essex we bought two big garlic pickles for a penny from the pickle-barrel lady, Mrs. Guss, who instructed us not to drip on our shirtwaists. We leaned way over the curb, making loud crunches so she could see for herself how well behaved we were, but she was already selling to the next customer.

At Henry Street, we easily spotted the settlement house by the crowd of children on the steps, bundled up, resembling salamis with mittens. A girl a little shorter and older than me opened the door after we pounded the brass knocker for a good minute.

“Yes?”

“We came to see what you’ve got for girls here,” Rose said in English, perfectly at ease.

“Why don’t you come in and look around. I’ll find a club leader to talk with you.” We followed her into a very clean, bright hallway. Pamphlets were arranged in neat rows on a polished wood table under a large mirror—not a crack in it. “Just poke around, girls. I’ll find someone for you in a minute.” She disappeared up the staircase.

Rose admired the furniture, picking up leaflets and putting them back without reading more than the English titles:
Votes for Women
and
Maternal Hygiene
. Down the hallway I saw someone turn a corner, and I felt a familiar tug.

“I’ll be back in a second,” I said, clattering quickly down worn runner carpets. I saw a door close and I knocked. A tall, sturdy woman, at least fifty, looked out at me.

“Yes?”

“I thought—”

The old woman stared, chewing her lip, and then spoke in a familiar Yiddish.

“Oh my! It’s you, Chavele! You remember me, nu? Or has New York wiped you clean, so you don’t remember your mama’s old midwife from the Pale?”

I searched my memory for a minute. “Gutke?”

“The same.”

“What are you doing here?”

“That’s a long story. The short version is that I work with the nurses, examining the midwives’ bags, attending a few births, helping out. In the tenements there’s always something to do.”

The Odessa station came back to me. I was trying to piece together a story without asking too many questions. Gutke cocked her head a little to the right.

“We left Odessa about a year after I saw you. Dovid had business contacts in New York, and he was worried about the way things were going in Russia. I told him if we had to move, I didn’t want to go to Paris or Berlin, I wanted to go where all the children were going, to New York. So, here it is, New York. And here you are.” I felt dizzy with the confusion. Why was I meeting this old woman again?

“You want to come in, sit down?”

“Oh, no, I better not. I left Rose standing in the hall, she’ll be wondering where I am.”

“Your cousin?”

“Yes.”

“Go get her and come in for a visit. No, I forgot, I have to go by Allen Street to check on one of my patients now. Next time. Just tell me quick, are you getting on all right?”

“Yes, I think so. It’s not the golden city—we work too hard, but we do all right. I’m in the binders’ union and I’m going to night school for my English.”

“Very good, that’s very good. You remember to come back and visit me, promise?” She wrapped her cloak around her shoulders and picked up a black bag.

I felt bewildered, like the child I had been, on a train for the first time, not wanting to leave Gutke’s side, anxious to get back to Rose. “I promise,” I said after a long hesitation.

“Good. I’m going out the back—remember to come see me soon!”

When I found Rose, another girl was already there, talking about clubs and study groups. I heard her say something about Tolstoy and Shelley.

“Literature is nice,” I said, impatient to tell Rose my news, “but we’re workers. What we need is unions.”

“This charming person,” Rose said, raising her eyebrows at me, “is my cousin, Chava Meyer, who boards with us.” She emphasized the word “boards,” making the biggest possible distance between us. I grabbed at her blue eyes with my strongest look but she didn’t blink.

“Very pleased to meet you, Chava Meyer,” the girl said, politely ignoring our little scene, which I was sure she took in. “I’m Ellen Teller, and you’ll be glad to know we have union discussions every other Monday and Sunday nights.”

“You do?”

“Of course. We respond to the needs of all the people in the neighborhood, which includes us working girls.”

I didn’t like how this American-born girl said “us,” but I didn’t want to further antagonize Rose.

“It’s important to work for our rights,” Ellen went on, “but our rights have to include literature and art.”

“Absolutely,” Rose agreed with her, “it’s not just the rich who should enjoy the good things in life.”

I sighed. This was what I expected.

“Would you like to see one of our club rooms?”

Of course Rose would. And of course the club room was beautiful—a fire burning in the fireplace, a plaster bust on the mantel.

“We have a library in the next room, which you’re free to use whether or not you join a club,” Ellen said, looking at me, trying to be sympathetic. “The women’s literature club meets tonight at 7:30, if you want to come back. You’re welcome to stay here and look around as long as you like, but I have see to the children in the playground now.”

“Thank you for your time. Maybe we will come by tonight,” Rose said carefully, as if she were reading from her primer.

“That will be delightful,” Ellen said, leaving us.

“Thank you,” I called after her. Then, whispering, “‘Delightful!’ and you—‘boards with us’—what is that supposed to mean?”

“Don’t be so touchy,” Rose said, inspecting her hat brim, picking at invisible lint. “You’re the one who disappeared.”

“And you’ll never guess who I saw.”

“Who?”

“Remember I told you about my mama’s old midwife, from the train, Gutke?”

“No.”

“Yes you do—the one who went with the woman dressed like a man?”

“Oh yes, I remember that. She’s here?”

“Here, working with the settlement nurses!”

Rose gave me her I-told-you-so look, about what, I didn’t know. “So where is she? Let’s go see her.”

“She had to go to one of her patients on Allen Street.”

“She goes to the prostitutes?”

“I don’t know, Rose. Not only prostitutes live on Allen Street, and besides, they deserve care the same as anybody.”

“My sweet radical,” Rose said, making as if to pinch my cheek. I shrugged her away. “Now maybe you too would like to come back for the discussion group?”

“You’re willing to walk all the way home and back to talk about literature?”

She held up the nickels. “We can have dinner in a café and come back after. Mama won’t worry. She knows I’m safe when I’m with you.”

All over the East Side you could get a bowl of borscht any time of day for three cents, with bread and sour cream. I gave my sour cream to Rose, who put her hand over mine and sighed while I spooned it into her bowl. The best part about cafés was the eavesdropping. Groups of young people were always in the middle of spirited discussions. Girls the same age as us, at tables with men even, argued about the future of Yiddish literature. I wondered if they read Yiddish authors at Henry Street or only goyim. Either way it was always men, men who were remembered for what they wrote. Maybe in the new world things could still be different, and women would be remembered too. No one remembered working girls—was that why women had children, so someone would remember us? I put down my spoon.

“Now what’s wrong? Your soup is sour?”

“No, the soup is good,” I said, taking a half spoonful to show her.

“You have to eat more, Chava, you’re beginning to look a little flattened out.”

“You’re tired of how I look?”

“Did I say that?” Rose leaned her head left, letting her eyes run from my head to my breasts. “I just want you to stay healthy and happy.”