Beyond the Pale: A Novel (55 page)

She was soft and good to me. I tell myself stories about how good she was. I’m not always sure now that she really did rub her palm along my cheek. Her blue eyes—nothing else in life was that color, because the color in eyes changes on you: in a person’s eyes, all of a sudden, some feeling shuts out light. How can that happen? When we were children we’d pretend we could control a candle flame by thinking,
now I will it to be small
—

How can I stop thinking about fires?

I tell myself stories about her goodness. The heat in our room was unbearable, but at least it drove everyone else to the fire escape. And if we lay with only our slips on, our breathing noisy, labored, who would think anything was wrong?

The engine strains against the train cars, eager to be off. I never would have believed the world stretched so far beyond the Pale. I still can’t bring myself to speak about the sea, crossing the sea. I pretend I dreamed the crossing and if I try hard enough, I believe it, although my stomach is bad after that dream.

My stomach is bad. She would stick her finger in the cream at the top of the milk bottles and hold her hand out to me. She pulled my lip down and ran the cream against my teeth until I couldn’t stand it anymore and I bit and licked her fingers. We were so lucky.

Listen to me! They murdered her when they locked those doors. All I can do is start moving again, preparing to learn America, traveling West.

This morning I looked up leaving the tenements of the East Side, catching bright blue between buildings at sunrise. A nice color but there was no color, really, like her eyes.

As the conductor yelled “All aboard!” I closed the notebook Gutke had given me as a goodbye present. She told me she’d been keeping a diary since she was forty. Forty! I thought, but said, “How will I live that long alone?”

Gutke smiled. “You won’t be alone. Everywhere you go now there will be women to meet you.”

“That’s not what I meant,” I said.

“I know what you meant,” Gutke said, pushing a lock of my hair behind my ear. “You’ll see. I know what I’m promising you.”

I ran my hand over the notebook’s rough brown cover and looked at my shirtsleeves. Rose might have made this very waist. I had decided to wear my own clothes, even after Dovida’s warnings about traveling as a woman. If I’d made it across three seas, I could survive a train to Cleveland. Dovida was wonderful, and I was grateful for all she was doing for me, “for us,” as she kept correcting. But after seeing my costumed male reflection in her mirror, I realized I had no desire to enter into men’s worlds. Women who didn’t know Dovida’s secret treated her deferentially, coquettishly, and I didn’t want women treating me that way. I wanted to do my part in whatever lay ahead as a woman among women. So what if it was going to be hard? What hadn’t been?

The train left the dark tunnels under Grand Central Station. I closed my eyes and felt surrounded by gentleness. Mama, Sarah, Aunt Bina, Lena, all the women of the League, Dovida, Gutke.

Rose.

Glossary

The following words are from the Yiddish, Hebrew, Aramaic, Russian and English. Yiddish words generally follow the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research modern transliteration guidelines, with a few exceptions (for instance, challah and mazel, which should have been khale and mazl), where the author found herself too attached to the old misspellings.

BABUSHKA. A kerchief or scarf worn on a woman’s head and tied under the chin (from the Russian for grandmother).

BALEBOSTE. Homemaker (complimentary).

BAR MITSVE. The traditional ritual which marks the adulthood of thirteen-year-old boys and their taking on the full responsibilities of “men” in the Jewish community, e.g., communal prayer, Torah reading, etc. Most contemporary Jews allow a bat mitsve for girls at the age of twelve; this was not the practice at the turn of the century.

BAT KOL. “Daughter of a voice” (Hebrew), a voice believed by some religious Jews to emanate from God, angels or heaven, directing people towards some truth.

BENTSHN LIKHT. To recite the blessing over Shabbes or holiday candles; traditionally a woman’s duty.

BESSARABIA. A province of southwestern Russia during the time this novel begins, bordered by Rumania on the west and the Black Sea on the south. The region often changed rulers and was detached from Moldavia in 1812.

BEYS MEDRISH. House of study, often a part of the synagogue.

BIRZHE. A gathering of workers, often secret, where leaders distributed jobs in factories and strategized about various workers’ actions.

BUND. Founded in Vilna in 1897, a Jewish socialist workers’ organization that rejected Jewish observance and advocated instead for Jewish national cultural autonomy and the Yiddish language.

CALENDAR. The Jewish calendar consists of twelve lunar months within the solar year, with a “leap” month inserted seven times every nineteen years so the holidays remain seasonal. The Hebrew months are: Nisan, Iyyar, Sivan, Tammuz, Av, Elul, Tishri, Kheshvan, Kislev, Tevet, Shevat, Adar and, on “leap” year, Adar II.

CHAIM YANKL. A Joe Shmoe, a nobody.

CHALLAH. Braided white bread made especially for Shabbes and holidays.

CHANUKAH. The eight-day “festival of lights” commemorating the victory of the Macabees over Greek invaders in Palestine in 165 BCE. Chanukah usually occurs sometime in December (see calendar).

CHAZAN. The cantor, a trained liturgical singer who assists the rabbi in leading the singing for religious services.

CHUTZPE. Arrogance, presumption, nerve, exceeding gall; while usually negative, sometimes pronounced with grudging admiration.

DAVEN. To pray. Davening is often accompanied by a bobbing motion.

DI ALTE HEYM. The old homeland.

DYBUK. An evil spirit, usually the soul of a dead person, that possesses the living and drives them mad.

FLANKEN. Potted beef brisket.

GEHENE. Hell.

GOLDENE MEDINE. The golden land—that is, the United States, where the streets are paved with gold.

GOTENYU. Familiar, affectionate, intimate form of addressing God.

GOY (s.), GOYIM (pl.). Non-Jews (pejorative).

HASKOLE. The Jewish reform/enlightenment movement started in Germany by Moses Mendelssohn in the eighteenth century, promoting modernization of religious Jewish practice, secular and scientific education, and the full participation of Jews as citizens in the countries in which they lived.

HAVDALE. The ceremony that marks the end of Shabbes on Saturday night, using wine, a spice box and a special, twisted, double-wicked candle.

KADISH. The prayer for the dead, traditionally recited by sons (or other male family or congregation members) during the eleven months after a parent has died and on the anniversary of her/his death.

KAYN AYEN-HORE. “Without the evil eye”—a verbal antidote to jinxing something that has been praised as successful, good or beautiful.

KETUBA. The marriage contract, often an elaborate, decorative scroll.

KHEDER. Literally, “room”; refers to the first school that Jewish boys attended between the ages of three and six; some towns also provided girls’ kheders.

KIKHL. Little cookies, usually very plain.

KISHKES. Intestines (to refer to your stomach or intestines as kishkes is considered coarse); also, a sausage-like food made from beef intestine stuffed with grain, chicken fat and spices.

KNEYDLEKH. Matzoh meal dumplings, usually served in chicken soup.

KOL NIDRE. Literally, “all vows” (Aramaic); the solemn prayer recited at the beginning of Yom Kippur, chanted three times by the chazan.

KOSHER. The Biblical dietary proscriptions, the most common being not to eat meat and milk at the same time (keeping separate dishes for each), to eat only certain kinds of meat and fish, and to slaughter animals in a special way.

KREPLEKH. A triangular dumpling similar to ravioli.

LAMED VOVNIK. “One of the thirty-six” (Yiddish), from the belief that in every generation there are thirty-six hidden righteous people on whose merits the world depends. Based on the letters lamed (twelfth in the Hebrew alphabet) and vov (sixth), which have the numerical value of thirty-six when written together.

LANDSMAN (s.), LANDSLAYT (pl.). Someone who comes from the same town or region. There were dozens of landsmanshaftn organizations in New York alone.

LATKE. A potato pancake fried in oil, usually cooked on Chanukah to celebrate the miracle of the oil that lasted for eight days though there was only enough to keep the eternal flame lit for one.

LILITH. The legendary first partner of Adam. When Lilith found she couldn’t achieve the equality with Adam that she demanded, she pronounced the secret name of God and chose to become a demon. Lilith often appears in the form of an owl and is considered a thief of souls, particularly children’s. Feminists and lesbians have reclaimed her as a symbol of rebellion against male authority.

LUFTSMENTSHN. Those who live on air—poor people with no jobs or visible means of support. Shtetl dwellers were usually considered luftsmentshn because of the terrible economic conditions of their towns.

MAGIDIM. Itinerant preachers, often with reputations as good sermonizers.

MAMZER. A bastard.

MASKIL (s.), MASKILIM (pl.). The followers of the Haskole (see above)—enlightened, liberal intellectuals.

MATZOH. Unleavened bread, eaten during the eight days of Passover (Pesach) to symbolize the bread the Israelites baked when fleeing slavery in ancient Egypt.

MAZEL TOV. Congratulations.

MEGILE. Scroll, lengthy document; one of the five books of the Old Testament: Esther, Ruth, the Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes and Lamentations, which are read on certain holidays; especially the Book of Esther, which is read on Purim. It has also come to mean any long or complicated story or proceeding.

MENORAH. Candelabra; usually refers to the eight-branched candelabra lit on Chanukah.

MENTSH. An upstanding, honorable person—someone to admire or a state of being to aspire to.

MESHUGINER. A person considered “crazy,” wild or absurd.

MEZUZE. An oblong container attached to the right side of a door post, containing the first two paragraphs of the Shema (see below) and indicating a Jewish home.

MIDRASH. The exposition of Biblical scripture in which the text is explained differently from its literal meaning.

MIKVE. Women’s ritual purification bath, taken before marriage and after menstruation or childbirth, and composed of natural (rain or spring) water.

MINYAN. Quorum; for religious rituals, ten males past the age of bar mitsve are traditionally required.

MITSVE. A good deed one feels commanded to do, a virtuous act that expresses God’s will.

MOLDAVIA. A province in eastern Rumania bordering, and sometimes including, Bessarabia. The majority of the native population was rural and poor.

MOUJIK. A Russian peasant.

NARODNIK. A member of the Russian populist agrarian socialist movement that proposed a loose confederation of local cooperatives to replace the state. Active between the 1860s and 1900, Narodniki were replaced by the Socialist Revolutionary Party. The terrorist wing assassinated Tsar Alexander II in 1881.

NU. The verbal equivalent of a shrug, a frown, a grin, a grunt, a sneer or a sigh; an all-purpose interjection or interrogative.

NUDNIK. A real pest, an annoying and exasperating person.

THE PALE. The Pale of Settlement, the large area in western Russia to which Jews were restricted from 1791 to 1917. Jews were also forbidden to enter the “holy cities” of Kiev and Moscow within the Pale. Its boundaries changed according to the liberalism or anti-Semitism of the tsars.

PAYES. Unshorn ear-ringlets and sideburns worn by Orthodox Jewish males.

PESACH. Passover, the spring commemoration of deliverance from enslavement as recounted in Exodus; a major Jewish holiday.

PURIM. A holiday occurring about a month before Pesach, commemorating Queen Esther’s triumph over Haman, who intended to destroy the Jews of Persia.

REBITSIN. A rabbi’s wife.

ROSH HASHONAH. The Jewish New Year that begins the High Holy Days period, ending with Yom Kippur (see below) ten days later. Rosh Hashonah usually falls in late September or early October. During the High Holy Days, the Book of Life is said to be open, and humans can affect what is written there by sincerely repenting their sins and directly righting the wrongs they’ve done to others.

RUGELAKH. A crescent-shaped pastry stuffed with nuts, fruits or jams.

SHABBES. The weekly Sabbath, beginning with the appearance of the first star on Friday and ending at sundown on Saturday; a time of rest and spiritual reflection.

SHABBES GOY. A Gentile who is asked or hired to perform domestic tasks, such as lighting fires or putting out candles, which are forbidden to Jews on Shabbes.

SHADKHN. A Jewish professional marriage broker.

SHAYNE MAIDELE. Pretty girl.

SHEMA. The first word of the Jewish prayer recited every morning and evening; literally, “hear.”

SHIKSE. A young non-Jewish woman (usually pejorative).

SHIVE. The prescribed seven solemn days of mourning immediately after the funeral, where Jews “sit shive” in the home of the deceased, during which mirrors are covered, garments are rent, hair isn’t cut and low stools or boxes replace chairs, among other customs.