Family Secrets (3 page)

There was only one problem with the child, which Lucy told him about sadly. Polly had been fond of wearing a long purple cape, which she had sewn herself, and during the spring which had passed after her death it had become stylish for many women to wear such a long purple cape—and so when Lucy took Leah Vania out for a walk often the child would see a tall woman in a purple cape from the back and run after her, screaming: “Mama! Mama!”

“I am your Mama,” Lucy would say, and the child would look at her with those clever little eyes filled with confusion.

“When will she forget?” Lucy would ask him.

“Nu, she’ll forget. An adult forgets, so a child can forget.”

“She screams at night, Adam. You sleep, you don’t hear her.”

“All children scream. That’s why I snore, so I can’t hear them scream.”

He would take the child on his lap and bounce her up and down. “Nu, nu, nu, my little monkey. You will be good to your Mama? You will obey your Papa?”

“Yes, Papa.”

“Then give me a kiss.”

“Nooo …”

“Why no?”

“Moustache!” the child would shriek, putting her hand gingerly on its bristly surface, and then she would put her arms tightly around his neck as if she was determined never to let him go. He would have to pull those little arms open, comfort her screams, and hand her to Lucy, thinking how glad he was to be a man and so not have to take care of children.

When Lucy’s child was born and it was another girl he was not too disappointed. It was good for two sisters to be close in age; then they could be friends. The baby was beautiful, with giant clear eyes as green as grass, much prettier even than her mother’s. Her nose seemed to turn up, and her hair was golden. A regular goy, he thought, amused. Now he hoped the next one would be a boy.

But the next child was a girl also, plain-looking but placid. Leah Vania was six, ready for school in the fall, and they had moved to a larger apartment in the same building. Lucy’s mother was living with them now, the son she had been living with having died and no one else in the family financially able to care for her. She was an Orthodox old woman who wore a sheitel and kept strictly kosher, poking around the pots and pans to make sure she was not being poisoned by tref, speaking only Yiddish and making a general pest of herself. But family was family, and it was good that she was there to watch over the two older girls while Lucy was busy with the new baby.

Adam’s dream of Mudville had come true. The row houses were filled with immigrant families, the streets were filled with children playing and peddlers hawking their wares, and the stores were rented too, one a kosher butcher, one a store for yard goods and things for making clothes, and one a grocery. Adam was pleased with his new tenants. He went by there every day to check on things, to make sure a toilet had not broken or a naughty boy had not smashed a window playing ball in the street. He was making money, and he was respected. Even Yussel was respected.

Yussel would have been happy to spend the rest of his days in the coffee house, telling and retelling the story of how he and Adam Saffron had been great visionaries who had foreseen all this when other men had not. But Adam was ready to buy more land and build again. This time his credit was good, he was known, and he had his choice of men who wished to invest with him and a loan from the bank. He decided to stay with Yussel, but in the back of his mind he was not sure how long it would last. Yussel was of small mentality, he was content with what they had now and although he was excited at the prospect of something new he was also afraid it would all be taken away from them. Because he did not understand business or finance, Yussel regarded it all as a sort of magic. They had magically been lucky, and he could hardly understand that, so they could magically be unlucky, and although he could not understand that either, at least it was something he was used to.

Adam decided to build more houses with Yussel, and in the meantime look around to choose other men with more money and more vision. He already had a vision of his own. The next building he built would be tall, maybe even ten stories, with an elevator in it, such as very rich people had in their homes, and it would be used only for business. Doctors and lawyers could have offices there, companies could do business—not dirty business like a factory but clean business with paper work and figuring and clean girls in starched white shirtwaists typing business letters on typewriters. Men in suits and hats would have appointments, and there would be serious conferences in quiet rooms with desks that shone of good wood and carpets on the floors so not a footstep could be heard. That was beyond Yussel’s imagining, and also his purse, so Adam did not speak of it to him. He concentrated on the new family dwellings he was building and bided his time. He hired a young man he liked and trusted to take his place as watcher in Mudville, to go there every day as he had done and see that everything was all right. The people liked knowing that their landlord cared about them, and having the young man there was the only way Adam could be sure they would be good tenants and not turn the place into a pigsty. He hoped that it would not be a long time before his wife started having sons. By the time they grew up there would be a great deal for them to do.

THREE

It was fall, and it was Leah Vania’s first day at school. School! How long she had dreamed of it, wishing to be old enough. Now she could learn to read. She had seen the grownups with their books, studying English, squinting over the pages, and she had longed to be able to read a book. She could speak English already, so it could not be too hard for her to learn how to read words. Her heart was pounding with happiness as she skipped along the street with her hand in her Mama’s. She was all dressed up in the dress her Mama had made for her first day at school, and her Mama was all dressed up too because it was the first time a child in the family, born in America, an American child, was going to an American school. Leah Vania knew she had been born in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America, and was a citizen.

They approached the large red building and suddenly Leah Vania was afraid she was going to cry. She choked back the tears and looked at her Mama, who was smiling proudly.

“Will you come for me at three o’clock, Mama?”

“Yes, of course, mein kind.”

“You won’t forget me?”

“I’ll think about you all day and be happy.”

“You promise you’ll come?”

“I promise. I’ll wait outside here until you are in. You go in this door here with the girls. Go. They look like nice girls. You’ll meet friends. Go, and be good and do everything your teacher tells you.”

Her home room was cool and smelled of dust and chalk and feet. There were boys and girls both in the class, all the same size and age, the ones who had been noisy in the street quiet and frightened now, all of them awed by their first day in the first grade. They had to line up and walk to the teacher single file. She was a tall, stern-looking woman with a huge bun, red. Leah Vania had never seen red hair before and she stared at it. It sat on the top of her head like a big tomato, and under it her face was long and white like a radish, the kind you made horseradish from. Her name was Miss White. She sat behind her huge desk with papers and pencils on it.

“Name?” she said.

“Leah Vania Saffron.”

The teacher shook her head as if she were trying to get a fly out of her bun. “No, no, your American name.”

“It
is
my American name. Leah Vania.”

“Yes, well, from now on your name is Lavinia. We don’t have foreign names here. Go sit in that row with the S’s.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Leah Vania now Lavinia murmured, and went to the row where she was supposed to sit. The teacher had already forgotten her and was changing the next girl’s name. Lavinia, Lavinia … it was pretty. It sounded like a flower of some kind, a scent. It sounded like lavender, that’s what it sounded like. Mama kept lavender sachet in the dresser drawer with her secret things. Lavinia … it was so American!

Lavinia sat at her desk. Her old name sounded foreign now. She wanted to be like everybody else here and to be liked. She had been named after old dead relatives back in Russia, but this was Brooklyn, and Lavinia Saffron was the most beautiful name she had ever heard.

Miss White was standing now, talking to the class. “Keep your hands on top of your desk at all times. If I don’t see your hands at all times I will hit them with this ruler.” She waved the ruler menacingly. “No talking. You will answer questions when I call your name. If any of you has to go to the bathroom you will raise your hand and wait until I call on you, then you will ask permission.” She pointed with her long, wooden ruler at the American flag hanging limply from a tall pole in the corner near where she stood. “Now, children, we will learn the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag.”

At three o’clock when the bell rang Lavinia raced out of doors with the other children, bursting with the need to shout, to giggle, to run, to move her aching legs and arms and back. She had never sat so long, so stiffly, in one place in her life. It had been horribly embarrassing to raise her hand to ask to go to the bathroom in front of the boys, but worse to think of what would happen if she wet her bloomers. She had been so afraid someone might whisper to her and make her get hit by that big hard ruler that she had kept her eyes looking straight ahead at Miss White every minute, never even glancing at any of the other girls, and so she had not made any friends but she had not gotten hit either.

But it was all worth it even so, because finally, after learning that long boring pledge that they would have to recite every day, they had been given their first glimpse of the mystery of life: Miss White had written the alphabet on the blackboard. Lavinia had a notebook and some pencils which her Mama had bought her, and she had copied the letters into the notebook to study and learn. Soon they would be put together into words, and then she would be able to learn everything in the world.

“I love school!” she said to her Mama.

“I’m so glad. You must tell Papa. He’ll be proud of you.”

That night while he ate supper she told him. “I love school, Papa. We got the alphabet and we learned to pledge allegiance to the flag, and my teacher’s name is Miss White.”

He was obviously pleased with her. “Good, good. It’s good that you should learn. I want you to be good and listen to your teacher.”

“I do. And Papa, my name is Lavinia now. That’s what Miss White said. It’s my American name.”

“Nu? American name?” he seemed amused.

“So please, Papa, could everybody in this house please call me Lavinia from now on?”

“You like it better than Monkey?”

“Yes, Papa.”

“Very hoity-toity.” His eyes twinkled and he pounded his fist on the table. “From now on everyone in this house will call Leah Vania Lavinia!”

“Vus? Vus?” her grandmother, the old witch, grumbled from her seat at the end of the table. She couldn’t stand it when they spoke English.

“The child is telling us about school,” Papa spoke in Yiddish.

“She talks too much,” the old lady said.

For once Lavinia couldn’t care less what the old witch said, because she was so happy that her Papa was pleased with her.

But such happiness had to end, and afterward she wondered how she could have been so dumb and innocent. School was a place where the teachers were always watching for ways to be cruel to the children, and the children always had to be on guard not to get hit or slapped or made fun of.

One day Lavinia knew her tooth was going to fall out. She moved it with her tongue, back and forth, trying to tell how long it would be before it came out altogether. She liked losing teeth because it meant she was growing up. This one was nearly ready to pop. If she just gave it a little nudge with her finger … she did, and it came out white and tiny in her hand. The hole filled with blood, which did not disgust her at all because she was used to it, and she swallowed it so it wouldn’t mess her dress. But of course some did get on her dress, it always did.

“Ooh,” the girl sitting next to her whispered, “you’re all bloody!”

“Lavinia Saffron!” Miss White shrieked triumphantly, striding down the aisle between the desks, waving her famous wooden ruler. “You were talking!”

“No, ma’am,” Lavinia said. “I didn’t say a word.” She held up the tooth. “I lost my tooth.”

“You pulled out your tooth—
in class
—and then you had to tell your friend, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t tell her, she saw it.”

“Liar! Liar!” Miss White grabbed Lavinia’s arm and pulled her up out of the seat. “I hate a liar.”

“I’m not a liar.”

She was dragging her now, almost pulling her arm out of its socket, the ruler smacking her on the bottom, on the shoulder, on the backs of her legs, wildly. “I’ll show you what I do with liars, Miss Liar.”

The school room was completely silent. Miss White dragged Lavinia out into the hall, down the hall, and then opened a door and shoved her into a dark closet.

“In you go, Miss Liar,” Miss White said, and slammed the door shut.

It took a few seconds for Lavinia’s heart to stop pounding, and then she realized that her eyes were never going to get used to the dark in the completely dark closet. She couldn’t tell which was front and which was back. Fuzzy shapes brushed the top of her head and she screamed and jumped away, hitting her shoulder on one wall. They were only coats, not bats. They smelled. There was no air in there, none at all. She was going to smother. She tried hard to breathe, but her terror and the closed-in darkness choked her and she knew she was going to die. It was so unfair! She began to cry, great gulping sobs, and felt the blood from the empty tooth socket running down her chin. She still had the little tooth clutched in her hand. Her tooth, a part of her, part of her life, her growing up. Now she would never grow up, she would die at six years old, and nobody would save her ever. Papa and Mama thought she loved school, they thought she was good, they didn’t know that she was going to be murdered by Miss White. It would be a slow death, by suffocation. She lay on the floor and it felt fuzzy with dust. Maybe there were bugs there, maybe rats or spiders. She sprang to her feet in fear and felt the fuzz stuck to her chin, her face. She wiped her face with the skirt of her clean dress and tried to breathe, but the harder she tried the more she couldn’t. She began to feel dizzy, and knew she was going to fall down.