Jew Store (16 page)

At any rate, by the time Saturday rolled around, Joey was sure that everyone in Concordia and surroundings had been put on notice that Bronson's Low-Priced Store would be open for business from 8:30
A.M
. sharp until 11:30
P.M
.

My mother had selected the souvenirs. For the men there were paper roses for the lapels of their Sunday suits; for the women, floral handkerchiefs; for the children celluloid pinwheels roughly resembling oversized, bicolored chrysanthemums.

On the target Saturday—the Saturday after the factory had opened on Monday—the long days of hauling and shelving and fixing were over, and the store stood ready.

All the furnishings had come from the store in Oliphant that had gone bust. Miss Brookie had taken my father to the place where the bank was selling at rock-bottom prices the foreclosed furnishings, and in the pile of stuff, he had unearthed a lot of useful things, even a cash register. It was an impressive thing, with elaborate silvery scrollwork along the sides, and two wide drawers, one of which was for checks. This particular drawer would have to be assigned to other duty, as there would be no checks at Bronson's. The pay of the factory hands would be in cash, and they would pay Bronson's the same way. Farmers dealt in cash as well. Still, my father said, even then he was contemplating a future day when he might institute a charge system. Whenever he had this thought, he always added, “if the store goes” so as not to jinx anything, and knocked on wood (as if he were superstitious, which he was not, but “could it hurt?”)

He set up the register on a tall table against a side wall. It overlooked the floor, which was crowded with counters and tables loaded high with pants and bolts of fabric and other soft goods. Even the ceiling was pressed into service: Bunches of handkerchiefs dangled down from it on strings.

Men's suits were upstairs in a cupboard behind tarlatan curtains that my mother had hemmed. She had done this by hand, sitting night after night enveloped in the dark gray stuff, like a small boat holding on in stormy seas, as my father described it. Upstairs also was a single dressing room, with a door, and by the window a three-way mirror with a narrow strip of rubber matting on the floor in front of it.

The rest of the upstairs floor, like the downstairs one, was carpetless, rugless, linoleumless, just its dark wood self. The downstairs was dominated by the women's department, which had the two dressing rooms my father had dreamed of—wood-partitioned ones made extraprivate with doors. Spivey had given in to my father's requests, though each concession was punctuated by a yelp of outrage. “You're just set on driving me to the poorhouse, ain't you, Bronson?” he would say.

Like the floors, the stairs were bare. Still, the mahogany banister had been sanded and varnished so that what had been pocked and pimply was now almost smooth.

Under the steps my father had managed something resembling a shoe department. In Oliphant he had come upon another find—a bench with shared arms, which he positioned as an area definer. It sat now in a welcoming mode, stools for clerks squatting at either side, and wooden foot-measurers hanging from the shelves above it.

The store's crowning glory was, of course, on the two front windows; each had
BRONSON'S LOW-PRICED STORE
spelled out in big gold letters. The name could be seen up and down the street, and on this opening day, in the sunny weather, the letters shone brightly. And, as my father had seen when he had gone to the store night after night before the opening, the gold letters gave off glints in the dark.

To wait on trade besides my father, there was my mother, Mrs. MacAllister (Billy Sunday with her), and Vedra Broome.

Vedra Broome was a former saleswoman of Spivey's. Spivey
had recommended her, mainly because her husband worked at the plant. “She'll give you a one-two punch,” he said to my father.

My father agreed, silently hoping he wouldn't also need a three-four.

My mother and Mrs. MacAllister were to take turns holding Billy Sunday, and if both got busy—when they said this, they exchanged something that passed for a smile—Billy Sunday would go into the feather-pillow bin.

On opening day my brother was to respond speedily to a summons from anyone; my sister, if she could be induced to take leave of the three-way mirror, was to hand out the souvenirs.

My father walked the store doing last-minute checking, moving from place to place, inspecting, tidying—picking up a flannel shirt here, a woman's hat there. He looked to see that price tags were correct, and readable.

Not everything had a price tag. The more expensive items, like suits and better dresses, would depend for prices on the clerk's knowledge of the markup and on his ability to hold his own in the early bargaining. In Jew stores, if the negotiations got hot, the owner would be called in: “Say, boss, Mr. Callcott here 'clares this suit is just what he had in mind, but he don't care too much for the price. I done told him the price is to the bone as 'tis. He says anythin' more you can do for him would surely be appreciated.”

Everything my father had ordered had come, plus a few things he hadn't. Spanish combs, for example, had been sent by the wholesaler with a note scrawled on a magazine picture of a girl crowned with the long-toothed, elaborately crested ornament. “Latest craze, hot seller,” the note said. “Try them on your yokels.” St. Louis people always felt St. Louis served as the sophistication capital for several states, and maybe it did.

My mother was anxiously running language samples through her head.
Pin
and
pen
were pronounced the same, she already
knew that. And
kindly?
Oh, yes. It meant not “considerately” but “sort of,” so that a dress that was “kindly long” was not designed to hide leg defects but was “sort of” long; in other words, it needed shortening.

As eight-thirty came closer, the salespeople began to move about the floor. Conversation ceased; silence, tense silence, was all there was.

Suddenly there was a clatter at the back, and T burst in. Beside Erv there was with him a tall, skinny youth with the remnants of the telltale farmer's sunburn around his neck and forehead.

My father took his watch out of his vest pocket. Ten minutes. He walked over to the boys.

T introduced the boy with him. He was another “cudden,” one named Nathan, who was “near nineteen years old” and who, according to T, had “never seen a Jew person in all his life” and, despite T's insistence to the contrary, was convinced that Jews had horns.

My father stood very still, hands at his sides, feet planted, and offered himself up. “Here I am, sonny. Here's your Jew,” he said to Nathan.

Nathan stared. In a moment anguish surfaced. “But by golly, Mr. Bronson,” he cried out, “you won't do atall!” Jews were
supposed
to have horns. The Bible said so.

Hadn't Nathan noticed that Jew peddlers didn't have horns?

But Nathan had never seen a Jew peddler either. Every time a Jew peddler came to town, he said in a very aggrieved voice, by the time the news came out to where he lived way out in the country, the Jew peddler was on his way out again.

My father took out his watch, saw that there were seven minutes to go. In spite of it all, he was still able to banter. “I sure am sorry about the horns,” he said to Nathan. “I got to tell you them kind of Jews have gone out of style. None of the new kind have horns.”

My father thought to make it up to Nathan by giving the
boys a little gift. Socks? What kind of treat was that for boys who wore shoes only when strictly necessary? As he mulled over possibilities, he told himself to be grateful for these little boys and this little problem, for this one moment of respite.

He reached behind a table, from a box pulled out three polka-dotted bow ties on elastic strings, and handed them around.

T took one, placed it around his neck, snapped it together, stretched it out with a forefinger, and let it pop back. Erv and Nathan did the same.

T said it “sure beats the fool” out of any tie he'd ever seen; Nathan said, “I reckon you could pure slap the tar out of your neck if you put your mind to it.” Erv said his usual nothing, just left with the boys, all of them pop-popping away.

At the register Carrie MacAllister, whose white skin was growing whiter by the minute, made a stiff little speech about when to expect the factory trade. “Not till after six,” she said. “The whistle don't blow till six.” She turned to Vedra Broome for confirmation. “Ain't that a fact, Miz Broome?”

Vedra Broome was just entering the circle around the register. “Mercy, I have no idea,” she said, touching her headful of curls. It could not be missed that no matter how Vedra Broome moved, her headful of curls remained stationary. Closely resembling sausages confined in a sausage box, they were called—what could be more expected?—sausage curls.

Vedra Broome had never before worked in dry goods. All her experience had been in furniture. “But I do know one thing,” she said to the group, repinning the fake camellia on the jacket of her dress, “and that is, don't look for quality trade. They wouldn't want anyone to see them over here.”

When Vedra Broome said this, my mother understood Vedra felt she had gone down in the world. Clerking in furniture was superior to clerking in dry goods, because divans—as sofas were called in Concordia—were a more prestigious item than, say, work pants.

“So who does that leave?” my mother asked of anyone who might answer. “Will somebody please tell me that?”

My father picked up the pinwheel lying next to the register. He blew hard on it, making it whirl madly. “That leaves plenty,” he said, and since everyone was staring at him, he produced a smile. “We wasn't counting too much on the
quality
people anyways.”

“So who's left?” my mother persisted, anxiety turning her voice up a notch or two.

My father said who was left were the farmers and the coloreds. “They'll keep us plenty busy till the shoe people come in.” My father turned to the others. “Don't everybody agree?”

Only Mrs. MacAllister answered, and all she said was, “Let's hope so.”

The conversation tapered off. It died altogether. And then my father's watch said eight-thirty. He gave a last glance at the counters and moved to the front door.

When he lifted the shade over the glass, he had a moment of doubt as to what he was seeing. Then there they clearly were—a crowd of people, a blur of faces, some pressed against the glass.

He unlocked the door. In no time the crowd was swarming all over the store. My mother left the cash register. Mrs. MacAllister put Billy Sunday into the pillow bin. Everyone was rushing toward a customer.

My mother approached someone—a man. She pushed out the unfamiliar words “Can I help you?” The man shook his head and said he was just looking. When she turned to find another customer, she saw only children. Everywhere children—children running up and down the aisles, hiding under the counters, playing peekaboo in the dressing rooms.

In God's name what did it mean? The farmers were supposed to be there, so where were they? And everyone had said the coloreds would come, so where were
they?
There were not even any dark
children
in the store. The smiling faces next to the
fluttering pinwheels were pale and freckled, and their smiles seemed to my mother to hold a secret.

She looked for my father and the others. They too were surrounded only by children.

My father called to Joey. He wanted him to go outside to see where everyone was. Maybe by some careless reckoning, no one had realized today was a holiday. “Go. Go now,” he said to him. “See if there are people in town.”

In a few moments Joey came running back. The town was full of people, he reported. “Even Dalrymple-Eaton's!”

Close to panic, my mother rushed up, to question Joey, to
challenge
him. She always said it was like her life depended on what Joey answered. She asked, as if angry with
him
, “So? So? And what did you see there? A few rich ladies? So tell me. You saw a few rich ladies?”

“Yes, Mama, yes! A few rich ladies!” The rich ladies had been in the coat department.

“Buying coats?”

Joey tried his best. “I didn't say buying, Mama! Maybe they weren't buying! Maybe they were just trying on!”

My mother's eyes gripped my brother's, willing him. “The other stores don't have no customers? Like ours?”

“No, no, you don't understand!” Joey has remembered being near to tears. How could everything have gone so wrong? But he knew he had to tell my mother the truth, and the truth was there were plenty of customers everywhere—everywhere but in our store.

My mother looked frantically around to find something comforting, something to tell her all was not lost. Everything only mocked her. As she said later, everything was telling her they had been fools. The tables so carefully laid out, the sizes meticulously in order so that no one would waste time, not the customer, not the clerk—why had they taken so many pains? The register with the beautiful silver sides—who needed anything
so fancy? The handkerchiefs that my father insisted be fresh and white and arranged on their strings just so—who was there to notice them?

She walked to the front door and looked out. The register did not need her.

And then T was back in the store, come to see if Joey and Miriam could go with them to the picture show.

My mother had no patience for him. A reasoned decision was beyond her. It was easier to say, “No, T, no. We need them.”

“Yes, ma'm,” T said to her. And then his eyes flicked up in the way they did when you knew, my mother said, that he “couldn't believe nothing what you were saying.” “You need them
now?
” he asked her.

Mrs. MacAllister came forward. She reported that the children were finally leaving. “Maybe now we can have some peace and quiet,” she said.