Modern Girls (7 page)

“You have a bit of ice cream on your face,” I told him.

“Where?” he asked, drawing his other hand to his cheek.

“Right here,” I whispered, and I leaned in, my tongue reaching the corner of his mouth, as I licked the last bits of ice cream. Chocolate mixed with sweat and the deep musky smell of his skin made my body tingle. Abe groaned.

“I think you missed a spot over here,” he whispered back, pointing to the other corner of his mouth.

I moved slowly to the other side of his face, and gently brushed his lip with my tongue.

“And you have a bit of ice cream, right here,” Abe said as he tilted in to kiss me deeply.

A shock of wantonness spread through me. My body craved his touch. His kisses grew deeper, and his hand slid up the side of my dress, resting just shy of my bosom, delighting me. With a slight twist of my torso, I had Abe’s hand cupping my breast in a way that made me gasp in desire. His finger was rough on my silky blouse in a most pleasing manner. I could feel his manliness against my leg.

“Well, I never!” an older woman’s voice said.

At that, Abe pulled back, and I shot the couple standing there the evil eye. They were clearly Upper East Side—she in a dress with a fur collar that was ridiculous in this heat—and they looked down their noses at the two of us. In as haughty a voice as I could muster, I said, “Perhaps you should! It’s really quite nice.”

Abe chuckled as the woman huffed and the two walked off. “Young people today,” we could hear the man say. “No morals.”

The moment was ruined. Abe and I never had a chance to be alone; the only modicum of privacy we had was benches in the park or dark corners of buildings. Not that Abe would give me much opportunity to be alone with him. He insisted we not proceed too far before our wedding night. The refrain I heard most was
“Es nisht di khale far a-moytse.”
Don’t eat the
challah
before you’ve made the blessing.

How would I make this happen? We had only one place where
privacy could be found. Camp Eden, the Jewish getaway up north in Cold Spring, where a couple could be on their own. Camp Eden, where I’d gotten myself into this mess to begin with.

We stood and I smoothed my dress. Abe kept himself turned away, so as not to disturb me with his reaction to our necking. “Walk me home?” I asked.

“Of course,” he said. By the end of the block, he was more composed, and he placed his arm around my shoulder and I placed my arm about his waist. We walked in comfortable silence back to the apartment.

When we reached the lower East Side, the very air seemed to change. The fetor of our neighbors’ sweat lingered in the air, as the searing temperatures turned the neighborhood into a steamy, seamy pit. When the heat suffocated apartments, the tenants evacuated like ants swarming toward the fruit spilled off a pushcart. Bedding dotted the sidewalks as mothers sat fanning themselves and gossiping on the stoop, while the children slept outside. Others escaped to rooftops, sleeping in the open air, desperate for that rare breeze.

“Do you want to come up? The apartment will be empty. Everyone will be on the roof,” I said. My fingers toyed with his shirtsleeve, darting underneath to rub his smooth skin.

Abe shook his head. “I can’t, Dottala. You know I can’t. It will lead to nowhere good.”

I put on my most seductive
Vogue
magazine pose. “How do you know it’s nowhere good if you’ve never been there?”

Abe’s wide eyes took me in from head to toe. “Oh, it’s clearly somewhere good. This little taste of heaven tells me that. But if it gets too heated, I might not be able to stop.”

With an exaggerated sigh, I rolled my eyes. “As you like, my dear.” As much as I wanted to press him, I didn’t want to scare him away. I needed to get him to Camp Eden. I walked into the front hall of the apartment building, and Abe followed. “You know,” I
said, trying to sound like I was teasing, “if you just married me already, this could all be yours.” I waved my hands down my body.

Abe pulled me close, giving me a long, deep kiss. “I thought this was already all mine.”

I whispered in his ear, “But you could have the rest.”

He groaned and pulled himself away. “So very tempting, my love.”

Trying to keep my tone light, as if the idea just occurred to me, I said, “Say, why don’t we go to Camp Eden next weekend? Get away from the heat. Do you think your parents could spare you at the store?” I drew him back in for another sultry kiss, to guarantee the right answer.

“Oh, I think they could,” he said, when we took a breath.

“Well, then. Next weekend.” And with that, I turned and bounded up the stairs, knowing that Abe was following me with his eyes as far as he could in the darkened hallway.

•   •   •

WITH my family seeking a draft on the roof, I found myself alone in the apartment. All my bravado melted away. My stomach thrashed like a cat at the mercy of a cruel street gang. My worries flooded me, and I agonized about how to make Abe be with me.

Sleep was impossible. The heat. My fears. My stomach. All of them added up to me tossing on the couch, my hand rubbing my belly, as I counted the days yet again. One week. Two weeks. Twelve weeks. Panic swelled in my chest. If this plan didn’t work, there was no way out. Soon it would be obvious to the world.

Saturday, August 17

WITH the breeze on the rooftop and a hint of sun peering over the edges of the buildings, my eyes sprang open that
Shabbes
morning. I guessed it was almost five o’clock. For me, since coming to America, there is awake and there is sleep; nothing between exists. When I was a child, curled next to my older sister Eta in our bed, beneath a full down blanket, those moments between sleep and wakefulness were treasured, that hazy feeling each morning when the angels decided whether to return your soul, the body tugging you back into slumber, the day beckoning you to begin.

But since America, there is no extravagance of angels. On the journey here, my fear on the train that someone would stop me, the roiling of the ship, the terror of what was to come, made sleep a luxury I grabbed in snatches. When I first arrived and lived with my cousins, I was thrust into wakefulness by the worry I would miss a moment of work, of not earning enough to send money to my family back home. And, then, of course, mornings were filled with the sobs of babies, and later, the cries of the sick.

Now that my babes were grown, my family safe, my needs few, lingering sleep would be acceptable. But my cursed body wouldn’t allow it. Too unused to it.

Bedding was scattered across the rooftop and I listened to the sounds others made in sleep. Next to me, breathing deeply, was Ben. So soundly he slept, even among the snores and rustles of
others. I smiled at the whistle his nose made. Turning on my side, I gently ran my finger down his face, tracing his forehead, his nose, his lips. He didn’t awaken, but the corners of his mouth turned up happily in his slumber.

A queasiness in my stomach dismayed me. Inhaling, I tried to settle myself, but the morning air of New York was nothing like the morning air of home, and I breathed in the smell of smoke and dust.

Gathering my sheet and pillow, I rose to head downstairs to begin making breakfast. As I entered the stairwell, I heard a noise behind me, and I turned to see Mrs. Anscher also making her way to her apartment. “Good
Shabbes
, Mrs. Anscher,” I said.

“Good
Shabbes
, Mrs. Krasinsky,” she replied.

A bubble rose in my belly, and my hand went instinctively to it. It didn’t escape Mrs. Anscher’s notice. “Try bicarbonate of soda in water,” she said. “It settles a stomach.”

I resisted rolling my eyes at such obvious advice, but I had another thought. Mrs. Anscher was a good fifteen or twenty years older than me. We walked down the two floors to my apartment, and before she could continue on, I stopped her. “Mrs. Anscher,” I blurted.

“Yes?” she said, pausing.

But then I was at a loss. Even I wasn’t so bold as to ask such a question. “Never mind,” I said.

I must have sounded odd because Mrs. Anscher pressed me. “What is it, dear?” Her Yiddish was the Yiddish of my own region, and I found it comforting to hear her voice.

Shaking my head, I said, “It’s not a polite question.”

Mrs. Anscher looked at me sympathetically. “Is your mother still with you?”

“My mother never made it to America, and she, of blessed memory, departed this earth long ago.”

She placed a hand on my arm. “Go ahead. Ask.”

How to phrase it? “I was wondering . . .” I paused. “What I
wanted to know . . .” Mrs. Anscher looked at me patiently. A fierce longing for my mama pierced me. I thought a moment more and finally said, “When a woman . . . changes, is it sudden?” Mrs. Anscher scrunched her nose, confused, so I said, even more boldly, “Do the courses just stop?”

Mrs. Anscher smiled. “No, no. They don’t just stop. They come late and early—they come a little more, a little less—but you will know when it happens. It happens slowly.” She patted my arm. “How old are you? Forty-three? Forty-four? You’re still young.”

Indignant, I pulled my shoulders back and stood taller. “Thirty-nine!” It wasn’t
such
a lie.

“My apologies. When you’re my age, it’s so hard to tell. But you have nothing to worry about for another ten years or so.”

Forcing a smile, I said, “Thank you, Mrs. Anscher. I appreciate it greatly.”

Holding the handrail, Mrs. Anscher resumed her walk to the first floor. “You may come to me anytime, dear.”

I stood at our door before entering, letting her comments settle over me. There was no surprise. The suspicion had been growing in me. Apparently, it wasn’t the only thing growing in me.

We didn’t deserve this.

Friday nights, the start of
Shabbes
, were a special time for a man and his wife. Not a Friday night—except when Jewish law disallowed it—had gone by in all our twenty years of marriage that Ben hadn’t fulfilled his duties as a husband. The previous night, before we went to the roof, was no exception. I might be forty-two, but on Friday nights Ben made me giggle like a newlywed.

When I was a young woman, sneaking out into the fields with Shmuel, lovemaking was a loud, boisterous affair. But with Ben . . . That first night of marriage, in his parents’ apartment, pretending to be a young virgin, I longed to cry out with desire, but I bit my lip, and admonished Ben to keep his voice down when it rose a touch too high. A parent in the next room, a lodger in the kitchen,
a child at the foot of the bed—never have Ben and I truly been able to be free together.

And now we’d wound the clock back to the start.

I needed to prepare breakfast and lunch for Ben and hustle him out the door so he could make the early
Shabbes
minyan
before going to the garage.

I opened the door, and quietly passing Dottie asleep on the sofa, I went to dress in the bedroom, fighting back a sob.

What had I done?

Saturday, August 17

THAT moment of waking on a Saturday morning was a luxury in which to revel. Not long ago, Ma would wake me early on
Shabbes
to help get
Tateh
out the door for
shul
and to take care of my brothers. But now that I worked in an office, Ma let me sleep in, even though the noise of the apartment made it difficult. I loved, in my sleepy haze, listening to her attempts to quietly shush the boys. “Dottala works hard,” she’d say. “Let her rest.” Her voice was always louder than the one she was shushing, but she tried. I could hear Ma at the table, not five feet from the sofa on which I slept, serving breakfast to the boys, who had bounded in loudly from the roof about a half hour earlier.

A thin sheet covered me, and I snuggled into it, happy not to be rushing. My Saturdays were always spent with Eugene, taking him to the pictures or the playground at Tompkins Square Park or the library. Saturday evenings I painted my nails. Already I was thinking about what new color I would purchase—coral? Ruby?

And then I remembered. My situation.

The thought came over me like a chill, and I wrapped the sheet tightly around me, as if to hide my dilemma.

And yet? Listening to Ma say the blessings before eating triggered a thought. Maybe, just maybe, this wasn’t
my
problem. Maybe I could lay this in the hands of something greater than myself.

I suddenly leaped off the couch, draping the sheet around me. Ma looked up from the table, startled.

“What? A bee stung you?”

“Ma,” I said.

“Never have you moved so fast out of bed. Sometimes I can’t tell which is sofa and which is you—you stay in so long.”

I rolled my eyes and headed to her room.

“What’s with the sheet?” Ma asked. “Suddenly you’re too modest for us to see you in your nightclothes?”

“I’m a grown woman, Ma. I shouldn’t be prancing around in underthings.” The truth was I feared her eyeing my bosom, my stomach.

Making my way into her room, where I kept my clothes on a small rack, I surveyed my garments. What to wear for an appointment with
Hashem
? I pulled down my most modest dress, which wasn’t saying much—the skirt came to below my knees and the sleeves brushed my wrists, but the scoop neckline wasn’t the most decorous. It would have to do. The last time I’d worn this dress was for the Stein funeral.

As I eyed the zipper, I sighed, and I turned to face Ma’s dresser. Could I do this? With my eyes half-closed so I wouldn’t see her unmentionables, I fished in her top drawer for a girdle. My hands found one, but not before they alighted on the small box. With a quick glance at the door, I pulled out the tin. My future. How wonderful it would be to sit in a classroom, surrounded by numbers. Were there new numbers to learn? New worlds of calculations to discover? I pictured evenings filled with numbers swirling around, multiplying and dividing, leaping along the number line, digits building and snowballing to ever greater sums. I admired the roundness of even numbers in their willingness to halve, the stubbornness of prime numbers in their refusal to divide. I loved the infiniteness of
eight
stretching before me, no end in sight, and the sturdiness of a
five
. Rounded
nine
was maternal, holding within a triplet of threes. But then the thought of maternity brought me crashing back into the moment.

I replaced the tin, shut the drawer, and shimmied into the girdle. Ma was just big enough that the girdle skimmed on easily, which disappointed me; I was hoping it would hide more. But it did enough so the dress slid down my body with barely a struggle.

Before leaving the bedroom, I bolstered myself with a deep breath. There was no way to slip out undetected; I’d just have to deal with Ma head-on.

Ma was cleaning a spill and not looking at me when she said, “Sit and eat.” She glanced up and was clearly surprised. “Did someone die?”

“God forbid, Ma.”

“Why are you dressed like that?”

Walking to the credenza, I opened the glass doors, hunting for my prayer book. “I thought I’d go to
shul
this morning.”

The silence startled me. Ma looked at me openmouthed, and Alfie and Eugene exchanged nervous glances. Finally Alfie said, “Are ya sick or something?”

Ah, there was the
siddur
, behind the photo of Ma’s parents. “No, I’m not sick,” I said. My tone was taking the singsong quality of an angry child and I checked myself, readjusting my voice by clearing my throat. “No,” I repeated, “I’m not sick. It’s just been a while since I’ve been to
shul
on
Shabbes
and I thought I should go.”

“What about the movies?” Eugene asked.

“We’ll still have plenty of time for the movies when I get back,” I said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

“Wait.” Ma’s voice was firm. I was sure she was about to insist I eat first.

“Ma—” But she interrupted before I could finish my sentence.

“I will come with you.”

“Oh,” I said. Now it was my turn to be taken aback. Ma didn’t go to
shul
. She sent
Tateh
while she cooked and cleaned. She went for the holidays, but even then she didn’t stay long, hurrying home to prepare the house. But here she was looking for her own prayer book and a hat suitable for
Shabbes
.

Alfie shook his head. “Going mad around here.”

“Say,” Ma said, “why aren’t
you
at
shul
? Hooligans! Finish your breakfast and head down. If I don’t see you there praying to
Hashem
, I’ll give you something to pray about later.”

“Look what you did,” Alfie said to me.

I shrugged. It took only a few moments for Ma to change her dress and say, “Let’s go.”

Walking out of our apartment, we made our way down the block. I waited for Ma to cross-examine me, but she looked to be caught up in her own thoughts. Very unlike her. She clutched her prayer book tightly in her hand, and finally, I couldn’t stand the quiet.

“So, Ma,” I started, but then I halted, unsure of what to say. Was I about to confide in her? No. I felt certain I could pray this away. So what was the point of worrying her?

“Yes?” she said, but her eyes remained forward, focused.

“Um.” I scrambled for something innocuous to say. I thought of nothing. “Never mind.”

We walked in silence.

Arriving at our
shul
, we went upstairs to the women’s section. Down below, we could see a sea of men
davening
, their bodies swaying back and forth as they hunched over their
siddurs
, reading the prayers even though they knew them by heart. There was no point looking for
Tateh
or Abe; they’d been to the early
minyan
before work. The men here were the ones who worked nights or in the afternoon or the pushcart peddlers who made their own schedules, closing on Saturday so they could observe
Shabbes
the way it was meant to be: praying at
shul
, studying Torah, relaxing at home.

The women’s area was much less crowded. Most wore large head scarves as they bent over their prayer books, but a few younger and more modern women merely wore hats, and a handful of older women, wigs.

Ma scanned the balcony. Leaning toward me, she whispered, “Do you see Perle?”

Glancing around, I shook my head.

Ma sighed and sat down. “Oh well.”

Had she come just to socialize? But then Ma opened her book and began praying with a devotion that felt oddly out of character. She was rapt in her intonations, her eyes closed, her body shaking. Taking her lead, I opened my own
siddur
, and with absolute concentration, I read the prayers softly to myself:
Baruch atah Adonai. Sh’ma Yisroel. Kadosh kadosh kadosh.
And then, when I reached the silent prayers, I put everything I had into it. The Hebrew letters careened and merged within me, and at the end of the prayer, I continued standing, adding in my own private plea. I closed my eyes, and just repeated over and over, my lips moving but no sound emerging, “Please, dear God, let this be a mistake.
Hashem
, make this problem go away. Please, dear God, let this be a mistake.”

For two hours Ma and I were lost in our own prayers, and when we were finally done, it was as if we emerged from a deep sleep, refreshed and satisfied.

•   •   •

THAT afternoon, I was so giddy, I let Eugene talk me into a Boris Karloff–Bela Lugosi movie. I allowed myself to be terrified at
The Raven
, confident my problem would be solved. At dinner I laughed, and while eating wasn’t easy, the food went down better, which I took as a positive omen. I painted my nails a lovely shade of Sun Rose, before letting Alfie and Eugene coax me into an after-dinner game of pinochle. I fell asleep dreaming of accounting school.

•   •   •

THE next morning I woke excitedly and ran to the bathroom. With a deep breath, I murmured, “Thank you,
Hashem
.” I pulled down my underthings and looked.

Clean.

My underwear was completely clean. Not even a spot of blood.

I sat down on the toilet and for the first time—truly, completely, and silently—sobbed.