Other People’s Houses (11 page)

From the drawing room came the happy squealing of a little child. I opened the door and walked self-consciously in. One of the married daughters
had brought her small son to visit. The baby was running around in circles. Mrs. Levine said, “This is little Lore. Look who’s come to play with you, Lore. This is our Bobby,” and she caught hold of the child and she squeezed him and hugged him and said that she would like to eat him up.

“Oh, Ma!” said Sarah. “You spoil him.” Mrs. Levine said, “Say hello to the little girl. Go and shake hands.”
But the child escaped from his grandmother’s grasp and slipped past his mother and his Aunt Sarah and continued his crazy circling, making airplane noises the while, and wouldn’t stop to look at me.

Little Bobby had a pair of those peculiar ghetto eyes—as if a whole history of huckstering and dreaming were gathered in the baby’s deep eyes. His cheeks were soft and round. I thought he was the
most beautiful child I had ever seen. I yearned toward him.

So did his grandfather. Uncle Reuben kept curling his beckoning finger and holding out a silver shilling, which the little boy caught from him like a relay runner snatching the baton, not staying to see his grandfather wink and put a conspiratorial finger to his lips. Bobby’s mother said, “Now say thank you to your grandfather and come
here at once. Come when I tell you. I’ll put your shilling in my purse for you, or you’ll lose it. Take his hand,” she said to me, “and bring him here.”

I put my hand out gladly, but the baby ducked and yelled and ran. I ran after him a little way, but I felt foolish and stopped. I thought, He’s only little. I don’t run around like that any more. I meant to stand there watching him smilingly,
the way grownups watch children, but I did not know how. I rubbed the back of my hand to and fro against my temple in an agony of self-consciousness. I wished I had my little footstool to curl up on, but it was on the other side of the fireplace and it was impossible to think of walking so far with them watching me.

Now they had begun to talk about me. “That’s all she ever does,” Mrs. Levine
was saying to her married daughter. “Write letters home or she just sits around. I tell her she should occupy herself. She’s got to try and be happy with us here. But she doesn’t even try.”

“Leave her alone, Ma,” Sarah said.

“But I am,” I said. “I am happy.”

“So why do you sit around all day just moping?” Mrs. Levine said, looking at me through her spectacles.

“I’m not moping,” I said. The
truth was that I never exactly understood the word “moping.” After the first days, I had lost my capacity to cry whenever I felt like it, and now I didn’t even feel like it any more. Often when I giggled with Annie in the kitchen, I would stop in horror, knowing I must be heartless: I had been enjoying myself; it was hours since I had even remembered my parents. I used to go and look in the mirror
to see what Mrs. Levine saw in me.

“You are so moping,” she said.

Little Bobby, who could not brook divided attention, crept between his grandmother’s knees and pushed his shilling into her chin, saying, “Look what I got, Grandma! Grand-maaa!”

“I’m not moping,” I said. “I just like sitting by the fire.”

“Always an answer,” Mrs. Levine said. “I never saw such a child for arguing. And you think
I can get her to go out for some fresh air?”

“Look, Grandma!” little Bobby said. “Look what I can do!” And he tipped his head back and laid the shilling on his forehead.

“My little
Bubele!
” cried Mrs. Levine. She squeezed his face between her hands and kissed him on the mouth.

“I will go,” I said very loud. “I will go for a walk.”

“You want to go now?” Mrs. Levine said. “Will you go with Annie?”

I blushed furiously, thinking of Annie and the chocolate, but I was committed to saying yes. I was almost glad I was going for a walk with Annie. I wanted to be angry with her.

I decided not to talk to Annie. We walked through the park gates. I knew that Annie was bad. I removed my hand from hers in a gesture of disassociation. I looked up from time to time with horror and awe at this Annie who
had stolen my chocolate, but she was walking very straight, her nose pointing upward. I started kicking little stones; Annie let me. My freed hand kept getting in the way. I put it in my pocket, but it felt as if it didn’t belong there and I took it out again. Presently I held it up for Annie, and she took it and swung it as we walked. I helped her swing it higher.

“You know,” I said and looked
up expectantly, “where I come from Jews aren’t allowed to go into the parks?”

“Aren’t they, now,” Annie said. We walked on.

“You know what! You know what I’m going to do with my money? I’m saving it for when my parents come here.”

Annie said, “How much you got?”

“Three shillings. Uncle Reuben gives me sixpence every Sunday. He gives Bobby a whole shilling, and he doesn’t even say thank you,”
I said in a mean voice. “He’s spoiled,” I said, for the anger that was working in my chest and had bounced off Annie now found its mark. “All he can do is run around and make noises. He’s just a baby, isn’t he, Annie! I bet he doesn’t even know what to do with all that money.”

“Oh, well,” said Annie comfortably, “there’s always something you can do with money.”

That very night, Annie knocked
at my bedroom door. She was all dressed up in a navy-blue uniform with a red collar and red-ribboned bonnet, and she looked very smart and strange, almost like somebody I didn’t know at all. She said could she come in, and did, and stood just inside my door.

I was proud to have her in my room in her uniform. “Where are you going in that?” I asked, making conversation.

“It’s my Salvation Army
day. We got a meeting,” Annie said. “We have a band and hymn singing. We sing hymns and sacred songs and we have this collection to give food to the poor people and bring them the Word of the Lord.”

I listened intelligently. Annie had never spoken such a long sentence to me before. I was flattered. She was even coming over and sitting down on the edge of my bed.

“Today I don’t know if I’m going,
because I don’t have any money to put in the collection. So I don’t know if I’m going.” Annie looked down at her immaculate black shoes and gave them a dusting with her black-gloved hand.

I noticed absently that her stockings were black, too. There was a brand-new thought working in my mind. It was so tremendous it made me dizzy. I blushed. I said, “If you like, I can lend you some money.”

“Oh, no,” Annie said. “No, that I never would. I wouldn’t borrow money from you, though you are a darling child, that you are, and I’ll pay you back every penny come payday—half a crown if you can spare it.”

I was shocked at the largeness of the sum, for though I valued friendship above money, I had an attachment to the silver coins that had accumulated over the weeks. I counted five of the six
into Annie’s upturned palm and watched her take out her black purse and drop them in and clap it shut.

Then Annie asked me if I would like to come into her room. I blushed again, because Annie was taking so much account of me, and because I wanted so very badly to go into her room I said no, and immediately regretted it, especially after Annie had gone and her footsteps sounded away down the
stairs.

It was, I think, on the following afternoon that I came downstairs and found Mrs. Levine sitting by the window just where she had sat the first morning, and she was sewing a blue dress for me. I remembered with a shock of remorse how I had not liked her and how I had written about her to my mother. I suddenly liked her enormously. I was glad that she was old and ugly so that I could love
her forever, even if nobody else did, and was casting about in my mind for something to say to her so that I could address her as “Auntie Essie,” but she spoke first.

“Is that you, Lore? Come here. I want you.” She had not raised her head and I could tell by her voice that there was something the matter. I looked around and I was glad that Annie was there, busying herself in the far corner of
the dusky room. “I have to speak with you,” Mrs. Levine said. “I hear that you are going around telling people we don’t give you enough pocket money. I was very upset. I think that’s very ungrateful of you.”

“I didn’t,” I said, but without conviction; I was trying to recall to whom I had said such a thing. “I never,” I said.

Mrs. Levine said, “I was quite upset. We do everything for you, and
when I hear you are saying Uncle Reuben gives Bobby more money than he gives you I get very upset. And criticizing everybody—how my grandson is spoiled, and this one you like, and that one you don’t like. You don’t do that when you live in other people’s houses.”

I felt the blood pounding in my head—confused because she was accusing me of thoughts I did not recognize, and not accusing me of thoughts
for which I had long felt guilty. I wanted to go away and think this out, but I knew I must stand and let Mrs. Levine scold me as long as she felt like it.

Her hand that was guiding the needle trembled. “It’s not that I expect gratitude,” she said. “But you might at least say ‘thank you, Auntie Essie’ when you see me sitting here sewing a dress for you, but you never notice what people do for
you.”

“I do,” I said. “I do notice.” But a small sulky voice inside me said, “If she doesn’t know I love her, I’m not going to tell her.”

Mrs. Levine had not done with me yet. She was thoroughly worked up and she said excitedly, “And how often have I asked you to call me ‘Auntie Essie,’ but you never even remember—though you always say ‘Uncle Reuben’ to him, and then you go around telling people
he doesn’t give you enough pocket money and I’m sure he gives you as much as he can afford.” Mrs. Levine was silent, sewing agitatedly on my dress.

I stood trembling. I looked toward Annie. I thought that any moment she would speak up and tell Mrs. Levine that there had been a mistake, and explain everything, but Annie seemed still to be dusting the same shelf, and her back was to me.

I ran
out and up to my room and threw myself on the bed meaning to cry and cry, but I managed only a few dry sobs. I was thinking how that little Bobby really did get twice as much money as I. It surprised me that I had not thought of it before. It made me angry. I decided that I would not go downstairs for supper, nor to breakfast the next day, nor ever again. I would stay in my room and starve. I tried
to cry some more, but I did not particularly feel like crying. I wondered if there was something the matter with me. I began to dream a dream—I imagined that I was weeping bitterly and that Sarah came into my room and saw me so and softly begged me to tell her why, and I could not speak because of the tears in my throat. My heart ached deliciously, imagining how Sarah wept for me.

I lifted my
head from the pillow, listening to footsteps coming upstairs. Perhaps Mrs. Levine was coming to look for me. I held my breath, but they had stopped on the floor below. A door opened and shut. I heard the bathroom chain pulled and then somebody went back down. That was the front doorbell now—Uncle Reuben coming from his shop, or Sarah. Soon everybody would be home. They would sit around the table
without me.

I thought of writing a letter to my mother, but I didn’t move from the bed. There was too much now that I could not tell her; it had shocked me profoundly to realize that everybody did not love me, and I knew if my mother were to find out that there were people who did not think me perfectly good and charming she could not bear it. The room had become dark and it was chilly. I was
getting bored. I thought how Annie would have to come up to my floor when she went to bed. Maybe I would call her. Maybe she would come in. I thought, If she invites me again to come into her room, I will go. I wondered how long it would be before Annie came upstairs.

After a bit, I walked out onto the landing and sat on the top step. Presently I went down to the floor with the green carpet and
hung around there, and then I went all the way down to the ground floor. Everybody would be home by now. I could hear them talking in the living room, but I didn’t know if I should go in. I wondered if Mrs. Levine was telling them all those things about me. I stood outside the door trying to hear what they were saying, but my figure limned itself on the frosted glass and Mrs. Levine called out,
“All right, then, so come in. You don’t have to listen behind the door.”

I came in with my head on fire. Mrs. Levine was biting off her basting thread. She asked Annie if we had time to try on before supper, and though I kept waiting for the catastrophe Mrs. Levine only said, “So, you want to have that little Helene over to play with you?”

I said no, I wasn’t playing with Helene any more, but
I had a new friend at school, called Renate. Mrs. Levine said to ask her to come to tea on Saturday.

Renate was two months older than I. She had tight black hair and wore glasses, and she was as smart as I was. After I taught her the game about guessing about letters, she only lost once, and she had come up with such fantastic and imaginative mishaps to delay her mail that she spurred me to ever
greater stretches of unlikelihood. If she made her letters travel the long way around the world, I must send mine via the moon, and so the thing got out of hand and wasn’t any fun any more. But Renate thought of a new game. We had to guess when our parents would come. I said, “I guess two years.” Renate guessed five years. I said, “All right, mine is six years,” but she said that didn’t count
because I had had my turn. I said I didn’t care. I knew a secret. She said, what. I told her how I had heard Mrs. Levine tell her eldest daughter that Mrs. Rosen didn’t know what she was going to do with Helene now that her parents were dead.

“Oh,” said Renate, “then Helene is an orphan.” And so Renate and I stood having our secrets together. I asked her if she would like to be best friends with
me, instead of Helene, and she said she would.

But I kept looking curiously at Helene who was an orphan. She stood by herself in the middle of the schoolyard looking before her. She still wore her little thick coat and her rabbit’s-wool hat tied under the chin. One would never have guessed from looking at her that her parents were dead. I tried imagining that my parents were dead, but whenever
I tried thinking about my father I would see him spread-eagled high above the ground comically wriggling his arms and legs, trying to get down from the thing like a telegraph pole on which he was trussed up. I wondered if that might mean that he was dead and tried to imagine him climbing down but could not crystallize this idea in my mind’s eye and so I removed it from him and focused it on my mother,
but whoops, there she went, too, right up on the pole, and I knew that she could not come down until I had removed my thought from her. For the rest of the week I was continually at work to stop myself from thinking of my parents so that they could keep their feet on the earth. Mrs. Levine worried about me: She would see me suddenly shake my head or change chairs or dive under the table and
would say, “For goodness’ sake, can’t you sit still a minute? I never saw such a child for fidgeting.”