Portraits (18 page)

Esther had thought about this too and had come to a decision. “You know what? When you get settled, I’m going to sell the restaurant. The great riches I have here I can have in Cleveland. I saved a few dollars through the years. And when we get settled then Jacob can move—why not? The whole family will be together. You know something, Gittel?”

“What, mama?”

“I suddenly got a lot of hope.” And to think Hershel should be the one to make such a great change in all our lives, she thought…

Three weeks later, Hershel sent for Gittel and the children.

When they arrived they stood on the sidewalk in front of the new store as Hershel pointed up to the sign above the door—
HAROLD’S DRY GOODS
.

Gittel wept happily and asked, “Why Harold’s?”

“Why not? A new life, a new name…this is America.”

Harold Jablon had emerged and Hershel Jablonsky had vanished.

Gittel hugged her husband as he put the key in the latch and marched ahead of his family toward the back of the store to the five-room apartment.

Two years later Esther sold the restaurant. From the moment the sale was finalized until the time of her departure she continued to tell Shlomo that his opportunities were in Cleveland. Look what a good living Hershel was making. The children were living in fresh air and they and the new baby girl, Bertha, were going to grow up among civilized people. Wasn’t Shlomo eager to see Gittel’s children?

Yes, but if Jacob couldn’t go then neither would he.

“Jacob’s going to come eventually. Why are you being so stubborn, Shlomo?”

“Because Jacob needs some family too. With everyone leaving he’ll feel very alone.”

Esther nodded her head slowly. As usual, Shlomo was right. Poor Jacob would be alone. At this moment it seemed to her that the children were smarter than she’d ever been…

Before getting on the train at Pennsylvania Station, Esther looked from one face to the other. She felt torn apart and suddenly remembered the first time she’d left her children. Had Jacob really forgiven her? Sometimes she wondered. But she couldn’t be in two places at the same time. Once again life had taken her by the hand…

In spite of himself, Jacob too remembered that first parting. Gittel always came first.

Sara’s thoughts were with Hershel, the one they’d always criticized. Hershel was making a home and a good living for his family, but Jacob, strong as an ox, was still carving umbrella handles and earning nine dollars a week. There was no justice in the world. For all her cultured background Sara lived in poverty, and Gittel, who had never gone to school, had it very good indeed. Sara and her mother had something in common—they seemed to know how to pick the wrong men.

Three weeks later they received a letter from Esther in which she enclosed a snapshot of a storefront and the sign above the door.
ESTHER SANDERS DRY GOODS
.

Where else but in America?

T
HE DAY SARA DISCOVERED
she was pregnant was the same day Jacob told her Germany was at war with France and England. When she cried it was not because of the war but because she didn’t want this child. She’d been so careful not to conceive and had in fact discouraged Jacob’s advances. But something was wrong. Well, the whole thing had been wrong from the day she was born, so why should anything be so different now…When she wrote to her mother about her situation and Molly wrote back that children brought luck, Sara wanted to scream out. If they brought so much luck why had Molly resisted being so blessed? Then she admonished herself. Molly had sent her some money although she was barely making a living out of the junk store she ran, and it hurt Sara to think of her mama living in the back of a store.

Sara gave birth to a second girl on January 10, 1915. No matter how she tried, she simply could not accept the fact that she was only twenty-two years old and burdened with two children and a husband with no future. She had become so fat after bearing the children that she swore she’d
never
have another. She had nothing in common with the mothers who sat on the stoops and discussed everybody’s business but their own. She had to get away. So from time to time, out of desperation, she took the subway with Rachel and the baby and went uptown although she had barely enough for the fare.

As she walked along Fifth Avenue she wondered how God could single out certain people to have the riches and good things in this life and others to be deprived and unloved. Her excursions only increased her longings, making it almost impossible for her to return home. The contrast between her dingy flat and her memories of Central Park, the governesses tending children who wore organdy dresses with wide pink satin sashes, the smartly dressed women who lived in mansions—it all brought back the promises Louie and Molly had made and the hopes she had felt in the early days of her marriage. But her marriage was just another broken promise.

Jacob couldn’t help but be aware of her resentment, but it made him feel betrayed. She should have been his comfort and helped him to shut out the mean world. Instead she made him feel less than a man, made him feel impotent. Was it his fault things had turned against them? Had he denied her anything he was able to give her? No, but all she had done was make life harder for him.

One night their resentment exploded into an argument. Sara had brought up Hershel’s success just once too often.

“I’m sick and tired of hearing the same thing over and over again.” He shoved his plate away and got up from the table. Standing over her, he said, “You should have married a millionaire. A lot you have to complain about. When I married you, what was the dowry you brought me? I even bought you the dress. What did your mother ever do for you—”

“Don’t talk about my mother.”

“Why, does the truth hurt?”

“You know as well as I do that she doesn’t have anything.”

“She had enough to support a pimp—”

Sara slapped Jacob in the face.

He took hold of her wrist as he tried to calm himself. After a long tense moment he said, “You listen to me and listen carefully. Don’t
ever
do that again. I warn you, Sara, and don’t push me too hard…As for your mother, it’s funny how you tell me how bad your life was, that you didn’t have a mother when you were a little girl, and then you defend her to me—”

“She’s my mother no matter what she did. You don’t have a right to talk against her…”

“But I’m your husband. What about your loyalties to me?”

“I’m as loyal as any wife. I live with you and make a home and—”

“And also make my life hell.”

“Then why don’t you leave me.”

“Don’t think I haven’t thought of it.”

“What’s keeping you?”

“My children…” He ran from the room, down the stairs and into the street. When he got to the river he sat on a bench and thought about his so-called marriage…

Meanwhile Sara started to pack. Enough was enough, and if this was what she could look forward to the rest of her life…she’d go to California to her mother.

Suddenly she sat heavily on the bed and began to cry. She must have gone mad. Where would she get the money to go to California and how would she support herself and two children? And then a further sobering thought came…She’d been selfish. Jacob was, after all, suffering as much as she was; his life had been nothing but hardship from the day he was born, and he was doing the best he could. If she could think a little less about herself and a little bit more about him maybe life would be a little more endurable. But she’d spent so much of her life vacillating between love and resentment. She prayed that if God could help her with anything, it would be to change her nature…

When Jacob came back she was sitting at the kitchen table, waiting for him. He walked toward the bedroom without a word.

She called after him but he slammed the door.

She went to him and watched as he let his shoe drop to the floor. “Jacob, I’m sorry…really I am.”

No reply. The trousers were tossed onto the chair.

“I’ve been wrong, taking my feelings out on you.”

He laid his shirt on top of the trousers. In his union suit he got into bed.

Sara went to the bed. “I know I’ve been wrong.” It wasn’t easy for her to say that, but Jacob didn’t make up easily. “I apologize, Jacob…”

No answer.

“Jacob, for God’s sake, what can I say except that I’m very sorry I—”

“You can leave me alone,” he answered, turning toward the wall.

She hadn’t felt so abandoned or alone since she had been a little girl, begging her mother to let her come with her, and she cried now, softly, through the night as she lay alongside Jacob.

The greatest joy in Rachel’s life was meeting papa at the subway every summer evening. How proud she was now that she was six and could go alone. Everyone said she looked like papa, same blonde hair and blue eyes…and papa was so wonderful. He took her to a place in a basement that sold charlotte russe. Papa always smiled and watched as she ate hers, but he never had one. Hand in hand, they walked home through the crowded streets. Rachel was very happy that Doris was still a baby and that she didn’t have to share these precious times with papa, and sometimes it was even good to get away from mama. She didn’t know why mama often made her feel so bad, like she’d done something wrong. “The reason you don’t eat your supper,” mama would say, “is because you always eat sweets before.” But Rachel didn’t care, she liked charlotte russe more than supper. More important was meeting papa; that was the nicest thing in her life and she wouldn’t stop even if mama got mad. And mama could get mad. The things she said to papa…although things had been better since Doris came into the family. She really didn’t like Doris at all. The only people she really loved were papa and her Uncle Shlomo…

Fortunately, Rachel couldn’t see what was happening between Jacob and Shlomo. For the first time in their lives there was a breach between them, and Jacob suffered badly for it.

The day America declared war on Germany, Shlomo went to Jacob to tell him he was joining the marines.

After the first shock Jacob said, “Oh, no, you’re not going to join anything. You’re only nineteen.”

“Jacob, I didn’t come to ask you but to tell you.”

“And I’m telling you
no
.”

“Jacob, there’s a war going on—”

“Don’t tell me about the war. I read the papers.”

“Then if you read the papers you know I’ll be drafted anyway. I don’t want to go into the army.”

“Damn it, I say
no
. You hear?”

“How could I help, you’re yelling so loud. But it doesn’t change a thing.”

Jacob went wild. Grabbing Shlomo, he punched him in the stomach, then slapped him in the face. Shlomo staggered and fell to the floor.

When Jacob saw the blood dripping from Shlomo’s split lip he was on his knees in a second, holding Shlomo to him like a child and wiping away the blood. “My God, Shlomo, I don’t want anything to happen to you. It would kill mama…me too if anything—don’t do it.”

Shlomo rallied himself and stood up unsteadily. He looked at Jacob, then put his arms around his brother. “Nothing’s going to happen to me.” …

The day Shlomo left, Jacob was as bereft as the day his father had died. When Jacob cried for Shlomo, and prayed he would come back safely, he was also, of course, crying for his father…for his father who had never come back.

F
OR THE FIRST TIME
in Molly’s life she happened to be in the right place at the right time. With the outbreak of the war, defense plants in Oakland were booming and the influx of people needed what Molly sold—secondhand furniture.

Six months after the declaration of war she had enough money to buy two flats in East Oakland. She no sooner had the deeds in hand than she sent off a letter to Sara and enclosed tickets and money…

The day Sara received the letter she threw her arms around Jacob’s neck when he came home and kissed him over and over again. When she showed him the letter, though, he hardly shared her excitement.

“Jacob, what’s the matter? I thought you would be so happy.”

He was thinking of Hershel, who had allowed Esther to pay the rent and give them food. And now Jacob was about to do the same thing he had so despised in Hershel.

“Jacob, look at the tickets and the money. Don’t you realize what a wonderful chance this is?”

His eyes focused on Sara’s face. The baby came and sat on his lap and when he felt the soft black curly hair and the little head against his chest he wondered what choice he really had.

“I don’t understand you, Jacob—”

He put the baby down and took Sara in his arms. “Don’t try to understand me. No one can look inside someone else’s head. I’m happy but I just wish I could have done it—”

“Oh, Jacob, that’s just foolish pride. Wouldn’t you help your children if they needed it? Wouldn’t you?”

But that was different; he was a man, a father. Still, Sara was right—he was being selfish. So he swallowed his pride, accepted the hundred dollars and looked at a smiling, jubilant Sara.

The only moment Sara felt sad was when she saw all her beautiful furniture being taken out of the dirty flat and loaded into the peddler’s wagon. But why should she dwell on the past now? The old dreams had been replaced by new ones. And at long last, mama was actually waiting for her.

Sara and the children were excited by the long train ride and spent much of the trip exclaiming over the countryside they watched from the windows. Jacob, however, was not quite so excited. He was unhappy with the food, which wasn’t kosher, and he despised the confinement. The trip was becoming boring and his restlessness made him irritable.

When the train finally came to a halt at the Oakland station, Sara ran to her mother’s waiting arms. Mama had changed so. Her hair was streaked with silver, lines were etched in her face…She remembered the day when she had stood on a pier in Brussels and watched a regal Molly walk down the gangplank, dressed in a dove-gray velvet suit and a feathered toque. But all the childhood dreams and disappointments—the overlapping love and hate—all were forgotten as Sara clung to Molly. They were together at last