Portraits (21 page)

That night Jacob reread a letter his mother had written several months ago. His eyes skimmed down to…“Please come, Jacob. I don’t have much, but you can live with me until you have a place of your own. Remember, I’m your mother…” Jacob sat deep in thought remembering the day he’d received that letter. If he had listened to his heart then, he’d have been three hundred dollars richer and a million times less upset.

The departure was very painful, and Jacob was not unaware of Sara’s distress as he watched mother and daughter cling to each other with tears in their eyes.

At last Molly came over to him. “I know I’m not the easiest person in the world to get along with, Jacob, but I hope you won’t hold it against me. I really meant well.”

Jacob nodded. Everybody
meant
well.

S
ARA FELT THAT THIS
journey was taking her backward. At this moment all the arguments with Molly seemed so unimportant. Once again she was going into an alien world…

As they stepped off the train, all of Jacob’s family were there to meet them. Today the signs on the doors of Harold’s Dry Goods and Esther Sanders Dry Goods read “Closed.”

As the family sat having dinner at Esther’s Jacob looked around the table. How much they’d all changed. Mama looked older, her hair whiter, and Gittel’s eyes seemed very tired. Hershel, on the other hand, seemed rested. He was just as joyless as ever, but now there was an arrogance about him.

Jacob looked at Hershel’s sons. Strange, he thought, Hershel’s boys were going to be tall—like Jacob. For a moment the thought made him sad, but when he looked at his daughters he couldn’t help but smile.

Sara’s thoughts were not as happy. She was—admit it—envious of Gittel and her well-dressed children. Hershel wasn’t as tall and handsome as Jacob, but at least he provided well for his family.

Gittel thought Sara had changed a great deal. She supposed she would always remember Sara as that charming girl she’d first met, old for her age…Sara at Coney Island…delightful in that black bathing suit. Now there seemed to be a kind of bitterness about her. Nothing that Gittel could exactly put her finger on…maybe it was all her imagination, the long trip with three children on a train, Jacob without a job. Of course Sara would be worried. And leaving her mother must have been very difficult. How well she remembered leaving Esther to come to Cleveland…

Doris was mostly overwhelmed with Uncle Shlomo. She’d never seen anything so gorgeous as this man with his shiny brass buttons on the dark blue uniform, the silver metal, the red stripe down the sides of his light blue trousers, the black polished shoes and the white hard hat with the black visor, which he’d now taken off. She’d only seen men like Uncle Shlomo in the newsreels the few times she and Rachel went to the movies on Saturdays.

Looking around the table, Rachel felt nearly as uncomfortable as her mother with all the relatives, especially with her boy cousins. Then she looked at Bertha. She really would have loved a big hair ribbon and barrettes like her cousin had. Her line of thought was lost as she heard the conversation going on between papa and Uncle Shlomo. Papa looked plenty upset; she could always tell.

“Why didn’t you write and tell me you were joining up with the marines again?”

“Because I thought it would be better to tell you when we were all together,” Shlomo answered.

“But why did you join up for four more years?”

“Jacob, I joined again because it was impossible to get a job.”

“But what are you going to do when the four years are up and you still can’t find a job? You can’t make a career out of it.
Goyisher
bums stay in the army, lazy bums…”

“Have some more tea and some strudel,” Esther said quickly.

Both brothers ignored their mother’s attempt to change the subject.

“There are no bums in the marine corps, Jacob. It happens to be the most respected branch of the service. Besides, since I didn’t go to college, I don’t exactly have a profession. The marines’ benefits are good.”

“
Mazel tov.
Where are you going to be stationed, in Washington with the President?”

“No, the Philippines.”

“Couldn’t you have at least stayed in the United States?”

“You go where they send you. And besides, I’m very happy about it. How else would I get to see the world?”

“Why, it’s such a beautiful world?”

“I don’t know yet, I haven’t seen it all. When I come back I’ll let you know. Now, welcome home to Jacob, Sara and the children.”

“Thank you, Shlomo Sandsonitsky. I mean Sandy Sanders—that’s some name. Only in America—from Shlomo of Poland to Sandy of the United States Marines.”

“You’re welcome,
Jack Sanders
—”

“Enough,” Esther said. “Shlomo’s only home on leave so let’s have a little peace. Gittel, it’s getting late and the children are getting tired.”

Gittel got up and went to Sara. “Darling, we’re all so happy you’re here.”

Sara sighed. “Me too,” she lied.

“Tomorrow night, you’ll come to my house for supper. Now let me kiss my beautiful nieces.” She bent down, then looked up at Sara and Jacob. “You’re still very rich.” …

Esther was awake until very late that night. She shuddered to think how angry Jacob would be when he found out it was not Hershel who was the breadwinner but Gittel. She worked in the store and took care of the house and the children while Hershel did as little as possible. There would be many arguments that would come…And she worried about Jacob’s future. She would gladly have given him her store, but the few bolts of cloth on her shelves barely made enough to feed and clothe her, and she had no money to offer him. Then her thoughts went to Shlomo…She too had been very upset when he’d come home after the war and told her he had reenlisted. However, the more she thought about it the more she realized that Shlomo was more realistic in accepting situations than Jacob. When Shlomo decided there was no future for him in the civilian world he pulled himself up by the bootstraps and did the next best thing. Well, maybe in the morning things would look a little brighter.

Three weeks later Jacob found a store.

It was way out on the fringes of Cleveland in a place called Collingwood, but the rent was cheap.

With the few dollars he had he stocked the store with the minimum amount of yardage, mostly gingham, cotton, braids, thread, pins and an assortment of ribbons. Hershel offered his opinion that Jacob would never be able to make a living with such a small inventory.

Jacob listened as Hershel went on, “If you don’t have it on the shelves, you can’t sell it. What if a customer walks in and asks for blue serge?”

Jacob held down his temper. He knew Hershel’s apparent concern was meant to make him feel more insecure than he already did. “When I’ve been in business as long as you, I’ll have blue serge in stock.”

Hershel was enjoying himself. He knew Jacob was jealous as hell. He could tell the night they’d come to dinner at his home.

Puffing on his cigar, Hershel said, “I told you there’s no reason to turn down the offer I made you, Jacob. You’ll pay me back when you can. I wasn’t going to charge more interest than the bank gets.” He felt safe making the offer, knowing Jacob would never accept it.

Jacob made up his mind that his day would come. He wouldn’t live in the back of a store forever. If he had Hershel’s money, his wife and children would at least live in a house…

It wasn’t too long after the
JACK SANDERS NOTIONS AND DRY GOODS
sign went up that Jacob and Sara became aware they were living in a very anti-Semitic neighborhood.

Sara was quite nervous when a customer noticed her slight accent and asked what nationality she was. When Sara answered that she was from Belgium, the lady said that it must have been a lovely country before the war. Lovely, replied Sara. The dear lady had really only asked because she wasn’t quite sure, and, she wanted Sara to understand, Collingwood prided itself on not renting or selling to Jews. Thank the Lord there weren’t any in this part of town…

Jacob was very disturbed by this incident. Of all places they could have lived, it had to be with a bunch of Jew-haters. They were afraid it might be discovered they were Jews, and they lived too far from the kosher butchers on Euclid Street to keep a kosher house. Like it or not they were compelled to live like
goyim
. It only seemed possible to be Jacob Sandsonitsky on the lower East Side of New York. His children would grow up half-Jews and half-
goyim
…

She adored the black galoshes that snapped up the calves of her pudgy legs. She loved the plaid muffler around her neck and the stocking cap she pulled over her ugly black hair. But best of all was trudging through the snow to school. At lunchtime the children sat around the big pot-bellied stove and took out their peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on white bread. Doris felt badly because mama didn’t make the thick meat sandwiches on black bread anymore or give her a little cup of fruit and a thermos of hot chicken soup. When she asked why, mama said, “Eat what the other children do and don’t talk about it…Just keep quiet, Doris.”

Doris enjoyed the games the children played until the bell rang and she returned to class only reluctantly.

Of all the things Doris enjoyed, class was not one of them. She really hated her teacher. She asked the dumbest questions. If you cut an apple in half and gave your friend half of your apple then obviously you’d have the other half to eat for yourself. Furthermore, she didn’t care at all how Jack and Jill got up the hill, nor was she interested that they were going to fetch a pail of water. Doris also knew that Cinderella wasn’t Jewish. No Jewish girl would have lost her glass slipper. Her mother would have killed her. And if Old Mother Hubbard was Jewish, she wouldn’t have let her children go hungry. Papa always said that children had to have a roof over their heads and food in their stomachs but Old Mother Hubbard’s cupboard was always bare…

Doris’s teacher always seemed vaguely affronted by her questions and said the class would get to it later. So Doris was bored and spent a lot of her time making up answers to her own questions. But there was one question that bothered her, and one night she brought it up at supper.

“What’s a Kike?”

Sara and Jacob stopped eating and looked at each other.

“Where did you hear that word?” Jacob asked.

“At school. The kids said that they don’t like Kikes or Catholics. Is a Catholic the same as a Kike?”

“No, just eat and don’t say another word,” Jacob told her.

Doris was mystified by their attitude and frustrated that no one ever answered her questions. She still didn’t know what a Kike or a Catholic was, but it had to be something bad, like saying “okay” instead of “yes.” At age seven, it was all very confusing.

When spring came, the five of them would take the streetcar every Sunday to spend the day at Esther’s, where the whole family congregated.

Jacob noticed that Hershel had put on weight and was looking very prosperous. A diamond ring flashed on his pinky finger and he smoked his long black cigar. “Twenty-five cents,” he said, blowing the smoke toward Jacob. Always the same questions. How were things in Collingwood? Very good, great. Really? Nevertheless, if Jacob needed any stock, Hershel would be more than happy to sell some to him, since he knew Jacob had no credit. Then Hershel would go on to boast that he now had three machines—an automobile, a washing machine and a vacuum. “Jacob, you really should get a washing machine for Sara.”

Yes, sure. Next week…God in his wisdom should only make Hershel’s tongue fall out of his mouth.

Summer descended upon them like a blast furnace.

On Saturdays Doris went with Rachel to take a piano lesson for twenty-five cents, and in order to save the carfare they walked.

After the lesson was over they bought ice cream cones and sat in an old, old cemetery on a tombstone, licking them. Delicious, Doris said. Next week she was going to get chocolate. Rachel paid no attention to her. As Doris contentedly licked her cone, her eyes wandered to the dusty moss-covered hundred-year-old tombstone and read the name and date. She asked, “I wonder who Fanny Pride was?”

Stupid Doris, always asking such crazy questions. “How would I know,” Rachel answered.

“I didn’t say you knew, I said I wonder.”

Oh God, what a pest. “I guess she was a woman.”

“Well, I know that…Fanny’s a girl’s name…I wonder if she was a mother.”

“Stop wondering and eat your ice cream, it’s melting.”

“I think it’s really nice here, it’s so quiet.”

“Can’t you ever keep quiet? That’s all you ever do is talk.”

“Well, what else is a person supposed to do with their mouth?”

“Eat. Which is something you don’t have a problem doing.”

That was really very mean, Doris thought, and wondered when Rachel would realize that she was at least a
person
…After all, she was almost eight years old.

Jacob sat on the short flight of steps leading to the back rooms. The heat was impossible and the flies even worse. If he bought nothing else, Jacob was going to buy a screen door. Sara was handing him a cold drink when a customer walked in.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Sanders. Did you ever see anything like it? I swear this is the hottest July I can remember.”

Jacob nodded. “What can I get for you?”

“I’d like a yard of red satin ribbon.”

Jacob took the ruler, measured out one yard of ribbon, put it in a small paper bag and handed it to the customer.

“How much is that?”

“Ten cents.”

The lady paid and blew a wisp of hair off her wet forehead.

Jacob stood in the middle of the store, watching the woman leave. Ten cents…that made about a dollar for the day’s earnings, and it was four in the afternoon. He looked at his hands, those enormous hands…

He went to the front door, slammed it closed, locked it and called out to Sara.

In a moment she stood framed in the doorway with Lillian in her arms. “Yes, Jacob, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong. Everything’s suddenly right…we’re getting out of here and moving back to California.”