The Boston Girl (9 page)

I figure God created Margaret Sanger, too.

The Saturday Club was changing. Younger girls joined, older ones married and disappeared, including Helen, who moved to Fall River, which was a real schlep in those days. Filomena was still working for Miss Green, but she had stopped coming to meetings. Gussie said that Morelli was teaching art in Boston; I don’t know how she found out these things, but she did.

Irene and Rose were still Saturday Club regulars and best friends from Rockport Lodge. They shared a room in the South End and Rose got Irene a job as a switchboard operator at the telephone company where she worked. Irene always had some juicy stories about conversations she listened in on. “Rose never does it, but she’s too good for this earth,” Irene said. “If I didn’t eavesdrop I’d die of boredom.” Irene always made me laugh.

But one Saturday when I was on my way to the meeting—it must have been in the spring because it was light outside—I saw Irene running toward me and I could see that something was wrong. My first thought was that Rose was sick. For such a big, strong girl, she always had a cold or a headache. But it wasn’t Rose.

In one breath, Irene told me that Filomena had come to their room that afternoon, pale as the moon, and asked if she could she rest there for a few hours. But after a little while, she started having terrible pains in her stomach.

I said, “Why didn’t you get her sister Mimi? She’d want to know if Filomena was sick.”

Irene cupped her hands around my ear and whispered, “She said not to go to any of them. She did something to herself so she wouldn’t have a baby.”

I’m not sure I ever heard anyone say the word
abortion
, but I knew exactly what Irene was talking about.

When a woman “lost” a baby, there were two different ways of talking about it. The first one was sad. People would say, “Poor thing,” and tell stories about how it happened to their cousin or their best friend who had wanted a baby for years.

The other kind of “lost” made people frown and bite their lips. “How is she?” they’d whisper, sometimes like they were worried, sometimes like she was the scum of the earth. When Mrs. Tepperman down the block died after she “lost” a baby, there was a rumor that they wouldn’t let her be buried in the Jewish cemetery, as a punishment. That wasn’t true but it shows you how people thought.

I said, “Maybe you should take her to the hospital.”

“Do you know what they do to girls who come in like that?” Irene said. She was right. I’d heard of girls being tied to the bed when a priest or a cop tried to get them to confess. And there was a story going around about a girl who ran out of the hospital and jumped off a bridge after the doctor said he was going to tell her parents.

“Rose said we should ask Gussie what to do,” said Irene, “but I worry about the mouth on her. I figured you’d want to know and maybe you’d have an idea of something we can do for her.”

I said I didn’t but that my sister might.

I never just showed up out of nowhere at Betty’s rooming house, so when she saw me—and I must have looked pretty grim—she said, “Which one of them died?”

When I explained about Filomena, Betty said, “Poor thing,” with tears in her eyes. I could have kissed her. And she did know what to do.

She said, “You know the Florence Crittenton Home? There’s a nurse there—Cécile or Céline, something French—I heard she helps girls in trouble. But stay away from the ladies who run the place; they don’t understand about things like this.” Then she said, “Why don’t I go get the nurse? Tell me where to bring her.” I did kiss her for that.

Filomena was sleeping when I got to Irene and Rose’s room. She was shivering and sweating and her face was the same gray as Celia’s had been when the policeman carried her down the steps so I thought she was dying for sure.

Rose was on the other bed with a rosary in her lap. She looked like a different person without a smile on her face.

Irene came in with a little bundle and said she’d been to see Mimi. “I told her that Miss Green twisted her ankle and asked Filomena to stay with her for a few days. She gave me some clothes for her.”

There wasn’t much we could do except wait for Betty. Rose patted Filomena’s forehead with a damp cloth and Irene put drops of water between her lips. I held her hand. The three of us were usually big talkers, but we didn’t have anything to say.

Filomena cried when she woke up and saw me. I told her everything was going to be fine, a nurse was coming to help, and she had nothing to worry about. I didn’t believe a word I was saying, but it seemed to calm her down.

She was asleep when Christiane got there. She was French Canadian and she looked like an angel in her white uniform, but she was all business. After she took Filomena’s pulse, she had us help her to the bathroom and into the tub.

Christiane handed me a pile of small cotton cloths and said I should roll them as tight as I could. She mixed something inside a hot water bottle with a tube at the bottom. Then she looked Filomena in the eyes and said, “Try to relax, my friend. It won’t take too long. Take breaths. Count to one hundred.”

Filomena’s face was like a mask, staring at the ceiling as the liquid went into her and blood gushed out. Christiane praised her and said she was doing great. It didn’t take too long, just as she’d said. But we were all exhausted. And Filomena? I don’t think she unclenched her jaw until she fell asleep.

After we got her into bed, Christiane took me, Rose, and Irene to the hall and told us we were to keep Filomena quiet, feed her soup and tea, and not to let her out of bed for two days.

“I think she used bleach,” she said. “At least she didn’t poke herself with an ice pick. Oh yes, I’ve seen that. When they poke, it is terrible. But I think your friend will be all right. It was good you found me so quick.”

I got home very late. Papa was asleep so Mameh couldn’t make a big scene and I snuck out of the house before sunrise to see how Filomena was doing. They were all asleep, Rose and Irene in one bed so Filomena could have the other.

She was pale but she was breathing normally. When she woke up, she held my hand and whispered, “The nurse was here a little while ago. She said I was lucky. I told her you were my luck, the three of you and your sister. I never even met Betty. I wouldn’t be alive without her. Or you. Especially you, Addie.”

I spent the whole day with her. Filomena had a lot of pain in the morning but by the afternoon she was better. While she was napping, Irene said, “You know there are ways to keep this from happening. I’ve got a pamphlet all about it.”

Rose crossed herself. “God forgive you.”

Irene said, “I figure God created Margaret Sanger, too. My own mother had five babies in six years and died giving birth to the last one who died, too. I am not having any more than two children. I’m going to loan the booklet to Filomena when she’s back on her feet. You should read it, too, Addie.”

“Don’t worry about me,” I said. Seeing what Filomena had gone through and after my
assignations
with Harold Weeks, I didn’t think I’d ever have sex.

—

Filomena decided to move to Taos, New Mexico, with Bob Morelli. I tried to talk her into staying but she’d made up her mind. “I’m pretty sure Mimi figured out what happened with me, which means all my sisters know. They’ll be relieved if I go away.”

I didn’t believe her but she said if she stayed, she couldn’t be the invisible maiden aunt who disappears into the kitchen when company comes. “Something like this always comes out,” she said. “It’s better this way.”

Not for me, it wasn’t.

I made her promise to write, but artists are artists, not writers. She did send postcards, though: a lot of postcards—sometimes four a month. I have two shoe boxes full of them: pictures of mountains and rivers, of Indian men on horses and women weaving blankets. Filomena wrote like she was sending telegrams. “Moved into small house.” “Sold pottery. Bought silver bracelet.”

She always ended the same way: “I miss you. Come visit.”

You may kiss the bride.

My father believed that Celia would be alive if she hadn’t married “that ganef.” So when Betty announced
she
was going to marry Herman Levine, Papa called Levine every bad thing you can call a person. In Yiddish that’s a lot. “He buries one daughter and he wants another one? Your sister’s body isn’t cold.”

“It’s a year,” Betty said.

“I forbid it.”

Betty lowered her head like she was a bull, which is what she did when she was really mad. “You can forbid all you want but Herman and are I getting married next Thursday afternoon at three o’clock. I would like you to be there, but if you’re not, that’s okay.”

Then she stood up, put both of her hands on her belly, and raised her eyebrows.

Mameh’s reaction was almost as shocking to me as the idea that Betty and Levine had been, you know, shtupping. I was waiting for her to call Betty a whore and tell my father “I told you so,” but all she said was, “We’ll be there.”

I had no problem with Levine anymore; he’d been like a brother to me in a lot of ways. But the marriage took me completely by surprise. He never let on and neither did she. Betty was always telling me about going out to dinner with one fellow or another, but when I stopped to think, I realized it had been a while since she’d mentioned anyone.

Betty said it happened “naturally.” She had run into Levine on the street and found out that Jacob, the little one, had been having nightmares ever since Celia died. “But Herman was even more worried about Myron,” Betty said. “He was doing terrible in school and getting sent home for fighting. I felt sorry for them.” She took the boys out for ice cream a few times and cooked them a few meals. She said, “One thing led to another and I just became part of the family,” as if there weren’t any difference between making soup and getting pregnant.

“You’re not going to give me any grief, are you?” she said. “He makes me happy.” The next time I saw her with Levine, it was obvious that he loved her, too.

Betty’s wedding was one hundred percent different from Celia’s. First of all, it was in Temple Israel on Commonwealth Avenue, which meant we had to take a streetcar to get there. Levine was waiting for us in the foyer, which was twice the size of Papa’s whole synagogue. We were a little early, so he showed us around.

The sanctuary was huge. There was a high dome ceiling and an arch of golden trumpets hanging over the pulpit; Levine said that was to make it look like Solomon’s Temple. Mameh said it was beautiful. My father didn’t say anything, but with all the tongue-clucking and snorting, he didn’t have to.

The ceremony wasn’t in the sanctuary, thank goodness; we would have felt like ants. It was in the rabbi’s study, which wasn’t a closet either, believe me. I remember a big vase of flowers and books up to the ceiling.

The rabbi was younger than the groom and he didn’t wear a beard or a yarmulke. He shook all our hands and asked my father something in Hebrew, which changed the sour look on his face to complete confusion. I guess you should never judge Jewish books by their covers, either.

Betty came in from a side door wearing a tan suit and a hat with a little veil that stopped just under her nose. She looked beautiful. Myron and Jacob were in matching suits she’d picked out for them and Jake carried the ring for the ceremony.

The wedding was quick and half in English, but there was no way to break a glass on the Oriental rug in that room, so it ended when the rabbi said, “You may kiss the bride.”

A secretary brought in a tray with a decanter of wine and a sponge cake, the rabbi asked Papa to say the blessing, and seven months later, Leonard Levine was born.

He was a cute, good-natured baby, but I hardly ever got the chance to hold him because my parents wouldn’t put him down. To them he was a miracle. Mameh lit up like a candle when she saw him and grabbed him out of Betty’s arms the minute they came over. She covered his face with kisses and pretended to eat his fingers. “Look how delicious,” she said. “Look how handsome! Has there ever been such a boy?”

My father couldn’t get enough of his grandson, either, and even stopped going to shul in the evening in case Betty brought the baby to our house. Lenny was named after my father’s brother, Laibel, and Papa called him “my Kaddish”; he didn’t have a son to say the prayer for him after he died and that was ages before women could do it.

But Kaddish didn’t have anything to do with the way my father played peekaboo with Lenny or laughed at every sneeze and yawn. Papa was a completely different person with him. It was the only time I ever heard him sing.

But not even Lenny could keep my mother and my sister from fighting. Mameh would start complaining about something—anything—until she got herself worked up about how bad America was.

Especially the food. Everything here was terrible: bread, eggs, cabbage: “The cabbages I grew were sweet like sugar,” she said. “You can’t get anything like that in this miserable country.” She went on and on until Betty couldn’t stand it anymore and grabbed Lenny. “I wouldn’t trade cabbages for running water and toilets. I was the one who had to carry water in those filthy buckets. Remember when you brought the goat inside so she wouldn’t freeze to death?

“What do you think, Papa? Is it better your grandson crawls on a dirt floor or grows up where he can go to school like a real person?”

My father smiled at Lenny. “According to that husband of yours, his sons will be doctors and professors in this country. Who knows?”

That would have been the nicest thing Papa ever said about Levine, but he couldn’t leave it alone. “Even a broken clock is right twice every day.”

You know—living life.

We didn’t call it the First World War when it was happening. When it started, almost everything I knew about it came from newsreels. We saw British soldiers marching in rows and explosions with dirt flying into the air, but the next moment soldiers were cleaning their guns or sitting up in hospital beds, with pretty nurses carrying trays. Then the movie started and it all melted together. None of it seemed real.

Some people in the neighborhood were worried about family in the old country, but we didn’t have anyone left over there. My mother’s only cousins had immigrated to Australia and South Africa. My father had an uncle who went to Palestine, but nobody had heard from him in so long he was probably dead.

For three years, most people weren’t interested in the war. They were just working, trying to get ahead, have a good time. You know—living life.

But not my brother-in-law. Levine read two newspapers every day and knew where the battles were and what the politicians were saying. He was sure that America was going to join the war sooner or later. “And when that happens, they’re going to need a lot of shirts.”

Levine got it in his head that the commander of the navy was Jewish and decided to go to Washington, D.C., and talk to him “man to man.” It turned out that Josephus Daniels was a Christian and Levine didn’t get anywhere near him, but he said the trip was a success because he’d met “people with connections” at the boardinghouse where he stayed. He was so sure of himself that he rented a much bigger space in the West End and borrowed money for sewing machines so he would be ready when the big orders came.

“Meshuggener,” my father said. “Crazy.”

Levine didn’t look so crazy in 1917 when the navy and army started ordering uniforms. He had to keep the factory open eighteen hours a day and he couldn’t find enough workers to keep up. After I finished up in the office, I pitched in and helped pack boxes.

The war was the only thing anyone talked about. When the draft started taking boys from the neighborhood, a lot of the older Jews got scared and talked about how young men used to be kidnapped by the Russian army; most of them never came back. But the boys I knew weren’t worried. They wanted to show how patriotic they were and went to enlist. In the beginning it seemed like a big adventure and everyone was singing “Over There.” The war was supposed to be over in a few months.

Of course it wasn’t. Coal got scarce and food prices went up. There were more beggars in the street and every week another business closed. One night, someone painted
Hun
on the door of Frankfurter’s Delicatessen and broke all the windows. The place closed for good, which was even sadder if you knew that the owners were Polish Jews who picked the name because they thought it sounded American.

It was a strange feeling knowing that my family was doing fine because of the war. I think it made Levine uncomfortable, too. I was the only one who knew that he had a drawer full of pins and medallions from having bought so many war bonds.

We moved in 1918, right in middle of the war. It was Betty’s doing. She found two apartments, first and second floor, in the West End. They were close enough to the factory so Levine could have supper with his children and she could put in a few hours here and there while Mameh took care of Lenny.

Believe me, I wasn’t the least bit sorry to leave that miserable tenement, even if it was the only place I’d ever lived. The new apartment had indoor plumbing and electricity, and I got my own room with a door I could close. It was worth walking a little farther on Saturday nights to see my friends.

I was still going to the Saturday Club again but the meetings weren’t exactly fun. We rolled bandages and knitted socks and the lectures were about things like using cornmeal instead of flour and chicory instead of coffee. There was no money for punch and cookies and it was so cold in the settlement house we had to keep our coats on, but I didn’t mind; I was there mostly to see Rose, Irene, and Gussie.

One night, Miss Chevalier told us that the Salem Street building was being sold and we would get together in the library instead. She tried to make it sound like it was all for the best, but I knew it killed her.

The library was crowded and stuffy but the girls and I kept rolling and knitting, doing our bit for the war effort—even if it wasn’t much. It was dull, except for the night Miss Chevalier brought a friend who had been an ambulance driver in France.

Her first name was Olive and she must have been as old as Miss Chevalier, but with her uniform and cap and the way she said things like “A-1” and “fed up,” she seemed more our age. She had signed up for the English ambulance service when she found out they let girls drive. “I learned how to change a tire in the trenches and all the boys had to admit I was as good as any of them.”

After she told us about driving through terrible weather and stories about the other women drivers, one of the girls raised her hand and asked if they were still looking for volunteers. “I’d do anything to get behind the wheel of a car.”

“Would you really do anything?” Olive said it with so much bitterness, I swear the temperature in the room dropped twenty degrees. She glared at the girl who had asked the question and said, “Would you hold an eighteen-year-old boy in your arms while he died? A boy with a hole in his belly, who had soiled his trousers and was screaming for his mother? Would you do that?”

She went on like that until Miss Chevalier stopped her. Though not before the girl who’d raised her hand ran out of the room, sobbing.

After that night I found myself counting gold star flags hanging in windows—one for each son lost in the war. The next time I saw a picture of Mary Pickford selling Liberty bonds, I wondered which of the handsome soldiers around her were dead. And when I passed a man with an empty shirtsleeve pinned to his shoulder, I shuddered to think he might have been wearing one of our shirts when his arm was blown off.