The Sisters Weiss (2 page)

“Tell me, Mamaleh,” Rose said softly, using her mother’s diminutive term of endearment for them both, “what were you trying to do?”

“To make kiddush and drink … the whole cup, like Tateh!” Pearl sobbed.

Rose put down the brush, her large, brown, intelligent eyes serious. Then, suddenly, she smiled, a small, secret smile of understanding and collusion. “You were thirsty?”

Pearl stopped crying. She nodded.

“If you let me change your wet clothes, I’ll bring you your chocolate milk. All right?”

The child nodded, sucking on her thumb.

Ever since Rose could remember, Pearl had been her special responsibility. They shared a room, the only two girls in a family with four brothers. She was an expert in preparing the drink, without which Pearl refused to go to sleep, knowing the exact ratio of cold milk and hot water to be added to the sweet chocolate powder. In addition, she knew just how to shampoo Pearl’s hair without getting soap in her eyes (she told her to look at the birds on the ceiling) as well as the exact spot that, when tickled, would send her into paroxysms of giggles, distracting her from the tantrums to which she was sadly prone.

Struggling with the buttons and zippers on her sister’s dress, Rose finally slipped the wet, cold garment down her arms and up over her head.

Pearl shivered. “Shoshi!” the child sobbed, using the family nickname, a short version of the Hebrew word “shoshana,” meaning “rose.” “Shoshi, bring pink pajamas. With the bunnies,” she demanded sleepily.

“In a minute.” Rose disappeared, returning with paper napkins, which she used to sop up the liquid still dripping down Pearl’s arms and back.

“Sticky!”

“I know. But you can’t take a bath; it’s Shabbos. Come into the bathroom, and I’ll rinse you off by the sink.”

But the water was cold. It was forbidden to use hot water on the Sabbath or to use a washcloth or sponge.

“Gevalt! Gevalt!” Pearl screamed each time Rose cupped her hand with cold water and attempted to wipe her down, until Rose finally gave up, toweling Pearl off and bringing her pajamas. Gently, she pushed her little sister’s small limbs through the openings, finally closing the snaps. Tucking her into bed, she said: “I’m going to get you your bottle, Pearl. Just stay here and wait.” She tucked her gently into bed.

“Hungry,” Pearl said, throwing off the covers and standing up.

Rose hesitated, then took her hand and led her into the kitchen, hoping her parents wouldn’t notice. Sitting her down by the small kitchen table, Rose moved a stool over to the stove, then climbed up. Lifting the lid off the boiling pot, she felt the hot vapors scald her face. Bravely, she extracted a piece of chicken and some liquid, which she ladled into a bowl along with a carrot and some egg noodles.

“Here,” she said, carefully blowing on a spoonful, then offering it to her sister.

Pearl stubbornly clamped her lips shut. “By self!” she demanded.

Rose nudged the bowl in front of her, then handed her the spoon. “Here, take it, but eat slowly,” she warned, sitting down beside her, trying to forget about her own growling stomach.

“Oh, so there you are!” Rebbitzin Weiss exclaimed as she came into the kitchen. “You chutzpadika girl!” she exclaimed, wagging her finger and head at Pearl. “You don’t deserve any dinner! Such a thing! To interrupt your tateh in the middle of kiddush! To spill the kiddush wine all over the table!”

Pearl put down her spoon and howled into her soup.

“Oh! So now you’re crying? Vi m’bet zich ois azoi shloft men. When you make your bed, you sleep in it! Come, enough already with you tonight,” she said, scooping her up.

“But Mameh, she’s hungry!” Rose pleaded, following anxiously behind as a kicking Pearl was put down in her bed.

“Ach, she got wine stains all over your dress, too!” Rebbitzin Weiss said to Rose. “You see? You ruined your sister’s clothes and her Shabbos dinner, too! Such a naughty girl! Why can’t you be more like your sister?” she scolded Pearl, who in response suddenly stopped crying, bunching her small mouth together defiantly, her eyes slits of fury.

“Ach. What am I going to do with you? Never mind. Come already, Shoshi. Eat something.”

Reluctantly, Rose turned away, taking her place uneasily at the table. The fish and soup had already been served and cleared. She reached for the large steaming platter of chicken and roasted potatoes.

“She didn’t hear kiddush,” Shlomie Yosef pointed out. As a bar mitzvah boy in training, he was very frum.

As everyone knew, one couldn’t eat before hearing the blessing over the wine, and since everyone at the table had already heard it, no one could make it for her, as it would be taking God’s name in vain.

It was a problem all right.

“Tateh?” Bracha Weiss beseeched.

Rabbi Weiss looked out the window into the apartments of their neighbors to see whether any of them could still be joined for the blessing. But all around them, Sabbath nigunim, which preceded the final Grace After Meals that signaled the conclusion of the meal, were already being sung.

“She’ll have to make it for herself then,” he said irritably. Girls were not supposed to make kiddush for themselves, certainly not girls who were not even bat mitzvah yet, and certainly not in front of a room full of men, some of them strangers.

Refilling the silver cup, he handed it to her along with a prayer book, which he opened to the correct page, pointing to the words. Rose took the book in one hand and the moist, slippery cup in the other, steadying her trembling hands as she looked at the sparkling wine that teetered so close to the edge. She would die if she spilled a drop, she thought, panicking.

“Baruch Ata Adonoi…” she began, slowly at first, then growing more confident. She had been learning how to read and write Hebrew since kindergarten but had never dreamed of saying kiddush on a Friday night in front of a room full of people! When she finished, a large “amen” resounded around the room.

“Nachas.” Her father beamed, getting up and patting her on the head. “Now, take a sip, nuch!”

Just as she put the cold, smooth rim of silver to her lips, she saw Pearl standing in the hallway, watching her, a look of envy and betrayal contorting her features.

“MINE!” the child roared. “MINE, MINE.”

2

Williamsburg, Brooklyn, 1957

The High Holidays were a difficult trial for four-year-old Pearl. For weeks before the New Year, followed by the Ten Days of Penitence and culminating in the awesome and terrible Day of Atonement, she hardly saw her father, who seemed to live in the synagogue or study house. And she had learned better than to approach her mother, who, burdened with endless days of cleaning, shopping, and cooking, not to mention getting everyone’s holiday clothes ready, was an irritable nervous wreck.

When the holiday finally did arrive, Pearl found herself bundled off to bed after a light supper in the kitchen, as her parents, older siblings, and family guests participated in the enormous holiday meals that went on and on into the night. Lying in bed, she’d listen to the clicking of plates and the thud of heavy platters being added to the groaning table; to people laughing at a joke she couldn’t hear; and singing songs she knew and would have liked to sing, too. She imagined with envy the heart-shaped cubes of sugar and platefuls of chocolate delights being handed out generously, mourning her fate. Why had she been born too late? She would never, ever catch up to her sister Rose … never … she would repeat in her head until—overcome by the fatigue of the long day spent running around the synagogue corridors and courtyard playing tag in her heavy holiday dress and tight new patent-leather shoes—she reluctantly gave in to sleep.

In the morning, she found a cloth napkin on the dresser. When it was carefully unwrapped, she found two sugar cubes, a piece of crumbling chocolate cake, and three almond cookies inside, tidbits Rose had squirreled away for her.

“Thank you, Rose!”

Rose smiled. “It’s a little crushed and dry but still tasty. And next year, you’ll be old enough to stay up.”

That had not occurred to her! Her sister would always be older, but she too was growing! It filled her heart with sudden joy, as did the weeklong festival of the Feast of Tabernacles, or Sukkot, in which even the youngest children were allowed to participate, helping to decorate the pretty little booth that her father and Shlomie Yosef and Mordechai, home from yeshiva, built of wood in the backyard and that the girls and their mother decorated, hanging colorful chains of pretty paper, shiny red apples, and bunches of grapes from the ceiling of palm branches that formed the roof. Abraham, recently married, would be spending the holiday with his in-laws in far-off Monsey, as was the custom for newlyweds.

Sukkot was a holiday that started and ended with Sabbath-like holy days, but in between had ordinary days that even the most ultra-Orthodox men used to take a religiously mandated vacation, spending time with their wives and children on rare and joyful outings.

This Sukkot, it was the Bronx Zoo.

“But what will we see there, Rose?” Pearl asked anxiously, settling into her sister’s lap as the crowded subway car with its rancid odor of oil, old rubber, and scraped metal careened down the dark tracks.

“Lions and tigers and monkeys,” came the excited reply.

“Wild animals? Like the plague in Egypt?” Pearl questioned, horrified. Animals in general were feared by religious children, and benign pets virtually unknown. Dogs especially were considered impure and contaminating creatures whose mere presence made it impossible to pray or say a blessing of any kind. And only those with a mice problem among the very poorest of families kept cats.

“No, not like the plague…” Rose struggled to explain. “Beautiful creatures like the ones God saved from the flood. Remember the pictures in the book Tateh gave you? The one about Noach and the ark?”

The tall giraffes and the lions, all walking docilely in pairs into the strange wooden boat.

“They don’t bite?”

“One bite? You they’ll chew up and swallow as soon as you walk in! Such a tasty little morsel!” Shlomie Yosef told her wickedly, unable to resist.

Pearl froze, then burst out in wails. “I want to go home!” she sobbed, until the other subway passengers in their workday clothes turned to look at her and, in so doing, rested their gaze longer then they’d planned, staring at the strange, foreign-looking family dressed up in holiday best on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon.

A teenager in a black leather jacket looked at them insolently: “HYMIES!” he called out, just before the subway doors slid open and he jumped off.

Rabbi Weiss’s cheek twitched. He adjusted his large black homburg hat, his eyes lowered.

“Stupid shegetz,” eighteen-year-old Mordechai said bitterly.

Rabbi Weiss threw him a cold look of warning. “No matter where we are born or where we live, we Jews will always be strangers because our laws and our God are strange to those around us. We must never provoke them.”

For the rest of the ride, no one said anything.

“Tateh, it’s the next stop,” their mother finally whispered. “Help me.”

“Hmm…” he uttered distractedly, lifting the carriage out to the platform and up the stairs to the street.

Their steps were heavy as they neared the ticket booth to the zoo. Rabbi Weiss took out cash and gave it to Mordechai. “Go, buy the tickets.”

Rabbi Weiss sat down on a bench nearby. He was not used to being seen together with his wife and children in public. It felt demeaning somehow for a Torah scholar to be involved in such frivolous activities. In fact, were it not for the fact that what they were doing was in honor of the holiday, and thus a mitzvah, he might have considered the terrible insult on the train a just punishment from God for going to the zoo in the first place.

“I also want a ticket!” Pearl wailed, refusing to budge, feeling deprived and belittled.

“You don’t need one. You get in free,” her mother scolded. “Go under the turnstile! Nu already?”

“I’ll give you my ticket, and I’ll go under,” Rose said, taking her hand.

“This is allowed?” Rabbi Weiss asked the ticket taker, who shrugged and waved them through.

Pearl took her father’s hand. “Tateh, why did Hashem save the vilde chayas from the flood? Why did He put them in the ark?”

“Some people are worse than vilde chayas,” Bracha Weiss interjected with a conspiratorial glance at her husband. “He keeps them alive, too.”

“Because He made all creatures, and there is no end to His compassion,” her father said gently, suddenly gaining back his good humor.

“Tateh, is it maybe because they are so beautiful?” Rose asked, taking his free hand and looking up at him earnestly.

He squeezed his daughters’ hands affectionately, then lifted Pearl into his arms. “As it is written: ‘But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee: Who knoweth not in all these that the hand of the Lord hath wrought this?’” he said in Hebrew, walking through the leaf-strewn paths, staring with childlike delight at the creatures behind the bars as he pointed them out to his little girls and his sons and wife.

“Look, Mameh, the monkey house!” Rose shouted, running ahead.

“Go away from there, quickly,” her mother called back.

“Mameh, it’s all right. The children can look. You go sit down.”

“Why doesn’t Mameh like the monkeys, Tateh?” Pearl wanted to know as they went into the elaborate Beaux-Arts building.

“It’s not that she doesn’t like … it’s…” But he didn’t continue.

“It’s because she thinks she might be having another baby and if she looks at a monkey, the baby will also come out looking like a monkey,” Shlomie Yosef whispered into Rose’s ear.

It was Rose’s turn to be horrified. But soon she forgot everything as she stared at the strange creatures that looked so familiar with their expressive, almost human faces and delicate pink hands. She watched, filled with compassion and delight, as a mother chimp cuddled her baby.

“Look, Pearl, see the baby chimp?”

But Pearl couldn’t get beyond the dark strangeness of their skin, the way they hooted and swung so fast from the bars and ropes.