Too Jewish (4 page)

"Then what is it."

"I have very private reasons for needing money."

Letty took both of my hands, stopped dancing, stepped back and looked me right in the eye. "You can't be ill or you wouldn't be in the Army."

"Please don't play Twenty Questions." I'd learned to enjoy that game. I always won because I knew so much obscure information. But I wasn't going to play it with the obscure information of my life.

Letty shrugged. "You don't
look
like a money-grubbing businessman. So why won't you prove it?"

This was a girl in a city I expected never to visit again. I saw no reason to tell her truths I didn't even want to face myself. "Maybe the reason I need money is painful," I said. "Think about my circumstances. All right?"

I could see her thinking. Her eyes actually moved, almost as if she were running them across the landscape of her own life and then trying to imagine mine. The band hit the final crescendo of the song, stopped, the dancers applauded. And Letty put her arms around my neck and gave me a brief hug. "I'll leave you alone," she said softly into my neck.

As soon as the next song struck up I remembered Letty was Alan's date, and I escorted her back to her seat, held her chair for her, got to claim my cold beer. Enough time had passed that I thought I could handle the alcohol.

"Hey, Bernie, I'm really sorry about what I said about your family," Shirley said. She was comfortable and slurry.

"So why'd you bring it up again?" Ted said. He was more comfortable and more slurry.

"Apology completely accepted," I said. I liked Shirley.

"Why don't you ask him about something good, like himself?" Letty said.

"You mean like the fact that you're not like Ted, who was just lying around until some big net scooped him up?" Shirley said.

I was tempted to be funny too, to say that a very big net had scooped me up, but I didn't want to let the conversation flip to seriousness, which often happens with humor. "I have a small business in New York," I said.

"Yeah?" Shirley said. She didn't believe me. I looked at Letty. She didn't want to believe me. I think it was the business part she didn't want to believe. Not the small part.

I pulled a cigarette case from my pocket. I always carried a piece of our merchandise. I never knew when I would need it. Of course I never put cigarettes in a case, and I always had it wrapped in tissue. That would be all I would need, to be beaten in the street and taken to the hospital with a woman's cigarette case on me, looking as if I used it. I'd be discharged from the Army with dishonor.

"Very pretty," Letty said.

"My partner expects to do well when he goes to Gimbel's in New York next month," I said.

Shirley looked a little funny. "Nobody much has fur down here, you know. I mean fur coats and stuff." She laughed at her own joke.

I had been thinking of going to Maison Blanche while I was in New Orleans, but I decided not to tell them that.

Letty asked Shirley if she wanted to powder her nose. I didn't know what that meant, but both girls got up and left the table. I knew they were coming back, though I didn't know how soon, so I quickly asked Alan if Letty was his girlfriend. I didn't want a girlfriend because I was in New Orleans temporarily, but I wasn't going to take someone else's girl to the movies.

"How can she be my girlfriend?" Alan said. I didn't understand. "This is my first date with her. And so far the only person she's danced with is you."

I looked at Ted for an explanation. I was beer dizzy. Ted's expression seemed to say that I had made a mistake. I sent him back an expression that I thought said I had no way of knowing I was making one. He nodded just a bit, as if to say, Well, hell, of course you had no way of knowing.

"I'll be going now," I said. When I stood up, I had to grab the back of my chair to steady myself, but once I started moving I was fine.

I never understood mail call. An envelope with a stamp or an aerogramme coming out of the sergeant's fist with one's name on it meant some kind of win. But many of the boys in the barracks lived close by and had no reason to expect a letter—unless they had sweethearts who wrote love notes for no reason. And only Andy from Hahnville, Louisiana, was that lucky. Still we all showed up, and if I received a letter, I had no privacy. A letter from Axel was easy to open in front of an audience. A letter from my mother always concerned me, no matter how much I tried not to allow myself to react. And it wasn't anyone's business.

For some reason this time I was succeeding in being preternaturally calm when I saw the thin form of the aerogramme. I saw the stamp of the Wehrmacht eagle. Everyone else saw it when I did, but I had seen it before, and I was not shocked. Another stamp read,
Im staatsinteresse geoffnet.
I had not seen that before. "Opened due to State interests." Suddenly I was alarmed in spite of myself. Mail call stopped. Everyone looked at me. "Germany," I said. I took the letter off to the latrine, giving the message that I wanted to be alone when I opened it.

My mother, who never in all the time I had known her had felt a need to think before she spoke, had become cryptic. Cryptic in the sense that the word was coined for. She was encoding every word she wrote. She was learning at seventy that she had to be coy, that she had to talk around her thoughts. And that her thoughts had to be told in shared secrets, in private language. My mother never had had a need to know about the world beyond her marketplace, what her food cost, who walked down her own street. Now she had to know about who governed her from a distance. Just to write a letter, she needed lessons she almost made it all the way to death without learning.

She made sure to build a thick cushion of chatter, of talk about food and the coming holidays and her friend Hilda. And then an oh-by-the-way.

The holidays are coming soon, but I think they will be different. I will celebrate in private, maybe with some friends. Hilda, I know for sure. She is well. I hope you can do better than we can, pray for your father. We won't even be able to break the fast with much. You know how it is. Maybe it is that way, too, where you are.

Son, you were so right that day when you told me about choices. Sometimes an old woman can think she's seen everything, but she can be surprised that she is wrong, and she can change her mind. I know you love me enough to forgive me and allow me to decide to go along with what you decided. Please write back and tell me it's not too late.

This was easy to translate.
I was wrong about Germany. Please get me to New York.

I saved the letter in a little packet, just as I once had saved Axel's letters from America. I threw his away when I saw him again. I would throw hers away when I saw her. Or maybe keep them for my children.

A knock came on the door of the latrine. The only reason anyone would have been knocking was that all the guys were respecting my privacy. That was worse than just opening the letter in front of them. "Come on in," I said with as much cheer as I could muster. Ted was the only one who entered.

"Hey, you don't have to handle this all by yourself," he said. We walked out together. I definitely didn't want to keep anybody waiting.

He had a point. I didn't want to be a charity case, a poor immigrant with these guys. This was different from how I felt with Axel. With Axel, I had a feeling he was in greater trouble than I was, and it was dangerous to bring it up.

"I don't want sympathy," I said.

"Fair enough," Ted said.

"My mother's still in Germany," I said.

"Well, I figured that."

"That's enough," I said.

Ted thought that over. "It sure is."

I told him I had a lot to think about, that we could leave it alone for now. My mother's letter gave me a sense of urgency—but it also had narrowed some options. I never was going back to Germany, for starts.

* * *

By afternoon I didn't know much except that I was a New Yorker. Everything I was going to do would be seen through a layer of fine black soot and the sound of I-dare-you. I had to move toward a future where I worked with Axel and tended my mother. All of us would be citizens. New York citizens. In the meantime, I would learn as much as I could. If I was in New Orleans, I was in a place where English was spoken the way it was spoken in New York, and pale imitations of Jews recognized each other. I asked Ted for Letty's phone number.

"What do you want that for?" Ted said.

"Do you think I might ask her to go on a date?"

"Aw, man, I grew up with Letty. You don't want to go out with Letty." I told him I thought she was very nice. I also reminded him that Alan had no claim on her. I was being an I-dare-you New Yorker.

"Okay, I'll tell you the truth," he said. "See, you have to be almost a direct descendant of Judah P. Benjamin to impress her mother. Oh, and it helps if you own half of Canal Street."

I didn't understand.

Ted asked me if I remembered Shirley. Of course I remembered Shirley. For a fraction of a second I had considered Shirley as an option before looking at Letty.

"I happen to know for a fact that for as long as anyone can remember, Letty's parents have made no secret that they think Shirley isn't good enough to be her friend. Which is ridiculous. It's not as if Letty is going to marry her."

I asked him what was wrong with Shirley. I thought she was a little off-putting as a possible girlfriend for me, but that had nothing to do with what Letty might want.

Ted folded his arms in front of him as if he were going to give me a lesson that would supersede anything else I might learn in New Orleans. "There are Jews in New Orleans, and there are Jews," he said. "Shirley is the wrong kind. Not as far as I'm concerned, mind you, but the Adler's think she's beneath contempt."

I'd been able to tell both she and Letty were Jewish by simple physiognomy, so to me they were equal. Jewish was Jewish. Certainly where I came from the government had rules about who was Jewish, but the quality of Jewishness was never an issue. The only times Jews hated Jews was when they hated themselves.

"The Third Reich didn't discriminate," I said.

"Well, the Adlers do," Ted said. "Shirley's last name is Hurwitz, which means her parents are a lower class kind of Jew. I think it means Eastern European. And that means conservative or orthodox. The Adlers want to be assimilated. They want to pass for gentiles. So actually practicing Judaism is like practicing voodoo, only a lot more embarrassing."

"I think my ancestors were at the court of Ferdinand and Isabella," I said, trying to be funny, though it was true. "That's very western European."

"That buys very little in New Orleans," Ted said. "Except maybe around Mardi Gras."

We both laughed. I needed that laugh.

"This is America," I said.

"New Orleans is not America," Ted said. "In fact, America is probably not America."

* * *

The High Holy Days were early that year, starting the second week in September, and I was grateful because I needed the time to think on Yom Kippur. I chose the synagogue on St. Charles Avenue that Ted suggested, though he claimed to know little more than that it had air conditioning. I was beginning to see that in New Orleans most places of interest either were bars or places of worship, and all of them had air conditioning. When I arrived I saw "Temple Sinai" written over the doors to the sanctuary, and I knew it was for reform Jews even before I walked in and saw the stained glass windows. Observant Jews did not go to temples. Observant Jews also placed kippahs on their heads as soon as they walked through the doors. No man here carried one in his pocket. There was no bin at the door for those who forgot. I placed mine on my head anyway.

It was nowhere near ten o'clock on the morning of Yom Kippur, and people were streaming in through the doors. I sensed a certain unfamiliarity in all of them, as if members and visitors alike did not know this place well, as if the High Holy Days were the only time of year most local people showed up, and most soldiers were showing up so they could say, Yes, mother, I went to services. I took an aisle seat halfway down, reached over and picked up a prayer book to see what I was in for. It was written as if for children, English translations, directions on when to stand, when to sit, when to respond. The Hebrew was transliterated. "Hello," a female voice said from the aisle, and I looked up and saw Letty with two people who clearly were her parents. I stood up so quickly that I dropped the book on the floor. I didn't think it was sacred in any way, and I bent over and picked it up as if it were any old book, smoothed it out, replaced it. None of them seemed offended.

"I'm Letty," she said. "Remember me from the night with Ted?"

I saw no reason to pretend. "Of course," I said with enthusiasm. I reached out and shook her hand. Her parents were looking impatient. In that crowd, I would have been, too. I extended my hand to her father. I really didn't know the finer points of what to do in polite society, so I hoped I was choosing the correct parent. "You must be Letty's parents. I'm Bernie Cooper."

Her mother saw my uniform or maybe heard my accent; I don't know. She pointedly took Letty's shoulder to keep her moving down the aisle. "Nice meeting you," she said.

Letty saw the empty seats next to me and asked whether they could sit next to me. Her mother indicated someone a few pews up and said, "Oh, I'm sorry, but I promised the Sterns we'd join them."

"Then, Mama, what about Bernie coming over to break the fast?" She didn't wait for an answer. "Oh, Bernie, we have such a great spread that'll be waiting at the house. I mean, both the cook and the upstairs maid set it up so we can have it when we get home this afternoon."

I never had heard of breaking the fast in the afternoon. The entire purpose of Yom Kippur was to fast until after sunset. At that time of year, the sun was not going to set until after eight o'clock. "But the sun won't set until after eight o'clock," I said.

Letty's father laughed. "Son, I think you came to the wrong place. See the stained glass? In New Orleans, this is as close as you can come to going to church without being Catholic." His wife laughed, too.