SYLVIA
After the week of mourning was over, Sylvia went into her bedroom, pulled open the bureau drawer with her socks, and took out the letter in the lavender envelope. She sat on her bed and held it in her hand, shaking, and wondered if she should open it or return it to Anna. Her address was on the left-hand corner of the envelope. She could go there, hand the envelope back to Anna, and tell her that Morty was dead. But maybe she already knew. It seemed that lots of people knew.
What could be so important that Anna would have come looking for Morty? She finally opened the letter, carefully peeling the glue away so she could glue it back, as if Morty would be coming and she could give it to him, and he wouldn’t know she opened it.
Her hands shaking, she read the letter over and over, digesting the information, wondering what to do with it. Anna was pregnant with Morty’s baby. She could not imagine going to see Anna and telling her that the baby she was carrying would be born without a father. She hoped Anna already knew. In the end, Sylvia tucked the letter away in her bureau, moving it to her underwear drawer, where it stayed.
It was summer again, late July 1941, and Sylvia once again stood in the cemetery beside her mother and father. The graves around her crowded one another, some grayed by exposure to the dirt and winds of Long Island, some pristine in their white marble. Morty had been buried almost nine months before, and today was the unveiling of his headstone. She stood before the small white stone that bore the words Morton Feinstein, Beloved Son and Brother, and his birth and death years, 1914–1940.
Sylvia, motionless, watched her father and nine other men recruited from other gravesites, men who wandered the lanes of the cemetery carrying worn black prayer books and wearing black hats. The men were for hire. They could be paid to fill a minyan of ten men so they could pray as a congregation. As women, Sylvia and Golda didn’t count.
In her hand, Sylvia clutched a smooth stone that she had brought with her to leave on the headstone. I was here, the stone said. I mourn you. No flowers, no plants but green grass, and just rocks and pebbles.
Morton—Morty—lay in his grave. The words to “John Brown’s Body” repeated in her head. She had learned the song in grammar school when they studied the Civil War. “John Brown’s body lies a-moldering in his grave.” Morton’s body lay a-moldering in his grave. At least they had been told it was him. Sylvia didn’t want to believe he was dead, so she preferred the other stories she had heard, the ones that cast doubt on his murder. But she had no reason to believe they were true. She wondered whether, in the plain pine box in which Morty had been buried, there were now only bones, a skeleton of his lean, handsome body.
The cemetery was quiet. Midweek. One funeral was taking place in the distance, a big gathering of mourners, all the men in a line waiting to shovel dirt on the coffin. At Morty’s burial, there had been some friends, but today it was just Sylvia and her parents. Each time they had to recruit those rent-a-men.
Golda had not spoken at the funeral, only wept. And she didn’t speak at the unveiling either. She was inconsolable, and Ben held her up through it all. Sylvia stood silently beside them.
Sylvia had loved Morty. He was her adored older brother. He had taken care of her in all kinds of ways. He’d made her laugh and bought her candies with the money he made working in a local grocery store. He’d played cards and checkers with her and taught her chess, although he rarely let her win—he said she had to learn to beat him fair and square. He’d helped her with her math homework because he was a whiz at math, able to run up sums in his head just by going down the column with his finger. He’d told her she was pretty, although when Sylvia looked in the mirror, she saw a slightly chubby adolescent with a few pimples scattered on her chin.
For as long as she lived, she would never forget his face, with his fine features, blue eyes, full red mouth, and cleft chin with the deep dimple. He had warm brown hair that always fell over his forehead so that when it grew too long, he had to flick his head back to keep it out of his eyes. He was so handsome that her best friend Frieda had a huge crush on Morty and called him “dishy.”
Sylvia was full of feelings today, but she hadn’t cried yet. Now, as she was flooded with memories, the tears came, and then the sobs. Her father put his arm around her, and she wept into his shoulder as they walked away toward the cemetery entrance.
Suddenly Sylvia stopped short. She was still clutching the smooth white pebble in her hand. She turned and ran back to the grave to place the stone atop the headstone. She would not want anyone to think that mourners had not been at Morty’s grave.
It was a very long trip home from the cemetery. A bus from the Queens, Long Island, cemetery and then the subway to Brooklyn. Sylvia had a long time to think. After they had found out Morty was dead and reburied the body in the Jewish cemetery, Sylvia knew she should have told Anna. She should have looked up her telephone number, called her, and said, “He’s dead. The police told us.” Instead, she had let Anna go on thinking and hoping that Sylvia would deliver her lavender note to Morty and give him the shattering information that he was going to be a father.
But was he? How did she even know the baby was Morty’s? Sylvia wondered. Just because Anna said it was? Sylvia had no one to ask. No one to check it out with. Rudy was dead. Morty’s old friends Paulie and Davy knew only what everyone else knew. They had seen the newspaper articles about her parents. Everyone had seen them.
The baby had surely been born by now. She wondered what it was, and if they still lived in Ocean Hill. And Sylvia knew that if she could do it over again, she would have done it differently, gone to Anna and told her about Morty’s death. Maybe Anna still didn’t know Morty was dead. But maybe she had read those articles in the newspapers. All the guys on the street had heard about it; Anna probably knew them. She probably had heard. But still. Sylvia’s head was swirling with thoughts. Back and forth she went. She did not know what to do.
She glanced at her mother and father. Golda leaned against the window. Papa sat still as stone, eyes closed. Every now and then his mouth moved silently. Was he praying? She closed her own eyes and leaned her head against his shoulder. The subway car rocked them through the underground, and the clacking of the rails crowded out her thoughts.
By the time they reached their station, Sylvia knew she would have to seek out Anna and find out whether she had really had a baby. She would fib a little and tell Anna that she had recently remembered the letter and opened it. That was why she was seeking her out now. Could she have kept the baby? She was a single woman, and her family were Italian Catholics. Sylvia knew that in Jewish families, an unmarried mother couldn’t keep her baby. How would she raise it? Was it different in Italian families? And where would she be living now? She could see the neatly written home address in the top left corner of the envelope: 138 Hull Street, Ocean Hill, Brooklyn, New York. That was where she had been living then. She would have to start looking there.
When Sylvia looked for Anna DeMaio, she went alone on a hot summer day. She dressed carefully, wearing her second-best skirt and a clean white blouse. She took the subway to the Ocean Hill neighborhood, which was largely Italian, the way Brownsville was largely Jewish, and carefully checked the house addresses. When she found 138 Hull Street, she stood for a while gazing at the building.
It was a two-family house, like many of the houses on the street. The house was brick, with four steps leading to a porch where iron chairs waited for the occupants to come out and sit. There were two doors on the porch, each, Sylvia knew, leading to a separate apartment. Which one was Anna’s? With a pounding heart, Sylvia walked up the stairs and read the names over the bells by the side of the doors. One said “P. DeMaio.” The other said “T. DeMaio.” Sylvia remembered Anna had said the phone number would be under P. DeMaio in the phone book. She pushed the bell.
She heard a clattering as someone came down the stairs and flung open the door. It was Anna. In her arms was a baby in a pink blanket. So Anna kept her baby, Sylvia thought. She tried to keep the surprise off her face. How did she manage that? She couldn’t take her eyes off the pink blanket, a girl. My niece.
Anna stood and observed Sylvia for a long time. Sylvia’s heart was pounding. She hadn’t thought about what she would say to Anna when she first saw her. Now she was almost wordless. “I’m Sylvia . . .”
“I know who you are,” Anna interrupted. “You’re Morty’s sister. The question is, why are you here?”
Sylvia felt her cheeks redden in embarrassment. She’d always hated how she blushed so easily. She took a deep breath. She was aware that Anna was blocking her way into the house. Was she not going to let Sylvia in? “I . . . I just opened the letter you gave me that day. I had forgotten about it, and when I read it, I wanted to make sure you knew about Morty . . . what happened to him.”
“You mean that he died? Was killed?”
Sylvia nodded. She felt as if Anna was punching her in the gut. She focused her eyes on the baby, instead of staring at Anna.
“Yeah, well, I know about it,” Anna said. Her voice was curt. She seemed to be observing Sylvia. “You might as well come in, now that you’re here.” She turned and silently led Sylvia into the hallway and up the stairs to her apartment. Sylvia followed nervously.
Anna’s house was nice, Sylvia thought. She followed Anna and the baby through the parlor and dining room into the kitchen. The parlor was furnished with heavy mahogany furniture and a beautiful oriental rug. The dining room, wallpapered in embossed green velvet, had a large oak table and chairs and a sideboard that held crystal and bone china behind glass doors. In the kitchen was a big red Formica table with painted black chairs. A loaf of bread sat on a cutting board in the middle of the table, and glass salt and pepper shakers stood beside it. Sylvia thought it was like a house in the movies. The room was filled with a delicious smell of freshly baked cookies, which sat cooling on a plate on the table beside the bread.
They sat at the kitchen table, awkward at first. Sylvia wondered how to start the conversation.
Anna moved about the kitchen easily. “I just made some coffee. Would you like some?”
Sylvia nodded. “I’d love a cup.”
Anna poured, placed the still warm cookies in front of Sylvia with a small pitcher of milk and a bowl of sugar, and sat across from her, holding the baby.
Sylvia began to tell her about Morty’s death, but Anna cut her off. “I told you I already knew about it.”
“When did you find out?”
“Well, I didn’t know when I came to give you the letter.” She stared hard at Sylvia. “Did you know then?”
Sylvia shook her head. “I found out about it two weeks later. And we were so shocked, so sad, I just forgot about you.” Sylvia saw Anna’s face relax. She must have thought that I knew Morty was dead and didn’t tell her. No wonder she seemed so mad. Sylvia added quickly, “And I didn’t know you were expecting. When was she born?”
“The end of April. She’s almost four months.”
Sylvia stuck her forefinger out, and the baby grabbed it. It felt wonderful, like the baby would never let her go. Sylvia laughed. “That feels good.” She played with the baby’s hand, waving it back and forth. “I wish I had known about her. But I didn’t open your letter, so I didn’t know.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t know anything either. I didn’t know Morty was dead until later. No one told me anything. But when I began to show pregnant, my uncle Mario told me. He had heard it on the street.”
Sylvia looked at the baby. “She’s beautiful. Can I hold her?”
Anna handed her the baby. “I told Morty not to get mixed up with that Rudy. He ruined his life,” she said.
Sylvia could not think of anything to answer. Anna wasn’t wrong. Rudy had ruined Morty’s life. But he had also saved her father’s. She wondered if Anna knew about that. Sylvia rocked the baby in her arms. “What’s her name?”
“Lily.”
Sylvia smiled. “Such a beautiful name.” She wondered what her mother and father would say about this. Would they welcome this beautiful baby into the family as their grandchild? Would they refuse to acknowledge her? Sylvia knew there were Jewish parents who declared their children dead when they married non-Jewish people. They even sat shiva for them. But then, Morty was already dead. They had already sat shiva. Families are often strange in the ways they behave, she thought.
Sylvia looked into the dining room, where there was a sideboard that held photographs of dark-eyed, dark-haired men and women, gazing at the camera with serious expressions. Some held babies on their laps. It looked like a big family. Lily started to move, a bleat coming from her rosebud mouth. She opened her eyes. “She has blue eyes,” Sylvia said, and looked at the photos. Most of the people in the pictures probably had brown eyes.
Anna nodded. “Yes. So did her father.” Her voice was hard. She was not looking at Sylvia. Lily was fussing now. “I’ll take her,” Anna said, stretching out her arms. Sylvia handed Lily back to her mother.
Sylvia nodded to the photos. “Is that your family?”
“Yeah. In Sicily.”
“We have pictures like that in our house too. Not from Sicily, of course. From Poland.”
Anna looked confused. “I didn’t know you’re Polish. I thought you were Jews . . . Jewish.”
“We are. Polish Jews.”
Anna looked away. “I don’t get all that. It seems so complicated. German Jews and Polish Jews and Russian Jews.”
“In the end,” Sylvia said, “the world just sees us as Jews.”
There was a long silence. Anna looked at the floor. Sylvia looked at Lily. She was half-Jewish too. If she lived in Germany, she’d be considered completely Jewish. Sylvia wondered if Anna knew that. Sylvia felt awkward, like there was something unspoken between them. She wondered if Morty had felt that too. “Can I visit sometimes?” Sylvia asked.
Anna hesitated. “I guess so. You’re her aunt.”
Sylvia smiled. “Aunt Sylvia. Thank you for letting me see her. I’ll come back again.” In the long silence that followed, the question that Sylvia had wanted to ask from the moment she entered Anna’s house was begging to come out. Was she being nosy? Sylvia stumbled over the words but said them anyway. “I know it’s probably none of my business, but how did your family let you keep Lily? I think in mine, you would have had to place her . . . you know, for adoption or something.” Sylvia found herself blushing.
Anna shrugged, licked her lips. “They weren’t happy, I’ll tell you that.” Anna held the baby against her shoulder, patting her back. She walked to the kitchen window and stared outside for a long time. Sylvia wondered what she was looking at. “You know you’re right. It’s not your business. But here’s the short version of the story. My uncle who owns the deli wanted me to marry a guy who worked for him. But surprise, surprise, this guy didn’t want to marry me. He said he wasn’t going to give his name to someone else’s baby. I was very relieved because I sure didn’t want to marry him.
“They couldn’t talk me into giving the baby up for adoption. That I wouldn’t do. And the truth is, my mother didn’t want that and neither did my nonna. I’m all they have, and now my mother has a granddaughter and my nonna a great-granddaughter. I don’t think the rest of the family wanted me to give Lily away either.” Anna took a deep breath. “In the end we concocted a story to tell if anyone asked. That I was married, and my husband died in an accident. And guess what? So far no one asked. People in the neighborhood stare, but I just stare back.”
Sylvia looked with admiration at Anna. She was standing proud, resolute. Sylvia could imagine her glaring at her nosy neighbors. She smiled at Anna. “I can see why Morty liked you. He always liked people with spunk.”
Sylvia had finished her coffee and cookie and knew it was time to go, but before she left the house, she said, “I hate secrets. My parents don’t know about you, or obviously about Lily. Would it be all right to tell them?”
Anna was quiet for a moment. “What do you think they would say?”
“I don’t know. They would be shocked maybe.” Sylvia thought about what she had learned of Morty’s birth. “But maybe not.” She remembered how innocent she had been when she realized that Morty had been born before Golda and Ben were married. Now, of course, she understood that her father and Morty’s mother, Esther, had sex before they were married. Surely her father would understand how Lily was born. “I think maybe they’d be happy.”
Anna shrugged. “It’s up to you. They are Lily’s grandparents, so . . .” Her voice drifted away.
When she left the house, Sylvia walked slowly back through the streets of Ocean Hill toward Brownsville. She thought she would love to come back to visit, to become friends with Anna, and to introduce her to Golda and Ben. It would be a connection to her brother. Maybe the only one she still had.
She thought about it for a week, then sat her parents down after dinner one night and said, “I have something important to tell you.” Sylvia took a deep breath and said, “Before he went away to Liberty, Morty had a girlfriend. Her name is Anna DeMaio.” She waited for a reaction from her parents. Golda blinked. Ben cocked his head.
“She was pregnant, but she hadn’t told him. She gave me a letter to give to him when we all thought he was still alive. I didn’t open it until much later . . . after the funeral. She had the baby in April, and I went to see her a week ago when the baby . . . Lily . . . was four months old.” Still her parents were silent. “I thought you might want to meet them.”
Golda shook her head. “Why would I?” She covered her mouth with her hands.
Ben spoke at the same time. “A baby? Morty’s? You’re sure?”
“Yes, Papa. She’s beautiful. She looks just like him. Blue eyes. Will you come to meet them?”
“Yes,” Ben said. “Of course.”
Golda’s eyes drifted to Ben’s face. “A baby from an Italian shiksa? Not married?”
“Not too different from Esther. He probably would have married her if he knew.”
Golda was silent. Then she nodded her head. “All right. I’ll meet her.”
Sylvia clapped her hands in joy. “The baby is so beautiful, Mama. You will love her. She looks so much like Morty. Blue, blue eyes. You could make her a dress, for a present. With embroidery.”
Golda nodded slowly, thoughtfully. “Lily. Pretty name.” Her voice was thick with tears. She reached out and touched Ben’s hand. He took it in his and raised it to his mouth and kissed it. There was a small smile on his lips.
Golda didn’t speak much more about it to Sylvia, but she made the baby dress of pale blue cotton, big enough so that Lily could wear it the next spring and summer. She sewed the top with intricate smocking, and on the collar, she embroidered white lilies in honor of the baby’s name. She bought a baby teething rattle when Sylvia told her Lily was teething, and Ben bought her a soft Raggedy Ann doll.