Three

When he first came to America, Jacob Goldman hoped to continue working as a blacksmith, but all the blacksmiths he talked to in Chicago complained that they had trouble putting bread on their tables. “Too many Russian blacksmiths. We are taking food out of each other’s mouths.”

Louis Katz, a distant cousin, said Jacob could work in his butcher shop until he found a job that suited him. Then Louis’s health deteriorated and he offered to sell the two-story building that housed the shop and two apartments to Jacob for a good price. The building had an indoor toilet, a rare luxury.

Promising himself that he would work as a butcher only long enough to set his family on its feet, Jacob swallowed his pride and took out a loan from the Hebrew Fellowship and Loan Society. He counted on the rent from the upstairs tenant to help pay back the loan.

“I give you something more valuable than diamonds or furs,” Jacob said to Rifke, “an indoor toilet! Think, Rifke! No more midnight trips in the freezing weather.”

“Are you sure we can afford it?” Rifke asked warily.

“Sure? Who can be sure of anything in this crazy world?”

But, instead of giving him a sense of security, owning the building increased Jacob’s feeling of entrapment. He resisted changing the name on the shop window from Katz to Goldman. Soon, God help him, he’d sell the shop and do work he liked. He might even have a little time to play his cello.

Located on the ground floor, behind the butcher shop, the Goldman apartment had a kitchen big enough to accommodate a dining table, a fair-sized living room, a small bedroom, and the slot in the wall where the toilet fit. Fanny and Sarah’s bedroom was a cubicle screened off from the living room by two lace tablecloths. Sammy slept in Jacob and Rifke’s bedroom. Jacob had replaced the broken door of the toilet room with a long, fringed window shade which, unfortunately, was six inches short of the floor, so whoever was taking care of bodily needs was identified by the shoes protruding under the fringe.

Sarah was high-spirited after her afternoon with Bianca. Just before dinner she managed to carry her father’s bulky work shoes into the toilet room without being seen. Spotting her husband’s large, blood-spotted shoes sticking out from under the fringed shade, Rifke called, “Jacob, come! The soup will get cold.”

“Come? I’m here,” Jacob answered from his customary place at the head of the table. Startled, Rifke turned, looked at Jacob, then at the shoes under the fringed shade.

“Sarah,” she said wearily, “I don’t enjoy your jokes. Come eat.”

Jacob winked at Sarah as she clumped to the table. “Rifke, smile,” he said, leveling his dark eyes on his wife. “You haven’t smiled for a week.” He looked at Fanny, one eyebrow raised. “Isn’t that right about your mama, Fanny?”

Fanny frowned. “Papa, I hate when you’re silly.”

Jacob sighed heavily. “This morning, early, Mrs. Marshak bought a brisket, five and a half pounds soup meat, and two roasting chickens. And the iceman bought two pounds of liver and another brisket…my best day this month. We should buy a pint of ice cream to celebrate, I decided. But now…” He shook his head gloomily and swallowed a spoonful of soup.

Sammy scrambled onto his father’s lap and flung his arms around his neck. “Papa, let’s have ice cream, please!”

“Ice cream,” Rifke said flatly. “When one loaf of bread and two quarts of milk have to last for a week. I don’t understand you.”

Jacob untangled Sammy’s arms and set him on the floor. “Sunday, God willing, we celebrate eighteen years married and beautiful Rifke still doesn’t understand her ugly husband.” He wagged his head dolefully. “Sarahla, help your mama to understand me.”

Sarah studied her soup.

Rifke retied her apron around her slim hips. Even though it was two sizes too large, Jacob bought it for her from a Maxwell Street peddler because green was her favorite color.

“Sarah lost her tongue,” Fanny teased. “Again.”

“I did not!” Sarah stuck her tongue out at Fanny, the whole pink length of it.

Fanny screwed up her face. “You’re disgusting!”

“Sarah, eat,” Rifke said. “You’re skin and bones. You keep it up and Sammy will have to push you in the baby carriage.”

“Leave her, Rifke. Soon enough she will round out into such a beauty you’ll have something different to worry about.”

Sarah looked at her father gratefully. Sometimes he would lay his hand on her head and say, “Sarahla, you’re getting prettier every day.” She didn’t believe him but she’d catch his rough hand and kiss it.

“Mama is right, Sammy,” Jacob said. “Tonight isn’t the best night for ice cream. We should wait until the weather is warm.”

“It’s warmer already,” Sammy insisted. But the bubble had burst and Jacob returned to his soup.

Only Sammy talked during the rest of the meal, chattering on, answering questions for himself if no one else answered them. The family was happy enough to hear Sammy talk. They far preferred his stream of banter to the unnatural silence that usually preceded the wheezing that worried them so, for his lungs had caused him trouble ever since he’d been born early.

It was Fanny’s turn to read a story to Sammy after dinner, and Sarah’s to clear the table and scour the pots. Jacob sat in his chair to read the Tribune, his stockinged feet resting on a wooden footrest he’d made. Last year, as a birthday gift, Sarah had decorated it with a painting of a cello.

She waited anxiously until her mother and Fanny steered Sammy into the bedroom and closed the door.

“Papa.”

Jacob looked up from the newspaper.

“I want to go with my new friend, Bianca, to an art class after school on Tuesday. It’s at Hull House.”

“Bianca’s a girl from the neighborhood?”

“She lives three blocks away. You would like her, Papa. She has an older sister who’s a suffragette like Mama.”

“So? That’s a good thing?”

“You think it’s a good thing, Papa. You know you do.”

“Women should be able to vote, yes. They just shouldn’t have so many meetings to talk about it.”

“Will you tell Mama that I’m going to art class with Bianca tomorrow? I already arranged to take care of Goosie on Wednesday this week. I’m going to bed now. I’m tired.” She kissed him, brushed her teeth at the kitchen sink, and had just slipped under the blanket, when her mother and Fanny emerged from the bedroom. They were talking about how bad the smelly garbage boxes were for Sammy’s health. Then she heard her father tell her mother about Sarah going to art class.

“Art class? Sarah gets art in school. Anyhow, Jewish children don’t go to Hull House. Only Catholic children.”

“Mama,” Fanny said. “I know two Jewish girls, Sopora and Ruth Glickman, who take dance lessons there. Anyway, just because Sarah goes to Hull House doesn’t mean she’s going to meet a Catholic boy, fall in love, and run away with him.”

Sarah cuddled her blanket around her. Fanny was on her side. She had nothing to worry about.