Part Thirteen
Dev, 1919
Chapter 33

Papa refused when Mama begged him to sit shiva with us. “I already mourned Shmuel. Chasidim believe in reincarnation but for me, once dead is dead enough.”

“That time didn’t count,” she said, hanging a black cloth over the window.“You can’t say Kaddish until the rabbi pronounces someone dead.” My mother appealed to his penchant for obeying rules, but my father was aggravated because it was Onkel Gershon who’d found the Talmudic tract that convinced Reb Stern to say Shmuel was gone. In Jewish law, the nostrils, not the heart, signify the passage from life to death. “We no longer hear his breath going in and out,” my uncle reasoned, “so the lack of sound in our ears, more than Shmuel’s disappearance from our sight, proves he’s dead.” The rabbi agreed and Shmuel was officially declared deceased.

Still Papa resisted Mama’s plea. “I recited the prayer for the dead when my son abandoned his faith,” he told her. “In God’s eyes, that counts.” But to my mother and me, Shmuel had not only been alive before, he hadn’t stopped being a Jew. He’d only stopped studying to be a rabbi.

Mama kept trying. “You prayed alone, without the required minyan of ten men. It was an embarrassment then, it will look worse now if you’re the only one who doesn’t pray.”

That made Papa give in, but not before he raised another objection. “No body, no coffin. Besides, we can’t afford one and I won’t take a pine box from charity.” Mama had an answer for that too. My uncle had already bought a hardwood casket and cemetery plot, and he claimed we didn’t need a body. According to the Talmud, Jews don’t show the corpse because it gives your enemy a final invitation to mock you. Again, my father lost out to my uncle.

Since there was no body, I suggested we put a token of Shmuel inside the coffin instead. I was thinking of the recruiting poster rolled up under the couch. When the war ended, I’d asked the druggist for it and now, whenever I missed my brother, I took it out and talked to the sailor in the picture. Mama liked my idea, but before she could say what she’d put inside, Papa put the kibosh on the plan. I bet she was thinking of Shmuel’s payess. I’d forgotten about his sidelocks after I found them in the garbage, but a year later I saw them in the closet, wrapped up with the braids Mama had cut off when she got married. I kept mum since I wasn’t supposed to be poking around in there. Also, I’d been afraid Papa would make Mama throw the payess back in the trash.

Unfortunately, Papa had a reason to leave the casket empty that even Gershon accepted. My father said ancient Egyptians buried their dead with personal possessions, hence Jews, having been liberated from slavery in Egypt, were forbidden from copying them. My uncles’s agreement almost made Papa reverse himself, but the coffin stayed bare. When we lowered it in the ground and threw handfuls of dirt on top, it sounded as hollow as our apartment without Shmuel.

During the week we sat shiva, there was a long-awaited sense of relief, but a new wave of sorrow overwhelmed us too. Except for Papa, who sulked like a sixteen-year-old, the same age my brother was when he left. It made me question all over again why Shmuel took off, whether he really cared about the war or used it as an excuse to run away from home. By the time I turned sixteen, well over a year from now, the period of mourning would be over. I was past ready.

My mother was comforted that so many people came to sit shiva with us. It was the first time since the disappearance that all the Mendels were at our house, although only Tante Yetta and my cousins spoke to my father. Neighbours stopped by, even Catholics, with cake from the Jewish bakery. Safer than making something themselves that might not be kosher. The rabbis who’d taught Shmuel shuffled in too. They addressed Papa, but grew silent when he scowled and pulled his tallit around his shoulders. It was his regular Shabbas prayer shawl, not the one he’d been saving to give Shmuel on his ordination. That special tallit disappeared after the first time he sat shiva. Rebuffed, the rabbis discussed Talmud with my uncle, unaware they were fuelling my father’s rage and grief.

Shmuel’s classmates, who’d graduated without him, also paid their respects, including his pals Yaakov and Bernie. Loud-mouthed Yaakov blubbered to Mama, “We could have stopped him.” If he thought his acting guilty would make her feel better, he was all wet. Didn’t he have the brains to know it would make her more splenetic that his friends hadn’t said anything?

“We couldn’t have stopped him,” Bernie confided to me. He was taller and not as skinny as that day outside United Drugs. “Shmuel knew his own mind.” I wasn’t sure of that, but Bernie saying so helped me feel better. It made Shmuel the master of his own destiny, which is how I wanted to remember him. Otherwise I’d be flooded with remorse thinking my parents and I had let him down. I was fed up listening to Yaakov make a spectacle of himself. I was done with crying, period. Sometimes my eyes stung but tears no longer spilled out. I was afraid if I stayed in that hot, crowded apartment another mournful minute, I’d start to wail and flail like Yaakov.

“I have to extricate myself from this drama,” I said. Bernie followed me out to the alley.

It was early evening and the laughter coming from Paddy’s Saloon was as disconcerting as the sobs emanating from our house. As near as I could tell, Prohibition hadn’t done much to change the drinking habits of our Catholic neighbours. They simply drank a larger quantity of watered-down beer to get as spifflicated as before, and stumbled outside to pay the water bill.

“Do you really think Shmuel was sure about what he was doing when he enlisted in the Navy?” I asked Bernie. Maybe he knew something I didn’t. After all, friends confided things to each other that they wouldn’t tell their families. I confessed nearly everything to Leah.

“No, but nothing me or Yaakov said would have made a difference.” Bernie watched a man lurch out of Paddy’s and weave down the street toward us. “Your brother was more certain about what he didn’t want than what he wanted. Or, he was confused about both, and figured a destroyer would be as good a place as any to sort things out.”

That made no sense to me, but maybe coming face-to-face with death helped you make up your mind lickety split about what to do with the rest of your life.

“One thing I’ll say for Shmuel.” Bernie’s body tensed as the dipsomaniac came closer. “He was brave. He wasn’t good at standing up for himself, but when the Micks and Wops picked on a Jewish kid smaller than us, your brother would step in and deflect the fight onto himself.”

I wish I’d known how to deflect some of our father’s pressure from Shmuel onto me, but Papa wasn’t as easily dissuaded as the boys at my brother’s high school. For them, any Jew would do. For my father, only Shmuel was a worthy target for his dreams. And disappointments.

“What do you think you’re doing? Can’t you see there’s a lady present?” Bernie yanked me behind him as he shoved aside the drunk, who’d stopped to relieve himself a foot from where we stood. Urine ricocheted off the brick wall and splashed down the front of Bernie’s coat. The man muttered a fuzzy apology and fumbled to button his fly. I peeked over Bernie’s shoulder to watch and stared as the old boozer zigzagged back to Paddy’s. I remembered being woozy last Pesach when my parents let me drink all four glasses of wine during the Seder. The giddy feeling had momentarily lifted our gloom, until the alcohol unstoppered Papa’s anger and Mama’s tears. I wondered what it would be like to get drunk without sorrow lurking in the background.

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” Bernie said, his remaining pimples red with indignation. I was sorry I hadn’t seen more. The last time I looked at a penis was ten years ago, when Shmuel and I were still young enough to stand together in the washtub on Friday afternoon while Mama heated water on the stove to pour over us. She was making us clean for the Sabbath. Of course, I couldn’t reveal my dirty mind to Bernie. It was almost too shameful to admit to Leah.

At the same time I was disappointed, I was also flattered that Bernie wanted to defend my virtue. The weekend Shmuel disappeared, he’d protected me from Yaakov’s teasing outside the drugstore. I wondered now what Shmuel would have done if he’d been here when the drunk pulled out his dingus to pee. I suppose acting manly was as important to Shmuel as it was to Bernie, or anyone their age. Maybe that was the real reason my brother joined the Navy. If so, nothing my mother or I said would have mattered. I doubted my father could have convinced him there were other ways to be a man either, but if Papa thought he could, he’d feel guiltier than us. Maybe it was the guilt that made him so angry. It wasn’t Shmuel he couldn’t forgive, but himself.

Thinking of Papa made me want to thank Bernie for acting like he cared about me. Mere words seemed lame, but when I reached toward him, Bernie pulled back. My face grew hot. He mumbled something about his urine-stained coat not being fit to touch. We stood apart in awkward silence until he asked if I’d do him the favour of going to the movies with him next weekend, when the family was done sitting shiva.

My jaw dropped. My gams wobbled.

“If your father will let you,” he added, covering the blemish on his chin with his hand. His fingers were as long as he was tall.

I had no intention of asking. Mama had barely persuaded Papa to let me go to the theatre with Onkel Gershon. Suppose he refused on the grounds that I was too young, although I considered myself mature for my age. Worse, he might shrug and say it didn’t matter one way or the other. “I’m sure my father will say yes,” I told Bernie. “Of all Shmuel’s friends, Papa liked you best.”

Bernie’s shy smile couldn’t mask his pride. His lips quivered. “Sometimes I have to force myself to have fun. I miss Shmuel.” My eyes filled. For the first time in months, I let the tears spill out.

***

I hung around the phone the rest of week so I could answer it before my parents. I worried they’d get hinky, suspecting I was up to something, but I think they were grateful. People kept calling to offer condolences and spout platitudes. After a while, kindness gets tiresome.

Bernie waited until Sunday morning to ring me up and ask if I could go to the movies that afternoon. I’d read in Bintel Briefs, the advice column, that a man should call by mid-week to ask a woman out, but maybe he was just waiting to give my parents more time to get over their grief.

“Did your father say it was okay?” Bernie’s voice was hushed as though he were asking for something sacred. Maybe he spoke quietly because he was calling a house of mourning.

“Yes,” I fibbed, crossing my fingers, then quickly uncrossing them, afraid the Christian gesture made the lying worse. “He thinks it’s good for me to get out of the house.” I don’t know why I added that. Me and my big mouth. I still hadn’t learned when to plug it. Bernie said he’d pick me up at 1:30, but I said we should meet at the theatre. “Seeing you will remind Mama of Shmuel and she’ll start crying all over again.” I silently asked God to forgive my whopper.

“I never thought of that. Girls know these things. They’re closer to their mothers.”

He was mistaken, although Mama considered us allies. She gave me more attention and freedom than Papa, but where was the victory in that?

Bernie suggested we see The Lost Battalion. It was about American soldiers trapped in a forest in France during the war, and many of the actors in the movie were survivors who played themselves. “Yaakov says the rescue scene is really exciting. It will be a good distraction.”

“How? When Shmuel is lost forever?”

Bernie was embarrassed and apologized for not thinking of that too, but I was pitching baloney. It was a ruse to get him to see Theda Bara in The Lure of Ambition, a movie about a fallen woman who saves a duke from being murdered by his crazy wife and marries him after the wife dies of a heart attack. After his gaffe, Bernie would have agreed to anything I suggested.

I got to the theatre a teensy bit late, enough to let Bernie arrive first but not get nervous that I wasn’t coming. Playing hard-to-get made no sense to me. Why not be on the level about what you wanted? If you pretended you weren’t interested, you might never get the mazuma.

Bernie was ogling a poster of Theda Bara in a low-cut dress when I got there. He looked away and blushed, and when I said I could see why she was called a vamp, he turned twice as red. “You look nice. I mean not too nice,” he said. “I know you’re not supposed to get dressed up ...”

I’d agonized about what to wear. With shiva just over, I couldn’t put on my glad rags. I told my parents Leah had invited me to her great aunt’s house and I was getting a little dressed up out of respect. My mother pronounced my get-up fine, but my father, who was going back to work for the first time in a week, hurried out the door. Too bad I hadn’t borrowed Mama’s zippered skirt to snag his attention. He did tell me not to talk slang to Leah’s relatives, and to be home in time to help Mama make dinner. I smiled because it meant he’d listened to where I was going, but I was annoyed that all he cared about was me buttoning my mouth and cooking.

Outside the theatre, smells from the food vendors’ carts filled the air. I was tired of eating the limp briskets and soggy noodle kugels people had been bringing us all week. Biting into some crunchy popcorn would be absolutely divine. I suggested to Bernie that we buy a bag.

“Suppose it was popped with lard. You wouldn’t buy food if you weren’t sure that it was kosher, would you?” Bernie loosened his collar. I smiled coquettishly, like I’d been joking, but I was worried. What if Bernie were as strict about rules as Leah? I decided to sacrifice my taste for deviant food so I could taste something better, but again I was disappointed because Bernie put a lid on his desires while we watched the movie. He wrapped an arm around my shoulder but when it trembled, he put it back in his lap. I leaned toward him to let him know it was all right, but he didn’t try again. I sighed and contented myself seeing Olga Dolan, the Theda Bara character, smooch with the ritzy English duke. That made me feel better. She was hotter than popcorn!

Afterwards we went to the drug store for sodas, like Shmuel and I used to. Bernie was a polite conversationalist. Unlike boys my age, who only talked about themselves, he asked about me. “I’m different than other girls,” I confided. “My friend Leah says I’m ambitious.”

“Not like that Olga Dolan in the movie, I hope.” A drop of root beer flew out of his mouth.

I ignored the sputtering to spare him embarrassment, took a demure sip on my straw, and murmured, “I’m no bearcat. I’ll use my wits, not sex appeal.” Bernie looked relieved and nodded for me to go on. I told him I was keen on biology and hoped to be a scientist. “A map of arteries and veins is prettier than a lace wedding gown.” I sighed thinking of the diagram in my textbook. The very word “heart,” with its breathy vowels and rounded “r,” was a satisfying mouthful.

“Shmuel always said you were smart.” Bernie took a long, manly draw on his straw.

I almost cried again, right there, to think that my brother bragged about me to his friends. His praise had to count double since I got none from Papa. I told Bernie what I’d never told anyone. “After Shmuel left, I imagined my heart grew a fifth chamber where he snuggles inside. If I need a shot of courage, I tap my chest and he pumps oxygenated blood all through my body.”

“With an extra spurt to your brain.” Bernie reached across the table and touched my hair.

For once, I was glad my curls were dark like my father’s and not pale, like Shmuel’s and Mama’s. Otherwise the blood pulsing through the capillaries of my scalp would have turned my hair bright red. “I’m not a Dumb Dora like the girls in my class who act as if nobody’s home.”

“Science is discovering new things all the time,” Bernie said. “No wonder you like it.”

“Maybe I’ll find the cure for some disease, like the Spanish flu.” I told him about a dream I kept having, where I wore a long white lab coat and peered under a microscope.

Bernie squirmed. “I don’t think women should work unless they have to, but it’s good to learn what you can do to make the home a safer and healthier place.” He sounded just like Leah.

“What about tikkun olam?” I reminded him, “the commandment to save the world?”

Bernie acknowledged that was important too. If he’d added “for men,” I’d have stomped out. Instead, he pushed his soda to the middle of the table. I did the same. We bent our heads and sipped from each other’s straws, a peace offering. Through lowered lids, I observed his dimples, no longer hidden by bad skin, and the arm muscles that swelled when his long fingers gripped my glass. I felt a flutter, but not from my heart’s extra chamber. I refrained from taking a big gulp.

Advice column instructions quelled the flutter and percolated into my brain. Ask about his work, his hobbies. I asked Bernie what he wanted to do now that high school was over.

“Work at my dad’s appliance store during the day, take business classes at night.”

“That’s what you will do. I asked what you want to do.”

Bernie leaned forward. Our foreheads almost touched. “I dream about being a rabbi. My dad wants me to be a businessman. I’m more cut out to sell a big God than small appliances.”

“What does your mother want for you?”

“Whatever my father wants.” He sat back and shrugged.

“Aren’t you disappointed that she doesn’t take your side?” I wondered if boys sought their mother’s approval as much as I craved my father’s. I doubted it.

Bernie took time to consider his answer. “No, it’s good for a wife to agree with her husband. I’m sure the tradition of sholem bayess, peace in the home, reigns at your house too.”

“Mama is masterful at it. Personally, I wish she’d provoke a little conflict with Papa.”

“In the long run, the mother being on the father’s side is better for the marriage and the children.” Bernie stuck out his chin.

“What if the father is wrong?” I asked.

Bernie’s head snapped back, but then he tilted it, ready to listen.

“I think my father was wrong about Shmuel.” Hearing myself say this for the first time I knew I was right. “Shmuel never wanted to be a rabbi. That was my father’s dream.”

“Your brother was a good student, like you. Scholarship is important for a rabbi.”

“Yes,” I conceded. “He liked books. But rabbis spend more time with people than books. They have to make the rich congregants happy.” I thought of my uncle who always got his way. “And rich people never agree with one another, so the rabbi is always in the middle of a fight.”

Bernie grinned. “I’m the opposite of Shmuel. I like people more than books. Even when they don’t agree.”

I grinned back. “So peace in the home is super, but peace in the shul is sacred?”

“A good rabbi makes everyone happy in the end.”

“God willing.”

Bernie laughed. “Yes. The all-powerful God—and powerful rich men—willing.”

“My father isn’t rich, but he tries to be all powerful. He didn’t let Shmuel say no to being a rabbi. After Shmuel left, he got even stricter with my mother. She’s barely allowed to lift a pot lid on Shabbas.” I looked at Bernie to see if I was sounding too hot under the collar, but he nodded for me to go on. “Papa doesn’t pay much attention to me,” I admitted, “but when he does, it’s always to tell me not to do something. He’s a dictator!” I sat back and crossed my arms.

Bernie rocked like Gershon did before quoting the Talmud, and stroked what I imagined would one day be a soft, wispy beard. “Shmuel was two when your parents emigrated, dreaming of a better life. Think how much your father lost when Shmuel left. If he’s grown more rigid, it’s because his heart is broken. He’s struggling to keep the family together so he doesn’t fall apart.”

It was my turn to admit I’d never thought of that. “You’ll make a good rabbi,” I said.

Bernie inched his hand across the table and put it over mine. “That means a lot, coming from you.” I’d been wrong about him. He was virtuous, but not judgmental like Leah. In fact, he was the most understanding person I’d ever met. Warmth suffused my body. “Race you to see who can finish his root beer first,” I said to recover. A few slurps later, we agreed it was a tie.

We stood outside the drug store under the rosy glow of a late afternoon sun. In the window where the Navy poster had once hung was an advertisement for Hall Brothers cards. “We help you say love to those you love.” Bernie touched his lips to mine. I pressed back, not too hard. I didn’t want to scare him off.

“Don’t take any wooden nickels,” I told him when we parted a block before my house.

“Don’t worry. I know my onions.” It was the first time I heard Bernie talk hip to the jive. With Shmuel gone, I hoped I could count on him to correct my slang and make sure I didn’t say something hurtful. I felt his eyes watch me, protectively, as I walked to our stoop. I wished Papa would follow me with the same interest, not to hold me back but to see where I was going.

“Baloney!” Shmuel spurted inside his chamber. “This kind of attention is completely different.” My brother was right, but thinking of him nearly arrested my heart with guilt. Was it wrong for his sister and best friend to have a good time together when he lay dead? I listened for his voice again, but Shmuel fell silent. I’d have to learn the language of romance on my own.