Chapter 34

I hardly slept that night. Euphoria collided with my guilty conscience. Shiva had barely ended and here I was kissing Shmuel’s best friend. Yet Bernie and I had been mourning my brother for over two years. Weren’t we allowed to enjoy life again? I could hardly wait for school to let out on Monday so I could ask Leah. If someone as good as her reassured me I wasn’t committing a sin, then I could stop worrying. Not that I was seeking her blessing, just a nod that it was okay.

My last class of the day was English, my favourite subject after biology. Language still bedazzled me. Learning a new word was like making a new friend. You discovered what the word did and the best way to be together with it. Searching for the perfect word was like picking who to spend the day with at Coney Island. Leah was my best friend, but sometimes other girls were better company. It was the difference between sweet and mellifluous, my newest word.

I still loved slang, of course, but using it got me into hot water. So the day I called the grungy guy who stiffed Bridget out of a cherry soda a piker, and Mrs. Whittaker held me back after class, I braced for a lecture. Instead she gave me The American Language by H. L. Mencken, with slang words from all over the country, like “bacon” for “money.” I wondered if Jews were allowed to say that or if the expression “to eat your words” meant we had to speak kosher too.

Leah’s last period was home economics. This year, high schools began tracking students and she was in domestic arts. I was one of the few girls in pre-college. If they’d had tracking in Shmuel’s day, he’d be pre-college too. Same for Bernie. Yaakov would have been in vocational, learning how to dig manholes. Most girls in Leah’s track didn’t even graduate. They got married and had babies. I eavesdropped at the door while her teacher droned on about boiling diapers, washing hands, and isolating sick children. How did she expect families living in crowded, cold-water flats to do that? “Remember,” she closed, “Ignorance breeds filth and filth breeds disease.”

When Leah emerged, I harrumphed that, “poverty breeds filth and wealth makes health.” I was quoting from a pamphlet my mother brought home after she marched on City Hall to protest tenement conditions. Leah said the government was trying to improve sanitation, but Jewish and Italian women wouldn’t open their doors to city inspectors because most of them were Irish.

“They’d trust someone like you,” I told her. “I still think you should become a nurse.” I’d suggested the idea to her after Mama gave me a biography of Lillian Wald, a Jewish woman who founded the Visiting Nurses Association. Even though Leah wasn’t in the academic track, she was smart enough to go to college. I said taking anatomy classes with her would be the bee’s knees.

“That’s not for me, Dev. It’s enough to take care of my own family.”

“Torah says to help others.” Leah didn’t need reminding, but I was annoyed she set her sights so low. Also, I wanted her with me in college so I wouldn’t turn into a car without brakes.

“You’re right,” Leah said, chagrined. Then she brightened. “I can set an example with my own children and tell the women in Sisterhood to sanitize their houses and let the inspectors in.”

“That’s not going to heal the whole world. You should organize all the mothers at the Henry Street Settlement House to talk to the politicians about cleaning up the sewage.”

“You sound like your mother.” Leah knew I admired when Mama stood up for women, but got irritated when she didn’t stand up to Papa. Like me, Mama craved his approval. I waited to see if he’d still love her when she tested the waters, hoping I could dare to do the same.

“If all it took was knowledge and not action,” I said, reluctant to abandon the argument and let Leah off the hook, “then Jews would be healthier than everyone else. Think how many laws the Torah has about cleanliness.”

“Those laws are written for men to obey, and they apply to the temple, not the home.”

“You’re right, kiddo.” I gave in. “There’s nothing in the Torah about boiling diapers.”

Leah smiled and slipped her arm into mine. Then we skipped home, taking the long way.

***

Our neighbourhood was an endless source of fascination. Skin colours varied from the freckled paleness of the Irish to the strong tea hue of the Italians. Earthy smells of cabbage stewed with caraway seeds blended with the acidic sting of simmering tomatoes. Pushcart peddlers, selling wares from roasted chestnuts to sewing thread, shouted in a polyglot half-English, half something else. Horses either sashayed with pride pulling fully loaded carts or shuffled listlessly ahead of their equally dispirited owners. Animal tails and human hands flicked away swarms of flies as numerous and agitated as the bustling throngs competing for space and the cheapest prices.

Elevated trains clanked above us, spewing foul air, but also the promise of riding out to the unseen edges of the vast city. I looked up and around, dizzy with the sensations of the Tenth Ward and visions of the universe beyond it. Leah kept her eyes down, on the street.

“Dev, if you don’t watch where you’re going, you’ll step in something.”

“Such as?”

“Something ... nasty.”

“Such as horseshit?” It was the first time I’d tried using that word.

“Dev!” Leah clutched her books to her chest as a protection against my naughtiness. She looked around to see if anyone else had heard. I smiled. I’d gotten her to lift her eyes.

“Poop, caca, crap, doodoo, dingleberries. Do you like those words better?”

Leah regarded me with suspicion. “Where did you learn them? Have you been spending time with Bridget?” I didn’t admit that I wished I could pal around with Bridget as much as I used to, but she’d shunned me once we started high school. She said it was nothing personal, but that Jewish girls weren’t fast enough for the likes of her. Maybe now I could prove I was different.

With as much superiority as I could muster, I told Leah, “For your information, Mrs. Grundy, those words are from a reputable source.” Holding my other books and papers under one foot so they wouldn’t blow away, I pulled out the Mencken book Mrs. Whittaker had given me. “See.” I flipped to a page with a long list of slang words for excrement.

Leah glanced down, then averted her eyes. “It’s just as bad to read them as to say them.”

“Listen to this.” I read the preface where Mencken says that prodding into the national idiosyncrasies and ways of the mind is always entertaining. I held the book out to Leah again. “Aren’t you itching to know what absolutely everyone, everywhere, says and eats and wears and thinks and ... oh, everything else? In America we can scratch that itch.”

Leah shook her head, like I might have expected, insisting she’d raise her children the same way she was brought up. The new opportunities were for them, not her. She repeated her bubbe’s old saying, “It’s up to the mama to turn plain potatoes into tasty kugel for the kinder.”

“Our parents came here so our generation could have kugel, hash browns, spuds ...” I consulted my book, “taters, murphies, Idahos. We should also be eating strawberries and cream in January and roast beef instead of brisket on Shabbas.”

Leah sighed. “So I’ll cook those fancy things for my grandchildren.”

“And pork roast and broiled lobster with drawn butter?” I teased.

“Shah, Dev.” Leah laughed and bent to pick up my pile of books, which she straightened before handing them back to me. “You are too, too much.”

“Beats being a flat tire, pill, or pickle.”

We walked on, past Walhalla Hall where suffrage and union meetings were held during the week, and wedding music blared on weekends. “Did I tell you my Onkel Gershon is hiring three bands when my cousin Zipporah gets married next fall? The caterer is from uptown.”

She grabbed my elbow, forcing me to stop. “Who did the shadchen match her up with? Where does the groom work? Where will they live? Will your aunt make the wedding dress or hire a seamstress? Has she picked out a china pattern? Silverware?”

“Hold your horses.” I hadn’t seen Leah this animated since we’d learned to roller skate. “His name is Jonah and my uncle does the accounts for his father’s stationery firm. I suppose Jonah will take over the business. That’s all I know.” My cousin’s nuptials didn’t interest me, although I was a smidgen jealous over how much money would be spent on them.

Leah’s face grew dreamy. “If I were rich like your relatives, I’d have a wedding dress with a ten-foot satin train and a hope chest filled with linen tablecloths and crystal candy dishes.”

“Didn’t your home economics teacher tell you that sweets are bad for children’s teeth?”

“To tell the truth, Dev, I’m not learning much in school that I haven’t already learned at home. Sometimes I don’t care if I graduate. I just want to start a family.”

Whenever Leah spouted such piffle, I had to restrain myself from shaking her. I touched the ringlets escaping from her scarf. “Women deserve more. You deserve more.”

“God willing, the shadchen will find me a tailor or a baker so my children can wear nicer clothes and eat finer bread than me and you.” Leah tugged playfully on my thick curls. “I don’t want much, just to live my life being pious and kind.”

“I know,” I cried, “but you can be those things and still use your brains.”

“I’m not like you.” Leah stared down at her scuffed shoes. “My dreams aren’t as big.”

I stroked the spine of my science book, recalling the illustration we studied that morning. Vena cava sounded like a mysterious tunnel inhabited by a goddess. I admired the stubby aorta, carrying oxygen-rich blood to our muscles and relished the sturdy sound of “pulmonary.” Maybe some day I’d discover why everyone’s heart worked the same but their minds worked differently.

Leah and I resumed walking, past a stand selling daisy-shaped cookies with shiny white icing and yellow sugar crystals. “If we can’t afford elegant weddings,” I said, “let’s treat ourselves to an elegant cookie. Split one with me?” Since Shmuel left, Papa had rescinded permission for Mama to pack store-bought cookies in my lunch box. Now everything had to be homemade. My mother was a good baker but her style was plain and simple. She refused to put on airs while others went hungry. If she’d ever aspired to adding a fillip to her cooking, Papa would have accused her of emulating my uncle’s family and put the kibosh on her fanciness.

“They’re probably made with lard. We shouldn’t buy anything that isn’t from the kosher bakery.” Leah pinched her lips together, although her eyes devoured the pastries too.

“We don’t always have to follow the rules. The man who wrote the slang dictionary says so, and anyone who isn’t an old schoolmarm agrees with him.”

“I’m sorry, Dev. I wish for your sake I could, but for God’s sake, I can’t.” I almost bought a whole cookie for myself, but if I incurred Leah’s disapproval for something so trivial, she’d never grant me absolution for the big sin of kissing Bernie.

We got to the Hester Street market. Mondays were quiet compared to Thursday afternoon and Friday morning, when housewives jostled one another shopping for Shabbas. Instead of carts filled with shimmering fish, fruits, and vegetables, today there were a few bedraggled peddlers hawking starched collars and dented tinware. Things were livelier at a corner café where Jewish labourers and students gathered to drink coffee and debate editorials in the Jewish Daily Forward. Arguments were loud but not violent. Unlike Catholics, Jews avoided saloons or speakeasies. It was said that even Irish policemen preferred patrolling our dry establishments.

“We could go to the Pilpl Café.” Pilpl was the Yiddish word for a hair-splitting argument or debate, which was the café patrons’ main pastime. “The coffee and pastries are kosher there.”

Leah hesitated. It might be considered unseemly for young women to sit, unchaperoned, next to young men in a drinking establishment, even if the beverage was coffee, not giggle water.

“I have no intention of flirting,” I reassured her, then winked. “There’s a special reason why I’m on my best behaviour. If you come with me, I’ll tell you.”

Leah raised her eyebrows and followed me into the Pilpl.

***

I hadn’t figured out what to say, so I stalled by suggesting we get tea and babka first. I gobbled mine in two bites. Leah nibbled hers and waited. I decided that if I acted like what I’d done was adventurous but nothing to be alarmed about, I could entice both her interest and her approval.

“Guess who I went to the movies with yesterday?”

Leah’s face fell. “Bridget?”

“No silly. Not a girl. I wouldn’t exclude you.”

Her hurt look disappeared. The cookie stopped halfway to her lips and her eyes opened as wide as her mouth. I prolonged her amazement by pretending to brush cinnamon sugar off my coat, until I couldn’t hold it in any longer. “Bernie!”

Leah returned the uneaten babka to her plate. “I’m surprised your father let you go.”

I let her assume he had. “After the movie, we went out for root beer. It’s kosher.”

Leah grinned. “I know. What did you and Bernie talk about? He’s so quiet.”

“Bernie talks more when he’s not around that big fat blabbermouth Yaakov. He told me he’s working for his father but deep down he wants to be a rabbi. I talked about studying biology and my favourite words in the circulatory system.”

“Marrying a rabbi would be even better than a tailor or a baker.” Leah’s eyes shone.

I’d scored a point, but I didn’t want to win Leah’s approval under false pretences. “I’m not marrying him,” I said. “I plan to be scientist, not a rabbi’s wife.”

“Couldn’t you do both?” Leah herself sounded sceptical.

“Bernie didn’t sound enthusiastic about women working outside the home.” Recalling his remark momentarily dampened my ardour, but I didn’t let on to Leah.

“I’d give up a career to marry a rabbi,” Leah said with certainty, “but I’m not sure you’re well enough behaved to be a rebbetzin.” She smiled. “Unless Bernie made you be good.”

I should have smiled back, but the idea of a man telling me what to do was infuriating. “Bernie’s not such a goody two shoes himself,” I retorted. “We drank from each other’s straws.”

Leah clapped both hands over her mouth.

“Worried about germs?” Maybe a little teasing would sway her. I prayed she’d accept that people she considered good could occasionally transgress without becoming bad.

“I’m surprised a future rabbi would do that,” she said.

“Bernie’s an appliance salesman, not a seminary student.”

“It’s still not right. My bubbe says, ‘Don’t crack eggs unless you plan to make a cake.’ You shouldn’t even hold hands until you’re engaged.” Leah studied her hands, glanced at a table of students hotly debating the Red Scare, and then, taking a deep breath, leaned in to hear more.

Sometimes I wondered what made us friends. Maybe she was my Bernie and I was her Yaakov. The withdrawn person needed the livelier one to add excitement to his or her life. Not that I was loud and coarse like Yaakov, but we were both willing to take chances, relying on our counterparts to keep us from going too far, and to love us when we skirted the edge.

“Bernie and I kissed outside the drugstore.” I grabbed what was left of Leah’s cookie and crunched it between my teeth. Now I had gone too far. Leah would never condone my behaviour, but that familiar urge to shake her from her complacency was too strong to resist.

She drew back as if I’d slapped her. “If you’re not careful, you’ll be a mother before me and you can forget about being a scientist.”

“I might not want to be a scientist after all. I told Bernie I dreamed of being a movie star.”

“You’re talking like a loose woman, Dev. Is that why he took the liberty of kissing you?”

“He didn’t take anything. I wanted him to kiss me. We both wanted it.”

Leah’s nose was six inches from mine. “Your family is barely done sitting shiva. What would Shmuel say about his best friend and his sister ...?” She searched for the right word.

“Canoodling? Making whoopee?” I sputtered crumbs on the table.

We both stood up. I waved goodbye to a scraggly bearded student whose lips opened in surprise at the same time Leah pressed hers together in distaste. At the front counter, I bought a pack of Milo Violets. The colour drained from Leah’s face. If her aorta didn’t get busy pronto, she was going to pass out right on the floor of the Pilpl Café. My heart had stopped pumping too. I’d often shocked Leah, but I’d never made my best friend so angry at me before.

Outside, Leah headed home without looking back. When she reached the corner, I threw the cigarettes into a pile of horse manure. I’d never intended to smoke them. I bought them just to goad Leah, and to punish her for trying to make me feel guilty, or guiltier than I already felt. An erratic lub, dup, lub, dup percolated in my chest. I didn’t know if it came from the four chambers of my own heart, or the fifth one where Shmuel knocked to chime in on the conversation.

It was already past time for me to help my mother with dinner, but the thought of going home crushed me. I was fed up with Mama’s sadness, Papa’s and Leah’s disapproval, and my own guilt. “Talk to Ruchel,” Shmuel whispered. He was right. My cousin would egg me on, not judge me. Tante Yetta would invite me to stay for dinner. The food would be kosher, but it would be more savoury than what everyone else was dishing out these days.