Chapter 35

Ruchel had her own bedroom. I was envious. After Shmuel left, I had the front room to myself at night, but we all used it by day and my clothes were crammed in the hall closet with our coats and blankets. My only private space was a scarred wooden chest where I kept books, word lists, and keepsakes—a rag doll with faded yellow hair to whom I’d given the American name, Susan, and a tin of seashells I started collecting at age five, back when Papa took our whole family to Coney Island. He’d help me rinse them off in the ocean and when we got home, he’d put the shells in a bowl of water so their violet and mauve streaks would shimmer again.

My cousin graduated from high school in June, when Shmuel would have too. Now she was enrolled in a secretarial course, but her parents didn’t take it seriously. Onkel Gershon said no daughter of his would need to support herself, but he paid the tuition in case Ruchel chose to help her future husband with his business before having children. Tante Yetta assumed Ruchel was just biding her time until Zipporah was married off, and then it would be her turn.

“Help me practice taking dictation?” My cousin sat at what she called an escritoire, or French writing desk, while I sprawled on her bed’s lace coverlet, looking at the Gregg Shorthand Manual. It struck me as an odd approach to language, abbreviating words by sound instead of spelling. I could see the practicality, but for my mazuma, the longer a word, the better I liked it.

Using my deepest voice, I read the business letter Ruchel handed me while she scrawled away with a pearl-tipped fountain pen. “In regard to the aforementioned transaction, our sales department indicates blotters will be in short supply until October.” She showed me her finished sheet of paper. I admired the unintelligible markings, and asked if I could make up a letter.

Ruchel agreed provided I used lots of vowels, which were tough to tell apart and required more practice. I thought a minute. “About our odious conversation on aortae, the obtuse and excessively obscure outlook is officious and archly elongated.” Our giggling made it hard for me to speak and even harder for her to write. The litmus test was whether she read it back correctly.

She cleared her throat, peered intently at the page, and pretended to read. “In the modern era, the clothes of our fair sex are less form-fitting. Ergo, ladies’ skirts reveal more ankle, shoes are supplanting boots, and buoyant bosoms blossom from unbounded bodices.”

“Faithful secretary, thou hast earned a perfect score on the Sorenson pH scale.”

“I aim to please, boss.” Ruchel batted her eyelashes. “Seriously, what on earth is P-H?”

“Pure horseshit!” I said, deepening my voice further. Ruchel’s eyelids stopped fluttering.

She turned on her radio. My uncle had bought three, one for the living room where he and my aunt listened to concerts, and one each for Ruchel and Zipporah who played popular music in their rooms. When I broached the idea of our getting a radio, Mama agreed it would be good for me. Not Papa. He said it was too expensive and would expose me to inappropriate ideas. He eyed Mama’s pamphlets and I expected to hear a derogatory remark about women voting. Instead he said, “If Shmuel had kept his mind on ancient wisdom instead of modern warfare, he’d be alive today.” My mother caught her breath, but said nothing, and the idea of buying a radio died too.

“A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody” came on the air. I glided across the floor and held out my arms for Ruchel to join me. Twice around the room we went, high stepping over strewn clothes and narrowly missing open drawers from which rumpled underclothes, blouses, and scarves spilled. I eyed them longingly. After my cousins grew up, I no longer inherited their hand-me-downs, although sometimes I got an outfit they’d gotten tired of.

Ruchel stopped dancing and turned up the volume. We listened to John Steel croon, “I have an eye for a maid, I like a pretty girlie.” “What awful words!” Ruchel spat. I was surprised. Irving Berlin’s lyrics were famous and he was Jewish. We weren’t supposed to criticize our own. “He treats women like we’re babies or baubles. It’s ...” Ruchel looked around her cluttered room as if the word were hiding under a pile of wrinkled skirts.

“Demeaning?” I asked.

“Exactly.”

I thought of “Alice Blue Gown,” primping in shop windows. It seemed hypocritical for Ruchel, aswarm in clothes and jewellery, to sneer at other women’s dreams. Didn’t the poor deserve decent bread and an occasional rose too? “It’s not bad to want nice things,” I ventured, “if we can buy them ourselves instead of depending on husbands.” My cousin conceded and we resumed dancing, striding like women marching for voting rights and better wages.

“Who needs fathers and husbands?” Ruchel tossed her head. “Not smart women like us.”

“What about boyfriends?” I asked hesitantly. My cousin might scold me, not because of old-fashioned mores, but newfangled ideas about women’s independence.

“Are you sweet on someone?” Ruchel, crimson-faced from dancing, returned to her desk.

“It’s a theoretical question.” I collapsed on the bed, hoping she’d take my blushing as a sign of exhaustion too. Still stung by Leah’s outburst, I wasn’t ready to trust Ruchel with my secret.

She reached way back into her top desk drawer. “Read this.” She handed me Family Limitation by Margaret Sanger.

I turned too red then to hide my embarrassment. “Not that I plan on Barney mugging,” I told her as I slipped the book between my English and math texts.

Ruchel winked. “Consider it part of your biology studies.”

“I’m forever blowing bubbles, pretty bubbles in the air” blared from the radio. I loved the way a waltz rhythm slowed your heartbeat while tingling your fingertips. When the singer lamented that his bubbles faded and died like dreams, I hoped my dreams of Bernie wouldn’t suffer the same fate. “They fly so high, they nearly reach the sky.” It was sad to think that Shmuel had never had a girlfriend, that his bubbles had burst before they even floated to heaven. Perhaps he was up there now, gently catching my bubbles and blowing them back to me before they burst.

***

As I predicted, Tante Yetta asked me to stay for dinner. I offered to set the table. Ruchel rolled her eyes, like I was being a goody two-shoes, but I wanted to feel their ethereal china and hefty silverware. There were three forks per place setting—appetizer, main course, and dessert—and a small plate with a curved knife just for bread. My aunt had to show me where to put everything.

All through dinner, Tante Yetta beat her gums with a zillion questions about Zipporah and Jonah’s wedding. Should the caterer put carrot crowns or radish rosettes on the chopped liver appetizer? Would guests expect kreplach or kneidlach with the soup course; stuffed potatoes or derma for the main course? Her biggest worry was whether anyone would be offended by men and women dancing together after the nuptials. Clearly, this was not to be an Orthodox affair.

Ruchel smirked at me across the table. “What do you think, Dev? You and your parents will be among the esteemed guests. That is, if your father graces us with his presence.” Zipporah looked down at her lap and I felt bad that Ruchel was being such a killjoy. Not that I wasn’t also worried about my father, but I didn’t want to say anything that would upset my big, sweet cousin.

Yetta, reared like Mama on peace in the home, said, “Of course Avram will come to our simcha.” Turning to me, she asked, “Petit fours or mandelbrot for dessert?”

“Both,” I said. “Keep the bluenoses happy eating and they won’t care who’s hoofing it with whom.” Everyone laughed, including Ruchel.

I couldn’t imagine such high spirits in our house. My father had no patience for chatter. Conversation was meant for men, talking about Torah. With Shmuel gone, he had no one to talk to and nothing worth talking about. Meals were mute. Sometimes, to liven things up, I’d describe what we were studying in class. I figured the alimentary canal would get a rise out of him, even a disgusted “Feh!” Instead, he looked at me blankly and continued to shovel food into his mouth.

Meanwhile, my mother shuffled between the stove and table, refilling his plate. Lately, though, there was a tad more hotcha in her step. I think the energy she felt returning to protest marches carried over to her movements at home. If anything, Papa was more morose, like a needle stuck in the groove of a record on a Victrola, another musical appliance he refused to buy.

“Whatever makes you ladies happy.” Onkel Gershon’s grin went around the whole table. “Nothing is too good for my beautiful daughter’s wedding.” Zipporah’s face was suffused with the glow of his praise. Ruchel cocked her head at me, but I directed my smile at Zipporah.

Tante Yetta, perhaps misinterpreting Ruchel’s expression as jealousy, told her, “Don’t worry, shayner maidel. You’re next. And your wedding will be just as getsatske as your sister’s.”

“Call off the shadchen, Mother.” Ruchel’s dessert fork pinged the china plate. She flung her napkin on the table. “I’ve told you time and again that I have zero interest in getting married.”

“I understand you want to finish secretarial school first, dear.” My aunt refolded Ruchel’s napkin. “It’s always good for a woman to have a simple skill, God forbid she’s widowed young.”

“I don’t want a simple skill. I’m thinking of going to college instead and being a teacher.” She tossed her head as if she’d just tossed off this idea.

Onkel Gershon sat up in his chair and scrunched his napkin. “Since when?”

“Since I decided I don’t want to work for a man. I’d rather teach letters to children who look up to me than take letters from a boss who looks down on women.”

“Make up your mind.”

“I will when I’m good and ready.”

“As long as I’m paying, you decide now.”

“Maybe I’ll just pay for it myself.”

“And how do you propose to do that, young lady?”

“I’ll be a shop girl,” Ruchel spluttered. “I’ll find some poor widow to work for. It doesn’t even matter if she’s Jewish, as long as I don’t have to answer to a man.”

My uncle was apoplectic, Zipporah was near tears again, and my aunt stared in disbelief. I wished I’d eaten at home. A morose dinner was easier on the alimentary canal than a contentious one. Tante Yetta recovered first. She smoothed the tablecloth and asked if anyone wanted more dessert. Zipporah cleared the dishes and I volunteered to help wash them.

“Time for you to go home, Dev,” my uncle said. “I don’t want your mother to worry.”

Ruchel stood. “I’ll walk her.”

“It’s getting dark. I’ll take her.” Onkel Gershon pushed back his chair too.

“Why don’t you both walk her?” suggested Tante Yetta. “Zipporah and I will clean up.”

***

The Tenth Ward, hushed and empty at this hour, was like a stage set after the curtain goes down. Ruchel moved too fast for my uncle to keep up. I walked with her but felt bad for him. I admired Onkel Gershon for being a man of the world, unlike Papa. Ruchel didn’t appreciate how lucky she was to have a father who paid attention to his daughters. And that had nothing to do with money.

After a block, when my uncle fell too far behind to hear us, I told Ruchel that if I talked to my parents the way she did, my mother would wash out my mouth with soap.

“Your mother is too modern to do something that old fashioned. Mine is so old world, I don’t know why I bother explaining things to her.” What a switch, I thought, Ruchel envies me.

“My mother thinks it’s her job to explain life to me,” I said. Ruchel wouldn’t understand that having a mother who agreed that I deserved better made it impossible for me to stand against her. “Besides, she’s not as enlightened as you think. She almost always caves to my father.”

“We both have tyrants for fathers.”

“Onkel Gershon is traditional, but otherwise he’s nothing like Papa. Your father works at a desk and buys tickets to the Thalia. He personally helps people who are old and sick and poor.”

“My father does that to prove how rich and powerful he is, not because he cares about the needy. If he was genuinely charitable, he’d give without any thought of recognition or reward.”

Talmud says the highest degree of charity is when the donor and recipient don’t know who the other is, but I saw nothing wrong in wanting thanks. Even God demanded it. And while lots of rich people only looked out for themselves, my uncle wasn’t like that. He’d done so much to find Shmuel that he lost weight and business. I was convinced he did it because he cared about us, not just to show off he was a big shot. Papa sneered that Gershon persevered to prove him wrong, but I believed people worked harder going after their hopes than battling against their enemies.

Ruchel floundered without that focus. She didn’t want to get married, but couldn’t decide what she did want. It made her contemptuous of everything. Defying my parents’ expectations wouldn’t have been enough to satisfy me either. I was grateful to have a goal.

“My father is a fake.” Ruchel raised her voice and glanced over her shoulder. “And so is yours. I don’t owe my father any respect, and you don’t owe it to Uncle Avram.”

“I want to go my own way too,” I said, “but I’d rather do it with my father’s blessing.”

“Then you’re nothing but a good little girl disguised as a hipster talking jive.” Ruchel spun around. Brushing past Onkel Gershon, she said he could walk me the rest of the way home.

Confusion burst all my bubbles. First Leah had judged me for being too bad, now Ruchel had criticized me for not being bad enough. Even Shmuel curled up wordless inside me. Feeling utterly alone, I waited for my uncle to catch up so we could finish our solitary journeys together.