Part Fifteen
Dev, 1919
Chapter 38

Four days after my blow-up with Leah and the scene between Gershon and Ruchel, the peaceful routine of helping Mama get ready for Shabbas came as a relief. I watched her polish the brass candlesticks passed down by the grandmother I’d never met, too plain to be orchids but worth more than gold to my mother. I still puzzled over the silver candlesticks I’d found many years ago, beneath her braids, and peeked at again the day I discovered she’d saved Shmuel’s payess too. I wondered what other secrets Mama was keeping from me. I wanted to ask, just as I now wanted to ask her about my feelings for Bernie, but not asking was my way of keeping secrets from her.

“I haven’t seen Leah all week. I hope her bubbe isn’t sick,” my mother chattered.

“She’s fine. Everyone’s fine and dandy.” I turned my back, but my voice was tremulous.

“Is something the matter? Did you girls have a fight?”

“I tried to talk her into being a visiting nurse,” I said, sidestepping the real reason for our argument. It was only a half-lie. “It would be swell to take anatomy classes together in college.”

“And how!” My mother laughed for the second time that week. Hearing her try one of my less jangly slang expressions made me smile. “What did Leah say?”

“She doesn’t want to be a nurse. All she cares about is raising her own family.”

“What woman doesn’t want children? Let marriage and motherhood come first. Leah can become a nurse later if she wants.” My mother set the two gleaming candlesticks on the table, and inserted the thick blue candles she usually saved for holidays instead of the plain white ones. I asked why. “To mark the first Shabbas after shiva,” she explained.

I stroked the cold creamy wax, a sign our lives were moving forward in small steps. If only Papa would walk with us.

“I’ll give these candlesticks to you when you get married. God willing, you’ll have your own daughter to pass them down to as well.”

My fingers closed around the candle. “Why must being a wife and mother come first? Suppose I become a medical researcher before having a family? What if I never get married?”

“You know I’ve always been in favour of your studies.” My mother patted my cheek, set the perfectly braided challah on the table, and covered it with the familiar embroidered cloth.

“But men rule?!” The candle snapped in my hand. “You don’t stand up for me and you kowtow when Papa orders you around. You even let Onkel Gershon dictate what you do.” Leah and Ruchel’s opinions ceased to matter. I wanted my mother’s reassurance that my feelings for Bernie were allowed, that I was entitled to have a career and get my father’s approval. I wanted to be a woman like her, while at the same time, I didn’t want to be like her at all.

“You even loved Shmuel more than me because he was a boy.”

My mother’s legs shook. She collapsed in Papa’s chair and I ran to kneel by her side, my tears watering the tiny silk flowers sewn on the hem of her Shabbas apron. It was the first time in three years that she’d worn it. “I’m sorry, Mama. That’s not true. I don’t know why I said it.”

Just then my father came in the door. In a lachrymose blur, I saw how his hair had turned gray and his shoulders stooped beneath his thin coat. He no longer gave my mother the traditional Friday night kiss to welcome the Sabbath bride into our home. With a blind nod in our direction, he went into the bedroom to change out of his work clothes.

My mother stood and pulled me up after her. “One handful of dirt doesn’t fill a grave. It will take years to fill in the hole Shmuel left.” She melted the broken halves of the candle back together and rested her hand on my head, a gesture of blessing. “In the meantime, sholem bayess. Peace brings healing. Healing brings peace.”

***

Minutes later, when my mother handed me the matches to light the candles, my father didn’t object. Nor did he mention that they were blue. He stood at the head of table with Mama sitting opposite him, and me on his left. Shmuel’s empty chair, on his right, was a grave marker in the kitchen. One evening I moved the chair next to the couch and laid out my next day’s clothes and books on it. When I got home from school, the chair was back at the table. I let it be after that.

Wrapping his Shabbas tallit around his shoulders, my father recited the prayers over the wine and bread. I wondered again what had happened to the prayer shawl he’d worn the first time he sat shiva, the one he’d been saving to give Shmuel on his ordination as a rabbi. It was as big as a blanket, and shot through with gold threads, so it should have been hard to hide. But it wasn’t stashed in the bedroom closet with my mother’s treasures, or behind my father’s cracked old boots in the hall closet. That tallit had disappeared as finally and completely as my brother.

“Amen,” my mother and I said when my father finished the bruchas. I sipped the thick, sweet wine, no longer restricted to grape juice or watered-down alcohol like a child. Papa broke off the last twist of challah and passed portions to us. Following tradition, only after the prayers were done and everyone had swallowed, could we talk to one another. Otherwise we would have interrupted the sacred thread that linked us to God’s generosity. Around our table, however, the silence often continued well into the meal. Rather than prolonging our connection to God’s bounty, the absence of conversation only reminded us of what He had taken away.

We’d finished the soup and gefilte fish, and were onto the main course, when my mother finally spoke, a peacemaker’s attempt at conversation. “There’s a march on Sunday to demand the release of Lillian Wald.” I already knew from Mama that Wald had been arrested as a Communist agitator for bringing health care to the poor. “I thought we’d go as a family.” She spoke to Papa, then looked at me for confirmation. I nodded, thankful for a chance to make amends.

Papa pulled a leg off the chicken and chewed it slowly. He wiped his hands on his napkin before picking up his fork and cutting off a bite of kugel. We watched him eat. At last he said, “I have to work.” Addressing my mother, he added, “You’d be better off working too. We ran out of bread last week and you had to get store bought. If women spent less time marching and more time looking after their families, we wouldn’t need meddlesome nurses sticking their noses into our business.” I waited, and hoped, that he’d scold me to stay home too and work on my studies.

“The march doesn’t start until five o’clock. I’ll bake in the morning, an extra loaf. You’ll be done with work by then, so you can meet us at City Hall.”

“I’m coming straight home and I expect you to be here.” Papa measured out his words.

“The entire Sisterhood from synagogue is going,” my mother said. “Even Yetta and the girls are marching. Lillian Wald is a Jewish woman and we have to stand together to defend her. You know Jews are being singled out for persecution in this meshugga Red Scare.”

“I know Jews have to stay silent and invisible or else we’ll be singled out more. They don’t want us here, except to sweat in their factories and sacrifice our sons in their wars.”

“This has nothing to do with Shmuel. I’m trying to make a better life for us. And for our daughter who, God willing, will live in America with her family long after we’re dead.”

“Rivka, I forbid it!” My father slammed his hand down so hard that wine sloshed out of his glass onto the tablecloth. My mother jumped up to put salt on it, but my father yanked her arm and stopped her. I watched as the resistance left her body and my father loosened his grip. She sprinkled salt on the blood-red stain that meandered between the cross-stitched threads. Their eyes locked, his beseeching hers for forgiveness, hers hard and unblinking.

My father turned to me and barked, “You will stay home too.”

I was thrilled to be included in his admonition, yet furious at his handing down the law. My fingers itched to overturn my wine glass until I remembered what Bernie said about my father losing his dream. I reminded myself to be more compassionate, an action that might earn me Bernie’s respect and Papa’s love at the same time. I could never be the rabbi he wanted Shmuel to become, but if I could persuade my father to accept my dream, I’d settle for being his second best.

“I have a biology test on Monday. If I stayed home to study, I’d get another A.” I glanced at my mother and her eyes forgave me. She thought I was capitulating for sholem bayess.

“Another A?” Papa’s raised eyebrows relaxed until the wrinkles etching his forehead smoothed out. Mama sat down and we all began to eat again.

“Yes,” I said. “I got the top score on every test. Higher than the smartest boy in my class.”

“This is good, you’re doing well in school, though maybe not so good you’re doing better than the boys.” He actually smiled, an itsy bitsy bit.

“If I want to be admitted to the medical research program at Hunter College, I’ll have to graduate at the top of my class.”

Once more, my father stopped eating. “Who says you’re going to college?”

My mother clutched the stem of her wineglass and mine. She couldn’t reach his across the table. “Hunter is all-girls,” she reminded him. “Dev wouldn’t be competing with boys.”

“No college.” My father’s voice rumbled softly, like far-distant thunder. “Marriage and children were good enough for your mother,” he said to me. “They’re good enough for you.”

“Not good enough!” Now it was my mother’s turn to pound the table. “My child is gone and my husband might as well have abandoned me. We didn’t come here for Shmuel alone. We came to make all our lives better, from generation to generation.” She spoke the Aramaic words, “l’dor vador,” from the Amidah, an old prayer of praise. “Dev is our only remaining hope. She deserves the opportunity and it’s a mitzvah, a commandment from God, that we support her.”

“Don’t tell me what God demands of us. You still have your daughter, good for you. I lost my son. Or my son lost himself. God hasn’t told me why, but as long as I remain the head of this household, I will issue the commandments and you will obey my laws.” He swept into the bedroom, the wind created by his tallit fanning the flames of the candles. The door slammed.

My mother and I sat in silence until the blue candles sputtered, leaving a sinuous trail of wispy, white smoke. Still we didn’t leave the table. I used to associate fire with nourishing the hungry and cauterizing the wounds of the hurt. But now I realized that fires eventually burn out, unless, as in the ancient temple, they are continually fed by animal sacrifices. With Shmuel gone, my parents at war, and me split in two, our family had nothing left to slaughter.

***

The silence continued the next day, even after Papa returned from services and we lit the havdalah candles marking the end of Shabbas. I lay awake Saturday night too, until I heard the first peddlers wheeling their pushcarts after their day of rest. Newsboys sang the headlines of the Jewish Daily Forward to the earliest workers, although there was barely enough light to read the paper. Hearing their cries gave me the idea of writing a letter to Bintel Briefs, the newspaper’s advice column.

Worthy Editor:

I write as a fourteen-year-old daughter of immigrants, the first person in our family born here. My older brother left home without telling anyone and is a casualty of the war. It broke my parents’ hearts. My mother, a modern woman, is rediscovering her zest for life. My father, who wanted his son to be a rabbi, is mired in anger. He criticizes my mother and ignores me.

I am a good student. I love biology and dream of going to college to become a medical researcher. Someday I may discover the cure for a deadly disease. My mother is in favour of my having a career. I am happy she feels this way, but sometimes I think she is a hypocrite about women’s rights because she doesn’t stand up to my father, who is opposed to the idea. He wants to me get married and have children. I am torn about which way to go. If I stay home and do what he expects, will that help him heal and repair the rift with my mother? Or should I pursue my own ideals and try to heal the world? What is my responsibility as a good Jewish girl?

Respectfully,

Trying-To-Be Dutiful Daughter

When I finished the letter, the smells and noises from below filled the apartment. I listened at the bedroom door, but couldn’t hear Papa’s loud snores or Mama’s gentle breathing. Shmuel slept silently inside me as well, while the lub-dup of my own heartbeat was as irregular as the clip-clop of a peddler’s lame horse. I crawled back under the blanket, faking sleep. If my parents saw me looking peaceful when they woke up, that tranquillity might flow back toward them. I refused to believe that the poisoned blood coursing through my family was what science, or God, intended.