Chapter 41

With Ruchel’s impassioned speech playing in his ears, Gershon vowed to call the synagogue and resume his charitable work. Only it had been so long since he’d helped anyone that he wasn’t sure the members would trust him. To restore his self-confidence, he went back to work first and, upon hearing how happy his clients were to see him again, began to wake up early each morning and relish a hearty breakfast. Yetta, delighted at the return of his appetite, packed big lunches too — herring with onions, half a roasted chicken, and enough babka to feed the pigeons on every train platform from the Lower East Side to Coney Island. Gershon soon filled out his clothes once more and didn’t need the enticement of Yetta’s hand mirror to make love to her on Shabbas. Still, something held him back from making that first helping call. Perhaps it was the memory of Ruchel speaking over his head to address the crowd. He felt invisible in her presence.

On Wednesday night, ten days after the rally, Gershon came home wondering whether the resumption of midweek lovemaking with Yetta would be the last step in building back his courage. Before he’d opened the door, the heavenly aroma of his wife’s baking took him far from the garbage-filled streets around the train station. Even though she tucked cakes and cookies into the meals she delivered to hungry immigrants, Gershon had always fancied that she prepared her tastiest treats for him alone. So he was surprised when he saw the dining room table laden with trays of her best pastries. Had she overestimated his appetite that much? Gershon reached for a slice of marble cake and was even more surprised when she playfully swatted his hand away.

“Not for you. For the women’s meeting. You can have some later, if there’s any left.”

There wouldn’t be. Yetta’s marble cake was swirled with twice as much chocolate as the recipe called for. Gershon was stung. A mouthful of useless saliva made it difficult for him to talk. “What meeting?”

“I told you.” Yetta shooed him into the kitchen, where she pulled another sheet of cookies from the oven. “Ruchel organized the women on our old block and Rivka handed out pamphlets in her building. Margaret talked to the Catholic ladies at her church, they should come too.”

“Come where? You’re carrying all this to Walhalla Hall?” Gershon glanced longingly toward the trays in the dining room. She couldn’t leave a little plateful behind for him?

“No, Mr. Forgetful. We’re meeting here.”

“I thought Ruchel was busy organizing factory workers. Don’t the women coming here tonight stay home?”

“Yes, but they don’t got it any better. There’s four apartments on each floor what share two toilets. Most buildings still don’t got electricity. The meeting is to organize them too, they should rise up against the landlords.”

“I’m a landlord.”

“A nicer one than those other gonifs, thank goodness.” He watched Yetta carry a plate of almond cookies into the dining room. When she returned, she touched his cheek. “Even so, we got our own private bathroom while upstairs two apartments share. Also, we got a refrigerator and fancy-shmancy chandeliers, while our tenants got maybe a lamp or a bulb on the ceiling.”

Gershon’s pride turned to resentment. It was one thing for his daughter to defend the less fortunate. But now she’d gotten his wife and even their maid to go after men like him, who were just trying to make a decent living for their own families. His stomach grumbled. “But I’m hungry.”

Yetta took a bowl of cold borsht and a plate of sliced pot roast out of the refrigerator he’d recently bought her. Didn’t she realize it was the rent he charged, a fair one he thought, that had paid for this newfangled appliance? “Essen.” She handed him a set of silverware.

“Here? Alone in the kitchen? Where Margaret eats?”

“Hurry. I have to finish getting ready. And when you’re done, you’ll stay out of there?” Yetta nodded toward the dining room.

“I promise I won’t eat the cake and cookies until you give me permission.” She was treating him like a child and he was beginning to feel like one, a neglected and very angry one.

“Ruchel’s afraid the women won’t talk up in front of a man.”

“So you’re banishing me to the bedroom?” It made no sense. His wife had spent weeks urging Gershon to get out of bed. Now she was sending him back there, and not with the purpose he’d been fantasizing about earlier in the afternoon. His hunger for food, for her, was gone.

“Who’s saying the bedroom? Go to your study, read Talmud, pick up the telephone.”

Was she pressuring him to resume his charitable work too? “I will not be restricted to certain rooms in my own house.” Gershon banged the heavy silverware on the table. He wanted Yetta to take it from him, to help him calm down. He didn’t care if he was acting like a child.

Instead she flapped her apron in a gesture of impatience. “You got a choice where to go in this apartment—our bedroom, your study, Zipporah’s old room, the bathroom. The ladies what’s coming here tonight got ten or twelve people, maybe more, living like animals in two rooms.”

Gershon knew this was the perfect opportunity to spend an evening in his study, calling around to find out who needed help. Here was his wife, no longer just bringing food to their poor old Jewish neighbours, but taking up social causes for Irish and Italian Catholic families too. Yetta was venturing out while Gershon stood immobilized. What was holding him back?

The cold meal sat before him on the kitchen table. He couldn’t smell the earthy aroma of the beets or the spicy paprika dusting the edges of the meat. All he could inhale was the butter and honey of the desserts in the next room, a sweetness denied to him. For nearly three decades, Yetta’s main job was taking care of him. Now Gershon was being asked to share her. He’d never worried about competition from another man. Was he going to lose out to a battalion of women?

“As long as I’m the breadwinner in this house,” he declared, “I’ll decide what room to park my tuchus in and what food to put down my gullet.” He grabbed two cookies off the sheet Yetta had just taken from the oven and crammed them into his mouth, burning his tongue.

She didn’t rush to get him a glass of cold water, or try to soothe his temper, but in a rare flash, displayed her own. “Just like Ruchel said.” Yetta shook a rigid, flour-coated finger at him. “As long as women take orders from men, they’re no better off than the slaves in Egypt.”

“Don’t quote my daughter or the Torah to me.” Gershon tried to sound defiant, but when his wife’s finger wagged just beneath his nose, he stepped back in alarm.

She retreated too, and busied herself unloading the rest of the cookies onto a china plate. In a softer voice, she said, “A true man is not afraid to stand up for the rights of women. I always thought you were that kind of man, a real mensh what doesn’t need to make himself look big.”

“And now?”

She wiped her hands and looked at him. “Nu, sometimes I don’t know you anymore.”

“I’m still the same man you married.”

Yetta shook her head. “The man my father gave me his blessing to marry quoted Talmud, not from his head, but with his whole heart. I married you for your goodness, not your money.” Here she gave a quiet laugh, as though recalling the poor boy who didn’t know what utensil to use the first time he ate dinner at her house. “You used to be a man of such wisdom, Gershon.”

“And now?”

The door opened and Ruchel and Margaret entered, leading a dozen women into the dining room. Yetta took off her apron and joined them. Gershon retreated to the darkened bedroom after all, where he crawled under the covers and quaked in fear at the thought of losing Yetta. His love for her had been the sole impetus to excel in his studies, cross an ocean, strive for success. Without her, he was nothing but a poor shopkeeper’s son from a stinking shtetl.

Where would his wife go if she left? To live with Zipporah and Jonah, or even stay in a hovel with Ruchel? Being poor wouldn’t bother Yetta. He remembered how, when they got to America, she’d adapted to tenement life better than he had. What he saw as a setback, she saw as a challenge. No chairs? No problem! Drape a shmata over a milk crate. Yetta’s confidence kept her warm; she fed off the righteous passion of her mission. He was no longer stoked by that fuel.

Gershon had to do something to win her back, to prove he could still use his influence to help those in need. Especially women. He flung back the covers and hastened to his study. He opened the Talmud for inspiration, but the words swam on the page. His hand reached toward his heart, then grabbed a pen. When, an hour later, he made a phone call, it was not to a needy Jew.

***

Two nights later, Gershon stood before the Community Board. His speech was in his pocket, but he knew what he wanted to say without reading it. Stepanic had put him last on the agenda so the men were eager to go home by the time he was finally called to address them.

“Gentlemen, my petition tonight is not personal. I speak for immigrant women, many of whom cannot yet converse in English, to beg you to consider the plight of their poor children.”

Stepanic’s raised eyebrows circled the table, inviting his fellow board members to join him in ridicule. Instead, they listened intently. Gershon had calculated, correctly, that they’d be intrigued by someone speaking on behalf of others, not for himself. Flattery would help too.

“In your esteemed positions, you have the power to urge landlords to drastically improve conditions in the tenement buildings where mothers are trying to bring up their young.”

Stepanic interrupted, prepared to dismiss him. “City laws already force owners to upgrade the plumbing and electricity. Conditions are getting better without the board’s interference.”

“Not better enough, and not fast enough,” Gershon leaned forward before Stepanic could lower his gavel. “True, there’s indoor plumbing now, but it’s only cold water, and there are just two toilets per floor. Electricity hasn’t been installed in half the buildings and what power exists is barely enough for one small family, let alone a dozen large ones.”

“Compared to the mud huts and outhouses they came from, people here have it pretty good.” This remark, spoken by a board member, not in anger but as fact, was Gershon’s opening.

“What the women ask for is not unreasonable. In fact, they are quite humble.” Without quoting scripture, Gershon nevertheless drew a parallel between the biblical Exodus and the vast migration to America’s shores. “After four hundred and thirty years of oppression, it took time for people to learn how to live in freedom. At first they were grateful merely to have food and water, the same bare necessities their taskmasters gave them Egypt. Only later did they feel entitled to a more decent life, provided they accepted a new set of laws and became good citizens. That’s what the women want now, not so much for themselves as for their children.” Gershon looked each man in the eye. “Isn’t that why we all came to America? To make a better life for the next generation?”

Stepanic changed tactics. His slimy lips curled in a conciliatory smile. “I haven’t heard any complaints from the women, or their husbands for that matter.” When several men laughed, he continued. “They seem happy enough going to church suppers and free concerts paid for by these so-called greedy landlords. Heck, the board even organizes parades and parties at Walhalla Hall. Lazlo here danced a polka with his wife last Christmas.” There were hoots and guffaws. Stepanic, looking satisfied, asked, “What more do the ladies want?”

“You give them Sunday entertainment as an escape when what they need is an escape from day-to-day poverty.” Gershon’s stern expression wiped the smiles from the men’s faces.

Stepanic pressed his lips together. His eyes narrowed. “You’re speaking up for Commie Jews, just like you. A bunch of cowardly men who hide behind their women because they’re too ashamed and sissified to admit their own weakness. If they’d served in the Army before slinking onto a boat bound for America, it would have toughened them up enough to face hardship here.”

Gershon harked back to Ruchel’s words when he answered. “Men grow bigger, not smaller, when they have the guts to stand up for the rights of women. Dignity is the due of all those who come to these shores, and that includes God-fearing Catholics as well as Jews.”

Heads nodded, except for Stepanic’s. The veins in his neck bulged. “I’m a landlord, Mr. Mendel. So are you, if I’m correct?” Here he inclined his head with a sly smile. “Don’t you agree that the buildings on the Lower East Side look better now than the day we got off the boat?”

“The outsides are done in Queen Anne, Greek Revival, and French Renaissance.” Seeing Stepanic’s face go flat with ignorance, Gershon pressed his advantage. “Builders make names for themselves with fancy facades, but the insides stay rotten. Unlike in the bible, families shouldn’t have to wait forty years for living conditions to improve. They’re already in the promised land.”

Lazlo called the vote. All, save Stepanic, voted to require landlords to double the number of toilets and electrify every tenement within two years. The men thanked Gershon for reminding them that they had also started out with nothing. He didn’t know if he felt pride or humility over his success with them, but it didn’t matter. All he cared about was what Yetta thought.