Chapter 46

A week passed and Mama didn’t come to Ruchel’s to persuade me to go home. I hated to admit it to myself, but I was disconsolate, wondering whether she sided with Papa or was just glad for the peace and quiet with me gone. By the second week, I told myself to feel consolate about my freedom and the whirlwind excitement of living with my cousin. It was a relief not to exist in a state of inhibition, anxious I’d say or do something to plunge my mother into a sad memory or elicit my father’s disapproval. Ruchel, for all her strong opinions, didn’t judge me. Either that, or I was immune.

For the first time in my life, I was surrounded by orchids—hand-painted china, fringed lampshades, and upholstered chairs— although the plain furnishings at my house were cleaner and better cared for. Tante Yetta attempted to straighten up when she visited Ruchel’s, but the place was dirty again by the next day and my cousin thought nothing of ruining things I would have treasured. I hated to think I missed Mama’s housecleaning, so I reasoned it was the methodical scientist in me who was offended by my cousin’s carelessness. I was orderly in the lab, but it would be liberating if I could let myself act the slob, at least a smidgen, at home.

Even better than pretty objects were the closets and drawers overflowing with Ruchel’s flapper clothes, which she shared with the same generosity as her opinions on women’s rights. I copied everything about the way my cousin dressed and did her makeup, except for how I styled my hair. She’d bobbed and marcelled hers to fit underneath her collection of cloche hats in every conceivable colour. Chopping off my hair would have solved the problem of its unruliness, but it had become a symbol to me. Permitting my mother to wear her hair long was my father’s sole flaunting of Orthodox tradition. If he could relax this rule, I hoped he might ease up on others.

“Listen to this.” My cousin’s outraged voice carried from the living room where she was reading the newspaper, to the kitchen, where I was forcing myself not to do the dishes. “A bank in New Jersey has banned women from entering the premises unless properly attired. Patrons and employees are forbidden from wearing feathery scarves, rakish hats, champagne-coloured hose, sleeves above the elbow, or hemlines more than a foot above the ground. The Federal Reserve also banned females from wearing makeup and, while short hair is permitted, workers may not fluff it on the job. Anyone who defies the dress code will be fired with no recourse or appeal.”

“Flapper flap,” as the incident was dubbed, soon spurred a protest rally. My cousin and her friends chartered a street car to take us and other marchers from our district to Fidelity Trust Bank, across the Hudson River, where the whole to-do started. Waiting on the corner early Monday morning with a throng of women dressed in outrageous outfits, I was surprised when my aunt took her place beside us. Ruchel hadn’t told me she was coming. Tante Yetta wore a sedate dress, but she’d adorned it with a fluffy scarf and tucked her Orthodox wig under a pert little hat.

“What? You think marches are only for the young?” she asked. “These ladies work hard to feed their families. If they had smarts in the keppe,” my aunt tapped her forehead, “these big-shot banker bosses would know that showing a bissel flesh was good for business.”

Ruchel hugged her. “I never thought I’d see the day you spouted economics in support of women’s rights.” I couldn’t help feeling envious. I hadn’t seen or hugged my mother in weeks.

“What does Onkel Gershon think about your going on the march?” I asked my aunt.

“I was going to keep it a secret.” She glanced up the street like she expected him to swoop down and order her home. Instead she smiled and said, “When your uncle found the scarf I bought to wear, he teased that he was going to come too and act as our chaperone.”

“What stopped him?”

“I forbid it. I said I didn’t trust him around sexy young women in flapper clothes.” Yetta giggled. “He said he was happy to settle for unwrapping a new scarf from off his old wife.” Even Ruchel raised her eyebrows at that. I wondered if my aunt and uncle, already affectionate, felt free to touch more since their daughters had moved out. Would my parents act differently toward each other without me around? I remembered the old days when Mama bathed on Friday afternoons and Papa stroked her hair.

The street car came into view and my aunt stood on tiptoe, looking not toward her house, the richer end of the Lower East Side from where my uncle would approach, but the poorer neighbourhood where my parents lived. Her pursed mouth broke into a relieved smile. Hurrying toward us, wearing her zippered skirt, was my mother. I felt betrayed and glared at my cousin for not telling me she’d invited her, but Ruchel looked surprised too. Only after Tante Yetta began to wave and chant, “Yoo hoo, over here!” did I realize it was she who’d asked Mama to come. Yetta grinned broadly as my panting mother raced toward us and enveloped Mama when she got there.

My mother pulled back, but addressed my aunt politely. “I had to wait until Avram went to work before I could leave.” She peered at me sideways but I refused to return her gaze.

“Not to worry,” my aunt said. “You made it in the kick of time.”

“Nick of time,” Ruchel corrected.

Yetta pulled Ruchel up the steps of the street car, pushed her into a window seat, and took the aisle seat next to her. I was forced to sit with my mother instead of with my cousin. We took the row behind them and sat in silence, looking out the window as the driver headed uptown and crossed over the river into New Jersey. After ten minutes, my mother took my face in her hands and turned it toward her. “I was worried you’d get too thin.”

“Tante Yetta brings us plenty of food.”

“I’m sure it’s better than what I can afford to cook.” Next my mother gently fingered the beads on the shoulders of the lavender chemise I wore. “It’s a pretty dress.”

“Ruchel is generous with her wardrobe.”

“But not so generous with the soap and water,” she whispered, passing her finger over a small stain above the elbow. We looked at the back of my aunt and cousin’s heads, then leaned into each other, muting our laughter.

“What will you do when school starts?”

“Stay with Ruchel. It’s not as quiet as at our house, but a lot of her classes are in the evening so I can study then.” I took Mama’s hands and squeezed them. “I’m reading her science textbooks. When I start college in a year, I’ll already be ahead of the other students.”

My mother touched my hair, which was as wild and curly as ever. “No short flapper do for you?” she asked.

I stroked her thick golden waves. “I can’t,” I said, “and you shouldn’t.”

“Do you want to come home?”

Two weeks ago I would have said no; standing in line for the bus when my aunt and cousin joked and hugged, I would have murmured yes. Now, sitting beside Mama, part of me wanted to bury my head in her breast, tell the driver to turn around, and go home right away. Yet another part told me that having broken loose, I should let the scar heal and move forward. “I can’t go back, Mama, but I’m ready to have you come visit me in my new home.”

“You’re there during the day, at least until school starts in the fall?”

I realized she was figuring out how to sneak away when my father wasn’t home.

“All day Sunday, too. Ruchel isn’t in class and you can visit with both of us.”

“Come Sunday before Avram gets home from the factory.” My aunt turned and peered over the seat rest in front of us. “For dinner. Gershon and I will come earlier than usual too.”

“You bring the main course,” my mother said. “I’ll bring the soup and dessert.”

When we arrived in New Jersey, there were so many women on the street that the driver had to park several blocks away from the bank. We marched to the rally twelve across, me and Ruchel in the middle, our mothers on either side of us, and a colourful throng linking arms curb to curb. “Don’t fire flappers” and “Freedom for dresses and tresses,” we chanted. “Bankers are bullies” and “Who cares about hair?” cried the women approaching from the other direction.

My father’s a bully too, I thought, but thank God my mother cares. It wasn’t a perfect deal, but unlike the bank women fired for changing with the times, I needn’t fear going hungry.