Chapter 47

My mother couldn’t prepare extra food at home without my father knowing, so she came to our apartment early Sunday afternoon to cook for us. Tante Yetta started coming earlier too, with Onkel Gershon arriving at five. He and my aunt would then walk Mama home before Papa returned from work. The subterfuge was thrilling, like a spy movie, but going behind Papa’s back also made me sad. On days when the heat was oppressive and the sweat I pictured pouring off him was a poor substitute for the tears he needed to shed, the ache in my heart nearly zotzed me.

Not enough to dampen my enthusiasm for the weekly mother-daughter cooking sessions, though. Tante Yetta hoped Ruchel would pick up some domestic skills, but my cousin nibbled absent-mindedly on scraps of bread dough or the celery stalks used to flavour the soup. I, however, watched the proceedings with interest. Our mothers’ skills in the kitchen were like those of a chemist mixing potions in the lab. The only thing stopping my own experiments with cooking was the fear that my cousin would deem me insufficiently feminist.

While the mothers chopped and stirred, the four of us talked. Yetta spoke about growing up a rich girl in Lemberg; my mother described what she’d endured being both poor and female. Ruchel, lamenting the political struggles of women in America, was happy to find an ally in my mother. Because of the tension between my father and uncle, Ruchel and Mama had never spent much time together. So, an unexpected consequence of my rift with Papa was that his wife and his rival’s daughter crossed a generational divide. Usually the loquacious one in a group, I was mostly silent at these gabfests. I absorbed the other women’s experiences along with the smells of baking and boiling, while imagining what my life as an American woman would be like.

“I was given clothes, trinkets, and a private tutor,” Yetta told us. “Of course, I was an only child. I wonder, if I’d had a brother, whether most of the attention would have gone to him.”

“Even with an older brother,” Mama told Yetta, “I never felt Gershon received special treatment from our parents. We couldn’t afford for anyone to get more than the bare essentials.”

“Yet only Onkel Gershon was allowed to go to school, right?” I asked.

“Yes,” my mother said, “but that was true for all the boys. And since Gershon was the smartest, he brought honour to our whole family.” What was honourable about having brains if they made others bitter, I wondered, thinking of the trouble between him and my father. “I never resented Gershon’s education,” Mama continued, “nor did I mind doing extra chores so he could study. When you grow up poor, being a scholar is the only road to recognition in the community.”

My cousin fixed her eyes on my mother. “Education is the way to move up in America too. Jewish girls today still get less education than Jewish boys. They’ll be as downtrodden here as they were in the old country if we don’t work to open up opportunities for them.”

Yetta looked at her daughter with pride. “So you’ll become a teacher and tell them they should study hard. Girls will see you and know they can succeed too.”

Ruchel blushed under her mother’s praise. “It’s easier for me because I grew up rich, like you. Also, Zipporah and I didn’t have to compete with a brother.”

My aunt’s lips quivered. “You think if we’d had a boy, we’d have given you girls less?”

“Not Father,” Ruchel answered. “He adores being surrounded by women. You, Mother, I’m not so sure about ...”

“Ptooey! Get away with you!” My aunt shook a celery stalk at my cousin, who snatched it and chomped down with a loud crunch.

“Dev grew up poor, like Avram and me,” Mama said when we all stopped laughing, “but she’s going to college too.” Her eyes glistened like the fat globules on the surface of the soup.

“That’s why her education means more than mine.” Ruchel sought, and got, an approving look from my mother. “She’s the kind of role model the students I’ll be teaching need.” Inspired, she waved the celery stalk at me. “Can I bring you to school for show-and-tell?”

“You’re going to teach high school. Isn’t that too old for show-and-tell?”

“The four of us show and tell every Sunday,” Yetta said. “You’re never too old to learn.”

“You can show and tell me all you want,” Ruchel teased. “I’ll never learn how to cook.”

My aunt shrugged. “These days, who needs to, when you buy ready-to-eat from the store?”

“I wish I could,” my mother said, “but Avram worries the food isn’t kosher.”

“He wants you busy at the stove so you don’t have time to go on more protest marches.” Ruchel sounded certain, but Mama wasn’t ready to admit she was right.

“When I’m a scientist,” I told them, “I’ll invent a way to make store-bought kosher foods. Saving women from death by cooking would spare more lives than finding a cure for cancer.”

“I don’t want to speak bad on your idea, mamele, but nothing you invent could ever be as good as your mother’s honey-nut cake.” Tante Yetta raised her eyes to the ceiling in praise.

“Or your aunt’s noodle kugel.” Mama grinned.

For the first time in my memory, my aunt and mother exchanged a look of pure affection.

Mama sliced the two end pieces from a loaf of bread and handed one to Yetta. “I didn’t resent my brother growing up, but I hated you for being rich. I assumed you were spoiled.”

“I probably was, but not as much as the children of the other merchants. My mother was strict. She made sure I learned how to cook and run a household. My father pampered me, but he taught me it was important to care about those who didn’t have as much as we did.”

“You were poor when you first came here, Yetta. My brother struggled to earn money.”

I felt like I was eavesdropping on a private conversation between my mother and my aunt, but I wondered if part of them wanted me and Ruchel to overhear them. Each word was a gift.

“For me, it was an adventure,” Yetta said, “figuring out how to make a small potato fill a big belly. But when you’re busy taking care of others, you don’t worry so much about yourself.”

“That’s why women handle adversity better than men,” my mother said. “We don’t have time to feel sorry for ourselves.”

“Emes, that’s true.” Yetta bit into a noodle to see if it was done. “Now I got plenty. It feels good I should do for those who have less.” She drained the pot and stared into the sink before continuing. “I always wanted to do more for you Rivka, but you wouldn’t take nothing from me. I didn’t know if it was because I was rich, or because you were being loyal to Avram.”

My mother thought this over for a while. “Probably both.”

“It must be hard.” My aunt beat the eggs for the kugel. “You love your brother and you love your husband, but for sholem bayess, it’s right you should put Avram first.”

Mama slowly stirred the soup. “All these years, I was wrong about you. I’m sorry.”

Tante Yetta walked to the stove, tasted the soup, and dipped a spoonful for my mother to try. After Mama sipped and nodded, my aunt said, “Why apologize for yesterday’s tsuris when God gives us such glik today? We got two smart daughters what will change the world.”

A sigh of contentment passed between the two women. I was momentarily satisfied too. Their late-life closeness was another unintended but good consequence of my leaving home.

***

When school resumed that fall, I applied to Hunter College. Ruchel was attending Barnard and Onkel Gershon offered to pay my tuition there, but I didn’t feel comfortable accepting that much money from him. Hunter was part of the city’s university system and it was free. He could pay my lab fees and continue to cover my living expenses and that was the berries enough for me.

Hunter had high standards and I worried about being admitted, but the guidance counsellor reassured me I was a shoo-in. Ruchel said so too, and I trusted her judgment. My scatterbrained cousin was smarter than she appeared, and aced most of her classes. Science was a struggle only because it didn’t interest her. On the other hand, economics came easily to her because it was important to women’s rights. Ruchel had inherited Gershon’s financial acumen (one of my favourite new vocabulary words) and planned to teach girls how to start their own businesses.

The only stumbling block was that the application form required a parental signature. My father had, if anything, grown stronger in his opposition. My refusal to marry Bernie was part of the reason, but he’d thrown an ing-bing about my going to college long before then. Late night discussions with my cousin hadn’t helped me figure out why he was against the idea, but after Mama and Tante Yetta reconciled, I had an inkling. Papa was ashamed of being poor. It was bad enough that he’d been bested by Gershon, then lost his chance at respectability through his son becoming a rabbi. For his daughter to show him up would be the ultimate shanda.

“I’ll sign the application as your guardian,” my uncle said.

“You’re already doing enough,” I told him . “Suppose you got arrested for forgery?”

“She’s right, Father,” Ruchel said. “How would you pay her bills from behind bars?”

“My practical daughter. Maybe it’s my ability to pay your bills that has you worried?”

“I could forge his name myself,” I suggested. “So many immigrant parents have illegible signatures, if they can write at all. Who’s to know the difference?”

My mother put the kibosh on that idea. “I’ll forge Avram’s signature. Better that I get into trouble than you if the school finds out. You can say you didn’t know I did it.”

Tante Yetta turned to Mama. “Rivka, why can’t you sign it with your own name? You’re Dev’s parent too. Where does it say on the form that it has to be her father?”

Ruchel whooped with glee. “We spend every Sunday talking about women’s rights and all of us, except my mother, fell into the trap of assuming it had to be a man.”

Tante Yetta found a pen among the jumble of books and papers on the kitchen table. “Go mamele.” She shooed me toward the desk in Ruchel’s bedroom. “Make us all kvell with pride.”

I worked on the application the following Sunday, pausing to listen to the talk in the next room. I grew wistful, thinking it might not be so bad to spend my life in the kitchen with women. I even got grummy missing Leah. Then I re-read the college catalogue, including the part about the new science lab, and got more excited than ever about having a life that was different from theirs.

“Ta da!” I twirled around the kitchen, waving the completed form above my head. Tante Yetta cleared a spot and wiped the table with her apron. We all sat down as my mother made a ceremony of signing her name.

“I should have brought something special for us to celebrate,” my aunt said.

“I did.” My mother reached deep into her shopping bag and brought out the ornate silver candlesticks I’d long ago seen buried in the closet beneath her braids and Shmuel’s payess. Tante Yetta gasped when my mother set them on the table. Tears streamed down Mama’s face. Baffled, Ruchel and I looked at each other, and then at our mothers as they embraced.

“They were a wedding gift from Yetta,” my mother explained. “I never used them. Only now, since I’ve come to love your aunt, can I not only accept them, but pass them down to you.”

“What about your mother’s brass candlesticks?” I asked. They were the ones Mama used every Shabbas and were my only connection to the grandmother left behind in Lemberg.

“You’ll get those too someday. They’ll be your old heritage; these will be your new ones. It’s up to you to decide which pair to use.”

It wasn’t Shabbas but we put a fresh pair of candles in the gleaming holders and said the Shehecheyanu. “Thank you God for giving us life, sustaining us, and enabling us to reach this season of celebration.” The prayer is traditionally chanted on the first night of a holiday.

“Tonight is its own kind of first,” my mother said as the four of us held hands and stared into the flames. “Dev will be the first woman in the Levinson family to go to college.”

“I have to be accepted before you can say that.” I was still a little worried.

“And this is the first time the candlesticks are being used.” Tante Yetta beamed.

“There’s no longer any question that I accept your gift,” my mother said to her.

“Or that I accept yours,” I said to my mother.

That night, after the women had left and Ruchel was asleep, I gazed at my candlesticks. I considered giving them to Leah to heal our friendship. Once she married, she’d make Shabbas dinners fancy enough to justify their use. Then I decided to keep them. They told the history of a generation of women and I would be adding to that story. I’d always wanted an orchid and I didn’t need marriage to make my own Shabbas dinner every week. I could light the candles, even cook, for the friends and family members who accepted me. Maybe someday my father would accept my decisions, but whether or not he did, I would learn to accept myself and light up the world.