Part Nineteen
Dev, 1922
Chapter 50

“Let’s have a Chanukah party,” Ruchel announced in early December. “We’ll invite my parents and your mother to thank them for their help. Also Zipporah, Jonah, and the baby. My poor sister never gets out these days.” She hesitated before asking, “Do you think your father would come?”

“You’re tooting the wrong ringer if you think I know.” Usually I avoided slang around Ruchel, ever since she said it made me sound like a ninny. The last thing I wanted to do was aggravate her. Now, however, I was trying to sound casual, hoping to avoid the black hole I fell into whenever Papa crossed my mind. It didn’t work, but I had an idea. Maybe doing something domestic, like frying potato latkes and jelly donuts, would convince him I was redeemable. He might come out of curiosity.

“We’ve never boiled an egg between us,” I said, looking around the dirty kitchen. “How are we going to cook a holiday meal for all those people?”

“You’re the scientist. Read the recipes in the paper and experiment.” Ruchel winked. “Besides, I see your fingers twitching to chop vegetables and massage the dough when we watch our mothers cook.” My secret was out and Ruchel didn’t condemn me for it.

We posed the idea to Mama and my aunt that Sunday. “Who cooks from recipes?” Tante Yetta scoffed. “Rivka and I will make the food. You set the table. I’ll bring clean napkins.” My aunt was already straightening the kitchen in anticipation of the dinner that was two weeks away.

Ruchel stopped her. “You’re missing the point. We want to do it ourselves to thank you.” Then she said conspiratorially, “Think how surprised Father will be to eat a meal prepared by his younger daughter. Even my big sister’s jaws will drop.” She and my aunt giggled.

My mother and I looked up from our private thoughts. She shook her head and answered the unspoken question. “I don’t think he’ll come,” she said, “but I’ll ask him if you want me to.” I lifted my chin in response, not knowing whether that signalled yes or was a gesture of defiance.

“Of course Avram will come.” My aunt’s optimistic voice carried the same assurance as her busy hands. “A family gathering during the holidays is the best time to make up.” Or create a disaster, I thought. Mama’s puckered mouth told me she harboured a similar worry.

Ruchel and I divided the chores, the same way women at her meetings each volunteered to do what she was best at. The problem was that neither of us was good at anything we needed for the party. So we decided who was least worst. Ruchel was in charge of cleaning. Her solution was to throw everything in drawers, which only made it harder than usual to find things.

Shopping and cooking fell to me, so I did a few trial runs. The first time I grated potatoes, I scraped my fingers until blood ran into the batter. I would have asked Leah if there was a better way to do it, but the timing wasn’t right. We’d repaired our rift again, and as often happens after a fight, we were closer than ever for a while. For reasons I didn’t understand though, she’d been distant lately. It might have been the feminist rhetoric I spouted, courtesy of Ruchel. Maybe Leah thought I was condemning her choices the same way I believed she was critical of mine.

In the end, I didn’t need my friend’s help. On the fourth try, I’d deduced the two variables critical to making perfect latkes: enough bread crumbs to hold the batter together and waiting to flip them until their edges were just past medium brown. Ruchel was so impressed by how good they looked and tasted that she agreed to peel apples so I could cook applesauce to go with them.

The fried jelly donuts were trickier. They disintegrated into a gooey mess. Our mothers paid us a surprise mid-week visit the evening I was trying to scrape the pot clean. “Nu, mamele,” Tante Yetta asked, “maybe you’ll change your mind and let me or Rivka make the donuts?”

“No.” I threw the steel wool in the trash and shoved the sticky pot under the sink. “I’m going to get store bought.” Since I’d never made them before, my father wouldn’t know the difference between mine and the baker’s. That is, if my father came. My mother hadn’t said.

“Mama,” I asked, inspired by my own subterfuge. “How come you never bought ready-to-eat food and pretended to Papa that you made it yourself?”

“After all these years, your father knows my cooking from store-bought.” I told her that was too bad. “It would be worse if he didn’t,” Mama said. She and Yetta smiled at each other.

***

A light snow was falling the night of the Chanukah party. Ruchel’s family lived a few blocks away and wouldn’t have far to walk. I’d grown up in a poorer section of the Lower East Side, distant in more ways than one. The trip would be longer and colder for my parents.

My aunt and uncle arrived first, bringing a gold menorah and hand-dipped candles. My cousin forced her mother to sit in the dining room so she wouldn’t meddle in the kitchen, although she still managed to “help” by substituting an ironed, lace-trimmed tablecloth for the wrinkled one Ruchel dug out of our closet. Zipporah and Jonah came next, apologizing that a last-minute diaper change had made them late. Baby Yitzak took after his father. He was bald and his skin was so pale you could see the tiny blood vessels underneath, but he had a happy disposition. My aunt, busy kvelling over her grandson, was finally distracted from what I was doing in the kitchen.

Ten minutes later, I heard footsteps on the stairs. I tried to count the number of people but the sizzling of latkes in the frying pan was too loud. Yetta opened the door and she and my mother said hello like long-lost sisters. I listened as the women made a fuss over the baby.

“Avram, it’s good to see you,” I heard Yetta say. “Give me your coat, I should hang it in the closet.” The clamour of my thumping heart overpowered the sound of the bubbling oil. I was happy Papa had come, but scared the evening would fall apart, like my first batch of latkes.

There was silence as my parents took off their things, then my aunt exclaimed “Oy vey!” as the papers and boxes Ruchel had crammed on the closet shelf came tumbling down. The noise made the baby cry, but it broke the tension. Even Papa laughed as he helped Yetta pick up the fallen things. Audible greetings followed, except between my father and Onkel Gershon. I hoped they at least nodded at each other. I rearranged the latkes, now draining on the dishtowel, too nervous to go out and see for myself. At last, taking a deep breath, I walked into the living room, spatula in hand, as my father and mother settled on the couch. “Hello, Papa,” I said, “Happy Chanukah.”

He ran his finger inside his shirt collar, cleared his throat, and wished me the same. “It smells good. Your mother tells me you’ve taken up cooking.”

“Just Chanukah specialities so far, but I’m an expert on them.” I excused myself to fetch the food and Ruchel ushered everyone to the table.

There was an awkward moment when it wasn’t clear who should light the candles in the menorah and say the Chanukah blessings. This was traditionally done by a woman, but which of the five of us would have the honour? My aunt handed a match to me and the matchbox to Ruchel.

“Together,” she commanded, so that’s what my cousin and I did.

While Yitzak slept, nestled in a pile of pillows next to the sideboard, the rest of us ate and talked. The latkes were the best batch ever and my father sang their praises. Ruchel joked that she’d not only peeled apples for the applesauce, but had added honey, sprinkled in cinnamon, and stirred the pot a couple of times.

“Who knew my sister could cook?” Zipporah glowed as I’d never seen her before. She and Jonah occasionally gazed at the baby, then smiled at each other. At one point, they grasped hands under the table, a most unorthodox public display of affection. Onkel Gershon looked like a satisfied patriarch presiding over his family, while Yetta beamed like a benevolent queen on her throne. Only my father appeared stiff, avoiding looking at my uncle across the table, while my mother looked warily between her husband and her brother. Everyone ate heartily, except Mama and me. Still, sholem bayess prevailed. My eyes sought Ruchel’s to congratulate ourselves on the party’s success. I brought out the donuts, arrayed on a thick, hand-painted china platter.

“Good!” my father pronounced, eyebrows raised that I’d mastered something so difficult. He handed me his plate for another.

“I’m glad you like them Papa.” A current passed between me, Ruchel, and our mothers.

“Did you hear Annie Oakley set the woman’s record in marksmanship?” my cousin asked, before he could inquire how I’d made the dessert. “She broke ten clay targets in a row.”

“Sounds like the kind of woman we need on our side the next time this country goes to war,” said Onkel Gershon, helping himself to another donut.

“Better a woman should fill holes with jelly than shoot holes in barn doors.” My father took a third donut. My uncle did too. And so it went until Gershon grabbed the last one.

“What do you think of Hungary joining the League of Nations?” I asked, hoping that talk of their shared homeland would unite the two men. “We’re reading about it in social studies.”

“It’s too soon after the Empire split up,” said my father. “I don’t trust them.”

“The Hungarians were never as bad as the Austrians,” Tante Yetta said. “Besides, people can change for the better, even in Lemberg.”

“The whole world is changing,” said Onkel Gershon. “Who would have thought President Harding would sign a resolution two months ago to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine?”

“Signing something is not the same as making it happen,” my father said, addressing my uncle directly for the first time that evening. I thought of Mama signing my college application.

“Women can vote now that the Nineteenth Amendment was signed into law.” Ruchel rose slightly in her seat. I gently tapped the table to signal her to pipe down, but she ignored me. “And our Dev is going to change the world by discovering a cure for cancer.”

“Not unless she goes to college, and I can’t afford that.”

“Hunter doesn’t charge tuition, Uncle Avram.” Ruchel was standing now.

“She still has to pay for books and whatever else those goniff’s charge the students.”

Ruchel agreed. “She’ll have to pay lab fees. Transportation. Living costs. But it won’t be a problem because my father is going to pay for it all.” Ruchel sat down in triumph. Papa looked at me. I nodded to show it was true, but I wished Ruchel could take it back. The lone potato latke I’d eaten backed up my digestive tract. I wanted to fry Ruchel in hot oil.

Tante Yetta started clearing the table, but the clanking silverware heightened the uneasy silence creeping around the table, so she stopped. We listened to the baby’s rhythmic snore. I hoped it would calm things down, but Papa’s breathing quickened until he rose and lifted the empty donut platter above his head. Jonah draped a protective arm around his father-in-law’s shoulder.

“Our forefathers wrote that stealing the love of children from their parents is as bad as sacrificing our offspring to Molech.” Again, my father spoke straight to Onkel Gershon.

My uncle snorted. “Talmud says no such thing, Avram. You always were a lousy scholar.”

Papa slammed the plate on the table, sending a small chip flying toward my uncle. Yetta hugged the platter to her breast, surreptitiously examining the underside for more chinks. Ruchel gently pulled it from her mother’s grasp and laid a steady hand on Yetta’s shaking one.

My father’s chair toppled as he pushed back from the table. Boxes thudded to the floor again while he got his coat, and the wine in our glasses sloshed as the door slammed. Mama trembled, her face whiter than the linen tablecloth. Without a word, she rose and followed him out.

I walked to the front window and watched them trudge through the now heavy snow. Papa strode into the blowing wind, his head held high. Mama, eyes cast down, was a few paces behind. Reflected in the window, behind me, the three generations of the Mendel family sat silently around the table. Jonah leaned over Zipporah as she soothed the baby, startled awake by the noise. Gershon and Ruchel stood on either side of Yetta. Above her head, they exchanged the relieved look of a father and daughter who had managed to reconcile.

I was furious that Ruchel’s big mouth had ruined that possibility for me. Of course, Papa would have found out eventually that my uncle was paying for me to go to college, but he would have heard it from my mother, in private. The news would have gone down more easily than hearing it from Gershon’s daughter, in Gershon’s presence, with the whole family around him. Ruchel’s brashness helped women gain their rights, but it didn’t help families set things right. I wanted to hurl every slang epithet in Mencken’s book, and then some, at her.

“Come mamele, sit with us,” my aunt urged. “I’ll wash the dishes.”

“It’s okay, Tante Yetta, I’ll do it. Cleaning the apparatus is part of being a scientist too.” I stared out the window until my parents turned the corner. Then, turning back toward the happy Mendels seated around the table, I picked up the empty donut platter and carried it to the kitchen.