After lunch, which cost them each twenty-five cents, Bella noticed that Sue left some pennies on the counter, and she did the same. The girl behind the counter came over and pocketed them, and smiled at the two women. Bella felt like a great lady. The poor girl, working for pennies! Then she and Sue walked about the store, stopping at one counter or another. Bella was drawn to a big square of counters, that had a piano inside it, and a man playing popular hits. On all four sides the counter was heaped with sheet music. Bella stood and listened for a long time, her heart full of longing. Oh, if only she could play! The young man played wonderfully, she thought, and he just flowed from one song into another. After a long time, Sue bought, for fifteen cents, the sheet music to “My Buddy.” Bella sensed she wanted to move on and dragged her body away from the counter. She was content that she could hear the music even from other counters. But she was also nervous: she felt she must buy something, but had little money and did not know what to buy. Finally, she found a paper of hairpins for seven cents and bought that.
Her mind whirled all the way home. She went home alone because Sue lived in the Bronx. She felt as if wires had been plugged into her head, her arms, her legs, and were sending impulses through her body. Everything was new, and interesting, and wonderful, and she was allowed to enter the new world. But she would not have dared to enter it alone: she needed a friend.
The Saturday-afternoon expeditions became a custom; the friends went at least twice a month. In time they gained courage and went inside some of the clothes shops and looked over the merchandise with slightly snooty looks on their faces, as if they could afford anything but found everything in some way wanting. In fact, Bella rarely saw anything she wanted. Momma made all Bella’s beautiful clothes, which were far nicer than anything in the stores. She had matching dresses and coats in navy blue and in beige; and she had two pleated skirts, one slim-line skirt with a kick pleat with buttons above it.
Then they began to walk uptown along Fifth Avenue, or Madison, and gaze in the windows of the really expensive shops. They never found the courage to go inside these, but they oohed and aahed about the exquisite embroidered satin nightgowns and bed jackets and slips; the cashmere sweaters; and the beaded dresses that stopped above the knee. Some days they just walked. They passed great hotels, the Hotel McAlpin and the Waldorf. Sue had a friend who had been taken to tea at the Waldorf, and said it was really beautiful, with palm trees and everything, right in the room! A space formed in Bella’s heart: tea at the Waldorf! Oh, what would that be like! But Sue said even if they had enough money they could not go there, because a man had to take you. Bella learned so much from Sue. They would walk arm in arm, and press themselves together, although Bella felt a little uncomfortable about this, and shifted herself slightly away each time. But Sue was very affectionate, she even used to touch Bella’s arm when she spoke to her.
One Saturday during an uptown jaunt, Sue suggested they have lunch at Schrafft’s. Schrafft’s! With gold letters on its front window, and Venetian curtains—so elegant—and real tables and chairs! Feeling daring, ready for anything, Bella clutched her handbag and agreed. They sat at a table and had chicken salad sandwiches and coffee and it wasn’t so expensive, it was only thirty-five cents. Bella realized that Woolworth’s wasn’t so great after all—it was only a counter, a luncheonette. Schrafft’s was a real restaurant, and now she was a young woman of the world.
One day as they sat over their coffee, Sue began to talk about religion. Her mother was very pious, she said, and went to church every day. Sue was religious, but she felt that was excessive. What did Bella think?
Bella didn’t know.
“You’re Catholic, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I guess so.”
“You guess so! Did you receive?”
“Receive?”
“Holy Communion! You must have received!”
Bella had a dim memory of a white dress and white silk stockings, and a bouquet of flowers, back in the old life, before Poppa…“Yes. And my father was close friends with our priest…,” she began.
Sue warmed to that. She leaned forward, her face glowing. “I knew you had to be Catholic. I told my mother you were. She doesn’t like me to make friends with people who aren’t Catholic.”
Bella just looked at her.
“And of course you must have been confirmed, too,” Sue went on.
Bella shook her head.
“But, Bella, you’re seventeen! You should have been confirmed at twelve or thirteen!”
Bella’s mouth opened. “My father died,” she said finally.
That was something Sue could understand. “Oh. Yes. But Bella, you must be confirmed.” Sue talked for a long time then, softly, persuasively, about the sacraments of the Church, and its Laws, and Salvation. If you weren’t saved, she said, when you died you went to hell with all the non-Catholics and sinners, and burned forever in eternal fires.
Bella was appalled. How was it that Sue, who was only eighteen, knew all these things, and Momma, who was forty, did not? Why was it that everything she learned she had to learn from her friends? Why wasn’t Momma concerned with the state of her soul? Did Momma want her to go to hell? Oh, what a home she had! A place to sleep, eat, and play cards, nothing more. She had never learned anything in her home, never. If not for her friends she would have gone on forever in ignorance and stupidity. Bella barely listened to Sue’s description of hell: she felt she knew better than Sue what hell was like, and that she had spent several years there already. Maybe if she had been confirmed, and had experienced God’s grace, as Sue said, all that wouldn’t have happened.
Bella squeezed Sue’s hand and promised she would go for instruction in the catechism. Sue smiled radiantly at her convert, lifted to another plane, she and her friend shining with God’s light. She told Bella she would introduce her to a priest whose parish was near where they worked, downtown—she occasionally popped into his church for First Friday, she said. And he would teach Bella. And soon Bella went from work on Tuesday nights to the rectory where Father Ambrose tested her on the catechism questions she was supposed to learn that week. Bella learned it all, but for her it was just words. She felt stupid again: she simply didn’t understand what the Holy Ghost was supposed to be, or what grace was, or sin, for that matter. How could a baby be born with sin on its soul?
Nevertheless, in the spring of 1922, after her eighteenth birthday, Bella went to church in a white dress and stood on line behind fifty twelve-year-old children (towering over them again, she thought grimly; then thanked Sue that she was saved at all), and felt the bishop put his hand on her head, and tried to feel the Holy Spirit descending upon her. And when she could feel nothing, she concluded she was just too stupid to recognize what was happening to her.
Sue came to her Confirmation with her boyfriend, and afterward, he took the three of them out to a hotel and bought them a Communion breakfast—eggs and bacon and orange juice and champagne! Bella had never had champagne before, and she decided that making her Confirmation and having champagne meant that she was now, really and truly, grown up.
Sue’s boyfriend, Andy, liked Bella, who was shy of him and simply smiled a lot. And Sue loved Bella, feeling responsible for the very state of her soul. The two of them invited Bella to go with them one Saturday night to the Cotton Club, the famous nightclub in Harlem. In great excitement, Bella told Momma she needed a new dress, a fancy one. Bella chose the fabric, a melon chiffon, and Momma made her a dress with little straps and a flat bodice, with a skirt that was many different lengths, all overlapping. And Bella used her last savings to buy herself a pair of silk shoes with high heels and a strap across the instep, and have them dyed to match the dress. As a surprise, Momma made her a silk coat just a few shades darker than the dress. And Bella went to the Cotton Club.
“Oh, I was such a stupid kid,” my mother says with disgust. “I don’t know where I was, I was always in a dream. Here I had all these chances—they took me to the Cotton Club
many times, I heard all the great musicians, like Duke Ellington and Count Basie and…oh, all the great ones. And I didn’t even know what I was listening to, I didn’t realize!”
I have just put an Ellington record on the hi-fi. I always listen to music turned up loud when I clean, and it’s time for the semiannual straightening up. The kids’ shoes and underwear are strewn around the living room, and my papers are heaped on every surface. There’s no room to sit down, here or in the kitchen, so I think I’ll have to do something. Then I hear this unsteady step on the walk outside and peer down from the front window, and there she is, tottering up the walk in her high heels. Saved from cleaning! I hastily pick up piles of things and stack them on other piles, so there will be someplace to sit down, and go into the kitchen and put on a kettle for tea. It takes her a long time to mount the stairs to my apartment, and I fidget, fighting the impulse to run out and help her. She arrives at the top breathless, annoyed, pink in the face: “Those steps!” She comes in and gets settled. Unlike my ex-mother-in-law, she is not bothered by the messy way I live. But she complains about the music. I go to take the record off, commenting, “I thought you liked Duke Ellington.” And she goes into her tale of the Cotton Club, which I have heard dozens of times before. The moral of her story is the same as ever: her ignorance of what she was hearing is one more source of grief; grief is the only residue of the experience. For the first time, I wonder why.
Bella finished her business course in the spring of 1923; she decided that armed with a certificate verifying that she had completed two years of study, she could risk looking for a job in an office. But she was very nervous about doing this. Momma had gotten her her other jobs, had introduced her to the foremen, who liked Momma and smiled and bobbed their heads, saying, “Ah, your daughter, Mrs. Brez, a good girl, I’m sure,” and Bella had smiled and almost curtseyed. To go alone into a world she had never entered before terrified her, and she kept putting it off. There was a late summer that year; the weather remained chilly right into June. Sue married Andy. They had a nice apartment in the Bronx with a living room and bedroom suite of new furniture. Bella visited them once, taking an embroidered bridge cloth and napkins, and Andy had served them champagne. But since then she had had no occasion for seeing Sue, who dropped out of Woods and was now pregnant.
Weekends were dull; and evenings too, now that she did not go to Woods anymore. The boys seemed to be at loose ends. Everyone in the family was working, and they were all doing well except Wally, who had trouble keeping jobs—he was an apprentice electrician—and they all gave most of their wages to Momma. Bella still got only fifty cents a day, as did Eugenia; but the boys, she knew, got more. And Eddie had insisted that Momma open a bank account and save money: every week he checked the balance and announced it with satisfaction. They now had $118.42 in the account.
One Friday night, Eddie came home late with a camera. It was a little rectangular box. When you opened it, a kind of nose came out, with accordion pleats on its sides. That Sunday, Eddie insisted that they all get dressed up in their best clothes so he could take their picture. Bella wore her black satin with the white satin lapels printed with roses; Eugenia wore a blue chiffon with accordion pleats; Wally wore knickers and a golfing cap (although he’d never even seen a golf course); and Eddie wore his new winter coat, a long dark brown full-skirted coat with a fur collar. Even Momma put on her best dress. He trooped them up to the roof of their building and lined them up against the brick chimney, and took a number of shots. Then he joined them in the line and asked his friend Oscar Ball, who was visiting that afternoon, to take their picture together. Of course, they couldn’t see the pictures right away, and all of them were excited and nervous, waiting for the sight of this miracle. It took two weeks for them to come back from wherever Eddie had sent them, and he laid them before the family with pride. And indeed, there they all were: four young people and a mother, all of whom looked far older than they were, standing on the tar roof in front of the dark brick of the chimney, while behind them spread the roofs and walls of tenements, as far as you could see. Eddie laughed and laughed. Bella could not understand why he was laughing. Then he took a pen and wrote across the bottom: ALL DRESSED UP AND NO PLACE TO GO.
Bella was restless. Summer still didn’t come. At least, in summer, the four of them and their friends could go to the Rockaways and spend the day on the beach. She knew she had to make her move soon, but felt paralyzed. One Saturday, missing Sue, it occurred to her to stop in at the church. Maybe God’s grace would give her strength. She had not been in a church since her Confirmation.
She walked in timidly, not feeling at home in this place. The church was nearly empty at five o’clock on a Saturday afternoon. Only a few people sat in pews near the confessional booths at the sides of the nave, waiting their turn. A few stood on line near each booth. Bella went to the front of the church where the candles flickered, and looked up at the statue of the Virgin, and the great white skinny figure of crucified Christ on a cross near the altar. She knelt in a front pew and bowed her head. But she didn’t know what to do then. As she sat there, something in front of her moved. A few rows closer to the altar, a woman was kneeling, with bowed head. She was so small and bent that Bella had not seen her before. As she finished praying, the woman straightened up a little more and Bella’s heart stopped: Momma! It was Momma! Then the woman stood up and worked her way out of the pew, and turned to walk down the aisle. Her face was swollen and wet, and she kept her head down as she walked. It was not Momma, but the woman looked like Momma—the same weariness in the body and the walk, the same defeat on the face. And Bella was filled with outrage. Suppose it had been Momma?
She could not bear it that her mother should bend her knees to the powers that had wrecked her young life, blighted it irrevocably. It would outrage her if her mother were to enter a church, pray, ask forgiveness. Forgiveness for what? What sin had Momma ever committed? Oh, she was often angry with Bella, but that was because Bella was so stupid. Images crowded into her mind, of Momma retching with tears in the office of the woman who took the children away; or sitting under the lamp sewing, her head falling onto the table as a cry of pain engulfed her. Or the night she had crept out of bed and peered through the crack of light showing around the kitchen door and seen Poppa with the razor strop, raising it high and slamming it down on poor Wally’s little behind. And Wally, only five then, a baby, screaming, while Eddie sobbed in a corner. And behind it all, herself, a statue, a stony paralyzed image, watching, watching. What had God, if there was a God, ever done for her family that was merciful, just, or good?
She raised her head and looked around her. The crowd had left. There were a couple of people on line at one confessional, but none at the other. As she looked, the priest’s door opened and he emerged, yawning and red-faced. His great belly was stiff under his cassock, and he trudged down the aisle toward the altar. As he approached, Bella noticed that he had the same little threads of red on his nose and cheeks that Father Stefan had had, and she recalled the sight of the priest laughing as Poppa vomited in the street.
She stood up unsteadily. How could these men, who were only men like Poppa, know what was good? Did Poppa know what was good? Did any man? Men, who did things like hit babies and hit Momma, who was a saint? She stiffened her lips and walked out of the church. For a few minutes, for the first time in her life, Bella felt furious. It passed quickly after she left the dark damp church and mixed with the people on the street. But it changed her somehow. It was that afternoon that she made up her mind to do what she had been wanting to do for a long time.
She waited until the following Saturday. Summer had finally arrived and the city air was soft and damp, and men walked carrying their jackets and hats, while women fanned themselves with handkerchiefs on the trolley. She had picked the place out long ago, wandering around with Sue, peering into windows and watching the way the operators worked. She considered the way the women looked when they were finished, and she had d
ecided on Alicia’s. It was only a few blocks from the shop, and she had told Eugenia she would be going with a friend after work. She stood outside briefly, then straightened and boldly walked right in.
“I want a bob,” she said.
Bella’s hair had never been cut. When it was down, she could sit on it. It was ash blond and very wavy, and every morning Bella had to brush it for a long time, then comb it, to get out the knots. Then she fastened it back with a clip to which she had attached a large bow. But it was a baby way to look, she felt. And she was grown up now. Sometimes she put it in a big bun with hairpins, but they loosened and fell out and her hair fell down; or if she put a lot in, they made her head ache during the day. And all the women in the magazines and the movies had short straight bobs and wore glittering headbands and black around their eyes. They were chic: Bella felt a surge of pride at knowing that word and even how to pronounce it properly. She had heard girls at the shop say “chick.”
Her hair fell around her in long showers, and Bella’s heart hurt a little. It was all over the floor and she looked down at it as if it were a limb she was having removed. But when Alicia was finished, Bella looked in the mirror enchanted. It was not Bella, it was a new person who stared back at her, someone modern and chic. Gone was the little Polaka, the ignorant immigrant girl who worked in a sweatshop. She stood, dazed, and paid Alicia the money she had been saving for months. Then, still dazed, she wandered around the streets, and in some kind of mad daring, walked into a little hat shop and bought a cloche, black straw with a little bow on its side.
When she got home, the family was all there and Momma was placing the bowls of food on the table for dinner. She walked in, and Wally glanced up from his newspaper and gave a long wolf whistle. Then Eddie turned around from the table where he was working at his stamp collection. “Wow!” he said, and Eugenia, standing behind Momma, holding a bowl of mashed potatoes, just stared looking terrified. Momma screamed: “AAAAIIEEEE! What have you done!”