What if Mameh wouldn’t let me back in the house? None of my friends had a place for me, I had no idea where Betty was living, and I was not going to ask Miss Chevalier—not after all she’d already done for me. My only hope was that Celia would stick up for me and get my father on her side, and that would mean a huge screaming fight at the least.
Walking up the stairs to our apartment, I felt like a criminal going to be hanged. But when I got to the door, I heard teaspoons clinking in glasses. That could only mean there was sugar on the table, which meant there was company, which almost never happened.
When I looked through the keyhole, all I could see was a man’s back and my father rubbing his chin, which meant he was either uncomfortable or mad. Mameh was pouring tea and smiling her company smile, but she must have noticed the door rattle or something, because before I knew it she was in the hall, pinching me by the ear and talking so fast I could hardly understand her.
“You listen to me. You’re going to say you were staying in Cambridge to help out a woman who had a baby. Your sister is getting married, thank God, and he doesn’t need to know about you.”
“Betty is getting married?” I said.
“Don’t you dare say that name to Mr. Levine. Celia is the one getting married.”
I couldn’t believe it. I never heard Celia say a word about her boss, good or bad. I said, “But Mr. Levine is too old.”
“Forty is not so old. His wife is dead a year and he has two little boys without a mother. He sees what a hard worker your sister is: so clean, so nice and quiet. He’s got a good business, so she won’t want for nothing. Today he brought over coffee and a bottle of whiskey for your father. So you say, ‘Mazel tov’ and not another word.”
When Celia saw me she jumped out of her chair and ran to give me a hug. She was wearing maybe the first new dress I’d ever seen her in—with flowers that brought out her blue eyes. She looked beautiful.
Mr. Levine stood up. “Nice to make your acquaintance, Miss Addie. Celia says such nice things about you.” He was a small man—maybe an inch taller than me—with a narrow face and a reddish-brown goatee that made him look like a fox.
He said, “Aren’t I lucky to marry into a family of such pretty girls? It will be nice for Myron and Jacob to have a sister, too.”
I said I would be their aunt, not their sister.
He laughed and said, “You must be the smart one.”
Celia took my hand and said I got all As in school.
So Mameh had to say that she was sure Mr. Levine’s sons were even smarter.
“You have to start calling me Herman,” he said.
“What is your real name?” Papa asked. “I need it for the ketubah—the marriage contract.”
Levine waved away the question like he was brushing away a fly. “Hirsch, I suppose.”
Papa made a sour face. This was the kind of man my father called a gantze ganef—a real thief.
Levine reached for the whiskey bottle and said, “Let’s make a toast to August twenty-second.”
“I still don’t know what’s the hurry,” Papa said.
“What should they wait for?” said Mameh. “They aren’t youngsters.”
My mother and Levine started talking about the wedding. The ceremony was going to be in Papa’s little shul around the corner. Levine said he’d pay for honey cake and wine.
“But I will buy the herring,” Papa said. “You can’t have a wedding without herring.”
Levine smiled in the snobbish way Miss Holbrooke did when one of the Italian girls had said her mother’s cooking was better than the food at the lodge.
Levine said he was thinking about joining Temple Israel and Papa gave him the same look back. “You mean the big German synagogue where they throw you out if you wear a yarmulke?”
“The rabbi there is very smart,” Levine said. “I can make good connections for business and my sons will meet a better class of people.” He winked at me. “And Addie will like it because the women sit with the men, like human beings.”
“If you want a church, go to a church,” Papa said, and the words hung in the air like a bad smell. My mother got nervous and said that maybe the bride and groom would like to go for a walk together.
Celia said, “And Addie can come with us.” See how she looked out for me?
I walked a few steps behind them and watched. Celia looked comfortable holding his arm, and he patted her hand a lot but they didn’t say much to each other and I couldn’t tell if there was any feeling between them.
We were on Hanover Street, which felt like a carnival after Rockport. There were a lot of people walking and talking at the top of their lungs—in three or four languages, mind you. We walked past a shop window where a group of girls were watching a man take the clothes off a dress dummy. One of girls said, “That’s what I call fresh,” which made me wonder if Celia knew anything about the birds and the bees. She was so shy about everything.
My mother never told me about sex. When I got my period, she slapped my face and showed me how to wash the towels we had to use. You don’t know how lucky you are in that department. I found out about what happened between men and women from a couple of girls in the schoolyard—and they had different versions.
—
On our cot that night Celia said, “At least you’ll have more room when I go.”
“But I’ll miss you,” I said.
She said we would see each other all the time. “Mr. Levine’s apartment is only a few blocks from here.”
“You don’t call him Herman?”
She said she wasn’t used to it yet. For three years she had known him as Mr. Levine.
I didn’t understand how it all happened so fast. I was only gone a week.
Turns out, it had started in May, when Mrs. Kampinsky, who lived downstairs, told my mother that Levine was looking for a wife and Mameh said why didn’t he look right in front of him?
“He asked if he could walk me home after work,” Celia said. “I met his sons a few times and Jacob, the little one, seems so sad. Levine asked if I would mind taking care of them and promised that I would have a good life with him.”
I asked if she was in love with him.
“Not yet. Mameh says you learn to love someone when you make a life together. She says a man who loves his children is a good man. Myron is six and Jacob is almost four, and they need a mother. And like Mameh says, I’m almost thirty years old and who knows if I’ll ever get another chance like this? He’ll take care of me and Mameh and Papa when they get old.”
I could hear my mother’s words coming out of her mouth, so I said, “Did she push you into this? You can still change your mind.”
She said no, that she had decided for herself. “He asked me a month ago and I told him I wanted to think. I didn’t even tell Mameh until you went away. When she found out where you were, she started screaming that the settlement ladies had sold you to be a white slave and wanted Papa to go to the police. But when I told her about me and Mr. Levine, she had more important things to think about.”
I had the horrible feeling that she’d said yes just to protect me. I even asked, “That’s not why you’re marrying him, is it?”
She said no. “Actually, I feel bad because once I’m gone, you’ll have to leave school and I know how much you want to keep going.”
She was right. My parents didn’t make enough money to pay the rent and everything else. Without Celia’s pay I was going to have to get a full-time job.
I felt like a rock had fallen on my chest.
Celia whispered, “I’m sorry, Addie.”
I said it wasn’t her fault, which was true. I also said it was okay, but that was not true.
Mazel tov.
When Levine found out about my sister Betty, he invited her to the wedding. Mameh started arguing, but he made that wa
ve with his hand and said, “Don’t be so old-fashioned. I want to meet one of these New Women. Anyway, Celia wants her there.”
When Betty walked into the apartment a few nights later, my mother wouldn’t even look in her direction. Betty grinned at me. “Who knew little Addie would turn into such a spitfire? Going off on an adventure like that without telling anyone? Atta girl.”
I didn’t really know Betty. What I remembered most about her was the fights she and Mameh had about her not coming home right after work or about going out at night with friends. The funny thing is, except for the fact that she was younger and curvier, Betty was an exact copy of our mother: same brown eyes, same wavy brown hair, and the same broad nose. They talked the same, too, as if they knew the answer to everything, shaking their heads up and down a lot, which made you nod back, as if you agreed with them—even if you didn’t.
Betty was a big talker. She told us all about her job at Filene’s and how she had moved up from wrapping packages to salesgirl quicker than anyone could remember.
“You see this skirt?” Betty said. “I got it practically free. A lady brought it back to the store and said it was ripped when she bought it. I think she tore it herself but the store has to pretend like the customer is always right, especially the ones who spend a lot of money. So that means us girls get some nice bargains.”
She asked Celia a lot of questions about “this Levine” and came right out and asked if she really wanted to take care of his two children and his house. Mameh got mad. “Of course it’s what she wants. It’s what every woman wants.”
Celia said that we shouldn’t worry and that he was a fine man.
Betty started coming over a lot and she usually brought presents: tobacco for Papa, a scarf for Celia, stockings for me, chocolate drops for Mameh. But no matter what she brought or how Celia tried to make nice, it always ended with a fight. Mameh would complain about America; how the apples had no taste and children didn’t listen to their parents—even the air was worse here. “People get sick from everyone breathing the same air. In our village we had room at least. The air was clean.”
Sooner or later, Betty would smack the table and say, “Enough, already! I remember what it was like over there and the air smelled like cow shit. And the floor in the house was made of dirt. Can you imagine such a thing, Addie? Filthy and disgusting! In America, at least it’s the twentieth century.”
When they started fighting, Celia shriveled up like a plant without enough water. Sometimes I wondered if she was marrying Levine just to get away from the noise and the tension.
Celia said she wanted to make her own wedding dress, so Levine bought her a beautiful piece of white satin. But a few days before the wedding, when it still wasn’t done, Betty said she would help with the finishing and made Celia try it on.
The dress was a plain shift that fell from her shoulders to her ankles, with long sleeves and a flat collar. Betty threw a fit. “You can’t wear that. It looks like a nightgown.”
Celia said it would be better when she attached the sash. “Then maybe you’ll look like a shiny nurse,” Betty said. “I’m going to buy the fanciest veil I can find and some lace for the collar and around the hem. You are going to be a pretty bride or I’m not coming to this wedding.” Celia giggled, and for a moment I saw them as children: the bossy big sister and the little sister who would follow her anywhere.
—
Celia’s wedding day was sunny and beautiful, so Mameh had to spit three times to ward off the evil eye. “Rain is what brings luck,” she said. Betty rolled her eyes and fussed with the veil, which had little pearls sewn all over and covered most of the dress and made Celia look like a princess.
Before we left the house, Betty took me aside and asked if Mameh had explained to Celia what happens on the wedding night.
I said, “Probably not.”
Betty groaned. “That isn’t good. I’m telling you, Addie, our Celia is not a strong person. We have to keep an eye on her, you and me.”
But now that Celia was leaving, I realized how much she had watched over me and had put herself between my mother and me. It was going to be awful without her.
—
Celia took Papa’s arm as we walked around the corner to the little storefront synagogue, where Levine and his sons were waiting by the door. The boys looked miserable in new shoes and starched shirts and the groom was blinking as if he had something in his eye.
“Where’s your family?” Mameh said.
Levine only had a few second cousins in America, but their children had gotten mumps, so the whole wedding party was just the eight of us, including his boys.
The shul was in a store where they used to sell fish, and since we were there in August and it was hot, the smell came back. I had only been there for High Holiday services, when it was crowded—especially in the back, where the women sat. But that day you could hear an echo, and it was so dark it took a minute for my eyes to see the old men standing next to the table with the food.
Papa said hello to each of them and asked about their wives and children. He prayed with these men before work every morning, so it was like his club. Mameh didn’t want them at the wedding—she called them schnorrers—moochers. But I was glad they were there. I thought they made things a little more cheerful.
The rabbi came running in and apologized for being late. He had a long white beard with yellow tobacco stains around his mouth, but he had young eyes and clapped Papa and Levine on the back and said “Mazel tov” like he meant it. He picked four men to hold the chuppah poles and called for Levine and Celia to stand with him under my father’s prayer shawl, which was the canopy.
The rabbi sang the blessings, Levine put a ring on Celia’s finger, and they sipped from a cup of wine. After Levine stepped on a glass, the old men clapped and sang “Mazel tov.”
The whole thing was over in a few minutes.
The rabbi shook hands with everyone, even Celia and the little boys, and left as fast as he came. “He has a funeral,” Papa explained.
We ate bread, herring, and honey cake and the old men toasted the wedding couple three times with big glasses of Levine’s whiskey. Celia stood beside her new husband and ate a few bites of cake, but when Jacob started whining and rubbing his eyes she said maybe it was time to go.
We walked with them to the end of the block and watched as they turned the corner.
Betty was crying.
Mameh said, “What’s the matter with her?”
Papa patted Betty on the cheek. “My grandmother used to say it isn’t a wedding if nobody cries.”
—
The apartment was one hundred percent sadder after Celia left. No one smiled at me when I walked in the door, and even though I had the bed to myself, I didn’t sleep any better.
My parents fought constantly. Mameh went back to blaming Papa for the baby who died on the boat. “If you had waited with me until he was born, maybe he would still be alive.”
Then my father would say, “If we stayed and I was killed, then you and all your children would have died with the rest of your family from typhoid or from Cossacks. And if you’d let me take the other boy to the hospital here, he would still be alive.”
That was the first I’d heard about the baby who was born in America before me. He was small and weak from the beginning, but my mother wouldn’t let him out of the house. “No one comes back alive from the hospital.”
He called her stupid.
She called him a failure.
Night after night, they blamed each other and cursed and wore each other out. Papa started going to shul right after supper. Mameh muttered over her sewing until she had a headache. I stayed on my cot as much as I could, and when the days got shorter and it was too dark to read back there, I fell asleep early and got up before the sun. I didn’t mind. That way, I got out of the house before the bickering starte
d again.
This daughter of yours is a firecracker.
Betty said she could get me a job at Filene’s. “The floorwalker has a little crush on me.”
I liked the idea of getting out of the neighborhood and working in a department store. I wouldn’t get dirty or ruin my hands and strain my eyes like I would in a factory—if I could even get a job in one.
But it turned out that Filene’s wasn’t hiring, and since I didn’t know how to type or operate a switchboard, I went to all the tearooms and sandwich shops I could walk to, but nobody was looking for waitresses. I didn’t have any luck in the stores or movie houses, either.
One Sunday when Betty, Levine, and Celia were visiting, Mameh complained about how lazy I was. “She thinks she’s too good to get her hands dirty. Ethel Heilbron’s daughter has the brains of a donkey and she’s making good money in a shoe factory.”
“It’s not Addie’s fault, Mameh,” Celia said.
Levine said, “She’ll find something. I read in the newspaper about how a Jewish girl is running the whole library in East Boston.” Jewish success stories were one of Levine’s favorite topics.
“Look at me. I’m not even born here and I own a shop with twenty workers. Just yesterday, I went to buy buttons from Glieberman and he had a girl writing down the orders so he could sit on his tuches like a big shot. And let me tell you, compared to me, Glieberman is a small-time operator.”
Betty said, “But if Glieberman has a secretary, how does it look that you don’t have a girl, too?”
Levine shrugged. “He’s spending a lot of money just to show off.”
“It’s not showing off,” she said. “It’s professional. Besides, I read in a magazine you’ve got to spend money to make money.”
“I heard that, too,” he said.
Betty winked at me. “And it just so happens that you have the perfect girl right in front of you. Addie has good penmanship and an A in arithmetic. Tell him how you worked in that settlement house lady’s office. You were kind of a secretary there, weren’t you?”