Miss Powder roamed around the room whenever we were practicing, slapping our hands if they weren’t in exactly the right position and pinching back our shoulders. As soon as we knew the basics, she brought in a stopwatch and bell to time us for two minutes as we typed The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog, as fast as we could, as many times as we could.
The bell made everyone nervous except Maureen Blair, a dark Irish beauty who was the best in the class. I was second best and Miss Powder held us up as examples for the others. She always blamed their mistakes on posture, but I thought it probably had more to do with the fact that most of them could barely read.
One evening, Miss Powder showed up with her hair pulled so tight that she looked a little Chinese around the eyes. She was spitting mad. “You will notice an empty chair tonight,” she said. “Miss Blair has informed me that as she is now engaged to be married, so she has no need to continue.
“I trust that none of you are considering doing anything so . . . so . . .” She couldn’t think of a strong enough word. “When I think of the poor girls who were turned away in favor of someone like that.” I don’t think Miss Powder could have been any more outraged if Maureen Blair had murdered her own mother.
After typing class, I ran upstairs to the second floor and Shakespeare. I don’t think I would have picked a whole class on just one writer, but it was my only choice and it turned out to be a good one. Strange, but good.
The teacher was Mr. Boyer, a short, chubby man with bright blue eyes and a thick white moustache. He had a deep voice and talked as if every other word started with a capital letter. “It is my Privilege to introduce you to the Greatest Writer in the History of the English Language,” he said. “Have any of you had the Pleasure of seeing the Great Bard’s Work on the Stage?”
Nobody had.
“A shame,” he said. “In this class, at least, you will hear the Immortal Words of one of his Greatest Works, The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet.”
And then he opened a book and started reading the play and didn’t stop until the bell rang. He picked up where he left off in the next class and the one after that.
At first, I didn’t understand half of what was going on; there were too many words I’d never heard before and I had trouble with all those names. But it was a little like listening to music—Mr. Boyer read with a lot of feeling—and somehow after a while it started making sense.
By the time he finished the play, there were only ten students left out of the twenty-five who started. A moment after he closed the book, Sally Blaustein wailed, “They both died? After all that?” I felt exactly the same way.
Mr. Boyer’s face lit up. “Our first Question,” he said, and then, without any explanation, he started reading the play all over again. But this time, he stopped after every scene and made us ask questions about what we’d heard.
I learned a lot from those questions—not just about the play but about the other people in the class, too. Iris Olshinsky asked Mr. Boyer for definitions of a lot of words—sometimes the simple ones, and usually more than once. He never got annoyed or impatient with her or with any of us. Actually, he seemed to be delighted when anyone asked anything at all.
Mario Romano didn’t seem to like any of the characters except the Nurse. Sally Blaustein felt sorry for everyone but especially Paris, who also died for love. Ernie Goldman wanted to get the facts right: Who was a Capulet and who was a Montague? Was there really a drug that would make everyone think you were dead when you really weren’t?
I asked about Juliet; in some scenes I thought she was wonderful but in others I thought she was an idiot.
Mr. Boyer timed it so that on the last day of class he read us the last scene, and even though we all knew what was going to happen, there were gasps when Romeo picked up the dagger and tears when Juliet woke up and found out he was dead. When he got to the last word of the play, I felt like a dishrag.
Mr. Boyer motioned to Ernie and handed him a pile of papers and announced, “Mr. Goldman will distribute these for your Final Examination.”
He had never mentioned a final examination before. We must have looked scared to death.
“There is no cause for worry, my friends,” he said. “All I ask is that you pose One Question that has most Intrigued or Confused you about the Play.”
That seemed easy enough and everyone finished up in a few minutes. But when Ernie started to collect the papers Mr. Boyer stopped him and said—actually, he never just “said” anything. If he wasn’t reading the play, he usually pronounced or declared—but this time he lowered his voice like he was telling us a secret.
“One more thing, my friends. Please be so kind as to answer your own question.”
Everyone went right to work, but I froze. “Was Juliet a great heroine or a foolish little girl?” I couldn’t just choose one or the other and I didn’t see how I could say she was both at the same time like I did with Paul Revere.
Other people were turning in their papers and I still hadn’t written a word. I was starting to panic until out of the blue I remembered my father saying that Jews answered questions with more questions. So that’s what I did.
“Was Juliet a better poet than Romeo? If Juliet found out about Rosaline, would she still love Romeo? Should Juliet have given Paris a chance? Why is love so dangerous for Juliet? Why are Juliet’s parents so blind? Was the Nurse Juliet’s friend or enemy? Would Juliet have killed herself if she had been twenty-five years old instead of thirteen?”
We sat and watched Mr. Boyer read our papers. He nodded, he smiled, he shook his head, he frowned, he laughed a little, and he sighed a lot.
When he was finished he said, “Congratulations to you, one and all, on Completing the Course. Each of you will receive the Highest Grade I am permitted to bestow. And now, ladies and gentlemen, I send you on your way. A Sweet Sorrow.”
I waited to be the last one to leave the room to tell him thank you and to ask what he was teaching next term and if I could take it.
“I am flattered,” he said, but he was retiring. I had taken the very last class he would ever teach. “That explains my unorthodox methods,” he said. “I am now Beyond Reproach. But I would like to give you an assignment, if I may.”
I said yes, of course.
He told me to go and see the play “on its feet.” You know, onstage, in person. He said he was sure I would understand Juliet if I saw her walking and breathing and speaking her poetry. “You might even come to love her.”
I’ve seen Romeo and Juliet maybe twenty times since then: movies, Broadway, even high school performances. Remember when I took you to see it in the Berkshires, under the trees? I do love Juliet now, but every single time I understand something different about her. That’s probably why Shakespeare is a genius, right?
Stumbling into Mr. Boyer’s class was one of the best accidents that ever happened to me. When I started teaching, I remembered how he talked to us, and you know what? If you treat every question like you’ve never heard it before, your students feel like you respect them and everyone learns a lot more. Including the teacher.
I figure God created Margaret Sanger, too.
The Saturday Club was changing. Younger girls joined, older ones married and disappeared, including Helen, who moved to Fall River, which was a real schlep in those days. Filomena was still working for Miss Green, but she had stopped coming to meetings. Gussie said that Morelli was teaching art in Boston; I don’t know how she found out these things, but she did.
Irene and Rose were still Saturday Club regulars and best friends from Rockport Lodge. They shared a room in the South End and Rose got Irene a job as a switchboard operator at the telephone company where she worked. Irene always had some juicy stories about conversations she listened in on. “Rose never does it, but she’s too good for this earth,” Irene said. “If I didn’t eavesdrop I’d die of boredom.” Irene always ma
de me laugh.
But one Saturday when I was on my way to the meeting—it must have been in the spring because it was light outside—I saw Irene running toward me and I could see that something was wrong. My first thought was that Rose was sick. For such a big, strong girl, she always had a cold or a headache. But it wasn’t Rose.
In one breath, Irene told me that Filomena had come to their room that afternoon, pale as the moon, and asked if she could she rest there for a few hours. But after a little while, she started having terrible pains in her stomach.
I said, “Why didn’t you get her sister Mimi? She’d want to know if Filomena was sick.”
Irene cupped her hands around my ear and whispered, “She said not to go to any of them. She did something to herself so she wouldn’t have a baby.”
I’m not sure I ever heard anyone say the word abortion, but I knew exactly what Irene was talking about.
When a woman “lost” a baby, there were two different ways of talking about it. The first one was sad. People would say, “Poor thing,” and tell stories about how it happened to their cousin or their best friend who had wanted a baby for years.
The other kind of “lost” made people frown and bite their lips. “How is she?” they’d whisper, sometimes like they were worried, sometimes like she was the scum of the earth. When Mrs. Tepperman down the block died after she “lost” a baby, there was a rumor that they wouldn’t let her be buried in the Jewish cemetery, as a punishment. That wasn’t true but it shows you how people thought.
I said, “Maybe you should take her to the hospital.”
“Do you know what they do to girls who come in like that?” Irene said. She was right. I’d heard of girls being tied to the bed when a priest or a cop tried to get them to confess. And there was a story going around about a girl who ran out of the hospital and jumped off a bridge after the doctor said he was going to tell her parents.
“Rose said we should ask Gussie what to do,” said Irene, “but I worry about the mouth on her. I figured you’d want to know and maybe you’d have an idea of something we can do for her.”
I said I didn’t but that my sister might.
I never just showed up out of nowhere at Betty’s rooming house, so when she saw me—and I must have looked pretty grim—she said, “Which one of them died?”
When I explained about Filomena, Betty said, “Poor thing,” with tears in her eyes. I could have kissed her. And she did know what to do.
She said, “You know the Florence Crittenton Home? There’s a nurse there—Cécile or Céline, something French—I heard she helps girls in trouble. But stay away from the ladies who run the place; they don’t understand about things like this.” Then she said, “Why don’t I go get the nurse? Tell me where to bring her.” I did kiss her for that.
Filomena was sleeping when I got to Irene and Rose’s room. She was shivering and sweating and her face was the same gray as Celia’s had been when the policeman carried her down the steps so I thought she was dying for sure.
Rose was on the other bed with a rosary in her lap. She looked like a different person without a smile on her face.
Irene came in with a little bundle and said she’d been to see Mimi. “I told her that Miss Green twisted her ankle and asked Filomena to stay with her for a few days. She gave me some clothes for her.”
There wasn’t much we could do except wait for Betty. Rose patted Filomena’s forehead with a damp cloth and Irene put drops of water between her lips. I held her hand. The three of us were usually big talkers, but we didn’t have anything to say.
Filomena cried when she woke up and saw me. I told her everything was going to be fine, a nurse was coming to help, and she had nothing to worry about. I didn’t believe a word I was saying, but it seemed to calm her down.
She was asleep when Christiane got there. She was French Canadian and she looked like an angel in her white uniform, but she was all business. After she took Filomena’s pulse, she had us help her to the bathroom and into the tub.
Christiane handed me a pile of small cotton cloths and said I should roll them as tight as I could. She mixed something inside a hot water bottle with a tube at the bottom. Then she looked Filomena in the eyes and said, “Try to relax, my friend. It won’t take too long. Take breaths. Count to one hundred.”
Filomena’s face was like a mask, staring at the ceiling as the liquid went into her and blood gushed out. Christiane praised her and said she was doing great. It didn’t take too long, just as she’d said. But we were all exhausted. And Filomena? I don’t think she unclenched her jaw until she fell asleep.
After we got her into bed, Christiane took me, Rose, and Irene to the hall and told us we were to keep Filomena quiet, feed her soup and tea, and not to let her out of bed for two days.
“I think she used bleach,” she said. “At least she didn’t poke herself with an ice pick. Oh yes, I’ve seen that. When they poke, it is terrible. But I think your friend will be all right. It was good you found me so quick.”
I got home very late. Papa was asleep so Mameh couldn’t make a big scene and I snuck out of the house before sunrise to see how Filomena was doing. They were all asleep, Rose and Irene in one bed so Filomena could have the other.
She was pale but she was breathing normally. When she woke up, she held my hand and whispered, “The nurse was here a little while ago. She said I was lucky. I told her you were my luck, the three of you and your sister. I never even met Betty. I wouldn’t be alive without her. Or you. Especially you, Addie.”
I spent the whole day with her. Filomena had a lot of pain in the morning but by the afternoon she was better. While she was napping, Irene said, “You know there are ways to keep this from happening. I’ve got a pamphlet all about it.”
Rose crossed herself. “God forgive you.”
Irene said, “I figure God created Margaret Sanger, too. My own mother had five babies in six years and died giving birth to the last one who died, too. I am not having any more than two children. I’m going to loan the booklet to Filomena when she’s back on her feet. You should read it, too, Addie.”
“Don’t worry about me,” I said. Seeing what Filomena had gone through and after my assignations with Harold Weeks, I didn’t think I’d ever have sex.
—
Filomena decided to move to Taos, New Mexico, with Bob Morelli. I tried to talk her into staying but she’d made up her mind. “I’m pretty sure Mimi figured out what happened with me, which means all my sisters know. They’ll be relieved if I go away.”
I didn’t believe her but she said if she stayed, she couldn’t be the invisible maiden aunt who disappears into the kitchen when company comes. “Something like this always comes out,” she said. “It’s better this way.”
Not for me, it wasn’t.
I made her promise to write, but artists are artists, not writers. She did send postcards, though: a lot of postcards—sometimes four a month. I have two shoe boxes full of them: pictures of mountains and rivers, of Indian men on horses and women weaving blankets. Filomena wrote like she was sending telegrams. “Moved into small house.” “Sold pottery. Bought silver bracelet.”
She always ended the same way: “I miss you. Come visit.”
You may kiss the bride.
My father believed that Celia would be alive if she hadn’t married “that ganef.” So when Betty announced she was going to marry Herman Levine, Papa called Levine every bad thing you can call a person. In Yiddish that’s a lot. “He buries one daughter and he wants another one? Your sister’s body isn’t cold.”
“It’s a year,” Betty said.
“I forbid it.”
Betty lowered her head like she was a bull, which is what she did when she was really mad. “You can forbid all you want but Herman and are I getting married next Thursday afternoon at three o’clock. I would like you to be there, but if you??
?re not, that’s okay.”
Then she stood up, put both of her hands on her belly, and raised her eyebrows.
Mameh’s reaction was almost as shocking to me as the idea that Betty and Levine had been, you know, shtupping. I was waiting for her to call Betty a whore and tell my father “I told you so,” but all she said was, “We’ll be there.”
I had no problem with Levine anymore; he’d been like a brother to me in a lot of ways. But the marriage took me completely by surprise. He never let on and neither did she. Betty was always telling me about going out to dinner with one fellow or another, but when I stopped to think, I realized it had been a while since she’d mentioned anyone.
Betty said it happened “naturally.” She had run into Levine on the street and found out that Jacob, the little one, had been having nightmares ever since Celia died. “But Herman was even more worried about Myron,” Betty said. “He was doing terrible in school and getting sent home for fighting. I felt sorry for them.” She took the boys out for ice cream a few times and cooked them a few meals. She said, “One thing led to another and I just became part of the family,” as if there weren’t any difference between making soup and getting pregnant.
“You’re not going to give me any grief, are you?” she said. “He makes me happy.” The next time I saw her with Levine, it was obvious that he loved her, too.
Betty’s wedding was one hundred percent different from Celia’s. First of all, it was in Temple Israel on Commonwealth Avenue, which meant we had to take a streetcar to get there. Levine was waiting for us in the foyer, which was twice the size of Papa’s whole synagogue. We were a little early, so he showed us around.
The sanctuary was huge. There was a high dome ceiling and an arch of golden trumpets hanging over the pulpit; Levine said that was to make it look like Solomon’s Temple. Mameh said it was beautiful. My father didn’t say anything, but with all the tongue-clucking and snorting, he didn’t have to.