Her Mother's Daughter (13 page)

While they waited for the water to boil, Bella said shyly, “Do you want me to go to the store, Momma?” She tried to keep any sound of reproach out of her voice, tried to keep Momma from knowing that every night when she came home, the first thing Bella looked for was whether she was carrying a little package from the butcher shop, and that, when she was not, Bella's heart sank.

Frances nodded and reached for her purse. “Just get some baloney, I'm too tired to cook tonight.”

Bella poured the coffee for her mother before she left, then took her coat and stepped out into the cold dark night. She never told her mother how frightened she was to go to the market at night, even though she had to walk only a couple of blocks. If she could go in the daytime, it would be better. Gradually, a plan formulated in her mind, like a wave gathering height. For Bella had never before in her life thought about doing something to change something. But maybe…

Over their baloney and black bread, with some cucumbers Momma had prepared the night before, Bella launched her idea. “Momma, why don't you give me the money for dinner at night. Then I could buy it in the daytime and we wouldn't have to eat so late.”

Her mother nodded wearily. She said nothing. She would cry, Bella knew, as soon as they had finished eating. She jumped up as soon as they were through.

“I'll wash the dishes, Momma. You rest,” she urged.

But Momma barely heard her. She was leaning forward, her elbows on the table; a line of tears ran from each eye down her cheeks. “Oh, my babies, my little orphans,” she cried in a small thin voice.

Bella cleaned up and sat on the couch. She would have liked to go into the other room, maybe even get into bed, but she could not. She no longer reminded her mother that she was there, or tried to touch her, but she could not go away from Momma when she cried. She knew that in time, exhaustion would overwhelm sorrow, and she would stand up wearily and say, without expression, “Bed, Bella,” and they would go together to the double bed in which they slept but never touched.

Tonight, though, Bella stopped her mother. “Are you going to give me the money?”

Frances opened her purse and took out fifteen cents. “Go to Jewtown,” she said in her drained voice. “It's cheaper. Get half a pound of chop meat and some vegetables.”

Bella accepted the coins wide-eyed. She felt she was accepting a sacred trust. She must not lose them! Oh, don't even think about that!

The next day, Bella woke groggily, as usual, when the sun was already hot, the room steamy. But then she sat up with sudden energy: she had important work to do that day. She dressed and ran out to the toilet and came back and made herself some coffee. If she was an adult, she should drink coffee like an adult. She sat there, going over in her mind how to prepare the meal she planned. Then she took the coins Momma had left from the cupboard shelf, and set off.

The streets were filled with children playing, cursed at continually by the drivers of passing drays. There was no trolley line on this narrow street, and people swarmed across the cobblestones. Farther down the street, she saw some girls jumping rope: Yetta Ettinger and her friends. She slowed for a minute, watching them, wondering if she could still do that. Then she pulled herself up: I am a big girl now. Jumping rope is for children.

She walked steadily until she entered the Jewish quarter, then slowed. Terror gripped her. So many people, so much noise! And no one was speaking Polish. The streets were massed with pushcarts, with large-armed women thrusting cabbages and turnips at customers who wrinkled their noses and pointed to others, vendors calling out to passersby to come and buy their fresh fruit, in loud voices, in words she could not translate. It was worse than school, for there she could understand some of the words.

So many men, in dark suits and bowler hats, men with beards, men with funny high hats, women in full long skirts and shawls over their heads, boys with long curls, new clothes pegged to lines hanging over counters full of more clothes, and the noise! Bella clutched her money tightly, and stepped into the street. She walked carefully, threading her way among the pushcarts. Her teeth were clenched. She did not look around her any more than she had to. Then, suddenly, she stopped again. On the step in front of a shabby door sat a girl about her age, holding a large baby on her lap. The baby was probably two, and, sitting down, was almost as big as the girl. Near them was a huge tin can full of refuse of spoiled vegetables and fruits. The smell was disgusting and flies surrounded it. The girl looked at Bella; Bella looked at her. The girl's eyes were large, and sad, and…something else, something hard. Bella shuddered, and walked on, shaking her head to get the image out of it. She found the stall Momma went to and got the meat, and two cents' worth of carrots at a stall farther down. She still had six cents left, so she followed a trail toward a baker's, and took a long time choosing two things that looked like
chruściki,
but were different. She clutched the four pennies change. Momma would be glad. She turned back then, and faced the scene once more, but when she did, she felt faint, she thought she would fall down. She leaned against something—the end of a pushcart—to catch herself. Suppose she fell down here! So many people would trample her, run her down the way the streetcar almost ran down Euga. She felt she could not go back. But she had to.

She thought about Anastasia. Suppose something bad happened to Anastasia, suppose she lost her momma while they were shopping, and wandered into this maze? What would Anastasia do?

Bella pulled herself up and lifted her chin. Like a duchess in a throng, she picked her way through the massing people, the goods, the noise, the smells, without noticing any of it. Women yelled from windows, men chatted under the awnings of shops, men read newspapers with funny letters on them, standing right there on the street, but she barely noticed. Head high, lips firm, her face as close to a mask of hauteur as she could manage, she escaped from Jewtown into her own less crowded neighborhood. When she reached home, she fell on a chair. (Just like Momma.) It was some time before she felt she could move.

When the yard grew dim, Bella stirred. She stood and turned up the gas lamp, then went to the stove and piled the wood for a fire. Then she began to scrape the carrots, as she had seen Momma do it. She peeled an onion. It was hard, it took a long time, and her eyes streamed tears. Then she got the bacon fat from the shelf and melted it in a cast-iron skillet, and chopped the onion up. She put it in the pan and laid the pan over the fire before it was really hot, the way Momma did. Then she sliced the carrots and put them in a small pan, with a little sugar and some butter and a little water. She put the pot beside the warm grate. When the onions were glistening, she removed the skillet and tried to pour them in a bowl, but the pan was too heavy for her to lift that high. She put the bowl on the floor and tried again, holding the short handle of the skillet with a crumpled towel. This time she could do it, but some of the onions stuck.

Sighing, she pushed hair from her damp forehead. Why didn't Momma seem to have these problems? She rummaged in a drawer for a large spoon, returned to the pan which was now on the floor, and tried to lift it with one hand and scrape it with the other. She could not manage this: the pan was too heavy. So she set it down again, and spooned up the bits of onion slowly, painstakingly, and dropped them into the bowl. She returned the pan to the stove—in a cool place—and put the bowl on the table. Then she unfolded the orange paper and put the meat in the bowl too.

She sighed. She was already tired. She tried to think. Yes. She went to the cupboard where Momma put stale rolls when there were any. There was half a roll in a yellow bowl. She took it to the sink and with a knife, cut off the crust and all the poppy seeds. Then, over the bowl, she crumbled the roll between her palms, the way Momma did, and poured some milk in too. The mixture swam. Maybe it was too much. She could barely reach the second shelf of the cupboard, where Momma kept the small bowls, but she could get her hand around the stack and push it forward. Then by tilting them a bit, she could grab one with her other hand. She sighed again, but there was a certain satisfaction in these sighs.

She carried the small bowl to the table, knelt on a chair, and poured some of the milk from one bowl to the other. She would not waste it. She could use it another night. She found an egg in the larder and added it to the meat. Then salt, pepper, paprika. Then, carefully, she mushed the whole thing up with her hands, the way Momma did. When she had finished, she examined it. It didn't look just like Momma's. There were big white lumps from the roll. She worked on it again, and finally just gave up. Then she formed the mixture into four good-sized balls, and washed her hands. But the fattiness would not come off in the cold water. She wiped her hands on the towel, and put water in the kettle, and set it over the grate. The fire was hot now.

Then she set the table, trying to do it the way Momma used to in the old days. But the napkins and their rings were gone, and so was the white damask tablecloth. She found some old napkins in the back of a shelf, and placed them on the aged tapestry cloth that covered the table, set out plates and flatware. They had only the old stuff, but in the dim light it looked all right.

When it was really dark, she put the carrots on the part of the stove that was medium hot and peeled some potatoes. The water was boiling, but now she didn't need it: her hands weren't greasy anymore. So she put that aside for the coffee. She washed the potatoes and put them in a pot and covered them with water. She added salt and put them over the hot part of the grate. She was quite damp now, on her face and even a little bit under her arms. She considered the potatoes: she liked mashed potatoes, but she wasn't exactly sure how to prepare them. They would have to have boiled. She looked in the bin and found a scallion, and tried to peel it, but when she did, there was almost nothing left. So she gathered up the peelings and sliced those. She found the small skillet and took a tiny slice of butter from the plate in the larder, and put it in the skillet, which she placed on the warm part of the stove.

The carrots were slowly cooking, the potatoes were boiling, and the butter was melting. It smelled very good, and her mouth got full of saliva. She wondered how she had known to do all this. She was nervous, but somehow she knew she did know how to do it. She tried the potatoes with a fork, the way Momma always did, and when they felt soft, she took them off the hot part of the stove and put the big skillet on. She added a teaspoon of bacon fat to it. Then she tried to pour the water off the potatoes. But the pot was so heavy with all that water, and so hot—she had to hold it with both hands as she tilted it over the sink, and…Bella's heart stopped. The potatoes had slipped out too and were lying, broken and crumbled in the bottom of the sink. She stood still, near tears. Then, with a towel, she gathered them up again and put them back in the pot—all of them, even the smallest crumb—and set it back on the warm part of the stove. She dropped the chopped scallions into the melted butter and picked up the meatballs gingerly and laid them in the big skillet. Immediately, they began to spatter and sizzle, and again her heart thumped. What did she do now? She moved them slightly away from the hot part but they still spattered. Her dress was getting grease spots on it. Momma would be mad. She was standing paralyzed when she noticed Momma coming through the door to the shop, her figure outlined by the lights from upstairs. Hurriedly, Bella put the carrots in a bowl, and found another large bowl for the potatoes. She tried to pour them in, but had the same trouble she had before, but this pot wasn't so heavy, so she just put her hand in it and scraped them out. She burned her fingers, but ignored that. She poured the buttered scallions over them, and had just got the two vegetables on the table when Momma opened the door.

“Hello, Momma,” she said shyly.

Momma looked at the table. She looked at the stove, where the meatballs were browning. She smelled the room. She looked at Bella. And Momma smiled.

M
OMMA SMILED. IT WAS
a weak smile, tired, wan, but there was something like gratitude in it, something like…it looked as if her eyes glistened. But that was probably only reflected light. Momma put her things on a chair and walked to the table with more energy than usual, and sat down less heavily than usual.

“Dinner's all ready, Momma. So I won't make coffee until later, all right?”

Momma nodded, and Bella set out the meatballs, and they ate. Momma said nothing. Bella recognized that the meatballs still had big lumps of bread in them, that they weren't exactly like Momma's, but she was hungry and ate with gusto. Also, the carrots had burned a little in the bottom of the pot, and the burned taste had seeped through to the others. But Momma didn't seem to notice, she was eating as if she were starved, and at the end she looked at Bella and said, “Good.”

Bella sat up with pride. Her face shone. After that, Bella had dinner waiting for Momma every work night.

My mother always did the cooking for the family. I cannot recall a night she didn't even when she was sick and had spent the day in her darkened room with cloths on her head. Even when I was twelve and she went to work and had to stand all day in high heels, she would come home and cook. She never asked me to do it, although she allowed me to help. I watched her as she had watched her mother, learning without knowing I was. She'd have me string the beans or remove peas from their pods, or peel potatoes, making sure to get every tiny bit of skin and eye.

Putting dinner on the table was the high point of my mother's day. She didn't say or do anything in particular, but you could feel it. She was always hot and tired and her face was always pink, and she was a little cross from all the work, but she laid the bowls of food, the platters, on the table the same way the priest put the host in your mouth—as if she were laying out something sacred. It was her gift to us, her gift of love. The table was always nicely set, even if the napkins were paper and we ate with the everyday flatware and dishes. And the food always looked pretty in the bowls, arranged, somehow, not just thrown in.