Orphan #8 (2 page)

Turning away from the window, she sighed. The boarders had left the room a mess, blankets tossed over couches, dirty clothes on the floor, their trunk gaping in the corner. She spent a few minutes setting the room to rights before coming into the kitchen. Harry had gone in to dress. Rachel was at the table, dropping pieces of stale bread into her cooling cup of tea and lifting them out with a fork. She pressed the dripping chunks of bread against the roof of her mouth with her tongue, squeezing out the tea and savoring the bread’s softness.

Visha was wrapping Harry’s lunch when he called to her from the bedroom. “Come in here a minute, would you?”

“You stay there now, Rachel,” Visha said, leaving the wrapped potato and pickle on the drain board. “I’ll be right back.”

“Yes, Mama.”

“Close the door, Visha,” Harry said. She did. He caught her before she could fully turn around, his hands sliding down her hips.

“Harry, no, I’m already dressed.” He grabbed a fistful of fabric in each hand and lifted her skirt to her waist. “You’ll make yourself late.” He steered her toward the bed, bending her over, pulling at her bloomers. “Rachel will hear!” Holding her down with one heavy hand, he guided himself into her with the other. It was Visha now who had to stifle a grunt. She turned her face into the mattress as Harry moved behind her. “You want another baby, don’t you?” The mattress swallowed her answer of yes, yes.

In the kitchen, Rachel finished her cup of tea, but there was still a piece of bread on the table. The teapot was empty. There was the kettle on the stove, the chair still pulled up to the sink. She looked at the bedroom door, knowing she should wait for her mother, but she wanted the tea now. She took the teapot from the table and, standing on the chair, set it on the drain board, lifted its lid, and put in a pinch of tea from the tin. Then, with two hands, she picked up the kettle like she’d seen her mother do a thousand times.

The kettle was heavier than she expected. When she tilted it, the spout hit the teapot and knocked it over. Her two hands still clutching the kettle, Rachel watched, helpless, as the teapot fell and shattered. Dropping the kettle back onto the burner, the water spit and sizzled in the flame. Startled, Rachel lost her balance. The chair teetered over, toppling her to the floor. For a second she felt like she couldn’t breathe. Then she gulped in some air and out came a scream like falling cats.

In the bedroom, Visha tensed at the sounds of breaking and
falling. She pushed up against the bed to stand, but Harry, not finished, held her down. Their daughter’s high wail carried over the transom. “Harry, enough, she’s hurt!” With a shudder, he pushed into her even deeper. When he finally pulled back, Visha stumbled to her feet, tugging her clothes into place over her slippery thighs.

Visha found Rachel on the floor, the chair on top of her. “Harry, come in here!”

Harry followed, buttoning his pants. He lifted up his screaming daughter and kicked aside the fallen chair. “What happened here? Is anything broken?”

Visha ran her hands over Rachel’s legs, bending knees and ankles, then lifted each of her arms, checking elbows and wrists. Rachel kept up a constant scream that never wavered in pitch as Visha examined her joints. “I don’t think so, Harry, she fell down is all.” Visha saw the shards strewn across the floor. “And look at my teapot! What did I tell you, to stay in your chair!”

Harry stroked his daughter’s hair, but now that she was in one of her fits nothing seemed to calm her. He handed her to Visha. “I got no time for this, already I’m gonna be late,” he shouted over Rachel’s screams.

“As if it’s not your own fault!”

Harry scowled as he yanked his jacket from its nail and shoved his fedora on his head. Visha, sorry for the harsh words, lifted her cheek to be kissed, but he turned away and headed into the hall.

“When you coming home?” Visha called after him.

“You know I got to finish all the cutting.” He paused in the doorway. “You just take care of this here. I’ll be home when I’m home.”

R
ACHEL WAS GROWING
heavy in her mother’s arms, her screams unnerving. Visha carried her daughter into the bedroom and sat her in the middle of the bed. “You calm yourself now.” She looked around for something that might distract Rachel, thinking of how Sam managed to settle her. Visha reached for the money jar on the dresser.

“Rachel, can you count these out for Mama? Then you can come do the shopping with me. I’m not angry about the teapot, I promise. Please?”

Miraculously, Rachel seemed willing to calm down. Stifling her sobs, she took the jar and dumped it on the blanket. Rusted pennies, dull nickels, sleek dimes, even a few quarters. She began to make little piles, matching like to like.

Visha backed cautiously into the kitchen. She sat down and took a few minutes to settle her nerves. Mrs. Giovanni peeked her head in from the hallway, a flowered kerchief tied over her hair.

“Can I help you, Visha?” she offered.

“Thank you, no, she’s quiet again.” Visha looked mournfully at the broken teapot. “See what she’s done.”

“You need a teapot to borrow?”

Visha shook her head, gesturing to a high shelf over the sink. “I’ll use the good one from my seder dishes.”

“I’ll come back to visit you later, yes?”

“See you later, Maria.” Visha swept up the broken pieces of crockery and put them in the scrap bucket.

“Look, Mama!” Rachel called from the bedroom. “Can we get a rye bread today?”

Visha went in and glanced over the sorted coins, totaling their
value. “Not today. Tomorrow when Papa brings home his pay we’ll get a fresh rye and some fish. But today there’s still the insurance man coming for his dimes, and a nickel for gas to make the soup, and another saved for tomorrow morning.” Visha dropped coins in the jar as she recited the list of obligations, then looked at what was left on the bed. “There’s enough for a yesterday’s loaf, some carrots, a meat bone. I’ve got still an onion. And some nice pickles, isn’t that right, Rachel?” On the first floor of their tenement was a shop where the pickle man tended barrels of brine and took in deliveries of cucumbers from a Long Island farmer; all the hallways of the building smelled of dill and garlic and vinegar.

Visha pocketed the coins and lifted Rachel down from the bed. “Come, let’s get you dressed so we can do our shopping.”

Passing through the kitchen, Rachel stopped and pointed at the wrapped bundle on the drain board. “Papa’s lunch!”

“Ach, see what you made him forget with your crying! Now what’s he gonna eat?” Instantly, Visha regretted the sharp words. Rachel’s lip pouted and began to tremble. Soon the wailing would start up again. “I’m not angry, Rachel. Don’t cry, please. Listen, how about we take it to him at the factory?”

Rachel clapped her mouth shut. She had never been to the factory. “Can I see where the buttons come from?” Most nights, Harry brought home an assortment of buttons twisted into a scrap of fabric, and it was Rachel’s job during the day to sit on the floor of the front room and sort them into piles by color and size.

“Yes, and the sewing machines and everything. Now, can you dress yourself do you think?” Rachel skipped into the front room, yanked open a drawer in the dresser she and Sam shared, pulled stockings up her legs and a jumper over her head.

Visha smiled at her plan, then hesitated. Harry had told her he didn’t want her coming to the factory. “A cutter is above the operators, Visha, you know that,” he’d explained. “I got to keep my respect. I can’t stop work just to show off my pretty wife.” But after last night, and this morning in the bedroom, wouldn’t he be happy to see her?

“So, Rachel,” she said, buckling the girl’s shoes, “you’ll be good?”

“Yes, Mama, I promise.”

“All right, then, we’ll bring Papa his lunch, and we’ll do our shopping on the way home.” The factory was a good walk from their tenement—Harry took the streetcar in bad weather—but today was a fine morning that promised winter was over for good. Visha held tight to Rachel’s hand as they pushed their way through the people crowding up to the pushcarts. They turned the corner and waited for the streetcar to pass, its hook sparking and snapping along the wire above. Crossing Broad Street, Visha lifted Rachel over a pile of horse droppings, then pulled her close as a delivery truck rumbled by, its big rubber tires taller than her little girl. Eventually Visha pointed to a brick building much bigger than their tenement. “There it is.” They hurried across the street as the policeman at the intersection whistled for traffic along Broadway to stop.

In the building’s lobby, Visha led Rachel to a wide door and stood still in front of it. “We have to take the elevator,” she explained. The door opened, sliding sideways, revealing a young man inside. Made to haul freight and workers by the dozen, the elevator car was bigger than Visha’s kitchen.

“What floor?” he asked as they stepped in.

“Goldman’s Shirtwaist.”

“Factory or offices?”

“Factory.”

“They’re on seven.” The young man pulled the door closed and the elevator began to tremble and shake. Rachel let out a little cry.

“First time in an elevator?” he asked. Rachel looked at Visha, who nodded for her. “Well, you did good!” The car gave a last shudder. “Goldman’s.”

Visha led Rachel into the din of the factory. The open floor was punctuated by iron poles that reached up to the ceiling. Without walls to block the big windows, the space was bright, dust and threads floating through streaks of sunlight. Long tables stretched across the floor, one sewing machine yoked to the next, at each a woman hunched over her work. Runners were moving around the factory, delivering pieces of cloth to the operators and picking up the baskets of finished goods at their feet. In the corner, some little girls sat on the floor, the younger ones threading needles and the older ones, eleven or twelve, sewing buttons onto the gauzy blouses piled around them.

The machines clattered and buzzed so loudly Visha had to shout in Rachel’s ear. “There’s Papa!” He was standing at the cutting table, his back to them. Above his head, pattern pieces edged in metal hung from the ceiling like peeled skin pressed flat. Rachel leaned forward, ready to dash at him, but Visha kept hold of her hand. “He’s cutting! The knives are sharp, we can’t surprise him.” Rachel shrank back; she’d already caused trouble once that morning. Together, they walked carefully past the sewing machines to the cutting table.

Harry looked around and saw them coming. His eyes darted over Visha’s shoulder to one of the operators, a pretty girl with a
lace collar buttoned up her neck. She met his gaze, hands frozen at the machine, her cheeks gone white. Seeing he’d put the knife down, Visha let go of Rachel’s hand. She ran a few steps and jumped into her father’s arms. He picked her up absently, watching the girl stand up from her machine. Moving as fast as she could down the crowded row, the girl ran across the factory floor and disappeared behind a door, the foreman chasing after her.

Visha was now standing in front of Harry, her mouth lifted for a kiss.

“What are you doing here?” he growled. She lowered her chin.

“We brought your lunch, Papa. You left it at home this morning.”

“She was so upset you left it, I thought she’d have another fit. I told her if she was good we’d bring it to you.” Visha offered the wrapped package.

“That’s fine, Visha.” Harry shoved the lunch into his pocket, grabbed his wife’s elbow, and steered her toward the elevator, carrying Rachel. “But I told you I got a big order, I don’t have time for this.”

Rachel’s lip began to tremble. “Aren’t you happy to see us, Papa?”

“I’m always happy to see you, little monkey, don’t get yourself upset. I just got a lot of work to do today. I’ll see you at home later.”

He set Rachel on her feet and left them to go back to the cutting table. When the elevator opened, it was crowded with crates full of wispy bits of cloth. “Maybe you could walk down?” the young man asked. “Scrap man’s here.”

Visha and Rachel went over to the stairwell and pulled the door in. On the landing of the stairs, a sewing machine operator was leaning against the wall, sobbing. She was merely a girl, Visha
thought, seventeen at the most, and Italian from the look of her. Visha wondered what tragedy had brought on her tears. She placed a hand on the girl’s shoulder but she threw it off with a shudder and ran back up the stairs. Visha shrugged and grabbed Rachel’s hand, guiding her down. It was dozens of steps, with a turn between each floor; by the time they reached the lobby, Rachel’s head was spinning.

Rachel’s arm hung heavily from Visha’s hand as they did their shopping: the butcher on Broad Street for the meat bone, the bakery on the corner for a yesterday’s loaf. From a pushcart in front of their tenement, Visha haggled over a bunch of limp carrots and some potatoes with sprouting eyes. Only when they entered their building and stopped at Mr. Rosenblum’s pickle shop did Rachel perk up.

“Look who’s here for brightening my day.” Mr. Rosenblum’s smiling eyes crinkled his face. He spoke Yiddish with most of his customers, but with the children he practiced his English.

“Mr. Rosenblum, we went to the waist factory!”

“You did? Did you like the factory? You going someday to work there with your papa?”

“No, I don’t want to work there. It’s too noisy, it makes the operators cry.”

“Ach, pickles never make for crying. Pick a pickle, Ruchelah.” Mr. Rosenblum lifted the wooden lid from a barrel of brine, and Rachel chose a big, fat pickle.

“Taste it,” he said. She took a bite, puckering her lips. “The more sour the pickle, the more better it’s good for you.”

“So good, Mr. Rosenblum, thank you.”

“And for you, Mrs. Rabinowitz?” Visha asked for half a dozen
pickles. Mr. Rosenblum gave her seven. “One for the boy,” he said, winking at Rachel. “So he shouldn’t be jealous of his sister.”

In their apartment, Visha gave Rachel a slice of the newly purchased bread. “Look here, the middle’s still soft. Take it in front and work on your buttons. I’m going to make the soup now.”

In the quiet room, Rachel dragged the jar of buttons over by the window, where warm light stretched across the patterned linoleum. She reached into the jar and brought up a fistful of the little disks. She spread them out on the floor, then began sorting the buttons by color, dividing black from brown from white. Then she grouped them based on what they were made of: mother-of-pearl separated from ivory and bone, tortoiseshell from jet and horn. Last would be size, though Harry mostly brought home tiny shirtwaist buttons. Sometimes Rachel would find a burly coat button mixed in, so big she could spin it like a top. While she worked she recited the letters of the alphabet that Sam had taught her, all the way from
A
to
Z
.