Portraits
A Novel
Cynthia Freeman
ContentsI dedicate this to my daughter, Nini,
and my son, Shelly,
from whom I drew the inspiration.
CHAPTER ONE
J
ACOB WAS BORN IN
a village which is no longer on the map. History and war have changed that. But at the time, it was on the border between Poland and Germany. His father died when Jacob was three, leaving his mother, Esther, with two small children—a five-year-old daughter, Gittel, and little Jacob. But Esther was a woman of enormous strength and little time for sentimentality. After she buried the dead, dried the tears, she knew there was only one thing for a widow to do, and that was to get married. After a year of mourning, Esther Dubin Sandsonitsky met Yankel Greenberg at the house of Tante Chava. There they were married. What did love have to do with it? He provided a roof over her head and she provided him with a wife who cooked, cleaned and worked from morning to night.
She soon found that her marriage was not a happy solution, nor even an acceptable one to a woman of her pride and independence. Soon after the nuptials, Esther found herself not only pregnant, but a slave to Yankel and his three sons, who were uncouth, lazy and demanding. As Esther scrubbed away, she planned that as soon as the child she carried inside her was born, she would pick up and leave. A roof and a bed hardly warranted the kind of abuse she and her children took from Yankel and his sons. True, she didn’t have a profession, but one thing she could do was cook. She’d make a living and survive without the benevolence of Mr. Greenberg.
After the nine months passed, a son lay in her arms. When the circumcision was healed, she packed whatever belongings she had, stole the money Yankel hoarded under his mattress, took her three children and without a word she left. Logic made the decisions for Esther.
She deposited four-year-old Jacob with the family of a distant relative who lived in a small village in Poland. They were hardly overjoyed at having another mouth to feed, but as Esther handed them a few of Yankel’s zlotys their resistance seemed to soften. She assured them they need not worry, that Jacob’s board would be taken care of.
That night a bewildered Jacob cried as he lay on the thin blanket covering the floor in the corner, which was to be his for the next few years.
With Gittel and baby Shlomo, Esther boarded the train for Germany. Logic, however, did not replace her longings and regrets, and she sat up for two nights and days thinking about Jacob. But what could she do? What? It wasn’t easy being a woman in the first place. How could she take care of three children and work? She shoved aside the guilt, realizing there were no alternatives.
When they arrived in Frankfurt, they went directly to the small hut, on the edge of the city, where Esther’s parents lived. Fatigued and weary, she knocked at the door. The house seemed even smaller than she had remembered when she married Avrum Sandsonitsky and had gone to live in Poland.
After a few days of rest and reunion, Esther left Gittel with her family, knowing the little girl would be loved. It was different for a girl. Somehow Jacob would adjust. He was a boy and boys didn’t require the same attention or affection. Besides, her mother was too old and sick to take care of two small children. Amid a tearful good-by, once again Esther boarded the train, this time to Berlin.
For the first time in a long time, Esther began to think maybe God loved her a little, that He’d not forgotten she existed, for soon after her arrival she found a clean room with a kitchenette and, added to this windfall, the landlady fell in love with the baby. How lucky could Esther get? The landlady said she’d be overjoyed to care for the little one while Esther worked. In return for any
kinder gelt
, Esther could clean on her day off. She assured Esther the work wouldn’t be too difficult—the basement, windows, woodwork, kindling the furnace, a few more chores as they arose. The deal consummated, Esther immediately weaned baby Shlomo away from her breast. Heaven looked down on her once more, for within a week she found a job cooking in a kosher restaurant not too far from where she lived. Again, Esther had a plan.
The next year was dedicated to one thing—saving enough money so that she could go to America. She would go first with Shlomo, open a small restaurant, establish a home and send for her other children. Her frugality with her hardearned wages and the money she had stolen from Yankel finally brought about the moment of departure, and without a moment of indecision she quit her job, left Berlin, and returned to Frankfurt to see her family before setting off for America.
As Esther stood before her parents’ house, she felt a nervous quiver at the pit of her stomach. This would be the last time she would see her parents, of that she was more than sure, but this final, painful severing would mean a new and, Esther hoped, a better life for herself and her children. There were beginnings and endings. That’s what life was made up of.
E
STHER BECAME A PART
of the multitude of rejected humanity that waited in droves at Ellis Island. If the great American watchword was “Give me your poor,” then her dream had been realized. The disenfranchised of the old world stood on the threshold of the new, waiting to be embraced. They were weary, dirty, tired, bewildered people who had traveled a long distance from the lands of their birth. This promised land seemed as unprepared for them as they for it They were herded from one place to another and separated into different ethnic groups—Poles, Irish, Russians, Jews. It was little different from the cattle boat from which they had just disembarked.
The immigrations officer looked at Esther’s name tag pinned to her coat. Boy, this was a tough one. Sands-o-nit-sky? To hell with it. The name was stamped Esther Sanders.
What Esther found in America the Beautiful was a dark, rat-infested room on the fifth floor of a five-story building on Rivington Street. Poverty anywhere was ugly, but here it seemed unrelievedly so. At least in the village she’d left in Poland there was a tree, a little garden, a little space, a patch of blue sky, a
shul.
And Berlin had been heaven compared to this promised land. And for this she had dreamed, yearned, never spending a cent that wasn’t a matter of life or death. The heat, the stench, the crush of humanity seemed worse than in the ghettos of Europe. Here, everyone screamed at the fruit vendor for a penny, at the fish peddler for a pound and the butcher would steal you blind if you didn’t watch the scales every moment.
So this was the
goldeneh medina
. This was the place where the streets were lined in gold?
With Shlomo in her arms, she started to look for a store she could turn into a restaurant, but it seemed that half of the East Side was made up of restaurants. What they didn’t need was another one. Besides, when she found out what it cost to buy a stove and equipment, she knew it was out of the question. She couldn’t put her money into something so uncertain; if things didn’t work out she’d be penniless. No, she’d have to do something else to live on in the meantime. And so Esther went to work for Kreach’s Restaurant, where she all but collapsed during the summer standing over the steaming pots and worrying about her future. Things were not working out as she’d dreamed, and for once Esther’s hopes and plans were faltering. But at least Shlomo, thank God, was taken care of. In the same building where she lived, Esther became acquainted with a Mrs. Rubinstein, who had seven children. For five dollars a month, taking care of another one was no problem.
Esther had been working at Kreach’s for some months when she came through the back door at six o’clock one morning and heard wails of sorrow from Mrs. Kreach. Alarmed, Esther ran to Mrs. Kreach and looked down at the floor where Herman Kreach’s lifeless body lay. His eyes, still open, had a look of surprise. Esther unthinkingly took charge that day, helping Malka Kreach with the most immediate arrangements until the widow’s family finally came and took over.
When an exhausted Esther left at the end of the day, she knew it was only a matter of time before Mrs. Kreach closed the restaurant and Esther would have to search for another job. Or was it? Another plan began to take form in her mind, and with it, new hope that she might yet reunite her family.
After the mourning period was over, Esther approached Mrs. Kreach.
“Now that Herman’s gone, how are you going to run the restaurant alone?”
Malka winced at the mention of Herman’s name, then sighed deeply.
With tears she answered, “To tell the truth, I don’t know. In the meantime, maybe you should look for another job. I don’t feel well myself. To tell the truth, I’m lost without Herman.”
“You want to sell the restaurant?” Esther asked without preamble.
Bewildered by the suggestion, Malka simply stared. Sell, sell Herman’s sweat? Sell what Herman worked so hard for? Never took a day off except
Shabbes?
But she was too sick now to manage the restaurant, and besides, she knew little about handling money. Herman had taken care of everything, from the moment they had married, when she was fifteen and he seventeen. When they had set out to make their fortune in the land of opportunity, the opportunities they found had amounted to ten years of drudgery. With the untimely death of Herman, she was left without a penny in the bank, for they had only managed to live from day to day on the restaurant’s earnings. The future looked bleak. They had not been blessed with children who could have taken care of her in her old age. Malka sighed. Maybe a dollar in the hand was better than…