The Dream (20 page)

I saw her still hesitating and a thought came to me suddenly. If Uncle Saul had told him about my bank account, then he could also have told him about Ma’s
money
under the mattress. ‘Ma,’ I said, ‘is your money still under the mattress?’

‘Yes, why do you ask?’

‘When’s the last time you looked?’

‘Two days ago, when I was changing the bed sheets.’

‘Go and look again.’ The more I thought of it the more likely it seemed. His coming home drunk right from work meant he’d had money to stop off somewhere. I started towards the bedroom myself. My mother ran ahead of me. I came in to see her lifting up the end of the mattress at the head and to hear her despairing cry: ‘It’s gone! It’s gone!’

Yes, it was gone and my hunch had been right. There was no question but that he’d taken it and in me there was bitterness at Uncle Saul’s betrayal. I told her all about my confiding in Uncle Saul and fury came on her face along with the despair. Now there was no longer any hesitation about leaving. ‘All right, we’ll go,’ she said. ‘If he can do this to me then I can leave him.’

We packed that evening and Sidney helped us willingly. I don’t think he felt as strongly about my father as I did, but I know that Ma meant everything to him as she did to me, and leaving suddenly like this to go to New York was fun in addition to everything else. He got his own things together and we got ours. We were only able to take relatively few of our possessions, leaving much behind that we would have liked to take but couldn’t.

We filled two suitcases that I carried, and I think my mother took the brass candlesticks that she had smuggled out of Poland, wrapped in newspaper and stuffed in a shopping bag along with a few other
household
treasures. I noticed that as we were leaving and about to close the door behind us for the last time she paused and gave a look backwards at the living room, the parlour, the big ugly piano that she thought was so beautiful, the couch and matching chairs that were paid off, the carpet, at the dream that had almost come true. At how close she had been to achieving it and now was forced to leave it all behind.

I could feel the sadness inside her, and the regret, and the uncertainty that lay ahead. Well, I felt some of it myself, but mingled with that was a sense of relief and almost joy at the prospect of living without my father and all the misery that he had caused us.

We went down the steps and out into the street. It was dark and not many people were about. I was glad of that. I didn’t want anyone to see us or to know where we were going.

Chapter Sixteen

WE WENT TO
New York by bus. It was the cheapest way to go and the buses ran often. In fact, there was one about to leave when we reached the bus station, and we rushed to buy our tickets and check our luggage. There were ample seats in the bus and we were able to get two, one behind the other. I sat in the one with my mother because I wanted to talk to her and Sidney had a seat alone behind us.

I knew how my mother was feeling and I wanted to comfort and reassure her. As soon as the bus started off I put my arm round her and said, ‘Ma, everything is going to be all right. I’ve got money in the bank and I’ll send for it as soon as we reach New York, and in the meantime I’ve got a few dollars in my pocket that’ll tide us over, and Joe will be there to help us. As soon as we reach a stop I’ll send him a telegram to meet us in New York.’

‘I’m not worried,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a few dollars in my pocketbook too. The only thing that worries me is your job. You’ll lose that and it was such a good job. And you were able to save money for college.’

‘Ma,’ I said, ‘it wasn’t such a good job’, and I told her of all the things I had been keeping from her, the dullness, and the monotony, and having to stand on my feet for hours at a time, and the scheme I had to learn. ‘I’m not sorry I lost it, Ma,’ I added. ‘I don’t think I could have stood it much longer anyway. And I think they would have fired me before I quit.’

She listened and sighed. ‘And I was always thinking it was such a good job and you liked it.’

‘No, I didn’t,’ I said. ‘But that’s not the important thing. I’ll get another job in New York. There are plenty of jobs. And eventually I’ll be able to go to college, too. The important thing is we’ve got rid of him. It’s something you should have done a long time ago.’

‘I know,’ she said slowly, brooding a little, ‘I thought of doing it so many times, but I couldn’t. You know why.’

‘Yes, I know why. We talked about that before. That’s all past history. You don’t have to worry about taking care of your children any more. It’s time your children took care of you.’

‘There’s only you,’ she said.

‘And Sidney.’

‘He’s only eight.’

I gave a glance behind. Sidney was absorbed in a puzzle I had bought for him some time ago and that he had chosen to take along as one of his most treasured objects. ‘He’ll grow up,’ I said.

‘Yes, I know. But in the meantime there’s just you.’ She seemed still to be brooding and thinking of something that troubled her.

‘What’s wrong with just me?’ I asked.

‘You might meet some girl and you’ll want to get married and have a family of your own.’

‘Oh, come on, Ma,’ I protested. ‘That’s a long way off – if it ever happens. You’re not worried about that, are you?’

‘I’m not worried,’ she said. ‘Why shouldn’t you meet some nice girl and get married? But it might happen and I wouldn’t want you to feel tied down to me.’

I understood now what all the brooding had been about. She had been looking ahead, far ahead, and seeing nothing but uncertainty lying in front of her. All her life it had been that way, from the very day she had been born. With both her parents dying while she was still an infant, with poor relatives haggling over her disposition, not wanting to add to their own already crushing poverty, how else could it have been?

My heart ached for her. I drew her closer to me and said, ‘Ma, I’m going to make you a promise. No matter what happens, I’ll never leave you alone. I’m going to look out for you as long as I live.’

She started to cry and stopped herself, trying to smile. ‘It’s good of you to say that,’ she said. ‘But I don’t want you ever to spoil your life on account of me. Just remember that.’

‘All right, Ma,’ I said. ‘I’ll remember it. But right now stop worrying. You’ve done something that should have been done a long time ago, and we’re all going to be happier for it. Oh, what a relief it’s going to be to wake up in the morning and find he’s no longer in the house. How wonderful it’s going to be not to awaken in the middle of the night and hear him coming home drunk. And never to have to see that dark, glowering face and hear his snarling voice.’

She gave a little laugh and wiped her eyes with a handkerchief at the same time. ‘I feel that way too. I should have done this a long time ago.’ Then after a brief pause, she added, ‘It’ll be a big shock to him when he comes home and finds us gone.’

Was she, in spite of everything, worrying about that, I wondered? ‘Let it,’ I said. ‘He’s given us plenty of shocks.’

She said nothing, and the bus rolled on and the landscape flashed past us, and I wondered if somewhere inside her there wasn’t pity for him and a touch of regret about the whole thing.

The first thing I noticed about Joe when he met us at the bus station in New York was that he looked much older than when I had seen him last time. His hair had thinned so that he was partly bald and there seemed to be a worried look etched on his face with several deep lines on his forehead.

My mother must have noticed it, too, because as he embraced her and she kissed him, she looked up at him anxiously and asked, ‘Are you all right, Joe?’

‘Yes, I’m all right,’ he said.

But he wasn’t, clearly. We would not find out until later that there was every reason for the changed look in him. Things were not going well with him. He was having trouble making a living. He had tried various things, even working for his wife’s father, who had bought a gas station in Brooklyn, and he had suffered badly in the attempt to become an auto mechanic. He was clumsy with tools and he wasn’t accustomed to hard physical work. He’d been forced finally to go back to selling magazine subscriptions door to door, but it was
not
the same as it had been in Chicago. Or was it that times had changed and people did not have the money they used to? He did not know, but it was getting harder and harder to sell, and on top of all that Rose was now pregnant, in her sixth month in fact, and soon there’d be a child to take care of.

At the moment they were living with his in-laws in an apartment in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, and he was going to take us there first before taking us to the room he had rented for us in a nearby apartment that belonged to his wife’s aunt.

But there was something else, something behind that worried look on his face that he could not tell us at the first moment. It was not until the two of us were alone and we had gone to get our suitcases from the check room that I found out what it was and it left me stunned. He whispered it to me even though the one he did not want to hear, my mother, was not there.

‘Lily’s dead.’

I simply stared at him, while an eruption of emotions went on inside me. I could not believe what he had said to me. But it was a cold, hard fact. He had received a letter from Arthur this morning. We had probably received one too in Chicago. Lily had died suddenly of a heart attack. Arthur had barely been able to write this news with all his grief.

It must have been very difficult for Arthur to write this letter. Joe showed it to me afterwards. The pain and grief showed in the unsteady handwriting, and there were damp spots blurring the ink here and there. He could have been crying as he wrote it. He told us something that we knew already, that Lily had had rheumatic fever
as
a child and that had weakened her heart. She had been ill for some time before the fatal attack came, but they had not wanted to tell us about that, knowing how it would affect my mother. We would learn later that the Forshaws were taking care of the baby.

‘You mustn’t tell Ma yet,’ Joe said.

How could I, if I had wanted to? What would she have done? Gone out of her mind? Somehow, I couldn’t help thinking that she would instantly connect it with her having left my father. Would she think of it as a sort of punishment? God’s punishment?

We got the two suitcases and with Joe carrying one and me carrying the other we went back to where Ma and Sidney were waiting for us. We took the subway to Brooklyn. It was our first ride in one of these underground trains and we sat in a packed car, having been fortunate in finding seats for all of us. It did not, however, take my mind off what Joe had told me and I was in a daze the entire time.

I was not in a much better state of mind when we arrived at the place where Joe now lived with his in-laws, the Alters. I do remember feeling some surprise, similar to the time when we had first come to my grandmother’s flat in Chicago. The Alters were business people, they owned a gas station, they had to be well off. The name Brownsville itself had suggested quiet, pleasant, rural surroundings, but the place was one vast city slum with block after block of tall, grimy tenements. They lived in one of these tenements and Joe led us through a dark, odorous hall and up well-worn stairs to a flat on the fourth floor, just one floor below the top.

And, the moment we entered there were smells and
noise
and seemingly swarms of children of different ages, from a toddler still in diapers and up to Rose herself, the oldest in this huge family, with her smiling face and swollen belly. Mrs Alter was frying lamb chops, and she lifted a harassed face from the stove and came forward to greet us, holding a frying pan in one hand, welcoming us as best she could.

There seemed to be numerous rooms in the place also, and one of them was Joe’s and Rose’s. He did not offer to take us in there and show it to us, but it had to be small and dark and cramped, and soon there would be another one to occupy it with them. I think my mother was appalled at everything she saw, at knowing this was where her son lived, but she did not give her feelings away and smiled through everything, and watching her I thought, oh God, I have to tell her, and she will not be smiling then.

Despite the noise, the crowding, the surroundings, we were glad to accept Mrs Alter’s invitation to stay for dinner. We had not eaten a good meal in the two days it had taken us to come from Chicago, and the lamb chops she was frying smelled good to us, despite the smokiness that came from them and filled the house. I don’t know how many sat at the table, but our shoulders touched, so close were we sitting to one another. Mr Alter had also arrived, together with the two sons who worked with him in the gas station, all three in grease-stained denims, with smudged faces and blackened hands. We had to wait until they had washed and changed into clean clothes, and then the meal began, and by that time we were starved for it.

We left almost as soon as it was over, thanking our
host
and hostess for their hospitality, they in turn expressing regrets at not being able to put us up. The regret was genuine, they were nice, kind-hearted people and it gave my mother some reassurance as to Joe’s welfare. There were many things that left much to be desired, but there was no question that he was being well cared for. And on the whole we were glad that there had not been room to put us up. The noise, the crowding, would have been too much for us. We were very tired.

Joe led us over to where we were to stay, only a block or two from his own building and in a similar kind of tenement, this one with two wide steps leading to the entrance. Then up two flights of dark, worn stairs to a door that was opened by a short, squat woman who resembled Mrs Alter very closely. She was her sister, a widow who lived alone in a dark, poorly ventilated and narrow flat that had two bedrooms, one in which she slept, the other rented out to us.

Joe left us almost immediately, but in doing so exchanged a look with me that asked if I had yet told our mother about Lily, and me shaking my head. I was putting it off until what I considered the proper time and I did not quite know when that would be, although I knew for certain this was not the time. We were all worn out and couldn’t wait to get to bed. We had been travelling on the bus for two nights in succession and had hardly slept. Our room had two beds, one a single, the other a double, so the arrangement was simple. Ma would sleep in the single, Sidney and I in the double.