Threads and Flames (21 page)

Mrs. Kamensky was peeling potatoes in the kitchen with Brina when Raisa came bursting into the apartment like a whirlwind of joy. “I did it!” she shouted, sweeping Brina into the air and twirling wildly. “I did it, I did it! I got a new job, and you'll never guess where, and—”

“And the baby is going to throw up all over my clean floor if you don't put her down right now and stop acting like a wild thing.” Mrs. Kamensky took Brina out of Raisa's hands firmly and cooed, “Are you all right, sweetheart?”

“Again!” Brina cried, trying to wriggle out of Mrs. Kamensky's arms and back to Raisa.

“So, where is this new job?” Mrs. Kamensky asked while keeping an unbreakable hold on Brina.

“Triangle, that's where!” Raisa collapsed onto one of the kitchen chairs. She thought she would never be able to get the smile off her face as she told Mrs. Kamensky and Brina the whole story. “Madame nearly tore my head off when I got back. She thought I'd slipped away to see a boy. You don't want to know the names she called me!”

“I can guess,” Mrs. Kamensky said drily. “And what did you call her?”

The question took Raisa by surprise. “Her? Nothing. I don't start work at Triangle until next week, and I don't get paid where I am until Saturday. The old herring steals enough of my money without my giving her an excuse to take it all!”

Mrs. Kamensky nodded. “Gavrel is right, you
are
a smart girl. Now, can you also be a
good
girl and give an old woman a little pleasure?”

“Anything,” Raisa said and meant it. “What do you want me to do?”

“Don't say a word about the new job to anyone else until after dinner, when I bring out the dessert.”

 

 

That night, after serving a modest meal, Mrs. Kamensky stunned her family by emerging from the kitchen bearing a towering apricot torte for dessert, the rich golden cake crowned with clouds of sweetened whipped cream. The sight of so much extravagance at the dinner table lured Mr. Kamensky out from behind his newspaper to ask if he'd forgotten someone's birthday.

“It's for Raisa,” Brina announced. “But it can be my birthday, if you want.”

With a go-ahead nod from Mrs. Kamensky, Raisa shared her news. The apartment rang with congratulations.

“Oh, Raisa, this is so lucky! The three of us can all go to work together!” a delighted Fruma cried.

“Maybe not the
three
of you, for too much longer,” Mrs. Kamensky said coyly.

“Mama!”
Fruma sounded mortified.

Raisa was confused by her friend's crimson-cheeked reaction. She turned to Gavrel for some sort of explanation.

“Nothing much to explain,” he replied jauntily. “If a girl marries the right young man, it's good-bye and good riddance to shop work, and our Fruma is—”

“Gavrel, don't you dare say another word,” Fruma said in darkly threatening tones.

Gavrel raised his hands in surrender. “My lips are sealed. And now”—he lifted a forkful of cake halfway to his mouth—“they're unsealed again.” Between bites of the delectable dessert, he turned to Raisa and said, “You should get a new job more often. We'd eat like kings!”

 

 

Madame's screeches of outrage still burned in Raisa's ears as she bounced down Essex Street, looking into every store window she passed. The memory of the Ukrainian woman's furious face at the moment that Raisa pocketed her final week's pay and told her now-former employer that she wasn't coming back was like sweet honey on her tongue.

I'm free,
she thought.
I'm
free
! I'll never work for such a greedy, grasping, coldhearted creature again.
She turned a corner and ran the rest of the way to the building housing her shtetl's Protective and Benevolent Association. Her job at Triangle didn't start for two days. She knew exactly how she was going to spend them.

The man behind the desk in the association's one-room office recognized Raisa from her previous visits. His watery gray eyes lit up in response to her joyous greeting. “Ah! You've found her? Mazel tov!” he blurted before she could say anything more. “So where was she all this time?”

A little of Raisa's elation left her. “I don't know. I haven't found her yet.”

“Oh.” The man's big walrus mustache drooped. “I'm sorry, but when you came in here looking so happy, I naturally assumed—”

“I'm happy because I've got a good job now. It starts in two days. Until then—”

“Say no more!” He raised his plump hands. “I wish I had some news to give you, but we've already asked everyone from home if they've seen or heard of Henda. Have you considered putting an advertisement in the
Forward
?”

“I don't think I could afford it.”

“You know, this association shares resources with three others, representing the neighboring villages back home. We've asked all of them to keep an eye out for your sister. We even sweetened the pot with the offer of a reward.”

“A reward?” Raisa's eyes widened. “I can't pay a reward.”

“Not you, child. Reb Laski contacted us as soon as your first letter reached him, letting him know about Henda. He's a saintly man, openhanded and benevolent. The reward was his idea. If you write and ask him, he would probably send money for the advertisement, too.”

Raisa shook her head. “Reb Laski has already done too much for Henda and me. We can never repay him. Once I start my new job, I'll be able to save enough money to pay for the advertisement on my own.”
It's what Henda would do,
she thought staunchly.
It's what she'd want
me
to do, too!

“I know better than to argue with a woman.” A strong sigh riffled the walrus mustache.

After leaving the association office, Raisa trekked to the Educational Alliance, on East Broadway. On the way, she paused at Seward Park and watched the children having a grand time on the playground. They raced over the cinder-covered ground as though they were flying through the sweet green grass of a meadow.

What a nice place!
she thought.
I'll have to bring Brina here, and soon. I can't wait to see how much she'll enjoy it.
Imagining the fun Brina would have on the playground made Raisa smile
.

The Educational Alliance was an imposing brick building the color of a terra-cotta flowerpot. Raisa stood across the street, gazing up at the windows, unable to get herself to walk over and through the doors.

So big!
she thought.
How will I find anything in there? If I get lost and start wandering around inside, how will that look? Like I'm a stupid greenhorn, that's how! So stupid I can't even find my way to a classroom.

She thought back to the previous night at the Kamenskys' dinner table, when Gavrel took a sip of tea and said, “You know what else you should do, since you have a couple of days to yourself? Find someplace you can start learning English.”

“Gavrel's right!” Fruma chimed in. “The Educational Alliance gives night classes.”

Raisa shook her head. “At night, I'm too tired to do anything but sleep.”

“Not anymore. Not once you start the new job. Trust me, once you're free of that Simon Legree you work for, you'll have the energy to go out after work and do something besides collapse like a house of cards.”

“Who's Simon Legree?” Raisa asked.

Fruma promptly told everyone at the table the story of
Uncle Tom's Cabin
and the poisonous villain of the book. Her enthusiasm was so catching that her father let the
Forward
drift to one side while he listened. Mrs. Kamensky wept over the death of Little Eva and insisted on hugging Brina to her bosom for the rest of the story. Then Fruma recounted Uncle Tom's death, and Brina buried her face against Mrs. Kamensky's chest, whimpering.

“Now look what you've done,” Mr. Kamensky grumbled at his daughter, while Raisa and his wife did their best to comfort the child.

“It's only a book,” Fruma protested. “And an old one, at that. We read it when I was in school.”

“It's a
wonderful
book,” Raisa said. “You almost had me crying, too, Fruma.”

“I was only telling the story,” Fruma replied. “It's much better the way Mrs. Stowe wrote it.”

“I wish I could read it.” There was true longing in Raisa's words.

“You can if you learn English,” Gavrel cajoled. “And
lots
of others.”

“Well ...” Raisa was deeply tempted. She remembered how much better Zusa's shipboard reading lessons had gone when they studied from
The Wishing-Ring.
For her, some reading was like stumbling through a rocky field, but a good story could lift her from her feet and send her sailing after it like a kite on a string.

Those times seem so far away,
she thought.
Zusa and Luciana and me, looking after Brina together, and now . . . just me. They're like Yitta and Avigal, out of my life, left behind. It would be so good to see them again! At least there's no ocean between us, and I
do
know where to find Luciana; I just need the time to do it. Maybe now that I'm no longer Madame's slave, I can look for Henda
and
my friends.

“Couldn't
you
teach her English, Gavrel?” Brina asked, wiping her nose on the back of her hand. Mrs. Kamensky tut-ted and rubbed the smear away with her own handkerchief while Brina kept on talking. “You know English. If you taught her, she wouldn't have to go somewhere else at night. I want her here!”

“Brina's right,” Raisa said. “That would be perfect.”

Gavrel shook his head. “Taking night classes would be better for you.”

“Why don't you want to teach her?” Brina persisted. “Don't you like being with her? Do you think she can't learn?”

“No and no and where do you get such ideas, little monkey?” Gavrel whisked Brina out of his mother's lap and bounced her on his knee until she giggled. “But I have to learn, too. I'm not going to spend my whole life cutting out pattern pieces at Triangle Waists. I'm going to be a rabbi one day! I go to my own lessons whenever I can. Your sister can't learn English if she doesn't have regular lessons
and
the opportunity to practice speaking it the right way.”

“Raisa's not my sister,” Brina said. “And I'm not a little monkey.”

“I beg your pardon, princess,” Gavrel replied with mock solemnity. “But you must acknowledge that she loves you as if you were her sister.”

“
Henda
is her sister.” Brina spoke to Gavrel with the patience of a teacher helping a struggling student with the most basic lesson in the world. “She has to find her.”

“And she will, I promise you. Learning English as quickly as possible will help her do that. It will let her go to many additional places where they might have information about what happened to Henda, but also where they don't speak any Yiddish at all.”

“Then
they
should learn Yiddish, and Raisa should stay home with me.”

Everyone laughed, making Brina indignant because she didn't see the joke. At last Gavrel stopped chuckling long enough to say, “But alas, princess, they refuse to do that, and we can't make them change their minds.”

“Oh.” Brina became thoughtful. “Then I think Raisa should go learn English. Then she can talk to the stupid people who don't know Yiddish, and they can tell her where to find Henda, and then we can all be together.” A momentary worry troubled her. “If Henda likes me.”

Now, standing on the sidewalk across from the Educational Alliance, Raisa remembered how she'd run around the dinner table to reclaim Brina from Gavrel and assure the child that Henda, too, would love her.
Gavrel's right,
she thought.
I
need
to learn English. But Brina's right, too—I wish he were the one to teach me.
She took a deep breath and crossed the street.

Raisa's first day at Triangle Waists was so different from her time in Madame's shop that at first she thought it was a happy dream. After breakfast, she walked with Gavrel and Fruma to the towering Asch Building, just off Washington Square.

“I wonder what Glukel would say if she could see me now, going to work in a place so high that I've got to ride an elevator to get there?” Raisa said happily. “I don't know if she'd be proud or scared.”

“Why should she be scared?” Fruma asked.

“The building's so tall, what if I got too close to one of the windows? What if I fell out, God forbid? What if this, what if that”—she shrugged—“you know.”