Up From Orchard Street (11 page)

I survived the scarlet fever, but as a result I developed rheumatic fever, or as the doctor put it, “a touch of rheumatic fever.” The phrase “a touch of” softened the blow for parents. My heart had a murmur, and there was minimal swelling in my joints. “Bed rest,” Dr. Koronovsky replied. “She can’t go to school for a month or six weeks.”

“Does she have a heart like Lil?” my father asked, worried.

“She’ll outgrow it. Lots of children do. When she returns to school, in bed immediately after. No lifting, no straining.”

The advice to rest, rest and more rest defined my childhood, or more accurately, brought me to a new level of mental activity. Uncle Goodman bounded into our house one day, huffing and puffing, under his arm a carton of books that his children had outgrown:
The Bobbsey Twins,
Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys
. After I finished reading my second Bobbsey Twins book, I told Bubby, “I can do that.” I was seven and about to start my first novel. But in order to begin I needed paper and pencil.

Bubby immediately ironed out the wrinkles from some old paper bags, cut off the tops and folded the bags to resemble little creased booklets. She sharpened the stump of a pencil with her kitchen knife.

The most curious thing about the Bobbsey Twins’ Thanksgiving holiday was the strange food. What were mince and pumpkin pie? I asked my mother. Lil pursed her mouth and answered, “I don’t know, ask Daddy.” My father replied, “Some goyisha dreck. Once I took one bite of pumpkin pie, in some diner near Wall Street. Feh! Orange glue with no taste.”

“And mincemeat?” I asked. “And giblet gravy?” I pronounced the
g
as in “give.”

“Why are you breaking your head over these things?” he asked, which meant he didn’t know the answers. “Just write what Bubby cooks in her kitchen. How could you go wrong with a Thanksgiving dinner like that?”

I covered five or six of my little booklets writing about the best Thanksgiving in the world with Bubby’s specialties. Unlike the Bobbsey Twins, we had no car, but I could describe the Goodman house and our visit to The Gypsy Cellar.

Dr. Koronovsky dropped in daily. After my rash subsided, I went back to sleeping at night in the folding bed rolled into the living room, but during the day I stayed in my parents’ bed, on which lay an inordinate output of stories on folded, brown paper bags. One day, viewing my bed as he listened to my heart with the stethoscope in his ears, Dr. Koronovsky inquired, “What are these brown papers? Why is the bed covered with them?”

“They’re my stories,” I answered.

He picked up one of my booklets at random and read my cramped writing, with as many words as possible covering the wrinkled brown paper. “Very nice,” he said, smiling. An hour later he returned with a gift for me—a fat notebook from Harber’s and a pencil box, complete with four number-two pencils, a gum rubber eraser and a pencil sharpener. On the front page of the notebook, he wrote in his scrawl, “To a good writer from her admirer, Mordecai Koronovsky.” I was stunned by this gift from our idol, our doctor.

My mother had a child’s reverence for presents and the pencil box overwhelmed her. Then I saw a frown cloud her pretty face and she tossed her blonde hair nervously.

“Doctor, I’d like to ask you something.” She formulated her words slowly. “What do you think about her reading so much? Do you think it’s bad for her?”

“Do you mean that she may need glasses because of the poor light?”

Lil fidgeted. Her green eyes were darkened by the gravity of her question. “I mean, what man will want to marry a girl who reads too much?” She hurried the words, stricken by her deep-seated perplexity.

In all the years that he had taken care of Jack’s weak chest and Lil’s weak heart before Willy and I had been born, Dr. Koronovsky confided his personal woes only to Manya. So it came as a surprise to us that on this expansive day of gift giving, he answered, “My fiancée is the medical librarian at New York University. She reads all the time. She’s charming.”

Characteristically, my mother blurted out, “But will you marry her?”

Quickly my grandmother led the doctor into the kitchen, exclaiming loudly as they went, “I baked two apple coffee cakes. One is for you and your sisters.” Once he was safely away from Lil, she asked softly, “Is it time for a mazeltov?”

“Soon, Manya,” the doctor answered. “I think soon.”

We talked about this subject for days. Was Dr. Koronovsky finally getting married, and how would his sisters adjust to his wife?

My father, who loved all women in the abstract, immediately wrote off the potential bride. “Did you ever see a classy librarian? They have no style, wear flat-heeled shoes, no makeup, and glasses.”

“What are you talking about? Those librarians from years ago? Then isn’t now,” Bubby protested.

“Then and now is the same,” Jack retorted. “Have you met a librarian with an M.R.S. in front of her name?” He glanced at my mother, sipping tea at the dining room table with her legs crossed, her high-heeled shoes enhancing her ankles. “A stunner like Lil he’s not getting.”

The conversation was cut short by that rarity, a delivery boy with a box from Macy’s. A card signed “From Flo and Henry” in Aunt Bertha’s handwriting lay atop the play clothes for me in the box. There was a light blue coverall appliquéd with white sheep in pink bow ties and a two-piece shorts-and-blouse set, white blouse and red shorts. My father, mother, Bubby and, finally, Willy fingered these unusual clothes. I weighed less than fifty pounds, and I had a leak in my heart, a skin slowly clearing of red spots and unabashed tears in my eyes.

In addition to the box of clothes there was another wrapped parcel containing a battery-operated game intended for Willy, called “Geography.” On one side were iron studs and questions beneath them. You pressed an electrical wire to the prongs on the other side to find the answer. Easy questions such as “How many states are there in the union?” required no battery-driven wires for answers. The dopey questions amused us the most: “How do you find the Rocky Mountains?” Answer: “Over small rocks that grew taller.” “What is the capital of California?” All of us cried out, “Hollywood.” Wrong answer: “Sacramento.” Sacramento? Where was that? My father replied with New York arrogance, “On some ranch somewhere in California.”

We loved the Geography game and played it by the hour—in fact, Willy and I were closer than we had ever been. He whistled for me every day, not just “Bye Bye Blackbird” or “Kiss Me Tonight in Dreamland,” but a tune that my mother sang faultlessly, “I’m forever blowing bubbles, pretty bubbles in the air.” It was a benign and wonderful period for everyone in the family, except that our restaurant business was experiencing a steady decline.

The Grand Canal Cafeteria could not be blamed, just our location. Increasingly busy shoppers from uptown wouldn’t enter our hallway. If they asked for the bathroom, they would be too horrified to use it, no matter how spotless. Customers had to wash their hands at the kitchen sink and hot water came from the kettle on the stove. No one faulted the cooking or the service, but to an uptown clientele the private restaurant in a tenement proved neither appealing nor, to many who were directed to us, acceptable.

One Sunday, we had exactly two women customers for lunch. Both were slumming for downtown bargains; both adored the food and recoiled at the surroundings. Bubby sighed more than usual that day and, for once restless, Willy donned his slick long jacket and went across the street to stand in front of the Mathias Hat Shop, one of his most beloved stores. He liked to peer into the window, staring at the hats. I was sitting in the living room window, watching him, when I saw Shirley Mathias, the owner’s daughter, come out from the skinny space between the stores. She carried a board from one of the hat crates and without any warning, she whacked Willy over the head. He fell to the ground, howling. Red blood gushed from his ear.

Crowded Canal Street heard Willy’s cry of pain. Every merchant on the street rushed out, and each one yelled, “Manya! Manya!” Bubby was headed for the street in an instant and she ran to Willy’s side faster than I thought possible. But Mathias, the store owner, ran even faster, putting his fingers between his teeth to whistle as he ran toward the El in search of a taxi. Before I could think about joining them, my bloodied brother and Bubby were hustled into a taxi.

I assumed they were on their way to Dr. Koronovsky, but Mathias yelled up to me standing at the window, “Koronovsky is uptown. They went to the hospital for stitches.” He darted back into his store. First I cried, then I waited. After an hour I drew a sweater over the frail nightgown I wore, one of my mother’s, cut off at the bottom and not hemmed.

It had been more than a month since Goodman carried me into the house, more than a month since I had been outdoors. My legs were weak, and my head swam from the effort of descending two flights of stairs. Slowly I made my way into the street. Had a tour bus observed me, would the driver announce that I was the Little Match Girl or an abandoned child wandering in rags? Jacob, in the clothing store below, was waiting on a customer when he spied me. “Darling, the telephone is in the back. Just pick up the receiver and ask for the number.” I did exactly that, calling my father at Farber’s Ladies Coat and Suits. He answered on the fifth ring.

“There’s been an accident,” I shouted, unaccustomed to a phone. “Willy and Bubby are at the hospital. Willy needs stitches on his ear. Shirley Mathias hit him with a board.”

“As soon as possible, I’ll be home. We have lots of customers,” he said urgently. He hung up.

Finished with the phone, I returned slowly to the apartment. No one offered to help me. It was Sunday, a big day for business on the Lower East Side.

I had to lie down from the exertion. My legs shook. Never had I been in the apartment by myself. No neighbor came to inquire about me.

I must have fallen asleep because it was dark when the silence of our apartment compelled me to leave the bed. Turning on the lights in every room, I could feel my heart pounding through my nightgown. Jittery, nervous, I listened for every sound. At last, the slam of a car door, a taxi. I stood on the landing yelling, “Bubby? Bubby?”

She carried in Willy, his head completely bandaged, his left ear thick with tape. He had been given something for pain and slept, claiming the place of honor in my parents’ bed.

Like crows, the neighbor women gathered when they heard Bubby arrive. “Twenty-three stitches,” she told them. “He could have lost his ear.”

“So why does he go there? Why does he stand by Mathias? Why does he go by someone who don’t want him?” Mrs. Feldman asked.

“Libbe,” Bubby answered.

“Libbe?”

“Er hut lieb Shirley Mathias.”

A bomb exploded in my head and heart. The instant the neighbors left I cried out, “How can Willy love that terrible girl who told everyone I had been left back when I wasn’t? Who hit him with a board that had nails in it?”

“If we knew the answer to why we love someone,” Bubby said, “we wouldn’t need a philosophe.”

We couldn’t continue our conversation because two of my mother’s brothers, who had heard about Willy when they were playing handball in Hester Park, came to give advice. George, at seventeen, was in training for the prize money in a Golden Glove competition, and danced around the bedroom, jabbing with his fists as if he were in the ring. He told the bandaged Willy, “I’ll buy you some boxing gloves. I’ll teach you to box. Like Georges Carpentier.” He pronounced the name “Georg-es Carpenteer.”

Abe, two years older, had wiser counsel. “We thought we would take up a collection at the social clubs where Lil used to sing, so we could give you the money for a telephone. You need a phone. To call doctors, to call Jack and Lil at work.”

My grandmother cringed at the word
collection
. Arriving exhausted after Division Street closed down, my parents heard every detail about the assault, the long wait in the emergency room, the twenty-three stitches, Abe’s offer of a collection for a telephone. The next day my father called the telephone company and requested Orchard 4-2333. He asked for and received the number in honor of the number of Willy’s stitches. For him, it was a lucky omen. He bet 233 in combination. It won ten dollars.

8

The Wedding

IN THE ENTRYWAY to 12 Orchard Street were our rusty mailboxes, some without lids, none with a name. We had had our name written in my father’s elegant scroll and pasted on the first box, but the rain, the snow, the winds and the heat curled the paper and inevitably it fell to the floor. After a while, the mailman stuffed the gas and light bills for everyone’s apartment into our box, along with an occasional letter from the old country—we ourselves received mail from Odessa relatives every nine months. My job was to bring up the mail and deliver the bills or letters to each tenant in the building.

I loved the top floor, the fifth, because the skylight let in beams of light, murky or sunny as the case might be. The first time the Polish woman on the top floor, Mrs. Rosinski, invited me into her apartment I was filled with wonder and fear. As soon as I stepped into the kitchen I beheld pictures tacked to every inch of clear space: of the Virgin Mary, of Jesus on the cross, Jesus with a halo of gold, Jesus weeping, Jesus in rags and sandals, holding a staff, Jesus extending an upturned hand, Jesus in the clouds. Cut from magazines, faded, the edges of the paper ragged, they covered the walls and cupboard doors.

To show me how much she appreciated my mail delivery—a letter from Poland—Mrs. Rosinski took my hand in hers and drew me into her tiny front room, with a sewing machine where she stitched men’s work trousers paid for by the piece. The most festive item of furniture was a small table on which she kept a crèche, a ceramic nativity scene, the year-round. A candle in a battered tin cup burned in front of it. Two or three rosaries hung from a nail hammered into the wall. I could have cried at her poverty. A stack of men’s trousers lay on a neatly cut slab of cardboard. In front of the altar I recognized a piece of carpet that had once been in my parents’ bedroom; Bubby had given it to her.

She said one of the few words she knew in English, “Nice?”

“Very nice. Beautiful.”

I longed to escape, to be downstairs, surrounded by food and people and our Persian rug and the embroidered shawl, and away from the eyes of Jesus whom we had been taught to fear. Simultaneously, I wanted to fill her empty counters with the riches from our kitchen.

She must have sensed my thoughts because she smiled at me tenderly, “Manya nice, you nice.” She bent to hug me.

Bubby smelled of food; my mother of Coty’s powder and Chanel No. 5. Mrs. Rosinski smelled of poverty, a slightly sour breath, the perspiration under her tired arms, the iron odor of the men’s work trousers.

“I hope your letter is nice,” I said. Like many who spoke English poorly, her understanding exceeded her ability to express herself. She walked me to the door and waited until I descended the steps. “I’m okay,” I called up to her. After that experience, every week I made sure that Mrs. Rosinski was fed.

One afternoon Mrs. Feldman leaned against the kitchen wall as I ladled some bean, barley and flanken soup into a jar. “To that Polish woman you’re giving soup? They kill Jews.”

“In every country someone kills Jews,” I retorted, “but Mrs. Rosinski is not one of them.”

“Don’t begin with her,” said Bubby, laughing. “Don’t begin with my grandchild. She’s a brenfire.”

The telephone in our dining room had the status of a rare art object but its glory faded in the glamour of what I discovered in our dilapidated mailbox: a large square envelope, its flap edged in gold, addressed to “Manya Roth and Granddaughter.” I took the steps two at a time and yelled, “Bubby, it’s a special letter for both of us.”

We opened it carefully, making sure that the gold trim did not tear. The invitation read:

MR. AND MRS. WALTER HESS
REQUEST THE PLEASURE OF YOUR COMPANY
AT THE WEDDING OF THEIR DAUGHTER
PHYLLIS ANNE
TO MORDECAI ABRAHAM KORONOVSKY, M.D.
CEREMONY EXACTLY 2 P.M., MAY 3, AT 682 GRAND STREET
INTIMATES ONLY
THE COUPLE WILL LEAVE IMMEDIATELY
FOR PARIS, FRANCE, ON THE ILE DE FRANCE

On the bottom Dr. Koronovsky had scrawled, “Manya, you will be our honored guest. Thank you for encouraging me to do this. Please bring my favorite patient, your granddaughter.”

I began to screech, “Bubby, can we go, can we go, can we go?”

“Ich ken dus nischt glaben,” she replied.

“Why can’t you believe it?”

“Because of his sisters, because his bride is an uptown girl, because he’s having the wedding in his house, because, because . . .
alles,
everything!”

“What about Mother and Daddy, what about Willy?”

“They aren’t invited. It’s for family and a few friends.”

“Aren’t Mother and Daddy friends?”

“Yes, but in a different way. I knew Koronovsky when he studied to be a doctor, when he would laugh at me for using bonkas, those red-hot cups on your father’s chest for his weak lungs. Who taught me to be a good nurse if not Koronovsky? Who kept my secret about me and Mister Elkin?”

Bubby sighed, “I’m happy for him. It’s coming to him, this happiness.” She fanned her face with her apron. “The world doesn’t stand still. It goes too fast.”

“What do you mean, Bubby?”

“Mathias the hat man is moving to Battery Park, Koronovsky is getting married, Goodman is making wallets. Then there’s my restaurant . . .” Her eyes met mine. “Do they think I don’t understand? Everything has to end. I want a few more years. Just a few. I’m not giving up yet. It’s too soon.”

“We’ll have business. We will. And Bubby, can we go to the wedding? Can we go?”

We heard the sound of shortness of breath from climbing the stairs that characterized my mother’s entrance. “Whose wedding?” she asked.

“Dr. Koronovsky to Phyllis Anne Hess. Here’s the invitation. It’s for Bubby and me. Just the two of us.”

Bubby waited while my mother scrutinized the invitation. “What does this mean, ‘intimates only’?”

“That means family and a few friends,” I offered. “They’re going to Paris for their honeymoon.”

My grandmother may have been on the verge of relating the news with more diplomacy when my mother lashed out, “That’s enough from you, blackness.”

Blackness! Did the word come from the expression “Ah schwarz yur”? From the color of my hair? From the fact that I had pneumonia almost at birth and was expected to sink into black oblivion? Involuntarily I shuddered. Bubby signaled me to remain silent.

But Lil was no longer concentrating on me. She called Ada Levine, who had a telephone installed a few weeks after ours. Especially when agitated, Lil tended to shout on the phone. “Dr. Koronovsky is getting married! And listen to this. Jack and I were not invited. Only Manya and her granddaughter.”

Dr. Koronovsky’s wedding became the talk of the entire Jewish ghetto and of Little Italy as well—more than once he had stitched up the wounds of Italian teenagers slashed on the streets. Remarks of wonder at the doctor’s sudden acceptance of matrimony were tinged with envy directed at me. No one questioned my grandmother’s right to attend, but why I should be singled out remained a mystery.

I stayed out of Lil’s way, since the discussion centered on Bubby’s outfit for the wedding. In bed at night I spoke to her in whispers, not once daring to ask what I would wear. At every store that sold food to Bubby and with customers at our restaurant, the same question was asked, “Nu Manya, you bought already a goldenah dress? You know how to dress swell?”

“Ah zayvah gut in Odess, like God in Odessa.”

Lil spoke to Aunt Bertha about Lane Bryant’s for Manya’s dress.

“Lane Bryant?” Aunt Bertha cried with distaste. “That’s for old women. Manya has to look like a fashion plate.”

Uncle Goodman suggested that they try the fancy department store that he called Bergdorf
and
Goodman. Like so many whose names were similar to those in high places, Uncle Goodman convinced himself that he was related to the department store owners, though he hadn’t troubled to find out.

Lil and Aunt Bertha began on Thirty-fourth Street, and made their way to Fifth Avenue, searching for the dress for Bubby—nothing on Clinton, Delancey or Fourteenth Street would do for this event. They ventured into Bergdorf Goodman without success. Day after day my mother returned, exhausted but enthralled, to describe dresses of satin, taffeta, lamé, organdy. Bubby cooked and baked, not once venturing uptown. She listened to my mother, nodded, assured her that she believed they would find the perfect dress, and kept herself apart, uninvolved. The search went on for one week, then two. Lil forgot her hurt at not attending the wedding and was consumed with a desire to show Dr. Koronovsky how “stunning”—my mother’s favorite word for clothing—Manya from Orchard Street could appear.

One day she and Aunt Bertha glided through our front door as if waltzing on air. The large box had the name of a specialty shop on Fifty-ninth Street stamped on it.

Aunt Bertha handled the problem of trying on the dress. “Manya dear, I’m sorry you don’t have a shower, but a little spritz with warm water would be nice. In case the dress doesn’t fit, you know what I mean. And also, your good corset, your fancy bra.”

While Lil took Bubby into the bedroom with hot water, soap, undergarments and towels, Aunt Bertha called Jack at Farber’s.

“I think this is it. Can you get away from the store for ten minutes?” Known as “a Jewish ten minutes,” this could extend for an hour and still be designated as ten minutes. Jack had the final say about the wedding dress, not as the nominal head of the family but as an artist.

My mother and grandmother seemed to be taking forever to come out of the bedroom. I wanted Bubby to resemble Cinderella—a touch of a magic wand and she would emerge transformed, a princess.

Aunt Bertha called out, “Jack is here,” and my mother answered, “We’re ready.”

Out stepped Bubby. The dress fell from the shoulders to her ankles. The underslip of pale blue taffeta and the dress itself, gray lace, had hemlines of scalloped edges. The blue of the slip enlivened the gray lace while the long sleeves had the same scallops as the hem. Bubby’s hair was done up in a braided tiara. She wore the gifts from Mister Elkin: seed pearls and tiny diamond earrings.

Aunt Bertha burst into applause, but my father fought back his tears. “May Robson has nothing on you. You’ll be more beautiful than the bride.” He ran to kiss her on the cheek and then on the lips.

“Isn’t it stunning?” my mother asked.

“Stunning. Bertha, Lil, I couldn’t have done better myself. That dress is pure class.”

No one asked about the cost. Uncle Goodman’s treat.

One detail bothered my father—his mother’s black pumps. “Black pumps are good for the theater, for a visit to Yonkers,” he declared with frustration. “This is an evening dress and it needs an evening shoe. Gray satin, or light blue satin. Maybe with a small buckle.”

Lil thought the task of the new shoes would fall to her but Jack announced, “I’ll take care of the shoes.” He intended to consult Rocco.

Rocco owned Little Italy. His business included a shoeshine stand with three chairs, enclosed on two sides and covered with an awning; a spaghetti and meatball café presided over by his mother, whose features were identical to Rocco’s: straight nose, black hair low on the forehead and sprinkles of tiny moles on the chin. Rocco often insisted that I have a free shine, but the iron molds for the feet were wide apart, which meant holding down my skirt so the shoeshine man couldn’t stare at my underwear. Though I declined Rocco’s shoeshine, I did accept his mother’s meatballs, placed over spaghetti thick with chunky tomato sauce. Rocco called me “the kid,” and he would always urge me to accept a shine, or meatballs, or lemon Italian ices prepared by his uncle Nico across the street.

Since I had been raised in the restaurant business and recognized that chefs lived on compliments, I praised Mrs. Rocco’s meatballs lavishly, though the heavily garlicked tomato sauce with its unfamiliar spices was hard to swallow. I declined the butter but delighted in the dense ciabatta country bread served with my meatballs. And from that day to this I never tasted better Italian lemon ices, creamy and cool, the perfect antidote to the spaghetti sauce.

The neighbors on Orchard Street marveled that I took a chance on Italian food. The Orthodox condemned me—surely pork must have been hidden in those meatballs. But compared to the soggy tuna fish sandwiches on doughy white bread served at The Grand Canal, Mrs. Rocco’s home cooking had genuine appeal.

My father brooded about his mother’s lack of appropriate shoes for the wedding until Friday, when he took me with him to Rocco’s. Almost the entire block of Elizabeth Street consisted of bridal stores, all of them equipped with sewing machines to produce wedding gowns and dresses for bridesmaids, for flower girls, for confirmations. In Rocco’s shoe shop, a gnarled Uncle Salvatore, who spoke no English and whose fingers were rainbow-hued from dyes, devoted himself to coloring shoes.

Holding Bubby’s pumps in his hands—she had broad, short feet— Rocco showed them to Uncle Sal, who after much searching and grumbling, came up with a pair of evening shoes in my grandmother’s size. They were white satin with curved heels, flat at the bottom, bulging in the center, tapered at the top—European. Then Uncle Sal painted various shades of blue and gray dye on a sheet of white paper until Jack decided on the color combination he desired: a watery blue pastel. He sighed with relief. So great was his need for perfection that he would have remained in the shoe store until midnight if necessary to get the right shade, and here in less than an hour he had both the right size and the color.