Chapter 2
My mother took the job and, right from the start, her new musician friends led her around a new bend and into the movement to help low-paid, immigrant garment workers.
One evening, during dinner, my mother asked my father to file a legal motion on behalf of the garment workers’ union.
“Elizabeth, my clients don’t want me working for the other side, the communist side.”
“No! It’s the side of people forced to work ten hours a day, six days a week.”
“Immigrants deserve better. But they’ll have to fight for it, the way I did.”
Both my parents made sense. I didn’t know whose side to take, so I took mine: I just wanted the arguing to stop.
It did, and I was glad.
Two days later, when I came home from school, two burlap bags filled with groceries were in our hallway.
“Ian, I’m taking the groceries downtown to a family whose father hurt his back and can’t work. I’ll help with your homework later.”
“After dinner you’ll have to go to work.”
“Do you want people to go hungry?”
I didn’t, and I also wanted my mother to know that because I too cared for poor people, she should still care deeply about me. “I want to go with you.”
“There are things your father and I think you shouldn’t see yet.”
“Dad already showed me pictures of dead soldiers. Besides, you shouldn’t go alone. There are a lot of bad people in Jewtown.”
“Where’d you learn that word?”
“In school.”
“I don’t ever want to hear you use it again.”
“I won’t. I promise.” I picked up the grocery bags and looked into her beautiful, sky-blue eyes.
She smiled.
We rode the elevated train to the Grand Street station. I picked up the bags of groceries and wondered what made some of the people in Jewtown bad. Did they kill strange people? Or did they just rob them? I wanted to turn back, but I didn’t want my mother to know I was scared.
My mother said, “The East River is this way.” We walked toward the river.
Grand Street was narrow and lined on both sides with people. The attached brick buildings on one side of the street blocked the sinking sun from shining on the bottom half of the buildings on the other side. Hanging on the front of the buildings were black, ugly fire escapes that looked like the mazes of a pinball game. To the immigrants, however, the fire escapes must’ve looked more like porches. A lot of people sat on them.
Tied to the fire escapes, sloping across buildings, were clotheslines. Hanging on the clotheslines like big leaves on a vine were shirts, pants, sheets and towels. Hanging below the big leaves were canopies. The canopies shaded big store windows. On the windows were big Jewish and English letters. The English letters spelled store names like Weinstein’s Fine Men’s Clothing, or Moe Cohen’s Fabrics.
I looked at the men on the street and saw yarmulkes and old, too-big or too-small suit jackets. I saw long hair and long beards, and I thought the Lower East Side was a good place for Santa Claus to hide. But soon I also saw derbies and well-tailored suits and faces without beards. In some of those faces I saw dark eyes, dark complexions and dark mustaches. Suddenly I saw the faces of sunburned pirates.
But the men, I knew, weren’t pirates. I didn’t have to run.
I looked at the women and saw shawls, kerchiefs and faded dresses. I saw wrinkled, sagging faces that looked like the opposite end of beauty, but then I saw smooth, young faces. In some of those faces I saw beautiful eyes and smiling, pretty lips that, for a second, I wanted to kiss.
“Stop staring at people,” my mother whispered.
I stared at fat horses pulling old, rattling wagons. I heard people speaking in funny-sounding, foreign languages. Unlike beautiful, dueling piano melodies, the languages clashed. Was I in a present-day Tower Of Babel? Or just on a different planet?
We crossed Allen Street and turned onto Orchard Street and stepped into a flood of people. The flood had two currents: one flowing north, the other flowing south. Parting both currents were two long lines of peddler’s carts. The carts were filled with bread, fruits, nuts, vegetables, pots, pans, washboards, books, cloth, shoes, clothing, firewood and even sewing machines. Hanging on the food carts were the same scales I saw in uptown grocery stores. But the peddlers didn’t look or act like grocers. They wore old, dirty aprons and yelled loudly—the prices, I guessed. Around the carts were circles of yelling, pushing, arm-waving customers.
I was thankful we shopped in a real grocery store.
Above me someone laughed wildly. Two boys about my age stood on a fire escape and stared down at me. One boy raised his arm as if he was throwing something. “White face,” he said to his friend.
I pulled my mother back, and in my mind I suddenly saw a musket ball streaking right at me. The boy opened his hand. It was empty. He and his friend laughed again.
I was ashamed of having been afraid.
“What’s the matter?” my mother asked. “Do you want to rest?”
I wanted to get away from the boys. “No, not now.”
I walked into the current flowing north and struggled down the street. Finally, I put the bags down. People swirled around me and my mother as if we were boulders in a fast-moving stream. Wanting to go home, I picked up the bags and followed my mother to the middle of the next block.
“This is the building, Ian. Ninety-seven.”
It was a red brick building. The building’s metal steps led to a big, arched doorway. On each side of the doorway was a clothing store.
My mother and I walked up the steps and into a hallway that was long, dark, and about half as wide as a train. It reminded me of a spooky cave. At the far end of the hallway was a small, bright square of sunlight. The square was a small window.
The air was warm and stuffy, like invisible smoke. It was hard to breathe.
The walls were covered with burlap. Painted on the burlap were two round paintings, one of a house in the middle of a meadow, the other of a country stream.
I followed my mother up a staircase that was so steep and narrow I felt I was climbing a ladder. The steps creaked loudly, like the steps in a haunted house. The bags of groceries bounced off the wall and the railing and hammered my shins.
Wondering if I could make it up to the third floor, I looked at my mother. She smiled.
I told myself, Yes I can make it!
We reached the second floor. The groceries seemed to have turned into lead weights. I gritted my teeth. Though all the apartment doors were closed, I smelled the aroma of cooking food and heard a muffled mixture of people talking in foreign languages. My arms felt as if they were being ripped out of their sockets. I dropped the bags, deeply breathed, and raised my arms above my shoulders. My arms were still in their sockets. The pain dulled. I picked up the bags, staggered down the hallway and saw a bathroom barely big enough for a toilet.
I asked my mother, “Don’t they have bathrooms in their apartments?”
“If it wasn’t for some new laws they’d still be using outhouses.”
It just didn’t seem fair that some families didn’t have their own bathrooms while others, like mine, had three. Suddenly I didn’t want to turn back and go home. I plodded up the next flight of steps, trying to block out most of the pain in my shoulders and arms.
“It’s this one, Ian. Number twelve.” My mother knocked on the brown door.
I heard footsteps. The door was opened a few inches. I saw a sliver of a woman’s face. The woman wore a white kerchief.
“We brought you some groceries,” my mother said.
“Who are you?” She spoke with an accent.
“I’m Elizabeth. This is my son, Ian. We help the garment union deliver food.”
The woman opened the door a little more. She stared at me as if I were from Mars. Her eyes were blue, like my mother’s. She looked over my mother’s brown dress. “It’s not true what
rich women think.”
“Think about what?”
“That clothes made down here carry and spread diseases.”
My mother smiled. “I never thought they did.”
“Are you Christians?”
“We are people.”
I said, “The food is kosher.”
She looked down but didn’t speak.
Wanting to make my mother proud of me, I said, “Ma’am, I’m not schlepping these bags back home.”
The woman opened the door all the way. She was very pretty. My mother pushed me inside. I looked left and saw a tiny bedroom. On the bed lay a man with a dark beard. He looked up from his book. His eyes seemed to stab me. He slammed the door shut.
I put the groceries down. I was in a dim kitchen, lit by sunlight that came through something I had never seen before: a window on an inside wall. The light shined directly on a round table. Sitting at the table was a fat old woman and a girl probably a few years younger than I. Like her mother, the girl was very pretty. She glanced at me and smiled. I didn’t smile back.
On the table was a small pile of yellow flowers with long, green stems. Next to the flowers were two cigar boxes. One was filled with stems, the other with petals. The girl and the old woman, I realized, sewed fake petals onto fake stems. I was surprised to see that fake flowers came from places like this.
I looked though the window. The small living room was crammed with a couch, a dresser and two neatly-made beds. Underneath one of the beds was a big suitcase. Underneath the other bed were two rolled-up mattresses. The room’s green walls looked freshly painted.
I looked behind me. Above the big kitchen sink was a shower nozzle and a pulled-back shower curtain.
I looked to the side. Above a small stove were three shelves. On the top shelf were stacks of books that reached the ceiling. On the middle shelf were stacks of plates, bowls and pots. On the bottom shelf was a bouquet of flowers, a jar of marbles, and a book with a Star Of David on it. The book, I guessed, was the Bible.
Next to the stove was a cabinet with glass windows. The cabinet was empty, except for a silver candleholder. Leaning against the cabinet was a gold-tinted fly rod. Even in the dim light the rod shined like polished gold and looked like a big piece of jewelry in a junk shop. On the rod was a black reel that shined like a polished automobile. I wondered if there was some way I could steal the rod. There wasn’t. I glanced at the Bible and remembered that stealing was wrong, especially since I was supposed to be on a noble mission.
“The fishing rod was my brother’s,” the woman said. “Someone owed him money so they gave him the rod instead. Before he learned how to fish he died. My sons tried to use it but they didn’t know how.”
“It’s a fly rod,” my mother said. “My uncle used to practice making the line go back and forth and gently landing the fake insect on the water.”
The woman looked at me. “Can you teach them?”
“Ma’am, I wish I could, but I don’t know how.” I thought of how it wasn’t right that so many people had to live in an apartment the size of our living room. I wished the world was fairer.
“In Russia at least we had a house,” the woman said. “But when people burned our Torah, my husband brought us to America. For this?” The woman cried. “I try to keep it clean.”
“You really have turned it into a home,” my mother said. “No one burns Torahs and books in America.”
The woman wiped her tears away. “What kind of hope, what kind of faith has the Torah brought us? To sit at a sewing machine twelve hours a day just to buy two hours to sit over holy books? If that’s faith, if that’s God’s will—well, I don’t want it for my sons, in spite of what my husband says. Does that make me bad? Does that make me good? How can I know?”
“If you’re bad I am bad too,” my mother said. “When I was a girl my father lost all his money and we had to move to a small apartment and I had to go to a public school. But I still wanted to see my friends, so one day I walked to our church on Fifth Avenue. One by one my friends came in and sat on the other side of the church. I started to cry, then I looked at the big, beautiful white altar and cursed it. I ran out of the church and told myself I hated religion. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I was right, but it’s the way I felt. Your daughter is very pretty. What’s her name?”
“Ida. My name is Sarah. And this is my mother, Anna. She just baked a banana cake this morning. Would you and Ian like some?”
“I’m sorry,” my mother said. “I have to cook for my family.”
Sarah walked into the living room. She came back holding a yellow flower. “This is the first good flower I ever made. I want you to have it.”
“No, really—”
“Please. Maybe my husband was right for bringing us to America.”
My mother smiled and took the flower.
A few minutes later I was glad to step into the fresh air and sunlight, no matter how crowded the street was. I looked into some of the immigrant faces. Surprisingly, I didn’t see any sadness. I asked my mother, “Do you think you’ll ever believe in God again?”
“I’m scared of using God to help me accept all the bad things in this world.”
I thought of how my mother cared deeply for poor immigrants and told myself I had the greatest mother in the world.
I said, “It’s amazing how real that flower looks.”
“Yes it is.”
During dinner, I told my father about our trip to the Lower East Side. His face seemed to turn into stone. I wanted to soften it, so I told him about the beautiful fishing rod I saw.
“I don’t want to hear another word about your trip.”
After dinner, I went to my room and read some of Mutiny on the Bounty. I closed the book and my eyes, and dreamed I was on the H.M.S. Bounty and was a friend to the courageous, mutiny leader, Fletcher Christian. I looked into the eyes of harshly treated sailors and passionately spoke about justice and our need to mutiny.
A few hours later, I heard the front door being opened. My mother was home. I heard my father’s muffled voice. I opened my door a few inches.
“This union thing is going too far,” my father stated.
“Why keep him blind to the way poor people live—why when you don’t keep him blind to the way soldiers die in wars?”
“There are incurable diseases down there.”
“Not in the apartment I took him to!”
“Elizabeth, promise me that you won’t take Ian or Rebecca to the Lower East Side.”
There was a silence. I didn’t want my mother to promise.
“Elizabeth!”
“I promise.”
I closed the door and told myself I loved my mother a lot more than I loved my father.