Sima's Undergarments for Women

by Ilana Stranger-Ross

  Yet there she was.

  Sima watched as Timna reached over the short metal fence to open the latch, stepped onto the cement path that ran down the center of their struggling lawn, and closed the gate carefully behind her. Sima rapped on the window—the only one that had been renovated, divided into five tan-toned sections—and signaled to Timna, who looked up, waved, that she’d be right out.

  “I got keys for you,” Sima said as she locked the front door of her red brick house, “Follow me so you know how to work them.”

  Timna shaded her eyes from the sun as Sima descended the five cement steps to the walk, followed it around to where another three steps, running alongside the basement window, led to the shop.

  “It’s not much of a security system,” Sima said, motioning toward the old wood door and the black-buttoned bell, above which “Sima’s Undergarments for Women” was written in blue cursive on white paper, the words cramped into two short lines and covered by a few layers of shipping tape, “but so far I haven’t had any trouble, even with the door unlocked half the day, thank God.” She touched a glass mezuzah that hung in the door frame, and, bringing her fingers to her lips, turned to Timna. “You can’t be too careful, right?”

  “I guess not.”

  “The truth is,” Sima said, lowering her voice, “I normally never remember the mezuzah is there. But a lot of my customers, maybe eighty, ninety percent, are observant, so I have it for them. This neighborhood, since I grew up here, such changes.” Seeing Timna glance down—strappy sandals this morning, and the fuchsia beginning to chip from one toe—she hurried to keep her interest. “So, okay,” she said, handing Timna the key, “try the door so we know if it works.”

  Timna practiced with the key twice, opened the door successfully both times.

  “Perfect. And if for some reason I’m not here when you come in,” Sima said as they entered, “you can just call up.” She pointed toward the back of the shop, where a green-carpeted staircase ascended from the corner beside the dressing room. “That leads to my kitchen, and that’s where I usually am.” Sima paused. “My husband, too.”

  “When do I get to meet him?”

  “Lev? Oh God, I try to keep him out of the bra shop. But he’ll appear sooner or later. He’s retired from teaching two years, so he tends to lurk about.”

  “And the rest of your family?” Timna asked. “Do your children and grandchildren help out sometimes?”

  “Children?” Sima asked, as if the idea had never occurred to her. “No, we don’t have any. Listen, for the first few days it’d be great if you could follow me around a little, learn how everything works. Things here aren’t exactly immediately understandable,” Sima motioned toward the box-stocked shelves, “but as long as you remember the cardinal rule—”

  “The customer is always right?”

  “Almost. The rule is that the customer is almost never right, but we try not to let them know it. No, really,” she said, seeing Timna smile, “I have to sell what works; I just can’t stand to let someone leave with a badly fitting bra or panty. I swear, sometimes I’ll want to go up to some woman in the streets, shake her, and say, ‘What are you wearing, don’t you know your breasts shouldn’t be on your belly?’” Timna raised one eyebrow and Sima, catching her glance, smiled. “Don’t worry—I’ve never done it. Yet.”

  Timna sat down at the sewing table, opened the drawer and began arranging spools of thread, needles. She kept her head down as she worked, running the sewing machine across a few old fabric samples while Sima pretended preoccupation with her accounting book. As Sima cursed the quiet of the shop—she never cared with the Russians, never worried so much what they might think of her—Dottie Katz entered. Though Sima knew Dottie’s size as well as her own, she made sure to evaluate her customer’s shape openly—her hand on her own hip, eyes sweeping down—wanting to remind Timna that it was her job to stare, her eye as cool as any surgeon’s.

  “Can we use you as a model?” Sima asked. “I want to show Timna how to properly fit a bra.”

  “I knew it was only a matter of time before I was discovered as a model,” Dottie laughed. Following Sima’s directions, she bent forward as she inserted her arms through the bra straps and tucked her breasts into the cups. After fastening the back hooks, she straightened while Sima adjusted the shoulder straps.

  “Everyone looks at the cups,” Sima explained, “but the band matters more.” She ran through the check with Timna: the bra should close on the middle hook; the band shouldn’t rise up the back or cut into the sides; the cup seam should cross the nipple; the fabric shouldn’t pucker or pull; the bridge between the cups should lie flat against the chest; the straps should lift, but not pull, the breasts.

  “Wow,” Dottie said. “I had no idea how complicated this was.”

  Sima smiled. She handed Dottie a new bra, nodded at Timna to take the lead.

  “Bend forward,” Timna said.

  Dottie followed orders once more, though she teased that Sima had never taken such care before.

  “You closed on the middle hook, excellent,” Timna said, running a finger under the band as Sima had done, “not too big and not too small.” Sima watched Timna touch Dottie. Most of her assistants were nervous at first, tentative, but Timna didn’t hesitate to pull along the edge of a cup, nudging it into place.

  “That’s it,” Sima said, after Dottie left with four bra-and-panty sets, having come in for one, “you’re a hit.”

  “Did you see how she really wanted the silk one, but was shy to admit it?”

  “It’s true, and you guessed it.”

  “I just saw her looking at something, and followed her glance.” Timna grinned. “And you thought I’d prefer working in some bar to this? A secret lingerie shop, hidden underground—Sima, this place is the stuff of legends.”

  “Right. The legend of the sagging body, maybe,” Sima said, but inside she thrilled to Timna’s enthusiasm, her whole life suddenly redeemed, special as seen through Timna’s bright eyes.

  3

  “SO HERE’S THE MOTHER INSISTING ON GOD KNOWS what, a chastity belt or something for under the dress, and I go running all around for corsets and one-sies and the whole megillah.”

  Timna leaned against the counter, listening.

  “But the daughter doesn’t like anything. I mean I’m going crazy. And she and her mom are screaming at each other like you wouldn’t believe and the mother’s threatening to call off the wedding if that girl doesn’t just buy some underwear already—they had the dress-fitting the next day.”

  “And her mom was paying and everything?”

  “She was willing to spend whatever it cost. But the girl doesn’t like anything. Finally, the mother goes out to feed the meter and the daughter grabs my arm. ‘She doesn’t know,’ she tells me. ‘Know what?’ I ask, and even as I say it I’m realizing, this girl is pregnant. Turns out she’s gonna be four months on her wedding. Of course she can’t wear those tight things, they’d be no good for the baby. So I run over and find this elastic-front onesie just a size too big for her, and by the time her mother returns, the Russian is already shortening the straps to make it fit up top.”

  “Did it work?”

  “For the wedding, sure. She sent me flowers. Of course, one month later she had some explaining to do. But she played innocent, and she got to have her day.”

  Sima heard a cough, looked up to see Lev watching from the staircase. “You scared me,” she said, though he hadn’t. “Don’t sneak up like that.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Timna,” Sima said, noticing that Lev’s drawstring pants were baggy and stained, his shirt untucked, “this is my husband, Lev.”

  “I’m so glad to meet you,” Timna told him. She smiled, flipped her hair over one shoulder.

  Lev smiled back.

  Sima watched them watch each other, a little nervous for what Timna might think: Lev wasn’t much for entertaining, always ruined a joke. But he made the right small talk—ho
w do you like New York, what have you seen so far—and she answered with her usual enthusiasm, praising Central Park, Times Square. Sima was relieved at first, but, as the conversation progressed—Timna answering his questions about her hometown, a suburb of Tel Aviv—she found herself growing impatient; it wasn’t right for Lev to come downstairs and take up Timna’s time with his questions. She kept her eyes on the window, waiting for the first customer to arrive, and ordered Lev upstairs as soon as legs appeared on the steps outside.

  Lev retreated as a group of new mothers entered the shop, giddy with the excitement of shopping together, with their babies in strollers and their husbands at work. Sima brought them silk nightgowns and bathrobes to try—“believe me, now is the time for a little treat, you’ve earned it”; watched, impressed, as Timna complimented each baby, cooing even over the ugly one so that his mother beamed.

  After the women left, Sima smiled at Timna. “He was completely bald,” she said, “and you managed to convince his mother that he had the most beautiful curls you’d ever seen.”

  “The potential for the most beautiful curls,” Timna said. “And he did have one, just above his ear.”

  “Right. Maybe if you looked at him with a magnifying glass you could see it.”

  Timna laughed. “I had to say something.”

  “You’re a natural,” Sima told her, pleased at their shared secret, “just an absolute natural.”

  “And she’s gorgeous,” Sima told Connie, “I’m telling you, a body like I’ve never seen—a real knockout.”

  Connie turned to Art, laid a hand on his arm. “Think I’d let a knockout into our house?”

  Smiling, he shook his head no.

  She looked at Sima, raised an eyebrow. “You trust Lev that much?”

  “Lev? I’m not worried. Lev, you gonna make a pass at Timna?”

  Lev reddened; did not respond.

  Art leaned across the table, his face flush and the corners of his mouth purple from wine. “Start flirting with her, Lev,” he said, whispering loud enough for the next table to hear. “I’m telling you, women love this jealousy thing.”

  Sima frowned, turned back to Connie. “Anyway, Timna says that in Israel—”

  “The thing you have to understand,” Art said, pointing his fork at Lev, “is that women like to be teased. Take Sima here. She acts so in control, yeah? A real businesswoman. But I bet that at the end of the day—”

  “Art. That’s enough.” Connie reached for his arm, brought it back to her side. “When he’s drunk,” she said, turning to Lev, “he’s a real monster. Aren’t you, Art?”

  Arthur growled happily in response, kissed Connie’s cheek. Connie grinned; Sima brushed some crumbs off her lap while Lev, smiling politely, bent over his steak, slowly shifting his knife through the thick meat.

  That evening Lev lay in bed while Sima washed her hose in the sink. “You know I love Connie,” she told him, watching the suds gather as she kneaded the material, “but she can be so self-centered. I mean, there she goes on and on about Nate’s new lab job again. Enough already about Nate. If you ask me, he’s a weird kid. Calling her every night—what forty-four-year-old calls his mother every night?”

  “So anyway,” she said, when Lev didn’t respond, “Timna did the funniest thing today. You know that bin where I keep old lingerie? You know, the clear plastic one? Well, I hadn’t been through it in who knows how long, so I asked Timna to take a look, see if there was anything worth anything. Anyway. She goes crazy. Starts trying on the stuff, my God, she put on this fur-trimmed nightie, I swear she looked like a movie star. Then Edna comes in. She almost died laughing when she saw Timna all dressed up. I had to stop Edna from trying on the stuff herself—can you imagine?”

  She rinsed out the hose, moving them back and forth under the tap.

  “So I said to Timna, ‘You should be an actress. What are you doing selling bras in a Brooklyn basement? Hollywood needs you.’ So you know what she says?”

  Sima paused to bunch the pantyhose into a ball, squeezed them dry.

  “She says, ‘But in Hollywood I couldn’t have so much fun as here.’ Huh? Isn’t that sweet? I never thought of myself as such fun before.”

  She hung the hose on a white plastic shower caddy and switched off the bathroom light; slowly made her way to the bed.

  “You know, Sima,” Lev said, after they’d lain quietly a few minutes, “if you’re not careful, soon you’ll be talking about Timna more than Connie talks about Nate.”

  “What do you mean?” Sima propped herself up on her elbow.

  “You complain that Connie’s always on about her son, but here you are on about Timna and she’s not even your daughter.”

  She lay back down, turned away from Lev.

  “What, I offended you?”

  “Don’t talk to me.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  Sima sighed, rolled so she was facing him. “You know, here I finally found someone to give me a little pleasure, and you can’t stand it. You’re so jealous, you have to put me down.”

  Lev was quiet a moment. “Someone to give you some pleasure, huh? I guess I’m not that for you.”

  “No. I guess you’re not.”

  “What am I then?”

  There was a need in his voice that surprised Sima, scared her too—she didn’t know how to answer. She watched the lights from the street outside move in patterns across the curtain, cars rushing through the night, escaping. “Lev,” she said, when she felt that she must say something, “I only mean that with Timna—”

  “She lights up a room.”

  “Yes.”

  “You used to light up rooms, Sima.”

  “You must be joking. I never looked like that.”

  “It’s not how she looks, only. It’s an energy.”

  “Don’t talk to me about energy, Lev. If you walk a block it’s a major trek.” She paused a moment. “Did you take your pills?”

  When Lev didn’t answer, Sima got out of bed, slowly made her way to the bathroom. She brought back cholesterol medication and a glass of water, waited while Lev accepted both.

  Once again Sima lay awake, listening to the sound of his breathing and waiting for something to give way inside herself, make her free.

  The night before her wedding Sima had locked herself in the bathroom, stood naked in front of the mirror, cringed. She had been a tall, skinny girl, until tenth grade still looked like a child, and then in a matter of weeks grew breasts and hips. Her skin could hardly keep up with the changes, which left red stretch marks like cat scratches. When she married, the lines, which would eventually turn white, still pointed with pink highlights to what was most secret.

  They spent their first night at his cousin’s house. Sima turned off the lights, drew down the shades so the room was dark. In bed she lifted her nightgown above her head, dropped it to the floor beside her, and slid quickly under the covers. Her stomach was thick with cake and her head still dizzy from wine and dancing; when he kissed her, his mouth was smoky from the celebratory cigar and his hands, running through her hair, pulled too tightly. He bent his head under the covers to kiss her breasts, and she, glad for the blanket hiding her body from him, watched from above the movement of his tented head. When he entered her, she felt a sharp burning, a pain that was shameful, punishing.

  And could his cousins hear? She stayed silent, felt the echo of each scuff of the bed.

  When Lev was done, Sima leaned over the side of the bed, vomited into the folds of her nightgown.

  It took Lev a minute before he leaned toward her, lightly placed a hand on her back.

  Sima had an impulse to bury her head beneath the covers, wait for her mother to come and clean up the vomit as when she was a child hot with fever, and though she could almost hear her mother’s complaints—such a mess, she’d say, the things I have to do—still that predictable disappointment seemed far more comforting than Lev’s nervous hand on her back. But down in her stomach a deep sadness remi
nded her that her mother would not come, that childhood was over, and that she would be a mother herself soon.

  Sima took a deep breath, managed a weak apology, and, gathering up her nightgown, crept downstairs in her bathrobe. In the kitchen she placed the gown in a plastic bag, buried the plastic bag deep in the garbage. Under a single, quiet stream of water she washed her arm: coffee grinds, the stick of egg yolk, the wet slap of carrot peelings.

  When she returned to the bedroom, Lev was asleep. Or pretending. Without speaking, she got back into bed.

  4

  SIMA TOUCHED THE BACK OF HER NECK, FELT THE DAMP-ness there. The clock radio that morning, before she shut it silent, had promised ninety-six degrees. Even with two standing fans—one angled at her, the other at Timna—some loose strands that had escaped her bun were pressed to the side of her face, tipped with sweat. She exhaled deeply, fanned her blouse against her body. “I don’t know how you take it, Timna,” she said, “I can’t even imagine how hot Israel must be right now.”

  “Think cool thoughts.”

  “Cool thoughts? I’ve exhausted all my cool thoughts. Give me one of yours.”

  Timna paused, drummed her fingers on the sewing table. “All right,” she said, “I’ll tell you my favorite.” She sat up straight, clasped her hands before her like a model student readying for a recitation. “So, Alon’s father owns a small supermarket,” she began.

  Sima looked at Timna. She was curious about Alon, Timna’s boyfriend, entranced by his power to still a brightness like Timna, keep her steady despite the ocean between them.

  “The summer we graduated Alon worked in the store most days, helping out. His dad wanted him to learn the business, but Alon liked stacking boxes, unloading trucks—”

  “We could use him here.”

  Timna smiled. “Guys before the army—they’re so scared, you know, so they try to get big. Lift this, lift that. Like he insisted his dad order these baby palm trees and he spent days digging holes and laying irrigation hose—”