Blue Thread

by Ruth Tenzer Feldman

  ***

  “Borrow as many as you like,” Aunt Sophie said Wednesday morning. “Hermann must have a dozen different translations, plus the Book of Mormon and that Moslem holy book.”

  I thumped baby Nathan’s back. He gave a satisfying burp.

  Aunt Sophie fiddled with her bedclothes. “I must look a fright.”

  “You look fine.” She needed a kind lie. “I’ll change Nathan’s diaper and put him down for his nap.”

  “That would be lovely.” Aunt Sophie was asleep before the baby was. I tiptoed into Uncle Hermann’s library, surveyed his Bible collection, and picked the book with the most attractive lettering on its spine. When I turned to go, I nearly collided with Uncle Hermann in the front hall.

  “Miriam!” He glanced up the stairs. “There’s nothing wrong, is there?”

  “No, not at all. Aunt Sophie and Nathan are napping. I came by to borrow a Bible. How’s everything at the print shop?”

  “Your father has business well in hand as usual, so I took the afternoon off.”

  “I thought you were very busy there this week.”

  “Your father makes every week busy.” He reached for the Bible I’d selected. “King James, I see, not the Isaac Leeser translation we use at services.”

  “Oh, I didn’t notice. Why do you have so many different kinds?”

  Uncle Hermann thumbed through the pages. “If we want our non-Jewish neighbors to respect our religion, shouldn’t we learn about theirs? The first five books of the King James Bible are essentially the same as our Torah. Did you know the Jewish Publication Society is working on a new translation?”

  “I'm looking for the daughters of Zelophehad,” I said, hoping to avoid a discourse on Bible translations. “We talked about them at dinner.”

  “Ah, yes, the daughters. That would be in Numbers. Give me a moment.”

  I studied his hands as he opened the Bible, hands that used to play cat’s cradle with me when I was little. Uncle Hermann knew even more string games than Florrie. “What exactly are tzitzit?” I asked before I stopped to think about it.

  “They’re the fringes on a tallis, Miriam. A tallis is a prayer shawl, you know.”

  I nodded, though he probably didn’t see. He turned page after page. Serakh had warned me against telling my parents about her. But Uncle Hermann is such a dear, I thought. What harm can it do to tell him?

  “It’s the strangest thing,” I said. “I met someone after Yom Kippur services, and she was surprised I didn’t have these tzitzit with me. I thought Jewish women don’t wear them.”

  “That’s true. Only men wear them—and some don’t bother to anymore.” Uncle Hermann closed the Bible and frowned. “A woman spoke to you about your prayer shawl?”

  “Not a woman exactly. She’s about my age, I should think.”

  “Did you discuss this with your father?”

  “Papa would be the last person I’d tell.”

  Uncle Hermann stared at me, color draining from his face. “Miriam, did she mention a blue thread?”

  He read the answer on my face before I could utter another word.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Uncle Hermann turned the dial on a wall safe in his study. He extracted a white woolen bag, beautifully embroidered, that looked like a pillowcase folded in half.

  “This belongs to you.” His voice shook. “They told me that one day someone would ask about the blue thread, but they didn’t tell me why.”

  His attack of nerves was contagious. “They?”

  “My mother and Savta.” Uncle Hermann stared at the woolen bag. “They told me to watch over this shawl. They didn’t trust your father because he was afraid. It’s not his fault, really. He said our sister Raizl died in this shawl.”

  “She died?” I stepped back.

  Uncle Hermann closed the safe. “I don’t remember much about Raizl. Your father was fourteen then. I was only five. I should have told you sooner, but Julius was adamant. Still, you are old enough now. You have a right to know.”

  He presented the woolen bag to me, treating the moment like a ceremony. “This prayer shawl came from your great-grandmother, my dear Savta. She wanted you to have this—her most precious gift.” He placed the bag in my arms.

  “I thought my great-grandmother was called Miriam. Mama said I was named for her.”

  “Yes. Her name was Miriam Seligmann. Savta means grandmother in Hebrew—at least the Hebrew that the rabbis wrote centuries ago. Who knows what they speak in the Holy Land now. In our town everyone called their grandmothers Oma or Bubbe—either German or Yiddish—but she insisted on Savta. She told me that Savta reminded her of her travels.”

  “I didn’t know you had a sister named Raizl.”

  “Your father keeps things to himself—things that are painful to remember.” He kissed my cheek. “Mim, please, we’ll talk another time. Handle this carefully and never show it to your father. Never. Open the bag when you get home. Now go before I change my mind.” He looked so torn that I almost gave the package back to him. But I didn’t.

  Instead, I clutched the bag and Bible to my chest against a sudden drizzle and raced home. Easing open our front door, I heard Mrs. Jenkins humming in the kitchen. Perfect. She only hummed when my parents were gone. I put the Bible on my nightstand, closed my bedroom door, reached inside the embroidered bag, and spread the shawl across my bed.

  Large as a child’s blanket, the shawl was made from a rectangle of the finest wool, cream-colored and woven into a delicate white-on-white pattern. Someone had embroidered the edge of the shawl that was meant to touch the back of my neck. Six tiny flowers in shades of ochre and orange and two clusters of purple grapes with green vines bracketed a set of curved marks stitched in crimson. The marks reminded me of Hebrew lettering from the prayer book, and they were grouped in a pattern that could have made words. Some curves and angles looked different from Hebrew—and what’s a letter but curves and angles? I brushed my fingers across the embroidery, as if it were Braille. What was the language? What was the message?

  Swirling the shawl over my head, I draped it across my shoulders. A strange sort of peace cocooned me. Everything seemed right. The prayer shawl fell to just below my knees. Like Papa’s tallis, it had short white fringes on the narrow ends, each tied in a special knot, and a longer knot of fringes dangling from each corner. One long fringe had a single thread dyed a vivid sky blue. I let that blue thread glide through my fingers. My hand tingled. I closed my eyes.

  I jumped when I heard a knock on my door.

  “You have a visitor,” Mrs. Jenkins said. A moment later she knocked again. “Miss Miriam? Are you all right?”

  “I’ll be downstairs in a second,” I managed to choke out.

  “It’s a young lady for you. She’s in the parlor. There’s lemonade in the icebox and fresh gingersnaps.”

  The visitor had to be Serakh! How could she have known? I had so many questions for her. Who was Aunt Raizl? Why did she die in my prayer shawl? I hurriedly returned the shawl to its bag and raced to the parlor.

  Serakh was nowhere to be seen.

  “Happy Blotter Day!” Charity Osborne smiled and thrust a yellow ink blotter at me. “We distributed these downtown, to remind businessmen to support voting rights for women,” she said. “I thought you’d like one.” Wisps of her straight brown hair peeked out from a plain felt hat with a thin ribbon and a single quail feather. Poor bird.

  “Why…um…yes. Thank you.” I sat on the settee and tried to hide my disappointment. After all, I would have been delighted to see Charity if I hadn’t expected Serakh. “It’s lovely,” I added, examining a rectangle of porous paper about the size of a large business envelope. The pressed fibers were coarser than the blotting pads I used to set ink when I wrote, and the dye had taken poorly. But the VOTES FOR WOMEN slogan looked professionally designed and printed. “I have a typography book that says blotters are the newest form of advertising,” I added. “Would you care for a glass of lemonade?”<
br />
  “No thank you, I can’t stay long.” Charity cleared her throat. “But I do have a request. Prudence and I have joined the Portland Equal Suffrage League, and we wondered if you might help us print materials for the campaign. Mrs. Solomon Hirsch suggested I ask. She’s very active in the campaign and she’s a member of your church.”

  Church, not temple—a mistake I often heard, but I didn’t bother to correct her. And I took a chance on honesty. “I’m really sorry, Charity. Either Mrs. Hirsch doesn’t know about my father’s views or she has a wicked sense of humor. He’s probably the most anti-suffrage person on Earth. He thinks women should handle housekeeping and social calendars and play sonatas at benefit concerts.”

  Charity managed a weak smile as she stood to leave. “And what about you, Miriam?”

  “Women should definitely have the right to vote. Definitely. But…um…I’m not sure I can help with the campaign right now. Much as I’d like to.” I couldn’t risk involvement with the campaign—then Papa would never let me work at Precision Printers.

  I waved my hand toward the kitchen in the hope that food would cement our friendship even if politics didn’t. “Won’t you change your mind and stay longer? Mrs. Jenkins baked gingersnaps today. I’m sure she’d brew some fresh coffee for us.”

  Charity shook her head. “Prudence hates to be alone at the shop.” As we walked down the front hall she added, “There’s a rally for Dr. Shaw in Portland this Saturday. Anna Howard Shaw. She’s president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. It’s a mouthful, I know. Would you like to go to the rally with Prudence and me? Dr. Shaw is due in on the train from Pendleton at about five."

  I opened the front door. “My parents usually make me do something with them on Saturdays, but maybe I’ll get lucky. Thanks for the blotter.”

  “This part of Johnson is quite lovely,” Charity said as we crossed the front porch. “Your rhododendrons and rose bushes are gorgeous. And your house is so…spacious.”

  Spacious is the word, I thought. Not charming. Unlike the other homes in the neighborhood, ours was a box of a house, all efficiency and right angles, like Papa. No curves. No ligatures or serifs. Everything in a straight line.

  We exchanged waves before she crossed the street. I did like Charity, and going to that rally could be exciting, maybe as exciting as meeting this Tirtzah person now that I had my shawl. I hurried inside, thanked Mrs. Jenkins (none of our other cooks had answered the door for me), tossed the blotter on my desk, and hid my prayer shawl in a hatbox on the top shelf of my armoire. It was a temporary solution. Mama had a habit of poking around in my things—no telling what she’d say to Papa. She came home two minutes later and called up to me.

  I reached for the Bible and pretended not to hear. The daughters of Zelophehad. Why stick their name on a suffrage banner? It was too late now to ask Charity.

  Mama called again. If she needed me that badly, she could climb the stairs and knock on my door. I opened the Bible to Numbers, chapter one. The text was set in two tight columns, in a tiny serif typeface, and read:

  1 And the Lord spake unto Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, in the tabernacle of the congregation, on the first day of the second month, in the second year after they were come out of the land of Egypt saying: 2 Take ye the sum of all the congregation of the children of Israel, by their families, by the house of their fathers, with the number of their names, every male by their polls.

  I scrutinized the names on line after line. Zurishaddai, Zuar, Zebulun, but no Zelophehad. Mama finally stopped calling. I skimmed fourteen more pages. Finding Zelophehad’s daughters was going to be harder than I thought.

  The front door slammed toward the end of Numbers, chapter ten. Curious, I rushed to the top of the stairs. Papa was in a fury.

  “Blotter Day!” he shouted up at me from the foyer. “If I am pestered by one more silly woman with yellow ink blotters, I will treat her like a man and punch her in the nose!”

  I stared down at him open mouthed, not knowing what to say. I must have looked like a dead fish.

  “Ach!” He stormed into the library, slamming the door so hard the dining room chandelier sounded like a wind chime. Mama swooped in from the parlor. I retreated to my room and tucked my own yellow blotter under my pillow.

  By the time I went downstairs, it was decided. Papa, Mama, and I were to dine out—Papa’s answer to all things stressful. Mrs. Jenkins had the night off. I did not.

  I kept a civil tongue all through dinner, which was easier to do in a restaurant with people watching. Papa was in a better mood by the time we came home, so I decided to take a chance and mention the print shop again.

  “Papa, I know you are busy this week, but may I work at the print shop next Monday?”

  Mama sighed as she pulled off her gloves and handed her coat to Papa.

  “Mondays there is always disarray,” Papa said, taking my coat as well.

  “Please. I won’t be any trouble.” Papa gave me a long, almost searching look. I held my breath.

  “Perhaps Tuesday. Do not pester me, Miriam. And do not expect me to wait while you dawndle in the morning.”

  Dawdle, I thought, correcting him automatically in my head. I nodded and tried to look professional. He might just let me go!

  “I leave the house by a quarter past eight,” he continued. “My employees must be at their desks by nine, and I set for them a good example.”

  “Certainly, Papa.”

  Back in my room I danced a congratulatory waltz with Mr. Gress—well, with Mr. Gress’s typography book. Finding that prayer shawl today was a sign of good things to come. An invitation to a suffrage rally with Charity, a chance to see Serakh again and meet Tirtzah, and now… I flopped on the bed and imagined how lovely it would be at Precision Printers. I tried not to think about Uncle Hermann’s solemn face when he gave me the shawl, or about the girl who died wearing it.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Tuesday, Tuesday, Tuesday… My first day at Precision Printers was eons away. I filled part of Thursday practicing layouts and designs in my copybook and trying on several outfits for the print shop. I settled on my light gray gabardine suit. It made me look older and more sensible, especially with my small silver brooch. I managed to read a few more chapters of the Bible, with nothing to show for it. No Tirtzah. No Zelophehad.

  Friday’s highlight—if you could call it that—was a visit from Mama’s seamstress. She measured me for two holiday gowns, lowered the neckline on my taffeta dress, and pinned the hem on six outfits, including the light gray one. The new fashion let my ankles show, so I wasn’t always dirtying the bottom of my skirts and dresses.

  “I need the gray skirt by Monday evening, please,” I told the seamstress, who knelt before me with straight pins clamped between her lips.

  Mama came to her defense. “Mrs. Sablovsky requires at least a week, Miriam. And stop moving. Look straight ahead.”

  “But this is the perfect outfit for Tuesday.”

  “What’s happening on Tuesday?”

  “Mama! I’m going to the shop on Tuesday. How could you forget?” Sister Margaret would have called that a rhetorical question. Mama rarely remembered anything related to Precision Printers.

  She sighed. “All right then. Would you kindly hem this one skirt by Monday, Mrs. Sablovsky?” The seamstress smiled, even with pins in her mouth. I think she understood—one businesswoman to another.

  At dinner that night, Papa announced that he had to go to the print shop for most of Saturday. I looked up from my soup, but he shook his head before I could frame the question. “Tuesday,” he said, as set in his ways as indelible ink.

  Mama put down her soupspoon. “Julius, dear, since you’ll be downtown tomorrow, I’ll go to the art museum with Hilda, and then let’s dine out with the Steinbachers. When shall we meet you at your office?”

  Papa gave her The Adoring Look. “A quarter after five.”

  Mama turned to me as if she’d forgotten I was still in the ro
om. “Oh, Miriam, would you care to join Mrs. Steinbacher and me at the museum?”

  And miss the perfect chance to go to a rally with Charity? “No thank you, Mama,” I said, trying to keep my expression casual.

  “Then I’ll tell Mrs. Jenkins there will be only one for dinner.”

  I pretended to rearrange the napkin on my lap, lest they see the annoyance on my face. “I suggest we give Mrs. Jenkins the evening off, Mama. Surely I can fend for myself. I don’t need looking after.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, Mama said, “No doubt Mrs. Jenkins will be delighted.”

  ***

  And she was. “I’ll make a double portion of salmon cakes for lunch,” Mrs. Jenkins told me the next morning. “You have a good time this evening.”

  “I will, and you do the same, Mrs. Jenkins. I won’t disturb Mama’s piano practice now. When she’s done, please tell her I went for a stroll and will see her and Papa after their dinner.”

  I tucked my frizz into my favorite hat—the navy one with a narrow brim and nothing fancy—and headed for Temple Beth Israel. I’d had my shawl since Wednesday, but there had been no sign of Serakh. Since it was Saturday morning, I peeked in at the temple long enough to satisfy myself that she wasn’t among the congregation. I asked Mr. Olsen, the caretaker, if he had seen a bronze-skinned girl with long white hair while he was getting everything ready for Sabbath services. He hadn’t, but he suggested I check at the First African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church down the street.

  Refusing to fret on a parent-free Saturday, I hopped back on the streetcar and headed to Osborne Milliners. Prudence and Charity were helping customers when I arrived. Apparently Portland women aside from my mother didn’t mind suffrage material mixed in with their millinery. Charity waved, and I settled into the corner by the ribbons.

  “I’m free for the rest of the day,” I said, after the customers left, “so I thought I’d go to the suffrage rally with you after all. It is today, isn’t it?”