“Why were you so late?”
“I stopped to look in the Macy’s window.”
What a bad liar she was. “Since when do you care from Macy’s? You don’t like all that clothes stuff anymore.”
“I like the clothes. I don’t like the prices and the snooty people.”
It was getting dark in the apartment. Sarah got up to turn on the lights, but the meter had run out. She went to the black box above the door, put a quarter in. She saw Liberty’s hat lying on the table. She picked it up.
“Where is your hat pin?”
“I must have lost it.”
“He tried it again, didn’t he?”
“I can manage him.”
“What happened?”
“The usual thing. He trapped me in the cloakroom after the other girls had gone.”
“Did he do anything?”
“I didn’t let him.”
“This is the third time.”
“Mama, I need the job. There’s a hundred other girls he can get if he wants.”
“Then he can have them. Enough, you don’t go back there. Over my dead body, bubeleh.”
“I have to go back. We can’t afford rent and food on one wage only. Even together we don’t earn the same as one man.”
“I don’t care. You are not going back, not even for your wages. You hear me? No one is going to take advantage of our poorness anymore.”
“But how will we live?”
“I don’t know, bubeleh. But we will find a way. I promise.”
42
Liberty met Frankie at the White Tower on Greenwich Avenue, one-nickel hamburgers in a white brick medieval castle, right next to the big Kesbec Esso sign, “Cars Greased and Oil Changed.”
The inside was all polished chrome and white tile, so clean you could eat off the floor, they said, though no one had ever tried. They sat at the five-stool bar and ordered cream sodas and jelly rolls from a Towerette waitress, and Liberty joked that it was what Frankie would look like in her new nurse’s uniform. Frankie had finally finished her training and had got a paid job working in a hospital in Pennsylvania.
“Well, I can’t wait. I won’t be mucking out bedpans and being some sour-faced matron’s unpaid slave. Although cutting up hamburger meat and working in an operating room are not that much different.”
Liberty covered her face with her hands and told her to stop.
“Well, it means a postgrad certificate, which is another step up the ladder. I’ll need all the bits of paper I can to stay out of the bread line.”
“Pennsylvania’s so far away.”
“I’ll come back every chance I can. You’ll not get rid of me that easy. And what about you? You can’t stay in that dead-end job forever. You’re too good for that.”
“Mama says I have to quit.”
“He’s not been putting his dirty paws on you again?”
“I had to stick him with the hat pin.”
“I’d have put it right through his fecking eye.”
“I’m not you, Frankie.” Libby sipped her soda through the straw. “I don’t know what we’re going to do if I don’t go back. We can’t live on one wage, and there’s no jobs out there. I’m no good for anything. That fancy school they sent me to, all I learned was to sit like a lady and say ‘My postilion has been struck by lightning’ in French.”
“What’s a postilion?”
“I had to go back for my final year for that. I suppose I’ll never know now.”
“Why don’t you come nursing with me? Get yourself through night school and get away from here.”
“I could never. My mama needs me.” She watched the Towerette toss some rehydrated onions on the grill, shake salt and pepper over the patties. “Do you see the rest of them much? How’s your little sister doing?”
“Pregnant.”
“No!”
“Barely out of school, she is. I warned her. The boy she’s been knocking around with, useless little gobshite, hasn’t a job. I don’t know how they’re going to manage. If he doesn’t stick around, she’ll have to put the kid into a home. She can’t afford to keep it. But that’s what happens when you let boys mess around. And they all do; they can’t help themselves.”
“Are you still seeing that boy from the hospital?”
“Tony? Sure, and he wants me to marry him.”
“Are you going to?”
“As if I would. He wheels stretchers around all day and mops the floors in the wards. I can do better, I reckon.”
“You said you’d kissed him.”
“Well, there’s no harm in practicing. I even let him touch me a couple of times. I quite liked it. Like I told you, he’s Italian, and those boys will do anything to a girl give them half a chance. The only time their own girls get down on their knees is when they’re in church.”
Liberty took a breath. Sometimes Frankie’s talk startled her. Even when her boss at the sweatshop tried to make her do things, she hadn’t known what it was he was saying. She had to ask Frankie to explain it to her afterward.
“Oh, Lib, you’re the best-looking girl I know, like a beauty queen, you are. Take my advice, don’t let a man fool with you until you’ve a ring on your finger, or else they’ll leave you holding the baby, and they’ll be gone. Happens all the time.”
“A beauty queen? I am not.”
“When we’re walking out, men stare at you all the time. Have you never noticed?”
“They’re looking at you.”
“Heck they are. I have nice eyes and a bit of sass and not much else. But look at you. Even the clothes you wear. How you afford stuff like that, working in a sweatshop, beats me. Where did you get it?”
“Mama made it.”
“You’re skiting me.”
“She makes dresses for everyone in the building. You know how she is. She gets scraps from work, hides them under her dress, and brings them home. Works Sundays and late most nights to make us a bit extra.”
Frankie rubbed the material between her fingers, looked at the stitching on the hem. “I always knew she was good with a needle. I didn’t realize this good. Where does she get the patterns?”
“She doesn’t. Someone brings her a sketch or just describes something to her, she can make it.”
“If you had a label on this, I’d swear blind it came from Bloomingdale’s or somewhere.” Frankie finished her soda, worked the straw around her glass. It made Liberty smile. For all her sassy talk, Frankie was still like a big kid most of the time. “You know what? I have an idea.”
“What idea?”
“My big brother Tommy works in the Garment District, pushing carts. Maybe he could help you.”
“Not unless he knows the manager at the Saks fashion department.”
“There’s other ways. Why don’t I ask him to steal you some labels?”
“How do you mean?”
“You know, some fancy fashion labels. That’s what people pay for anyway, isn’t it? They don’t care about the dress as long as they think it came from Paris. He could tear a few off; no one would know it was him; your ma could sell her dresses for ten times.”
“Isn’t that against the law?”
Frankie looked at her as if she was mad. “Of course it is! Are you going to let that stop you?”
Liberty grinned. “I guess not,” she said.
43
It was a Sunday. All the shops closed, Liberty stood outside the Saks window with Sarah, looking at the new season’s fashion, a frown on her face.
“You could make that, Mama. What you make already is better than that.”
“A lot of women can make as good.”
“Not without a pattern and not so fast. And they don’t have your sense of style. You make things with scraps, add little touches. You’re a genius, everyone says so.”
“Who is this everyone?”
“You know what Frankie said last night when she saw that dress you made? She thought it was from Bloomingdale’s.”
“Mama, all the years you’ve spent working with schmatta, everything your papa taught you, you don’t even know how good you are. All the women on our block want you to make them dresses. Every day there is someone coming around, asking.”
“I don’t have time. One or two I can do. Not everyone.”
“Why not everyone?”
Sarah shook her head. “How much people will pay for homemade? The label and fancy-schmancy stuff on the collar, that is what they like. And look at this: the dummies they have in the windows.”
“Mannequins.”
“Still just a fancy name for a dummy, you ask me. I tell you, bubeleh, how many women you know have hips like a bar-mitzvah boy? Who’s got a shape like that? No one got a shape like that. Well, you have, bubeleh; and maybe once, when I am in the Follies, I had that shape, all tall and skinny and no waist. But you and I, we are lucky. Look, now they make dresses with shoulder pads like a Green Bay Packer and big puff sleeves. Get a woman with hips in this, what does she look like? King Kong.”
Libby laughed.
“My day, a girl could show her legs, bare backs, almost bare fronts even. And no underwear, God forbid. Now what have you got? Since all the millionaire types on Wall Street lost all their money, it’s like the whole world should be sad for them. No more bee’s knees, no more Charleston, and women dress like they are afraid what God will say if he sees them out. At least if they make women wear this stuff, they can make it nice, put a little oompa-oompa into it.”
“What’s oompa-oompa?”
“It’s a word I just make up. But you know what I mean. You’re twenty years old, oompa-oompa is all you got.”
“What shall we do?”
“Maybe a walk in the Park. Such a lovely day. We can buy an ice-cream brick, celebrate. Tomorrow we will be living under the bridge with all the bums.”
They walked up Fifth, past Tiffany and Bergdorf Goodman, all the shops that were once as familiar to Sarah as her own living room. They reached the big square Monopoly piece of the Plaza Hotel. Sarah lingered, staring at the comings and goings, remembering the days when she rode straight to the front door with her own chauffeur, didn’t have to schlepp up and down with her nose pressed against the glass.
She saw Liberty stop and stare at something, someone. “Isn’t that Mrs. Pargetter?” she said.
Oh yes, it was Jane Pargetter, no question. She looked like she had stepped straight out of the front window of Saks in her white wool frock and bolero jacket and white brimmed hat. She was coming from a soirée in the palm court, Sarah supposed, trying not to look tipsy as she stepped into the limousine, clutching a small white dog in her arms.
For a moment, their eyes met. There was a flicker of recognition, Sarah saw it in her eyes; then, just as quickly, she turned away and got into the shiny black Packard.
“Did she see us?” Libby said.
“She saw. Of course she saw. She is right there, I can spit that far. How can she not see us?”
“Weren’t you two friends?”
“No,” Sarah said, “but once we acted like we were.”
The bell captain was staring at her, the same one from the old days, ramrod straight in his smart red uniform. He gave her a salute, even a hint of a smile. The help at the Plaza are so polite, she thought. Better than Dewey’s old friends.
As the limousine pulled away, Sarah said, “Did you see her poodle dog? Was that in the Vogue summer catalog?”
“Autumn.”
“That explains. I didn’t see autumn.”
Sarah sat in her kitchen and stared at the squashed bugs on the wallpaper, the slime of grease on the wall over the stovetop, the holes in the linoleum. What troubled her about such poorness was Libby; she was born for poodles and limousines and bolero jackets. It is because I love her so much that she must live with me here in my noisy linoleum world. This is all my fault.
She stared at the Sears catalog on the kitchen table in front of her. Everything now was ready-to-wear, with zippers not buttons. Sarah wrinkled her nose at the cheapness of it, and such sameness. Okay, they call them “town tailored,” okay, silk or rayon. But if you buy from a catalog, she thought, you can walk in to afternoon tea or a matinee and there’s another woman, dressed just the same.
What women want, she thought, is to look like Macy’s front window for Hester Street prices; not only to look a million dollars, but to look like the only million dollars anyone ever made in their whole lives.
Libby walked in and peered over her shoulder. “Why are you buying a Sears dress, Mama? I thought you hated them.”
“Never buy such sameness,” Sarah said. “Such puffy sleeves, belts, big yoke collars. I can make twenty, thirty, before I get out of bed. Can make with my eyes closed and reading a book.”
“You can’t read a book if you have your eyes closed.”
“Okay, Miss Smarty-Pants, but look you this one. Imagine, instead of rayon is cotton; and here you sew some pretty buttons, maybe a godet right here on the skirt, perhaps flounce of lace here. Whatever bits and pieces you can buy, cheap as scraps, but different every time.”
“The ladies round here would snap it up.”
“If they think it is by Jean Patou, they snap. If they think it is bust-your-door-down bargain, yes, they will snap. But if they think it is by Mrs. Levine from Cornelia Street, they will put up their nose and spit in the street.”
“I have to go. I said I would meet Frankie at five.”
Sarah didn’t even hear her leave. She was still staring at the Sears catalog and wondering what she would do if she was this Mrs. Jean Patou. She wouldn’t be working in a sweatshop. She would be making her own dresses, she thought, and sewing like nobody’s business.
44
The long summer evening seemed like it would go on forever, the sun sitting plump over the roofs of Greenwich Village, and still it was no cooler. She could hear the bup-bup-bup of some kid throwing a handball against the wall down in the yard. The old man was still wandering around his apartment in his underwear.
Sarah stared at the spindle where she kept the household bills, then at the nut-brown Singer sewing machine between the window and the coal-black stove, golden scrolls painted on the black arm, the little drawers either side of the treadle, where she kept her needle and thread.
“What are you doing,” it said. “I can save you! Why are you ignoring me?” It sounded like her mutti back in the alte heim: “You are bleeding all the blood from my old heart.”
She got the butter out of the icebox and fetched the jar of rhubarb-strawberry preserve that old Mrs. Herzog had given her, sliced yesterday’s bread on a wooden board. She could smell from somewhere fried liver and onions, and it made her stomach growl, but there was no money for such things until Libby found another job somewhere where the men didn’t make her use all her hat pins.
She went back to the bedroom, unlocked the drawer where she kept the old biscuit box: a photograph of Micha, his soldier papers from the army, the newspaper clipping. Like parchment it was, so brittle. She thought, One day it will just crumble to dust.
She stared at it, wondered at how it could make her fingers tremble even after so long.
I should tell her, she thought. This life is not for her. What would happen if I found this Mr. George Seabrook, told him everything? Here, this is your daughter I stole. Look how beautiful she is! Here, take her. Do what you want with me. Only give her a life again, away from my poorness and bread and jam for supper.
She heard Libby on the stairs. She was running. Something must have happened. She fumbled the lid back on the tin and shut it away in the drawer.
Libby hurried in, face flushed, but this time not because her boss had been trying to touch her. She looked like she had found a diamond ring lying in the street. She grinned at Sarah and started to carve off a slice of bread, near the middle, reached for the jam.
“Bubeleh. Where have you been? Did yo
u find a job today?”
Libby shook her head, but she had a smile on her, a smile like Sarah had not seen in a long time. She had under her arm a big brown paper bag, and she tipped it up and emptied everything inside it on the kitchen table.
“What are these you got?” Sarah said. Just scraps of material, that’s how it looked. She picked one up, stared at it, puzzled. “Jean Patou,” it said. “PARIS” in capitals in one corner. “Adaptecheune” in the other.
Fancy writing on silk. How many were there? Three dozen, four dozen. Another said “7. Rue St. Florentin. PARIS.” Burgundy stitched on cream silk. Another, more simple, black capitals on white background: “CHANEL.”
“Frankie’s brother got them for us.”
“He breaks the law for us?”
“It’s not breaking the law, Mama. Well, all right, perhaps, if you call a little bit of stealing breaking the law. But Frankie said they owe you, all the money you sent them when their mama was sick.”
Sarah sat down hard on the chair.
“But it is stealing. You say so yourself.”
“It’s a bit of fabric, Mama. Not a gold ring.”
Sarah let the labels run through her fingers like they were gold dust.
“Well?” Liberty said.
“We’d better get to work,” Sarah said.
Sarah went down to Orchard Street, to the remnants store, picked out what she wanted, and bargained with the owner until she thought he was going to cry, then bargained harder. Not until he screamed at her that he would fetch the police if she didn’t get out of his shop did she accept his price. Then she went home and started work.
She plugged the lead from her Singer into the light socket in the ceiling. It was getting dark, and she would have to use a gas lamp to work by. “For everyone else, the day is finished,” she said to Liberty. “But our day, it is just starting.”
All night she spent sewing and stitching. Six dresses she made, like the ones they had seen in the window at Saks, but these she made from cotton and added her own touches, used the scraps she had bought from Orchard Street to make each one look individual: some lace here, flowers there, some godets in the skirt here, with a different color, different pattern. And then, a deep breath, and a quick prayer, God, please close your eyes and don’t look. I wouldn’t do this but I’m desperate. She stitched on the labels Frankie’s brother had stolen for her.
Loving Liberty Levine Page 23