by Pamela Moses
But though I could never tell Mama, I did love one day of the week: Sunday. The day Mama shopped for our weekly groceries, then scrubbed the corners of the apartment that she complained Inez, our Wednesday morning cleaning woman, had overlooked. Sundays were the days Poppy would drive Sarah and Valerie and me to Long Beach for the afternoon. He would roll down the windows of our old Chevrolet wagon and fiddle with the radio dial until he found the station with the least static.
“You’re all going in today, right, girls?” he would say, checking us in the rearview mirror. “No chickens in this car!”
“No chickens, Poppy!” we would laugh. And once we’d made this promise, he reminded us, there’d be no turning back. No matter how the surf stung our feet with cold as we stood at the water’s edge or how our arms and legs bristled with goose bumps. The rule was we had to submerge ourselves shoulder deep. Then, if we were brave enough to stay in longer, he would teach us to swim—freestyle, breaststroke, even the backstroke. For the first few weeks, I had watched for half the afternoon, dry above my ankles, as my sisters splashed about with Poppy beyond the breakers, daring to plunge in with them only after much coaxing. But, eventually, I gained courage and allowed Poppy to show me how easily my body could float on the surface if I relaxed, how quickly I could propel myself by pulling at the water with long strokes and fluttering my feet.
“What a little tadpole you are, Ruthie! A natural swimmer!” Poppy would tug at my streaming wet hair. And then how reluctant I was to leave, staying in long after Sarah and Valerie, despite the numbness in my hands, feeling I could swim forever, past the umbrellas far, far down the shoreline.
On the way home, my hair still hanging in damp strands, leaning my head against the blue vinyl seat, I would dream of swimming all the way to the horizon and back, swift as the wriggling fish below, free as the clouds overhead. If traffic returning to the city was slow, Poppy would stop with us at the Friendly’s off the highway for cheeseburgers and milkshakes, calling Mama from the restaurant pay phone to say we would be home later than planned. On these evenings, there was no time for Mama’s math games or reading. And I heard her at night, through my bedroom wall, protest that after so many hours at the seashore—and maybe it was also the junky food we had been eating—we were completely spent. Even the following day when she worked with us, she said, we were often unfocused, as if we’d been overbaked in the sun! Certainly there were other things Poppy could take us to do. How about a visit to the Metropolitan Museum or a walk through the gardens of Fort Tryon Park? Did it have to be the beach every time?
“But the girls love it,” I was relieved to hear Poppy reply.
So Mama changed her market day to Mondays after work. She found time for her housework in the evenings once Sarah, Valerie, and I had gone to bed. And she began to accompany us to the beach, packing a picnic basket full of food she claimed would nourish us properly, and learning games for the car since we would not get to them that night. She would sit in a folding chair in her white beach cover with red trim, her wide-brimmed hat tied beneath her chin with a red ribbon. Always she brought the Sunday Times crossword, which she later liked to tell her sisters she had finished in its entirety (though I thought, on more than one occasion, I had caught her checking the answers in the following week’s paper, then filling in the spaces she had missed).
“Don’t you want to come in, Judith? It’s warm once you get used to it!” Poppy would call to Mama, running up from the water onto the first ridge of dry sand. He looked handsome, I thought, in his black bathing trunks, his hair slicked from the wet. But Mama, who had admitted to us once she’d never learned to swim well, would tuck her feet under her chair—her legs, from lack of sun, much paler than the rest of ours—and wave her hand in a way that meant, “No, go ahead without me.”
Though one morning, after many requests, Poppy did convince her. She waded in with small steps, raising her elbows as she slowly reached waist-deep water, then waiting for a long break in the waves before edging out farther.
“Come to where we are, Ma!” my sisters and I cried from where we swam with Poppy. But as she stretched out her arms to paddle, her chin up, her neck stiff, a wave broke over her. And as soon as her head was above water once more, she quickly retreated to the shore, coughing into her hands.
“Come on, Judith! Give it one more try! We’ll go together,” Poppy offered as Mama made her way back to our belongings.
But she only shook her head and resettled in her chair with her crossword. She did not even notice Sarah and Valerie, some time later, tossing back their hair with their eyes closed, puckering their mouths like the man and woman embracing near us in the water. It was Poppy who eventually declared, “That’s enough, girls,” shielding his eyes from the sun to look at Mama as my sisters and I giggled bubbles into the salty water.
Mama stayed put until precisely noon, when she signaled us to come towel off and break for lunch. Then she pulled from her basket liverwurst on chewy rye. Or some Sundays, tuna salad with chunks of pickle, even deviled eggs with paprika sprinkled on top, setting it all at the center of our checked beach blanket for us to sit around. Now and then she would turn to glance over her shoulder at groups gathered nearby, families with hot dogs and pretzels from the concession stands, teenage girls drinking diet sodas, nibbling from small packets of chips. And as she sniffed then looked back to us, munching our sandwiches and eggs, I knew what she was thinking—that our meal was far superior. But this seemed the only part of the day she enjoyed, and, guiltily, I would sometimes wish she had not come. I knew it was because Poppy sensed Mama’s impatience that he shortened our afternoons, the parking lot still packed with cars when we drove off. The radio remained silent now on the ride home as Mama read aloud a book of Aesop’s Fables from the library. And so I would pretend drowsiness, closing my eyes until Mama believed I was asleep so that I could imagine I was still bobbing on the surface of the waves, drifting with the rhythm of the vast ocean.
Summer days seemed to pass more slowly than those of other seasons, but the summer I was thirteen seemed to disappear before its time. The Tuesday following Labor Day weekend, school began again. But this fall I would not be returning to the public school in our district. Since the previous autumn, I knew, Mama and Poppy had argued over where to enroll me for my eighth-grade year, their voices sometimes waking me hours after I had gone to bed. Poppy was eventually expecting a raise from the factory where he worked as a mechanical engineer, and partial scholarships, Mama had recently learned from our neighbor Babbie Schafer, were available for qualified students at her son’s private school. If they could find the money for the remaining tuition, shouldn’t I be given every advantage? Mama demanded. But Poppy thought our local public school was challenging enough. It was good enough for Bernice’s and Helena’s children, after all, and for the children of so many friends. Besides, even with a scholarship, he was sure the cost would still be in the thousands. That kind of money wasn’t falling out of his pockets. This sounded like one of Poppy’s jokes, but I heard no laughing. I wished Mama would forget the whole notion. But she was insistent. Maybe the raise would come faster if Poppy spent less time on his journals, which earned us nothing, and more time in the office. She’d heard what Babbie’s son was learning, only a grade ahead of me. “Have you considered the opportunities this could mean, Aaron?” Mama’s words grew louder, covering Poppy’s. I remembered the Passover some years before when I had walked into the kitchen and found Mama and Nana Leah quarreling over things from the past. “That’s not so, Mother! It would have made a difference if I had finished all four years! How many choices do you think there are without a degree?” I had never seen Mama short-tempered with Nana before. As soon as they were aware of my presence, their conversation ended. But for days afterward, I wondered what Nana had said before I’d entered and about the things Mama would have changed. And from something unwavering in her voice as she argued with Poppy, I knew she would make sure things went differently for me
.
Then, some weeks later, I heard Poppy announce to her that an increase in his salary had finally come. And so he agreed that I should apply; and if I was accepted, since they now had the means, I would be given the finest possible education. Then, hopefully, the following year, they could plan to send Sarah, too.
In addition to my usual summer lessons, Mama, during that July and August, drilled me on the rules of grammar and composition. “Extra preparation for your new school can’t hurt, can it? I imagine some new things will be asked of you now.” For my practice work she brought me, from her shop, a red marbleized fountain pen she knew I had always admired, one of the pens fancy enough to be kept in the locked case to the right of the front window rather than in the rows of plastic bins above the loose writing paper.
Along my walk to school on the first day, I felt for the pen Mama had given me—easily accessible in the pocket of my windbreaker. I headed past the shops of Mosholu Avenue, turning onto Fieldston Road, to the Fieldston section of Riverdale with all of its large homes of stone or brick or stucco, grander than Leonid and Nadia’s house in Scarsdale, a world just minutes from our apartment but one that I’d rarely entered.
That first Monday I had six courses to attend. The school had mailed me a copy of my weekly schedule, and on its grid of squares Mama had color-coded each subject—yellow for history, blue for math, red for English, and so on—making it simpler for me to keep track of where I needed to go. The campus of my new school was more expansive than I’d remembered from my visit the previous winter, with its scattering of structures, its lawns far wider than even those of the homes I’d passed on the way. (My old school had only a single building with an asphalt play area in the back.) Here the high-ceilinged hallways seemed to swallow sound, the voices of the students seeming more subdued as they moved from room to room—the boys in fitted jeans or khakis, sockless loafers, the girls in ankle boots and designer sweaters. Though many were Jewish—I knew from talk in the neighborhood—I saw not a single yarmulke, not one below-the-knee skirt like the several Orthodox girls in my old school wore. Was this something Mama had noticed, too, when we visited earlier in the year? I vowed that the next morning I would wake early, allowing plenty of extra time to dress more stylishly.
• • •
By only the second week, I was assigned an eight-page English essay comparing the characters of Edward Rochester and St. John in Jane Eyre, the dense novel we had been required to read over the summer. Casually my classmates folded the essay instructions into their notebooks, none of them seeming alarmed by having to complete a paper of this length within just ten days.
For several evenings after dinner, at the corner living room desk, I studied the book, scribbling pages of notes then erasing much of what I’d written, a pile of crumpled papers forming at my feet. Each time I tossed a balled sheet to the floor, I thought I could see Mama glance up from her reading. Since the start of the school year, I’d noticed, rather than spending her evenings at the kitchen table with order forms for holiday cards or sealing wax or decorative stamps for her shop, she had taken to sitting in the upholstered chair not far from where I worked.
“Can I get you anything from the kitchen, Pea?” Standing up, she would give my shoulder a squeeze. She smiled, but I saw, before I answered, that she scanned what she could of my scrawled paragraphs, and that, for a moment, her bottom lip drew inward, as if she were pinching back some remark.
I would shrug. “Yes, okay. Are there any more of those oatmeal cookies?” Then, as soon as Mama walked away, I would read again the sentences I had just written, wondering if they flowed in a logical manner.
As the deadline for the paper drew closer, I spent longer and longer evening hours poring over the chapters of the book, but the more I tried to organize my thoughts, the less sure I was of them. This was nothing like helping Poppy with his stories, which seemed alive and whole before we ever put them on paper, like songs already playing in our heads that needed only their notes recorded and embellished.
“How is it coming?” Mama would ask.
“Making progress!” I would say cheerfully. I did not tell her that as I worked I found myself drawing absentminded doodles of Jane Eyre and Edward Rochester around the margins of my pages, or that I was not certain my paragraphs contrasting St. John’s morality with Rochester’s expressed all I meant to say.
“Yes? Oh, good, good.” But she squinted at the growing mound of papers beneath my chair and the untouched plate of cookies. And I thought I heard the small snap of her tongue when I raised my fingers from my lap, revealing the newly bloodied skin around my nails.
Then, four nights before my essay was due, I saw that Mama, in her chair, her feet propped on the ottoman, was carefully inspecting the pages of a new book. Its cover was hidden by her hands, but when she rose to fill the kitchen kettle with water, I peeked at its title—Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë! A silver Doyle & Co sticker was adhered to its spine, a brand-new copy from the bookshop next door to Mama’s store.
Before I could return to my seat, Mama emerged from the kitchen sipping a mug of tea. “Oh!” She waved an arm toward the book and laughed, as if she’d almost forgotten what she was reading, her cheeks pink as carnations. “You don’t mind if I read the story, too, do you? And this way, if you have any questions—”
“I don’t think I’m allowed to accept any help on this assignment. Anyway, I can do it on my own.” I yanked at the neck of my wool sweater, which had begun to itch, and hoped I sounded confident as I tried to recall the long list of essay rules my English teacher, Miss Fielding, had written across her blackboard in yellow chalk.
Mama flicked her hand and smiled, as if to say she understood perfectly, but for some time I could hear, over my shoulder, the scratch of her pencil as she underlined passages, and, now and then, to my annoyance, when I turned around, I caught her turning down the corner of a page.
The following day in English class, while Miss Fielding led a discussion about the meaning of symbols in our novel, I studied my fellow students. How rested and calm they looked, and I imagined that none of them was keeping my late hours. But when, later in the period, Miss Fielding checked over what each of us had written so far, she complimented my understanding of St. John’s values versus Rochester’s and of Rochester’s development throughout the novel. “You are off to a good start,” she said. “Now rethink how you will pull your argument together in the closing sections so that you do not stray from your topic.”
At home that final afternoon before the essay would be turned in, Sarah and Valerie were in their room, their door closed, singing along with the Cats cassette playing on their shared stereo. (Now that I was in eighth grade, Mama believed we were old enough to look after ourselves for the short hour between our return from school and hers from work.) I spread my papers once more across the living room desk and considered how to rework the last two pages of my essay. Despite the music thumping from my sisters’ room, I dashed off three revised concluding paragraphs, my thoughts tumbling out almost more quickly than I could record them.
“Hello, girls!” Mama called when she entered, hanging her fall trench coat in the hall closet, shaking off her buckled heels. She walked to where I was working, kissing the top of my head. “Almost finished?” she asked offhandedly, as if the question were no more than a politeness. But from where she stood behind my chair, I knew she was hoping for a glance at what I had composed.
“Yes, just about! Until today I thought maybe I’d made a mess of it, but Miss Fielding said she liked much of what I’ve written, and I think I’ve almost fixed the parts that were wrong.”
“Oh, so fast?” Mama smiled, but her voice was low, as if the words were thick in her throat.
“I know—the ideas just flew out of me!” I grinned and twirled my pen between my fingers.
“Good, very good. Now that you’re close to finishing, perhaps I should take a quick peek at what you have so far—”
“What, Ma?�
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“Just as a simple proofread, a second pair of eyes. Only to catch things you may have missed or to give a simple suggestion here or there. Especially if only yesterday you still had concerns. . . . It can’t hurt, can it? I’m sure it’s perfectly acceptable.”
As Mama searched for a pen in the desk drawer and pulled over one of the dining chairs, setting it beside mine, I was not entirely certain Miss Fielding would say it was perfectly acceptable; but suddenly fearing I could not possibly have sorted out my points so quickly, I nodded my agreement.
Mama read through the paper once and then a second time, and as she did, she found many things to question—things I had not yet considered, things that had not caught Miss Fielding’s eye. But Miss Fielding had given only minutes to my paper, and Mama hunched over my essay with me until long after midnight, until my eyes stung with fatigue. And gradually I saw that what had seemed so ordered earlier in the day had only been a tangled muddle. And I resented Miss Fielding for having made me believe I’d had only simple revisions left.
“What if you said this instead? Just an idea.”