by Lily Pond
“No, dear girl. We’re just having a wee chat.” I never heard him sound so Irish. Naomi disappeared.
“Well, Erin go bragh.”
“You’ve got an ugly side to you,” he said, and he put one stiff hand to my face.
“I do. I’m ugly sides all over lately.”
“When it gets bad,” he said, “I’ll need your help. I seem to have taken a sharp turn for the worse this time.”
I put my face on his stomach, which seemed just the same beautiful stomach, hard at the ribs and softer below, thick and sweet as always, no wasting, no bloating.
“And when I’m worse yet, and I want to go, you may have to help.”
I saw Jack’s face smeared against the inside of a plastic bag.
“That’s a long way away. We all want you with us. Jennifer needs you. Naomi needs you, for as long as you’re still, you know, still able to be with them.”
Jack grabbed my hair and pulled my face to his.
“I didn’t ask you what they wanted, I didn’t ask you what you want, I can’t ask my wife. I know she needs me, I know she wants me until I can’t blink once for yes and two for no. She wants me until I don’t know the difference. You have to do this for me.”
I put my hands over my ears, without even realizing it until Jack pulled them away.
“Darling Mistress, this is what I need you for. I can’t fuck you, I can’t have fun with you.” He smiled. “Not much fun anyway. I can’t do the things with you that a man does with his mistress. There is just this one thing that only you can do for me.”
“Does Naomi know?”
“She’ll know what she needs to know. No one’s going to prosecute you or blame you. I’ve given it a lot of thought. You’ll help me and then you’ll go, and it will have been my will, my hand, my choice.”
I walked around the room. With a teenager and a sick man and no cleaning lady, Naomi’s house was tidier than mine on its best day.
“All right? D.M.? Yes?”
“What if I say no?”
“Then don’t come back at all. Why should I have you see me this way, see me worse than this, sweet merciful Jesus, see me dumb and dying, if you won’t save me? Otherwise, you’re just another woman whose heart I’m breaking, whose life I’m destroying. I told you when I met you, baby, I already have a wife.”
Avinu Malkenu, inscribe us in the Book of Happiness.
Avinu Malkenu, inscribe us in the Book of Deliverance.
Avinu Malkenu, inscribe us in the Book of Merit.
Avinu Malkenu, inscribe us in the Book of Forgiveness.
Avinu Malkenu, answer us though we have no deeds to plead our cause;
save us with mercy and loving-kindness.
“You’re a hard man,” I said.
“I certainly hope so.”
I am waiting. I have cleaned my house. I paint. I listen.
The Peddlers, excerpt
Joseph Leon
IRACED HOME FROM SABBATH SERVICES at Shul, crossing Hopkinson Avenue swiftly ahead of the clip-clopping ice wagon and climbing over the rough-stone windowsill into our ground-floor apartment on Saratoga Avenue. Today I was the chosen one. My father had gone into business for himself—free enterprise—and it was my turn to be his assistant. His decision had been to become a dry goods peddler with a route that took him to the New Jersey towns of Nutley, Belleville, Lyndhurst, South Orange, and Newark. Didn’t Mr. Macy, Mr. Gimble, and even Mr. B. Altman—those big department store moguls—begin as lowly peddlers? On the weekends he needed one of us, my older brother or sister and now me, to help him deliver the bulky bundles of dry goods wrapped in brown paper and tied with thick white cord. Today was my chance. This was an event I had prayed for; this prayer God had answered. For most of my father’s life, these launchings had ended in failure. Pa kept flunking out. Even though I was only ten, perhaps I would find the key to make this new business a success.
I carefully changed from my blue suit for religious services into one of the striped cotton shirts my mother made us from remnant, and corduroy pants which one of Pa’s customers had refused. Perhaps we would make enough money and there would be fewer arguments at home. We could move to a place with an inside toilet, and I wouldn’t have to sleep on the stiff mattress laid across the dry goods bundles in the store room. The day lay before me like a clean stretch of sand waiting for footprints.
My mother cut thick slices of cholleh, the egg bread that was baked on Friday, smearing them with schmaltz, the rendered chicken fat, a mandatory staple in Jewish households in Brooklyn, the Bronx, and the lower east side of Manhattan. She sliced pieces of cold roast chicken, put them between the bread slices, and wrapped these thick sandwiches in white paper. She also wrapped two kosher pickles and a green pickled tomato, then enclosed all in newspaper and placed this packet in a large, double brown paper bag. The second course was her gefilteh fish. Ma put three pieces in a glass jar with a screw-top lid, and in a smaller jar spooned out red horseradish, the bitter kind that made your eyes tear. These, with forks wrapped in paper napkins, were added to the brown paper bag. The third piece of fish had been cut into bite-size chunks, offerings to Pa’s Italian customers. Two pieces of fruit completed the bag, which was referred to as the “peckle.” I was to carry this plus the lighter of the four bundles of the day’s merchandise.
My father slung one bundle over his shoulder, secured by thick cord, and the other two heavy ones in either hand. These big bundles contained smaller, different-sized packages. In the parcels were shirts, pants, slips, petticoats, cotton house dresses, winter underwear, long johns, socks, full-fashioned hosiery, bloomers, curtains, bedspreads, tablecloths, cotton doilies, and also silk panties and silk and satin pink nightcaps that children gave their school teachers for Christmas presents. My father wrote on them with a flat, thick-leaded pencil, the names Capalbo, Vitteloni, Cavellicci, DeFalco, and he also marked the contents. For his peddler venture, my father, like the Phoenix, had arisen from the ashes after being fired from a job flanging hats in a men’s hat factory in Belleville. Just before he was fired, Pa had begun navigating this new course, offering to furnish household goods to the Italian families he’d worked with and their friends, all recent immigrants who had settled in northern New Jersey. These now made up Pa’s route.
It was a lighthearted, buoyant walk of three blocks to the elevated train at Flushing Avenue. Despite the bundles, I carried no weight. Pieces of blue sky surrounded fat white clouds that looked like cats. Although it was still chilly for April, I unbuttoned my wool lumber jacket. Every one hundred steps, I fingered the metal coins in my pocket, warm in their tissue paper, each for a different fare.
The train was crowded—some people going to work, others to Manhattan on their day off, to the Aquarium at the Battery or to the top of the Woolworth Building. I didn’t take a seat; I liked the train’s rattling vibration on my feet. I also wanted to be close to the strangers and breath in their smells if I could do it undetected. As we click-claxed over the Manhattan bridge, I watched a coal barge and two tugboats in the East River below sailing down to the Narrows, towards the Atlantic Ocean. They were going where? Along the coastline to other state harbors? In geography class I’d read that Savannah, Baltimore, and even Newark had harbors. I craned my neck to look down on two stick figures on one of the tugboats. Did they like being on their boat? Was the work hard? I wanted to work on a tugboat and travel away and eventually have enough experience to get a job on a big ocean liner sailing everywhere I wanted to go, anywhere, to just be far away, I didn’t exactly know where, to see strange and different places like in pictures in magazines and books at the public library, to meet people, not just children but also men and women who were not Jewish, who had other looks and different manners.
The City Hall station in Manhattan was our exit, the first portion of the journey. We found the connecting underground passage to the Hudson Tubes Station, a long dim-lit cavern, mysterious, filled with hushed noises, exciting in spite of the
musty tunnel smell, a gray-mixed-with-pee odor. The Hudson Tubes Depot was brilliantly lit with shining tile walls, and several tracks going to several places. I paid out the fare for Jersey City and rewrapped the remaining coins in the tissue paper. Clutching the green tickets, I followed my father, who was now sagging with his weight. I was aware that my two bundles were also heavy, and the food peckle felt damp. This car was brighter, cleaner, somehow more airy than a BMT car. The Hudson Tube train took the passengers from the State of New York to the State of New Jersey, and this Jersey City train waited a long time before its doors hissed closed. Then we were rushing violently through the tunnel under the Hudson River, whooshing, choonging, howling, a wholly different dissonance from the train over the East River. My father unfolded the Jewish Daily Forward and began to read.
I watched him. Did the fact that I was finally chosen to go with him mean that now he thought I was reliable? I knew he favored my older brother, which was usual among the tribe of Israel, but I had no clear idea of his feelings towards me. Did this mean he now saw me differently?
I had forgotten to bring my siddur, the Hebrew prayer book, so I couldn’t read my favorite Hebrew chants. I studied the faces of the few passengers. Did they have money, or were they poor like us. Did we have a “poor” look? And how many were Jewish and how many were goyim? The exuding aroma of the chicken sandwiches puckered the inside of my cheeks.
At Jersey City, the train station was above the ground. The clouds had turned to a threatening grim steel, and we hurried to the bus station two blocks away. Panting, we clambered aboard the number twelve bus that went to Nutley, and I had to put my cargo down to get the right coins. People watched me, and my face turned red. My father had found a seat towards the rear, and I took one just behind him and looked at his neck. His collar had a thin uneven line of sweat. I leaned forward. It smelled like sour milk. The next half-hour my father continued to read his Yiddish Forvertz newspaper, and I kept looking at these different new faces, examining each to find out which ones I liked. My gaze returned again and again to a sleeping heavy-set man wearing an open work shirt with the sleeves rolled up, showing muscular arms and dark hair on his chest. He had thick black eyebrows and the beginning of a beard on his strong jutting jaw. I tried to breath like him, my mouth open. When the man woke and frowned at me, I turned away, my face pink. Had my father noticed?
As an exercise, I read the advertising signs up on the sides of the bus. I scanned them once, then went back to see how fast I could read them again and again. One ad, “Ipana for the Smile of Beauty,” pictured a mother, father, and child, all with bright white teeth. I added numbers on license plates that passed the bus, then counted how many were from New York, New Jersey, and further-away states. That done, I twisted around to look out at the streets, avidly watching the street changing character from store fronts to growing spaces between houses, stretches of green plots and trees, then small farmhouses in the middle of truck gardens and grapevines. I looked everywhere but back at the muscular man, and I didn’t notice when he got off the bus.
Finally, Pa folded his newspaper, stuck it under the cord of one of the bundles, and gestured to me. We were in the countryside in surrounding farmland. I reached for the stop signal cord as the bus swung wide around a rock promontory and our target, two dirt roads, came into view.
The moment the bus roared off and we started to walk toward Allabardi Lane, several young children came running to us. They circled us, jumping about and laughing, then escorted us chanting, “Here comes the sheenies. Momma mia, here comes the Christ killers.” The cry was echoed up the unpaved street, as we carefully made our way over mud, wagon ruts, stones, and rubble to the first house.
“Oy vey—gay vehr gehargit” (Oh woe, go get yourselves killed), Pa muttered, yet his voice wasn’t angry. He was used to the greeting.
Angelina Cavellicci was already at the open door, smiling and shouting out a spate of Italian words, interlaced with “Comeinahousea—wadda you bringa me?” Hers was one of some ten farmhouses along the road, houses that looked unsteady in their low peaked roofs and uneven faded, flaking brown and green and gray-white clapboard siding. Spare, scratchy grass plots bordered the fronts. Some had a semblance of a fence, some had a few poles with wires strung between them. Chickens and fat red and black roosters wandered about pecking and strutting. In back, however, was a lush green well-ordered world, with grapevines and fig trees still wrapped up in their winter burlap and tattered blankets. Large wire-fenced vegetable gardens occupied most of the backyard area. Here were rows of beginning tomatoes, peppers, kohlrabi, cabbages, radishes, and onions. Dandelions grew in all available spaces. There were a few each of olive, walnut, apple, and pear trees. The air was strong with the scent of hay, manure, and black dirt, and there was a green smell.
In the kitchen, we dropped our bundles. This was my first view of a Taleynisheh house. I only knew Jewish apartments and houses. The walls were painted a shiny white enamel. A Virgin Mary and a sad saint with a bright pink heart were framed in heavy broad gilt. They hung on either side of the kitchen doorway. I recognized Jesus Christ on the cross, blood dripping from his nailed hands and feet. He was also in a wide gilt frame between two small net-curtained windows. His face showed not so much agony as an ageless deep suffering that would make any Jew proud. Through the open windows drifted the sandpaper noises of crows in the garden and the rattle of wheels as hollering children pulled a wagon up and down the rutted road. Most of the kitchen area was displaced by a large square solid table with fat wooden legs, its top covered in a shiny pink and red flowered oilcloth.
Mrs. Cavellicci brought a dark bottle from an oversized bureau. She washed three tumblers and brought them to the table, uncorked the bottle, and poured out the deep-red wine with its vinegary smell. Chattering in Italian-English all the time, she wiped her hands and arms on the apron pinned to her large chunky house dress, then crossed her fat arms and watched as I sipped slowly, trying not to swallow more than a few drops of the sour, homemade wine. A moment later I decided I liked it, and sipped again. She laughed and spoke rapid Italian with a few heavy-accented English words thrown in. She let us know young Jews didn’t understand how to drink, did they, but Pa was “little by little learning,” and she nudged him, demanding an answer.
Smiling, he muttered half-English, half-Yiddish phrases, “Shure, shure. Good wine. Zie vaiyst fuhn gornisht ah Talayne Sheh kup” (She knows from nothing, an Italian head).
Untying one of the big bundles, my father took out a large package and after checking the name, undid that, all the while smiling, playing the role of benevolent seignior bringing frankincense and myrrh, uttering more Yiddish epithets, interspersed with English words: “By’m by, ah fortz ah July—ah klug tzoo Columbus” (a plague on Columbus). I stared at him. Pa was a comic? I hid my smile. Then he took out a notebook from his sweater pocket, read out to Angelina the dry goods she’d ordered, and laid them out on the kitchen table. There were pairs of boys’ socks, mercerized stockings, pairs of bloomers, two medium-size house dresses, two rose-patterned aprons, a work shirt for the “mister,” and three and a half yards of black cotton for Angelina to make a dress.
While Pa was laying out the items, the neighbor from the next farmhouse came in, a gurgling baby in her arms. She was called Fat Philomena. With a round, dark pink face, large green-olive eyes, and a body filled with young sensual juices, there was a wet-mouthed excitement about her. Her plain, simple black dress had a low round neckline where a large black ebony cross nestled in the dark cleavage of her abundant milk-filled breasts. Addressing my father in her heavy-accented English, she informed him that when he finished with Angelina, she was next and he had charged her “too much” last time, “like all the Jews.”
Pretending great hurt and anger, he said he would take the clothes back and “deh moichendize—ahff meineh sunim gezugt” (On my enemies it should be laid).
She grinned and retorted he was “the only honest Jew, Italians are c
rooks too. We should drink a little wine.”
Pa grinned, and lifting his wine glass as a toast, said in Yiddish that a plague should descend upon her. I burst out with a short laugh I couldn’t cover. Pa frowned.
Philomena smiled, drank her wine, dipped a finger in the remains, and raised it to the baby’s lips, which set him wailing, and then mother and infant went off in a noisy exit.
The financial dealings took time. Every item was bargained over. Angelina ran her hand up the inside of the stockings looking for flaws, so she could declare them seconds and pay less. My father played indignant and angry, then pled on his life how he was selling to her at a loss because she was such a good customer. He was the victim, not she, and this circular argument went back and forth, their voices rising into a mishmash of Yiddish and Italian. Finally, Pa wore her out, and she gave in, looking to the portrait of the Virgin Mary, lamenting that she too was a victim; she couldn’t go shopping to big stores in Newark, and she depended on my father to bring what she needed. . She was at his mercy. Adding numbers in the air with her finger, she declared she would pay nine dollars on account. Wetting the pencil with his tongue, my father wrote figures in another part of the notebook where he kept all the financial records.
When business with Angelina was over, we trudged, one bundle a bit lighter, across the road to Mrs. Philomena Chianese. Although all of Pa’s customers were women, as we sat at the kitchen table, some of the neighborhood men arrived in their muddied overalls, hands caked in shining brown earth and mud from toiling in their small vineyards. Immediately they began kibitzing, the men peaking in loud guttural Italian, my father answering in Yiddish, hurling curses and smiling all the while. The dialogue led to the Jews killing Jesus Christ, with my father claiming it was the “fahcockteh” Romans, the men yelling it was the sheenies, and then more curses in Yiddish and Italian.
The noise brought other neighbors and more greetings which led to additional wine drinking, and then a quieting down as the accusations faded away. The Jew had come, and it was now the time for philosophy and testing the different varieties of homemade wines which had appeared on the table. The popping of corks mingled with backslappings and introductions of me as the other son. I asked to smell the wines; each had a different tang, all dry, that made me shut my eyes. Then the paisanos and the Jews drank and drank, and the Italians listened while the Jew talked. With the wine, someone had brought in freshly baked coarse-grained bread with a thick craggy crust. Hunks were broken off and passed around. Slices of a marinated meat appeared. It turned out to be venison. Alien food roused my curiosity, as alien anything usually did. The venison was stringy and tasted of smoke.