Ellis Island: Three Novels

by Joan Lowery Nixon

  “Of course you do, Grandfather!” Rebekah insisted, but she wondered, how could she know what was best for her family? She had no idea what lay ahead.

  Elias joined them. “When will you leave?” he asked his father.

  “The day after tomorrow,” Mordecai answered.

  “Then we will wait here with you.”

  “And talk now and then through this wire screen? No,” Mordecai said. “Avir will be waiting for you. The time for us to part is now. On this matter I insist.”

  The Levinskys clustered around for a last, tearful farewell before Mordecai hefted his small bundle of possessions and walked through a doorway that led to another part of the building.

  “Grandfather!” Rebekah fought against a creeping, clawing panic. Mordecai would return. He would! Maybe within a year. Maybe two …

  Or would she ever see him again? A sob rose in her throat, and she pressed her hands against the burning pain in her stomach.

  Heartsick, the Levinskys straggled to the baggage room to claim their possessions. They shouldered them—Nessin carrying the sewing machine—and made their way to the American Express office to change their money into United States currency. It was there that Rebekah confessed to what she had done.

  Leah gasped. “We had very little money in the first place! Now what will we do?”

  Wrinkles of worry etched Elias’s forehead, but he smiled wearily and said, “What’s done is done. My father has blessed and helped us by teaching us English. Who knows if Rebekah’s impulsiveness was wrong or right? This is a difficult parting—as hard as our leaving our home.”

  But Leah persisted. “With half our money gone, how will we buy food?” she asked. “How will we pay for a place to live? What is going to happen to us now?”

  To Rebekah’s surprise Jacob spoke up. “Mama,” he said, “we have so much to worry about, one thing more won’t matter. Uncle Avir will be on hand to guide us, and somehow we’ll survive.”

  “We may all go hungry,” Leah grumbled.

  “Being hungry could never be as bad as being seasick,” Jacob answered. “We’re here to exchange the money that’s left, so why are we wasting time? Why don’t we exchange it now and take the next ferry to New York?”

  On the ferry Rebekah glanced at the other members of her family, their faces drooping with misery. Everyone had arrived with such hope, and this last ferry trip to Battery Park should have been one of joy and excitement, but it was not.

  The volunteer from HIAS had sent a message to Avir, and he was waiting for them at Battery Park when the ferry docked. Avir looked much as Rebekah remembered him—a thin, wiry man with a short, thick beard and mustache. As the Levinskys approached, his eyes darted from one to another, and he called to Elias, “Where’s Father?”

  There was much hugging and explaining and a fresh flow of tears from Leah, as Elias explained that Mordecai had been refused admittance to the United States.

  Avir blew his nose loudly into his handkerchief, and his voice broke. “I never thought this would happen. I wanted him—all of you—safely out of Russia, away from the czar and his cossacks.”

  “Grandfather will stay with cousins in England until he comes to America again,” Rebekah hurried to tell Uncle Avir. “Others have come back in second class and been accepted.”

  Avir sighed. “It would take a long time to save enough money for second class.”

  “You wrote that you are doing well here in America,” Elias said. “If the country is as kind to us as well, surely it won’t take long to save the price of second-class fare.”

  Embarrassment washed over Avir’s face, turning his nose and cheeks a dull red. “Life is better than it was in the shtetl,” he said, “but did I say I was rich? Never! There is plenty of piecework to be had, but in order to earn enough money to eat well we must work long, hard hours.”

  Leah sighed and said, “We will do what must be done and manage to put as much as we can aside.”

  Avir pulled out a shiny silver pocket watch, glanced at it, then led the family to a horse-drawn trolley, grandly paying their fares, and they rode through heavy traffic of horse-drawn buggies, carts, and heavy drays to their new home in the city.

  At their stop Rebekah followed the others from the trolley, made her way to the sidewalk, and slowly turned in a circle, staring open-mouthed at the crowds of people, many of them hurrying, as though on their way to work. Some of the men were dressed in dark suits and white shirts with stiffly starched collars, but many wore the traditional black, broad-brimmed hats and long coats familiar to Rebekah. Most of the women were dressed in kerchiefs and shawls, but a few young women wore coats with nipped-in waists and hats with broad brims and flat-topped crowns perched squarely on their heads.

  Who were these smartly dressed women? Rebekah wondered. Where were they going? Was it possible that some of them were students? Is this how women students dressed?

  “Come along, Rebekah,” Uncle Avir called, and she ran, her bundle bouncing against her back as she caught up to her family.

  “Where are we?” she asked.

  “Near Grand Street. This is called the Lower East Side.”

  “Where is our home?”

  “You’ll soon be there,” Avir answered. “There is a flat across the hall from ours, and fortunately it just became available.”

  “What is a flat?”

  “You ask too many questions,” Avir said, but Rebekah didn’t mind. It was too noisy and crowded on the street to carry on a shouted conversation with any success, and she was more interested in what she was seeing than in whatever Uncle Avir could tell her.

  They turned a corner and entered a street that was like a bazaar, but it was far more cluttered and crowded than market day in the shtetl at home. Tattered, faded awnings hung over the narrow storefronts that lined the ground floors of countless brick and wooden multistoried buildings. Wrought-iron balconies and fire escapes jutted out below windows, and ornately carved lamp poles held aloft electric light globes. Peddlers whose pushcarts were mounded with fruit and vegetables, drivers of horse-drawn delivery carts and wagons, stall keepers displaying food, dishes, and baby clothes, and harried pedestrians—bags and baskets over their arms—noisily fought for space. People shouted at each other in Yiddish, Hebrew, and English. Adding to the general commotion, crated chickens and geese kept up a cackling, honking din. The air was thick with mingled smells of dust, horse dung, fish, and newly baked loaves of bread.

  “Gutes frucht!” a peddler yelled at Leah, and he waved something narrow and yellow in her face.

  Avir turned and grinned at Leah, then shook his head at the peddler. “That piece of fruit is a banana,” he said. “Someday you’ll have to eat one.”

  “Is it kosher?” Leah asked.

  Avir’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “Kosher? In this neighborhood you don’t need to worry.”

  “Bargain!” another peddler screamed at Leah. “Ten cents, and I give you enough tomatoes for your whole family!”

  “What is this place?” Rebekah shouted to her uncle.

  “Hester Street,” he said, and he gave a jerk of his head toward the right. “One more block, and we are home.”

  As they managed to progress through the traffic they were shouted at from both sides. “Bluefish! Buy now! Good bargain! Fresh cakes! Collar buttons, suspenders, handkerchiefs!”

  “Look!” Sofia shouted and pointed at a man wearing a wobbling tower of hats, one inside the other.

  “Old clothes. I buy old clothes,” he chanted as he passed, giving the Levinskys an appraising look that quickly slid into a lack of interest.

  Uncle Avir made another turn and led them a few blocks down a narrow street. Refuse littered the sidewalk and clumped where it had blown against row after row of outdoor steps that led down to the street from identical stained and peeling front doors. Avir ushered them into the fourth building from the corner and up a dark, narrow, staircase to the third floor. He stopped in front of one door and open
ed it wide.

  Rebekah had expected rooms that would be homelike, with comfortable chairs and a table and maybe a few rugs on the floor; she was astounded when she saw at least a half dozen people inside the room, all of them hunched over fabric or sewing machines. Dark woolen cloth was everywhere—on laps, on tables, and on the floor—and the lint from the cloth covered everything and everyone with a fine black dust. A dingy, colorless fringe decorated the lower edges of the raised window shades, but aside from the sconces that held gas lamps, there were no pictures or paintings to break the monotonous, faded wallpaper.

  “This is my home and my shop!” Avir announced proudly, but he made no move to introduce them to his workers. A presser and a seamstress glanced up but quickly went back to their work when they caught Avir’s eye on them. “I’ve arranged to rent the flat across the hall,” he said, “so I can set up another shop like this for you to manage, Elias.”

  Elias tried to talk, then cleared his throat and tried again, but still the words were faint. “I—I could not manage a shop, Avir,” he said. “I am a tailor. If I could get a job somewhere as a tailor …”

  “New York City is full of tailors,” Avir said. “And those who work in factories make less than ten dollars a week. Besides the coats my workers are making, I’ve got a new contract to make three hundred pairs of boys’ pants, which I’m going to subcontract to you. I have to pay outside help to press, baste, finish, trim, and so on, but with your entire family here to help with all those jobs, you could easily clear a profit of thirty dollars for the week’s work!”

  He took his brother’s arm and peered into his face. “With a shop in your flat, your whole family to work for you, and rent just six dollars a week, think of how successful you can be, Elias!”

  “This is not the kind of work I am used to doing,” Elias answered.

  “Don’t you understand, Elias? This and factory work are all that is available for us!” Avir said. “Consider yourself fortunate that I’ve set this up for you. There are plenty of people out there who are after these jobs. Operators get fifteen dollars a week, finishers ten, basters twelve.”

  “Not everyone in my family will work Avir,” Elias began. “Jacob has his religious studies. We will look for a rebbe who is a good teacher, for a yeshiva …”

  “For a while Jacob can postpone his studies,” Avir said. “You have to get established, Elias. I’m trying to help you do so, and you’ll soon understand I know the best way.”

  Rebekah glanced from Jacob’s shocked expression to the workers in the crowded room. It was hot, with steam rising from irons at which a young man toiled, without his shirt on. Sweat rolled down faces, necks, and backs; arms glistened in the heat.

  This is a sweatshop, Rebekah thought, and her stomach clutched in revulsion. This is not what they’d come to America for! Not to live like this!

  “Elias, I have made a thriving business for myself,” Avir said. “It may not be just what you expected, but at least we live in freedom, safely away from pogroms and the cossacks. Am I not right?”

  Elias nodded agreement, but Rebekah glanced at her mother, whose face was pale. Her father’s eyes had dulled. Jacob looked as sick as he had on the ship. But Nessin’s lip curled defiantly, and Rebekah knew he wasn’t about to accept this life either.

  “It can be a rewarding and successful business for those who master it,” Avir continued. “The manufacturers have piecework which must be done. They call for bids on each order. Maybe it’s six hundred men’s coats, maybe one hundred women’s shirts. Usually, the manufacturers accept the lowest bid. The trick is in coming just under the others with a penny here, a penny there—without going too low. The profits are not large, but with quantity and careful management I have created a successful business.” He swept his arm in a proud gesture around the room. “It will be the same for you, my brother.”

  Avir didn’t give Elias time to answer but went on: “The manufacturers establish deadlines for each order of piecework to be completed, and these deadlines allow very little time. We work from six in the morning until nine at night to meet the deadlines. Only those who can win the bids and meet the deadlines have any chance to survive in this business.”

  Leah’s expression was one of bewilderment, but to maintain face she said, “Enough talk of business for now, Avir. Where is your wife, Anna? It’s been such a long time … I’m eager to see her.”

  “She’s cooking our evening meal,” Avir said. “She’s preparing enough to share with you, and when she brings it to you, you’ll have a short time in which to greet her before she must return to work.”

  “Brings it? Where? What do you mean?”

  Without answering, Avir suddenly shooed them back into the hallway and shut the door. Across the hall he opened the door to an empty, dirty string of rooms. “Come,” he called and strode through to the kitchen in back, his footsteps echoing. “Put down your baggage. This is your new home.”

  The Levinskys sadly looked at one another, but followed Avir into a good-sized kitchen, which contained a black cast-iron coal stove, a corner sink with a single cold-water faucet, and a table with six chairs. The wooden floors were stained and sticky, but Avir gave them only a cursory glance and shrugged. “Once Leah and Rebekah scrub these floors clean, this will be your favorite room in the house.”

  At least the kitchen had sunlight streaming through the window, Rebekah noticed. With the exception of the pair of windows facing the street, the windows in the other two rooms faced only the brick wall of the building next door.

  “I need the privy,” Sofia demanded. “Where is it?”

  “Outside in back,” Avir said, and Leah took her daughter’s hand, hurrying her out of the room.

  “We’ll outfit the other rooms with beds and sofas and tables—lots of tables to work on,” Avir continued. “There are secondhand-furniture salesmen with carts.” Avir stopped and looked expectantly at Elias. “You have enough money with you to buy the furniture and extra sewing machines you’ll need, haven’t you?”

  “We do not have much money left,” Elias said. He reached into his pocket and removed the folded United States currency he’d been given at the American Express office on the island. “We gave some to Father when he was detained.”

  Avir’s eyebrows rose as he thumbed through the bills, removing two of them before he returned the rest to Elias. “At least you can pay for the first week’s rent,” he said. “I am your brother. I will lend you the money to buy your furniture and the sewing equipment you’ll need.”

  “Thank you,” Elias said quietly. “You’ve done a great deal. I don’t know what I was expecting, but we can’t go back. We will do what must be done.”

  So. Her father had decided. Rebekah ached at seeing the despair in his face. This had been a frightening change for her parents—for all of them. The life Uncle Avir had arranged for them in New York City was so different from their quiet lives. But did they have to agree to everything he said? If only Grandfather had been admitted to America. What would he have done? What would he want her to do?

  Rebekah took a deep breath and said, “Father, what about Jacob’s yeshiva studies? Couldn’t he help after his studies each day?”

  Both her father and uncle looked at her with surprise, but Elias’s eyes shone warmly. He told his brother, “What Rebekah says is fair. We will all work hard to repay your loan as quickly as possible. But Jacob will work after he has come from yeshiva and done his studies each day.”

  “Very well, then.” Avir shrugged.

  By this time Leah and Sofia had returned. “If you have some lye soap and cleaning utensils we can borrow, Rebekah and I will get to work on this … this flat, as you call it,” Leah said. “Then we’ll go to Hester Street and shop for food and dishes.”

  Avir looked pleased and nodded briskly. “It will all work out well for you … for all of us,” he said, and he began to explain to Elias how the shop would be set up and run.

  Rebekah didn’t listen.
Noise from the streets below became a background of discordant sounds that went on, and on, and on. Rebekah wanted to cover her ears, to scream, to cry, but she couldn’t. She had lost her grandfather, she had surely lost the opportunity to go to school, she had lost the friends she had made on board ship, and she and her family seemed to be left with a horrible life of unending drudgery, noise, and dirt.

  In desperation, she walked to the front windows and raised them high. The din from the streets increased, but a cool breeze blew into the room. As it touched Rebekah’s face, it reminded her of the breezes from the sea. With it came memories of Mordecai, Aaron, Kristin, and Rose. She stood a little straighter.

  Rebekah could accept the fact that she and her family might have to follow the program Uncle Avir had arranged for them, at least until he had been repaid, but she knew that there were other ways to live—happier, more comfortable ways. Surely America was not a place made up of people living miserable lives. In Russia, people lived with more and less. She would find a way to make a better life in this land. She only had hope, but she wouldn’t give that up.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  UNCLE Avir took Nessin away with him, and Nessin returned with a broom, scrub brushes, a bucket, and a large, sloshing jar of pungent, acrid-smelling lye soap. Before Rebekah changed to a work dress, she turned to her father.

  “Papa,” she said, “we cannot sew here until the rooms are clean. Perhaps while Mama and I work you can visit the people at the HIAS office and ask them to help you find a yeshiva for Jacob? You have the address. And Mrs. Greenberg told us they’d help us in any way.”

  Elias slowly straightened his shoulders and began to relax. “A good idea,” he said. He fished in his pocket for the piece of paper. When he had found it, he nodded to Jacob. “Come with me. We’ll see what these people can tell us.”

  Soon after they had left, Nessin edged toward the door. “I’ll take a look around and find out more about this place,” he said.