by Marge Piercy
Sammy nodded. “We get her tomorrow. We don’t put it off.”
“You’re the true son of my heart. You know that, don’t you?”
“If I was your real son, I couldn’t marry Debra.”
“No talk about marrying.”
He made a sign of zipping his lip, but she knew that was not the end of this. They were old enough to marry. He was sixteen; Debra was fourteen. The age of consent in New York was ten. She must discuss this with him and with Sara before something bad happened. Children, death, marriage, it all came tumbling down at once. She could imagine a quiet life, but she had never known one. Imagine a day without a crisis. Shalom, shalom, shalom, Jews prayed all the time and where was it? In the clouds. In dreams the color of lavender and the pink cotton candy the goyim ate on the Bowery. Peace like the scent of pine needles on a June morning early. In their heads, peace, shalom, there and only there.
In the morning they left as planned. Asher was davening, lost in blissful mumbling, facing the east windows in the front room. It did not occur to him that they would disobey. They hurried through the early streets, crowded already with carts, one picking up dead animals in the street and the occasional corpse, one delivering empty barrels to a brewery, one carrying in potatoes from Long Island to the greengrocers along his route. A peddler was selling turnips, leeks, onions and carrots. There was a skim of ice on the mud of the street, but it melted quickly. The day was going to be warmer than yesterday, she could feel it. They dodged a cascade of slops from a chamber pot and headed downtown past Delancey, then east to the river. The only reasonable way to get there was to walk, and they did, at a fast pace through the mud and over the cobblestones and wooden planks. It wasn’t that far, just a different world: no Jews, tougher gangs, more filth. The Patsy Conroys, the Daybreak Boys who preyed on the docks, the River Pirates all found their homes in this old, old slum along the East River where Irish and Yankees below poverty shared the rotting buildings and narrow streets deep in mud.
The old woman in her torn gray gown that had once been red, with a dirty kerchief tied around her head and her arm in a sling, answered the door again. She stared as if seeing them for the first time. “You got the money?”
“Show us the girl.”
“Reba! Get your ass down here.”
A dirty little barefoot girl, her long brown hair hanging in greasy hanks, came slowly, reluctantly toward the door, blinking at the light. She edged past the woman, gingerly.
“I’m your Aunt Freydeh. Did your mama ever mention me? Did she tell you my name?”
The girl shrugged, filthy thumb in mouth.
“You were lost. I’ve come to get you.”
“Where’s my mama?”
Freydeh did not want to start off by lying, but she could hardly tell the girl her mother was dead and she must go with them. The little girl squinted at Sammy suspiciously. She had already learned to mistrust men. Freydeh began, “Later on—”
“Your mother’s dead,” the slattern interrupted. “They take you or I’ll throw you out in the street or worse. Now give me the twenty dollars for her.”
“We agreed on eighteen.” Freydeh held out the money but kept a grip on it.
Sammy let his coat fall open so that his knife was visible. “We’ll take her now.”
The woman looked indecisive. “I said twenty.”
“Then you agreed to eighteen. You take it or leave it. Either way we’re going home with our niece.” Sammy stepped forward as if to threaten her.
The woman took the money and tucked it into a woven purse she wore under her skirts with a flash of her gray flabby legs. Freydeh picked up the child, who began to cry and tried to duck behind the woman. For a girl of five, she was severely underweight. She stank of urine and worse. The child beat feebly on her, crying and shrieking. Freydeh half expected the windows to open and people to run down as they would on her block, but nobody even looked. With Sammy in the lead, they headed for home. Freydeh gave the girl a dried apple ring to suck on, and she quieted. Halfway there, Sammy took her. Reba began to cry again. Freydeh soothed her with more of the dried apple rings from her pocket and they marched on. At one point, the little girl said, “My mama has yellow hair. Is she coming to get me?”
Sammy looked at her and she looked back at him. Nothing to do but tell the truth. “No. But we promised her we’d take care of you for her.”
“Miz Canary, she say my mama dead?”
“I’m your auntie and this is your cousin. We’re going to take you home with us.”
“You won’t throw me in the river?”
“Why would we do that? You’re our little girl now.”
“Miz Canary say she throw me in the river.”
“We’re going to take you home and feed you and put you in clean clothes. You’re going to your real family, to another little girl Kezia and your Aunt Sara and your Uncle Asher and your cousins Debra and Feygeleh, who’s just your age, and Chaim. You’ll have children to play with and a home to live in.”
SHE NOTICED THOSE next days as Reba was cleaned up and dressed and fed, her hair cut off to get rid of the lice, the scabs on her arms and legs treated with ointment, that Asher did not look at the little girl. Sara took Reba on her lap along with her own Feygeleh. Chaim considered himself too big to sit on his mother’s lap now. Sometimes on Saturdays, Asher took him to shul, and sometimes on weekday mornings for prayers before school. Chaim was still obedient and took his father’s wishes as law, but she knew, from her years in the neighborhood, that would change. Kezia played with Reba like a doll. Sammy was tender with her. Debra hung back at first, but then the maternal feelings that were uncommonly developed in her took over and she began to mother Reba.
Reba would cringe if Asher or Sammy or Sara moved suddenly or lifted an arm. She did not have that reaction with Freydeh. After she had been with them for a month, she began to call Freydeh “Mama.” She knew who she belonged to now.
Asher went out to look for work but seldom found it. Freydeh suspected he wanted it to find him. He was one of those men, unlike her own father, who paid little attention to his daughters and a great deal to his son. Her father had loved them all out of his overflowing generosity of spirit. She had been lucky in her parents, even though she fought with her mother. Her mother thought she had too much spirit for a girl and that would prove dangerous. She still thought her mother was wrong. A girl needed all the strength and spirit she could muster. Her mother had obviously preferred Sara and Shaineh, and she had doted on her sons. Her father had encouraged Freydeh to learn, to walk with him in the woods and listen as he told her about the different trees and birds and animals who lived there, the foxes, the wolves, the weasels, the hares, the rabbits and the deer. He showed her cocoons of moths and hornets’ nests and the hives of wild bees in hollows of trees. She could never have a chance to pass on that kind of lore to her sweet adopted children, because there were no trees, no rabbits unless someone kept them in a hutch behind a building. Someday she would get them out of this slum. Comstock had cost her four years of work, but she would save, get them to a better spot. She would.
Asher was brooding about Shaineh and the shame she had brought on the family—as if anyone here knew her. If he didn’t tell the story, no one would know, so what was the problem, Sara said repeatedly. He did not listen. Occasionally he would lose his temper and pound on the table in fury if she did not shut up. Nobody cared where Reba came from. So many families ended up taking in children of relatives who died, no one thought twice about it. Reba wasn’t about to go shouting in the hallway that her mother had been a whore. So forget about it, maybe go and see if they’re hiring at the tin factory where one of the men downstairs got a job.
Asher did not forget. He twisted thin and bitter stories about the facts of Shaineh’s life and death. He ignored Reba. In three tiny rooms, that was difficult, but he was so often at the shul he could withdraw. Several times Freydeh tried to speak to him about his situation. His gaze glassed
over. He did not bother to reply, simply waiting for her voice to cease as if it were an annoying noise from the street. A dog in agony. A horse or a woman being beaten. The third time she spoke to him he glared and raised his fist as if to hit her. She caught his arm and held it as they each tested their strength against the other. She was the stronger. He turned away. He was cold to all of them except his little son. She felt as if he did not know who to blame for what had happened to Shaineh. His shame gnawed away inside him like an ulcer. She tried to talk with Sara about Asher, but Sara was fiercely loyal to her husband and perhaps afraid.
Time seemed to do little to ease his bitterness. Once or twice he found work briefly but it never lasted. In the meantime, Freydeh finally confronted Sara about the attachment between Sammy and Debra. Freydeh had sent them on an errand to buy some supplies she needed. She took advantage of the privacy with the two of them gone, the younger four children in school—she had enrolled Reba, whose short hair caused her to be teased, as everyone could guess the reason for it—and Asher off at shul. “Do you think anything has happened between them?” Sara asked, wringing her hands.
“I don’t think so. Sammy is a good boy. Debra’s a good girl. I think holding hands and a stolen kiss is as far as it’s gone.”
“We should move out.”
“If you can find a place cheap.” She was taking only four dollars for all of them.
“I don’t know what to do!”
“Will you speak to Asher?”
“He’ll just start screaming. He’s so destroyed by what happened to Shaineh, zikronah l’brakhah, may her name be blessed.”
“So we’ll keep this to ourselves. Even if you move out, I suspect they’ll see each other. Should we think about marriage?”
“She’s so young… They both are.” Sara was wringing her hands again. “Who needs more trouble?”
“Maybe if we betroth them, then they can marry when we think they’re ready.”
“Freydeh, has Sammy been bar mitzvahed?”
Freydeh sat down hard in a chair. “I took him off the streets. I never thought of it. We’ve been so busy trying to survive.”
“We got to bar mitzvah him right away. We won’t say why, just that it never happened… He’s circumcised, right?”
“Of course.”
“So we get him bar mitzvahed. Without that, Asher will never agree.”
She broke the news to Sammy, pulling him into the hall. “You got to get bar mitzvahed, Sara says.”
“What for? I’m a Jew. That costs money we don’t got.”
“Because you and Debra are making cow eyes at each other. Because there’s no chance for you with her if you don’t do this. Better late than not. Asher will forbid it otherwise.”
“We want to get married. Not right away. But soon.”
“So then you got to do this. It means learning a bunch of Hebrew, but you’re quick with languages.”
“If I got to do it for her, I’ll do it.”
It was explained to Asher that without a man in the family, it had never happened. That seemed sufficient explanation for him and he arranged for Sammy to start studying with one of the men in his minyan. Sammy would not take the regular Hebrew classes; since he was so much older and bigger than the boys in them, he would be ashamed. The rabbi agreed that his preparation would be accelerated. Everyone accepted that he had missed his time because his father was dead and because there had been so few Jews from the Pale living in the neighborhood then. Now a couple more came every week. The shul had moved upstairs and taken over the apartment above the store.
Sammy liked learning the language, but he resented going through all what he called the rigmarole. She didn’t push him about it. He understood the situation and he would do what he must, but he wasn’t going to be religious like Asher. He would be something of a freethinker, like Moishe had been, like herself. Debra was a closed book to her. A good girl, hardworking, willing to do whatever she had to for her family, but showing little of what she truly thought. She was picking up English quickly, even though she couldn’t go to school. When Freydeh saw her with Sammy in the street or the hallway or with one of the girls she had made friends with in the neighborhood, she was far more animated. She laughed openly, she waved her hands around and spun on her heel and leaned close to her friend to argue. She was a different girl away from her parents. Was that the girl Sammy had fallen for? Freydeh was intrigued, but would not interfere. Then she caught them in the hall together kissing against the wall with Sammy’s hand under Debra’s blouse. She warned them to be careful. “Enough trouble in the family already!”
Asher went out often in the evenings. They assumed he was at the shul, but one evening when Sammy was working with his Hebrew tutor, he came back and said that Asher was not there. “So where is he?” Freydeh asked Sara.
“I don’t know! He doesn’t smell of liquor or beer when he comes home. Could he have another woman?” Sara looked as if she might weep.
“I can’t imagine that. Maybe he’s so distraught he’s walking and thinking…”
When Asher came home that night, they were waiting for him. “Where have you been?” Sara asked, her hands on her hips. “We know you weren’t at shul. Do you have a woman on the side?”
“Wife, I am going to wash away the shame on our family.”
“There is no shame, but what you think is shame,” Freydeh said. “Shaineh had no choice. She had a little girl to feed. He locked her up. He kept her locked up.”
“Then he is a criminal and the shame should be on him.” Asher turned his back on them and strode to the window to stare out at the street.
“You can’t prosecute him in a court of law. Lawyers cost a lot of money. He has money. We don’t.”
“Keep out of my family business. You didn’t protect her when she came. It’s your fault, what happened to her.” Every night now he went out. Sometimes he came back in an hour. Sometimes he was gone until after midnight.
“Do you think I should follow him?” Sammy asked.
Freydeh shook her head. “He’s a grown man. Let him find his way.”
Then one night Asher came back at ten. He was dirty and disheveled as he sat down at the table and announced, “I have dealt with it.”
“Dealt with what?” Sara asked him. “You got a job?”
“I was waiting for him when he left the house of his cuervah. Such a man always has such a woman. I caught him and I struck him across both knees with a lead pipe. Then I left him there in the alley… He will survive, but he will be lame.”
“Asher, mine husband!” Sara shook him by the shoulders. “How could you do such a thing? The police will come and take you away. We’ll never see you again.”
“He doesn’t know who I am. He never saw my face in the dark alley. No one will come after me. I thought of killing him, but I did not want to commit such an act. What I did is sufficient. I am done with him.”
Freydeh was astonished. The New World had changed him too. He would never have dared seek revenge in the Pale. She was worried that somehow he could be found, but she couldn’t imagine how.
He rose and walked to where Reba was sleeping on a pallet. “I spoke with the rabbi. There’s a Children of Israel orphanage—”
Freydeh lunged to her feet. “She’s no orphan. She has us. She has me.”
“She’s a child of shame.”
“She’s a sweet little girl who’s had a hard time of it. Now she’s mine.” She stood glaring back at him, in his face.
“I won’t live under the same roof with her.”
“Then find another roof.” She doubted he would. For that, he would have to get a job. At least perhaps he would begin to act like a mensch. She stood before him without wavering, and after a few minutes he turned from her, muttering. She did not regret what Asher had done, so long as no consequences landed on her and her children. She had three of them now, and soon Debra would join her family. She smiled when she thought of that. A barren woman she h
ad been, and now she was the mother of three. The street had killed Moishe, but it had given her beautiful children. All the lines of condoms were in manufacture now; she had won back some of her lost customers and found new ones. All her effort could go into taking care of her family. Asher could carry on as he pleased, but she was the one everyone turned to when there was trouble, when something was needed, she was the one.
FINALLY
EPILOGUE
1902
ELIZABETH HAD GROWN WEAK and short of breath and quite blind. She had extracted a promise from her doctor Livonia that when she became too feeble to continue, when the pain became too much for her to work, Livonia would help her to slip out of life easily in a way that would not alarm her children or give cause for scandal. It should appear to be natural. In her recent will, she had recorded her objection to an autopsy. She requested that there should be a simple, commonsense ceremony conducted by women and then she should be buried in Woodlawn Cemetery rapidly without fuss or ostentation. She hated the ceremony of mourning that had weighed so heavily on women all through the previous century, the heavy black gowns, the weeping and wailing, the enforced withdrawal from work and society.
This was to be her last day, she decided. She had her hair dressed carefully in the morning. Snow white, it was still abundant and curly. Should she leave a note for Susan? No, that might tip her hand. They had last seen each other in the spring, when Susan visited her in the New York apartment where she had moved when Tenafly grew too much for her. She lived with her son Robert, a lawyer, and her daughter Margaret, a widow and professor of physical education at Columbia Teachers College. Susan was still passionately involved with suffrage agitation and the younger women she had brought into the movement, besides cooperating with the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union on their suffrage work. Elizabeth was mistrustful of them and of their leader Frances Willard, although she did not doubt the woman’s energy or organizational skills. But her dislike of organized religion had not diminished in the seven years since she published The Woman’s Bible and shocked half her allies into distancing themselves. She was not a Christian. Several conventions of suffragists passed resolutions against her because of The Woman’s Bible, but she would rather women did not vote than see the government at the mercy of bigots and religious zealots. The founding fathers had seen the danger of the joining of church and state and tried to secure equal rights for all citizens, Quaker, Baptist, Jew, Catholic, Protestant, infidel, agnostic: every one equal. Now organized religion was encroaching on the movement for woman’s rights, eroding its edge, sapping its wild energy. Respectable women wanted to be “good.” Until women ceased worrying about respectability, they would never seize their freedom—Tennie Claflin had written that in their Weekly decades ago, before it was suppressed.