Overall, the Zigman family was making progress. In addition to the peddler’s cart, they had taken in boarders. It was crowded, but they were sustained by their dreams. The debt Zev had incurred to pay for his family’s tickets to come to Canada was slowly being paid down, and Zev had started a special savings jar to send for his brother Leib’s family in England.
Six days a week, Zev traveled with Queenie and his loaded wagon through the neighborhood streets, selling his goods and collecting castoffs. Pots and pans, old clothing, blankets, buttons, and even jars of pickles found their way onto his cart. He took anything he thought he could sell for a profit. His customers called him a rag picker. Zev hated the term. He called himself a peddler, or a traveling salesman. Though he thought it pretentious to admit it, Zev especially liked the term used by his French-speaking customers. They called him a colporteur.
There was just one letter waiting when he stopped to pick up the mail and it was gaily decorated with British stamps. He scooped it up and waved to the postmaster as he climbed back up into the wagon to open it, anxious for the news from his brother. But the letter was not from Esther and Leib. It was from his brother’s neighbor in London, Mrs. Zlotinsky, and it was filled with heartache.
Zev felt his chest tighten as he folded the letter and put it in his pocket. He dropped his head into his hands and worked to stop the stinging in his eyes. Finally he nudged Queenie into motion for the ride home.
As he pulled into the Patrick Street yard and began to settle the horse, Ziporah bounded out of the house to greet him. He pushed the letter farther into his pocket, out of sight. He knew what she was going to ask.
“Papa, did you go to the post office? Mama is worried; it has been too long since she had a letter from Aunt Esther. There should have been a reply by now.”
Deep worry lines etched his face. “Hmmm. Your mother seems to always be one step ahead in these things. I have with me a letter.”
Watching him, Ziporah’s beaming face wilted. “Is my cousin Malka all right? Is she well?”
Through the family letters back and forth to England, Ziporah had come to know and love her cousin like a sister she had never met.
“Ziporah, we must talk in private with your mother and grandparents before the house is filled with the boarders.”
She could see by her father’s expression that he would say nothing more until they were in the house. Bad news was not so unusual in their lives, but she wished it was not bad today. It would be too much for her mother.
While her father took care of Queenie, Ziporah filled a basket with the vegetables. Nothing was ever left to freeze and go to waste.
Ziporah marveled at how her father remained strong, no matter what went on around him. Papa was steady and patient, and seemed less affected by the trials of their life than her mother. Nor was he quick to share his emotions.
Zev sat down with Hannah and his parents while Ziporah silently finished making supper. The news was very hard. He told it plainly, and held his wife tightly as grief overcame her. Ziporah fetched the tea and a cool towel for Mama’s head. Then Mama read the letter for herself, in the faint hope that it was different from what Zev had told them. It was not.
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Zigman,
It pains me to have to write this very sad news to you, but I made a promise to your brother, Leib, when he became sick that I would. I am so very sorry to tell you that the typhoid fever in Whitechapel has been very hard and that your brother and his dear wife have died. They died within two days of each other. First your brother on September 2 and then Esther on September 4. The child, Malka, who had taken it upon herself to care for her parents, has survived and is well, and this good news is a miracle, as she, too, was stricken with typhus. Leib and Esther have had a proper Jewish burial, you will be comforted to know.
Malka was nursed back to health in the hospital, thanks to the help provided by the synagogue. From the hospital she has come to stay with me, but with no room and no money to keep her, I have been able to make arrangements for her to go to in the home of Dr. Babcock and his wife. You are not to worry that she is on the streets with the beggars and street orphans of London. Malka has shown early talents with a thread and needle and is helpful in the kitchen.
Dr. Babcock has taken the girl in as a maid. She is learning to be a laundress. She has enough food to eat and a safe place to sleep. Malka will get only a small wage, but she will be all right until arrangements can be made for her to join you in Canada.
My deepest sympathies to you and your family in this difficult time. My address and Malka’s address are on the back of this letter. I will keep an eye on the child to be sure she is fine until you can send for her. God willing it will be soon.
Sincerely,
Mrs. S. Zlotinsky
“The world is a hard place,” said Hannah and blew her nose loudly. “Esther and Leib both gone. I so wanted them to meet our children. It was always my wish that my sister and I would sit together under a tree and tell each other secrets just one more time,” she wept and hugged Ziporah. “Who knew I would never set my eyes on her again?”
There was little time for grieving as the boys rushed in from school and the boarders began to arrive.
The younger boys did their best to be respectful during the supper conversation, but had little attachment to these relatives they knew only from letters. Isaac, though, was deeply moved by the thought of his orphaned cousin.
“Malka can have my place to sleep, Mama,” he insisted. “I can sleep on the chairs in the kitchen.”
Mama said she was blessed with good children. She cried again.
Chapter Fourteen
Hard Times on Patrick Street
January 17, 1899
Hannah stood in the back yard in the dying light of the January afternoon and swore at her laundry as the north wind cut through her heavy shawl. She swore in Yiddish, but it wasn’t enough, so she added a couple of epithets in Ukrainian. One frozen shirt after another taunted her as they flapped like loose shingles on a barn, stinging her fingers with bitter cold. The clothes were neatly pegged on the frayed string that ran from the house to the metal hook on the stable. She stamped her feet and then blew into her hands to revive her stiff, aching fingers. Her hands moved steadily over the line, snatching the pegs from the shirts and towels and flinging them into a wooden pail. As she worked, she felt her dark mood closing in on her. She stepped cautiously around the tally of woes that ran freely though her thoughts, fighting for something positive to think about. Plick, plick, plick. The pins dropped into the pail.
Nothing.
Think again.
Plick, plick, plick.
Then, finally, a wisp of an image slipped through the emptiness. It wasn’t much, but it was a start. Collecting the clean laundry was much easier than hanging the wet clothes when the temperature dipped to forty below zero. Hannah reserved special words for that job.
It was her second winter in Canada and she hated it. Nothing she had ever experienced in the old country had prepared her for the severity of the climate in Winnipeg. With tears from the wind blurring her vision and her feet pained by the cold, she made fast work of stacking the pieces into her basket.
“Oy,” she said to the clothes pegs. “Hard winter. Hard work.” When the last piece of clothing was placed on the basket, Hannah hurried into the stable to feed the chickens. The hens squawked and fluttered as she tossed grain into the little pen of their winter confinement. It’s a good life to be a chicken, she thought. Eat and lay eggs. Day in and day out. Eat and lay eggs.
“Who would have ever thought that Hannah Zigman would envy the life of a chicken?” she muttered to the hens as they competed for the scattered food. She put her hand on the door and brought her head to rest on the rough wood. The darkness moved through her and Hannah could sense the familiar seduction of defeat dancing at the edge of her consciousness. With defeat, she would be able to stop fighting. She would be numb and float through life without cari
ng. Delicious, sweet, inviting defeat.
She sighed. Who had time to be depressed? Too many others would suffer if she couldn’t keep up her workload.
Irksome thoughts stabbed at her and brought her back to the work before her. Was it a mistake to have come here? She thought about Mrs. White on Ellen Street. She gave up on Canada and went back. From England you could go back. From Russia, you learned to live in whatever country you landed; thankful to get out from under the czar. To freeze to death in Canada would be better than to go back to Russia.
No, there would be no going back for the Zigmans.
But to stand outside with laundry that froze before it could dry, this she still hated. And to run through the cold to use the outhouse in the winter, that she hated with special feeling.
She sighed heavily as tears welled in her eyes. It’s not so good to complain. What’s the use? Of course she had many blessings, and it would be a sin to forget them. She thanked God for the safety and health of her family. But, this weather? It’s so necessary to have a wind so cruel? For what?
The careful efforts she had made to line her worn shoes with newspaper now seemed a stupid waste of time. She swore again. Above the hole in her shoe, wet newspaper sat under the ball of her foot. She swung the laundry basket onto her left hip and stomped up the icy path and the two wooden steps to the back porch.
One day, she would maybe have a nice thick wool coat and a big fur hat. She would have fine boots with sheepskin inside to protect her from the cold. She relished the dream. Maybe she could trade a feather quilt for such a pair of boots. One day. After the children had proper boots.
Maybe.
Or maybe this was it.
Maybe this was the best she would ever have out of life.
A fragrant cloud of warm vapor met Hannah as she pulled the kitchen door open. Ziporah was tending to a large pot of soup on the small cast iron stove, pushing it aside to gain access to the heavy iron lid of the firebox. The frosty piece of wood crackled and popped, sending out a hiss of steam as she dropped it into the flames. Though still shy of her twelfth birthday, Ziporah was well beyond her years in her capabilities in the house. One day, when they had more money, there would be time for her to go to school like her brothers. For now there was only work. Like so many other girls her age, she was needed at home. Another sadness for Hannah to add to her list. A child without a childhood.
“Ach, Ziporah. I can’t take it.” Hannah pulled off her shawl and scarf and hung them slowly on the first peg in the row next to the door. Gaunt and hollow-eyed, she rubbed her dry red hands together briskly. Ziporah looked up from stirring the soup to see the familiar strain on her mother’s face and recognized she was building into one of her spells. Pain and despair weighed down the four short steps Hannah took to cross the kitchen. She sat down in the wooden chair against the wall and stared at her feet.
“Will you taste, it Mama?” Ziporah asked gently and held out a spoon.
“In a bit,” she sighed and forced a smile. She pulled a large white handkerchief out from behind the top flap of her apron and blew her nose loudly. Then she balled up the hankie and stuffed it back under her apron. She exhaled deeply. It was greater than a sigh and just short of a groan. Ziporah was worried. The last time Mama had one of her spells it went on for a long time. She seemed to be sad all of the time, and it made Papa sick with grief.
Hannah regarded the newspaper poking out of the side of her shoe. Like her shoes, she too, was worn to the breaking point. All the sacrifice and hard work for so many years had led them where? To be overrun with boarders. To have no privacy. To have no rest from the endless work. As her feet and hands warmed, Hannah gave way. She felt herself being swallowed by defeat and had no strength to stop it. She was no match for this relentless foe beating down on her. She longed to drown in the darkness and block out the reality of her life as she stared blankly out of the kitchen window.
Twelve people lived in the house the Zigmans rented on Patrick Street, eight family members and four lodgers. Hannah had put her foot down in insisting that there would never be more than four boarders at one time, as twelve people were as many as she thought humane to pack into the tiny house. With the exception of the time they took in a Jewish family of six who were on their way to farm in Saskatchewan, the Zigmans never did have more than four strangers sleeping on the narrow cots in the front room.
The house with just four rooms was a hastily constructed, one-story wooden building, twenty feet wide by twenty-nine deep. It was typical of hundreds of homes in the area. Hannah sometimes felt guilty about her distress with being crowded. So many people were worse off. In truth, by the standards of the neighborhood their living conditions were not considered severe. Two doors down, a house just double the size of the Zigman home sheltered twenty-eight people. Mrs. Bricknell, the owner, was quick to brag about how much money she was making every time she saw Hannah. “Good for you,” Hannah thought. “You are a stronger woman than me.” Hannah could only think about how Mrs. Bricknell’s outhouse was overused and overflowing into the back lane all summer. She didn’t even want to think about what it must be like to be inside that house.
There were many such houses in Winnipeg, and more were being built all the time. There were hundreds, maybe even thousands of people boarding on streets like Patrick, Laura, Ellen, and dozens of others that were all within a short walk of the Canadian Pacific Railway station. She knew because her son, Isaac, had told the family he often read stories in the newspaper of overcrowding. He read of dirty little houses with ceilings so low you couldn’t stand up and jammed so tight with people there was no air to breathe. Landlords were brought to court, but that didn’t seem to change anything. What could they do? Push them out into the cold to freeze to death? Most of the boarders were men in their twenties or thirties who had recently arrived in Winnipeg. Most were single, but many were married men, working to bring their families, like her husband Zev had done. Where else would the greenhorns go if it weren’t for the boarding houses? Welcome to Canada, the land with streets of gold. Ha! Some joke.
Hannah rubbed her aching feet and felt the numbness of freezing slowly give way to the prickling pain of thawing. She sighed. The family and then the boarders would be coming home soon. No, Hannah was no Mrs. Bricknell, counting her riches with that smug smile on her English face. After a year of running a boarding house for ten cents a place by the night, or two-and-a-half dollars a month, Hannah was well passed irritable. She cried often and easily.
Who was she fooling? This wasn’t a house. This was a hovel. A glorified tool shed packed to the walls with everyone stepping on each other, smelling each other’s sweat and living in each other’s noise. The house was as clean and tidy as she could manage, but it always reeked of the stench of unwashed working men. The little stand with the basin in the kitchen was no match against the grime caked on the boarders arriving dirty and exhausted from their daily labor.
Hannah kept careful records. In the time since they had started taking in boarders, the Zigman family had seen 162 different people taking their places in the lodgers’ beds. She was very strict and wouldn’t tolerate drunks or any fighting, so more than a few had been sent packing and Hannah kept a list of them, too.
She thanked God for the relief that came in the few quiet hours in the daytime when the house was not so crowded. The boarders were working or looking for jobs and most of her family was away at work or school. Though she was on her feet working the entire day, cooking and doing laundry, at least she had room to move. In the evenings, the only privacy they had for even a confidential conversation came in whispered tones and the limited refuge offered by speaking in Yiddish or Ukrainian, in the hopes their boarders would not understand. Usually this was the case. In this neighborhood more than twenty languages were spoken, but English was the predominant among their boarders, which the Zigman children seemed to be soaking up like sponges. Isaac was the most fluent and often acted as the official translator for the famil
y.
She was proud of her children, but on a day like this when she felt particularly low, Hannah saw their success as small consolation for a weary woman pining for privacy. She was desperate for quiet, desperate for a moment to sit without work in her hands, desperate to smell the blossoms on a cherry tree.
She was tired, she ached, and she was sad. Hannah sat back on the chair and motioned to Ziporah for the spoon. She tasted the soup and nodded her approval.
“The soup is good. Very good. You are like your Baba. A much better cook than I am. You have a gift,” she said softly.
“Thank you, Mama. Why don’t you rest a bit before everyone comes in?”
The tender words from her loving child tore open the floodgates. Hannah started to cry. At first it was in a silent stifled crumple, her shoulders heaving with emotion. She squeezed her eyes tightly against the ache in her soul. She badly wanted to be strong in her daughter’s presence but was powerless to stop the rush of tears. She inhaled deeply and held her breath. She looked at Ziporah. What would become of her tchotchkeleh? It was all work, work, and more work for all of them. What had become of them? What had happened to her family? How long could they go on without rest?
“Rest. Ach. The only rest this old woman will get is when she is dead,” she said before she realized she had spoken her thoughts out loud.
“Mama! Thirty-one is not old, and you are a long way from saying goodbye to life.”
“Life,” she scoffed. “And what kind of life is this? There is not room to turn around in this stinking shack with all of us here. It’s not so bad in summer when the lodgers stay in the loft in the stable, but this is too much. Washing, cooking, cleaning. And then scrubbing this hateful wooden floor. Look now at your hands, Ziporah. Chapped and bleeding with the cold and swollen from the splinters.” Hannah’s voice rose in anger and gave way to deep wracking sobs. “Is this a life for my daughter who is now working herself to a thin bone? For my fine sons? My husband who is gone from morning to night? This is a life? So cold that the frost piles in the corners inside the house. Where have we landed? In Siberia?” Her crying triggered a hoarse and phlegmy coughing fit.
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