Like Normal People

by Karen Bender

  What had her parents been like before their lives here? The rest of the family knew this history, and this inhabited a world of feelings that was forever denied to her. It was hard to believe that her parents could have been different from who they were. Her mother was shy, tousled, smelled of boiled meat; she poured herself so completely into her tasks that, at times, she seemed to disappear. Ella’s father, too tall for the apartment, was restless, eager to get away. Sometimes Ella came upon them in a kiss that appeared stronger than love; in its rage, it reached toward an innocence. To Ella, those were the only times they seemed married.

  Ella had the greatest sense of belonging when she and her sisters headed out, away from home, into the world. Her sisters delighted in teaching her games on the sidewalk, and they were kindest to her then; away from her parents’ favor, she was a toy they prized.

  In winter, the streets were often black with dirty snow, and white steam billowed up, like furious breath, from grates. On their street was a saloon and a butcher shop. She loved running with her sisters, a pack. The girls were supposed to avoid the drunks, but they liked to tiptoe right up to an unconscious man and pretend to jump on him or kick him. Sometimes they would pull down the man’s pants and roll him over; his penis would be limp and pinkish, a tiny elephant trunk resting in matted hair. Deborah liked to leap over a sleeping man, one smooth arc over his skull; she liked the idea that he’d open his tired eyes to see a flutter, one big, braided girl soaring over him. She liked the idea that someone would believe, for a moment, that she could fly.

  In 1910, when Ella was seven years old, Deborah, then thirteen, took her into the dark crowded bedroom and shut the door. In the closet she groped around, searching for something. Ella’s thin arms were lit by a platinum line of light. Deborah’s breath was quick, excited. Her calves twitched slightly under her stockings. She opened old boxes and found what she had been looking for.

  It was a small white box, which she handed to Ella. “Look,” she said, and took off the lid. Inside was a tiny, fanglike child’s tooth.

  “Whose is it?” Ella asked.

  “Don’t you know?” asked Deborah.

  Ella could barely make out Deborah’s face, but she could feel a superiority rising, like heat, from her sister.

  “This is Eva’s,” said Deborah.

  “Who’s Eva?”

  “Our sister.”

  The tooth lay in the box, pale and sharp.

  “We don’t have a sister named Eva.”

  “We did.”

  Deborah picked up the tooth and, tightly gripping Ella’s wrist with her other hand, began to trace slow circles with the tooth in Ella’s palm.

  “Mama didn’t want you,” she said.

  The darkness deepened. Ella’s heart began to march, but she stood up straighter, trying to look her sister in the eye.

  “If Eva hadn’t died,” whispered Deborah, “they wouldn’t have had you.”

  Deborah began to prick Ella’s palm with the sharp end of the tooth. “Can you feel it?” she whispered. “She’s biting you.”

  Ella stood in the doorway of the kitchen, watching her mother bend over the counter, slicing raw meat. It took a long time for Ella to ask the question.

  “Who’s Eva?” Ella asked.

  The odor of blood from the meat filled the kitchen. Her mother wiped one hand on her apron, then the other. “Who?” she asked.

  “Eva,” said Ella, and began chanting, “Eva, Eva, Eva . . .”

  Her mother resumed slicing; Ella kept murmuring the name. Finally, her mother turned around and said, sharply, “Eva was your sister.” Then she told a story, in a rush. Eva was the youngest daughter in Russia. One day when she was seven years old, she ran into the street and was kicked by a Cossack’s horse.

  “They killed her,” her mother said. Her face was empty of all feeling; it was not familiar.

  The floor under Ella’s feet became fragile; her mother abruptly turned away.

  Later, Deborah took her into that closet again and whispered, “She lied. Eva wasn’t killed by a horse. She died on the boat when we were coming over. She coughed to death. They had to throw her overboard. This was all they let us keep.”

  “Liar,” said Ella.

  “You don’t know,” Deborah said. Her face was arrogant; she belonged to the family in a way that Ella could not.

  Deborah pushed open the door and stormed out of the room. Ella remained, wondering whether she would ever feel she was part of something, or whether she would always be Ella, alone.

  One day when Ella was eight, Mrs. O’Connell, a neighbor, asked her mother to take her place cleaning for a woman who lived on Beacon Hill. Her mother agreed, and since Ella was home from school with a slight fever, her mother took her along.

  When they got off the streetcar at Beacon Hill, Ella was amazed. The buildings looked like beautiful gifts made of bright red brick. The people walked slowly as though through fluid. The air was clean, fragrant with lavender. Ella walked solemnly beside her mother, trying to show off the one bit of beauty she had: a lemon-colored hair bow Deborah had stolen off a pile of laundry. Her mother trudged along, staring at the sidewalk, her shoulders hunched around her ears. Ella touched her bow and turned her head so that passersby would see it. She wanted to send a message of worthiness strong enough for both of them.

  They found the house. The woman who opened the door was tall and slim, like an elegant tree. Ella felt shy, and she was proud when her mother spoke. “I’m Golda Oscowitz. I’m here to clean the house.” Mrs. Jones introduced herself and led them inside.

  The house seemed fat; the walls were a foot thick and covered with purple velvet wallpaper, fancy enough for a woman’s fine dress. Ella squinted, for the hallway gleamed with many types of lights. Yellow gas lamps flickered on the walls. A fixture, shaped like an upside-down cake made of diamonds, flushed white and brilliant from the ceiling. Suddenly, her clothing was too heavy; the air in the house was warm. Mrs. Jones showed her mother which rooms needed cleaning; she was to do only the first floor today.

  Mrs. Jones went up the stairs, and Ella realized that the upper floors, too, were part of her house; one family owned the whole house. Ella and her mother were left in the living room. Ella sat on the carpet, wary of the furniture. Then her mother became a maid.

  Her mother was a bad maid; even at eight, Ella could tell this was so. Jewish women rarely heard about cleaning jobs; that was Irish work. And her mother didn’t know how to act like a maid. She worked slowly, carefully running her rag around each of the crystal vases and decanters that flushed in the light. Then she put them in the wrong places. Ella saw her mother withdraw into a quiet place within herself as she cleaned; her anxiety made her very slow.

  Ella could feel her heart drum in her throat as a sense of protectiveness and sorrow rose in her like a pair of wings. This was her mother, and she did not want to become like her. It was a thought she had never understood so clearly.

  She wandered into the hallway just as Mrs. Jones was coming downstairs. The woman smiled. “You may wait in the kitchen,” she said. Stiffly, Ella followed the woman. Mrs. Jones gave Ella some bread and jam, and also a fork and knife, which puzzled her.

  “Are you hungry?” Mrs. Jones asked.

  “No.”

  “Your name is Ella?”

  Ella nodded.

  “What grade are you in?”

  “Third.”

  “You have lovely hair,” said Mrs. Jones. Her tone was tender. “Do you know that?”

  Ella didn’t know whether to agree or not. She shrugged.

  “You’re a pretty girl,” said Mrs. Jones. “You’re lucky.”

  Ella crossed her arms and squeezed them tight. She stared at the bread.

  “It’s difficult to run a house like this,” said Mrs. Jones. “I try to take good care of it.” Her skin bore the slight scent of orange. She seemed to be pleading for some acknowledgment, recognition. “I’ve been through seven maids. One maid, I’m so
rry to say, stole a silver candlestick.”

  Ella could not look directly at Mrs. Jones. Her mother was far away. All of a sudden, she wished her mother would steal one of the crystal vases in the living room, even though it would look incongruous, ridiculous, on a shelf in their flat.

  But she enjoyed the way this stranger was looking at her. Easily, Mrs. Jones liked her.

  “My mother is a very good maid,” said Ella.

  “I see.”

  “Yes,” said Ella. She felt suspended, belonging neither to her mother nor to this stranger. It was a terrifying sensation, but one that also made her free. This airy feeling was replaced by a harder one. She was better than both of them. She smiled at Mrs. Jones with a joyous insincerity and said, “I think your house is very nice.”

  Girls were supposed to stay chaste until they were married, but few did. Ruth and Esther roared into the apartment, shouting out names of girls they suspected were pregnant; the others’ decline proved their own worth. “Nobody’s seen Ruby for weeks. She was sent to her aunt in Washington.” Or, “Minnie’s parents won’t let her go to school. You know what that means.” Girls disappeared for months and came back with babies and sad, elaborate stories; their husbands had been sent to France, were killed on the front. When Ella’s sisters hit twelve, thirteen, boys were everywhere—pressing them against stairwells, following them and calling their names. Her sisters wore the bitter, grassy smell of boys, the places they’d been with them, as they whisked in late at night.

  Her mother said two things: “If you keep your mouth shut, no man will know if you’re smart or dumb. If you’re spoiled, no man will want you.”

  It started before Ella was ready. Boys hissed as she walked down the street: “Hey, look at me, doll. Smile for me.” She thought they were joking. A conspiracy of other men joined in: the paper boy, the butcher’s helper, a street drunk. She was a young woman; somehow, they all believed this.

  From the time she was young, Ella had wanted to be loved, and she needed that love to be immense, ferocious. After her sisters married and moved away, she often sat alone in the bedroom she had shared with them, wondering whom she would love. And who would love her? The streets outside her window at night were empty, silvered by the moon. She longed to be able to walk down them joined wholly with someone else.

  A job led you to the man you would marry, but in 1920 only a few jobs were available to unmarried girls in Boston. Ella watched her sisters to see what they chose. Their jobs shaped them in basic ways. Every day, Esther, the oldest, limped home after ten hours of shouldering huge plates of food at Bloom’s Kosher Restaurant, barely able to make it up the stairs. She got married first, to one of her customers, a large, moon-faced man who frequently ordered omelettes; they met when he let her sit in his booth to rest her feet. Ruth worked the graveyard operator shift at New England Telephone and turned into a pale, ghostly person who rarely spoke. She married late, in part because she spent her time packed in a room with fifty other female operators, and few people bothered to flirt with a voice on the telephone.

  Deborah had the best job. She worked at the women’s hat counter at Filene’s, and Ella often visited Filene’s just to observe her sister. It was a beautiful place: the mirrors at the jewelry counters shone silver; the aisles were radiant with sweet fragrance. Ella was proud to know a famous person—her sister, the Filene’s hat girl. She could never get enough of listening to Deborah talk to a well-dressed customer, a woman who would not even nod to her on the street, telling this woman—smoothly, knowingly—“I know this hat will be perfect for you.” Ella watched the rich women remove their hats, revealing flat, dry hair, and tip their heads obediently, like children, for her sister to crown.

  The Salesmanship class was composed of seventeen girls and three boys. They were all immigrants or the children of immigrants, and they were all sixteen years old. On the first day of school, the teacher, Mr. Reilly, asked them all to come back the following morning in their best clothes—or, rather, their best selling clothes—so that he could examine them. He was going to tell them whether they had the skills to become salespeople; he was going to tell them who they were.

  On the second day of Salesmanship, Mr. Reilly moved around the classroom, examining the students as they stood by their desks in their best clothes. He told them that not only had he been born in this country but his parents had been, too—and he, therefore, knew what was what. “Look at this jacket,” he said to Jacob Katzman. “It’s red. You look like a clown. From a circus. Do you want the world to laugh at you? Do you want a red nose to go with it?” Trish O’Donnell, a slight girl, stood shivering in a mealy black sweater. “You,” he said, “are a scaredy-cat. Why would anyone want to buy anything from you?” To Rosie Delano, done up in wrinkly, baby-pink chiffon, he said, “You think you’re a princess? You’re coming out of the castle for us?”

  Mr. Reilly complimented only three students, and not on what they were wearing. He praised John Delaney for his impressive height—six feet one—“like an oak tree.” He approved of Pearl Johnson’s melodious voice and told her to say “Pleasure to meet you” several times; and then he admired Ella’s smile. “Look at this,” he said, turning her head, like a doll’s, for the other students to see. “Is this a smile you would buy a hat from? A dress? A vase?” He paused and answered, “Yes!”

  He gave them rules, and Ella wrote down every one. When a woman walks into the store, watch her closely to see which piece of her clothing she wears most proudly, then compliment it. Make sure your hands are perfectly clean. Nod one full second after someone asks you a question, not before. When a customer walks in, count to ten before you say, “May I help you?”

  The students practiced looking into each other’s eyes with confidence. “Pretend you see a flower inside your customer’s head,” said Mr. Reilly. Ella tried to see roses, lilies, marigolds, blooming behind her nervous eyes. “This time, look interested,” said Mr. Reilly. “The flower is shrinking. Keep watching it until it goes away.” Rosie Delano was better at looking interested than anyone, but John Delaney had the most confident look. When the others asked him what flower he saw, he answered, “A very big blue rose.”

  “There’s no such flower as a blue rose!” they shouted, and he shrugged.

  “That’s what I saw,” he said.

  During the semester, they had to sell numerous absurd items that Mr. Reilly brought to class: an ugly rag doll, a satin shoe without a heel, a cracked marble, a banana peel. At first, almost everyone stuttered and spoke in a wispy voice. Mr. Reilly stood at the back of the room and yelled, “What! I can’t hear you! Americans speak loud.” He pounded his chest. “Loud! Are you an American? Or do you want to go back?”

  Some of the items were impossible to sell. It took three students to get rid of the banana peel (by that time, it had dried up). Of course, no one actually bought anything, but Mr. Reilly knew when a customer might relent, and Ella learned to detect a subtle change in the room. When a student successfully sold an item, it was as though he had planted a new longing in you. One day, Anna Stragowski held up the black, dry banana peel and said, “You need this peel. You must buy. Why? Because it is a duster!” and she whirled around the room, whisking the stiff peel against desks and windows. The students were quiet with amazement, breathing softly; there really was one more thing they could want.

  Mr. Reilly was hard on Ella for the whole term. She did not live up to the unintended promise of that first smile, so she wanted desperately to do well when he handed her the final object to sell—a tiny, broken child’s tooth.

  Ella cupped the tooth in her hand. The tooth seemed to be jumping around in her hand, and she was afraid, for a moment, to look closely at it.

  “Hello,” she whispered. “I am Ella and I have something—”

  “Louder!” yelled Mr. Reilly. “Who’s talking? I can’t hear you!”

  “I am Ella—” Mr. Reilly was shaking his head. She felt as though she were yelling. “Do you have trou
ble chewing?” she asked. “This is what you need!”

  The field of faces blinked and yawned. A few of the students laughed. “With this extra tooth, you can have a better smile!”

  “They have teeth,” said Mr. Reilly.

  The panic was rising again, and Ella popped the tooth in her mouth and swallowed it. She and the other students looked stunned.

  “Where’d it go?”

  “She ate it!”

  Ella placed her hand on her stomach. She had swallowed a stranger’s tooth. Whose mouth had it come from? Why had she swallowed it? Would it harm her insides? Would Mr. Reilly want it back?

  The class was in an uproar.

  “Mr. Reilly! Now we can’t buy the tooth!”

  “Ella, where is the tooth?” asked Mr. Reilly. Ella gently patted her stomach. “Is that your sales technique?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Tell me, class. Do you want that tooth?”

  Nineteen pairs of eyes were fixed on her. “Yes!” the students said.

  “Then I have to say that you pass,” said Mr. Reilly.

  Ella remained in front of the class for one more moment before she sat down, feeling those rapt, hungry eyes on her. She knew the others wanted the tooth only because it could not be had.

  Ella’s tooth-swallowing trick so impressed Mr. Reilly that when she was about to graduate from high school, he referred her to his friend Marvin, a floor walker at Johnson Massey’s Treasure Trove. It was a plum job, even more prestigious than being a hat girl at Filene’s.

  The Treasure Trove was situated on the fifth floor of the elegant department store. On the elevator directory, the Treasure Trove was indicated by a scrolled gold plaque. It was where the wealthy bought objects with which to decorate their homes—vases and light fixtures and china figurines that were imported from all over the world.