After working at the Hayward Meat Packing Company for three months, Jacob decided he wasn’t going to spend the rest of his life hitting cows over the head. At lunch one day he said to Smitty, “How’d you like to be my partner? I’m going into business for myself.”
Smitty looked at him and laughed. “You got to be out of your mind. You know what it takes to get into the cattle business? What the hell have I got?”
“It’s not money I need but someone who knows the business inside out.”
“You’re nuts. How would we make it without dough?”
“I’ve got some, enough to start.”
“Start what?”
“I’ve been looking and I’ve been listening. Buying calves is the cheapest and that’s where we begin.”
Smitty wasn’t laughing now. After a long moment he said, “It’s a hell of a long shot, but what do I have to lose? It’s your dough and a job like this I can get anywhere. Okay, Jack, you’ve got yourself a partner.”
Tomorrow was Thanksgiving. Tears stung Sara’s eyes as she looked at the two-burner hot plate and the crayon drawing of a big turkey that Doris had made for her and Jacob. She put aside the drawing as well as her painful feelings when the door opened.
“You’re home early, Jacob?”
He kissed her on the cheek, took off his jacket, went to the small corner sink and began to wash his face.
“Jacob, why are you home so early?”
Wiping his hands on the towel, he looked at her and smiled. “I just quit my job.”
For a moment all she could do was look at him. “You…what? Jacob, what’s wrong with you? You must be crazy—”
He sat down alongside her and took her hand. “No, I’m not crazy. This is the first time in my life I’m absolutely completely sane.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. How are you going to make a living?”
“I’m going into business for myself.”
“With what, what kind of a business?”
“I told you I work with a guy by the name of Smitty. You know the story of how I got the job. Smitty and I are going into business for ourselves.”
“You can’t be serious, Jacob. It takes money to get into business.”
“I have to start somewhere. We’re going to buy calves in the country, slaughter them ourselves and sell to the Chinese butchers. They’re not too particular what they buy.”
“I think it’s crazy, absolutely crazy. How are we going to live in the meantime?”
“With your mother.”
That meant still another school for her children…and another move to the back of a store. For a moment she looked at Jacob and saw Louie’s face. Gamblers…“You’re sure you know what you’re doing, Jacob?”
“You bet. Sara, do you believe in fate?”
“At this point I don’t believe in anything.”
“Well, maybe you don’t, but I do. The luckiest thing that ever happened to me was the night I met Smitty. Sara, as there’s a God above us, I’m not just going to make a living, I’m going to be rich—”
Yes, it was Louie speaking, from Johannesburg, Brussels, Monte Carlo…
This time he felt no guilt or shame when he asked Molly to loan him an additional three hundred dollars. She’d get all her money back, plus interest.
He bought a secondhand Dodge truck and moved Sara and the children to Molly’s place.
Doris and Lillian loved the excitement of living in the back of grandma’s store—especially Doris. She loved to wander through the maze of junk and make up stories about the people in the old tintypes in the gold oval frames. She loved to take Lillian to Fremont Park to show her off, and then go to the United Biscuit Company, where huge bags of broken cookies were sold for a nickel. Broken or not, they were delicious.
But best of all were Saturdays, when she shlepped Lillian to the movies, where the serials started at ten in the morning. Doris was always the first in line, grasping the brown paper bag filled with sandwiches, sponge cake and fruit to be eaten at noon while William S. Hart and his horse were falling off a cliff. She was madly in love with William S. Hart because he was so brave. Somehow he always seemed to defy the Indians—at least twenty at a time—while jumping from one side of the horse to the other. She wondered if William S. Hart was Jewish. If only she could look like Mary Pickford. Doris wondered if Mary Pickford was Jewish…
The one cloud in Doris’s life was school. She still found the classwork boring. Even worse was that the teacher’s response to her questions had passed from annoyance to studied avoidance. Well, maybe next year would be better.
Doris was not alone with her crosses to bear. Sara could not understand how Rachel could be so different from the other children, so difficult to handle and so moody. Rachel was even less happy with their move than Sara was. She hated sleeping with Doris and despised living in the back of grandma’s store. There was absolutely no dignity in living with all that junk in the store. She remembered the beautiful furniture her mother had sold before they first came to California and how her mother had missed it. But everything had changed so much, especially mama. If Rachel said the least little thing mama didn’t like she was slapped, but what made mama the angriest was that Rachel wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of crying, no matter how much it hurt. When she cried, it was alone. How could her mother discuss her so openly with grandma? If your own mother didn’t think you were anything, then how much of a person could you be? Mama criticized everything she did. She was never paid a compliment, and everything she did was taken for granted. Nobody knew how lonely she was…There didn’t seem to be anyone who understood. And since she’d grown up, even papa and she had grown apart…
At thirteen, the only comfort in her otherwise joyless and friendless life was the Fulton Theater, where she went alone on Saturdays. The make-believe world seemed more real than her own. She felt a strange closeness to the actors on the stage, as if she were more related to them than to her own family, and she found herself becoming immersed in their make-believe lives.
When the matinee was over she would leave with a strange sadness. Going back to grandma’s junk store depressed her after the magical places she had just seen, so she usually delayed the return home as long as possible. She would walk down the street to the corner of Fourteenth and Harrison, turn into the Clinton Cafeteria and wait in line with a tray. Walking close to the counter she would look at the different colors of shimmering Jell-O topped with snowy white whipped cream and the crisp salads garnished with small plump tomatoes and black olives. There were enchiladas in large oblong steel pans, creamed chicken and garden peas on the steam tables. It was all so serene, so tranquil, so different from home…
This time she had the creamed chicken and a square of corn bread. It was worth the long walk to and from school every day to save up the nickels for this treat. When at last she returned to the junk store she walked to her room without a word of greeting to anyone and shut the door. She wanted to preserve the calm, dreamy feeling, but peace was not to be hers for long.
Sara stood framed in the doorway. “How dare you not let me know when you come home. Do you care at all how hard I work? Now get up and come and have supper—”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You’re not hungry? Fine. You think you’re punishing me? Well, we’ll see…just wait till your father comes home—”
Sara slammed the door and went into the kitchen where she found Molly. “She’s impossible, completely impossible. Mama, how did I ever have such a child?”
“She’s only thirteen…”
When I was thirteen, Sara thought, I would have given the world to have a mother who cared where I was and how I spent my time. Sara felt as if her life was choking her. She was still going to be a better mother than Molly had been, but she wasn’t about to get any further into the trap than she already was. She was pregnant, but this was one child she wasn’t going to have.
That night Jacob was met at the door by
a very upset Molly. “Jacob, I don’t know what to do, Sara’s locked herself in the bedroom and refuses to speak to me or come out—”
“Why? What happened?”
“I don’t know, she takes everything so to heart—”
“Did you have another one of your fights?”
“No. Rachel upset her but I really don’t know what the child did that was so serious. In fact, Jacob, Sara’s been so nervous lately. I know it’s not easy all of us living here in such conditions…”
He hurried back to their room and knocked on the door. “Sara, let me in.”
No answer.
He was about to insist when he heard the key turn. Opening the door, he looked at Sara’s red-stained eyes and watched as she crossed the room to sit on their bed. It wasn’t Rachel that had upset her, not really. She couldn’t understand how hard he was working to make life better for them, that this bad time wasn’t going to last forever. Something down deep in him knew what she was feeling…after all, he’d felt it himself many times…
“Sara, I’m trying, and things will get better—”
“It has nothing to do with your trying or not trying.”
“Then what was it Rachel did that upset you?”
“She upsets me most of the time, but she’s not my most important problem.”
“What then?”
Her eyes seared through him. “I’m pregnant.”
For one brief moment Jacob wanted to hold Sara very close and tell her how happy he was, but that moment was lost in Sara’s next words.
“Tomorrow I’m having an abortion.”
Jacob stood rooted to the floor, speechless. She was destroying…no, killing, something that was a part of him too. The decision, by God, was not only hers. “Oh no you’re not. I swear, Sara, if you do this I’ll never forgive you…I mean it…”
“Then I’ll have to live without your forgiveness. I will not have this child or any other. Three is enough, I’ve suffered enough for them. I won’t sacrifice myself any more. No more…”
Jacob paced the floor, then turned, looked at Sara and said quietly, “Please, Sara, don’t do this…it might even be a boy…”
Was that the only consideration? Did he expect her to keep having babies until they hit the jackpot? “No, Jacob, I will not have this child.”
He sat down on the straight-backed wooden chair and put his hands over his eyes so Sara would not see the tears.
“I need fifty dollars, Jacob.”
He sat for a moment longer remembering the night Gittel’s first child was born and his words to Hershel. “You have a son. When you die there will be someone to say Kaddish for you.” He got up, counted out the money and placed it on the dresser, and left the room without a word.
For three weeks Jacob stayed away and roamed the countryside, trying to come to terms with his bitterness over Sara’s decision, and for three weeks Sara did almost nothing but cry.
The abortion had been done in the back of a dirty barbershop and for several days the bleeding was so profuse that Molly thought Sara might die. She too had pleaded with Sara not to go through with it, but no amount of reason or logic did any good.
As for Jacob, to all outward appearances he was a man of great physical and emotional strength; no one would have guessed his deep, intense fear and loneliness. When he finally did come back Sara was hugely relieved. She’d felt as lost and helpless without him as he had felt without her. Although she would never admit it, she had felt misgivings about taking a life Jacob had so wanted and she now lived with an unexpected burden of guilt. The child had been a boy—would have been—but of course she could never let Jacob know.
They would never be able to reveal their feelings to each other, and it was more than a week after Jacob’s return before they could even face or speak to each other. Eventually conversations around the table with the children began to draw them into meaningless talk. If their lives did not always run smoothly and if there were times when they grew apart, nothing would change the great need they still had for each other.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
SMITTY TAUGHT JACOB EVERY trick, every piece of territory, which ranchers to buy from, what to look for when evaluating a calf.
Calves were three dollars a head, so Jack’s two hundred dollars bought a truckload. There was just one hitch. Smitty told Jacob that they had to do something a little irregular—their own slaughtering. The cost of sending the calves to be slaughtered would eat into the profits and they could wind up with practically nothing. Smitty suggested they rent a barn or a garage in a remote place, so they wouldn’t have the law on their tails.
They found the perfect place in Emeryville, way back in the hills. Smitty and Jacob slaughtered the calves, hung them just long enough to drain the blood and get rid of the body heat, and the next day sold whole carcasses to the Chinese butchers, who were no more impressed with government regulations than were Smitty and Jacob.
The hides were sold for four dollars a skin to a tannery, the innards for fifty cents a pound to a feed mill, and the hearts, livers, kidneys, heads and hooves brought an additional seventy-five cents a pound. That was the beautiful part about the cattle business; nothing was wasted. From an initial cost of three dollars per head, the total yield realized a profit of twenty-eight dollars.
At the end of three months Jacob put seven hundred and fifty dollars into Smitty’s sweating palm and told him that the partnership was terminated.
At first Smitty was furious, but he couldn’t really say that Jacob was being unfair. Smitty had made a lot of money, although he hadn’t invested a dime. Besides, Smitty wasn’t one to be tied down to such a large responsibility, and the work and the living conditions were grueling. Jack was a tough guy to work for. Everything had to be his way, and he was like a mechanical man who never knew when to stop. Smitty missed the pool hall and the occasional glass of beer. So, with all things considered, he didn’t feel he’d been given such a raw deal. The partnership was terminated, but not the friendship.
Jacob decided he’d learned all Smitty could teach him, the rest would come from his own acquired experience. Smitty went back to work at the Hayward Meat Packing Company and now Jacob did the work of two. He slaughtered and skinned his own calves, delivered to the trade, traveled through the countryside to Salinas, Modesto, Watsonville…he stopped at every farm along the way.
In the next few months, he learned everything that remained to be learned about the business. At long last Jacob had come out of the dark tunnel, into the warm California sun.
If Jacob felt guilty about ending the partnership with Smitty he still knew it was a wise decision. Now all the profits were his. He had earned them and now he would use them. Finally he would have a house of his own.
Jacob’s supreme moment came when he announced, “Sara, I found a house in West Oakland.”
Sara’s heart pounded. Was it possible that she would stop living in back of stores? She was too stunned to respond, but her thoughts were clearly written on her face.
Jacob smiled. “It’s true. Come, Sara, get the kids and tell your mother to close the store. I want you to see it.”
There was such excitement as the family piled into the truck that Jacob laughed out loud. As they drove along Fruitvale Boulevard Sara asked him, “How did you find this house?”
“Funny how things fall in my lap, like with Smitty. I stopped for coffee and met a butcher I know. He happened to tell me his mother died and left him a house. I asked him if he wanted to sell and he said yes—as soon as possible, because he doesn’t want to pay the county taxes. I went to see it and all I can say is it’s the most beautiful house I ever saw in my life.”
Her heart pounded even harder. “If it’s so gorgeous, why is he selling it?”
“Because he’s an old bachelor and doesn’t need all that space.”
Sara relaxed. “How much did you pay for it?”
“Twenty-five hundred dollars.”
“Jacob, we don’t
have that kind of money—”
Jacob had it, but he was careful not to divulge too much to Sara. Washington Heights was still very fresh in his memory. “That’s true, but I’m giving him a down payment and a note for the balance…”
At this point Sara was no longer listening. The only thing she could think of was being her own mistress and of the hell she’d gone through living in such close quarters with mama and the children with never a moment of privacy, nowhere to hide—the same as it had been with Esther. It was about time she took charge of her own life.
Deep in thought, she was startled when Jacob came to a halt in front of the house. Everyone got out of the truck. Sara couldn’t believe her eyes. The small dingy houses in the neighborhood only emphasized the charm of the lovely old two-story wooden house. Leading to the front porch were four wide stairs and a banister on each side. The peaked roof was trimmed with filigree moldings.
Jacob took the key from his pocket and opened the door wide.
The moment Sara entered she wanted to get down on her hands and knees and kiss the floor. Breathlessly, she looked around.
The square hall was paneled in gray gumwood. Her gaze wandered to the heavy newel post and banister leading up to the second floor.
Jacob beamed as he showed his wife and her mother through the house.
The livingroom was spacious, with a tall wood mantel flanked on either side by round columns. Between the columns a mirror reflected Sara’s image. She could visualize it in winter, could almost smell the scent of burning logs. She followed Jacob into the adjoining diningroom where the wood panels towered to within two feet of the twelve-foot ceiling, ending with a cornice that ran around the entire room. How beautiful, Sara thought. She could already visualize decorative plates along the wall. The built-in buffet with the leaded glass doors must have held the previous owner’s best china.
Jacob hurried Sara and Molly into the enormous kitchen. The brown linoleum would have to be replaced, Sara thought, but she smiled as she recalled their first flat with the lime green kitchen and yellow linoleum. This was a far cry from Washington Heights.
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