Bittersweet Brooklyn: A Novel

by Thelma Adams

  Mama settled at the top of the mattress, where two pillows normally rested, lifting her daughter’s head into her lap with fingers made strong from domestic work. With a damp rag, she traced a circle on Annie’s sweat-slicked forehead; the eldest daughter cooed in response to let Mama know to continue, that it soothed her. Her shoulders relaxed against the older woman’s knees. They were the image of mother and child, and Annie knew it would irritate her brothers and sister to see how close they were, nearly identical in looks but for the difference in their ages and experience. Her siblings’ imagined jealousy made it all the sweeter.

  Removing a boar-bristle brush from her apron pocket, Mama gently parsed Annie’s curls, smoothing the snags as if fingering fine wool. She had often told Annie that in Galicia young women received knotty balls of yarn to untangle to prove their patience before they could marry. She’d said there weren’t enough skeins in Austria to prepare Mama for her marriage!

  Mama scratched Annie’s scalp, stroking the thin brows plucked like those of a silent film star. Humming a lullaby in a minor key, she held on as Annie’s body shuddered when contractions slammed her harder and quicker.

  Their mutual exchange of comfort was a tradition rooted in mourning for Papa. She’d cradled Mama’s head when the woman had suffered in that tuberculosis-riven tenement, when she had threatened to abandon this new world and all its old disappointments, forgetting her sons, who were only nine and six at the time, and Thelma, the baby. There had been only Annie to rescue her, rubbing her temples, soothing her sobs.

  Fifteen years later, Mama nurtured Annie with the attentiveness she’d learned from her daughter. For them both, the world had stopped rushing past and they clung to each other, survivors sharing a life raft. Annie reflected, as the mule kick became stomping and Mrs. Spiegelberg demanded she push, that she was the love of her mother’s life. And it was this thought that held her as the contractions crested and receded and the baby’s head battered against her insides, simultaneously reluctant to leave and demanding exit. She began to scream and Mrs. Spiegelberg tried to put a rag gag between her teeth, but she swatted the woman’s hands away. She raised herself on her elbows and growled and spit and howled, falling back to pant and then rising again.

  “Stop kicking me,” said Mrs. Spiegelberg.

  “Then get out of my way!”

  “Hold still!”

  “You hold still . . .” The comment ended in a curse as Annie grunted and groaned and heaved as much to push out the baby as to chase the aggravating Mrs. Spiegelberg out of the room. As this third child slid from between her legs, following the path widened by Julius and Adele, and gave one healthy geschrei, she felt her heart expand and a fierce desire to protect this life even if she had to die trying. She knew as he curled into her arms, all tiny fingers and toes and a little pecker and pink testicles, that he was going to be the love of her life.

  “Get Jesse,” she said as an afterthought.

  Weeks passed and the baby prospered. She held him constantly, a bulwark between herself and the world. When she needed to change clothes, she handed Mama the infant. Even four-year-old Adele had her turn (with close supervision), but not Thelma. Annie justified the rejection by telling herself her sister was irresponsible, but there was an underlying jealousy twisted up with anger: the fear that the child might bond to the sister and reject the mother (like Abie, like Louis, even Moe). As for Abie, she snubbed him, not inviting him to the circumcision, the bris. She wouldn’t let him upstage the holy event with showgirls or distract the mohel with schmuck jokes.

  After that, most evenings the family followed the Thirty-Eighth Infantry’s progress against the Germans. In late September, after a fifty-six-hour assault, the Allies breached the enemy’s last defensive position on the Western Front, the Hindenburg Line. Louis had not only fought with the winning side—he’d survived enemy artillery, snipers, and mustard gas. The army promoted the family war hero to private first class. The French awarded him the Croix de Guerre for bravery. His division became known as the Rock of the Marne for changing the course of the war.

  Louis remained in Europe as autumn folded like batter into winter. On a dank December 23, Annie held a newspaper, watching out the window for Thelma to return from work. Before the sixteen-year-old had shaken the sleet from her shoulders, Annie pounced, handing her the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

  “What’s the rush?” Thelma asked, removing her damp gloves. “Is Louis’s name in the paper?”

  “Read,” Annie urged, torn between shame and schadenfreude. She’d been waiting all afternoon for Thelma to come home so she could shove her nose in the paper. Now she’d watch her squirm.

  “Is this what you wanted me to see: ‘Red Tape Delays Peace Conference’?”

  “Not that,” Annie said, impatience rising.

  “Don’t play games, Annie, I’m beat.” Thelma shimmied out of her coat. “This: ‘London Streets Decked with Flags in Wilson’s Honor’?”

  Annie sucked her teeth. “Not that, either.”

  “What then? And where’s Julie?”

  “With Jesse,” Annie said, trying to keep a poker face. “Look lower.”

  “This: ‘Eight Million Killed in the World War; Thirty-One Million Six Hundred Total’?” Thelma plopped on the sofa. Although the girl began weeping at the news, Annie couldn’t stomach her tears.

  “Take off your boots.”

  “How can you worry about feet at a time like this? I can’t even imagine that many people to begin with—and that many people dead. It’s a miracle Louis survived.”

  “A miracle, right,” said Annie. She shifted the baby like a swaddled potato from one shoulder to the other, shook out a burp that launched stringy white spittle over the cloth covering her back. “Read below that article.”

  “That’s local news.”

  “What does it say?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Look.”

  “It says, ‘Hold 2 as Store Looters.’” Thelma leaned in, placing her forefinger on the newsprint to mark her spot. “With the arrest of Abraham Lorber, alias ‘Yiddle’ . . .” Thelma looked up, eyes wide. She said in a rush, “Was Abie arrested? Did he telegram? Why didn’t you tell me when I walked through the door?”

  “He’s done it again, your Abie darling, shamed us in front of everybody. Read.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since my heart’s breaking. Is he in custody? Have you talked to him?”

  “You wanna know the truth about Abie, it’s there in black and white for everybody to see.” Annie nuzzled Eli’s bald head, savoring her sister’s distress after her summer of pride.

  Thelma returned to the paper, voice quavering:

  . . . 23 years old, of 481 Essex St., and Dorothy Bernstein, 19 years old, of 111 Clymer St. . . .

  She gazed at Annie, puzzled. “Who’s Dorothy Bernstein?”

  “Who knows? But if there’s a girl involved, it must be Abie.”

  “How can you say that?”

  “He’s a disgusting lecher. Wake up! He’s a dirty, rotten goniff.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Read to the end. He stole from Jews!”

  . . . the police say they have put a damper on store looting. The two were arrested by Detective Van Giluwe on a charge of receiving stolen goods from the shop of Clara Katz, at 17 E. 17th St., Manhattan. They were held on $1,000 bail by Magistrate Steers in the Williamsburg police court today.

  “I don’t know where he’s going to get a thousand dollars,” said Annie. “If we had that kind of money we’d buy a house!”

  “Has he asked you for money?”

  “He wouldn’t dare.”

  “Is there that kind of dough in a newsstand?”

  “Just nickels and dimes,” said Annie, downplaying the profits. She did the books, after all. It was a good business.

  “What are we going to do?”

  “That’s his problem,” said Annie. “He should r
ot in jail.”

  “He’s our brother.”

  “Like that’s ever stopped him before. When are you going to wise up? Abie is dangerous to himself and all of us. Ask the parents of Dorothy Bernstein.”

  “Who?”

  “His accomplice. Cut him off, Thelma. He’s dead to us. Defend him and you’ll end up on the streets, or in the sewers.”

  “I’ll take my chances. It beats your company.”

  “You’ve got a lot of nerve, skinny girl. You sound tough now, but don’t say I never warned you. Someday you’re going to need me. You’re going to beg for my help, and then I won’t be so nice.”

  “Since when are you nice? He’s Abie. He needs us.”

  “Keep believing that, sister, but I’m nobody’s fool.” Annie rubbed her hands together while the baby hung from her shoulder. “I’m washing my hands of this tsuris and putting my children first. Abie? Feh! I’m done.”

  Chapter 19

  1919

  Annie claimed to be finished with Abie, but Thelma wasn’t. It took more than an arrest to test her affection—and he hadn’t even served jail time. Boasting that he was untouchable, he often treated her to pizza at their favorite spot near Nina’s house, dropping her off for a visit with the Gigantiellos afterward but never joining her upstairs. Sometimes the siblings would catch a movie or, if Abie had an extra ticket, go to the fights—and sit ringside like big shots. He’d confess his troubles and she’d share hers, and they discussed Louis and the fun they’d have when he returned to New York.

  On the first day of August 1919, Abie called Thelma at work and invited her to meet him in East New York, which wasn’t a neighborhood she knew well. He said he had a surprise but rang off before she could ask what it was. Having left work early to meet Abie after her boss skipped with the other secretary, she shvitsed in a summer shirtwaist that had begun to ripen. Who had time to wash and iron a blouse more than once a week? Who had money for two? Not Thelma, the working girl who took dictation at the women’s shoe factory but couldn’t afford more than a pair of shoes every other year, especially since Annie pocketed her weekly pay packet for rent and household expenses.

  That summer was record-setting miserable, so bad even chatty neighbors clammed up, although they didn’t mind their own business. Instead they watched without commenting, saving their strength and collecting gossip for cooler times. In Chicago, race riots exploded. White mobs had killed another colored man, raising the total to twenty-three. In Brooklyn, the heat steamed up from the sidewalk and pressed down like an electric iron. Garbage could be smelled from three blocks distant; a rotting corpse would take days to discover.

  The Allies won the Great War and, for once, the Lorbers landed on the winning side. They expected Louis home on leave any day, although he hadn’t sent a telegram for them to meet him at the docks yet. Meanwhile, infant Eli was already pulling himself up and threatening to walk (a genius bound to climb Everest!). He’d never met his uncle Abie, who’d avoided Hooper Street since the chilly night of the slap and the shiksas, the last time they’d seen Louis before he’d shipped out.

  As Abie had explained, he was too busy to drop by, making deals, fixing disputes, and living on Essex Street with a Jewish contortionist who made physical demands he was obliged to keep. Ahem. According to Annie, her brother was an unwelcome putz. But it seemed to Thelma that lately there had been some kind of thaw, and she recognized the return of Annie’s crafty look in eyes that had softened just a bissel during that first year of the infant king’s reign.

  Hot days or cool, the sun rose and set on that child, whom Abie was in no apparent hurry to meet. On the day he called, he met Thelma on the stoop of an unfamiliar redbrick house at 265 Montauk Avenue between Sutter and Belmont, five miles east of their Williamsburg apartment and Nina’s Our Lady of Mount Carmel parish. From what she could tell by the mezuzah nailed to the doorframe, this was a Jewish neighborhood. She worried that the owner would rush out any minute and shoo them off his steps. Still, Thelma didn’t question why her brother wanted her to meet him there; she was accustomed to going easy on the questions since his December arrest. She didn’t condone stealing, but she wasn’t her brother’s keeper and, after all, it wasn’t a violent crime.

  The Montauk row house was about Thelma’s age, a two-story brick building identical to its neighbors with five cement steps built to last. A door and two windows fronted the narrow porch, and a second floor with three rectangular windows perched above that. A pretty redbrick facade rose atop that like a paper crown, with a graceful arch and three decorative diamonds. It was nothing fancy unless an immigrant family believed that owning a house on a quiet street with a tree out front was a dream too far, a making-it-in-America fairy tale that folks had heard about but never achieved.

  “What I’m saying, Temeleh, is getting arrested and paying bail—that’s the cost of doing business, the unavoidable expenses that cut into your profit. Ask Annie the money counter; she’ll explain.”

  “I’ll skip it,” she said, jealous and disturbed that Annie and Abie kept secrets from her.

  “Okay, I’ll take a stab.”

  She jokingly raised her hands as if to defend herself. “Don’t hurt me!”

  “A guy like me pulls a knife once or twice and nobody will ever let him forget it.”

  She punched his arm, teasing to mask her concern. “Oh, poor baby.”

  “Not so poor.”

  “I’d rather have you beside me than shekels in my pocket,” she said.

  “Why not both?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.

  “If you continue breaking the law, Abie, you’ll end up in prison stripes—and they’re not your style.” She needed him more than money, but he just patted her knee and laughed. She knew that’s who he was. That’s how he got his kicks. Good citizenship was for suckers. He was cocky that way—and she worried that if she scolded too much, he’d disappear.

  “You worry too much, little sister,” he said. “This arrest thing is a racket, a way to shift cash around to the bail bondsman, the cops, the lawyers, and the judges without wasting a brown paper bag. It’s lubrication, like oil, to keep the system moving.”

  “So getting arrested doesn’t discourage you from breaking the law?” she asked, fearing deportation for anything worse than cheating on a math test.

  “Why should it?” he asked. “What a shvits! I need a drink. I’m guessing you’re not carrying?”

  Thelma shook her head and laughed. “I’m worthless.”

  “Beat yourself up on your own time. As for me, I have no more shame than John D. Rockefeller or Cornelius Vanderbilt. I’m never going to be a big macher at the synagogue—and if I wanted that, I’d make a hefty donation. That’s how things work in America. I am who I am.”

  “You certainly are. Annie thinks you’re the devil.”

  “Not so much lately, but I’ll get to that. Now focus. You’re a smart girl, but here’s a lesson you don’t get from school. The coppers haul me in. They stick me in bracelets to make a big show. Maybe it winds up in the papers to shiver up the good citizens and scare the neighbors who cry for more cops on the beat.”

  “Annie didn’t take it so lightly. She rammed the paper down my gullet, and my throat still hurts. A summer of Louis being a war hero, wiped out by a single burglary.”

  “Well, it wasn’t a single one, more like a looting spree, but I didn’t need handcuffs. I didn’t hurt anybody. I’m not on the lam—I’m a local businessman with ties to the community—it just doesn’t look so good to their bosses if they bring me in nicely and we’re all smiling and clapping each other on the back.”

  “So the police are your friends?” she asked, screwing up her forehead.

  “I won’t confess to that, Madame Prosecutor. Between you and me, I’ll admit we’re business associates.”

  “Monkey business?”

  “Oy. Are you going to nudge me to the bitter end here? I go to the precinct house. I pass around some Cuban cigars. We kibit
z. I tell them some things about people I don’t like. They tell me who they have locked up and who looks nice for certain crimes. I clear my throat. I nod. I make a face like something stinks. I point them this way or that. We have a laugh. It’s not them or us except in the minds of the sisterhood broads gasping at the shonda. The shame is we aren’t all born rich with a martini glass in our hands and mink diapers.”

  “I wouldn’t want to change those!”

  “It’s a metaphor.”

  “So now you’re talking in metaphors, Mr. English teacher? You didn’t finish school.”

  “School of life, Temeleh. It isn’t fair, but it adds up. For every arrest, I pull four or five jobs that go unnoticed and I line my pockets. That’s why we’re here.”

  “Sitting on a stoop in the wilds of Brooklyn? Why are we here?”

  He pulled out a set of keys with a pleased look on his face and dangled them. “I bought us a house.”

  “Are you kidding? You, a homeowner?”

  He raised both eyebrows. “Not just me.”

  “This is ours?” It astonished Thelma, something entirely out of the blue. She’d never thought she’d have that kind of security—or that Abie would be the one to provide it. This was supposed to be something that you got by scratching and saving for generations, putting aside fun for frugality. That wasn’t Abie’s way. “What’s the catch? Is it for you and me and the contortionist?”