“Listen, Sadie, maybe someday,” she tells her. “I’m in no hurry. I’m only seventeen, but maybe later I’ll meet your Saul, when I’m ready to settle down. He sounds like a good boy. But who knows, he shouldn’t wait on me.”
With her constant joking, singing, laughing, and dancing in the narrow aisles on their all-too-brief and infrequent breaks, Joe takes her aside and warns her to stop being a show-off. Each week, she proudly presents her mother with six dollars for room and board. With what’s left over, she begins to accumulate a small wardrobe of the latest styles in clothing. And a small savings account.
As she snips and stitches throughout the day, rhythmically pumping the foot treadle that powers her heavy-duty sewing machine, one of Joe’s new purchases, she loses herself in fantasies of becoming a fashion model or Adele Astaire, a tap dancer who danced on Broadway with her brother, Fred. Once, absorbed in her reverie, she catches her index fingernail in the needle but hides the bloody wound for fear that she will be punished, or fired, for spoiling the prized fabric.
Sadie wraps Dora’s finger with a piece of her own fabric and then conceals the bloody evidence in the brassiere that holds her generous breasts. The nail, with its permanent ridges and fissures, will evoke Dora’s anger until her dying day, like a shrine commemorating all the abused factory workers of the world. She never forgives Joe’s callousness after hearing Henya’s reproach.
“What do you want from me?” he responds. “If she’s so careless, what do you want from my life? I tell them all to be careful, but they all do it every now and then. It’s part of the job. Tell her to pay attention. Maybe you should know what it costs me when someone ruins a pair of bloomers? I have other things to worry about, like a payroll and unions trying to break me, trying to unionize my workers.”
Dora is keenly aware of the attention she attracts and of the admiring glances she receives in the subway, in the trolley car, and wherever she ventures. As she walks down the street one day, dressed in her most recent acquisition—a navy blue gabardine dress that exposes her shapely knees, with a matching fake-fur-trimmed coat and white flannel cloche that shows only a few ringlets of her dark hair—she catches sight of a pair of shoes in a store window. It is Shabbos, but she determines that it can do no harm just to take a look. Looking can’t hurt; I won’t buy, she promises herself.
“Well, hello there, miss, can I help you with anything?” the shoe clerk inquires. Dora looks up to see a beautifully dressed, handsome young man in his mid-twenties, wearing a gray silk suit and smiling appreciatively as he welcomes her.
“I want to see those black patent-leather shoes you have in the window, the ones with a strap that buttons across the instep. I take a size four and a half, but I may have grown a little, so maybe you should measure.” Like Cinderella, she sits down and offers him her foot, along with her most winning smile, and then looks down shyly.
“Gladly. It’s the latest style.”
As he puts the shoe on Dora’s foot and takes the buttonhook from his pocket to fasten the strap, Dora suddenly yanks her foot away and covers her mouth to muffle a scream.
“No, no. Take the shoes away,” she pleads.
“But miss, they’re the shoes in the window, the ones you said you wanted to try on,” he insists.
“Just take them away. I changed my mind, and please, please put that thing in your hand—the buttonhook—put it away,” Dora insists as an involuntary shudder ripples throughout her body.
“Okay, okay, but say, haven’t we met someplace before?”
Recovering, Dora giggles.
“Oh, come on, I’ve heard that line before. You can do better than that.”
“No, really,” he continues. “Do you ever go dancing at the dance halls? I think we’ve met there,” he sweet-talks.
“What do you take me for? I’m not that kind of girl. Oh boy, my papa would kill me.”
“Well,” he asks, “do you like to dance?”
“I love to,” she responds with great enthusiasm. “Do you know how to do the black bottom, or the Charleston? I just learned it from the gals at work.”
The clerk prolongs their playful conversation by insisting she try on one shoe style and then another. And another.
“You know, with your tiny feet, I’ll bet you could be a shoe model. I know a few people in the business that I could introduce you to,” he cajoles as he slips a red silk sandal on her foot and gently slides his hand over her ankle.
She loves the touch of his hand on her foot and the way he looks at her. She is aware that other customers have entered the store but that his focus remains steadfastly on her.
“There, don’t they look lovely? No one else could wear them the way you do.”
She feels even more like Cinderella after the ball with the prince, trying on the glass slipper. She veils her growing excitement with an air of nonchalance and wonders if he can see her heart beating wildly underneath her blouse.
Well, you’re some smooth talker, you know. I bet you say that to all the girls.”
“No, only to the beautiful ones. Say, how would you like to go dancing with me sometime? Or have lunch? And by the way, my name is Freddy. Fred Cohen. What’s yours?”
“Dora.”
“A beautiful name for a beautiful girl.”
Dora departs feeling as though she is walking on the cotton candy she recently tasted at a funfair she attended with her friend Minnie. Her heart thumps loudly in her chest, like the rat-a-tat-tat of a drum in a marching parade on the Fourth of July. She is light-headed and stops to lean against the wall of a nearby building. She throws her head back and laughs. She can’t wait to tell Bessie and Minnie about her adventure. For the first time ever, she gave a man, this handsome stranger, her address at work. She closes her eyes and prays that he will live up to his word and take her to lunch.
Whoever heard of being taken out to lunch? she silently squeals. She feels so sophisticated and grown up. She is thrilled and reassured to realize that he is Jewish. Freddy Cohen. A nice Jewish boy. Mrs. Fred Cohen, she repeats. Maybe Papa will let me keep company. I will even if he says no, she thinks defiantly.
Theirs is a torrid but chaste love affair. He introduces her to macaroni and cheese, creamed spinach, and chocolate milk at Horn & Hardart’s Automat on Broadway and Thirteenth Street. He describes it as a “beautiful example of Art Deco architecture.” She doesn’t reveal her ignorance of whatever subject he introduces, but will often ask Bessie, still believing that Bessie knows everything. And, mostly, she does.
“He’s so smart,” she tells Minnie. “He knows so many things. And I love his deep voice. Imagine, for a handful of nickels, we eat banquets fit for kings and queens.”
“Especially since they’re his nickels,” Minnie retorts.
She delights when the small glass doors open to reveal delicious pastries and pies and sandwiches to be had for a few coins and a twist of the dial. She giggles when Freddy puts the nickels into the waiting slot and commands, like Ali Baba, “Open Sesame.” She is totally in love with him.
One Sunday afternoon, she calls in sick to Joe. Freddy takes her for a ride on the Staten Island Ferry where she sees, for the first time since her arrival in America, the Statue of Liberty. Forty-five minutes and ten cents across the five-mile expanse from lower Manhattan to Staten Island and back provides ample time for whispered exchanges and the opportunity to hold hands, hug, even kiss when no one is looking.
Freddy surprises her with little gifts: a frosted cut crystal locket with a diamond the size of a grain of sand at its center, a pair of leather gloves, a stuffed animal. He promises her the world.
“And one of these days, I’ll buy you a diamond ring that will cover your finger from here to here. And a diamond necklace. And a diamond . . .”
Dora interrupts, “Freddy, I don’t need diamonds. You are all the diamonds I need. I love being with you. You make me so happy. I’ve never known anyone like you. You’re smart and funny. I love you.”
> On Saturday nights after sundown—after Mama lights the Havdalah candles—he takes her to dance halls, where they gambol until just before midnight. He is her Prince Charming, she his Cinderella; she is his Ruby Keeler, he her Dick Powell. She is mesmerized when he holds her in his arms or when he whispers “little nothings” in her ear.
Five years later, when Dora reaches her twenty-second birthday, Freddy is still promising Dora a world of fun, fur, and diamonds.
“Someday, Dora, I want to give you the moon and the stars and the clouds. I’ll buy you a mansion, and we’ll have servants, and you won’t have to sew bloomers at Joe’s factory anymore. We’ll go to Paris and Rome.”
“Freddy,” Dora says in a tone that surprises both of them, “you don’t understand. I don’t want the world or the stars. I don’t need diamonds or fur coats or mansions or servants. Really. All I want is to be with you and to be your wife, Mrs. Freddy Cohen. So tell me if that’s going to happen, because if it isn’t, we’ll have to stop keeping company. I mean it, Freddy.”
“Ah, baby, listen. I have to make my mark in the world,” he wheedles, taking her hand and putting it to his lips. “You just gotta be a little patient and believe in me. It’s our future.”
“I’m listening, Freddy. I’ve been listening for five years now. Now you listen to me. I’m almost twenty-two, and I want to know what your intentions are. All my friends are married and having babies already, and soon I’ll be a dried-up old maid. And my brothers keep hoching me. So tell me. Are we going to get married? And I don’t mean next year; I mean now. You don’t have to answer today. Just let me know, Freddy. Tomorrow. Next week. Otherwise we’re through, and I mean it this time. I know I’ve said it before, but this time it’s for real.”
Always optimistic, Dora expects to hear from Freddy the next day. Or the next. She waits three days. Then a week. And finally a month. She never hears from him again.
“So listen, Sadie,” Dora proposes several months after her confrontation with Freddy. “What about your nephew? Is he still single? Is he keeping company with anyone? No? So fix me up with him. I’m ready. It’s Saul, right?”
“Hello, Mama? Mama, yoo-hoo, we’re here. Why are you sitting in the dark? Are you all right? Saul is parking the car. But look what I have: some peaches from our tree. And apples too. We picked them right before we left. You’ve never tasted anything as good. Sweet like honey. Sorry we’re late. Roberta fell asleep right before we were supposed to leave, and I let her sleep for a while. She gets cranky when she’s tired. And there was all the traffic on the bridge. But never mind, we’re here. Where’s Papa? Let’s turn some lights on. Here, can you hold Roberta so I can take Hannah’s sweater off? Oh, Papa is still sleeping. Nothing wakes him up. Watch, he’ll say he wasn’t sleeping, only squeezing his eyes.”
Henya reaches out to take the sleeping child from Dora’s arms and watches with pride as she looks at her daughter’s real American beautiful family. Who would have thought? she reflects.
“Mendel, wake up, Dora and the kinde are here. It’s time for Havdalah.”
“Who’s sleeping? I was just squeezing my eyes.”
Chapter 7
SAUL: AN HONEST MAN OF FEW WORDS
1926
“Saul is everything Freddy is not,” Dora confesses to Bessie over tea at her best friend’s place, a cozy but cluttered walk-up apartment she shares with her husband, Max, on the Lower East Side. Papers, books, and newspapers are strewn on the floor, sofa, and table that serves as a desk and a place to eat. Her apartment is an hour subway ride from Henya and Mendel’s apartment.
“He’s kind of short. Well, not short exactly. He’s taller than me by five inches but shorter than you-know-who. With Freddy, I always had to look up. So funny, when we danced I always ended up with a crick in my neck. It felt like I was gawking at his pupik,” she says, laughing.
Bessie snorts. “You said it. Definitely a pain in the neck. And elsewhere, if you know what I mean.”
“I guess that’s the story of our relationship, a great big pain in the neck. Yet, I hate to admit this,” Dora imparts, “I still have dreams about him too.”
“It’s months already, and you’re still having dreams? That’s bad,” says Bessie as she makes Velveeta cheese sandwiches on Wonder Bread for their lunch.
“I can’t figure it out either. I mean, why? The last year we were together, I was miserable. We kept arguing about getting married. I was a nag. A real nudnik. But just the other night, I dreamed that we were on a big boat, in the middle of the ocean, and there was no one around, and there was this big hole in the bottom of the boat, and the waves were huge, like skyscrapers. There was a big leak, and we were being pulled down into the hole. You know, like what happens with water going down the drain in the bath tub, only the noise was like a big steamship sinking. We were never on a boat together, except when we took the ferry to Staten Island. What do you think of that?” Dora asks as she reaches for a sandwich.
“Well, I’m no psychologist, but I did take a psychology course, and they mentioned a Viennese doctor named Freud. A Jew! He says that dreams have meanings that we can’t understand unless we interpret them. And you interpret them by what he calls free association. They’re symbolic and have their own language. I mean they stand for something else that your mind doesn’t want you to understand, because you really don’t want to know. He calls it the unconscious. So maybe you felt like your relationship with Freddy was going down the drain and becoming dangerous, like you were drowning, or that the world was coming to an end. Freud says that tall buildings stand for male genitals. And holes stand for a woman’s genitals. Get it? No? Well, as I said, I’m no psychologist, so what do I know?”
“I get it all right, but it’s filthy! I’d never dream that. I’d say this Freud was a dirty old man. But do you really think dreams can say all of that without our even knowing? Amazing. Because it is true that I didn’t want to know that it was kaput, all washed up, and I kept hoping that he would change,” sighs Dora. You know, Saul is a man of few words, but from the start he showed he liked me. He didn’t say it—like Freddy who gushed words all the time—but I could tell by the way he looked at me.”
“I’ll say he’s quiet,” nods Bessie. “Those few times we met, he barely said anything. But you know what they say about still water running deep. So with Freddy, going back to the dream, you were overtaken by big waves of emotion that were drowning you. You were losing yourself. And with Saul, he doesn’t make big waves. Maybe a little boring but definitely steady. Not like Freddy. But what about male and female genitals, or what would you like to call them?”
Sitting at the kitchen table with their heads almost touching, these two women reflect the comfort that friendships of long standing provide. Their conversation radiates warmth and love, at times interrupted by laughter or a playful slap on the forearm, a shrug of annoyance or irritation, or a sulking silence. The thirteen-year disparity in their age evaporates. The differences of yesteryear, when Dora was a child of ten and Bessie a woman of twenty-three, disappear.
“I’m going to ignore that question and especially that you think Saul’s boring. He’s not one for talking for the sake of talking. He doesn’t gossip and just listens when I talk, and he doesn’t fool around the way my family does. You know, come to think of it, I’ve never heard him laugh out loud—you know, really laugh a belly laugh. He has one of those tight-lipped smiles, as if he’s trying to cover up bad teeth. And, believe me, he has nice teeth—nicer than mine—straight and white. He brushes them with baking soda. And sometimes,” continues Dora, taking a bite of her sandwich, “he doesn’t understand what I’m even laughing at. He looks at me like I’m meshuga. And I think he thinks my family is batty because we’re always nudging each other and laughing about things. Well, mostly Stewart and Lenny. And yet, I think he likes it. So different from his family. Maybe, like they say, opposites attract.
“Freddy could talk your ears off about nothing, but I liked it be
cause the way he told a story made nothing sound exciting. But then there was the Freddy who told lots of fibs.”
Bessie interrupts Dora with contempt. “Fibs? He told you out-and-out lies for over five years. Five years he was going to marry you! Five years he was going to give you a ring! Five years he was going to pay back the money you loaned him! Five years he was going to find a job that would make him rich—get out of selling shoes. Five years taking away your youth, and then he disappears without a word. That man was no good. I will never understand what held you. And you say you still think of him. Are you out of your mind? But maybe this is where Freud comes in.”
Dora places her half-eaten sandwich on her plate and stares pensively out the window. Hester Street at this time of the day is teeming with hordes of humanity: children returning home from Yeshiva Day School; housewives shopping at Gertie’s Bake Shop, at the last minute, for a sweet finale to their supper; Orthodox men departing the Bialystoker Synagogue, their prayers for the day at an end. As the sun begins to settle in the western sky, it casts a rich shadow upon one half of Dora’s figure so that, in her silhouette, she resembles a Rembrandt portrait, with its muted tones of brownish-red amber.
Bessie takes another sandwich from the platter. “You want another, Dora? Or a little more tea? So tell me, did you ever, you know, do it with him?”
“I can’t believe you’re asking. How can you even ask? You, of all people, who’s known me since I was ten years old. No! Never! I would never do that.”
After a silence, Dora whispers, almost speaking to herself. “Well, maybe I wanted to, but I just couldn’t let myself. Although, God knows, Freddy kept pushing. He even said once, ‘you shouldn’t buy a car without driving it first.’ I said, ‘I’m no car.’ I’m glad I didn’t. I’d feel worse now if I had.”
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