Sisters Weiss ~ A Novel

by Naomi Ragen

  “Where is it?”

  “On Twenty-third Street and the Third Avenue in Manhattan. You just have to change the trains only once.”

  On the subway, alone, at night, into Manhattan, she thought, the very idea unimaginably dangerous and wonderful. For a brief moment, she allowed herself to float there on her magic carpet. But soon she landed with a thud. “If my parents … if Bais Ruchel … if they ever found out … if they even saw us talking to each other…”

  “But what they don’t know, it does not hurt them, eh? So we make up to meet in the city!”

  She shook her head. “I couldn’t!”

  Michelle searched Rose’s frightened face curiously. “Why not, chérie? What is wrong with learning art, or photography? Did God not give us our talents? Are we not sixteen years old? In Williamsburg, at seventeen, they already find you a husband. If we are almost old enough to get a husband, we are old enough to decide to take the subway into Manhattan for a class, n’est-ce pas?” She reached into her purse, tearing off a piece of paper and writing down her number. “Here, call me if you change your mind. Spring classes start in two months. Good-bye, my friend.”

  *

  “Bubbee, I think I’m going to sign up for a chesed committee, to visit sick people in the hospital, the way I did in Williamsburg.”

  “This is a very important mitzvah, to visit the sick. Your parents, you told?”

  “Not yet. What do you think, Bubbee, is this a good idea?”

  “You haf da time? It von’t be too hard for you?”

  “I have the time, Bubbee.”

  “I’m sure you do. Dat Satmar school … dey teach da girls nut’ting.” She shook her head disgustedly, then sighed. “So, if you vant, go. It’s okay by me.”

  “Really?”

  She seemed a little bit too delighted, her grandmother thought shrewdly, looking her over. “Dere’s a reason you’re not telling me?”

  Rose swallowed. “Of course not, Bubbee.”

  “Abi Gezunt—in good health. But I’ll check with your parents. It’s trou da school?”

  “No, it’s through the synagogue. The one around the corner, where we go for Shabbos.”

  “And how many times a veek?”

  Rose hesitated. “As many times as I want, Bubbee. But I thought I’d go after school on Tuesdays.”

  “But not too late?”

  “No, Bubbee. Not too late.”

  Her grandmother patted her on the cheek, nodding tiredly. “It’s time to put da bubbee to bed,” she said, shuffling off.

  Rose quietly cleaned off the table and washed the dishes. While she was no longer bothered by lies, she still had a prick of conscience each time she transgressed, and was still not above expecting on-the-spot divine punishment. Looking apprehensively around her, she wondered if a plate would fall out of the cupboard on her head, or a glass would slip, cutting her wrists.

  Reassured at the uneventful progress of her chores and the absence of divine intervention, she checked her grandmother’s whereabouts, ascertaining she was already in bed fast asleep. Hesitantly, she closed the kitchen door behind her, picking up the phone.

  “Michelle, it’s Rose again. What night is that photography class?”

  *

  As expected, her parents thoroughly checked out the chesed committee and the hospital visits, going so far as to discuss the whole arrangement with the principal of her school and the Honored Rav himself. Only after all agreed that this was a good sign of a positive change in her character did they all give their consent.

  She went every Tuesday after school, handing out little packages of sweets to the old people and their relatives, sitting by the bedside making small talk to those languishing alone. Her mother regularly checked on her progress with members of the committee, even calling to personally congratulate her: she’d heard only praise, she said warmly. After several weeks had passed, her mother relaxed and stopped checking up on her. It was then that she made her move.

  “Bubbee, I want to add another night a week to the chesed committee, Thursday nights. I feel it would be good for my character.”

  “A broocha on your keppeleh! God should only reward you.”

  Rose felt a tightening in her chest and an ache in her stomach at hearing these heartfelt words of praise from the old woman. But she had no choice, she told herself. She had started down this road, and to turn back would kill her. Even though she hadn’t started the class, she already felt devastated at the idea that it would not happen.

  Besides, it wasn’t her fault. They were the ones who had forced her into lies and deception, after all! If only they had left her alone!

  “But Bubbee, please don’t tell Mameh and Tateh yet.”

  Her grandmother’s radar hit a bump. She narrowed her eyes. “Why not?”

  “I want to make sure it’s not too much for me. If you tell them and I quit the extra night, they’ll be so disappointed. I don’t want them to disappoint them. Not again…”

  The old woman nodded sympathetically. “Ich farshteist, maideleh. It’s all right, it’s all right. Go, go. It’ll be our secret.”

  “Thank you, Bubbee!” She hugged the frail shoulders, breathing in the flour and cinnamon that rose from her apron, her own special scent. Her heart felt heavy for the deception.

  But whatever misgivings still lingered inside her, they were soon overwhelmed by joy when the day finally arrived. She took the BMT line on Fiftieth Street, just as she would have if she were going to the old-age home, but instead of getting off one stop later, she took it into Manhattan, changing trains and waiting for Michelle at the entrance to the Twenty-third Street station.

  What if she didn’t come? she panicked. What if, instead, some strange man, like the ones who had shouted at them on the subway that day on the way to the zoo, approached her? What if…? Her heart began to drum.

  “Hi, sorry I’m late.” She wore a short, expensive coat with wooden buttons and a warm fur hat. Like a model, Rose thought in admiration.

  They hugged, then walked together to the school. She tried not to think about how she would pay the tuition fees, hoping the teacher would allow her to simply “sit in” for the first few sessions, and afterward … well, she would cross that bridge when she came to it.

  She was startled when she reached the building, watching the students mill around, giving her surprised looks.

  Michelle grabbed her, pulling her into the first bathroom. “You’ll have to do something about that outfit if you don’t want everyone staring at you.” Quickly, she pulled out Rose’s tucked-in shirt, unbuttoning the first few buttons. Then, she rolled up the sleeves to above her elbows. Finally, she grabbed the waistband of Rose’s skirt, rolling it up until the skirt uncovered her knees. She stood back, inspecting her work critically. “It’s those horrible stockings. They’ve got to go!”

  “But my legs will be naked!”

  “No, they’ll look like legs, not wooden stumps!”

  “Oh, I just couldn’t!”

  “Fine.” Michelle reached up under her skirt, pulling down her own sheer panty hose and handing them to her. “Here, take mine, d’accord?”

  “You’ll freeze!”

  “It’s warm in here. We’ll switch back before we leave.”

  Rose went into one of the toilet stalls and changed, stuffing the Palm stockings into her coat pocket.

  “How’s this?” she said, offering herself up to her friend’s inspection.

  Michelle reached behind her, pulling out her braid and hairpins, spreading her long, silky hair around her shoulders. She smiled. “No one will stare at you now, except in a good way.”

  Rose looked in the mirror. “Oh, I couldn’t…”

  “Oh, yes you can,” Michelle said, pushing her out the door. She took her hand, pulling her up the stairs and down a long corridor. She pointed to a door.

  “Here, this is where your course is being given. I’m upstairs. I’ll wait for you at the entrance when our classes are over. H
ave fun!”

  She clutched Michelle’s arm.

  “I have to go! I’ll be late. Look, just go in and sit down. You will be fine. You’ll see.”

  Terrified, she walked quickly into the classroom and sat down. Now it was her turn to stare, especially at the men and boys with no head coverings, wearing unbuttoned shirts that showed their chest hair and tight jeans that boldly outlined their bodies. She was horrified. She jumped up, walking quickly toward the door, her plan to hide in the bathroom until Michelle’s class was over. But just as she was about to pull open the door, someone pushed it open toward her and entered.

  He was a man her father’s age, and thus a man who looked old to her, though he was only forty. She had never seen a man with such a smooth, hairless face, no different from a woman’s, she saw, startled. It was round and fleshy with a large cleft chin that would have looked handsome on a younger, thinner man. As it was, it simply accentuated the pounds he’d put on over the years. His graying hair was neatly trimmed, combed straight back from his high, smooth forehead, yet his sideburns were stylishly longer than they should have been for a man his age, she thought. His dark eyes were small and clever and something about the way he looked at her frightened her a little, although she could not say why. Perhaps “frightened” was not the best word, the most accurate word. She reconsidered. Perhaps the word she was looking for but refusing to find was “excited,” even “disturbed,” as he aroused in her strange feelings with which she had trouble coming to terms.

  “You look lost,” he said kindly. “Are you?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe,” she whispered.

  He raised an amused eyebrow, the smile coming only in his eyes, his lips a straight line, his nose just a tiny bit flared with amusement. You’d have to know what his face usually looked like to even notice it, she thought.

  “Are you interested in a photography class?”

  “Yes,” she said, finding her wits.

  “Well, good then, because you are in one! Why not just find a seat and relax?”

  People around her tittered. Ashamed, she dropped quickly into the nearest chair.

  His name was Vincenzo Giglio, he said, writing it on the board, and he was their teacher. According to the brochure she’d picked up as she’d entered the building, that meant he was an award-winning photojournalist whose work regularly appeared in The New York Times, Look, and Life. He wore dark pressed pants and a dark sweater from whose collar and sleeves a checked shirt peeked out. He was dressed more like a dentist, she thought, vaguely disappointed. She also decided he was shorter than he should have been, considering the broadness of his shoulders. Like the statue of Michelangelo’s David she’d once seen in Life magazine. But it was a manly, strong body. A competent, powerful body.

  He dimmed the lights, setting up a slide show of his work, projecting photographs on the large, blank wall. There in the dark, as the disembodied voice of this unknown man explained meaning and composition, she slowly forgot herself completely, the people around her vanishing along with the walls of the classroom and the city itself, subsumed into a language that held her in thrall. Her sense of sin also departed, taking with it her fears, her excruciating shyness, her insecurities. She felt cocooned in a private world of her own choosing, where miraculously she made the rules. And in this parallel universe, for the first time in a long time, she began to enjoy herself simply because she had ceased to be herself, feeling foreign and strange and other but in the best way possible. Instead of searching for a way back to the familiar, she realized she only wanted to go forward, leaving the familiar behind forever.

  When the lights went back on, she looked around shyly. She’d never dreamed of meeting such people, let alone joining them in any shared enterprise other than a random subway or bus ride. There was the black teenager wearing a huge afro and bell-bottom jeans and a tie-dyed T-shirt. There was an olive-complexioned young man wearing leather pants and a pretty blond girl in a low-cut maxi dress, braless, her frizzy hair like a vast halo around her head. By deliberately and freely choosing this activity, she realized, they had now been invited into her world, and she into theirs.

  A wave of immense excitement washed through her, followed by a jolt of panic of even greater intensity. She’d been banished from her home simply for looking at a book of photographs! What would they say if they could see her here, now, in a classroom full of indecently dressed Gentile boys, being spoken to familiarly by a beardless man named Vincenzo old enough to be her father, her hair undone, wearing a short skirt and a partially unbuttoned blouse with rolled-up sleeves that bared her white forearms! My parents! My teachers in Bais Ruchel! The Honored Rav! The idea of being caught and judged by any of them in such a state was paralyzing.

  “… And so, your assignment for next week is to choose a subject that exemplifies transition. Begin with a series of outdoor photos and then slowly move on to interiors. Oh, and those of you who have not registered, please go to the office after class and take care of the formalities.”

  She waited for him outside the door.

  “Professor Giglio,” she said.

  “Oh, hello. You again! You look awfully pale. Are you feeling all right? You aren’t going to faint, are you? I don’t know what to do with fainting ladies…” Again, that barely discernible smile gleaming out of those dark eyes.

  “I feel … yes. I’m fine. That is … I’m just not sure how I’m going to pay for this class.”

  “Your parents … are they poor?”

  “NO, no. Not exactly. Well, maybe. But I can’t ask my parents.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m…” She swallowed hard. “Not supposed to be here.”

  “Ah. Tell me more.”

  “My parents are ultra-Orthodox Jews from Williamsburg…”

  “Ah … okay … I get it.”

  He didn’t, not really. Like most people who live in New York City, he had seen the odd Hassid in black garb and sidelocks walking the streets, but, other than knowing that they existed, he knew little else, nor did he want to. “It’s a Jewish thing, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So, why are you here?”

  Something in the question crystallized for her everything she was feeling. The answer came spilling out, her wild heart finally overcoming her reasonable brain. “Because this is the most important thing in my life right now. I have to be in your class,” she said with an outpouring of passion that surprised and embarrassed her. She felt tears well up.

  “So, a bad girl, huh? My favorite kind.” The laugh lines around his eyes deepened, his lips finally succumbing into a smile. “Look, I can pretend I don’t see you for a few sessions, but you’ll have to register eventually. There is nothing I can do about that…”

  “Oh, I understand. I’m sure I will be able to work it out.… Thank you!”

  “But you do have a camera, don’t you…?”

  She looked down at her hands. “I am planning to get one.”

  He was equally annoyed and intrigued. “Well, you won’t get much out of this class without one. See you next week.”

  “Thank you, Professor Giglio! With all my heart!”

  “Professor,” he repeated mockingly, cupping her chin and giving it a playful shake as he looked deeply into her innocent, young eyes. “See you next week, honey,” he said.

  The impression of his fingers on her skin lingered as she made her way down to the entrance to wait for Michelle. It tingled.

  They met at the entrance, then retired to the bathroom to change stockings.

  “I’ve got to buy a camera,” Rose told her, calling out over the stall as she pulled up the dreaded hose and handing Michelle the sheer ones under the stall wall.

  “I thought you already had one?”

  “That was years ago. Your father said it was a toy.”

  “My father could lend you one. He’s got a million.”

  Rose considered this, but her initial enthusiasm waned as she thought about the i
mplications. “I might break it, or lose it,” she answered, but what she was really thinking was: I might have to be alone in a room with your father. I might have to show him my gratitude. He might demand it.

  “D’accord. Then I’ll ask him where you can buy one cheap.”

  “Ask him, but don’t mention me. Say it’s for someone else. One of your friends from Flatbush.”

  Michelle pushed out of the stall, adjusting her skirt. She gave Rose a curious stare, about to question this strange request, but then thought better of it. “Where will you get the money, Rose?” she asked instead, changing the subject.

  Rose said nothing. What could she say, except that she still believed in miracles?

  10

  It was only in bed that night, tossing and sleepless, that she remembered her Dime Savings Bank account. Miraculously, the passbook had been in her school bag when she left home, ready for the following day’s deposit. No one had remembered to take it out. She jumped out of bed, putting on her flashlight. She opened the passbook: $520.00!

  A fortune. Her hands shook as she considered the possibilities.

  The next day, she walked into a local branch with it. Presenting it to the clerk, she felt like a bank robber. “I want to withdraw the money.” She took a deep breath. “All of it.”

  “Do you have some identification?” the clerk asked.

  She took out the copy of her birth certificate that her mother had inserted into the passbook, suspicious that the bank might one day try to cheat them by questioning ownership of the account.

  “Special occasion?” the clerk asked, counting out the money.

  “Very,” Rose answered.

  Too excited to wait for Michelle’s father’s advice, she immediately went to several camera stores to shop. But none of them took her seriously, trying to sell her Polaroids and Brownies. They refused to even unlock the cases holding the more serious cameras so she could look at them. Frustrated, she called Michelle.