The Smartest Woman I Know

by Beckerman, Ilene

  “There is no excuse for a married Jew to make hanky-panky with someone who is not his wife, especially with a young girl who is my granddaughter.

  “A Jew should not do such a thing to a young girl, to his wife, or to the Jewish people.

  “A Jew doesn’t have to be so special like Albert Einstein or Sophie Tucker, but after five thousand years of trouble, why look for trouble?

  “You did the right thing,” Ettie told her. “Levy did the wrong thing. Imagine, a married man. Imagine, a Jewish married man.”

  Ettie thought everyone should get married. Especially women. “But not to a Mr. Levy!”

  She told Tootsie and me several times, “Marry a doctor. Everybody needs a doctor in the family, and with a doctor, you’ll always know he’s got a job because sooner or later everybody gets sick. And with a doctor, you’re already a somebody. You’re not just a Mr. and Mrs., you’re a Dr. and Mrs. Plus, if you have a little chafing, a little wheezing, a little pain, you got somebody right there.”

  Don’t waste your time on somebody who’s not a doctor unless he’s a dentist.

  “Get them when you’re young,” Ettie advised us, “before somebody else gets them. Because if you aren’t married by the time you are twenty-five, you will be an old maid. Nobody will ever want you, not even in a card game. You’ll work as an assistant bookkeeper, live in a dark, tiny apartment, and have a cat that sheds on everything and ruins the vacuum cleaner. On Saturdays, you’ll go to a movie with another old maid, then maybe splurge on a chocolate sundae with two scoops at Schrafft’s.”

  “A man is different. If you’re a man over thirty-nine and you’re not married, it’s a whole different ball game, a different kettle of fish, and horse of a different color. Nobody will ever call you an old butler. People will call you a bachelor, think you’re a good catch, Cary Grant will play you in the movies, and unmarried women will make you noodle pudding.”

  You got to shop around to find a good fit

  When Tootsie told Ettie that she and the boy from Westchester wanted to get married, Ettie wasn’t as happy as Tootsie.

  “You didn’t look around enough,” Ettie said, “A husband is like buying new shoes. You might see something you fall in love with right away, but if it’s not a good fit, it will never make you happy.”

  “Well, at least he’s Jewish,” Tootsie said.

  When Mr. Goldberg heard Tootsie’s big announcement his response was: “Does he have a job, because I’m not hiring and I’m not supporting.”

  Despite Ettie’s worries, something about The Announcement brought out a side of her I’d never known.

  One afternoon when the store was empty, she started reminiscing. “Mr. Goldberg once told me he remembered the sound his footsteps made when he walked on the autumn leaves in the woods in Russia. I told him I remembered the crunching sound my boots made when I walked in the winter snow in Russia.

  “I also remembered when I saw him for the first time in New Orleans and how I fell in love with him on the spot. But I didn’t tell him that.”

  ANOTHER BEGINNING

  TOOTSIE WANTED A WEDDING dress with a veil and a train like the Junior League debutantes whose wedding announcements and photographs by Bachrach she saw in the Sunday New York Times.

  Ettie was reluctant to spend the money for such a dress. “You want a long, white dress with a train? Where are you going to wear it again? To the butcher?”

  Tootsie and the boy got married in the living room. She wore a white wedding dress with a veil and a train.

  It was the first time Ettie met the boy’s mother. After the ceremony, Ettie took Tootsie aside and said, “I met the mother. So just make believe she’s like a neighbor you hope you don’t run into, but if you do, you say hello nicely and make believe she’s a friend you’re happy to see but you’re in a hurry to go someplace else. God will forgive the lie.”

  Ettie handed her an envelope when Mr. Goldberg wasn’t looking. Mr. Goldberg handed her an envelope when Ettie wasn’t looking.

  Nine months and a day later, Tootsie gave birth to a boy. “A great-grandchild, that’s interest on the interest,” Ettie said.

  We had a bris. Mr. Goldberg held the baby with his eyes closed.

  Ettie cried more than the baby. “At someone else’s bris,” she said, “I don’t cry so many tears.”

  Tootsie didn’t know whether to breast-feed or not. “Not even King Solomon could give you an answer,” Ettie told her.

  “Before there were bottles and formula, you didn’t have a choice. But today, there is a modern way to do everything.

  “Nobody should tell you what to do. Especially not your mother-in-law. Tell her to mind her own business—in a nice way.”

  “Some people think the only way is to breast-feed the baby. But some women don’t have enough milk. Some women don’t want to.

  “Whichever way is okay by me. But no matter what you decide, whichever way you do, you should always hold your baby close.”

  RELATIVES

  EVENTUALLY, MR. GOLDBERG’S father came north and eventually they started talking to each other.

  After a few more years, Mr. Goldberg invited his father to the Passover seder.

  I was supposed to call his father, my great-grandfather Zayde, but I never called him anything because I never spoke to him.

  Zayde wore black from head to toe. I could see what he’d just eaten by looking at his beard. He spit when he talked. He’d run after me to tickle me and I’d run into the bathroom.

  Dear God, You couldn’t make Zayde should wear a red suit, carry jingle bells and go ho-ho-ho once in a while, so my granddaughter shouldn’t be scared?

  Three sisters, Minnie, Sarah, and Rose were cousins of Mr. Goldberg. They never married and lived from hand to mouth in Brooklyn. Sometimes they came into the store.

  Minnie was an elementary school teacher, Sarah was a social worker, and Rose cooked and cleaned for her sisters, listened to Woody Guthrie records, and wrote letters to Henry Wallace, the 1948 Progressive candidate for president of the United States, endorsed by the U.S. Communist Party.

  On Saturdays, the sisters marched in protest. On Sundays, the sisters distributed flyers. Evenings, the sisters knitted sweaters for the oppressed. They could sing “The International,” the anthem of world socialism, in harmony.

  “Let me tell you about three other sisters,” Ettie said. “Patty, LaVerne, and Maxene—the Andrews sisters. They go around singing “Bei Mir Bist du Schon” and they aren’t even Jewish. But from that song, they make a fortune and live in sunny California.

  “Sometimes life is all about the song you sing.”

  Mr. Goldberg called his cousins the Pinko Sisters. Thanks to Ettie, they never left the store empty handed.

  Ettie would always say, “Take a magazine, a piece of candy. Maybe you want a Tootsie Roll? Some Chiclets? Mason Dots? Necco Wafers? Maybe you’ll be lucky and find a Necco with a lot of chocolate wafers. Don’t be shy. You need some Waterman’s blue-black ink? Don’t worry, I’ll deal with Mr. Goldberg.”

  Almost every Jewish family had an unmarried aunt. In ours, Aunt Babbie occupied that unenviable position. I loved it when she came to visit. She always brought a shiny box of Fanny Farmer lollipops.

  Instead of marriage, Babbie choose a career. She worked as head bookkeeper for the Elite Dress Company. She excelled at her job. Her numbers were always balanced. Her profit and loss statements were accurate to the penny. However, her reconciliation of pluses and minuses did not translate into her choice or appraisals of men.

  A bright tie on a charming shoulder-pad salesman blinded her to the fact that Irving Grossman was about to be jailed for embezzlement.

  Lou Stein, who always wore a vest, opened the door for her, and took her dancing at Roseland, obscured the small detail that he’d been married for seventeen years and had two teenage sons.

  Eventually, Babbie abandoned the garment industry and migrated to Florida.

  Unlike the birds, though,
she never came back.

  HOLIDAYS

  THE STORE WAS OPEN seven days a week including holidays, with one exception.

  The one day a year the store was closed was Yom Kippur.

  There was always a contest of wills between Ettie and Mr. Goldberg, and it was never more apparent than on a Jewish holiday.

  One particular Passover, we sat down for the seder when Mr. Goldberg stood up and announced “Before we will begin the seder, we will sing ‘Hatikvah.’”

  “‘Hatikvah?’” Ettie countered, “We are Americans. We should sing ‘The Star Spangled Banner.’”

  Mr. Goldberg: We will sing “Hatikvah”!

  Ettie: Mr. Goldberg, you’re an American.

  Mr. Goldberg: “Hatikvah”!

  Ettie: “The Star Spangled Banner”!

  Mr. Goldberg: So all of a sudden you’re Mrs. George Washington? Enough already. The people who want to sing “Hatikvah” should go by my side of the table. The people who want to sing the other song should go by her side of the table.

  Nobody moved. Mr. Goldberg and Ettie both stood at opposite ends of the Passover table. Mr. Goldberg sang “Hatikvah” loud. Ettie sang “The Star Spangled Banner” louder.

  The seder had begun.

  Ettie never looked forward to Passover even if just Zayde and the Pinko sisters came.

  “It isn’t the planning,” she’d say.

  “It isn’t about cleaning the house.

  “It isn’t about finding enough chairs or enough glasses.

  “It isn’t about the shopping.

  “It isn’t even about the cooking.

  “It’s about how to keep everything hot when you’ve only got a small oven.”

  Every Passover, Mr. Goldberg complained that the brisket was too dry and there wasn’t enough of it, the chicken didn’t have enough dark meat, the chicken soup was too salty, the matzah balls weren’t fluffy enough, the chicken liver gave him heartburn, and next year, he’d make the charosis so it would come out right.

  So you listening, God? Boils, blood, lice, wild beasts, pestilence, hail, locusts, darkness, slaying the firstborn—that’s nothing compared to what I go through in a week with Mr. Goldberg.

  One year, Ettie wanted to buy a new hat for Rosh Hashanah. “Not like I don’t have a hat, but Mrs. Schneiderman who sits next to me at the temple, her son is already a doctor, might think I have only one hat. She has a hat with a big feather. I want a hat with a bigger feather.”

  So Ettie decided to go to Klein’s on 14th Street and she asked me to go with her. Klein’s was known for its bargains and Ettie was always trying to save money. Still, we took a taxi down to 14th Street.

  Once we got to Klein’s, we took the escalator up to the third floor. Ettie didn’t go on elevators.

  Why ride up and down in a closet? On the escalator, in case there’s a fire, I can get off in a hurry.

  Ettie avoided saleswomen. “Saleswomen get commissions on what they sell,” she told me by way of instruction, “so they try to sell me a lot of expensive shmattes. I have nothing against a woman should make a living, but not from me.”

  As soon as we reached the floor where they sold ladies’ hats, a saleswoman asked Ettie if she needed any help. “No, thank you,” Ettie said. “I’m just looking. I’m not buying anything today. Thank you very much but no thank you. I’m just looking and I don’t even know what I’m looking for. But by the way, should you know where the black hats with big feathers are, you might point me in that direction.”

  We walked to the corner section where they had ladies’ hats. Ettie picked up a hat, looked at the tag, and said, “Who can afford this? Mrs. Rockefeller, maybe. Maybe I should call Mr. Goldberg’s cousin Morris. His son sells mattresses in the garment district. Maybe he could get me with a big feather wholesale?”

  I reminded Ettie that Mr. Goldberg and Morris hadn’t spoken in years.

  “Maybe it’s about time,” she answered.

  Purim was no big megillah for Ettie. “Any Jewish holiday when you don’t you cry or starve isn’t worth fussing over,” she told me.

  Every December, the store was decked out with Christmas ornaments and boxes and boxes of Christmas cards. One small shelf in the back of the store held about six Chanukah cards.

  The spelling of Chanukah was a continuous battle between Ettie and Mr. Goldberg for they needed a small sign. Ettie spelled it Hanuka. Mr.Goldberg spelled it Chanukah.

  One day, Mr. Goldberg insisted. “I’m right,” he said. “It’s written Challah, not hallah, so, once again, I am right.”

  Ettie believed in tradition. Every Hanuka she said the same things:

  1. Don’t eat the chocolate Hanuka gelt all at once, you’ll get constipated.

  2. Eat the latkes while they’re hot, but don’t eat too many, you’ll get diarrhea.

  3. Not so much sugar, your teeth will fall out.

  4. Eat, eat. There are children starving in Europe.

  Every time Ettie heard Bing Crosby sing “White Christmas” on the radio, she muttered, “Irving Berlin, a Jew, wrote that song. So what would have been so terrible if he’d dreamed about a white Hanuka, instead?”

  Let me tell you something, Bing Crosby is no Al Jolson.

  Sukkot Ettie completely ignored.

  Thank you, God, for a holiday so beautiful, but on Madison Avenue nobody puts up a sukkah. Lulav, they don’t sell in Gristede’s. Times have changed. I don’t worry about the Cossacks anymore, I worry about shoplifters.

  Cossacks

  But even if her feet hurt, her head hurt, or her heart hurt, even if she was too tired to move, even if it was too hot, too cold, too windy, too snowy, even if it got dark too early or too late, Ettie always lit the Shabbos candles.

  A WAY OF LIFE ENDS.

  A NEW ONE BEGINS.

  ETTIE WAS ALWAYS a little sad on a Jewish holiday. On one hand, she wanted to be observant. On the other hand, the holidays didn’t fit in with life on Madison Avenue. “How can we close the store for Shabbos, for Tish’a B’Av, for Simchat Torah, for Rosh Hashanah? We’ll lose customers. They’ll go to 59th Street for their newspapers.”

  “Who knows what to do anymore?

  “Who knows what’s important anymore?

  “Who even knows who anybody is anymore,” she sighed.

  “Nobody knows that Hedy Lamarr is really Jewish.” On and on she’d go. Her list was endless. Anybody she admired was in one way or another Jewish.

  “And Cary Grant is part Jewish, but I don’t know which part. Lauren Bacall is Jewish and married Humphrey Bogart who also has a Jewish part. Winston Churchill and Mae West have Jewish mothers. Groucho Marx and his brothers are all Jewish. The Ritz brothers, Jewish, but Jews shouldn’t hit each other on the head. Jacob Javits, the senator in Washington, is Jewish, so I don’t think he’s really a Republican.

  “Three more things, you should always remember:

  “Number 1: Rich or poor, it’s good to have money.

  “Number 2: You better eat something while you’re waiting for a free lunch.

  “Number 3: Nobody owes you anything unless you lend them money and it should be in writing on a piece of paper with a lot of copies and a lawyer who puts a seal on it with a notary. And try to use a Jewish lawyer.

  “You know why there are so many Jewish lawyers? It’s in our history to argue. Do you know a Jew who doesn’t have an opinion?

  “Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Joseph and his brothers—it’s in our history not to get along.

  “Fight with guns? We like to fight with words.

  “The men sit and study the Talmud and they discuss, they debate, they argue, their faces turn red, they start to shake, and worse things happen.”

  God, how come every Jew is putting in his two cents, especially if nobody asked him?

  IN THIS LIFE, YOU have to be prepared,” Ettie advised, and she always was.

  Whenever she left the store she carried with her a black pocketbook with a gold clasp that made a noise when
she closed it. It was her Handbag for Emergencies.

  No matter when I looked in it, I always found the same things:

  Peppermint Life Savers

  A white cotton handkerchief with embroidered flowers

  A small mirror in a felt case

  A compact with a powder puff and powder (never used)

  Ten shiny pennies (for the kinder to play with) and a dollar in change in a red leather change purse

  A silver pillbox with four aspirins inside

  A plastic rain bonnet in a plastic holder

  A safety pin

  A small sewing kit from the Saxony Hotel in Miami Beach

  A Band-Aid

  A five-dollar bill rolled up and stuffed into the pinky of a pair of short black cotton gloves

  The telephone number of Mr. Max

  Finklestein, a lawyer: TRafalga 8-9224.

  ENDINGS

  FINALLY, HIGH SCHOOL was over for me. What would I do? What were my choices?

  “Let me give you some good advice,” Ettie said. “Smart people are smart because they make smart choices. There are some things maybe you want to do, but you don’t do them good. It wouldn’t be smart to choose them to make a living.

  “Not everybody can do everything. Maybe I want to be like Gypsy Rose Lee. Let me tell you, Gypsy Rose Lee doesn’t have to worry I’m going to take her job. But I bet Gypsy Rose Lee can’t make a breaded veal cutlet as good as me. Some things you can do. Some things you never can do.”