by Marge Piercy
“Not that there’s much to buy with it nowadays. But for the first time in my life, I can go buy myself a dress without asking Can I? Honey, can I?” Short and broad-shouldered, Vivian wore the first slacks Ruthie had seen on a woman, except in the movies. Now she herself was wearing overalls. At first they felt odd, stiff fabric rubbing against the inside of her thighs, but the pockets were great. Best of all she liked the way she could run along the catwalks without guys looking up her skirt.
People on the street were still touchy about women wearing slacks and often called out insults or obscenities. Just last week, Joyce had been sent home for wearing red slacks, as if the men were bulls and would charge her. The foreman called her red slacks indecent, provocative. The women all agreed it was a hoot, but Joyce lost a day’s pay and had that put on her record. They had not even been tight slacks, but loose and pleated.
Ruthie got off the Woodward streetcar and slowly walked toward her house. It had been a wet summer and now, two weeks after Labor Day, it was hot, as if to make up for the rainy August. She was exhausted, for she had worked eight hours, then spent nine to two at school.
She noticed a bunch of the local kids in the alley entrance as she crossed to her own block, two of the guys with fags hanging out of the corner of their mouths and the girls smoking too. Some of the younger girls had started wearing slacks, probably their brother’s pants, with oversized men’s shirts pulled down to cover the fly. She was dismayed to realize that one of the girls leaning on the side of the building flirting with the scuzzy-looking boys was Naomi. With a hand on her outflung hip and an expression of smiling disdain, her lips daubed with bright pink grease probably borrowed from the other girls, she looked mean and cheap.
Ruthie was embarrassed as she called to Naomi, not wanting Naomi to think she was spying, but truly dismayed. Naomi looked completely assimilated, one of the street kids, tough, scrawny, flip. Ruthie herself had never belonged to a gang or even the sort of protogang she could see forming there. Why not? Ruthie walked on more slowly. She had duties at home. She had always felt a strong identification with her mother, her mother’s troubles, the difficulty of making things stretch for the family.
Then too she had feared the seductions of that street world, had feared being stuck here, married too young, pregnant too young, forever poor and just one step off the dole. Arty and Duvey were not going anyplace. She had always been the best at school. She had not thrown in her lot with the tougher kids but with those who meant to go to college, whose families pushed them successfully to excel, to study, who saw in classes and exams and grades a personal salvation, who found books a passport to elsewhere.
Rose was more harried with Naomi than she had been with Ruthie, and Bubeh had also overseen her, taught her, comforted her for the small and bigger abrasions of life as a poor Jewish girl. Naomi was not Rose’s child, but they owed her more care and attention. Yet Ruthie herself had little enough time. She was always tired, always rushed. Between the noise and confusion and harrying, almost intolerable pace of the line, and the world of lectures and library, exams and the imaginary case studies of school, there seemed no overlap. Sometimes she felt crazy, as if she belonged in neither place and ought always to be in the place where she was not.
Here she was studying to be a social worker, and there was her own charge, her cousin, hanging out with a gang of scruffy kids smoking butts they must steal someplace and who knew what else they were getting into? She sighed as she plodded along the driveway past the Rosenthals’ house to their own. Washing hung in the yard, sheets drooping in the humid heat. The last coals of summer, she thought, feeling the air stain her with its weight of sulphur and smoke until her skin had the smell of river bottom mud. Rose met her at the door, hefting a squalling baby on one hip.
“Your young man is coming, Ruthie mine. Your young man is coming this Saturday to see his mother and father and you. Pick up your head and give me a smile, you look so tired, tsatskeleh.”
“Murray? He’s coming? How do you know, Mama? Who told you?”
Rose smoothed a telegram out of her apron pocket and handed it to Ruthie. “This came for you. I was so scared, I thought something happened with our Duvey. For once it’s good news, we should always be glad when it happens and it should happen more often.”
The telegram, addressed to her, said simply that Murray had forty-eight hours’ leave and he would call her as soon as he got in Saturday.
She had to take off work. She had never yet been absent, but she would call in sick on Saturday. Sunday she had off anyhow. She kept reading the telegram again and again, hoping for more information. Love, Murray. Love. She would see him Saturday. She could not speak. She could not eat the soup steaming for her. She chewed a piece of rye bread she could scarcely choke down and then went upstairs. Because of the noise from the children, Ruthie, like Arty, slept upstairs.
Arty was snoring in the bedroom, but when Ruthie lay down on the couch that Rose had already made up for her, she could not sleep. She was parched for sleep, but she could not quiet the excitement that rattled and tore in her like a fan with sharpened blades. They would have such a short time. She had to share him with his own family. She could already feel past this brief respite in her longing for him how desolate it was going to be when he was gone again.
Why did they give them so little time? It wasn’t right, it wasn’t right. She understood why Trudi had traveled down to Tennessee to stay in a dismal town where she was overcharged and treated like an outcast, just to be near Leib all of August. Now Trudi was back, perhaps pregnant, and Leib was somewhere in Scotland.
When she woke, Sharon was asleep and Arty was in the bathroom. She went downstairs to bathe and dress. On the table, the candles from supper had burnt out but the old Sabbath candleholder from Poland was still in the center of the table with the layers of colored wax dripped down its tarnished silver sides. A year ago, it would have been freshly polished every week, but Rose was too overworked. Ruthie decided she preferred it dimmed and festooned with multicolored wax. What she didn’t like was missing Sabbath dinner.
Rose was waiting for her at the table, with her supper heating. “I wish you wouldn’t wait up, Mama. Your day starts too early.”
“It’s my pleasure,” Rose said, sweeping crumbs from the table with the side of her hand. “I sleep better knowing you had a good meal.”
It was odd to eat supper upon waking, in the middle of the night, but nothing was normal. Rose brought her a plate on which was set out slices of roast chicken, stuffing, applesauce, potatoes and salad from their victory garden. Across the table from her Rose sat nibbling a slice of challah to keep her company, trying to hide her yawns as she played with the bread.
“Tomorrow I’m going to stay out of work, Mama,” Ruthie said.
Rose looked down, her face puckering with worry. “You had such a hard time getting this job, shainele. You need to take such chances with it?”
“I haven’t even been late once yet. Everybody misses sometimes and I’ll go in Monday. I can’t help it, Mama, we have almost no time.”
“After the war, you’ll have lots of time.”
“When will that be, Mama? When I’m fifty? That’s assuming Murray will come back to me.”
Rose spat into her hand. “Kine-ahora, don’t say such a thing, don’t even think such a thing to yourself.”
“Murray’s a marine, Mama, he’s not just on a ship. He’s going to be fighting. I’m convinced that they’re sending him overseas, and that’s why he has this leave. That’s what happened with Leib and every guy we know, Mama. They give them a little leave and then they go.”
“He’ll go and then he’ll come back. Then you can talk about all the time you need and be serious. The radio sings all day about love, love, love, no wonder young people go crazy.”
“Mama, I’m worried about Naomi. She’s hanging around street corners with some tough-looking kids—”
“Naomi’s a good girl. She doesn’t help me
as willingly as you used to, but she does as good as she can in a strange country away from her own mama. She tries. So she speaks like the other kids and of course she tries to look like them too. When you go into another country, it’s so hard, Ruthenyu, I remember, everything is hard. They all look like zhlobs nowadays, it doesn’t mean they’re no good. It’s the times.”
When she got home from work Ruthie went straight to bed. She was always short on sleep by the weekend, ready to fall into it and let it wash through her. Only women with six-day-a-week factory jobs left their kids with Rose and Sharon on Saturday. Ruthie could sleep in her own bed and wake in her own room. That was better for her, better for Naomi, who seemed to miss her presence. That was one of the few days she woke feeling as if she had sunk all the way down into sleep and been rebuilt.
Today she would have supper with her family and then Murray would call. If he could not see her tonight, she could always go in anyhow. She had till ten to make up her mind, and now it was daylight when she woke up, a luxury she loved, and only five-thirty. Boston Blackie lay against her purring softly. He missed her too, but he had taken to sleeping with Naomi. That seemed to comfort both of them.
Lying in her bunk peaceful with the rare feeling of being rested and refreshed and trying to keep her mind off Murray, hearing the sounds of cooking and the clatter of dishes from the kitchen, work which she ought to go and help with but did not, she wondered if she were doing the wrong thing by working in a factory. Going to school four evenings a week, taking two classes, she had in a year finished the equivalent of one semester. At the rate at which she had been able to take classes, she would have needed eight years to get her degree, eight years of deferring marriage, family, personal joy, to arrive finally in her profession handicapped by her late start.
Now going to school days, she would be done in two and a half years. When Murray came home, she would be able to offer him more than labor for an aging bride, as Jacob had waited for Rachel, who then had all that trouble with child-bearing, probably from being overage. Perhaps she would be almost finished or even have her degree and be working. Instead of liabilities and the promise of joy deferred, she could help Murray, and they could begin a life together.
With that hope she finally got herself out of bed.
At eight Murray called. Ruthie had intentionally not been answering the phone, because she could not stand to answer it and have it be someone else. Knowing that Ruthie was waiting for that call, Naomi came running. “The chassen is on the phone,” she said wryly, coming to a halt.
Ruthie rushed to the phone through air thick as honey. After the brief conversation it seemed to her she had not spoken at all and had scarcely been able to listen. He was on his way over. He had his father’s very old but still functional Dodge.
She ran to dress. She could think of nothing to put on except the pink chiffon Rose had bought at a rummage sale. “Are you going to a fancy party?” Rose said to her, tsking her tongue.
“Seeing him is the only party I care about. What’s more important than to look good to him before he goes?”
She stared at him as he came through the door, a little dismayed, for he looked different in the uniform. His fine light brown hair was cut so short he looked bald, his ears sticking out like handles on a sugar bowl. His eyes were the same rich warm brown with flecks of sun in them; that reassured her. She did not know how she got him out of the house, but she did. Tata wanted to talk with him, Arty was waiting around, Sharon and Rose were avid with curiosity.
What got them out was that they both wanted desperately to be alone together, and politeness simply failed and the urge to bolt into the night won out.
“Where are we going?” she asked, in his car.
“How about Belle Isle? At least it will be cooler there.”
Rose had been right; the pink chiffon dress was silly. But he was saying, “You look so beautiful, I can’t believe it. I can’t believe we’re together and I can’t believe I have to leave you in less than twenty-four hours.… Don’t you ever wish we’d gotten married before I joined up?”
“Sometimes. But it doesn’t make sense. At least, maybe by the time you get out, we can do it without losing everything we want.”
“Right now all I want is the right to walk into a room with you and close the door on everybody else in the world.”
“You sound like you wish we’d got married?”
“We were stupid not to. At least you’d get the allotment checks.”
In the pavilion on Belle Isle, a band was playing. Murray was not the world’s best dancer and neither was she. The female singer was belting out, “One Dozen Roses.” The dance floor was so crowded that they could do no more than embrace where they stood and sway back and forth with little steps. Half of Detroit seemed crowded into the river park tonight.
He held her very close. She kept having trouble catching her breath, not because he was hurting her but because of their bodies pressed thigh to thigh and belly to belly. She could feel his erection against her. Through the flimsy chiffon, her skin burned. The dance floor was hot, reeking of beer, sweat, perfume, hair tonic. Fights kept breaking out on the fringes. They simply stood in place swaying, taking mincing little steps and holding each other.
When the band started a fast jitterbug, “Pennsylvania Six Five Thousand,” they sat down. The floor cleared out some. They drank soda and looked at each other. She kept feeling as if she were on the edge of bursting into tears. “It was hard for you at Parris Island, wasn’t it?”
“The Marines must recruit the worst bullies and the most prejudiced foul-mouthed goys in the whole country.”
That was a word he had used to object to, a ghetto word, he had said. Now it came to his lips with feeling. What you send away, you don’t get back the same, she thought, but felt no less close to him.
He handed her a check for one hundred ten dollars made out to her. “I’ve been saving. You open a new account for us. I have to feel we’re getting someplace. This’ll start us off, when the war’s over. We’ll both save what we can. I don’t want to live with your parents or move in with mine. I have to know if I come back, and I’m going to come back, I swear it, that I’m coming back to you. That you’re waiting for me—”
“Murray, you must know that. I haven’t looked at another man since the first time we went out together. I don’t want anybody else.”
“But it’s hard on you too. I want you to know we’re homing in on what we want together. That we will make it happen. I won’t give up any part of it. I won’t let go of you, and that’s going to bring me back.”
“You’re going overseas?”
“I’m sure of it. The guys are guessing New Zealand.”
How could they be together at this table tonight and tomorrow separated, perhaps for years? “We could make a code to get by the censors, for all the places we can think of.” They made up phrases for New Zealand, Australia, New Guinea, Samoa.
“It’s like a shvitz bath in here, let’s get a breeze,” he said, leading her out to the old Dodge. He drove toward the downriver end of the island and parked on a loop with several other cars, dark and occupied. As soon as he shut off the engine, he reached for her.
She knew almost as soon as he touched her that he was not going to hold back. He was not trying to restrain himself, as he always had, as she had always trusted him to. He wanted. “Murray, I’m afraid. Don’t!”
“Ruthie, if not now, when? When will we have a chance together? I have a rubber, I’ll take care. Don’t be frightened of me.”
“You are so sure of me, you bring one of those things?”
“I’m sure what I want, and that it’s you I want. Aren’t you sure yet?” He did not wait for her answer but started kissing her again, slipping his hand down inside the V neck of the dress and into her brassiere. His hand felt hot against her breast, engulfing. No one had ever touched her naked breast before and she felt as if she were turning to warm jelly, the calves’ foot jelly Bubeh
made for invalids.
She tried to twist away from him but he held her. “Ruthie, you want me too. Don’t make us both suffer any longer. You are mine. Or aren’t you?”
She felt the slither of despair cold and dry on her back. Fighting off Leib had been one thing, discouraging Murray another. She had let him too far in. She loved him. She could find no words to raise between them that would refuse him without pain. She thought of her mother. Rose would be furious. She was caught between them, pulled to each. But Rose had her husband and she must have hers, the only man she had ever found herself wanting all through her body and her mind.
She could not wrestle with him or strike him as she had more than once given Leib a smart slap across the face. She was going to give in. Rose would have many names for a girl who was that foolish, but Rose had never had to send Morris off to be shot at. The worst danger he had ever faced had been beatings on a picket line, and at least they had been married then.
Murray could read her body language, her sighs, her sudden passivity in his arms. “You will. Come on, take off your dress. We can get that undressed.”
“Suppose the police come.”
“They won’t. They’re scared to come in here when so many servicemen are parked. They know they’d start a riot.”
They got into the backseat. Ruthie was shaking slightly as he slipped the dress off. She insisted on keeping on her bra and her slip. She was not wearing stockings. She was rigid with fear.
“Ruthie, my love, my baby, you’re so stiff I’ll hurt you. Relax to me. When we were dancing, you wanted me. Can’t you want me now?”
“I’m so scared I can’t stop shaking. You should just go ahead and do it anyhow.”
“Put your hand on me. There. Is that so frightening? It’s just flesh like your flesh. It stands up, it lies down. You can make it do anything you want just by touching it. It’s not as big as your foot or as hard as your elbow, right?”
She laughed. “I’m touching it. Don’t think I’m an idiot. I’ve seen my brother Duvey’s, when he was asleep on top of the covers and I was sent in to wake him, but it was just hanging there, little.”