But before we could leave, Ma said, “I hear talk that Hitler is going to assume the position of von Schuschnigg. I read—”
I cut Ma short. The political talk would continue all night if I let it. Abe was always more than willing to be drawn into a debate with my parents.
“Ma!” The impatience oozed from me, but I checked myself. An argument would only delay us further. With a saccharine tone, I said to Ma, “We won’t make curtain if we don’t leave now.”
“Of course, of course,” Ma said. She made shooing motions with her hands. “Go. See your— What is it you’re going to see?”
“The Children’s Hour,” Abe said.
“Ah, yes. Well, go. Enjoy.”
I set my hat on my head and carefully pinned it into place as Abe opened the front door and we headed out.
I hurried down the stairs before anyone else could stop us and Abe rushed to catch up.
“Where’s the fire?” he asked as he took my arm.
“Trying to escape the flames of my mother’s convictions,” I said. I gave him a playful nod with my chin. “Why do you encourage her so?”
“Encourage her? I enjoy the conversation.” His smile created tiny wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, a look that made me want to grab him and hold him. But we needed to make our way toward the train.
“Conversation? Is that what you call those battles with my parents?”
Abe chuckled. I pulled his arm closer. I loved when I could make him laugh. The sound was low and rumbling, and it touched me in all the right places. “We’d better hurry. It’s at the Maxine Elliott Theatre. If we miss the next train, we’ll miss the first act.”
Abe and I had known each other since, it seemed, the beginning of time. From grammar school, from the block, from the market. But he hadn’t paid attention to me as anything more than a neighborhood fixture in those days. Three years older, Abe had little time for the pip-squeak I was then. While I’d had my eye on him, he had his eye on Sadie Kraus. But just before I turned sixteen, my body began to change, and I found plenty of excuses to stop by Abe’s store. A little laugh here, a light touch there, and soon his attentions meandered my way. A few months later, he made his intentions known, and we’d been an item ever since. But Abe was frightfully slow, and after three years, I was becoming impatient. Now I was downright desperate.
As we made our way to the theater, Abe kept me entertained with the gossip from the store. He chatted about who complained the scales were heavy, who tried to pay on credit when credit ran out, what he overheard women telling his ma, and while he spoke, I plotted. Abe was determined we not marry until we could afford our own apartment. Many of our friends moved in with the bride’s or groom’s parents after the wedding; Abe refused to allow that. He’d saved quite a bit, but it was not yet enough, he insisted.
I pulled him closer, longing to feel his arm around me. When we arrived at the theater, we took our seats just as the curtain rose. But I couldn’t follow the story, as preoccupied as I was. My mind tuned in and out like a staticky radio. Yet as words floated past me, a line settled in, nestling into my brain: Martha and I have been lovers. They had been lovers. Lovers. Of course.
I didn’t need to marry Abe. I just needed to seduce him. How silly of me not to realize that.
But how? It wasn’t like I hadn’t tried, but before, it had been fun and games. Now it was serious business. Abe was an innocent in so many ways. His parents’ store protected him from the harsher aspects of the lower East Side with which Izzy and I were all too well acquainted.
Every day as a child, Abe ran home after heder to help his parents. From a young age, he was carting sacks, filling barrels, helping customers, whereas Izzy constantly fell into scrapes with his gang. With Tateh at the garage and Ma sewing in the shop down the street, no one kept an eye on us. The neighborhood was territorial, and the street needed to be guarded from gangs from other blocks, and Izzy was into fisticuffs, it seemed, more often than not. Ma did the best she could until Alfie and Joey fell sick; then it was up to me to steer Izzy toward proper behavior, bandaging his wounds, keeping him from the prostitutes who offered their wares on the street corners.
But the truth is, I was not quite immune to the temptations of the street and, out of boredom and curiosity, found myself, once or twice—or a dozen times; who can remember?—in a compromising position with one of the boys in the gang. My virtue remained—more or less—intact, although in empty cellars and on lonely rooftops I certainly pushed the boundaries of decency from time to time. For a while, Lefty Iskowitz and I met in the basement of my building, but it didn’t take long for us to tire of each other.
But Abe. Abe was pure and untouched by any hands other than mine. At least that’s what he professed. But then again, so did I, so how was I to be sure? Who knows what went on with Sadie Kraus in the back of the store when he was left alone to mind it?
Onstage, the bang of a gun jolted me back to the moment, and I caught the final few minutes. When the lights went on in the theater, I snuggled into Abe’s arms and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “That was lovely. Thank you.”
“I’m not sure ‘lovely’ is the right word for a play with such a tragic ending, but the production was wonderful, wasn’t it?” Abe said, his eyebrows bopping up and down as they did when he was excited. “Florence McGee was terrific as Mary. Why did we wait so long to see this?”
I took Abe’s arm as we stood to walk out of our row. “Because you wanted to catch La bohème while it was still playing at the Hippodrome and we had to see the Whistler Centenary at the Metropolitan before it closed, and we couldn’t pass up Leslie Howard in The Petrified Forest and . . .” We made our way up the aisle to exit the theater. “Shall I go on?”
With a laugh, Abe said, “Well, I’m glad we finally made it. Such complex characters. I do believe Miss McGee stole the show. Her character was pure deviousness.”
As we exited the theater, Abe asked, “Shall we get an ice cream before we head home?”
“Of course,” I said, though I worried about my ability to keep it down.
As we walked, Abe returned to the topic of the play. “Isn’t it interesting how the story exemplified lashon hara?”
“And it always comes back to Torah,” I said, trying to keep my tone light.
“The prohibition against gossip is such an important commandment to observe. And it’s fascinating to see the relevancy of Torah around us. Even in the goyishe world.”
Abe still held dear the mitzvot of the Torah, spending time studying Talmud even after becoming a bar mitzvah. Unlike other boys who immediately distanced themselves from synagogue—attending only on holidays and the occasional Shabbes when their mothers insisted—Abe appreciated the traditions. Even in my own home, the rules were strictly obeyed only because Ma said so. Tateh said socialism had no room for religion, but all it took was one fierce glare from Ma, and Tateh would be scurrying off to shul. “The workers should own the means of production,” Ma frequently said, “but there’s no reason God can’t keep an eye on us while we do it.” I once spied Tateh eating a sandwich with his pals on Yom Kippur, when they were supposedly praying. That night he came home, and pretending he’d fasted the entire day, he forced himself to eat the lavish spread Ma had prepared for him. How difficult it was to keep from erupting with laughter, as I watched Ma eye Tateh with such a suspicious look. “Yom Kippur made you too ill to eat? Here, have some more.”
Abe, however, kept the traditions because he found beauty in them. He went to shul twice a day to pray. Every morning he placed on his arm and forehead the prayer boxes, the tefillin. Yet, he assimilated in many of the same ways as Tateh: he kept a clean-shaven face; he no longer observed Shabbes; he would sit alone with me.
For the next few blocks, I let Abe pontificate about the play, trying to proffer a tidbit here and there, even though I hadn’t paid enough attention to say anyth
ing meaningful.
When we reached the ice cream stand, Abe paid for two cones and we found a bench to sit on.
“Oh, I should have bought those with my new raise,” I said, scooting close to him.
“It’s good you got a raise,” he said, “but I will always treat.”
Trying to appear coquettish, I licked my ice cream in long, languorous strokes. But apparently it was more comical than provocative, as Abe chuckled.
“With this extra money, we don’t have to wait to get married.”
Abe nodded. “Yes, it will help. In a year we should have saved enough.”
A year. That would never work. But happily, the ice cream agreed with me, and that, coupled with the gorgeous night and the comfort of Abe and my plot to seduce him, made me truly feel like everything was going to turn out fine.
We chitchatted about where we would go on our next date, about our friends, about our families. When the ice cream was down to the cone, I walked over to throw it into the garbage. On returning, I sat on Abe’s lap.
“Well, hello,” he said.
“Well, hello,” I said back.
He popped the rest of his cone in his mouth and snaked his now free arm around my back.
“You have a bit of ice cream on your face,” I told him.
“Where?” he asked, drawing his other hand to his cheek.
“Right here,” I whispered, and I leaned in, my tongue reaching the corner of his mouth, as I licked the last bits of ice cream. Chocolate mixed with sweat and the deep musky smell of his skin made my body tingle. Abe groaned.
“I think you missed a spot over here,” he whispered back, pointing to the other corner of his mouth.
I moved slowly to the other side of his face, and gently brushed his lip with my tongue.
“And you have a bit of ice cream, right here,” Abe said as he tilted in to kiss me deeply.
A shock of wantonness spread through me. My body craved his touch. His kisses grew deeper, and his hand slid up the side of my dress, resting just shy of my bosom, delighting me. With a slight twist of my torso, I had Abe’s hand cupping my breast in a way that made me gasp in desire. His finger was rough on my silky blouse in a most pleasing manner. I could feel his manliness against my leg.
“Well, I never!” an older woman’s voice said.
At that, Abe pulled back, and I shot the couple standing there the evil eye. They were clearly Upper East Side—she in a dress with a fur collar that was ridiculous in this heat—and they looked down their noses at the two of us. In as haughty a voice as I could muster, I said, “Perhaps you should! It’s really quite nice.”
Abe chuckled as the woman huffed and the two walked off. “Young people today,” we could hear the man say. “No morals.”
The moment was ruined. Abe and I never had a chance to be alone; the only modicum of privacy we had was benches in the park or dark corners of buildings. Not that Abe would give me much opportunity to be alone with him. He insisted we not proceed too far before our wedding night. The refrain I heard most was “Es nisht di khale far a-moytse.” Don’t eat the challah before you’ve made the blessing.
How would I make this happen? We had only one place where privacy could be found. Camp Eden, the Jewish getaway up north in Cold Spring, where a couple could be on their own. Camp Eden, where I’d gotten myself into this mess to begin with.
We stood and I smoothed my dress. Abe kept himself turned away, so as not to disturb me with his reaction to our necking. “Walk me home?” I asked.
“Of course,” he said. By the end of the block, he was more composed, and he placed his arm around my shoulder and I placed my arm about his waist. We walked in comfortable silence back to the apartment.
When we reached the lower East Side, the very air seemed to change. The fetor of our neighbors’ sweat lingered in the air, as the searing temperatures turned the neighborhood into a steamy, seamy pit. When the heat suffocated apartments, the tenants evacuated like ants swarming toward the fruit spilled off a pushcart. Bedding dotted the sidewalks as mothers sat fanning themselves and gossiping on the stoop, while the children slept outside. Others escaped to rooftops, sleeping in the open air, desperate for that rare breeze.
“Do you want to come up? The apartment will be empty. Everyone will be on the roof,” I said. My fingers toyed with his shirtsleeve, darting underneath to rub his smooth skin.
Abe shook his head. “I can’t, Dottala. You know I can’t. It will lead to nowhere good.”
I put on my most seductive Vogue magazine pose. “How do you know it’s nowhere good if you’ve never been there?”
Abe’s wide eyes took me in from head to toe. “Oh, it’s clearly somewhere good. This little taste of heaven tells me that. But if it gets too heated, I might not be able to stop.”
With an exaggerated sigh, I rolled my eyes. “As you like, my dear.” As much as I wanted to press him, I didn’t want to scare him away. I needed to get him to Camp Eden. I walked into the front hall of the apartment building, and Abe followed. “You know,” I said, trying to sound like I was teasing, “if you just married me already, this could all be yours.” I waved my hands down my body.
Abe pulled me close, giving me a long, deep kiss. “I thought this was already all mine.”
I whispered in his ear, “But you could have the rest.”
He groaned and pulled himself away. “So very tempting, my love.”
Trying to keep my tone light, as if the idea just occurred to me, I said, “Say, why don’t we go to Camp Eden next weekend? Get away from the heat. Do you think your parents could spare you at the store?” I drew him back in for another sultry kiss, to guarantee the right answer.
“Oh, I think they could,” he said, when we took a breath.
“Well, then. Next weekend.” And with that, I turned and bounded up the stairs, knowing that Abe was following me with his eyes as far as he could in the darkened hallway.
• • •
WITH my family seeking a draft on the roof, I found myself alone in the apartment. All my bravado melted away. My stomach thrashed like a cat at the mercy of a cruel street gang. My worries flooded me, and I agonized about how to make Abe be with me.
Sleep was impossible. The heat. My fears. My stomach. All of them added up to me tossing on the couch, my hand rubbing my belly, as I counted the days yet again. One week. Two weeks. Twelve weeks. Panic swelled in my chest. If this plan didn’t work, there was no way out. Soon it would be obvious to the world.
Rose
Saturday, August 17
WITH the breeze on the rooftop and a hint of sun peering over the edges of the buildings, my eyes sprang open that Shabbes morning. I guessed it was almost five o’clock. For me, since coming to America, there is awake and there is sleep; nothing between exists. When I was a child, curled next to my older sister Eta in our bed, beneath a full down blanket, those moments between sleep and wakefulness were treasured, that hazy feeling each morning when the angels decided whether to return your soul, the body tugging you back into slumber, the day beckoning you to begin.
But since America, there is no extravagance of angels. On the journey here, my fear on the train that someone would stop me, the roiling of the ship, the terror of what was to come, made sleep a luxury I grabbed in snatches. When I first arrived and lived with my cousins, I was thrust into wakefulness by the worry I would miss a moment of work, of not earning enough to send money to my family back home. And, then, of course, mornings were filled with the sobs of babies, and later, the cries of the sick.
Now that my babes were grown, my family safe, my needs few, lingering sleep would be acceptable. But my cursed body wouldn’t allow it. Too unused to it.
Bedding was scattered across the rooftop and I listened to the sounds others made in sleep. Next to me, breathing deeply, was Ben. So soundly he slept, even among the snores a
nd rustles of others. I smiled at the whistle his nose made. Turning on my side, I gently ran my finger down his face, tracing his forehead, his nose, his lips. He didn’t awaken, but the corners of his mouth turned up happily in his slumber.
A queasiness in my stomach dismayed me. Inhaling, I tried to settle myself, but the morning air of New York was nothing like the morning air of home, and I breathed in the smell of smoke and dust.
Gathering my sheet and pillow, I rose to head downstairs to begin making breakfast. As I entered the stairwell, I heard a noise behind me, and I turned to see Mrs. Anscher also making her way to her apartment. “Good Shabbes, Mrs. Anscher,” I said.
“Good Shabbes, Mrs. Krasinsky,” she replied.
A bubble rose in my belly, and my hand went instinctively to it. It didn’t escape Mrs. Anscher’s notice. “Try bicarbonate of soda in water,” she said. “It settles a stomach.”
I resisted rolling my eyes at such obvious advice, but I had another thought. Mrs. Anscher was a good fifteen or twenty years older than me. We walked down the two floors to my apartment, and before she could continue on, I stopped her. “Mrs. Anscher,” I blurted.
“Yes?” she said, pausing.
But then I was at a loss. Even I wasn’t so bold as to ask such a question. “Never mind,” I said.
I must have sounded odd because Mrs. Anscher pressed me. “What is it, dear?” Her Yiddish was the Yiddish of my own region, and I found it comforting to hear her voice.
Shaking my head, I said, “It’s not a polite question.”
Mrs. Anscher looked at me sympathetically. “Is your mother still with you?”
“My mother never made it to America, and she, of blessed memory, departed this earth long ago.”
She placed a hand on my arm. “Go ahead. Ask.”
How to phrase it? “I was wondering . . .” I paused. “What I wanted to know . . .” Mrs. Anscher looked at me patiently. A fierce longing for my mama pierced me. I thought a moment more and finally said, “When a woman . . . changes, is it sudden?” Mrs. Anscher scrunched her nose, confused, so I said, even more boldly, “Do the courses just stop?”
Modern Girls Page 6