I hate to admit it, but sometimes I wish I could go to the track, or golly, to anywhere interesting. Sure, school is okay, but it’s kind of boring. I like learning things, of course. I just wish it didn’t take so long.
I played dolls with Rivka again, on Sunday. My doll still had to be the maid and Rivka wouldn’t let Molly join in even though she really wanted to and she just sat there and didn’t say anything and watched us the whole time and I was so glad when Rivka finally went home. I wonder what it’s like to be at the track.
Pa still doesn’t have a job. We’ve been living for weeks now on loans from Uncle Bertzik and on what Sophie and Dora and Gert make, which is next to nothing, and I’m always so cold. But at least it’s warm at school — especially in Domestic Science now that we’re cooking instead of sewing. We made blancmange last week. It tasted okay, but a little boring.
I almost forgot. Everything isn’t boring. Last week I got into big trouble, and it was all because I like to read. Life is so unfair. I was putting the dishes away after supper, and I noticed that one of the pieces of old newspaper Ma got from Mrs. Koslov to use as shelf paper had comics on it. So I climbed on a chair to read them. But while I was reading I accidentally pushed a box of matches off the shelf, and they fell into the schmaltz Ma was making from the chicken fat Auntie Rayzel gave her. I got them out right away, but Ma was really upset anyway, because she didn’t know if the schmaltz was still going to be kosher after matches fell into it. Pa didn’t know either. He had to take the pot to the shul and ask the Rabbi. The Rabbi said it would be okay, thank goodness. He even stamped it with his hechsher to show it was kosher.
November 13
It was Shabbes yesterday, and a funny thing happened. It started when I heard “Stardust” playing real loud on the radio, so I went into the parlour to sing along. I was pretending to be an opera singer like I always do and singing in as high a voice as I could when Benny walked in and started singing in a high voice, too, to tease me. I nearly died.
Sometimes I wish Benny didn’t like me. He doesn’t like any of my sisters, that’s for sure, which means he never teases them. He just avoids them as much as he can. But he teases me all the time and then he laughs like crazy when I get mad. I think he just likes making me mad.
The most annoying thing is, I kind of like getting mad at him. It’s — well, it’s interesting. It’s ever so much more interesting than being yelled at by Gert or helping Molly do everything or pretending to serve imaginary biscuits to Rivka’s doll Agatha.
After Benny stopped laughing, he told me his job at the track was over and he’s back to selling papers. I guess it’s better than being arrested. But it means I’ll be hearing about Germany all the time again. Darn. He also joined a Greco-Roman wrestling club. That’s the right way to spell it because I asked him and he told me. He’s going to be in a demonstration at the Labour Lyceum over on Spadina, and he invited me to come. He says he was thinking about boxing, but wrestling is more artistic — whatever that means. I think he’s just afraid of getting punched.
Anyway, the radio was playing so loud we almost couldn’t hear each other. Benny suddenly stopped talking right in the middle of a sentence and went over and turned it off, and right away, Sophie came rushing in and she was furious. She was sitting in the kitchen leafing through a Time magazine Syd loaned her and listening and of course, once the radio was turned off we couldn’t turn it back on because it was Shabbes. On Fridays Pa lets us leave it on and we can turn the volume up or down, but once it’s off, it’s off. Benny said it wasn’t a big deal and turned it on again. That made Sophie even angrier, but you could tell she was happy about being able to listen again. She even talked to us a little bit. But not for long. I wish she would stop being such a mope. She hasn’t been the same since Pa said she couldn’t get married.
After Sophie left, I told Benny that of course I couldn’t go to the wrestling. What was he thinking? I’m a girl. Ma and Pa would never allow it. Anyway, Pa would never let me go to the Labour Lyceum. He says that it’s just a bunch of godless communists in there, thinking they’re so clever and making trouble for the rest of us.
November 18
Ma is so angry at Pa because of what he did to her yesterday. Ma said she thought she heard something making a noise in the cellar, and it might be a mouse, so she sent Pa down to look. When he came back, he was holding his hanky, and there was a long thin brown thing hanging out of it, just like a mouse’s tail. He held it up to Ma’s face and said, “Look what I found,” and she screamed and nearly fainted. But then Pa unwrapped his hanky and there was nothing but a beet inside. He laughed like crazy till Ma started yelling at him.
Pa is usually so serious. Is being out of work driving him crazy?
November 21
Pa finally got a job. I am so relieved.
The job is on the assembly line at Christie’s Biscuits. Pa puts arrowroot biscuits into boxes and he hates it, but at least we’re going to get something to eat besides the beets and potatoes we have left in the cellar from last fall. Ma said she’ll even buy a chicken on Thursday for Shabbes. We haven’t had one for so long, I can hardly remember what it tastes like.
November 24
Ma made me go with her after school to buy the chicken. When we got to Baldwin Street, I waited outside the cage while Ma went in and caught one. There were three other ladies in the cage, too, and about a dozen chickens. It was funny to watch them chasing around in there. I couldn’t help laughing.
Ma must have noticed, though, because after she paid for the chicken, she put it in the baby carriage she uses for shopping and made me take it to the shochet while she went home. She knows how much I hate going to the shochet. His shed is so tiny, and you have to stand real close while he slits the chickens’ throats with his knife and then sticks their poor little heads in the hole in the trough to drain the blood and make them kosher. Sometimes the chickens give a little cluck even after they’re in the holes. Sometimes they actually pull their heads out of the holes and fly up at you. It’s a truly awful place. Sometimes I have nightmares about it.
I still like chicken, though, and I can hardly wait to have some tomorrow. It’s been such a long, long time since the last chicken. I’m such a terrible person, I really am.
We didn’t have enough money to get one of the ladies who work at the shochet’s to pluck the chicken. Ma is doing it herself out in the summer kitchen right now.
November 26
The chicken was delicious last night. I feel awful about it.
November 30
Today in school Miss Douglas was upset because Meyer Eckel was absent again — he hasn’t been there for almost two weeks now. Miss Douglas got a snooty look on her face and said it was hardly surprising that certain kinds of people don’t manage to get ahead when they can’t even get themselves out of bed to come to school and get an education. I hate to admit it, but I think that when she said certain kinds of people she meant Jews, because she also said it would never happen with a boy of good British stock. I think Miss Douglas is an anti-semit. It makes me mad.
It’s strange, though, because most of the time she seems to like me. She’s always telling the others how clever I am and embarrassing me. Last week she said that there were two wonderfully gifted writers in the class, and one was me and the other was Myrtle MacDonald. I don’t understand people at all.
Anyway, Miss Douglas was wrong about Meyer Eckel. Later, on the playground at recess, I heard Hannah Klipstein tell some other girls that Meyer was her cousin and the reason he wasn’t coming to school was that his shoes had worn through and his father is out of work and they can’t afford new ones. It must be true, because when he was coming Meyer always wore the same filthy shirt with holes in it. I never noticed his shoes. Who ever looks at other people’s feet?
After I heard about the shoes, I was even angrier at Miss Douglas. I’m tempted to tell Benny, even though he’ll say I told you so.
I wonder what kind of stories M
yrtle MacDonald writes.
December 1932
December 4
I am so angry at Benny. I am never talking to him ever again.
He came over because he couldn’t think of anything else to do. He was very bored, and he said it was all because of the goyim. Sunday is their Shabbes, and so they make sure that nothing is open, no stores or restaurants or anything. There’s nowhere to go and nothing to do.
Benny is right. It is boring. They even tie up the swings in the playgrounds so you can’t go and swing. And they pull the drapes on the windows at Eaton’s so you can’t look at the Christmas windows, which is sad because I love those windows even if Christmas isn’t Jewish and anyway, it’s mostly just elves and princesses from fairy tales, not anything really religious.
Anyway, Benny talked me into going out for a walk with him, even though there was really nowhere to go. I didn’t want to go because I had to wear my new coat. It’s the only one that fits. My old one wasn’t all that small, but Ma gave it to Auntie Bella for my cousin Millie’s cousin Freda on the other side.
I hate the new coat. No matter what Ma says, a reefer coat is a boy’s coat, and anyone who takes even a little teensy look at it will know that it’s a boy’s coat. I wish my cousin Manny hadn’t grown two whole inches in a year so that the coat doesn’t fit him anymore and Auntie Rayzel had to hand it down to me. He probably just grew like that to annoy me.
I had a very embarrassing experience because of that coat. And because of Benny.
I wore the coat when I went out with him, but I pulled my stocking hat down as far as it would go so no one would recognize me. After Benny and I walked around for a while we got really cold, so he suggested we go to St. Christopher House. It’s open on Sundays and they let you in out of the cold if you’re willing to colour Bible pictures. I think we’re both much too old for colouring and I told him so, too, but Benny talked me into it because his coat isn’t as warm as mine and he was freezing.
When we got there, the lady looked at me in my coat and hat and said, “May I help you, sonny?” She really did. She called me sonny. I was furious, absolutely furious.
Benny just laughed. He laughed for a long, long time. But then he got a strange look in his eye and he snapped his fingers and he said, “That’s it!”
Benny told me he figures that I can sneak into the wrestling exhibition wearing my reefer coat and stocking hat, and no one will ever suspect I’m a girl.
I am devastated and humiliated and deeply, deeply upset. What a terrible insult! I left Benny right there in St. Chris by himself and came right home and I am never ever talking to him again.
December 10
I’m so glad Pa’s working now. He’s so much happier and nicer to everybody. And I like the broken arrowroot biscuits he brings home. This week, there was enough money for Ma to buy an Amerikaner magazine. She hasn’t been able to get one for months and months. This morning, she let me curl up in her bed with her while she read me the stories from the magazine in Yiddish — just like I loved to do when I was little.
December 12
I am such a softie. I actually talked to Benny today. I even agreed to his stupid idea about the coat and the wrestling.
It was because he came over to apologize to me with a big bruise on his cheek. I thought it was from wrestling but he said it was because his pa was on the warpath again. Benny’s brother Al got Benny a job in the belt factory where he works, and Uncle Max told him he had to take it or else he’d throw him out of the house. Benny said fine, he’d go, he didn’t want to live there anyway, so Uncle Max gave him a big slap. But afterwards, Benny remembered he had nowhere to go to and it’s too cold out now to just stay on the street or sleep on our front porch and he didn’t want to end up like all those other boys who sneak rides on the railways and go all across the country and have no home at all. So he’s working at the belt factory. He cuts out belts and the machine has a huge sharp knife in it and the leather is very stiff and hard to cut.
It sounds awful. Benny looked so sad I couldn’t help myself. I said I’d go to the wrestling.
What was I thinking of? Lady Flora Eaton would never dress up like a boy. It’s not ladylike.
I can’t decide whether I hope people think I’m a boy or find out I’m a girl and kick me out. Either way, it will be awful. Maybe I’ll just pretend to be too sick to go.
December 13
I’m so excited. Today, Miss Douglas announced that a lady named Miss Tedde is coming to our school to listen to us all sing. She’s going to pick the people who sing the best to be in a big choir of children from schools all over the whole city. It’s my big chance to start my opera career! Miss Tedde will be so proud of me when I sing at the Metropolitan Opera some day, and so will Ma and Pa. I’ve been practising by singing “Stardust” all evening. I can get my voice ever so high.
December 14
I went to the wrestling demonstration. I told Benny I couldn’t go because I had a bad cold, but he didn’t believe me. He grabbed my hand and dragged me out onto the porch before I could do anything about it. He wouldn’t even let me go back in to get my hat and coat. He went back in and got them for me and I had to put them on out there. It was below zero and I was freezing.
It’s so strange. I’ve been going to school and the market and everywhere in the reefer coat and the stocking hat for almost two weeks now and I just felt dumb because everyone would think I was a boy and I didn’t want them to. But last night I wanted them to, and it was exciting, like I was wearing a disguise or I was a spy or something.
I shouldn’t be excited by things like that. It isn’t refined. I’m afraid Benny knows me better than I think.
I was worried that people would think it was strange for me to keep my hat and coat on even if they did think I was a boy. But Benny said that nowadays a lot of men keep their coats on at meetings and things because they’re too poor to buy new shirts and suits and they don’t want people to see how awful their clothes look. He was right, too. Nobody at the Labour Lyceum even noticed me at all.
Life is so confusing. How will I ever get to be a famous opera singer if people can’t tell I’m not a boy? Still, it’s a good thing they couldn’t — for today, at least.
The demonstration was awful. Boys or men came out two at a time and got down on the floor and held each other in strange positions and grunted for a while, and then they got up and everyone clapped and they went away and two more came. The wrestlers were wearing hardly any clothes at all, and none of them seemed to be the least bit embarrassed. I sure am glad I’m not really a boy.
Benny was looking even skinnier than last summer at the Ex. He must be ever so hungry. Still, he almost won his demonstration, but then the other boy twisted in a funny way and Benny had to give up. He kvetched about it all the way home.
After the wrestling exhibition, Benny talked me into going to Altman’s for a soda. I’ve never been there before. Pa would kill me if he found out. I feel awful about it, but I have to admit that it was exciting being there, too. It’s hard to believe the world is so different just a few blocks from my own house.
There were lots of men and boys in Altman’s, smoking and kibitzing and eating pickles and sandwiches, and they all knew Benny and said hi to him when we walked in. He told them I was his cousin Mendel from Sarnia. I just sat there and didn’t say anything and tried to look invisible. They talked about gambling and where to buy illegal liquor and they said simply awful things about ladies, especially certain parts of ladies’ bodies that I can’t write down. It makes me blush to even think of them, and I’m so glad I don’t have any yet. I blushed in Altman’s when I heard the men talk about them, and one of the men teased me and said they sure do make the boys green in Sarnia and told me I should stop being such a little girlie. If he only knew.
December 15
Today was the most embarrassing and awful day of my whole entire life. I hate myself. I hate my stupid voice. I hate Miss Tedde.
Miss Ted
de made everybody sing for a bit, and then she stopped them and said, “Thank you, dear,” and sent them back to their seats. But when my turn came, she didn’t say thank you. She just gave me a strange look and said, “Hmm, I really don’t know, dear. Would you mind singing again?” So I sang again — and Miss Tedde did the same thing again. She did it three whole times. I don’t know why she did it, I really don’t. If she didn’t like my voice, why didn’t she just stop me and go on to someone else? Finally I couldn’t stand it anymore. I burst into tears right there in front of everybody and I shouted at Miss Tedde. I said, “If you don’t want me, why don’t you say so?” And I ran out of the room crying like crazy.
Miss Douglas came and got me and told me I was being over-emotional and wiped my face with her hanky and made me go back into the classroom. Everyone was staring at me and laughing at me behind my back, I just know they were.
I don’t know what Miss Tedde was so confused about. I was singing in a lovely high voice. Nobody else sang anywhere near as high as I did.
I hate music. I am never going to sing another note again in my entire life.
December 22
They had Christmas carols at St. Christopher House tonight. I went last year and the year before, but of course I’m not going this year, because I’m never ever singing ever again. You couldn’t drag me there with a team of horses. I’m sorry I won’t get to see the Christmas tree because it’s always ever so lovely even if it isn’t Jewish, and of course the carols aren’t Jewish, either. I guess that’s one good thing about not singing. It will make me a better Jew. Although I guess I won’t be singing any Hanukkah songs either.
December 25
I couldn’t help myself. I sang “Dreidel Dreidel Dreidel” right along with everyone else after supper tonight. But that’s it. I’m never singing again.
December 26
It was so hot yesterday! The radio said it was a record high, 57°! The announcer said people were wading in Etobicoke Creek and it didn’t feel at all like Christmas.
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