Gert is still sneaking out all the time. She told me if I tell Ma and Pa she will make my life miserable forever. I can’t imagine how she can be any meaner to me than she is already, but I bet she could if she tried.
I still have that nickel, and I still haven’t told Ma.
May 1933
May 2
Pa finally got a job. He’s working in the St. Lawrence Market, stacking empty crates. One of the men from the Fruit Terminal has a brother who knows the man who gave Pa the job. Pa says it isn’t much, but it’s a job, and he’s lucky to have one, because there are so many people out of work.
It’s true. A lot of them don’t even have a house to live in anymore — just like Pa’s cousin Yankl. We still haven’t heard anything more from him. I wonder how he is, and where he is. I started thinking about him because yesterday morning when I took Hindl for a swing before school, there was a man sleeping on the bench in the park. They seem to be there all the time now. This one was snoring very loudly and his clothes were wrinkled and filthy like Yankl’s were, and he smelled almost as bad as Harvey Tischler. I felt really sorry for him.
We’re so lucky, we really are. Sophie and Dora and Gert are sewing, and now Pa has a job, too. So we’ll be okay even if we are in the middle of a Depression. But I do worry a lot about Yankl.
May 4
I was in the library at St. Chris and I noticed they had a book called Robinson Crusoe and I suddenly remembered that movie last winter with Douglas Fairbanks and the money Mrs. Koslov gave me to get in. And then I thought about that nickel of Chaim’s. I still haven’t given it to Ma, even though I know I should, and I hate the thought of it sitting there tied up in a sock at the bottom of my dresser drawer reminding me of what a coward I am. So I’ve decided I’m going to give the nickel to Mrs. Koslov.
May 5
Mrs. Koslov said she’d totally forgotten about the movie and thanked me for the nickel and told me to forget about the other 5¢ and told me what a good girl I am for remembering. If only she knew. I still haven’t told Ma about Chaim. I just can’t.
May 8
The most ridiculous thing happened. Well, Dora doesn’t think it was at all funny. Poor Dora, I do feel sorry for her, I really do. But whenever I think of it I can’t help laughing. I am such a terrible, terrible person, I really am.
Mr. Roitenberg came around yesterday to collect the rent, and of course Ma said she was a little short, because of course she almost always is. Usually, Mr. Roitenberg just makes a sour face like he’s burping and gives her a few more days. But not yesterday. Yesterday, he told Ma he had a solution to the problem.
You’ll never guess what it was! He wanted to marry Dora! He said if he did he’d hardly charge any rent at all to his in-laws!
Ma didn’t even have to think about it for a minute. She just told him that Dora was much too young.
Maybe she is, but if you ask me, the real problem is that Mr. Roitenberg is much too old. He must be at least a hundred and fifty and he has a big grey beard and wrinkles and his suit always smells bad. Just thinking about my dear darling Dora and that disgusting old man standing under the chuppah together to get married makes me laugh. Dora deserves better than that, even if Mr. Roitenberg does own four houses.
The worst part is, Ma had to come up with the missing rent money right there on the spot, and now there’s no money for food for the rest of the week. We’ll just have to make do with what we’ve got. I am so sick of oatmeal.
May 11
We’re starting a new sewing project in Domestic Science. It’s a sundress. We’re going to cut out the pieces this week, and it should be all finished by the time school stops. I wish I could make a dress with sleeves instead, but there probably won’t be enough material and the teacher wouldn’t let me anyway because sleeves are so hard to do.
It was really warm today. Soon it’ll be warm enough to wear a sundress, and I’ll have one to wear!
May 13
Benny’s pa is in big trouble. He’s working for the furriers’ union now, and on Thursday he went into a factory in the Tower Building on Spadina to hand out pamphlets about a walkout to the women working there making up coats. The supervisor got mad at him and told him to get out before he called the police. Uncle Max swore at him and they started to shout at each other and Uncle Max got so mad he ended up picking up a big pair of scissors and stabbing the supervisor right in the back! Can you imagine! They had to take the supervisor to a doctor, and the doctor called the police. Benny says the supervisor might press charges if he doesn’t get better. Benny doesn’t think he will, because his pa says the supervisor came from the old country not so long ago and he’s not a citizen yet. He only got to be a supervisor because his brother owns the factory and if he makes any trouble they might send him back. Benny says it doesn’t get into the papers or anything, but his friends at the belt factory know about all sorts of men who got sent back to Europe for doing nothing at all. The goyim do it so they can keep the jobs for their own kind.
Benny says his pa says it’ll be different when the socialists take over. What I’d like to know is, since when did Benny start listening to his pa? He gets mad at Uncle Max for hitting him and everything, he refuses to live in the same house with him and sleeps on a hard old sofa in his brother Al’s place, but he still believes everything his pa says. I wish he wouldn’t. My pa is right — socialists like uncle Max are just troublemakers and they make the goyim mad and make it bad for the rest of us. The last thing we need is more trouble.
May 21
Like Ma always says, if it isn’t one thing it’s another. Now that it’s warm enough, Pa doesn’t have to smoke in the cellar anymore. He can go outside. Last night he says he couldn’t sleep so he went out to the front porch to have a cigarette, and guess what? He caught Gert trying to sneak in! She said she was just out with a girlfriend, but Pa saw that trombenik Chaim running off down the sidewalk.
Pa was so mad he yelled at Gert right out there on the porch. I didn’t hear anything because I was sound asleep upstairs, but I bet all the neighbours heard. Pa told Gert she could never see Chaim ever again — just like he told Sophie about Steven. After Gert came up to our room she woke me up and told me and she cried and cried and cried. I gave her a big hug to make her feel better, and I think it did. But really and truly, I’m glad it happened. I’ll never have to talk to that no-goodnik Chaim again. And now that Pa knows, I don’t have to worry about telling him and Ma myself anymore.
May 23
Gert must be really upset about fighting with Pa, because today she forgot her lunch. It was just bread and cheese, but it was food. When I got home from school at noon, Ma asked me to go over to Spadina to the factory and take it to her. She said I’d have just enough time to get there and back to school if I walked fast, and she gave me a lunch for myself to eat there, too, with the other girls.
When I got to the factory, Mr. Tulchinsky, the supervisor, was really nasty to me. When I asked for Gert, he said, “Who’s Gert? All these @*#!@?! look the same to me.” And he wouldn’t let me in to talk to Gert or Sophie or Dora, or even to Uncle Bertzik, who must have been in his office in the back. He just grabbed the lunch from me and said he’d give it to Gert when he had the time, and told me to scram. Dora was sitting at a machine near the door and she looked up and saw I was there, but when she tried to say something, Mr. Tulchinsky just swore at her and told her to get back to work. So she did.
I had to eat my lunch on the steps outside the building by myself. I didn’t even have a glass of water to go with it. My mouth felt like a desert all afternoon.
I’ve been to the factory before, of course, but I never really thought about it. It was just my Uncle Bertzik’s pants factory. Hezekiah Q. Fortnum and Company. But now that Benny’s always talking about unions and things, I paid more attention. I guess it really isn’t a very nice place to work. It’s so noisy with all those sewing machines going all the time. I had to shriek at Mr. Tulchinsky to get him to hear me. And
there are no windows and it’s very dark except for the lights right over the machines, and the ladies who work there have to sit in a long row and keep sewing for hours and hours to keep up with the rest or else they get fired. They can’t even go to the toilet if they feel like it until the supervisor says they can have a break. Sophie says they get paid for each piece they finish, but if they make a mistake they have to pay for it themselves, and if they make too many mistakes, they lose as much as they make and have nothing to take home. And if they get sick or something and can’t work, Uncle Bertzik just fires them. It happened to Sophie’s friend Ettie last week. Sophie says she thinks that’s fair, because it’s a factory, not a hospital. But I don’t know. Maybe Benny is right about them needing a union.
Sophie and Dora and Gert have to go there and sew the same seam all day long, while I go to school and have fun doing spelling and making sundresses and learning things. I guess I’m lucky. It makes me feel so guilty.
I had a perfect score in arithmetic today. And Miss Douglas liked my story about spring. It’s about a poor downtrodden maid who takes the children out to the park on the first warm day of spring and meets a hobo who turns out to be a handsome millionaire in disguise, and they live happily ever after in a little brown house.
June 1933
June 1
I expected Gert to mope around about Chaim just like Sophie did last fall when Pa stopped her from marrying Steven. She did for a while, but now she isn’t moping at all. I wonder why not. It makes me worry. I know she’s not sneaking out at night anymore, but she is spending a lot of time after work over at Ida Rothstein’s house.
Or so she says. If you ask me, Gert doesn’t really like Ida all that much and just lets Ida think she’s her friend so Ida will share her clothes with her. Oh well, as long as I don’t really know what Gert’s doing myself, I guess it’s not really any of my business.
June 4
Benny was over with a big bruise on his forehead, and this time it wasn’t his pa. Last night he went with the men from the belt factory to a rally in Trinity Park. It was for unemployed people. Benny says there were hundreds and hundreds of people there, and there were speeches about how the government does everything for the rich goyim like themselves and never does anything for poor people or Jews or other foreigners. Benny says a policeman came up and interrupted one of the speeches to ask what was going on, and the man who was talking said it was a public park and they had a right to be there and they just wanted to have a peaceful rally. The policeman said, “Oh, you do, do you?” and walked off. But he must have gone to make a phone call, because a few minutes later a whole bunch of policemen drove up on motorcycles and then marched into the park right up to where the people were speaking and tried to stop them. The crowd started to get mad because they weren’t doing anything wrong, and one man ended up hitting a policeman in the face, right beside Benny. The policeman fell over and got trampled. Benny trampled him, too. He couldn’t help it, he says, because people behind him were pushing. Then everyone started fighting, and Benny got his bruise.
Benny said he was just trying to get out of there as fast as he could. But he sure seemed to be happy about the fighting, and he is very proud of that bruise. He says he can’t wait for the next rally, and he said I should come, too. Does he think I’m crazy?
He told me one good thing, though. His pa was right. The man from the coat factory decided not to charge Uncle Max for sticking the scissors into him. Thank goodness.
June 12
It was really warm yesterday, so Pa decided to get the truck up and running and take us all for a picnic at Balmy Beach. It’s a public beach, so we knew for sure there wouldn’t be any of those No Jews Allowed signs like we saw last summer. Lots of people from the community go there all the time.
When we got there, we decided to go into the water for a swim, but there was nowhere to change. Ma put towels over the truck windows and Gert and Dora and Molly and I took turns changing in there while Ma took Hindl over to a picnic table to change her there.
While she was doing it, a woman sitting at a table nearby was making very loud comments about how disgusting it was. Really! I would have been mortified if I wasn’t so angry.
That lady was so nasty, and she went on and on. She said she certainly never expected to see naked children in her park in her own neighbourhood. It may be her neighbourhood, but it’s certainly not her park. She told the other ladies that in her opinion, these unmannerly kikes with their naked children and their disgusting foreign ways should stick to their own parts of the city and not pollute nice British neighbourhoods with their lax manners and smelly foods. She made sure she said it loud enough for us all to hear, too. Of course Ma didn’t understand what she was saying, but she could tell the lady was talking about us and she made Sophie tell her what it was even though Pa didn’t want her to. When Sophie told her, Ma was really upset, and she made Pa take us home right away. We didn’t even stay long enough to have our picnic.
How could that woman be so mean? Hindl is just a little girl, and she’s adorable, not disgusting. And we weren’t eating anything the least bit smelly, unless you count the pickled herring, and I like the smell of pickled herring. And we had just as much right to be there as she did. It makes me so, so mad.
June 13
I told Benny about what happened at Balmy Beach, and he got mad, too. He says no one can push the Jews around and get away with it. He says the boxing match last week proved it.
I know what he means, because everybody was talking about it — even Pa, and he never pays any attention to sports or any of the news. The match was in New York, at Yankee Stadium. An American boxer named Max Baer won over a boxer from Germany, Max Schmeling — and he did it with a Mogen David on his boxing trunks! Actually wearing a Jewish star! He did it because his grandfather is Jewish, and he wanted to show everybody how proud he is of his heritage. Benny says that’ll show Hitler and those Germans. Benny thinks we Jews shouldn’t let anybody push us around ever.
I think he’s right. The next time a lady talks like that about my family, I’m going to give her a piece of my mind. I told Benny I would, and he said good for me. I hope I’ll be brave enough to do it.
June 15
Gert is still seeing Chaim. I saw her with him in the park around the corner yesterday, and they were smooching, right out in public. What can she be thinking of? Has she lost her mind completely? I am so worried about her, and I can’t tell Ma or Pa, I just can’t. I’m too scared. Well, at least Gert isn’t pinching me all the time. I guess she has other things on her mind. I wonder if Chaim likes being pinched, because if he keeps on being around her, he better get used to it.
June 20
Now that the farms are starting to have lettuce and things to sell, Pa is back driving the truck again. It’s what he really likes to do, and he’s always happier in the summer when he’s doing it. I’m so happy for him. Of course it means having to pay for the gas, which Pa says is still pretty expensive even if it’s a lot less than it used to be, because everyone is so poor now that they try not to drive anywhere. But even after the gas, there’ll still be enough money for everything and Ma won’t have to keep going to Uncle Bertzik. And it also means we get salad for lunch again, instead of just plain sour cream and cottage cheese.
School will be over next week. I can hardly wait. I like school, I really do, but not when it’s so nice out and it gets so hot in the classroom. Today I was dying from the heat and I asked Miss Douglas if I could open the window. She said I could and I tried, but I couldn’t reach up high enough and Miss Douglas had to get Melvin Krasner to do it. I hate being so short. If I hadn’t been put forward a grade when I was in Junior Two, I wouldn’t be smaller than everyone else. It’s so unfair. I can’t help it if I’m smart.
June 25
Benny isn’t in the band anymore. His ma noticed how filthy his tuxedo was and she washed it and it shrank, so he had to quit.
June 27
It wa
s Hindl’s birthday today. She’s five now. We couldn’t afford any presents, of course. But Ma made a nice cake, and I ripped a page out of one of my school scribblers and I drew a picture of a doll and got Molly to draw some dolly clothes, and then Ma cut them out with those little tabs like real paper dolls have, and Hindl was thrilled. She and Molly played with the doll all afternoon, and they didn’t even mind that the doll and the clothes had the lines for writing crossing them all over.
June 28
I’ve been promoted to Senior Four! It’ll be my last year at Egerton Ryerson. It’s hard to believe that I’ll soon be going to high school and I’ll be further in school than anybody else in the family ever went. Pa had hardly any school in the old country, just cheder to learn his prayers and things, and even Ma stopped when she was twelve. So did Sophie because Ma and Pa needed her to go out to work, and she thinks she knows everything and is always telling me what to do. Today she wanted to make me memorize the names of all the capital cities of the provinces in Canada, and when I told her I already knew them because of Miss Douglas she made me say them all. Sometimes I think I liked it better when she was moping instead of going to Jewish Juniors meetings all the time.
I got As in almost everything but I nearly failed Domestic Science. It’s not my fault. I enjoyed making the blancmange and then the chocolate blancmange in the cooking part, and I loved the smell when we baked bread. But I have to admit I did sort of make a mess of my flannelette underpants. Even Ma couldn’t fix the seams after I was finished with them, and she’s the best sewer in the whole world. We had to use them for dusting rags. I wish I could sew like Ma does but I just can’t. Miss Hayter wouldn’t let me sew on the machine until I got my seams straight in hand-sewing, so I never did, so of course I never got to sew up my sundress, which is why I almost failed. It’s so unfair. Can I help it if I can’t sew?
Not a Nickel to Spare Page 9