The Boston Girl(13)

The shul was in a store where they used to sell fish, and since we were there in August and it was hot, the smell came back. I had only been there for High Holiday services, when it was crowded—especially in the back, where the women sat. But that day you could hear an echo, and it was so dark it took a minute for my eyes to see the old men standing next to the table with the food.

Papa said hello to each of them and asked about their wives and children. He prayed with these men before work every morning, so it was like his club. Mameh didn’t want them at the wedding—she called them schnorrers—moochers. But I was glad they were there. I thought they made things a little more cheerful.

The rabbi came running in and apologized for being late. He had a long white beard with yellow tobacco stains around his mouth, but he had young eyes and clapped Papa and Levine on the back and said “Mazel tov” like he meant it. He picked four men to hold the chuppah poles and called for Levine and Celia to stand with him under my father’s prayer shawl, which was the canopy.

The rabbi sang the blessings, Levine put a ring on Celia’s finger, and they sipped from a cup of wine. After Levine stepped on a glass, the old men clapped and sang “Mazel tov.”

The whole thing was over in a few minutes.

The rabbi shook hands with everyone, even Celia and the little boys, and left as fast as he came. “He has a funeral,” Papa explained.

We ate bread, herring, and honey cake and the old men toasted the wedding couple three times with big glasses of Levine’s whiskey. Celia stood beside her new husband and ate a few bites of cake, but when Jacob started whining and rubbing his eyes she said maybe it was time to go.

We walked with them to the end of the block and watched as they turned the corner.

Betty was crying.

Mameh said, “What’s the matter with her?”

Papa patted Betty on the cheek. “My grandmother used to say it isn’t a wedding if nobody cries.”

—

The apartment was one hundred percent sadder after Celia left. No one smiled at me when I walked in the door, and even though I had the bed to myself, I didn’t sleep any better.

My parents fought constantly. Mameh went back to blaming Papa for the baby who died on the boat. “If you had waited with me until he was born, maybe he would still be alive.”

Then my father would say, “If we stayed and I was killed, then you and all your children would have died with the rest of your family from typhoid or from Cossacks. And if you’d let me take the other boy to the hospital here, he would still be alive.”

That was the first I’d heard about the baby who was born in America before me. He was small and weak from the beginning, but my mother wouldn’t let him out of the house. “No one comes back alive from the hospital.”

He called her stupid.

She called him a failure.

Night after night, they blamed each other and cursed and wore each other out. Papa started going to shul right after supper. Mameh muttered over her sewing until she had a headache. I stayed on my cot as much as I could, and when the days got shorter and it was too dark to read back there, I fell asleep early and got up before the sun. I didn’t mind. That way, I got out of the house before the bickering started again.





This daughter of yours is a firecracker.

Betty said she could get me a job at Filene’s. “The floorwalker has a little crush on me.”

I liked the idea of getting out of the neighborhood and working in a department store. I wouldn’t get dirty or ruin my hands and strain my eyes like I would in a factory—if I could even get a job in one.

But it turned out that Filene’s wasn’t hiring, and since I didn’t know how to type or operate a switchboard, I went to all the tearooms and sandwich shops I could walk to, but nobody was looking for waitresses. I didn’t have any luck in the stores or movie houses, either.

One Sunday when Betty, Levine, and Celia were visiting, Mameh complained about how lazy I was. “She thinks she’s too good to get her hands dirty. Ethel Heilbron’s daughter has the brains of a donkey and she’s making good money in a shoe factory.”

“It’s not Addie’s fault, Mameh,” Celia said.

Levine said, “She’ll find something. I read in the newspaper about how a Jewish girl is running the whole library in East Boston.” Jewish success stories were one of Levine’s favorite topics.

“Look at me. I’m not even born here and I own a shop with twenty workers. Just yesterday, I went to buy buttons from Glieberman and he had a girl writing down the orders so he could sit on his tuches like a big shot. And let me tell you, compared to me, Glieberman is a small-time operator.”

Betty said, “But if Glieberman has a secretary, how does it look that you don’t have a girl, too?”

Levine shrugged. “He’s spending a lot of money just to show off.”

“It’s not showing off,” she said. “It’s professional. Besides, I read in a magazine you’ve got to spend money to make money.”

“I heard that, too,” he said.

Betty winked at me. “And it just so happens that you have the perfect girl right in front of you. Addie has good penmanship and an A in arithmetic. Tell him how you worked in that settlement house lady’s office. You were kind of a secretary there, weren’t you?”