The Boston Girl(64)

The sky had been overcast all day and when it started snowing, the room got dark. I must have dozed off because the next thing I knew, Mameh was sitting up straight, something we didn’t think she could do on her own. Her eyes were wide open and she was looking around the room as if she was trying to figure out where she was, like she was Rip Van Winkle. She frowned at the dirty glasses on the bureau and at the reading lamp I had moved in.

In Yiddish, I said, “Mameh? Can I get you something? Do you know who I am, Mameh?”

She searched my face and frowned. I could hear her breath get faster and I said, “Don’t worry. Just rest.”

Her eyes got big and she reached out to me with her good arm. I sat down next to her on the bed and she whispered, “Of course I know my own daughter.” Her voice was raspy and the words were slow but I could understand her. “How can a mother not know her own beautiful daughter?”

She ran her hand over my hair and let it rest on my cheek. “I didn’t know right away it was you, sweetheart, zieseleh. Your hair is so short. Have you been sick?”

I told her I’d cut my hair and that I was fine and she didn’t have to worry. But she was anxious and started talking fast, as if she was in a hurry to say something before she forgot. “I want to tell you that I’m sorry. You were right and I was wrong. If I had listened to you, you would have been happier.”

She started crying. “Ich bin moyl. I’m sorry. But you’ll forgive me; I know you will. You were always such a good girl, so pretty, so good . . .”

I had never heard her apologize to anyone, not even once. I couldn’t remember my mother ever looking at me that way or telling me I was pretty or sweet. She never called me darling.

It was like a miracle.

All that talking wore her out and she sank back on the pillows. I kissed her hand and said not to worry about me, that I was getting married to a wonderful man. I asked if she remembered Aaron and she squeezed my fingers.

I said how happy I was to talk to her like this and that I wished I had tried to explain myself to her before.

She shook her head and whispered, “I thought I had lost you, but here you are, just like my mother, your grandmother. You have her golden hands, goldene hentz, like an angel with a needle and thread.

“I was wrong to make you go. I chased you and beat you to force you, even when you were telling me you would die if I sent you away.

“I thought he would keep you safe and that Bronia would look out for you but you knew better. You knew this country would kill you. I am sorry, little Sima. My poor, poor Simmaleh.”

She sighed. Her breath slowed. When she fell asleep I let it sink in.

I had waited my whole life to hear her say those things. That she was sorry. That I was a good girl. And pretty and sweet. But it was all for Celia: the tenderness, the apology, the love. She didn’t even know I was there.

I was too sad to cry.

—

It was late when Betty came back from the party. She turned on the light and asked why I was sitting in the dark. “Did she sleep all day?”

I said yes and that I was going for a walk. I needed some fresh air.

It was a beautiful, clear evening. The snow had stopped and the moon made everything look silver. I was walking a long time before I realized that I was going to Aaron’s house. From Roxbury to Brookline is a long way, five miles at least, and I took a few wrong turns on the way. It was so late by the time I got there, his house was dark except for one light in the living room. They never locked the door, so I just walked in. Aaron almost fell out of the chair.

I said, “Don’t ask. I’ll tell you in the morning.”





| 1927 |





All I felt was pain.

My mother died a few weeks later. Levine took care of the funeral the same way he took care of most things—without anyone asking him and without much in the way of thanks.

I had been to the cemetery when Myron and Lenny died, but burying Mameh was a completely different experience, like night and day. Even getting there wasn’t the same. The roads were better, so we got there in no time, and instead of three mourners, there were twenty people and a whole line of cars behind the hearse.

The biggest difference was how “normal” it seemed. Mameh was sixty-five, which wasn’t so young in 1927. Nobody was shocked. She had been sick and died at home in her own bed, so it was sad but nothing like the tragedy it had been with Celia, or Myron and Lenny.

Only Papa and Levine had been there for Celia’s funeral. That was probably because we didn’t know many people back then, but maybe it had something to do with how she died. There was so much guilt mixed in with the grief. And how do you explain a healthy young woman dying from a slip of a kitchen knife?

With the flu epidemic, everyone was afraid, and walking into a cemetery seemed like tempting fate. I went to the boys’ funeral to stand in for Betty and it’s a good thing she didn’t come. The idea of her seeing those little coffins was so awful. Just remembering it still makes me feel like crying.

Before the service for Mameh, I went to look at their graves and tried to think of my sister and nephews when they were young and healthy, but all I could remember was the blood on Celia’s hands and the look on Betty’s face when they took away her little boys. Standing by those gravestones, I didn’t get any comfort or what you’d call “closure” today. All I felt was pain.