Kitabı oku: «The Unfortunates»
LAURIE GRAHAM
The Unfortunates
Copyright
Fourth Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
This edition published by Harper Perennial 2006
First published in Great Britain by Fourth Estate 2002
Copyright © Laurie Graham 2002
Laurie Graham asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
Cover illustration © Rachel Ross
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks
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Source ISBN: 9780007234066
Ebook Edition © NOVEMBER 2012 ISBN: 9780007390694
Version: 2017-03-30
Praise
From the reviews of The Unfortunates:
‘If you see people creasing up with laughter on public transport, this is probably what they’re reading’
The Times
‘Fresh, funny and smart, a novel that reels from the Titanic to jazz age New York’
Observer
‘Epic and very, very funny’
Daily Mail
‘A wildly funny novel, which is often on the brink of being a wildly tragic one’
Sunday Times
‘Set in New York, France and England, this witty book is brimming with irony while an understated sadness bubbles just under the surface. Laurie Graham’s last novel, The Future Homemakers of America, was a bestseller. With deft prose and a Nancy Mitford style, her seventh novel looks like repeating that success’
Irish Independent
‘Laurie Graham is a writer with a remarkably malleable comic voice … Poppy, like Nancy Mitford’s Linda Radlet and The Bolter, is a thrill-seeker with a penchant for romance, brightly coloured clothing, elaborate cocktails and effervescent company’
Guardian
‘A compelling read’
Hello!
‘A fantastic, engrossing read’
Glamour
Dedication
To Joan Fitzgerald
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Praise
Dedication
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Thirty-Seven
Thirty-Eight
Thirty-Nine
Forty
Forty-One
Forty-Two
Forty-Three
Forty-Four
Forty-Five
Forty-Six
Forty-Seven
Forty-Eight
Forty-Nine
Fifty
Fifty-One
Fifty-Two
Fifty-Three
Fifty-Four
Fifty-Five
Fifty-Six
Fifty-Seven
Fifty-Eight
Fifty-Nine
Sixty
Sixty-One
Sixty-Two
Sixty-Three
Keep Reading
About the Author
By the Same Author
About the Publisher
ONE
It was just as well I had ripped off my Ear Correcting Bandages. Had I been bound up in my usual bedtime torture-wear, I would never have heard my mother’s screams.
The bandages were part of my preparation for the great husband hunt. I was only fifteen years old, but my mother recognized a difficult case when she saw one. She had taken up the challenge the day after my twelfth birthday and never spared herself since.
‘The early bird, Poppy,’ she always said, when I complained. ‘The early bird.’
And so, assisted by my aunt, she began an all-fronts campaign to catch me a worm.
I was forbidden candy and other waist-thickening substances. I was enrolled for classes in piano, singing and cotillion dancing, and spent an hour every day in a backboard, during which I practiced French pronunciation whilst a series of Irish maids tried to straighten my hair, or at least, defeat its natural wiriness into the kind of soft loose curls preferred by husbands.
On alternate days my neck was painted with Gomper’s Patent Skin Whitener, to coax out of it a certain oriental tinge. The label advised using the paste no oftener than once a week. But as my mother said, what did they know? They hadn’t seen my neck.
As to my nose, she knew the limits of home improvements. I was to go to a beauty doctor in Cincinnati, as soon as I was sixteen, and have a little cartilage shaved off.
Meanwhile she applied herself to the correction of my protruding ears. She designed an adjustable bandeau to hold them flat against my skull while I slept and had the Irish girl make them up for me in a selection of nightwear colours.
‘So you can choose, you see?’ Ma explained. ‘According to your frame of mind.’
And, gauging my frame of mind all too well, my aunt informed me that some day, when I had grown in wisdom, I would be grateful for their efforts.
The alternative to all this was that I would be left an old maid.
I knew what an old maid was. My cousin Addie was being one up in Duluth, Minnesota, riding around all day with her dogs and not wearing corsets. And I knew what marriage was too. My sister Honey had recently married Harry Glaser and as soon as the marrying was done she had to leave home and put up her hair. As far as I could see she wasn’t allowed to play with her dolls anymore, and she had hardly any time for cutting out pretty things for her scrapbook. She had had to go to tea parties all the time, but never appear too eager about cake, and whenever she came to call Ma would make mysterious inquiries.
‘Honey,’ she’d whisper, ‘how are Things? Are you still using the Lysol?’
To avoid the fate that had befallen Honey, I decided on stealthy sabotage rather than outright rebellion. As long as things appeared to be satisfactory my mother took them to be satisfactory. Surface was her preferred level. Hidden depths were unattractive to her, therefore she behaved as though they did not exist. So, every night, I took off my ear correctors, but only after the house had fallen dark and silent.
Then, that night, someone came to the front door and rang the bell with great persistence. I thought it had to be a stranger. Anyone who knew us knew the hours we kept. They knew our disapproval of night life and lobster suppers and men who rolled home incapable of putting a key neatly in a keyhole.
I heard the Irish slide back the bolt, eventually, and voices. And then, leaning up on my elbow, holding my breath so as not to miss anything, I heard my Ma scream. This signaled excitement. The late visitors were Aunt Fish and Uncle Israel Fish, come straight from the opera, still in their finery, because they had seen newsboys selling a late extra edition with reports of a tragedy at sea. ‘At sea’ was where my Pa was, sailing home from Europe.
Aunt Fish was my mother’s sister and she always seemed as at home in our parlor as she did in her own. By the time I had pulled on my wrapper and run downstairs she had already arranged Ma on a couch and was administering sal volatile.
‘Are you sure he sailed, Dora?’ she kept asking, but my mother wasn’t sure of anything. ‘Maybe he didn’t sail. Maybe business kept him in London.’
My father had been in Berlin and London, inspecting his subsidiaries.
‘Israel will go to the shipping offices,’ Aunt Fish said. ‘Israel, go to the shipping offices.’
Uncle Israel was stretched out with a cigarette.
‘Nothing to be done at this hour,’ he said. Aunt Fish turned and looked at him.
He left immediately. And my mother, released from the constraints of being seen by her brother-in-law dressed only in her nightgown, collapsed anew.
‘Poppy,’ said Aunt Fish, ‘don’t just stand there. Be a comfort to your mother.’ And so while she plagued the Irish for a facecloth soaked in vinegar, and more pillows, and a jug of hot chocolate, I stood by my mother’s side and wondered what kind of comforting to do.
I tried stroking her arm, but this appeared to irritate her. I looked at her, with my head set at a compassionate angle, but that didn’t please her either. I was altogether relieved when Aunt Fish returned from harassing our help and resumed her post as couch-side comforter.
I said, ‘Aunt Fish, is Pa lost at sea?’ and Ma resumed her wailing.
‘Poppy!’ said Aunt Fish. ‘Don’t you have even an ounce of sense? Your poor mother has received a terrible shock. If you can’t be quiet and sensible, then please return to your bed.’
I’m sure it wasn’t me that had rung the doorbell in the middle of the night with news of shipwrecks.
‘And send the Irish in, to build up the fire,’ she shouted after me.
We had stopped bothering with names for our Irish maids. They never stayed long enough to make it worth learning a new one.
‘And Poppy,’ my mother called weakly, from her couch, ‘don’t forget to strap down your ears.’
I lay awake, waiting to hear Uncle Israel’s return, but eventually I must have dozed, and then it was morning. But it was not like any other morning. Our family was suddenly part of a great drama. The first edition of the Herald reported that though Pa’s ship had been in a collision, all hands were saved and she was now being towed into Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Aunt Fish returned, having changed into a morning gown, and then Uncle Israel, with news that the White Star Line was chartering a train to take relatives up to Halifax to be reunited with their loved ones.
I said, ‘I’ll go. Let me go.’ This provided my aunt with further reasons to despair of me.
‘For heaven’s sakes, child!’ she sighed, and Uncle Israel winked at me.
‘Out of the question, Pops,’ he said. ‘Too young, you see. But why not write a little note? I’ll see he gets it as soon he sets foot on land.’
‘There’s no need for you to go, Israel,’ my mother said. The morning’s brighter news had restored her appetite and she was eating a pile of toast and jam. ‘I can always send Harry, if it isn’t convenient to you.’
‘Of course it’s convenient,’ said Aunt Fish. ‘It’s Israel’s place to go.’
I went to the escritoire and started composing my letter to Pa, but I was still more haunted by the idea that he might have drowned than I was uplifted by the prospect that he was safe. I had no sooner written the words ‘Please, never go away again’ than I burst into inappropriate and inconsiderate tears and was sent to my room.
Soon after, my sister arrived with her husband. Honey came up to my room and lay on my bed beside me.
‘Don’t cry, Pops,’ she said. ‘Pa’s safe. And you don’t want to get swollen eyes.’
I said, ‘Why did he have to go across an ocean, anyhow?’
‘Why, because that’s what men do,’ she said.
I said, ‘Would you allow Harry?’
‘Allow?’ she said. ‘It isn’t my place to allow. Besides, I know everything Harry does is for the very best.’
I had often suspected that marrying had caused a softening of Honey’s brain.
Uncle Israel left that afternoon on the special train to Halifax. And Harry went downtown, first to his broker with instructions to buy stock in the Marconi wireless company whose wonderful shipboard radio had helped save so many lives and bring comforting news to the waiting families. Then he went to the White Star offices to inquire when the passengers might be expected back in New York.
Honey and I were pasting scraps, just like old times, when Harry walked in, looking smaller and flatter and grayer than usual. He scratched his head.
‘It’s gone,’ he said. ‘The Titanic has sunk, with heavy losses. A boat called the Carpathia is bringing the survivors home.’
It was eight o’clock. Up in Massachusetts Uncle Israel’s train was stopped, directed into a siding and reversed. There had been, he was told, a change of plan.
My cheeks were hot from the fire, but something deathly cold touched me. My mother fainted onto a couch. My sister uttered a terrible little cry. And Harry studied the pattern on the parlor rug.
‘Marconi stock closed up one hundred and twenty points,’ he said, to no one in particular.
TWO
My Grandpa Minkel and his brother Meyer arrived in Great Portage, Minnesota, in 1851 intending to set up as fur traders, but they were too late. The beaver pelt business was finished. They stayed on though and changed their plans and did well enough trading in lumber to build a fine house on top of a hill in Duluth. From Grandpa Minkel’s house you could see clear to Wisconsin. So they said.
Meyer and his wife were never blessed with children. This was somehow due to the accidental firing of a Winchester ’73, but I was never allowed to know the details. So when Grandpa headed south, looking to buy a spread and turn farmer, he left behind one of his own boys, Jesse, as a kind of second-hand son. Gave him away near enough, though he was a grown man and might well have had plans of his own. Grandpa took his other boy, Abe, to Iowa to be a mustard farmer. And that was my Pa.
Uncle Jesse stayed where he was put, married one of the Zukeman girls and had a number of obedient children, plus Cousin Addie, the one who refused to knuckle down to marriage. Grandpa Minkel grew so much mustard he had to buy a factory. Grandma Minkel told him he should make mustard that had a fine flavor but a short life, and she was right. Folks just had to keep coming back for more and Minkel’s Mighty Fine Mustard did so well Grandma and Grandpa had to send Pa to New York City, to invest the profits and keep his finger on the quickening pulse of finance.
My mother’s people were Plotzes. They sold feathers and goose down, in Cedar Rapids. She married Pa in 1890 and came with him to New York soon after, in a delicate condition with my sister Honey. Ma took to her new life as if to the city born. She sent directly for her sister Zillah and fixed her up with Israel Fish, and from then on a veil fell over the Iowa period of their lives. Cedar Rapids had been a mere accident of birth, and was never discussed. As far as Ma and Aunt Fish were concerned everything from the Hudson shore to the Pacific Ocean was nothing but a social wilderness.
Minkel’s Mighty Fine Mustard was to be found on every discerning table and the profits were invested in railroads and mining, and the consequence was Honey and I were mustard heiresses, more or less.
Pa, though, kept his finger on more than the pulse of finance, and was often absent from his own table, indulging, as I had overheard discussed by my mother and Aunt Fish, in ‘a man’s needs’. I understood these to be cigars and blintzes, two things that were not permitted at home. For these comforts Pa went elsewhere. We lived on West 76th Street. My mother bore the impediment of this address as bravely as she could. Pa and Uncle Israel Fish assured her that before too long New York society would abandon their houses on Fifth Avenue and follow her there.
‘We’re setting a trend, Dora,’ Pa used to say.
But my mother didn’t want to set trends. On the steep climb to good society, novelty was one of those hazards that could pitch us all back down where we’d started. Her plan was to keep us as unremarkable as possible. Correct and unremarkable. Let no Minkel be a protruding nail. I don’t think Pa ever appreciated what a close watch Ma kept over our reputation and standing. And no matter how much she protested, he bought that rose pink low-stoop house and encouraged the architect to add as many turrets and finials as could be accommodated.
My aunt, who still lived safely within visiting distance of The Right People, should the call ever come, said, ‘Never fear, Dora. Marriage may be a sacred institution, but if Abe tries to drag you any further into the wilderness, you may depend on having a home with us.’
On evenings when Pa was home, a fire was lit in the library and I was allowed to sit in there with him and look at the things on the shelves of the vitrine. He had a beaver skull, and a rock of fool’s gold, and an Ojibway Indian necklace, and a little silk cap, brought by Grandpa Minkel from Germany. There was a rubber plant, and a stuffed osprey, and books. I was allowed to take them down off the shelf and read them, as long as I sat in a good light and didn’t scowl or screw up my eyes. Careless reading can cause the setting in of ugly, permanent facial lines. For this reason my mother never risked opening a book.
When the lamps and the fire were lit and Pa and I sat, cozily turning the pages, it was the best of times. I hated to hear him clear his throat and take out his watch. It meant my time was nearly up and he was preparing to go out into the night.
‘Pa,’ I’d say, ‘don’t go for a blintz tonight.’
But he’d snap shut his watch case and go anyhow. I wasn’t altogether sure what a blintz was, but I knew Pa’s favorite kind was cherry, and I liked the sound of that. I knew, too, that for the best blintzes you had to go to Delancey Street, a dangerous place teeming with something Ma called ‘the element’. I worried that one of those nights Pa wouldn’t come home. Murdered by ‘the element’, and all for a cherry blintz.
THREE
It was Tuesday night when Harry brought the news. There was no sleep. Honey cried until she made herself sick. Aunt Fish said she had always doubted the flotation principle. Harry steadied himself with a hot buttered rum, advising us against plunging into despair before the list of survivors had been published. And the Irish, who could hardly keep her eyes open, was kept from her bed, letting out the side seams on Ma’s mourning wear. Unaccountably, every gown had shrunk in the years since Grandpa Minkel’s passing.
Wednesday, there was still no news and Ma was on her second bottle of Tilden’s Extract, a tonic she usually only resorted to in order to face the rigors of giving a dinner. By Thursday our house was in a permanent state of receiving. Mrs Schwab and Mrs Lesser called, and the Misses Stone and Mrs Teller. Maids came with soup. And Uncle Israel drove down to Broadway three times in search of information and came back with none.
Aunt Fish was exasperated with him. ‘Go back, Israel,’ she said, ‘and stay there until they tell you something.’
My poor uncle. Sometimes he seemed to be as much of a disappointment to my aunt as I was. Once again, it was Harry who delivered the goods. He called by telephone, a device my mother had never wanted in the house because of the extra work it would heap upon her. She refused to answer it, and Honey would never do anything Ma wouldn’t do, so I was the one to take the call.
‘Poppy!’ Ma chided. She was at a loss to know what to do with me. Two whole days had passed without my hair being straightened or my slouch corrected, but she was too distracted to insist. And now there I was, crossing the room at an unseemly pace, snatching up the hated telephone and chewing my fingernails.
‘Tonight,’ Harry said. He was breathless. ‘The Carpathia’s expected tonight.’
Aunt Fish loosened Ma’s collar.
‘Bear up now, Dora,’ she said. ‘Israel will represent you. There’s sure to be a crowd and it’ll take a man of Israel’s standing to get to the head of the queue.’
‘Harry will go,’ was all Ma would say. ‘Harry will go.’
Harry didn’t realize he had a passenger in the back of his automobile. I waited until he turned onto Columbus before I emerged from under the pile of blankets Ma and Honey had had brought out. They seemed to imagine Pa might still be wet from the sinking.
‘What the hell are you doing there?’ he said. ‘Get out! Get out at once!’
‘Make me,’ I challenged him.
‘Oh please, Poppy,’ he whined. ‘You’re going to get me into hot water.’
For all his talk of turning around and taking me home, he carried right on driving. He knew who’d win if it came to a fight. Harry’s trouble was he didn’t have any backbone.
I said, ‘When Pa steps off that boat I want to be sure the first thing he sees is my face.’
‘There you go,’ he said. ‘Getting your hopes up. Well don’t come crying to me. I never invited you along.’
Around 32nd Street we began to see people. Hundreds of them hurrying down to the Cunard pier. Harry parked the Simplex and we joined the crowds. There was thunder rolling in over the Palisades and the Carpathia was on her way up the Hudson, with tugs and skiffs and anything else that would float swarming round her and blasts of magnesium light flashing from the newsmen’s cameras. She was making slow progress, and then word came up she had paused, down by Pier 32, so that certain items could be taken off. Lifeboats. Property of the White Star Line.
Harry whispered, ‘They’ll fetch a pretty penny, as curios.’
But they didn’t. As I heard years later, they were picked clean by human vultures before anyone could start the bidding, and the name Titanic was rubbed off them with emery paper and that was the end of that.
Slowly the Carpathia came home. Some people had cards bearing the name of the ones they were hoping to see. I wished I had thought to make a card. They held them up, praying for a wave or a smile, but nobody at the rail was smiling or waving.
It was half past eight by the time they began to warp her in, and then the thunderstorm broke. We waited another hour, in the rain, until she was moored and the gangplank was lowered, and lists of survivors were finally posted. That was when I got separated from Harry.
There was such a crush I could scarcely breathe and I was wet to the skin.
‘Please,’ I asked the man in front of me, ‘can you see if Minkel is there?’
But he gave me an elbow in the ribs and I never saw him again. A woman said she’d find out for me if I gave her a dollar, but I didn’t have a dollar. And so I just found a place to lean, against the customs shed, figuring the best thing was to stand still and allow Pa to spot me easily.
Then a Cunard porter noticed me.
‘Are you all right, Miss?’ he said. ‘Is it First Class you’re looking for?’
I said, ‘Mr Abraham Minkel. I can’t pay you though. I don’t come into my money until I’m twenty-one. But my father will tip you.’
He touched his cap and disappeared, and I didn’t expect to see him again. A sense of service was a thing of the past, as Ma and Aunt Fish often remarked, and everyone expected something in their grubby hand before they’d stir themselves.
And so I waited, shivering, wondering at the uselessness of Harry Glaser, trying to draw up a balance sheet of my standing at home. I believed my crimes of disobedience, ingratitude and impropriety might just be offset by the triumph of being the one to bring home Pa.
The ladies from First Class began to file into the echoing shed. There were children, too. Some were crying, most were silent, and the ladies still had on their hats. ‘How odd,’ I thought. ‘A sinking must be a good deal gentler than I imagined.’ And then this happened. I saw a face I knew.
The very moment I looked at her, she sensed it and looked back at me, quite directly. Then she turned her head away and disappeared into the crowd. I was still puzzling how an Irish, dismissed without references, could have sailed first-class and in such Parisian style, when the Cunard boy reappeared beside me.
‘Miss,’ he said, ‘I’m afraid to say I couldn’t find a Mr Abraham Minkel listed, but Mrs Minkel is there, alive and well. You should be seeing her any moment now.’
But the women had all disembarked. The men filed through next, but my Pa was not amongst them. They all had downcast eyes, and a hurried step, and somewhere in the crowd I heard somebody hiss. Being a survivor isn’t necessarily a happy condition, I realized later. There would always be the question, hanging in the air, too awful to ask, ‘And how were you so fortunate? What other poor soul paid for your life with his? Or hers?’ If you were an able-bodied man, it would have been better form to perish nobly.
‘Not spotted her yet, Miss?’ the porter asked. ‘Well, that’s a mystery.’
He was now taking more interest in my case than I liked. He was like a stray dog, eagerly padding along at my side, on the strength of one brief expression of gratitude.
I said, ‘It’s not a mystery. It was a cruel mistake. There was no Mrs Minkel. Only my Pa, but he’s not here. Is there another boat? Are there more following on?’
He looked away.
‘I don’t think so, Miss,’ he whispered. ‘I don’t think so at all.’
People milled around us, plucking at him, wanting his attention.
‘My Pa’s lost,’ I said. I knew it.
And he was glad enough then to make his getaway.
A woman said, ‘There’s to be a service of thanksgiving. Right away.’
What did I care? Thanksgiving for what?
‘Not just thanksgiving,’ she said, reading my expression. ‘To pray for the ones that were lost as well. A prayer is never wasted.’
The third-class passengers had been directed to another shed, and a group of them were leaving, and some first-class ladies, too, walking to the nearest church.
Over the heads of a hundred people I thought I saw the feather trim of the Irish’s hat, and I decided at that moment to add another item to the list of my transgressions. I abandoned all thoughts of Harry Glaser and followed the throng, walking as quickly as I could so as to catch up, trying to remember whether I had ever known her name.
We had had any number of Marys, several Annes and a Videlma Teresa who broke, against stiff competition, all previous records for brevity of employment with us, but on the whole, their names disappeared. They were, to a girl, impertinent, uncouth and given to ‘carrying on’ so that Ma often predicted her death would be certified as ‘caused by Irish’.
I had never been in a church before. Ma and Aunt Fish had formulated a plan for their concerted rise in New York society, and a key decision had been to keep a low profile vis-à-vis God.
‘Religion gives rise to intemperate opinions, Dora,’ Aunt Fish advised, ‘and a hostess does well to keep those from her table.’
So we avoided any association with God as carefully as we avoided cold drafts, and, with regard to this, nothing could have made Ma happier than Honey’s choice of Harry Glaser as a husband.
‘A good thing about Harry,’ I had often heard her say, ‘is that he doesn’t go in for religion.’
I knew therefore, as we came to the doors of St Peter’s Episcopalian church, to expect dangerous excesses inside, and I resolved to stay in command of myself. I kept my eyes downcast for five minutes at least, for fear of coming face to face with this God who was too controversial to have to dinner.
All around me grown men wept and crumbled, and candles were lit, and a song was sung, in poor cracked voices, for those in peril on the sea.
‘Too late now for that,’ I thought, aching for the smell of my Pa’s hair tonic. But I liked being there, close to people who had been saved from the dark and deep. I liked how determined they had been to walk to 20th Street and pray when they might have gone home directly and been cosseted with warm milk and cake.
She was kneeling, across the other side of the church, busy with some Irish hocus-pocus. I kept her in my sights and moved a couple of times, to get nearer to her, squeezing past people who complained and people who were too lost in their sorrow to notice. I had remembered her name.
When the singing and praying was over I moved quickly, to be sure of blocking her path as she made to leave.
‘Nellie,’ I said, ‘is it you?’
She gave me a stubborn look I recognized, but her face colored. She may have been dressed by Mr Worth, but she still had the look of a maid caught trying on her mistress’s gown.
I said, ‘My Pa was on the Titanic. Did you see him, by any chance?’
Still she resisted me, and I felt my chance slipping away, to know the worst, or to find new hope.
‘Please, Nellie,’ I begged. ‘Can you tell me anything at all?’
Her pertness dissolved.
‘I’m so sorry, Miss Poppy,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry for your loss. He went back for my muff. I begged him not to, but he would go …’
We stood face to face but at cross purposes, and people flowed around us, away, out of the church and back into life.
‘… it was my Persian broadtail muff,’ she said, ‘and it was an awful cold night.’
I said, ‘So you did see him? Were you close to him? Did he say anything?’
‘He said “Go to the boat station, Nellie. I’ll come to you there.”’
Then her tears started.
‘He lived and died a gentleman,’ she said. ‘Whatever people may say, there were no irregularities between us. I was there by way of secretary to him.’
I said, ‘How could you be? Mr Levi was his secretary. And anyway, can you read?’
‘I can,’ she said. ‘Well. I was more of an assistant. A personal assistant. There was no one could take away his headaches the way I could. And that’s how things stood. I’d swear to it on the good book.’
They always said that when they were lying. Next thing she’d be asking for wages still owed.
I said, ‘Where do you live? Where are you going?’
‘To my sister,’ she said. ‘Or maybe to my cousin.’
The slipperiness of the Irish. How right my mother was.
It was a long walk home. Three miles, I now know, but then I had no idea of distance or time. My shoes rubbed holes in my stockings and my toes were pinched and sore, but I pressed on as fast as I could. I knew the streets were full of robbers and murderers and women who drank sherry wine.
It wasn’t exactly fear kept me hurrying along. Now my Pa had died, dead seemed an easy thing to be. Still, I wasn’t sure I’d be as brave as he had been. ‘Go to the boat station, Nellie.’ When the moment came, I might squawk, or not quite die, and lie in agony in the gutter.
I knew, too, I’d be the subject of a full inquiry at home, and I preferred to face it as soon as possible. There was no predicting what grief would make of Ma. She might forgive all, in a fit of tenderness, or she might turn on me, like a wounded beast. In any event, it has always been my nature to take whatever I have coming to me as quickly as possible.
As I passed the New Theater, nearly home, I heard an automobile chugging toward me and I knew it was a search party in the shape of Harry Glaser. He all but threw me into the car. I didn’t think he had it in him.
‘You damned fool,’ was all he could say. ‘You goddamned fool!’
I said, ‘You were the one abandoned me. I waited for you. And does Honey know you use language?’
‘Don’t we have hard enough times ahead of us with your Ma,’ he said, ‘without you disappearing and putting me in a bad odor? What’s your game?’
I said, ‘I lost you in the crowd, that’s all. Why are you so afraid of Ma? What did she say? What’s my punishment?’
‘Consider yourself mighty lucky,’ he said. ‘So far you haven’t been missed, but you’re not home and dry yet. You’ve still got to get back into the house and into your bed, and I suppose you’ll be expecting my help? You’re a brat, no two ways.’
‘Harry,’ I said, ‘a porter told me there was a Minkel on the list of survivors. Did you see that?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I definitely did not, and neither did you if you know what’s good for you. Anyway, it was clearly a clerical error.’
A lamp was burning in the parlor, but it was only Uncle Israel Fish, smoking a last cigarette. He appeared in the doorway as I tiptoed up the stairs but seemed not to notice me. We only see what we expect to see, I suppose. It was another lesson for me, and I had learned so many in just one day. I listed them as I lay in bed, too tired for sleep.
1. My Pa was not indestructible.
2. Personal assistants got Persian lamb muffs and trips to Europe.
3. I was blessed with powers of invisibility.
4. Harry Glaser was a half-wit, my sister married him, therefore I would be expected to marry a half-wit, therefore I would not marry.
I got up, lit a candle, and one by one I committed to its flame my ear-correcting bandeaux. First the pink one, then the apricot, then the eau-de-Nil. They created an interesting and rather satisfying smell.
FOUR
It was Aunt Fish who came into my room next morning. She was wearing her black bombazine.
‘Poppy,’ she said, gravely, ‘a terrible sadness has come to this house, so you must now make great efforts to be a good girl, for your dear mother’s sake.’
I said, ‘I’m sure I always do try to be good.’
‘There is all the difference in the world between trying and succeeding,’ she said, ‘and quibbling with me is not a promising way to begin.’
I said, ‘I know Pa is drowned, Aunt Fish. I know Ma is a poor widow now.’
She leapt up and knotted the ends of her shawl in despair.
‘That is precisely the kind of heartless remark good girls do not make,’ she said. ‘Your duty is to spare your mother from harsh reminders.’
I got up and put on my wrapper. Aunt Fish was looking at my ruined stockings and muddied shoes.
I said, ‘Am I to pretend then that Pa isn’t drowned? Am I to pretend he may come back some day?’
‘You are to wash your face and show respect,’ she said. ‘You are to go to your mother, and try to persuade her to sip a little peptonized milk, to keep up her strength. And you are never ever to speak of drownings, or steam ships or … oceans. How worn out your shoes are, Poppy. I’d suggest a new pair, but you’ll be going out so seldom now it hardly seems worth the expense.’
And with those words, Aunt Fish raised the curtain on a whole new period of my life.
Ma was propped up with extra pillows. Her night table was cluttered with various bottled remedies, her little helpers. I could see she had been crying. I suppose she could see I had, too. She patted the bed beside her.
‘What a blessing I have you, Poppy,’ she said. ‘I see now, this was all meant to be. If you had been as favored with beauty as Honey you’d soon make a good match and then what would I do, left all alone in the world?’
I opened my mouth to say I didn’t think Honey was all that favored with beauty, but Ma was getting into her stride.
‘But it’s so clear to me now,’ she continued. ‘I was given a beauty for the consolation her children will bring me, and I was given a plain one for companionship in my old age. How wise Nature is!’
I said, ‘Does this mean I don’t have to go to Cincinnati for a new nose?’
‘The nose is cancelled,’ she said. ‘And the singing lessons and the French and the cotillions. There’s no sense in exerting ourselves in that direction anymore.’
The husband hunt had been called off. Still, I had rather enjoyed my singing lessons.
I said, ‘Shouldn’t you like me to be able to sing for you sometimes, Ma?’
‘Not at all,’ she said. ‘I should like you to read to me sometimes from the Home Journal. And mend stockings.’
She tried to stroke my hair, but her fingers caught in it. Standing in the rain had given it a particularly vicious kink.
‘We’ll just live quietly now,’ she said. ‘No more dinners.’
Dinners had always been a trial to her, as she clambered the foothills of society. She had once committed the solecism of following a potage crème with creams of veal en dariole. It was only the dessert, a Prune Shape, produced by Reilly, our cook, in a moment of whimsy, as a substitute for the Almond Shape that had been ordered, which saved Ma from the social ruin of presiding over a completely beige meal.
As far as I know she never descended to the kitchen. Her negotiations with Reilly were conducted entirely through a speaking tube that connected the parlor to the scullery. The temperature of their exchanges rose as the dinner hour drew near, and neither party ever seemed to understand that they could not only hear and be heard. They could also be overheard.
‘Reilly has been nipping at the brandy,’ was one of Ma’s favorite asides.
Reilly herself was fond of the prefix ‘fecken’’, as in, ‘I’ll give her fecken’ fricandeau of sweetbreads, all right.’
I took this to be a quaint usage from Reilly’s home country and sometimes repeated it, in imitation of her. I had no idea what it meant, and neither did Ma, so no harm was done.
On the day of a dinner, Ma required an extra dose of Tilden’s, for her nerves. The day after a dinner, her shades were kept tightly closed and she took nothing stronger than seltzer water. That Pa’s death meant an end to all this was no cause of regret to me.
I said, ‘What about the backboard? Do I still have to wear that?’
‘Good posture is always an asset,’ she said, ‘even in a homely girl.’
I sensed, though, that this was the moment to strike as many bargains as possible, and I was just about to sue for a ceasefire in the war against my protruding ears, when Aunt Fish appeared in the doorway. In her hand were the ashes of my corrective nightwear bandeaux.
‘Dora!’ she said. ‘I have had the candle removed from Poppy’s vanity table. I fear she is not yet to be trusted with unguarded flames.’
FIVE
Like Great Uncle Meyer, Aunt and Uncle Fish had not been blessed with children of their own, and perhaps they had expected Ma and Pa to follow Grandpa Minkel’s example and hand over their spare. At any rate, Aunt Fish seemed to believe she had some lien over me and the bigger I grew, the more forthcoming she was with her advice and opinions.
On the subject of molding and polishing Honey, she had deferred to my mother. Clearly she, the elder sister, understood better than Aunt Fish, a younger and childless person, how to raise a daughter, especially a daughter as perfectly pink and golden as Honey. But my aunt sensed the moment would come when her talents for, as she put it, ‘the handling of more difficult cases’ would be gratefully received. If Aunt Fish ever had a career, it was me.
After Pa’s death she deemed her normal daily visits to be inadequate and she moved into our house for an indefinite period, to spare Ma the burden of household decisions and make good my deficiencies as a tower of strength. Ma suggested that this might be a great inconvenience to Uncle Israel, but he insisted that nothing could be more convenient to him. He would dine at his club, he said, and be occupied until late every night going through Pa’s complicated business affairs with Mr Levi, ensuring everything was in order.
Complicated was a word that filled Ma with terror.
‘Are they not all in order, Israel?’ she asked him, handkerchief at the ready.
‘Nothing to worry about, Dora,’ he said. ‘I’m just going through things to make sure. Abe would have done the same for me.’
I said, ‘Are we ruined, Uncle Israel? Am I still a mustard heiress?’
‘Poppy!’ Aunt Fish said. ‘That is a thing to have said about one. One should not say it of oneself!’
‘Never fear, Pops,’ Uncle said, ‘you’ll come into a handsome amount.’
Ma said, ‘Not that you’ll have any need of it, since you will always have a home here and be provided for. You might think, Poppy, when you are of age, of making donations and helping with good works.’
‘There’ll certainly be plenty for that,’ Uncle said. ‘The Education Alliance is doing fine work with the immigrants. And The Daughters of Jacob. Both very worthy causes.’
Aunt Fish said, ‘Dora didn’t mean that kind of cause, Israel. One has to be careful in selecting one’s charities. They reflect on one so. Poppy might do better sending money to the little black babies in Africa.’
I’m sure it’s very easy to spend someone else’s inheritance. I didn’t bother to tell them I intended spending mine on silk harem pants and a gasoline-powered automobile and cake.
So Uncle dined at the Harmonie Club every night and Aunt Fish moved in with us and began nursing my mother through a carefully planned convalescence. At first, no callers were received. Ma stayed in her room and toyed with a little calf’s-foot jelly. I was allowed to brush her hair for fifteen minutes each day, and sometimes Honey came and read to her from Fashion Notes.
The name Minkel had only appeared in the first list of survivors published in The New York Times. By the time the next edition went to press, the phantom Mrs Minkel had disappeared and Ma seemed to be none the wiser. Harry Glaser had done something useful for once in his life.
By the middle of May, Ma had progressed to a small, baked fillet of sole with bread and butter fingers, followed by vermicelli pudding or perhaps an orange custard, by way of variety, and she felt able to receive Mrs Lesser and Mrs Schwab, and eventually the Misses Stone.
Mrs Schwab was herself a widow and understood what was appropriate, but Mrs Lesser was unpredictable. Sometimes she simply reported on the refreshments and gossip at her latest crush – she was very keen to be known for her afternoon teas – but sometimes she would canter off into more dangerous territory. Would there ever be a funeral for Pa, she would suddenly wonder out loud. If not, could there be a funeral monument? And if there could, what form should it take?
One of my duties was to anticipate this kind of conversational turn and head off Mrs Lesser at the pass, but sometimes my attention wandered and before I knew it Aunt Fish would be fanning Ma and tutting at me and suggesting to Mrs Lesser that she had already given us more than enough of her valuable time.
The thing was, I had questions myself, most of them far more macabre than Mrs Lesser’s. I knew, for instance, that the bodies of drowned persons were often hooked out of the East River and the Hudson, but I suspected things worked differently in an ocean. Still, sometimes I imagined Pa’s poor body, slowly finding its way to Pier 32. And other times I imagined he had never boarded that accursed boat. That he was still in London, inspecting his subsidiaries, and Irish Nellie had been, as usual, telling whoppers.
None of these ideas could ever be aired, of course. They were merely evidence of the unhealthy state of my mind and I knew better than to draw that kind of attention to myself. Apart from my sleeplessness and loss of appetite, daily life had become easier with Pa gone. Since April eighteenth my hair had been left au naturel. This alone gave me such a fierce appearance, I doubt even Aunt Fish would have dared to suggest resuming the applications of neck-whitener. We had reached a kind of accommodation. No one troubled me with beauty regimes, and I troubled no one with my questions. Then the Misses Stone came to call.
‘It occurs to us,’ one of them began, ‘we might be of assistance, at this sad time, in the … disposal of … unhappy reminders.’
The Misses Stone were collecting unwanted clothes for their Immigrant Aid Fund. It had never crossed my mind that Pa’s things wouldn’t hang forever in their closets. I visited them every day and buried my face in the cloth of his coats, to smell his cologne. The possibility that the Misses Stone might bundle them away and give them to strangers hit me much harder than the news of the sinking. I sprang from my chair while Ma and Aunt Fish still sat, pudding-faced, absorbing the request.
‘We have only happy, treasured reminders of my dear father and there are no plans to dispose of any of them’ was what I intended to say. But it came out as ‘They’re mine, you hateful crows! Pa’s things are mine! And no one else shall ever take them.’
They were unnerved by the sight of me, I know. Even diminished by grief, there was enough of me to make two of the birdlike Misses Stone, and then there was my hair, which weeks of neglect had turned from a deformity into an instrument of terror. They fluttered toward the door under cover of Aunt Fish’s bosom.
‘Unhinged by our loss,’ I heard her whisper. ‘Perhaps, when a little more time has passed …’ and the Misses Stone made little gobbling noises of sympathy.
Ma was looking at me in amazement.
‘Don’t let them take his things,’ I yelled at her. ‘Don’t let anyone take them. I miss Pa. I have to have the smell of him.’
‘Oh Poppy,’ was all she said. ‘Oh Poppy …’
‘Well!’ Aunt Fish said, when she returned from seeing off the Misses Stone. ‘That was a fine display you made of yourself.’
Ma struggled to her feet. I realize now she was only forty-two and not at all the old lady she seemed. She put out her arms and held me stiffly to her jet stomacher.
‘Oh Poppy,’ she said, ‘how stricken you are. I think perhaps one of my powders …’
She turned to Aunt Fish, who was all for smacking me, I dare say.
‘Zillah,’ she said, ‘I think poor Poppy needs a powder. Or perhaps some of my special drops?’
‘Hmm,’ said Aunt Fish. ‘And time alone, in her room, to compose herself and consider what embarrassment she has caused.’
I said, ‘I’m sure it wasn’t me who came begging for a dead man’s clothes. I’m sure we are not the ones who should feel embarrassed.’
Ma released me from our awkward embrace.
‘They are crows, Aunt Fish,’ I cried, as I fled the room. ‘They are crows and you are a gull for allowing them.’
I hid for an hour inside Pa’s closet, comforted a little by its smells but anxious, too, that they might be fading. When I returned to my room, a small bottle had appeared on my night table. Pryce’s Soothing Extract of Hemp, recommended for cases of nervous excitement.
SIX
All through June and July our household was run by Aunt Fish, and then she stayed on through the worst of the August heatwave because we had an electric fan and she did not, and she feared she might expire without it. Uncle Israel struggled on without her, quite weary I suppose of having to dine out every night and drink champagne and play cards with other poor bachelors.
The days hung dead and hopeless. We visited no one, we had nothing to refresh our conversations, and every exchange was hobbled by unmentionable subjects. Water, travel, Europe, mustard, Iowa, money, joy, happiness, unhappiness; these were the main taboos. But to those I added my own secret list: Irish secretaries, gowns by Mr Worth, death by drowning and ghosts.
I was employed in a series of sewing assignments, trimming handkerchiefs with black ribbon, and turning slightly worn sheets sides to middle, a pointless exercise made all the more absurd by the fact that I had ten thumbs. In the privacy of my room, when I made clothes for my dolls and stitched them with my preferred left hand, I sewed very well indeed, but in the parlor, of course, only the use of the correct hand was permitted.
‘How awkward you look, Poppy,’ Ma said. ‘But you must persevere.’
While I stitched, Ma and Aunt Fish conversed. In the morning, dinner was discussed, and the social events none of us would be attending. Just once a week my aunt would tear herself away from us to attend the opera.
‘It gives me no pleasure, Dora,’ she always said, ‘but a box cannot go to waste.’
Otherwise the evenings were spent considering next day’s luncheon and reviewing our health, two not unconnected subjects.
‘An omelette is very binding,’ Aunt Fish would bid.
‘But celery is invigorating,’ Ma would counter-bid.
My only release from this was that once a week I was allowed to visit Honey. She and Harry had a red-brick on West 74th Street with a bay window high above the street that made it lighter and more cheerful than home. The serviceable, dark plum chintz had been picked out on Ma’s advice, and I now recognize, recalling the abundance of valances and frilled portières, other signs of her hand. If society abhorred a naked door frame, who was she to argue?
Still, I loved to visit there and play Chinese checkers and try on Honey’s new hats, and she enjoyed my being there. Sometimes, without Ma around, or Harry, she could be quite gay.
But in the fall of 1912 something changed. On my weekly visit there was no gaiety. All afternoon Honey just sat in her cushioned rocker and sucked peppermints. And the next week, and the next. It was December before I found out why. A baby was coming to live with Honey and Harry.
This news made me very happy. I had often wished to have a brother or a puppy and Honey’s baby seemed to promise a good alternative.
‘Where is it coming from?’ I asked, and Honey turned scarlet.
‘A little star fell from heaven,’ Ma said, ‘and has come to rest under her heart.’
I had noticed that the area beneath and around Honey’s heart had expanded recently, but I’d attributed this to the quantity of violet creams she ate.
‘And then what?’ I asked.
‘The stork will bring it from a special baby garden,’ Aunt Fish cut in.
‘Yes,’ said Ma, abandoning her story about the star, ‘and give it to the nurse and she’ll place it in the cradle.’
I was confused. So next time I was down in the kitchen, looking for company and cookies, I asked the Irish. We had a rosy-cheeked one at that time, quite pretty.
‘I wonder where Honey’s baby will come from?’ I said, drawing on the oilcloth with my wetted finger.
The Irish put down the silver cloth.
‘How old are you, Poppy?’ she asked.
I was just fifteen.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘you know you get your monthly health …?’
Reilly slammed down a tureen in front of her.
‘Wash out your mouth and get on with your work,’ she said.
The Irish grinned at me and polished on in silence until Reilly disappeared into the pantry. Then she leaned across the table.
‘’Tis very simple,’ she whispered. ‘Mr Harry had his way with her and put a bun in her oven and now she’ll blow up and up till her time comes and then she’ll be brought to bed of it and scream and scream and drop it like a sow-pig, and then there’ll be a grand pink little baby.’
I ran to my room and tried to compose myself before luncheon. I vowed, on my next visit to West 74th Street, to tell Honey what I’d learned. She seemed so calm, languid even, I couldn’t believe she understood what a terrible fate awaited her.
‘Harry will do it,’ Ma always said. ‘Leave it to Harry.’
Leave it to Harry indeed. I might have guessed he had something to do with it.
My sister was brought to bed of a baby boy on May 28, 1913. Three weeks before, she had taken up residence in her old room, so Ma and Aunt Fish could keep watch for the stork, so I supposed. In the event, things turned out much as the Irish had said they would, with Harry being sent away and Honey screaming, and a nurse arriving who drank quantities of tea, and finally a doctor in a top hat, with something in his bag that put a stop to all the yelling.
I was allowed to see my nephew when he was two hours old, and then it devolved to me to start breaking the news to Ma that he would not be named Abe, for his dear departed grandpa.
‘How well he suits “Sherman”,’ I said. Honey had suggested this as an opening.
‘Sherman?’ Ma said. ‘Sherman? As usual you are quite mistaken, Poppy. In this family we do not name our children after … hotels.’
‘Not after the hotel, Ma,’ Harry tittered, when he was finally admitted to see his wife and child. ‘Sherman, as in General William Tecumseh Sherman.’ And he attempted to sing ‘While We Were Marching Through Georgia’, as though that explained everything.
Ma was quiet for a while.
‘It seems to me,’ she said, returning to the battlefield, ‘that if you wish to name my grandson for a public figure, it should be for our new president. Abraham Woodrow Glaser sounds very well.’
‘’Fraid not, Ma,’ Harry said. ‘Can’t tar the boy with a Democrat brush. His name will be Sherman Ulysses, and that’s my final word on it.’
Ma’s knuckles whitened round her handkerchief.
‘Tell you what though,’ he said, backtracking a little at the prospect of tears. ‘Tell you what. If the next one’s a girl, we’ll name her Dora, for you.’
From what I had seen and heard that day, I doubted there would be a next one. I planned to consult the Irish again and see whether such things could be prevented.
Meanwhile ugly little Sherman Ulysses Glaser cried and slept and cried some more, and eventually I was allowed to cradle him.
‘I’m your maiden aunt Poppy,’ I told him, and he curled his little fingers around my thumb. Honey had three weeks lying-in before she took him home to West 74th Street, and Ma didn’t waste a moment of it.
‘Abraham,’ she kept whispering to him as he slept. ‘Grandma’s special little Abraham.’
Down in the kitchen I heard talk.
‘Is Mrs Honey’s baby to be cut?’ the Irish asked me.
‘Why?’ I asked, and she and Reilly exchanged annoying little smiles. I took the question straight to Ma, who was sitting with Aunt Fish and Honey and Harry’s mother, the senior Mrs Glaser.
‘Poppy!’ Ma said. ‘Not in the parlor!’
I had to wait until the company had left. Then I was taken to Ma’s bedroom to have it explained that some baby boys underwent a procedure, but the Minkels and the Glasers were unanimous in judging it quite unnecessary.
‘It’s just an old-fashioned racial thing,’ Honey said, ‘and we are civilized New Yorkers.’
I said, ‘I wish you could stay here, Honey. I’d help you with Sherman Ulysses and we could make dolls’ clothes and have fun.’
‘I’m a mother now, Pops,’ she said. ‘I don’t have time for fun.’
So the party was over. Honey took Sherman home, and time slowed down again, crawling past me while I read to Ma from Collier’s Weekly, and danced imaginary cotillions, but very quietly, so as not to tire her.
Mrs Schwab visited, and Mrs Lesser, and even the Misses Stone returned. They had forgiven me my hysterical outburst and after I turned sixteen they seemed more inclined to take me seriously. They knew better than to mention the distribution of second-hand clothes, but some of their projects, their work amongst ‘the element’, sounded adventurous and exciting. They raised money for the settlement houses where the Russian Hebrews could be washed and fed and trained out of their rude oriental ways. They arranged classes where the unfortunates could learn hygiene and gymnastics. They sent them to summer camp.
I said, ‘Gymnastics and summer camp! I’m sure I shouldn’t mind being an unfortunate.’
The Misses Stone laughed.
‘No, Poppy,’ one of them said, ‘you wouldn’t say so if you saw how people lived. Workers and donations are what we need. Perhaps some day, when you’re not so much needed at home?’
‘I hope,’ Ma sighed, ‘some day I may feel strong enough to spare Poppy for a few hours.’
Her true intention was that I should never set foot anywhere near such dangerous territory, but I wore away her resolve with the daily drip, drip, drip of my requests. It took many months. Then suddenly, one summer morning, she threw down her needlepoint and said, ‘I see you are determined to break my heart, Poppy, so go and be done with it.’
Two days later I was taken by trolley-car to the Bowery, and then, with a Miss Stone on either side of me for safety, I was swept into the tumult of Delancey Street, the very place where Pa had enjoyed his cherry blintzes.
I tried to tell the Misses Stone about this exciting coincidence, and they smiled, but I wasn’t at all sure they could even hear me. I had never in my life encountered so much noise or seen so many people. Then we turned onto Orchard Street and the buildings and the noise of the stinking, shouting unfortunates pressed in on me even closer.
There were dead ducks and chickens hanging from hooks, and women with dirty hands selling eggs from handcarts, and pickle barrels, and shop signs in foreign squiggles, and small boys carrying piles of unfinished garments higher than themselves, and ragged girls playing potsy on the sidewalk.
‘Why is everyone shouting?’ I shouted.
‘Because they’re happy to be here.’ That was the best explanation the Misses Stone could offer.
I said, ‘I’m sure abroad must be a very terrible place if Orchard Street makes them happy.’
We went to The Daughters of Jacob Center where the element could learn to dress like Americans and raise healthy children. And then to the Edgie Library where they could study our language.
‘You see, Poppy,’ they said, ‘how much needs doing?’
I said, ‘I don’t come into my money until I’m twenty-one and I don’t know how much there’ll be because Pa had complicated affairs.’
But the Misses Stone said it wasn’t only money they needed but helpers, and why didn’t I try sitting, just for five minutes, and helping someone with their English reading.
A small girl stood in front of me with a primer in her hands, trying to stare me down. I turned to tell the Stones I probably wouldn’t be very good at it, but they were hurrying away to inspect another class, and the staring girl was still waiting with her book.
I said, ‘The first thing you should learn is not to stare, especially not at your elders and betters.’
She was pale as wax, and skinny.
‘What’s your name?’ she said. She spoke perfect English.
I said, ‘And if you’re going to read to me you had better start immediately because I have to go home very soon.’
I sat on a stool and she stood beside me, a little too close for my liking, and read. She was pretty good.
I said, ‘You can read. You don’t need good works doing for you.’
She grinned.
I said, ‘Have you been to summer camp?’
She shook her head.
I said, ‘How about gymnastics?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I did do that, but now I can’t be spared. I have to help make garters. We get one cent a piece. My name’s Malka but I like Lily better. What do you think?’
I didn’t really know what gymnastics were. As I had never been allowed them I surmised they were something desirable.
‘How old are you?’ she asked. She was one impertinent child.
‘And how were the gymnastics?’ I asked, feeling my way.
‘They were fun,’ she said. ‘Are you married? I like your coat. Want to see how I can turn a somersault?’ And she just flipped over, like a toy monkey. She went over so fast, I couldn’t see how she did it. This attracted the attention of the other little monkeys, who all left off their studying and gathered around me, fingering the fabric of my coat.
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