Bittersweet Brooklyn: A Novel Read online

  Abie said, “I pity the boys you spread your legs for when you finally open that mouth and they see who you really are.”

  Yellow and sweaty, Mama belched. “Enough.”

  Annie encircled Mama’s shoulders. Once the older woman caught her breath, she said, “Why should I visit? Like I need more tsuris? Since I’m here, tell me, Abraham, they have school here. What do they teach?”

  “I can pick a lock in under a minute. If I had better tools, I’d be faster. See, Ma, I’ve learned a trade.”

  “You are a rascal,” said Mama. “At least are you learning your numbers and letters?”

  “I could read your letters if you sent any. Can you write?”

  “Well enough if I have something good to say, but, Abraham, tell me why I should write to you when you have no shame?”

  “You could send your love,” Abie said. Silence descended on the great big room. Thelma knew love: Abie showered affection on her. Abie gripped Thelma tighter. Louis moved nearer.

  Mama didn’t soften. “When you’re worth it.”

  “If you’re worth it,” Annie sniffed.

  “I can’t control you, Abraham, so I won’t comfort you. You behave like an animal and you land in a zoo, dragging your brother behind. Are you tending Louis now that your bad deeds landed him here?”

  “Are you minding Temmy?” Abie asked. Thelma shivered. She feared being in the middle. It was the lighter all over again. She rubbed her scarred thumb. “Look at her: turn her sideways, she’d disappear. And what’s with this hair? What horrible thing can a baby do that deserves such punishment?”

  “Temmy is fine . . . ,” said Mama.

  “. . . not a scratch on her, but what are these bruises on her arms? She looks sad, just like I’d be if I was left alone with you two.”

  His caring unleashed the tears stuck inside her.

  “You’ve grown since I saw you last, Abraham, with that dirty fluff under your nose. But Louis has shrunk.”

  “Unhappiness can do that. I protect him the best I can, but it’s no picnic for a skinny kid without the belly for a fight. Hey, Ma, here’s another lesson we’ve learned on the inside: how to walk back-to-back. It’s like having eyes behind your head when some big bum tries to rush you. So I’ve learned how to take better care of Louis, but looking at his lip, well, nobody’s perfect.”

  Turning to her younger son, Mama asked, “Louis, what happened to your face?” Louis hung his head. Thelma took his hand.

  “He fell down the stairs,” Abie answered.

  “Which stairs?” Annie asked.

  “The joint has tons of stairs. We’ve had to clean ’em all.”

  “You always make a big tsuris from nothing,” Mama said, “even when you were a baby.”

  “I was never a baby.”

  “My firstborn son, you are. If only Papa had survived to see you here.”

  “Was that the only way Papa could escape you?”

  “Why would he want to escape me?” Mama’s fury rose, shrinking her eyes, twisting her mouth. She leaned forward like a witch casting a spell. Annie mirrored the action, the anger sparking from mother to daughter. But while Mama focused on Abie, Annie narrowed her eyes at Thelma. Thelma feared Mama would rise and strike her, even in her weakened state. Young as she was, she knew that hurting her hurt Abie.

  “Always the funny boy, Abraham, always with the joke,” said Annie, her fists balled up and ready to strike. “Has that mouth of yours helped you make friends here?”

  “Better than friends, I have a gang.”

  “He has a girlfriend, too,” said Louis.

  Abie plumped up his chest and stroked the few dark hairs above his lip. “I don’t put up with drek, and I take my lumps.”

  “Why should you get lumps unless you asked for them?” asked Annie.

  “Like I asked to be here, Annie? Welcome to the institution, Ma.”

  “I brought you here . . .”

  “. . . dumped us here . . .”

  “. . . they promised to take care of you.”

  “You should be thankful that we came here on my day off,” said Annie.

  “And all you give me is heartburn,” said Mama. “Can’t you see my stomach can hardly support this visit and yet here we are, to show that you have a family? How many of those orphans dream of having a family like yours?”

  “They call those nightmares,” Abie said. “The other kids, most of their parents died. My mother’s alive. My big sister’s no beauty, but she’s healthy. I got sent because I set fire to Annie’s drawers. She stays home because she only burned the baby. Where’s God’s justice in that?”

  Mama rose, her face pale and her neck red. “Who are you, you little pisher, questioning God?”

  “What’s there to question? The high holidays came and went with no word from our mother. The others look at Louis and me and wonder what we did to deserve this stone shithouse. Those children cry because they have no families. But at least their parents didn’t abandon them here. They mock us as unlovable.” Abie had worked himself up. He wasn’t quick to anger, but once he was angry, it couldn’t be stopped. “Those jerks don’t envy us, Mama, because we are lower than low. We’re orphans with a mother beyond the iron fence.”

  “Don’t make Mama feel worse than she already does,” said Annie.

  “The fix is simple,” said Abie. “Spring us today. Call Mrs. Feingold right now and take us home. Tell her we won’t be eating chipped beef on toast tonight.”

  “I can’t do that,” Mama said.

  “Can’t—or won’t?”

  “Please, Mama,” Thelma said. “I’ll never be bad again. I promise. Bring them home.”

  “We don’t have the money for the horsecar,” said Mama.

  “Annie does. She tucks coins in her handkerchief,” Thelma said.

  “Have you seen my money that I worked so hard for?” Annie said. “Have you stolen it?”

  “The kid doesn’t steal,” said Abie. “She’s a kid.”

  “We can work,” said Louis. “We’ll deliver newspapers. Just take us home.”

  “Please, Mama, let them come home with me.” Thelma buried her face in Abie’s neck, feeling his thighs stiffen beneath her. He must have known her tears didn’t move these boulders.

  “Come, Thelma,” said Mama. “Enough of this.”

  Annie approached. She ripped the child from Abie, holding her collar and waistband as if the girl were a dirty diaper. Annie set Thelma down roughly, and they hurried away behind Mama’s hippopotamus bottom.

  It crushed Thelma that she hadn’t said goodbye before leaving with the enemy. She twisted around and saw Abie, sitting still like a king in his big rabbi’s chair, fingering his baby mustache. Louis wilted beside him, his head bowed.

  “I love you,” she called, voice squeezed tight. “When I’m grown, I’ll marry you both.”

  As Annie dragged her behind Mama, the child promised herself that she would never treat her own children so harshly. They would know love and affection. She would protect them, whatever happened.

  When Annie tugged at her bruised arm, Thelma winced, wishing she had left her there in the Asylum for the Criminally Unloved with the boys.

  Chapter 5

  Annie knew she’d done good. Who could argue? Problem solved. She washed her hands of that bad business with the boys. She wasn’t yet fifteen, and already she had a woman’s tits and a man’s kishkes, guts. She owned the family, and no one would stand in her way. It was her rightful price for protecting Mama.

  Feeling powerful, Annie strode away from the orphanage, an imposing building under the capable care of the solid Mrs. Feingold (no beauty for sure—would it be so terrible to use tweezers occasionally?). The matron ran a haven for Hebrew youth. It wasn’t perfect, but what was? It was a palace compared to where those boys, those goniffs, could have been. They should have been in jail. It could always be worse.

  In Europe, it was worse. The boys should count themselves lucky they weren’
t among those panicked Jews trying to flee Russian persecution into Finland that Annie had read about that morning in the papers. This wasn’t Saint Petersburg. There was no czar. No one had chased those rascals into the orphanage.

  Burning money! What kind of animal did that? They were American-born citizens. And, if you misbehaved, you got what you deserved—not because you were a Jew, but because you were a thug. That was justice. That was fairness. That, she was certain, was never going to happen to her. She wouldn’t let it.

  Annie wasn’t dumb enough to get into trouble. She was going to enjoy the freedom America had to offer: work hard and rise, marry and have children, send them to school and let them be doctors and lawyers and pillars of industry. Maybe even buy a house, a mezuzah on the front door and a yard at the back to hang laundry where no one could see your intimates. A place she didn’t have to share with people like Mrs. Junger, the landlady, who sniffed the air around Annie as if she stank, who shrieked at Mama as if she were a bum. Sacrifice, yes, be patient, survive setbacks, but keep moving forward, like she was today, on the wet sidewalk of Upper Manhattan. She’d won.

  It had begun to snow. The air seemed charged with potential and her power to control her future with Abie shut away. She was going to work hard, get herself and her mother off charity, and improve their situation. Annie believed in a better life, and that included dresses and shoes and occasional trips to the hairdresser. She would find a husband and marry for love—none of this old country arranged-match mishegas. She wasn’t a breeding cow waiting to be milked, not here in America. Of course, she would marry an observant bachelor, but what was the rush? She wasn’t above having a little fun now that she was out of school and learning how to keep books.

  Annie had taken to accounting quickly with her head for numbers. The same in Yiddish or English, they weren’t open to interpretation. They stayed in their columns. They didn’t lie. Add them up and they equaled the same number every time; multiply them and they grew. Annie enjoyed working outside the 106th Street apartment, the daily routine, the smell of the green canvas ledger and the way her boss, old Mr. Nutkis, slowly nodded his head as he reviewed her work, pausing occasionally to put his eyes near the figures, closing the right and focusing with the left. The owner of a wholesale women’s undergarment business, the widower would run his stubby, ink-stained fingers down the debits and then appraise Annie over his wire-framed glasses, tutting contentedly and saying, “Not bad.”

  Not bad. She knew in the language of old Mr. Nutkis that that was good, praise even. She appreciated compliments, given their rarity. Even without completing eighth grade, Annie was already better than her employer’s two red-haired sons, who sat and read the racing forms the moment their father went out to do his business, as if the bell over the front door were the starter gun that had them running for the petty cash.

  Annie wasn’t working at Nutkis & Sons for the entertainment of lazy nudniks, neither of whom were marriage material. She’d figured that out on the first day of work. She didn’t want ginger-bearded sons. She deserved better, even if they would likely inherit their father’s company. And, when she bent over the files, when a son’s frisky hand landed on her behind, accompanied by a high giggle, one hard smack clarified that she was there for her business, not their pleasure. “Do it again,” she’d said the first time, “and I’ll slam your schlong in the file drawer.”

  In general, when the father was out meeting clients, Annie dealt with the boys firmly and swiftly, secure in the knowledge that she had more on them than they had on her—and she was willing to use it. The old man was the one who mattered. He earned her best white-toothed smiles in the morning while her lipstick was in full force. She served him strong tea made the way he liked it, in a short glass with three sugar cubes on the saucer. At the end of every week, she received her paycheck gratefully, not too proud to mention how much it meant to her sick mother and how she appreciated his charity in hiring a young woman without experience. She made the old man feel good about himself, and that encouraged him to feel good about her. At the end of the day, she pinned on her hat, walked onto the sidewalk in shoes she bought herself, and purchased beef at the kosher butcher that went a long way toward smoothing relations with their landlady. This was autonomy, a new kind of freedom Annie relished with small gifts to herself: lipstick and hairpins.

  Annie prided herself on her daughterly devotion, but she was no altruist. A debt was owed, a life saved. She’d first shown her mettle when Papa died, and now she’d done it again, unbidden. She was the mother now, the family boss. But control came at a cost. Without her brothers, Annie had more responsibility for Thelma. The curly-haired kvetch constantly harassed her older sister, always wanting this or rejecting that. Annie hated dragging her kid sister wherever she went. With wet puppy eyes and a perpetually runny nose, the skinny meeskait embarrassed Annie. Her sister wasn’t the kind of kid that strangers admired, saying, “What a pretty girl!” Instead, people on the street stared at Thelma’s emaciated legs and knobby knees and seemed to judge the zaftig Annie, as if she’d intentionally starved the kid. Was it her fault the monkey only ate bananas?

  If Annie stopped to talk to a boy, say, in front of the candy store or by the shoemaker’s, Thelma would hop from foot to foot as if the sidewalk were burning, crying to pee. Or she’d sock the kid right below his belt to steal his attention from Annie, or pick her nose and wipe the booger on her sister’s arm. Exasperated, Annie would lift the girl’s skirt from behind and potch her right there on her droopy underwear. Thelma deserved the punishment, but it only ignited the child. She’d wail and scream and pull away so that by the time Annie turned back to the boy, red-faced and annoyed, he’d be skulking away.

  Who needed all the mishegas? That feral child, forever underfoot, dragged on Annie’s freedom, needy and pleading, “Play with me.” If the usual discipline—pinching and pushing and slapping—didn’t work, Annie needed to show Thelma the harsh alternative. The trip to the orphanage should have made the point that there were worse places to be than by Annie’s side, but it hadn’t gone as she’d hoped. Abie had had to ruin it, sitting there, dry-eyed and unapologetic, blood on his knuckles beside a battered Louis. He even had the chutzpah to demand an apology from them! The schmuck just had to crawl under Mama’s skin and kick her in the heart when she was down.

  Now, as the snow fell softly, Annie felt tempted to peer over her shoulder up the block at the Hebrew Asylum one last time, victorious. But she wouldn’t let herself look back, even to check that Mama and Thelma were close behind her. They could keep up, as far as she was concerned.

  Snow or no snow, she intended to rescue her day off. She had to get home, touch up her hair and makeup, and change shoes. She’d already laid her dress out on the bed. She had a date to meet Frank, the shoemaker’s eldest son, the one with the brush mustache. He was a little older, a little dangerous, muscular, but if she could handle Abie, what couldn’t she handle?

  Energized, Annie paused impatiently at the corner, allowing her mother and sister to catch up. She rearranged her mother’s woolen scarf to cover her rounded head. “I’m so ashamed,” said Mama.

  In answer, Annie hugged her tight, breast to breast, rubbing the older woman’s back with gloved hands and feeling the fat rolls beneath the old woolen coat.

  Crossing the street, Annie took Thelma’s hand. She glanced down at the head she’d shaved last night in anticipation of the visit, fearing the spread of lice. Shorn of her copper curls, the child looked even more pitiful, not that Annie felt the pity herself.

  Thelma glared up at her sister, her wet eyes full of fire.

  “What?” Annie asked.

  “I want Abie.”

  “He’s never getting out,” she said. “That orphanage is too good for him. And if Louis isn’t careful, Abie will drag him down, too, and you with them, little girl. Just you see.”

  Thelma tried to yank her hand away, but Annie clutched the child’s twiggy wrist harder and hurried until
she was dragging the girl behind her. Thelma tried to bite her sister’s arm but couldn’t reach it as the older girl jerked her up on the curb. Despite Thelma’s yelp and a piteous “Mama,” their mother didn’t turn around.

  Chapter 6

  Manhattan, 1908

  Two lonely years later, the Hebrew Association dispatched a matchmaker, a shadkhn, to 106th Street. The widow Pressman wore a black straw hat with a goldfinch perched on top. The bird bobbed as she balanced across the dining room table from Mama, drinking hot tea through a sugar cube and whispering. Thelma sat nearby on the windowsill, her hands squished between her thighs and feet pressed together. She thought the yenta said something about a carrot and a stick: that either Mama could move, or she could marry.

  Within a week, Mrs. Pressman had introduced Mama to Moritz Mandel. The virile younger man had an unkempt nest of curly hair and dense black brows that could have been considered romantic in a situation where that mattered; he and a sister, Clara, had arrived on the Lower East Side from Austria in 1902, the year of Thelma’s birth. Declaring the match, the shittach, perfect, Mrs. Pressman stitched the pair together: a foreign-born goldsmith with steady employment and an experienced American citizen who could keep a home in the old style and make sons. Perhaps Mandel should have struck a better bargain, but he was homesick, overworked, and accustomed to obeying maternal figures in domestic issues.

  After a lunch-hour wedding, Thelma, Annie, and Mama moved to Brooklyn’s Hooper Street. A week later, Abie and Louis returned from the orphanage wearing ragged clothes three sizes too small. They were tougher now, lean and rangy with calloused knuckles and practiced sneers. Abie hardly slept. The pair spent most of their time outdoors, never explaining where they went or who they met. If pushed, they claimed they were at shul, davening, praying. When Mama attempted to direct them, they ignored her. They’d been beaten by professionals. For Annie, Abie only had scorn. He held her responsible for his institutional stretch.