“For two years that doesn’t open, son, don’t worry about it. The bedroom windows do open, though, onto the air shaft. And look how the parlor window looks over the street. That’ll give you some cross ventilation. The little bedroom has a window right on the fire escape, a very nice feature.”
Rose bit her lip. Ephraim stared at his shoes. I could see his toes wiggling impatiently.
“I see you have gas jets in here,” Isadore said. “I heard in American buildings there was electric light now.”
The landlord made a gurgling sound, by way of a laugh. He was a very thin man with big hands, and he kept fingering his watch chain, making sure we noticed. “Uptown. Matter of fact, I just built a new apartment building in Harlem, all modern. For that you’d pay $35, maybe $40 a month. Big building boom in New York but you pay for luxury. Most folks off the boat want to stay here on the East Side anyway—no problem finding jobs or landslayt down here.”
Isadore cleared his throat, put his hands in his pockets, jingled his change and squared his shoulders before he agreed, so the landlord wouldn’t think he was a shlemil. “We’ll take it.”
“Of course you’ll take it. Would I have shleped you up those stairs for the view? Lookit—the last tenants even left a broom and a rag. Your girls can start right away making it nice.” His Yiddish was rough, as if he only used it for tenants.
“Pa,” Aaron said, rubbing his hairy cheek.
“Hush. This is America, isn’t it? We’ll be able to afford better soon, isn’t that right, Mr. Abrams? How long since you’ve been here?”
“Fourteen, maybe fifteen years. From Germany,” he said, as if that made all the difference.
Uncle Isadore ignored the implication. “See, just a little more than a newcomer himself and already a landlord. Am I right? We’ll do fine, we have to start small but keep thinking big. Here it is, $17 for the month, in advance.”
As Abrams was leaving, Aunt Bina stopped him. “And the Horowitzes, how long in this country?”
“Well, here, three years. I don’t know before that.” Abrams shrugged and left.
Bina looked at Isadore. In Odessa it was upstairs, downstairs, a cherry tree in the yard, the most prosperous time in their lives.
“Come, boys, we’re going down to find some nice furniture for our new home,” Isadore said cheerfully.
“How much we got left, Isadore?” Aunt Bina asked.
“Twenty-eight American dollars.”
“You leave twenty here.”
“Now Bina, I got to go down with the boys, start talking to people.”
“Twenty.”
“All right, $8 for the furnishings. But I’m taking $5 for myself. Now that we’re in America you don’t get to say what’s what all the time. I got a few things to take care of on my own.”
She laughed. “Well, Mr. New World, you go, but come back soon. There’s plenty work to do here, to make this a place we can even sleep.”
“Don’t worry, Mama, we’re going to get directions to the street where the gold is,” Ephraim said, leaping back down the stairs.
Aunt Bina, Rose and I scrubbed every surface until our hands and knees were numb. Many of the walls looked worse for our scrubbing, dark blotches showing through the different layers of wallpaper, but at least we had the sense that we were removing strangers’ dirt, leaving our own desire for cleanliness in the corners. By night we had furnished our little rooms. Isadore and the boys dragged up chairs, none matching, and two of what they called bedsprings, creaking, rusty metal squares. One went for Bina and Isadore, one for me and Rose. We put them on old wooden herring barrels and smoothed out our featherbeds—a little lumpy, not exactly clean, yet comforting, even if they smelled still of the ship. The boys grumbled about having to sleep on chairs pushed together. Aunt Bina flattered them about their strength and courage until they gave in.
It was too hot to sleep. Voices and hoofbeats kept waking us.
“Oh, God!” Rose mumbled.
“What?”
“Bugs are crawling on me.”
I got up and lit the gas jet. I saw something move on the featherbed but it was gone quick. I turned the jet down. The room was still streaked with light coming off the fire escape. Rose was curled on her side, with just a plain white slip on. She looked like my sister Sarah, a little, in that position. I lay back down, put my arms around her shoulders. She backed into the curve of me.
“It’ll be all right, don’t worry. I’ll protect you from the bugs.”
“Not even you can save us from bugs,” Rose said.
For some reason this struck us both funny and we started to giggle. I felt the giggle in her hips. From the other room we heard a sharp snore.
“Shh,” she said, “we should try to sleep. It’s not too hot for you like this?”
“No.” It surprised me to think about being too hot. I should have been. I rubbed her soft upper arm a little. I had been packed in with people all my life but I had never felt a naked arm like that. “No, I’m fine.”
“Good,” she said, snuggling.
I felt a blush move through me and I pulled my hand back. I closed my mind up so the bugs couldn’t get in. I hated living with bugs at least as much as Rose did, being bitten in your sleep by things you couldn’t see.
“We live in the world with all its creatures,” Mama used to say, but she still swept the ants out of the house and hardly anything ever bit us in bed. Mama’s house was clean. On Essex Street the bugs lived in the walls, under the loose, uneven floorboards, just waiting for their chance. I could feel their tiny insect eyes on us. I didn’t cross a whole world just to cower before bugs—they weren’t going to boss my sleep! I put my arm back around Rose and followed the rhythm of her ribs into the dark.
The next day we saw a woman and her children sitting on the street in the middle of a pile of furniture, pots and pans, bundles of clothes.
“What’s this?” Aunt Bina asked her.
The woman gave a pitiful sigh. “Evicted—couldn’t pay the rent. Lady, couldn’t you use something? A table, a pot?”
Aunt Bina bought her old couch for two dollars. I was embarrassed that we were buying because of someone else’s misfortune. The evictee, a short, square woman with four young children and apparently no husband, appeared grateful. But from behind a pushcart a yente called Bina a greenhorn for not making a bargain.
“From you, I’ll make a bargain. You got cabbages?”
“The best, four cents only.”
“Four cents! In Odessa this cabbage they wouldn’t feed to the goyim’s pigs. One penny.”
“One penny—you want me to be put on the street like Beryl over there? You won’t find a better cabbage. It could serve as the eye of an idol in India. Your children will bless you for the soup this makes.”
“You think I’m just a greenhorn? Two pennies, that’s the end of it.” Aunt Bina turned as if she was going to walk away.
“May your hand spill the salt and ruin the soup for driving such a bargain. You don’t know how this costs me but all right, two cents.”
“You see, if you mix around, you learn,” Aunt Bina said to Rose and me as the corners of her mouth went up and down with satisfaction. “Now go get those boys to move this couch.” I admired how quickly Bina added up the parts of America. Her eyes were on everything: the laundry waving like a thousand flags between buildings, the signs in Yiddish, Russian, English, the pushcarts piled with bruised fruit and baby clothes, the shirtwaists the younger women wore. Already in Odessa she didn’t wear a wig—Mama and Papa had been scandalized when they found out. Now she gave up even her light summer shawl.
“We may be greenhorns,” she said, “but we’re smart greenhorns, you’ll see.”
So we had a cabbage and a couch. Aaron and Ephraim were supposed to share the couch. They tried sleeping head to toe but you could hear them cursing each other all night long. Aaron was stocky with wide shoulders, and, as the oldest remaining son, was determined to get his way. Ephraim tossed in a state of constant agitation, as if he were trying to sleep quickly so he wouldn’t miss a minute of the new world. Aaron complained that Ephraim’s feet stank and Ephraim called Aaron a bearded biblical bully. By Sunday morning Uncle Isadore got a separate cot for Ephraim, plus a couple of fruit crates to use as tables.
On the second night of the cabbage soup, Bina added a tongue that was delicious with the rye bread we got from David’s pushcart on Broome Street. In our neighborhood we had a choice of four Jewish bakers, just on two blocks. Mrs. Brody told Aunt Bina that David’s was the best, even if he was her second cousin. My stomach acted like it was still in Kishinev—or on the boat—most of the time, but it seemed a little better when we didn’t eat dairy. I even asked for a second bowl of the tongue soup.
Isadore leaned back in his chair, which gave a cracking sound. He sat up straight and wound his pocket watch. “Didn’t I tell you this was going to be a great life? Tomorrow morning, the boys and I will get jobs. Soon I’ll have enough for my own shop again and we’ll get real furniture.”
Aunt Bina looked unconvinced but smiled and nodded at him, stifling a yawn. Since we landed, she’d barely stopped moving long enough to eat and sleep.
“Can I get a job too, Papa?” Rose asked eagerly, though clearly aware of what Bina’s answer would be.
“Isadore, she won’t even be fourteen for three months. Mrs. Lieberman down the hall told me in America it’s against the law to let a girl work before she’s fourteen,” Bina implored, reawakening. “Besides, why should I send her out on the street to find who knows what? She can go to school for free. Think what an opportunity that is.”
I was already fourteen and Aunt Bina knew I was determined to work. I had a queasy feeling of being on the outside, the tag-along they had to bring with them, not figuring in discussions about either school or work. I got up and cleared the dishes.
“That’s right, she’s a child still. Me and the boys, we’ll make so much money, next week you’ll have pearls! Isn’t that right, Aaron?”
“I thought I was going to go to university here,” Aaron complained.
“Well, of course. Absolutely. But you’ve got to know English first and how better to learn than to work? You’ll come with me and Ephraim—we’ll go by the watchmakers and see what’s what. Then you’ll go to night school for English right away. You’ll have to pass entrance exams and you want to be ready. That’s a plan, isn’t it?”
“It’s a plan,” Aaron said with definite misery.
On the landing that night I overheard Mrs. Brody telling the Horowitz boy they were hiring down by Samuel’s box factory, and I decided to find the place the next day. I let Rose in on my idea but made her promise not to tell Aunt Bina or Uncle Isadore. I wanted it to be a surprise, in case I actually got hired. Rose and I blocked and straightened my blue hat, and Rose said I looked so fine she’d hire me in an instant. I felt the job was already mine.
Early Monday morning, as it was beginning to be light, I put on my hat and went out. All the buildings tinged with gray shadow made me feel small, even frightened, that first time I was on the street alone. But by 6:00
A.M.
the peddlers were wheeling their carts into place and people were rushing everywhere, spitting sunflower seeds into the gutters. At first no one knew where Samuel’s was. Finally someone told me to go to East Broadway.
I had a little piece of charcoal and I made a circle on the buildings on the west sides of the streets, at the corners, so I could find my way back. I had to ask directions many times, but at last I stood outside the factory, a long, three-story place surrounded by a high fence. I took a deep breath, walked up and knocked at the first door I saw. A tall woman opened it and asked me something in English.
“I heard you were hiring—.” I started in Yiddish. She silently pointed around the rear of the building. Inside the next door a man chewing an unlit cigar looked me up and down.
“Greenhorn, huh?” he asked in Yiddish.
“Yes sir,” I said. “But if you give me a job, then by next week I’ll be an American.”
The man didn’t bother taking the cigar out of his mouth. His laughter created a trickle of brown spittle that he quickly wiped away. “I bet you will be! All right. I’ll take you on. But work started thirty minutes ago, so today you’re just a learner, no pay, all right?”
“Of course! And tomorrow?”
“Well, tomorrow, you’ll be almost an American—you’ll get one cent for your part on every 100 boxes. In this factory, you’re lucky. We don’t make you work on Shabbes, but you got to come in Sunday or else don’t come in Monday, you understand? You be here tomorrow at 6:30
A.M.
Go to Mrs. Schwartz, over there—she’ll show you what to do.” He made a show of lighting his cigar while waving me away.
It was a filthy place, this box factory. We stood three in a row on each side of a table: the first girl folded, the second glued, the third one collared, putting a band around the box. If you made a mistake, you threw it on the floor and the mistakes were charged against everyone at the table, even the workers on the other side. We waded among scraps of cardboard and paper, sometimes as deep as our ankles. If we whispered for longer than five seconds, Mrs. Schwartz or one of the bigger boys who distributed the box pieces would shush us. Even so, it was noisy. Machines in the back clamped and shuddered as they cut through the box materials, and when the machines stopped for a second I could hear hundreds of hands rustling cardboard. The windows were in a high row at the top of the wall, covered with cardboard dust. The boss had installed electricity to prevent dust fires. A single, bare bulb dangled over each table.
At my station we were putting together boxes for candy. The boxes had a picture on top of an American girl with blond curls and eyes bluer than Rose’s, holding a red ball. At the other end of the room the boxes were for cigars. My co-workers whispered quickly, keeping an eye out for the bosses, even when they had to give necessary instructions. I got to glue. I didn’t like how the glue smelled: a sweetish, nauseating odor. The whole factory reeked, but it was better than some smells I’d recently known. At first I made a lot of mistakes, put on too much glue or not enough, got the pieces crooked. The others at my table—no one was older than fifteen—glared at me. Most hadn’t had a good bath in a long time. “Learners!” they said in disgust, “you don’t even know you’re losing money all day.” But it didn’t take me long to understand the job and I started to go faster.