Bertrand Court (4 page)

Ten days post-miscarriage, I pack toiletries, two shirts, and a peasant skirt into a duffel bag; my jeans don't fit because I'm still sporting a sanitary napkin the size of a diaper. I fly Midwest Express to Milwaukee because the seats are roomy and they serve warm chocolate chip cookies and meals with real linen napkins.

A blond woman in her sixties offers me one of her cookies. “I'm Lois. You got family in Milwaukee?”

“I'm visiting a relative.”

“You got kids?” She adjusts her Coke-bottle glasses. “Those career women forget to have kids until it's too late and then that's that.”

“I have a baby girl.” I entertain a confrontation fantasy with Lois on my way to the bathroom:
Lois, I've lost a baby. I named her Sylvia, and I'm carrying a replica of the fetus made out of raspberry jam and capers in my purse. Would you like to hold her?
The tiny lavatory smells like asparagus pee and jet fuel. I pull the baggie and the spoon out and examine them. Neither one ever truly belonged to me.

I rent a Ford Taurus and drive to Aunt Sylvia's empty colonial house with a For Sale sign planted on the front lawn. I sneak into the backyard and sit cross-legged on her overgrown grass. A ladybug crawls up my big toe. Four raspberries cling to an anemic- looking bush, and I pick them. I open my baggie, which smells vinegary and sweet, and drop in the fruit.

The grass cools my feet as I walk back to the car. While I concentrate on finding my way to the cemetery, I excavate a piece of licorice from the bottom of my purse and run it back and forth between my teeth until it turns into a skinny thread.

Seven white tulips mark Aunt Sylvia's grave. Sylvia Savitz Seigel. What a dreadful name for a woman with a lisp. The thought makes me smile.

I remove my sandals and let my soles sink into the velvety soil. The dirt next to my aunt's grave yields easily as I dig a hole with my fingers. I take the baggie from my purse and place it in the hole. I scoop small chunks of dirt over the plastic with my aunt's spoon, and then I raise its warm handle to my lips and kiss the Hebrew letter
hey
. I drop the heirloom into the earth. A warm breeze tickles me, and I hear a whisper, my whisper.

Yisgadal ve yiskadash shema rabah. Amen.

WHAT HANNAH NEVER KNEW

Goldie Solonsky and Sylvia Seigel, September 1970, 1935, 1937, and 1990

September 1970

Goldie

O
f course Goldie Solonsky said yes when her son asked if Hannah, Eric, and baby Amy could spend the night with her. What bubbe would turn away her grandchildren? “I can still make Rosh Hashanah and take care of the kids,” she assured Simon. “What do you think I did when you and your sister were children?” She told him that she knew from losing a mother and that his wife needed a little peace and quiet.

This morning her husband, Hyman, had taken Eric, Simon's eldest, to the office to show him off. Eric took after Hyman, gentle, plump, and not so good with the books, but blessed with a knack for listening to people and enough street smarts to find his way, she often reassured Simon, who worried about the boy too much. Hannah, on the other hand, for that one everything came to her on the first try, and Amy, well, she was still a baby so it was too early to tell.

Goldie put Amy down for a nap and began peeling potatoes for her kugel. Hannah sat at the kitchen table sorting her rubber bands by color until she grew bored and asked for a job. “Can I cut the onions, Bubbe?”

“Let's wait until you are seven for that. You'll need all of your fingers to play jacks.”

“Can I grate the chocolate for the icebox cake?”

“Your aunt Sylvia will be here soon, cookie. She'll take you across the street and run you around but good.”

Hannah pulled a doll from the Milwaukee Sports Club gym bag her father had loaned her for her sleepover. Fancy. The club had just started officially accepting Jews, and her Simon, famous for fixing noses and bosoms, was one of the first to join. Hyman wouldn't have cared about the club even if they'd accepted him. He'd never wanted to shower with the goyim; too many times he'd gotten it for having a different shmeckl.

Hannah fed her doll with a fake bottle. Goldie thought her granddaughter was a bit old for dolls, but what did she know about little girls? Her daughter, Marlene, had run off to San Francisco ten years ago and barely picked up the phone to say hello. Miss Broken Finger.

“Your baby hungry?” Goldie glanced up from a heap of peeled potatoes.

“Yes, Melanie wants Cream of Wheat.”

Hannah held her doll to her shoulder with tenderness. This was a child who knew from love. Goldie felt proud of Simon for being such a good father, and proud that he'd picked such a loving wife. So she was bossy, which had only gotten worse when she started burying her nose in those Gloria Steinberg books.

“You're a good mommy, Hannahle.”

Hannah's eyes brightened. “Do you have a special spoon too?”

Goldie reached into her top drawer and handed her granddaughter a teaspoon.

“No, Bubbe, a baby spoon.” Hannah grabbed the end of one of her pigtails — her hair was black and curly like her father's — split it in two, and tugged.

“My baby is thirty-five years old.” Goldie chuckled.

Hannah put her hands on her hips. “Well, Aunt Sylvia doesn't even have kids, and she has a baby spoon.”

A chill ran up and down Goldie's back. “What baby spoon?”

“It was small and shiny and silver, and it had a little Hebrew letter on it.”

Goldie could tell Hannah was feeling like a real big shot with this piece of grown-up information. “A
hey
,” she murmured. Her limbs felt heavy. She wanted to pour herself a glass of ice water and sit down for a second. She had specifically asked Sylvia at Mama's funeral if she'd seen Grandma Hannah's baby spoon, and Sylvia just shook her head in her sweet Sylvia way and said not a word, so Goldie assumed that it had been misplaced. The funeral was more than thirty years ago, but she remembered it as if it were yesterday.

“Are you okay, Bubbe?”

“Of course I'm okay.” Goldie's tone was harsher than she meant it to be. “Bring me that tin. We'll split a pecan bar.”

Hannah's eyes, brownish black like Goldie's, grew round. Goldie never interrupted her cooking and baking for anything.

The cookie felt like chalk on Goldie's tongue, but she tried to pretend that a treat was just what the doctor ordered. After everything she'd done, all those envelopes of money, all the fights with Hyman when he insisted that she should just let Sylvia fend for herself, all the times she turned her head the other way when Sylvia's good-for-nothing husband, Irving, showed up in his fine wool suits, all the nights Sylvia spent on Goldie's sofa, all the Shabbat dinners and seders and Rosh Hashanah lunches and the care packages that followed. Not to mention the fact that Sylvia had never so much as invited her over for a grilled cheese sandwich. Why wouldn't Sylvia have wanted Goldie's children and grandchildren — whom she practically pretended were hers sometimes — to take their first bites from the spoon that had touched the mouths of generations of their family's babies? Goldie couldn't even think to peel a potato she was so hot. This one she couldn't blame on Irving.

Hannah examined her bubbe, in that way that made Goldie uneasy, as though her granddaughter were twenty years old already, as though she could see right into Goldie's heart. “Let's go watch for Aunt Sylvia, Bubbe,” she suggested in her sweetest voice.

Goldie always felt better when her hands were busy. She led the little girl to her newly reupholstered chair, forest green with gold stripes. “Go get me your hairbrush,” she ordered. Hannah returned with the brush and a glass of ice water. “That's a new coffee table. Use a coaster, dear.” Hannah placed the glass on a coaster and sat on her knees in front of Goldie, who brushed the tangles out of her hair just as she and Sylvia had done for each other when they shared a bedroom back in Mama's four-room apartment on Burleigh Street.

“There she is, Bubbe!” Hannah pointed out the window to her aunt, still slender and a looker. Hannah had inherited Sylvia's figure, thank God, and not her mother's schmaltz or her father's pear shape that hours of schvitzing in the gym couldn't change. “She's here, she's here! Do you think she brought raspberries?” As Hannah turned around to face her grandmother, Goldie knew what she would read in the little girl's expression. Hannah had never once looked as excited to see her own bubbe as she was to see this woman whom Goldie had thought she knew better than anyone, including Hyman.

Chic in her pantsuit from Gimbel's and her fresh set from Minsky's, Sylvia waved up at Hannah. Goldie's neighbor, Zelda, recovering from her corn surgery, limped to her mailbox and nodded at Sylvia, who kissed her cheek and made a beeline for Goldie's steps.

Goldie hauled herself out of the chair and rushed to her bedroom, where she listened to Hannah's breathless chatter, something about a Barbie doll that talked or some such mishegas. “I'll be out in a second, Sylvia,” she called, trying to make her voice sound normal.

Business had been good for Hyman that year. Goldie took her knippel, a fat brown envelope filled with bills she'd been socking away, into the bathroom and sat on the toilet to give herself another minute, but she couldn't stop herself from thinking bad things about her sister. She'd been too generous, and not only with the money. “Simon, have you called your aunt this week?” “Simon, go shovel your aunt's front step.” “Simon, take the kids to see Sylvia; they need to know their aunt.” “Sylvia, you play with the kids. I'll fiddle around in the kitchen.”

Goldie was sobbing now, and the tears were going to give her away. Once she started, though, she just couldn't
stop. She would frighten Hannah, who, like Sylvia, missed nothing. She buried her face in a bath towel until her shoulders stopped shaking. Cold water helped, but she would need a miracle to hide her puffy face.

Sylvia knocked on the door. “Goldie, you okay in there?”

“Just a little indigestion. Take Hannah to the park.”

“You sure? You don't sound so good.”

“Go.”

When Goldie heard the door close, she came out of the bathroom and began chopping potatoes again. Halfway through the second potato, Sylvia and Hannah returned for Hannah's doll. Goldie just wanted to keep chopping, but for the sake of her Hannah, she had to force a smile. Sylvia looked worried, and Hannah looked scared. Goldie's eyes were so swollen that they felt like buttonholes in her head.

“Come on, my little monkey. Come and show me your trick on the bars.” Sylvia stroked one of Hannah's plaits and guided her out the door.

The envelope felt heavy in the pocket of Goldie's slacks. Part of her wanted to look her sister square in the eye and hand her the money, instead of her usual pretending that it just appeared like magic in Sylvia's pocketbook. Part of her wanted to keep the money and splurge on a trip to Florida with Hyman next winter. Most of her wanted to turn back the clock, to tell Mama that Sylvia was the older one and she should take care of herself, or maybe even Goldie, once in a while.

Goldie finished peeling her potato, then reached for another and another. After she added egg and flour and onion to the bowl of chopped potatoes, she grabbed Sylvia's purse from the kitchen table, returned to her window chair, and zipped the envelope into the side compartment of her sister's bag. She watched Hannah and Sylvia emerge from behind the big slide in the middle of the park; Sylvia put out her hand, and Hannah grabbed it. From the way they tilted their heads, Goldie knew they were sharing a laugh, a good giggle. And nobody knew better than Goldie how warm it felt on the inside of Sylvia's laughter.

September 1935

Goldie

Goldie thought she might plotz if she had to wait one more second to tell Sylvia the big news. Every few minutes, she peered out her living room window, waiting for her sister to come help her prepare her first Rosh Hashanah feast.

She fluffed her new chair, delivered fresh from Zellen's Furniture Store just in time for this important lunch. If Sylvia ever got here, she would help whip up cabbage rolls, three kinds of kugel, brisket, and of course Mama's icebox cake. The men would eat until their paunches strained against their belts, and the aunties would squirm in their girdles, pledging to eat bread and water for days after the meal. But Goldie and Hyman wouldn't announce their news to the family, not yet, too soon.

She could see everything from the new chair, including willowy Sylvia finally waltzing down the street. Rays of sunshine poked through an umbrella of elm trees, catching the reds and golds in her hair as she moved in and out of the light. Her narrow shoulders drooped from lugging shopping bags brimming with last-minute items Goldie had asked her to pick up at Saltzberg's.

Marshall Plotkin broke from a game of kick-the-can to give Sylvia a big hello. She used to babysit for half the boys on the west side of Milwaukee before she married that Irving. Back then, Goldie didn't share her sister's enthusiasm for children; she preferred to meet her girlfriends at Walgreen's to gossip over chocolate phosphates and French fries. But now, everything had changed. Goldie was going to be a mother.

Zelda Greenberg waddled out of the bottom half of Goldie and Hyman's duplex and stopped Sylvia to look into her grocery bags. Sylvia, too polite to end the conversation, smiled and nodded for what seemed like hours while Zelda nattered on, probably kvetching about her corns; she was always kvetching about something.

By the time Sylvia let herself into the kitchen, Goldie's impatience had gotten the better of her. She got up, fluffed the indentation of her body from the chair, and walked toward the kitchen.

“You're too nice to Zelda Greenberg, she probably asked you how much you paid Saltzberg for the groceries. She's got real nose trouble,” Goldie said as she pulled a place setting for Zelda from the breakfront in her dining room. Calmer now that her sister was here, she savored the anticipation of sharing her secret, just like she used to love sharing a string of black licorice at the matinee.

Sylvia retrieved a pound of ground beef and a bunch of parsley from a shopping bag and placed them on Goldie's kitchen table. “Isn't collecting strays what you're supposed to do on Rosh Hashanah?” She started giggling; her laughter, thick as honey, filled the room.

“What? What's funny?”

“Birdie Finkelstein's cement cakes.”

Goldie couldn't contain her smile; she could never stay sore at Sylvia for long. “Mama said Birdie dropped one of her honey cakes on her foot and broke her toe.”

Goldie and Sylvia shared a good laugh.

“I've got a surprise for you.” Sylvia set a bowl on the counter. “From my garden.”

“A farmer we've got in the family.” Goldie peeled away the tinfoil and nearly gasped at the mound of perfectly shaped raspberries. “We'll put them in the applesauce.”

“Whatever you like.” Sylvia's eyes — Mama's eyes, gray and slightly bulging — shone with pride.

Goldie couldn't hold in her news any longer; she patted her belly and smiled big. “You're not the only one with a surprise.”

Sylvia paused for a second, and then her eyes widened and she pulled Goldie to her body and hugged her tight. “Mazel tov, mazel tov.” She sniffled.

Tears of joy. This was exactly how Goldie wanted it to be when she told her sister she had killed the rabbit. She reached deep into the pocket of her housedress and pulled out the crisp white handkerchief Sylvia had given her for her last birthday.

Sylvia examined the embroidered pink roses and inscription:
Always, Sylvia
. “It's too pretty to use.”

“Go ahead, blow already. We've got work to do.”

Sylvia blotted her upper lip, leaving a small dot of pink lipstick. “I'll take it home and wash.”

Neither sister would speak another word about the baby. Mama had always warned them that gloating, or even discussing their good fortune, was a sure way to attract the evil eye, especially when it came to babies. Goldie used to think this was mishegas from the old country, but best to be careful anyway. She certainly wouldn't dare mention Grandma Hannah's sterling silver baby spoon, smuggled from Minsk. Goldie had always figured that Sylvia would have the first baby because she was older, so she'd get the spoon first, but now Mama would give Goldie the spoon after the first baby came, of course, and she and Sylvia would pass it between them. Like Grandma Hannah and Mama, like Goldie and Sylvia, all the babies in the family would take their first bites from this treasure.