East Side Stories:Tales of Jewish Life in the Lower East Side of New York in the 1930's (21 page)

 GIRL OF HIS DREAMS

Danny stood outside the candy store, he had a little time to spend before he would have to go back to his house in the tenement and finish his homework. He glanced across the street at the fruit and vegetable store, she, Frieda, was not there. Only her parents and one customer were visible through the grimy store window. Danny would have liked to have seen Frieda, a glance of her would have been sufficient for him.

He had watched her over the many months, been drawn to her, at times seen her standing on the stoop of her tenement house, staring out into space. What was she thinking of? Who was she thinking of? It had alarmed him, it still did now, that she would be thinking of another young man. Danny wanted to be her boyfriend, he wanted to talk to her, be with her.

He told himself he would ask her for a date. Yes, he would, the next time he saw her. He would get the money somehow, two dollars would be sufficient, more than enough. Seventy cents for the movies for the two of them, seats in the orchestra, not the fifteen cents second balcony seat that he always purchased for himself, climbing up and up still higher, up the stairs of the Loew’s Delancey that seemed endless. Then after the movie maybe forty or fifty cents for ice cream sodas for the both of them at a really nice ice cream parlor. That made a total of a dollar and twenty cents, well, a dollar and a half would do for the date.

He really hadn’t had a talk with her, just a polite hello to her when he entered her parents’ store to buy five cents soup greens his mother needed, which Frieda wrapped in cylindrical fashion in newspaper. She had replied with an almost automatic echo of his word. He didn’t know whether or not she knew his name, but she would, oh, yes, she would, he told himself.

He glanced at the empty stoop to her house. He was thinking of what he would say to her, what she would reply to him. They would be walking down Delancey Street smiling to each other, he was holding her arm, the scenario forming in his mind when he heard the voice of the candy store owner.

“Danny,” the candy store man said. “Go up and get Frieda, you know, from the vegetable store , go up to her house and tell her she got a telephone call. You hear?” Danny nodded. “Apartment 3D.”

Nobody Danny knew had a telephone, well, almost nobody. Maybe his Uncle Sol who had been a dress cutter and now was a partner with three others in his Bon Ton Frocks, a dress factory on Seventh Avenue, yes, Uncle Sol had one. But everybody else he could think of, those countless people in the tenements around him relied on the system of calling the neighborhood candy store, ask for someone to be called to one of the store’s telephone booths. Calls within the city limits cost five cents, the caller almost always would be telephoning from the pay phone of another candy store.

“I’m going,” Danny said. He looked up at the third floor of the tenement opposite where he stood. Dark was falling, he could see glass windows painted yellow by the setting sun.

The candy store owner said,
“Gay schoin!
Go already! Go!”

“I’m going, I’m going,” Danny said.

As he raced across the street, entered the dark hallway of the tenement and bounded up its worn steps he was thinking of his friend Izzy, who had told Danny that he had been the messenger for two separate telephone calls for Frieda.

“A guy?” Danny had asked attempting to sound casual.

“A guy,” Izzy had said. “I was inside the candy store when he called and I answered the telephone. He had a deep voice, like this,” Izzy had forced his voice to its lowest pitch and had croaked out, “Call Frieda. Apartment 3D.” Izzy’s voice cracked and he had stopped.

Another guy? Danny thought sadly. Older, maybe. Maybe. No, Danny couldn’t let it happen, he would ask Frieda out for a date, now, tonight. It wasn’t fair.

And Izzy had said, “—the crazy things you see when you go upstairs to tell somebody there’s a telephone call. Like that time with Mrs. Klein—”. Danny was blotting out the words, still thinking, another guy, no, it can’t be. Izzy had gone on, “—like sometimes a man comes to the door in his underwear, sticks his head out, like that. And Mrs. Klein, once I came up there to tell her about a telephone call, I was in her house while she was looking in her bag for the nickel to give to me. You know she’s got a crazy thing hanging on her wall, crazy. A big cardboard target on one of her walls, you know a big bull’s eye. Clean, no marks on it, like those things you throw at it, you know—”

“Darts,” Danny had said almost unconsciously.

Over the years he had gone from reading Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan series as well as his science fiction books. Having finished those, Danny had gone to mysteries, to Sherlock Holmes, Philo Vance, Charlie Chan, a host of others, all he could find in the public library. When he had graduated to more serious fiction, he had read about the game of darts being played in English pubs.

“Yeah, darts,” Izzy had said. “But you sure see and hear crazy things, don’t you?”

And Danny had thought, A boyfriend calling Frieda? No. What would she be doing with a boyfriend? Danny had never seen her with one, nobody in the neighborhood had even mentioned there was one. Danny desperately did not want to think about that, as he groped about for another answer.

Waiting expectantly for the reply Danny had asked Izzy, “Was it somebody from her family maybe?”

“How should I know?” Izzy had replied. And Danny had asked whether Izzy had overheard any of Frieda’s conversation when she had been in the telephone booth and Izzy had replied, incredulously, “I don’t listen in to girls when they talk. What for? When they talk to their girlfriends, to hear about dresses and shoes, things to wear, things like that? Or when they’re talking to their boyfriends, listen to that mush? You think I’m crazy, or what?”

Well, maybe it had been from someone from the family, someone, an aunt or maybe an uncle or Frieda’s
zaydeh,
grandfather, maybe was sick. Yes, maybe that was it.

He found himself in front of the door to the flat marked 3D. Puffing with exertion, he had raced up the staircase, why he didn’t know but he had and now he stood outside in the hallway as his breathing began to return to normal.

He knocked on the door. “Who is it?” Frieda’s voice called out.

“Me. Danny.” The door opened. There she was. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. He found himself saying, “There’s a telephone call for you down at the candy store.” Her face brightened with a smile.

She said, “Thanks. Wait, wait a minute.” She turned, went into the kitchen, returned with a coin in her hand, said, “Here, thanks.”

Danny stared down at the nickel in his palm. He didn’t want her money. No, what he wanted was to be with her. Not this. Not to be treated like Izzy, or the others, those who had been merely messengers, instruments to inform her that there was a call for her. They didn’t care for her like he, Danny, did. Nobody could care for her like he did.

As she went to shut the door of the flat he moved away and accidentally brushed up against her. He wanted desperately to touch her hand, to hold it, to tell her, No, don’t go. And if it was a boyfriend he would say to her, I’m here, you don’t need anybody else.

She was running down the stairs, the heels of her shoes making sharp staccato sounds, he raced after her. Down into the street, across to the candy store, to the telephone booth where the ear piece hung dangling from its heavy wire.

She shut the door of the booth, picked up the hanging piece and began to talk into the mouthpiece. Danny loitered in the candy store attempting to listen, but all there was for him was the heavy glass of the folded door of the booth muting and muffling her words, her words that he could not understand.

Something seemed to have gone out of him. He tried to reassure himself, No, it wasn’t a boyfriend, it couldn’t be, she had no boyfriend. But there were those doubts, they would not leave him, he was besieged by them.

Finally she was done. At last, Danny sighed to himself. She opened the booth door, was out into the store. Danny followed her into the street, across to the stoop of her tenement house where she stopped when he called out her name.

“Yes?” she asked. He mumbled something, her name. He found himself feeling childish, acting childish, the words that had sounded so good in his mind had vanished. Other, disconnected words came from his mouth. What was the matter with him? She was looking at him, a small smile on her face. She said, in an understanding tone of voice, “It’s okay. I’ve got a few minutes to spare.”

He had been staring at her, at her face, her figure. She was a nice girl, he would treat her tenderly. Suddenly embarrassed, Danny looked away from her face.

Stumbling over the words he said, “I don’t want your nickel. Here.” He put out his hand, the metal of the coin was damp with sweat from his tight hold.

“No,” she said shaking her head. “It’s yours. You earned it.” No, no, no, he was saying and she said, “Yes. I want you to have it.”

He stared down at the coin in his hand, and as his gaze returned to her, he said, “Will you—Will you go out with me? I mean, about a date.”

She began to laugh softly. “I can’t,” she said. “I don’t have the time.” The sound of her laughter made him feel as if she had struck him.

His face reddened with embarrassment, he wished it hadn’t, but he couldn’t control himself. He said, “Okay, okay. If that’s the way you want it.”

She quickly said, “I’m not laughing at you, Danny. Honest.”

He felt better. He felt the hot flush ebb from his cheeks. “Then go out with me,” he said.

“I can’t. I’ve got things to do.” She gazed at him for a moment, and with a rush of breath said, “Danny, you know, I’ll be getting busy with Party work—”

Party work? he thought. What party? Whose party? And it suddenly came to him as he said incredulously, “The Communist Party?”

She was nodding vigorously. “The Party. Yes, someone just called me and said I’ve been accepted. You know how it is on the phone, you can’t say a lot, he just said I was in.” She was laughing softly as she came closer to him. “What do you believe in? Do you believe in the Party?” she asked.

He didn’t know what to say. Over and over again he had heard the words, bourgeoisie, petit bourgeoisie, capitalists, the masses, workers, the proletariat, fellow workers. He had heard the phrase, Religion is the opium of the people.

He had heard all those words and more, the arguments, the words flung in heat from family member to family member, the party-line words from his Uncle Moe and his wife, the rebuttal, if it could be called that, mainly by his Uncle Sol whom everybody in the family called the rich Uncle Sol, but who could not compete with Moe in argument, not that Uncle Moe’s words had any validity with Danny, they hadn’t. But Uncle Sol was incapable of original thought, he didn’t read, what he did was bury himself in his business. That was his life. And all Uncle Moe did was parrot words that had been supplied by the radical newspaper, the Daily Worker.

He remembered the family gatherings at Zaydeh’s house held every few months which the four sons and three daughters, all married, had attended, the, grandchildren running pell mell through the railroad flat, the rooms of which ran in a straight line from the front to the back of the building. The entire place smelled of that delicious aroma of stewing meat simmering with carrots and onions. Danny’s seven aunts and uncles had brought food along with them, cakes, apple strudel, bread, rolls, a carton of tea, fruit. The women had brought chopped liver,
latkes,
pancakes, a sweet carrot dish,
tzimmes.
There, before they ate, each uncle had approached Zaydeh, and had pressed money into Zaydeh’s gnarled hand.

The rich Uncle Sol and his family always arrived last. They entered the flat, Uncle Sol kissed Bubbeh, his mother, and as he said hello to Zaydeh, Uncle Sol palmed folded money bills to his father.

The women began to bring the food to the table in the dining room where the adults were to eat. The children ate in the kitchen, their noise spilled out to the rest of the flat. A child began to cry and its mother hastened to its side. Those at the table, the first adult shift, ate quickly, not many words were exchanged in the hurry to make room for the second shift.

At the table Uncle Sol said to Uncle Moe, “Well,
vee gates,
how’s it going?”

Uncle Moe said, “How can it go in this stinking country? You tell me.”

“A-agh!” Uncle Sol said. “Again with the Communist talk?”

“What do you mean, you capitalist, you! You got a business, the
schmateh
trade, you and your rags, you’re bleeding the workers white while you sit back with your fat cigar—”

“What cigar? What bleeding the workers, what sitting back, I work eighteen, twenty hours a day. What’re you talking about?”

“And how do you live and how do your workers live, hah?” Uncle Moe said.

My Aunt Ruth said, “Will you both shut up? The same old story, like a victrola.” She had graduated high school before the Crash, had taken piano lessons. She had read the best of literature, Shakespeare, Dostoievsky, Dickens, Tolstoi.

“Ruthie,” Uncle Sol said,
“farmacht der pisk,
shut your mouth. I’m talking.”