That was the worst thing. The jumbling. Not remembering. It was like losing him all over again. But she had no control over it. It was, she thought, like the waves at the beach. They came in so strong and real and beautiful, and then somehow they lost their power and dribbled into foam which melted and disappeared even as you watched.
“I’m cold,” Davy complained.
She pulled the earflaps down on his leather hat and put his icy hand into her pocket.
“I don’t wanna go,” the child whimpered.
She thought of the classroom full of snobby little girls in their lovely costumes. Her hand tightened around his. “I know, Davy. I know.”
Chapter seven
The March winds that are supposed to come in like a lion and go out like a lamb blasted the trees of Orchard Park, bending them into question marks. Outside, little yeshiva girls crowded the streets as they hurried to school, their gloved hands clutching their heads to keep the crowns of tinsel from sailing off. There were no yeshiva boys in the street. Their classes began half an hour earlier and ended an hour later. This was no coincidence. The neighborhood’s rabbis and teachers had colluded to put the boys safely behind closed doors before the girls came out. Besides, the extra time was needed to drill the boys in Talmud, the sacred Oral Law of the Torah forbidden to females.
“You’re walking too fast!” Tamar complained, her pudgy feet beginning to go numb in the tight party shoes whose thin soles did nothing to insulate them from the freezing pavement.
“It was stupid to wear those silly shoes! And take off some of that stupid red lipstick!” Rivkie ordered her, all pretense of kindness dropped once out of their parents’ earshot. “And don’t
twirl around in that dress, it makes you look like a little elephant…”
Tamar, her hands thoroughly occupied in guarding her headdress from the marauding wind and her skirt from the filthy wet pavement, could not even wipe away the quick tears that froze on her cheeks until the wind whipped them away. “I don’t!” she planned to cry out, but the wind filled her throat and choked her, carrying off her words. She closed her mouth and hurried to catch up with her sister, which she was never quite able to do.
Rivkie was always just a little ahead of her. It was not that her legs were so much longer, but rather that she walked forward deliberately with no pauses to look at shop displays or pretty curtains flapping in windows or gasoline rainbows on sidewalks. She was not burdened by imagination or the idle dreams that slow a person down or detour them from getting through the simple, ordinary goals of life. And she never stopped to look back or to wait for anyone else to catch up.
Tamar was constantly distracted. The authoritative honk of a new car, the tramp of feet, the glitter of crystal in pavement, were all enough to excite her wonderment and curiosity, which she satisfied with the expensive investment of time in dreamy reflection. Often, she got lost. Often Rivkie got punished for losing her.
“It’s freezing! Hurry up, you dummy!” her sister called over her shoulder with her usual kindness and patience.
Tamar struggled with the shoes, her frozen feet, her chapped wet face, the ballooning dress.
Jenny walked Davy up the stairs of the old brownstone and knocked on Mrs Cohen’s door. She felt Davy’s hand tighten around hers as the crack of light widened in the hallway and Mrs Cohen’s no-nonsense voice welcomed him in. The apartment was chilly and smelled like something old carefully waxed and polished, but not quite clean.
Jenny urged her brother over the threshold with a yank on his arm. He swayed a little, but his feet gripped the floor. He wouldn’t budge.
Jenny bent down to him, surprised. “What’s the matter, Davy? Does she hit you?” she whispered.
He shook his head no.
“Well then, you’ve got to go. Mommy says. It’s just like school. Everybody’s got to go to school,” she coaxed him, her sympathetic voice loosening his feet just long enough for her to drag him over the threshold. But when she tried to leave, his fingers just tightened around her skirt until, finally, she had no choice but to pry them loose almost cruelly.
She ran down the steps. But once outside, her footsteps slowed, exhausted as only a small child can feel handling adult problems. She felt so sorry for her brother: shy, affectionate, easily frightened little Davy. Why should he have to spend his day with strangers? She felt the rage and pity tighten her jaw and chest muscles. She had every child’s intuitive hatred for injustice tremendously heightened by the bereaved child’s experience with death, the ultimate injustice. Although she was not particularly vehement or headstrong, unfairness drove her to extremes.
The feeling lodged in her heart as she slowly crossed the street, defying the wind and the lateness of the hour, ignoring the bone-chilling shadow of the overhead el, which had sucked away whatever weak and useless sunlight there was. She was in no hurry to get to school.
As she neared the familiar quaint brick building, she was shot full of a whole new set of emotions that made her stomach go queasy. She was the new girl in the class, the one who lived outside the neighborhood. The one who had no father. And no new clothes. And who didn’t know Hebrew very well… So many things to be ashamed of. So many disabilities to hide and overcome. And now she would be the only girl in the class—if
not the whole school!—who would not be wearing a Purim costume. Her stomach turned over.
“Yehudit!” she heard someone calling in the distance. It was her Hebrew name, the name the school had given her because Jenny was too American, too goyish. Most of the other girls had been given two names by their parents: a
real
one, for parents and teachers and synagogue and friends, and an American one, for hospital records, passports, and naturalization papers. So Shaindel was Shirley. Baila was Brenda. Zissel was Zelda. There seemed almost a terror of discovery, a desire to hide the strong Orthodoxy, the differentness, from the authorities.
“Yehudit!”
Who was calling her? Her eyes blinked and squinted against the wind. It was Tamar (somehow she didn’t remember her English name, since no one used it. Was it Tammy?), one of the few kind children she’d met in that class. Tamar was not really her friend, though. Friends, after all, you invited to your home, and you went to theirs. She’d never been invited to Tamar’s, and if she had been, she’d have made up some excuse to beg off. She was terrified of owing a return invitation. No one must ever know where or how she lived. They must never know about the couch full of holes, the panties hanging over the chipped bathtub, or the ash of incinerator smoke that coated the grimy windows. They must never know about her mother, who worked all day like a man, who wore no white apron and baked no cookies and had no dinner on the table. They must never know about the bed in which her mother slept alone and the shameful cold earth that held her father.
Still, Tamar’s friendliness warmed her cold heart. She hurried toward her. “Tamar! You look so… so…” She gulped as she neared her, taking in the thick makeup, the extravagant flounce of blue tulle, the mountain of jewels. It was all a bit too much, even for a child’s taste. “It’s so… beautiful!” she finished kindly, for want of a better word.
“Do you really like it?”
“I really, really, really, really, really, really… do!” she assured her, deciding to love the flamboyance without reservation, seeing in it a just compensation for her own total lack. Together they were perfect. Tamar linked her arm happily through Jenny’s.
They giggled.
“But you should see my sister. She
really
looks beautiful!” Tamar told her, thrilled but uneasy with the compliment, her cheeks still burning from the icy tears.
“I think you look fantabulous!” Jenny said generously, using the ultimate accolade known to little girls in the 1950s. She had no interest in the distant older sister, who’d already disappeared inside the building, anyhow.
“You also look fantab—fantab—lous,” Tamar answered, struggling valiantly with the four syllables, two too many. She gave her friend a sudden searching stare. “But what’s your costu… ?”
“I’m an Ohel Sara girl, dressed for school!” Jenny tried gaily.
“Well, that’s… that’s a…” Tamar floundered, searching for something encouraging to say. “That’s a very fun idea, to come regular! I bet no one else will have such a fun idea!”
Jenny smiled at her, painfully.
Just then a car shiny with chrome and with tail fins that practically spanned the street pulled up at the curb. A Hasid got out and opened the door, his chapped hand holding down his black
shtreimel
against the wind. Picking up her skirts daintily, Hadassah Mandlebright stepped out onto the pavement.
The girls on the sidewalk surged forward, coalescing into an admiring throng. Their eyes shone with the light of envy, awe, and admiration one sees in the eyes of fans. She nodded to a lucky few, waved to privileged others, ignored the great mass, which included Tamar and Jenny, who soon found themselves pushed
back as the girls surrounded Hadassah and ushered her up the stairs like ladies-in-waiting to some little queen.
“
Oooh
, what a fantabulous dress!”
“Ahh, it’s got real beads!”
The voices gushed and gushed and rose with girlish relish, filling the corridors.
Tamar and Jenny followed the entourage up the stairs with slow, thoughtful steps.
“Did you see the velvet and the beads?” Tamar whispered with frank admiration.
“No, not really good,” Jenny said carelessly, her stomach turning over in desire, the memory of the gorgeous beaded velvet dancing in her head like a fairytale.
The classroom was large and well heated, with a cheerful collection of decorations depicting the lives of biblical heroes and illustrating maxims from Proverbs. Screams and giggles and shouts of hilarity filled it as the little girls took off their heavy winter coats, gloves, and hats to reveal the costumes underneath. They hugged each other and touched the tinsel and paste and ribbons and scarves with innocent delight.
Jenny sat down in her seat quickly, taking out her books.
“You look so gorgeous, Hadassah!” a group of girls began, inundating her with an effusion of praise that had it been water would have soon drowned her.
A faint smile of acknowledgment played around Hadassah’s tight lips, but her eyes ignored them all.
“It’s the prettiest color!” Freda Einkorn gushed. She was the daughter of a diamond merchant, a Kovnitz Hasid. She considered herself Hadassah’s best friend, although she had stingy evidence to prove it. She was constantly, nervously wooing her.
Hadassah’s lips compressed and her nose wrinkled as she turned malevolent eyes on Freda.
“I mean, you are the prettiest girl here,” Freda stammered,
unnerved. “I mean, look at Tamar!” she tried, knowing Hadassah loved to talk behind other girls’ backs. “What is she supposed to be?” Her eyes rolled upward mockingly.
“Why don’t you ask her?” Hadassah said. It was more like a command.
“Tamar, what are you supposed to be?” Freda asked, nudging Hadassah and making a big show of trying and failing to keep her lips straight.
Tamar stood a little straighter, spreading her blue skirts to their full advantage. “Queen Esther,” she said, delighted to have been asked, missing all the unpleasant nuances that would have rung warning bells and set off red flares for a more wary child.
“Well”—Freda rolled her eyes, looking at Hadassah for approval, believing she’d found it—“that’s the first time I ever saw an ugly Queen Esther!”
Tamar’s rosy face went pale.
There was dead silence broken only by a few nervous giggles.
“You take that back!” Jenny said suddenly, rising behind the protective shield of her desk.
“Why, what’s it to you, butinsky?” Freda bristled.
“You doody-head! Take it back, I said!”
Freda took a step back. She was hopelessly in the wrong and knew it, which makes even a small child nastier than they really are. “Why, you’re not dressed up at all! I mean, look at her!” she suddenly addressed the class, her eyes sweeping the room anxiously to unearth allies. “Just an ugly old blouse and skirt…” She looked at Hadassah a bit desperately for approval. But Hadassah’s eyes had a faraway look of boredom.
“I came as an Ohel Sara girl on her way to class,” Jenny said weakly, her defiant eyes beginning to cloud in humiliation at this public interrogation.
“That’s no good. That’s just nothing at all!” Freda hooted unpleasantly, taking a step forward.
A mysterious light came into Hadassah’s eyes. “You’re wrong, Freda. It’s a swell idea,” she pronounced. “It’s the swellest idea I ever heard,” she said to the total annihilation of Freda Einkorn. She walked over to Jenny.
“I think Tamar looks beautiful!” Hadassah said charmingly, her perfect white teeth gleaming in her lovely face. “And I think your costume is the best idea I ever heard. Please, please, trade with me? Just for a day?”
Speechless, Jenny just stared at her.
“Tell Tamar how beautiful she looks, Freda. Go ahead, tell her. Have a little
chesed
. You know you’re not allowed to talk
loshen hara
,” Hadassah called over her shoulder, never taking her charming smile off her charming face as she continued to look at Jenny. “Tell her. I can’t hear you,” she said a little louder.
“I guess,” Freda agreed sullenly.
“Will you? Trade me? Even steven? Yours for mine?” Hadassah begged Jenny. “Pretty please?” Her charming smile went a notch higher, into mesmerizing.
Jenny, with all the caution of a small starving animal who knows its vulnerabilities in venturing forth for food, hesitated. “I don’t know,” she finally answered, examining the other girl’s eyes for signs of mockery or worse—charity. She found neither. “If you want.”
Hadassah caught her hand and led her urgently to the bathroom. They took two separate stalls. “Push me your clothes underneath, and I’ll push you mine.”
When they returned, the class stared, amazed.
Later, Mrs Kornbluth, their teacher, told the other teachers the entire story. “A little
tzdakis
, a true saint. Such an act of
chesed
—kindness—to give that poor child her own beautiful Purim costume.” Of course, the story got back to the
admor
of Kovnitz before lunch, and made the rounds of all the Hasidim before the day was out. It was repeated with pride and awe and
deep spiritual satisfaction. The apple doesn’t fall far, they told each other in triumph.