East Side Stories:Tales of Jewish Life in the Lower East Side of New York in the 1930's (3 page)

 MARRIAGE

They sat at the tan porcelain-topped table in the kitchen, her mother and father sitting next to each other and she, Claire, across from both of them. The overhead light fixture with its small electric bulb burned dimly. Across from her, past the heads of her parents, Claire could see the window in the kitchen, a wide window that was part of the wall that separated the kitchen from the unlit dining room, its bulky furniture dark shadows in the gloom of the other room. Another window, less wide, at the end of the kitchen looked out into the rear yard of the tenement building, the outside all blackened by night. Behind her, near the kitchen sink was the bathtub standing on its four clawed metal feet, the top of the tub covered with its large removable porcelain lid, black irregular chips showing here and there, especially at its edges. When David, Claire’s younger brother, came home from school that was where he did his homework.

Her father was saying, “What are you talking about? Do you know what you’re saying?” Turning to her mother, he said, “She’s talking
narrishkeit,
foolishness, she don’t know what she’s saying. Go on, you talk to her.” He threw up his hands in a gesture of resignation. “I can’t talk to her.” He turned to his daughter in a swift motion and asked, “What language am I speaking, hah? Do I speak a foreign language to you, do I?”

Her mother put her hand over her husband’s tightened fist that now rested on the table. Glancing from her daughter to her husband, she said, “Listen, Morris, don’t excite yourself. Don’t get a heart attack. You come home from the shop, you worked enough. Don’t get excited.” And to her daughter just as her son, David opened the door of the flat and entered into the kitchen, “Your father works like a dog all day for them, the Margulies, in their shop. Don’t let him get excited. You hear, Claire? Listen to him, he wants the best for you.”

“Ach!” her father said angrily as he removed his hand from his wife’s clutch. “What do they care, Claire, even David? Nothing. Not a thing. What am I to them?” Glancing angrily at David, he said, “You got a look on your face I don’t like to see. You got something to say, I don’t want to hear it.”

Standing near the table, David had stopped to listen. Disregarding his father’s remarks, he said, “What’s going on?”

“What’s going on?” His father said. “Don’t you hear? Dear God, don’t you have ears?”

Now his mother said to David, “Claire don’t want to get married.”

“Not to him!” Claire snapped. “I don’t want him! Why can’t you—?

“You don’t want him?” her father said incredulously. “He wants you, you don’t know how lucky you are.”

To Claire her father’s voice went on and on, all the words familiar now, the slow drip of the kitchen faucet a soft punctuation to his words. She glanced across the room to where David’s cot stood folded and erect against one of the walls, a flowered print material covering its bulk. She became lost in the flowers of the material as her father’s voice droned on and on. It was the same thing over and over again, never ending, always hammering at her, beating at her, there was no escape. And always, however hard she tried to make her parents understand her feelings, there was total incomprehension, their words flung at her, Why was she acting like this? Didn’t she understand the prize she would be getting? other girls would do anything to get a catch like that. What was wrong with her?

David remained standing, a spectator, his eyes slowly moving over the three of them. Claire burst out, “He’s forty-eight, he’s an old man, I can’t do it, I don’t want to do it.” She turned her head away from her parents, staring deeply into space, seeing nothing.

“So he’s forty-eight, so what? He’s still young. He’s an accountant, he’s got a good job. Who’s working these days? We got a Depression, yeah? Who’s making a living? Tell me. What do you want to do, marry somebody from your shop, someone who’s always out of work? A
koptzint,
a pauper,” her mother said.

“He’ll make you a good husband,” her father said leaning over the table, his face closer to Claire’s. “He’ll make a good living for you.”

Her mother moved closer to Claire, her chair scraping across the scarred linoleum, and now her voice was pleading as she said to Claire, “You won’t have to worry about what to eat, you’ll have to eat, or about the rent, about buying clothes. You’ll live in a nice apartment with steam heat, not like here,” she said pointing to the black coal stove that was on the other side of the room. “Not like here, a tenement. A toilet in the hall for three flats. You like that, hah? You’ll have a frigidaire, not the box that we got on the kitchen window outside, that metal thing nailed to the window outside we use in the winter, and that icebox there.” She pointed to the aged wooden appliance in the room, painted green and peeling in scabrous blotches,” and she said, “in the summer David has to
schlepp
up the ice on his back every two days and the basin underneath it is always running over with melted water. You like that? Or would you like to live like the rich people? He’s a good man, he’s rich, he makes,” she accented the words, and said, “a hundred and fifty dollars a week,
ma-ma-nyu,
a millionaire.”

“What kind of a life is this?” her father asked.

Claire said nothing. Breaking the silence David said, “Why don’t you leave her alone? You’re killing her with all your words. Leave her alone.”

“Ah!” his father said furiously. “Now this one, here. With the big mouth. Fourteen years old and he knows everything. What do you know, you
pisher,
you baby?” His wife was tugging at his arm to stop his shouted flow of words but he was saying, “Do you know how to make a living? Do you know what it is to have no work and a family to support?” His words were racing now. “Do you know what it is to have the electric company shut your lights? Do you know what it is when the grocery store says they can’t keep you on the books no more because you can’t pay what you owe them? Do you know what it is,” his father jumped up from his chair and glared fiercely at David as he said, “not to be able to pay the rent and they throw you out in the street, like the Goldsteins, hah?”

“Morris, Morris,” his wife said as she jumped up from her chair and went to her husband. “Don’t get excited. Sit down. Please.” And to her son as she pulled on her husband’s arm, “Don’t be a fool, David. Keep quiet. Show respect for your father. You have no right, you hear me? No right! He slaves for you.” Turning to Claire she said, “And for you too.”

Claire was still sitting at the table, she looked up and said angrily, “I’m twenty-two. I work too. I bring in money.”

“When you work,” her father said, sitting down once more at the table. “Remember that. How many weeks did you work this year? Tell me. And tell me how many men you liked that the
shadchen,
the matchmaker, brought to you, hah? And you say, this one’s too short, this one’s too bald, this one’s too old, that one limps.” He was breathing heavily now and he roared out, “What do you want?” Glancing at all of them shouted, “What do you want from me?”

“Don’t yell,” David said. “The whole building will hear you.”

“You shut up!” His father said. “Who asked you? Keep your mouth shut!”

“Is that the way to talk to your father?” his mother said angrily to David. “Go to the other room! Now!” David hesitated and his mother said, “Now, I said!”

David glanced at Claire, gave a great sigh. He turned and went into Claire’s bedroom, a room off the kitchen. Inside, he pulled the chain of the electric fixture, the room became darkly visible in the anemic light. He sat down on the bed, its springs creaking. He was tired but he would have to wait until the family discussion, if it could be classified as such, was done.

His bed, the folding cot in the kitchen, could not be opened until the entire family had left the kitchen and gone to the two bedrooms. Now, from the other room, the kitchen, he heard the voices of his father and mother and Claire, and in the small silences between their hurled sentences, there was distant hum and sound from the other apartments in the tenement building, the creak of a floor when someone walked across it, the squeal of the small wheels of a folding cot being brought to the center of a kitchen, the flush of a toilet with its strangled liquid sound.

He lay back on the bed careful that his shoes did not touch the blanket beneath him. He stared into the dark ceiling, Claire’s voice was saying, No, no, no, I don’t want him! pleading now, her voice begging, almost crying.

“Goddammit!” he heard his father say. “I’m going to bed. To hell with all of this! I’m finished! You hear?”

There was the sound of his footsteps across the kitchen floor, the slam of the bedroom door. Outside, in the kitchen his mother was saying to Claire in a soft voice, “My child, listen carefully. Listen to me. Marry him. You won’t have this kind of a life like this. Is this what you want? Better yourself.” Claire mumbled something and her mother said, “What is love? Foolishness. Something from the movies. Go live on love, see if that will bring you something to eat. You can starve on love, your heart breaks for your children because they have nothing, nothing, because of love. A living, a man who makes a living for you, that is really love. So you can buy a dress, a pair of shoes, go to the country in the summer with the children. Don’t live like a
schlepper,
a nothing. Listen to me.” David heard the scrape of the chairs in the kitchen. His mother was saying to Claire, “Go to bed. Go. Think about what I said. Do you think your father and mother want bad for you? You are my child, I want the best for you.”

“Yes, yes,” Claire was mumbling. He heard the sound of the pull of the chain cutting off the electric light in the kitchen, he heard his mother go into her bedroom, he heard Claire moving slowly, the door of the bedroom opening as she entered the room.

David sat up in bed and as Claire wearily sat down beside him she muttered, “I can’t, I can’t.”

“You don’t have to,” David said. “You shouldn’t be forced to. This isn’t the Old Country, this is a different time.” There was the distance of years between the both of them, she an adult, and what was he? He didn’t know, both of them living together yet living in different worlds, and he put his arms around her, his sister, her face now beside his. He could hear the sound of her breathing, loud and labored and he whispered to her, “Marry who you want, you listen to me. Don’t marry that old man. Don’t.”

To his amazement he found that he was crying now, crying for his older sister who had suddenly, strangely, come back to him.

“Don’t cry, David,” she said to him in a strangled tone of voice. “Don’t.”

And David was saying, “I won’t let you, you can’t do it. You’ll die. You deserve better.”

And she, in a strange, haunted voice, lost, faraway, muttered more to herself than to him, “I must, I must do it.”

 THE CANARY WHO PLAYED CARDS

The Canarrick they called him, the Canary, sitting at the table holding the cards of his poker hand close as he trilled a soft whistling tune through his teeth. His face a blank, he flittingly glanced at the other three players around the table, each of them studying his cards.

Bulldog, with his jutting lower jaw, his wide face and short flat nose, looked up from his cards towards the Canarrick, gave a humorless smile showing his uneven teeth as he asked, “You got a good hand, hah?”

“Maybe yes, maybe no,” another player, Adler, said. “You sing that song and you say,” and imitating the Canarrick’s recent rhythmic words, “maybe yes, maybe no, hah, then I figure you got maybe two pair, at least. Yeah?”

“Maybe yes, maybe no,” the Canarrick replied trilling his tune once more.

“At least a pair aces,” Levin, the fourth player said. “The Canarrick he can afforda to throw this kind of money in. Me, I can’t. I didn’t have no work for a long time, it’s a big slack season.”

“What slack season?” Adler asked, shaking his head sadly. “Nobody’s buying, nobody’s selling, nobody’s working.”

Levin and Adler worked in the garment center but work was scarce, if at all. They spent their time in going to the shop and being told, no work today, maybe tomorrow, come back.

The Canarrick had become a professional gambler, he only worked at sitting in on poker games. Years before, he, Bulldog, Levin and Adler had all worked in the same shop in the garment center but it had all been too haphazard for the Canarrick, the long interminable stretches of no work and no pay, it was a crazy way to make a living. It had been too much for him and he had given it up and had, over time, found an aptitude for poker. That had become his livelihood.

Bulldog was a gambler too, having teamed up with the Canarrick, but now and then he would do some peripheral jobs for the local gangsters, nothing serious, picking up money perhaps, bringing it from one person to another, a sort of petty money messenger. Sometimes, just to pass the time away both he and the Canarrick would play this small meaningless game with their old friends.

Now the Canarrick was about to reply to Levin’s remark but Bulldog said to Levin, “I know what the Canarrick’s going to say, why only a pair aces? Why not two pair, a straight, maybe?” Bulldog discarded three cards from his hand, Adler two cards, Levin three cards. The Canarrick just sat there, staring at his cards, trilling a peeping tune. “Hey, Canarrick,” Bulldog finally said. “How many cards?”

“I’ll wait, I’ll wait,” the Canarrick replied.

“Wait? For what?” Levin asked.

“After we get our cards,” Bulldog said. “I know him. He waits, he waits, just to see how things go.” Bulldog gave a short laugh and said to Levin and Adler, “Makes you a little nervous, hah? What’s he got there, the Canarrick, you ask? A straight, a royal flush, maybe? Maybe he’s bluffing, maybe?”

“Maybe yes, maybe no,” the Canarrick said in a singsong voice. “And why not? You think royal flushes are for everybody else and not me?”

Bulldog dealt the required number of cards to Adler and Levin, now he looked at the Canarrick and asked, “It’s your turn. How many?”

The Canarrick shook his head. “I’m pat,” he said in a flat almost distant tone of voice.

“Yeah, sure,” Adler said without looking up, busy studying his cards. “He’s got nothing. He’s bluffing.”

“Wait and see,” the Canarrick said with a smile.

Levin, having studied his hand, stared hard at the Canarrick, shrugged and said, “Two cents,” as he tossed the coins towards the center of the table.

Adler sighed and looked at the small pile of coins in front of him. “I’m out,” he said in a disappointed tone of voice. “These cards are no good. Hey,” he said to Bulldog, “what kind of a dealer are you, hah? Terrible cards, just terrible.”

He sighed, threw his cards in as Bulldog said, “You must be lucky in love.
Ai, lieber!
Love, love! Adler, a regular movie star, hoo-hah!”

The Canarrick picked up a coin, nonchalantly tossed it into the pot where it landed with a clink on the other coins in the center of the table. “Five cents,” he said.

“Hey!” Levin said somewhat angrily. “It’s a penny and two. We’re not millionaires around here. Come on, Canarrick, it’s not right. We made an agreement, a penny and two.”

“Look,” the Canarrick said to him. “I’m your friend, yes? How am I going to tell you I got you beat? Sure, you put your money in already, but Bulldog, now it’s his turn to get in or out. He’s going to raise me.” He turned to Bulldog and said, “Am I right? You’ll raise me and I’ll raise you and Levin, he’ll put in his few more cents, he’ll be caught. But he’ll lose.” He turned back to Levin and said, “You’ll lose.” And now to Bulldog, “And so will you. I got you all beat.” He paused for a moment then said, “Look, I told you. Now it’s up to you.” Sitting there in that small silence he began his trill.

Bulldog laughed, a deep rolling sound.
“Ai,
Canarrick,” he said. “An actor, that’s what he is.” And with a smile said in a confidential tone of voice to Levin and Adler, “Don’t tell him but I’m telling you right now, I got him beat.”

Levin dropped out of the game, stared moodily out the kitchen window of Bulldog’s sister, Rifkeh’s, flat. Rifkeh was working in a shop that miraculously had some work. Her eleven-year-old son was away at school and during the days when she worked and when he came home, one of the neighbors made lunch, sometimes

supper for him. Her husband, Mottel, years before had come to America with her and their then small son but Mottel had found himself a complete stranger, an outsider in this alien land, and after a year of working in the shops had suddenly disappeared and gone back to Europe.

About six months later Rifkeh had received a letter from him, begging her forgiveness, telling her how impossible it had been for him, maybe America was for her, but it was not for him. After that letter there had been complete silence, Mottel, had become lost somewhere in that place beyond the ocean, buried by time and distance. A few years ago, she, still a pretty woman, had applied for and been granted a divorce by the court.

The Canarrick had attached himself to her, they were going steady, he had suggested moving in with her but she had refused. She wanted to get married and the Canarrick had told her he would marry her sometime in the future when he could support her so that she wouldn’t have to work. Over and over she had pressed him, time was going by, why shouldn’t they get married? Didn’t he love her? She loved him. And he had replied, You know how I feel, Rifkeleh.

When Bulldog had moved out of Rifkeh’s tenement flat to live with a single woman he had recently met, when he told his sister he was leaving, he said with a laugh, Rifkeh, I’ll take
mein puhr zachen,
my few things, my fifty-three things, a deck of cards and my shirt and I’ll go. He had roared after saying that but she had not been amused. She had stared angrily at him and had asked, And how will I be able to pay the rent, Bulldock? That was the way she pronounced his name. Well, Bulldog said, the Canarrick, he wants to live with you, yeah? Rifkeh attempted to control herself as she stared icily at her brother and Bulldog said, he’ll help pay the rent.

Terrible, terrible, it had been awful for her and she had screamed at her brother, What am I,
a koorveh,
a prostitute? And Bulldog with a look of innocence had said to her, Who said anything like that? Did you hear me say that? When? You’re a good woman,

you will live with the Canarrick, he’s a good man. He likes you, you like him. He tells me he will marry you just as soon he gets some more money together.

So Bulldog had moved out, his double bed in the second bedroom had come to be used by her son, Leo, and the Canarrick had moved in with her.

Now sitting at the kitchen table, Bulldog raised the ante, eased back in his chair and waited for the Canarrick’s reaction.

“Your five and ten more,” the Canarrick said tossing in the coins.

Through the swirl of cigarette smoke Adler, dismayed, looked at Levin and said to the Canarrick, “Hey! This is a penny and two game, a game with friends, yes? What do you want, blood?”

“Yeah, yeah,” the Canarrick said glancing at Bulldog. “But this betting don’t hurt you no more, yes or no, Adler? It’s between me and Bulldog and he can afforda it.”

Bulldog stared long at the Canarrick. Finally he said, more for Levin’s and Adler’s benefit, “I know you, Canarrick. I know when you’re for real and when you’re a bluffer. So you really got yourself a good hand this time, hah?” He threw his cards on the table.

The Canarrick grinned, dropped his cards face down on the table. As Bulldog began to reach for them the Canarrick said, “Hey! You didn’t pay, you don’t see.” Staring at Bulldog the Canarrick scrambled all the cards, his hand became lost in the deck. “You know better, Bulldog. You and me, we been in too many games together. You didn’t see me, right? So you don’t see my hand.”

“Agh-h,” Bulldog said with a disgusted wave of his hand. “That’s for real games, not this one, this penny game, we’re friends here.”

As the Canarrick raked in the small pile of coins, Levin said, “I’m finished here. Let’s go to the cafeteria for a coffee. We can sit there and
schmooz.”
Adler and Bulldog nodded.

The Canarrick had become tired of this game, there was no real tension, there was no real money involved, there was only cards dealt, a few pennies tossed into the pot, it all meant nothing, it was not a real game. Adler and Levin were his friends, but, well, this was not the game for them, they had no money. Maybe they thought it was money, but to the Canarrick it was nothing, just petty tokens. He yearned for a real game, one with the pot heaped with dollar bills, with suspicious eyes staring around the table looking at the backs of the cards held by other players, with the grunted remarks from some of them, with cigarette smoke clouding the air, where he felt alive, not like this boredom plastered on boredom.

“Bulldog,” the Canarrick said. “We got to get us a real game.” He glanced quickly at Adler and Levin and said, “Not that this ain’t no game, but I mean, a real game.
Fahr gelt,
For money. You understand?”

Levin stared at the Canarrick. “What’s the matter?” he said. “We’re
koptzunim,
paupers, already?”

“No, no, no,” the Canarrick replied. “It’s a different kind of game. You know.”

“Yeah, I know,” Adler said.” The
gelt,
the money. That’s what makes it different, hah?”

Bulldog arose from his chair and said to them, “Adler, Levin, what
narishkeit,
foolishness, are you talking about? The Canarrick remembers his friends, you know that. It don’t matter how much they make or how little. Come on,” he said to the two of them, “we go to the cafeteria, we have a coffee, we
schmooz
a little, like friends do.” Looking down at the table he saw the Canarrick still sitting there idly picking up a card at random and flipping it into the strewn pile near the center of the table. “Come on, Canarrick, let’s go.”

“Yeah, yeah,” the Canarrick replied. Rising from the table he began to whistle while Bulldog began to rake in all the cards, formed them in a neat pack and stowed it into its box.

“Hey, let’s clean up the place a little, yeah?” Bulldog said. “When Rifkeh comes home from work the place should be clean. She works late at the shop.” He took the boxed pack of cards, stowed it in a drawer nearby, emptied the cigarette butts and ashes from the filled ashtray into the garbage can, opened the window to air out the room. He was careful to replace everything as it had been before they had started the game, he didn’t want Rifkeh to know they had idled their time away instead of looking for something productive to do.

Rifkeh knew they gambled like this sometimes during the day, she knew that the Canarrick and Bulldog would not look for work of some kind, for something honorable not like this gambling and not like Bulldog’s association with the gangsters, but she tried to convince herself that both men were trying, were looking for work. Bulldog wanted to keep it all that way, she with her fantasy, he and the Canarrick with their gambling.

As they were leaving the flat Bulldog said to the Canarrick, “Rifkeh told me you ain’t staying out tonight, you’ll have sopper with her and the boy.” The Canarrick nodded and Bulldog said, “Me, I go to
mein maydel,
my girl, she’s got a good sopper for me.”

“So that’s what’ll be,” the Canarrick said. “There’s no game tonight, I looked. Anyway it ain’t so bad eating with Rifkeh and the boy. That Leo, he’s a good boy.”

“Good?” Bulldog said as he locked the door of the flat. “He is the best. And such a smart boy,
ah zah yuhr ahv mir,
I should have such a good year. He gets A’s in school, you should see his report card, AAAA, the teachers all talk about him, such an honest boy. He’ll maybe be a doctor or a dentist, a lawyer maybe, you’ll see.”

Adler, walking down slowly on the flight of stairs began to laugh and said to Bulldog, “So when you’re good and sick, you’ll go see him, the doctor, after all you’re the uncle and you’ll get a free treatment. Not bad. I wish I had someone like that.”