The Boston Girl (6 page)

We got a suffragette in the family.

Starting in September, Levine wouldn’t stop talking about Thanksgiving. “The Americans say a prayer before they start eating,” he said. “What do think, Mr. Baum?”

“By us it’s not a holiday,” Papa said.

“Why not? We live in America so we should celebrate like Americans. This week I filled out citizenship papers for Celia and me. My boys were born here so they don’t have to worry. Not Addie, either. But the rest of us, we have to apply.”

“For what?” Papa said. “So they can find us easier to throw us out? Or put boys into the army?”

“For voting,” said Levine.

Betty sniffed. “So why should I bother if they don’t let me?”

Levine clapped his hands. “We got a suffragette in the family. What do you think, Celia? Is Betty right? Should women vote like men? Celia?”

Like always, Celia was mending clothes and not paying attention. She had dark circles under her eyes and she’d gotten so thin that her clothes hung off her like they were pinned to a clothesline.

Levine said it again. “What do you think about votes for women?”

She looked lost, so I said, “Of course women should be able to vote. In Australia, they vote, and in Denmark.” After a year in the Saturday Club, I’d heard a lot of lectures about suffrage and I was about to tell him all the states where women were already voting in America when Levine put his hands up.

“I’m not fighting with you. Mr. Louis Brandeis says that in Palestine women should vote; that’s good enough for me.”

“You are a modern man, Mr. L.,” said Betty.

“I hope so. And I want you all to come to eat by us for Thanksgiving, like real Americans with turkey and apple pie!”

Celia did hear that. “You never said anything before.” She looked terrified.

“Maybe you should have given her a vote,” I said.

“It’ll be fine, Celia,” he said. “Addie will help you. I’ll give her the whole day off from work—with pay.”

Mameh made a face. She had tried to teach Celia to cook, but Celia burned everything she put on the stove and nicked her fingers whenever she picked up a knife. She couldn’t boil water and chop carrots at the same time and whenever Mameh tried to correct her, she covered her face with a dishcloth. “Who would have thought a girl who sews with such golden hands would have trouble peeling a potato?”

Celia’s apartment was a wreck: pots and dishes piled up in the kitchen, dust in the corners, and a sour smell of dirty clothes. Mameh got so disgusted, she stopped going.

But I missed Celia and went to see her a lot, though I wasn’t sure Celia was always glad to see me. Instead of “hello” she would apologize for the mess and then try to clear the table so we could have tea, but first she had to wash the cups and then she couldn’t find the tea. She never seemed to finish anything and she never sat down.

But the worst thing was how Levine’s sons treated her. In the beginning, they were real monsters. Myron, who was six, was just plain nasty when Celia talked to him, and Jacob, the three-year-old, copied what his big brother did. Every time Celia gave the little one a bath, she got black-and-blue marks all over her arms.

But no matter what they did, she wouldn’t let anyone say a word against them. “Imagine how they must feel to lose their real mother. Who am I? A stranger.”

Things got a little better after Levine gave Myron a smack for talking back to her. But “better” meant that they just ignored her, which wasn’t hard to do since she was getting quieter all the time.

The day after the big discussion about Thanksgiving, Levine was waiting for me at the door when I got to work. “Your sister says no turkey. No matter what I tell her, she won’t have it in the house. It would be a nice thing for the whole family. I want you to talk to her. The boys would be so disappointed.”

I thought Levine was the one who would be disappointed, but I understood how he felt. Every year in school we learned about the Pilgrims and how the Indians gave them turkey. I wanted to have Thanksgiving like the pictures in the newspaper, too, but not if it was going to make Celia miserable. I couldn’t take his side against her.

I told him it would be better if he asked Betty to argue for the turkey, figuring she’d be able to talk Levine out of the whole thing. She was always telling Celia to stand up for herself.

But it turned out that Betty agreed with Levine. “It’s not such a big thing,” she said. “He doesn’t ask anything from us and we’re all better off because of him, you most of all. You have to help me to talk Celia into it.”

Betty hadn’t been to Celia’s apartment for a while and after being shocked at the mess, she took off her hat and gloves and started washing dishes like it was something she did all the time.

“You don’t have to,” said Celia.

“Of course not,” Betty said. “Now go comb your hair.”

After the sink was empty and the table was clean, Betty poured us tea.

“This is so nice,” Celia said and smiled like I hadn’t seen in months.

Betty patted her hand. “So what do I hear that you won’t make your husband a turkey?”

Right away, the light went out of Celia’s eyes.

“How can she cook a turkey in this place?” I said. “Do you see a pot big enough? Do you see an oven?”

“He’s her husband,” said Betty. “He pays the bills, he wants what he wants. I told Herman he could buy one of those cooked turkeys from the Italian butcher.”

“Treif meat in my house?” Celia whispered, like she didn’t want God to hear. She rubbed her hands up and down her cheeks. “No. If it has to be, you can come here to eat, but chicken from the kosher butcher.” The tea went cold while Betty came up with one argument after another, but nothing changed Celia’s mind. Finally she said, “Maybe you should go now. I have to make something to eat for him and the boys.”

As soon as we got outside, I said, “Since when are you calling him Herman?”

“What are you mad about?” said Betty. “You’re the one who told him to talk to me. He doesn’t know what to do with her anymore. She’s crying all the time, even in her sleep. So I told him how she didn’t talk for a whole year when Papa brought us to America. At first, she cried so much she would make herself throw up. She walked in her sleep, too. She’s not a strong person, our Celia. She is afraid of everything.”

Betty lowered her voice. “And I mean everything. Since the wedding night she hasn’t let him near her. I mean in the bed. Can you imagine? All these months? He could divorce her for that.”

I tried to think where Levine and Betty could have talked about such a thing: across from each other in a restaurant where strangers could hear? In his office after I left? In Betty’s room?

“I give him credit,” Betty said. “He’s doing his best with her. I told him, if worse comes to worst, I can bring the turkey from the Italians. Celia doesn’t have to eat it.”

But it never came to that.

Somehow, Celia won the turkey argument and Levine said we would have Thanksgiving chicken at five o’clock, which was a ridiculous hour since usually no one got off work until six. But Levine said that was when regular Americans ate, so we would, too.

Papa made fun of the goyishe simcha, the gentile party, but the week before the holiday he asked me to tell him the story about the Pilgrims and the Indians. Mameh decided that she would make a tsimmes of mashed carrots, “So at least there will be something to eat.” Betty said she would help Celia clean the apartment and Papa went to the barber. I thought maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all.

I thought I was in love.

You remember my cadet, Harold Weeks? Well, I did see him again.

I was on my way to Saturday Club when a man in a dark overcoat walked up to me and said, “Pretty hat on a pretty girl.”

When I realized who it was, all I could say was “What are you doing here?”

He said, “Aren’t you glad to see me?”

He’d gotten posted to Boston and “looked me up.” He remembered that I’d said something about my Saturday-night meetings and did some snooping.

Who knew you could be too happy to speak? He had gone to all that trouble to find me when I was sure he’d forgotten all about me. It was like a dream.

He said he wanted to take me to dinner and I said yes.

He talked as we walked, though I was practically running to keep up with those long legs of his. He told me he didn’t like being in the coast guard anymore. He was bored all the time and his shipmates were stupid. He didn’t sleep at all when they were at sea, and the Boston barracks were disgusting. His uniform didn’t fit and he hadn’t had a decent meal in weeks.

We went to a famous restaurant that I’d never heard of where everyone was eating things that didn’t look like food to me: clams, oysters, lobsters. But I thought it all had to be good, because everything was so elegant. The tables were set with heavy silverware and wineglasses, and the waiters wore big white aprons and moved around the room like they were on roller skates.

The women were wearing beautiful dresses and gorgeous hats with big feathers. I thought I must look like a weed in a rose garden but Harold didn’t seem to mind. He was excited about the menu and ordered a huge amount of food and a whole bottle of wine.

I tasted the lobster, which wasn’t bad. But the clam was so slimy I swallowed half a glass of wine to wash the feeling out of my mouth. So then I was tipsy, another first for me.

I could hardly look at Harold eat the oysters. “You don’t know what you’re missing,” he said.

He was better-looking than I remembered. His teeth were perfectly white, his fingernails were perfectly clean, and in the gaslight his eyes were blue-black. When he talked, I could feel his voice vibrate inside my head, as if I were standing next to a big bell.

When the waiter brought coffee, Harold said, “I haven’t shut up all night, have I? What about you? Are you still working at a shop?”

I couldn’t remember what lie I’d told him and was trying to think of a way to change the subject when I recognized a man sitting across the room.

“See the old man by the potted plant?” I said. “The one with the white beard who looks like he’s going to fall asleep in his soup? I heard him give a lecture about Longfellow once.”

Harold took my hand under the table and moved his leg so it was touching mine. “Longfellow, eh? I didn’t realize that you were such a highbrow.”

I forgot all about time until we walked outside and I asked how late it was. If I got home past nine thirty, Mameh might send my father out to find me, and if he went to the settlement house, Miss Chevalier would think I had used the club as an excuse to do something I shouldn’t. I hated the thought of disappointing her—never mind what would happen at home.

Harold said it wasn’t even nine o’clock and his curfew wasn’t until eleven.

When I told him I had to start for home right away, he stopped smiling. “After a meal like that, I figured we’d take a walk and have a little fun.”

I said I was sorry but I couldn’t be late.

He took off up the street with his shoulders bunched up around his ears and I really did have to run to catch up. Eventually he slowed down and put his arm around me. “I never stopped thinking about you, Addie,” he said, and when he leaned down to kiss me, I kissed him right back.

“That’s my girl,” he said.

I was his girl! He pulled me into a doorway and we kissed some more.

—

I didn’t have a telephone number to give him, so Harold and I decided to meet in front of the State House the next Saturday night.

Keeping that secret made me feel like I was living inside a novel. The week seemed like it would never end. I kept bumping into things at work and at home I was so touchy, Mameh said she was going to give me an enema, which was her cure for everything.

For our second date, Harold took me to a Charlie Chaplin picture. I loved Chaplin, but Harold seemed bored and after a few minutes he kissed me and then, well, he got fresh and I told him to stop it.

When we left the movie he asked if I was afraid of him.

I tried to make a joke out of it. “Should I be?”

He chucked me under the chin. “What do you think?”

It was still early, so we walked along Washington Street with all the other couples that were strolling along arm in arm. Harold said that on one of his walks around the city he had found a wood carving that looked exactly like the ships his family built. “It’s on the door of a bank, so nobody notices it,” he said. “It’s one of my favorite things in Boston. How about if I show it to my favorite Boston girl?”

We left the crowds and walked to a street where all the big banks and lawyers’ offices were. In the daytime it was crowded and noisy, but at night it was like a cemetery and I got a little nervous.

Harold knew a lot about the decorations on the sides of the buildings—what they stood for and when they were made. Then he stopped. “Here we are.”

The door he wanted to show me was at the end of a long entryway, where it was so dark I couldn’t see the carving at all. Harold took my hand and ran it over the outlines of the boats and the water. And of course, we started kissing.

Like I said, Harold was a really good kisser, and by then I was really getting the hang of it, so I closed my eyes and stopped thinking. But then he started getting rough. He bit my ear and pawed at my chest, and when I tried to push him away he pinned me against the wall. The next thing I knew, he had his leg between mine and was pumping against me hard, with his mouth clamped over mine so I couldn’t tell him to stop. I could hardly breathe.

It didn’t last long. When he pulled away he kissed my cheeks and my forehead, sweet as could be. Then he sort of growled, “Now I bet you’d like me to say that I love you.”

Not very nice, is it? Not the kind of thing you tell your granddaughter. I don’t think I ever told anyone about that particular experience. Who was I going to tell? Filomena would say not to see him again and I didn’t want to hear that. I thought I was in love.

—

I must have mentioned something about where I worked because that’s where Harold sent the letter. It started “Darling,” and was full of compliments. I was wonderful, I was smart, pretty, a good sport, and modern. He said he’d never met anyone like me—a real city girl but not hard. There was even a little pressed flower in the envelope.

He said he was going to Washington, D.C., for a few days, but I should pick a time and place for our next date and he would be there “or die trying.” I thought that was very gallant.

I wrote back for him to meet me at nine o’clock in the morning on the State House steps on the Thursday that was Thanksgiving. I had the day off to help Celia, but I could still get to her house in plenty of time. And since it would be broad daylight, I wouldn’t have to worry about him getting fresh.

I went a few minutes early but Harold was already there, waiting for me with a rose. It was the first time I’d ever seen him in the daytime and I was swept off my feet all over again. The brass buttons on his coat were gleaming and the sun made his black hair shine. He had grown a little moustache, which made him look dashing and older. “You look so handsome,” I said.

He laughed. “For that, you’re getting breakfast at the Parker House.”

I knew all about the Parker House. I asked if we could get some of their rolls.

He said I was adorable. “I don’t think they let you out unless you eat one of those things.”

There were Oriental rugs and a big chandelier in the lobby, which was as quiet as a library, but the restaurant was completely different—loud, and cloudy with cigar smoke from tables full of men wearing good suits. I was the only woman in the room except for a white-haired lady who was drinking tea and reading a newspaper.

A boy in a white jacket brought us coffee and a basket of those famous rolls, which were beautiful and warm.

Harold told me about all the important people he had met in Washington and how pretty the monuments were. “You have to see it sometime.”

When he finished his bacon and eggs, Harold put his hand on the inside of my knee and said, “Look at you—taking everything in with those big green eyes of yours. It’s just like the night I met you, I thought to myself, now, here’s a girl who’s on the lookout. You were free as a bird, Addie. The new woman.”

I tried to move my chair back and said, “How could you know all that about me from just a few dances?”

“I know talent.” He squeezed my thigh. “That was a real lucky night for me. But then, I’m a lucky man.”

Harold stopped the busboy from refilling my coffee cup and asked for the bill. “I’ve been assigned to the coast guard commander’s office. My father may have had a hand in that. But I don’t care; it’s a way out of that damn barrack.”

I told him that was wonderful.

“Of course, it means I’ll be moving to Washington,” he said, as if he were talking about a change in the weather. “I ship out tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?”

I felt as if I’d been knocked down—like when the tide had pulled my feet out from under me at the beach. Miss Holbrooke had said, “That’s the undertow. A girl was dragged out to sea last month. They never found her body.”

Harold said, “I didn’t want to tell you until everything was settled. And I’ve got another surprise for you.” He put his arm around me and walked me to the elevator. “I got us a room so we can have a proper goodbye.”

That was the moment I couldn’t fool myself anymore. Filomena had been right and I had been an idiot.

I said, “You think I’d go to a hotel room with you? Is that what you think of me?”

A bell sounded and an old man in a red cap opened the elevator grate.

Harold leaned over me and whispered, “Don’t give me that. You let me buy you fancy meals. You didn’t squawk when I pawed you from one end to the other. You can’t say I haven’t been patient. So shut up and do as you’re told.”

I tried to pull away from him but he tightened his grip on my hand.

“You’re hurting me,” I said—and not in a whisper.

Harold looked around to see if anyone was listening and said, “Aw, sweetheart,” to make it seem like we were having a lovers’ quarrel. “Now, be a good girl.”

He pushed me into the elevator, but I said, “Let me go,” loud enough so the elevator man said, “What’s going on?”

Harold had murder on his face. “Do you know what that room cost me, you little sheeny bitch?”

When he reached for the grate I bit him. I really sank my teeth into his hand.

He howled and made a fist. I started screaming, “Don’t hit me, don’t hit me.”

When Harold saw the bellmen come toward us, he backed away from me, turned up the collar on his coat, and started to walk across the lobby—not in any big hurry—as if he were taking a stroll through the park. I watched him, feeling like that drowned girl in the undertow.

When the doorman opened the door for him and he disappeared, I realized that everyone was staring at me and I took off in the opposite direction from the door. I was running without knowing where. I guess I was looking for another way out, but all I found was a stairway going down, so that’s where I went and ended up in the basement, where I was almost hit in the face by a big tray loaded with cups and saucers.

It stopped an inch from my nose and I heard “Jesus Christ!”

It was the busboy who had poured my coffee. He put down the tray and asked what I was doing in the basement and what happened to my sailor.

I started to cry.

He was so nice. He said, “It’s okay. I didn’t think you looked like the type.”

I guess everyone in the restaurant thought I was a floozy, to put it nicely.

—

I walked back to the North End as fast as I could. I kept my head down, thinking about how stupid I’d been.

I liked to think of myself as smarter than most girls, but I had talked myself into believing I was in love with a man who thought I was easy, who insulted me, who was ready to force me. So stupid.

The thing is, I should have known what kind of man he was from when we were on the dance floor. When Harold leaned down to tell me to meet him on the porch, he—I can’t believe I’m saying this to you—he stuck his tongue in my ear. I was disgusted that anyone would do such a thing, but I was also thrilled—from one end to the other, if you know what I mean.

But even after that night in the doorway when I had bruises all over my back? Even then I kept fooling myself.

I’m still embarrassed and mad at myself. But after seventy years, I also feel sorry for the girl I used to be. She was awfully hard on herself.