The Sisters Weiss (5 page)

“I’ll talk to Mameh. Maybe she can walk you some mornings.”

“She won’t!”

They both knew that was true. Mameh had better things to do. Her youngest in school, she was now working full-time as a saleswoman in a bakery. She worked hard and expected the same from her family. She did not believe in spoiling her children by giving into their whims. Besides, the streets of Williamsburg were considered extremely safe and it was not a long walk.

No one would have suspected what lay behind Pearl’s insistence. Only a few months before, while she was playing alone in front of the house as everyone was busy with Passover cleaning, a strange man in a pious beard and a black hat like her father’s had tried to talk to her and give her a candy, and when she refused, he’d reached out and held her tightly by the shoulder, pushing her into the alleyway. Mrs. Schultz suddenly sticking her head out of the window as she beat the dust from her pillows had made him turn around sharply and disappear. Pearl, convinced it was her own fault for insisting on playing outside while everyone else was involved in the mitzvah of preparing for the holiday, said nothing to anyone.

“Why don’t you walk with friends, Pearl?”

“What friends?”

“Malki, Shulamit…” They lived on the same street.

“They don’t like me … they say…”

“What? What do they say?”

“That I don’t daven with enough kavanah.”

Rose looked at her solemnly. This was a serious accusation. “Is it true? Do you not mean the words you say when you pray?”

“I pray with all my heart! But I always finish before they do because I know the prayers by heart and my Hebrew is better than theirs…”

“Then they’re just jealous. So make different friends. There are always new girls that need friends.”

Pearl thought about it, wiping her eyes, feeling a little more hopeful. “Can you walk me once a week? I promise to get up really early!”

She shook her head firmly. “No, Pearl. I just can’t. You are just going to have to get used to doing without me.”

Pearl watched in bitter silence as Rose excitedly dressed in her new school uniform for her first day in high school. She looked older, prettier, Pearl thought jealously. Almost like a kallah moide.

“Let me see my Bais Yaakov girl,” Mameh said, opening the unlocked door to their bedroom without knocking and walking in as she always did. “Shaine, shaine. A shaine maideleh,” she said approvingly, impressed. “You ironed everything.”

“Yesterday already, Mameh.”

“Very good! You see your sister, Pearl, how she takes care of herself? God bless you! Make us proud, as you always do.”

“Yes, Mameh,” Rose answered, bending her head to accept her mother’s kiss of benediction on her forehead.

Bracha Weiss turned her attention to her younger daughter. “Put away the toys and make your bed, Pearl. Honestly. What is going to be with this child?” She looked up in exasperation, appealing to the heavens.

“I can’t walk to school myself!” Pearl suddenly insisted. “I want you should walk with me.”

“What? Every day it’s another mishagas with you!” her mother said, shaking her head.

“She says she’s afraid, Mameh,” Rose interjected.

“From vus is there to be afraid in Williamsburg?” their mother scoffed.

“Bad men. Jews,” Pearl finally blurted out.

“What a thing to say, Pearl! There are no bad Jews here. Only God-fearing men like your tateh…” she insisted. “That is why your tateh and I chose to live here, and not on the outskirts of Borough Park with the Italians and the schvartzes and Puerto Ricans.”

“Please, Rose, please, you take me!” She sounded desperate.

Rose sympathized, but there was nothing to be done. She shook her head no.

Pearl stared at her with daggers in her welling eyes.

“Good-bye, Pearl. You’ll find some friends to walk with. You’ll be all right,” she said, her heart uneasy, avoiding her sister’s face. “Good-bye, Mameh.”

The walk to the bus stop alone took Rose twenty minutes. It was in the opposite direction from her and Pearl’s old school, in an area of barbershops and hardware stores, an area not all that familiar to her. But she sympathized with Pearl.

She too had fears about traveling on a city bus all by herself twice a day, a bus filled with every kind of stranger. But when she boarded, her fears dissipated. In fact, for the first time in her short life, she felt a heady sense of freedom. She was on the cusp of something new, strange, and potentially wonderful, she felt, a sudden, unexpected surge of adventurousness sweeping through her, heightening all her senses. She was alone but in the largest, most interesting city in the world. High school, she hoped, would be different from grade school, larger, more open to the world.

Little did she realize on that first journey into adulthood how fully her wish would be granted, and with what unimaginable consequences.

5

Williamsburg, Brooklyn, 1964

The first year of high school passed quickly. At first, Rose was overwhelmed by the amount of work, but then things began to lighten, the Hebrew verses becoming rote, English and math and science—always her best subjects—bringing to her attention fascinating new areas for her to explore on her own in the library. She became part of the life of her class, an integral, well-accepted member who traipsed with them to collect charity and visited Orthodox Jewish old-age homes to bring cheer to the elderly every Friday afternoon.

The only thing she stubbornly resisted was joining the collective dreams of her peers concerning marriage and motherhood. She could not even explain to herself why, simply imagining it was too early to think about such things. But had she been brave enough to dive down and explore her feelings in depth, she would have had to face the shocking fact that not a single woman in her family or her community embodied the kind of life she envisioned for herself, a life whose outlines were still shrouded in mystery, blurry and indistinct. The rapidity with which that fog lifted, everything coming suddenly into focus, was as breathtaking as it was unexpected.

It began on the first day of her sophomore year, when a transforming new element entered her sheltered and settled life in the person of Michelle “Miriam” Goldband, who landed in her classroom like a tropical bird fallen out of the sky. That which her Bais Yaakov classmates found most shocking and which for them explained almost everything that was strange and wrong about her could be summed up by the startling fact that she was French. Even in a school uniform, she managed to arouse attention and inspire envy by wearing shiny patent-leather shoes with a small heel. While she spoke a number of languages, including Yiddish, she claimed that the Yiddish spoken in America was incomprehensible to her. “Gai close da vindow,” for example, or, “Was hut der mama gemacht fur lunch?”

As time went by, troubling rumors began to spread. Michelle’s father was a beardless professor of French at Brooklyn College who did not attend any of the neighborhood synagogues. Her mother had been seen without a head covering over her flashy blond curls. Why the school had accepted her at all remained a mystery to the girls and their disgruntled parents, the key to which lay with Rabbi Mischkin, the school’s undisputed spiritual authority, who had sole discretion in such matters.

While he never said so out loud, it was clear to all that Rabbi Mischkin was reaching out to the Goldbands, whose misguided insistence on living among them had now put the entire community’s well-being at risk, unless they could be gently steered into the fold. By accepting Michelle, rabbinical authorities would now be able to exert some influence over the family’s behavior by holding expulsion over their heads. As long as there existed a possibility of converting them to the true way, shunning them and thus allowing them to float subversively unmoored thus influencing the pious good people around them with their French ways, was simply unacceptable.

The girl fascinated Rose. So when Mrs. Kornblum, their teacher, asked for volunteers to help tutor the new immigrant from Marseille, Rose eagerly raised her hand. She was the only one. The teacher quickly changed her seat to the one next to Michelle’s.

Rose found herself studying the girl for hours, examining everything from the little pieces of jewelry she wore around her neck and on her slim wrists to the exquisite perfection of her hair, plaited intricately from the top of her head. And while the other girls complained they could hardly understand a word she said, Rose drank in her accent, enamored by the almost musical way she lingered over some vowels and swallowed others. Often, in secret, she would attempt to imitate the way the girl’s mouth puckered as she formed the words, as if getting ready to be kissed.

After school hours, Rose eagerly accepted the task of going to Michelle’s home to help her with homework. Before long, she even arranged to pick Michelle up on the Sabbath and accompany her to the synagogue, although it was a long walk from her own neighborhood and meant she could spend no time with her old friends.

“She’s not one of us,” her mother grumbled. “Aren’t they Sephardim?”

“Rabbi Mischkin is a great scholar and a great tzadik,” Rabbi Weiss said decisively, ending the discussion. But inwardly, he decided the school was going downhill and they’d have to find Rose another one. But in the meantime, they could hardly forbid her from volunteering to help instill Torah values in a new immigrant, especially since it was the teacher’s idea. Again, “the teacher said” held its magical sway over them, and Rose, to her delight, found herself at Michelle’s house several times a week.

She lived on the outskirts of Williamsburg in a rare brownstone that stood out like a pretty woman among the drab gray and dirty white apartment houses and tenements. Instead of the cramped, boxy railroad flats most people lived in, the Goldbands had a separate room just for formal meals, which had a large, elaborate table and a huge china closet filled with silver ritual objects. Even more amazing, they had a room they called a library, which was filled entirely with bookshelves containing hundreds of volumes in English, Hebrew, and French. It was there they worked on their homework.

“Vous êtes charmante,” Michelle’s father said the first time Rose met him, extending his hand to her for a forbidden touch. He wore a tiny skullcap and a tweed sweater with leather elbow patches. He was clean-shaven and smoked a pipe.

Rose blushed furiously, not knowing what to do. What was he doing home anyway? she wondered. At this time of day, all the other men in the neighborhood who didn’t work full-time were in kollel or at the synagogue reciting their afternoon prayers.

“Non, papa,” Michelle warned him, shaking her head. “It is forbidden for girls to touch a man except a father or brother.”

“Ah, I forget. Forgive me, mademoiselle Rose.” He smiled charmingly, putting his hand inside his trouser pocket. “Well, vas-y, vas-y, enjoy your studies.”

He soon disappeared, replaced by Mrs. Goldband, who brought a silver tray of éclairs filled with freshly whipped cream and a crystal decanter of lemonade.

“No, thank you.” Rose shook her head dutifully, having been forbidden by her parents to eat anything at Michelle’s home. As outsiders and newly religious, the Goldbands were not to be trusted as far as their observance of the strict laws of kashrut were concerned.

Mrs. Goldband raised her eyebrows. “It is kosher. I assure you.”

She seemed hurt, Rose thought. And wasn’t it a worse sin to hurt someone’s feelings and embarrass them? Confused, her loyalties stretched and tested, she resisted for several more seconds before eagerly succumbing, reaching out and devouring one.

It was the most delicious thing she had ever tasted.

“Good?” Mrs. Goldband asked, smiling.

“It’s amazing!” Rose exclaimed sincerely. Michelle’s mother nodded, satisfied, closing the door behind her.

“Take another!” Michelle urged her. But Rose was already feeling guilty she had eaten even one, wondering if God would punish her for her weakness of character or reward her for her sensitivity to the feelings of others.

Doing God’s will was never absolutely clear to her, the way it was to others. For who could read God’s mind, especially when His commandments sometimes seemed at odds with each other? She would compensate by performing another mitzvah, she thought, opening her book and patiently explaining the Torah lessons and the laws of the High Holidays to Michelle.

“For everything, there is a law,” Michelle complained, interrupting her. “A right way and a wrong way. C’est compliqué!”

Was it? Rose wondered. Complicated? What other way was there to live, after all?

Michelle rose, stretching her coltish limbs and picking up the empty decanter. “I’m going to get some more juice. Do you want to come with me?”

Faced with the prospect of facing Mrs. Goldband yet again, and thus an unknown cornucopia of other forbidden delights, she declined.

“I’ll stay here and wait for you.”

Rose wandered around the room, exploring the bookshelves. At first, they didn’t seem to be arranged in any kind of order, but slowly she saw a pattern as she pulled them off the shelves for a quick look, hurriedly replacing them. In one section there were novels in French by Balzac, Camus, Stendhal, and Colette, while in another novels in English by D. H. Lawrence, E. M. Forster, and Virginia Woolf. There were dictionaries and thesauruses in several different languages. There were books about art: Chagall, Monet, Manet, Degas. And right next to them were the photography books: Henri Cartier-Bresson, Brassaï, Robert Capa.

One with an especially striking cover caught her interest, Doisneau, the desire to leaf through it irresistible. She sat with it, cross-legged on the carpet, her skirt riding up barely covering her knees, as she slowly turned the pages, lost in the wartime streets of Paris. She followed the eyes of people in a crowd looking upward, their faces filled with fear, wonder, tension. What were they looking at? she wondered. And there was a face peering over the dark glass of a door front, the expression hostile, guarded. Why? A courtyard was littered with paper pamphlets, almost like snow. What did they say? Why had they been thrown? What did it mean? Each photo aroused her imagination. They were like pages torn out from the middle of a book, containing only a tantalizing hint of a life, a time, a place, a story. They made you wish you could enter and live there and explore until you cracked open the mystery like a walnut, getting at its meaty heart.