Beyond the Pale: A Novel (26 page)

“Do you believe it?” I asked.

“What part?”

“What he says, that we didn’t fight back or protest?”

“I just read the poem. It moved me.”

“We did. We did fight.” My knuckles were white against the railing. I realized I had the same hands as Mama. I didn’t look at Lena but I could tell she was looking at me. “We did fight.”

She put her hand on my shoulder. “I believe you did,” she said. I watched the lines of water cross and recross. Maybe the ocean had a face like the moon and we couldn’t see it because we were so close. Many faces? The faces of the dead.

“Perhaps Bialik was wrong to be so harsh,” Lena reflected. “From what I can tell it’s only a few in any oppressed group who are ready to risk everything—or know when to risk everything. How can we know? A pogrom happens, a war—everyone wants to make sure they’re the ones who live. Everyone has their own escape route.”

She made it sound so simple.

“What do you know, what could you possibly know about it?” I asked. She squeezed my shoulder. Her hand was strong and I didn’t resist.

“Well, after all, here I am, escaping myself—I leave dead behind me

too.”

“You?”

She shrugged.

“I’m not escaping,” I said. “I would rather have died with them. They could have killed me instead—.” I stopped. Why didn’t I get there first? Why didn’t I stop them? I could have distracted them. Mama didn’t have to—a few tears gathered in the corners of my eyes, spilling out. Lena made a little tchish in her throat but didn’t say anything. We stared at the water for a long time.

“It’s my fate to leave Russia, I suppose,” I said, drying my face on my sleeve.

“I don’t know what fate is,” Lena said. “But maybe in America we can learn to choose when to fight. Maybe we might even win once in awhile.”

“I thought in America you don’t have to fight.”

“There is no such country,” Lena said.

Part Two

The Needle Goes In,
The Needle Goes Out

D
ID WE LOOK RIDICULOUS
in our dried-out crushed hats with their frayed ribbons and limp flowers? Or like respectable bourgeoisie who had undergone an indignity? Rose and I had pressed the precious hats back into their original shapes as best we could in the few minutes they gave us to clean up when we landed on Ellis Island. The other women stared. The immigration men whistled. Aunt Bina said it was because we were in style but I thought she didn’t understand. Rose was unsure whether to be proud or embarrassed. What did I care about fashion? I was only relieved to be on the ground with a washed face.

Pushing and pulling us through metal gates—what was new about this world? It smelled. Not exactly as badly as the ship’s hold, but worse than the steerage deck—all the sweat and sickness of Europe and Russia fused into the unmoving, hot September air. And the food smells: everything that people had no stomach for on the sea—garlic, pickles and rotting sausages that poked out of greasy wrappings and were now confiscated. Most of the clothes people wore were grayish black or brown, no matter what color they had started out. A few embroidered flowers on women’s hair wraps had some resemblance to their original pinks and oranges. The white roses on Rose’s hat were dingy, though there was still a little shine in the purple velvet brim.

We were bunched together with the passengers of two ships that had just arrived from Germany, herded up a flight of stairs through a massive chamber and separated by iron bars into neat, compliant rows. They should have had klezmer bands welcoming us, to make us feel our terrible journey had been worthwhile. Instead they had only immigration police, shouting at us above the babble.

Everyone was busy with their shame and fear. It was pitiful to see how worried we were, anxious to distance ourselves from the ones who could not rise above the terrors and filth of the ship, who now turned in frantic circles, gesturing to the air. It was clear they’d be rejected, sent back. Sent back—to have to take this whole journey in reverse and show up in Kishinev so failed as to not even have been let in—I would have died first, thrown myself overboard and let sea monsters tear me in pieces. So I acted like everyone else, adjusted my plain, mashed blue hat, whispered to my relatives, looked straight ahead, though when no one was watching I turned to see what was happening around me in the vaulted room.

Hours moving through the lines. We studied those who were singled out, pushed aside, even if they weren’t talking to themselves. There were corridors where the ones removed from the line were taken. Rose said at least none of those women were wearing hats like ours. The women pulled their shawls tight with bony fingers, though it was so humid you could see waves of air carrying off the human stink. Only because the room was as big as Odessa’s whole train station could we breathe. I looked up at the ceiling, which was woven out of yellow tiles, resembling our straw trunks. I tried to point out how clever this was to Rose but she nudged me forward.

For us there were questions. We moved from questioner to questioner, trying to decipher what each one wanted. Uncle Isadore didn’t joke or talk back to the immigration men. He looked unusually unsure of himself, taking on the half-stooped shuffle of so many in the line. Our Russian passports had been stamped “Jewish” when they were issued. An officer mumbled loudly, and I made out a word that sounded like “zhid.”

“Please, sir,” a woman asked another uniformed man with dark black hair and eyes, “what’s he saying?”

The man narrowed his eyes. “Another shipload of dirty Jews,” he replied in rough Yiddish. Maybe America wasn’t going to be so different from Russia after all.

More people were pushed aside, held back. Officials were called from one line to another to interpret. Our dark officer spoke a broken German-Yiddish, just enough to read from his list and interpret curses. A woman in a white apron pulled up our eyelids looking for disease while another interrogator asked what day we were born.

What day was I born? A cold day, that’s what Mama always said. That was not the right answer, I knew, but what answer could I give? They didn’t know the Jewish months, and I remembered that Russian dates were different than the rest of the Christian world’s. Something about a fight between their churches. I knew I was born in February, 1889.

“February?” the American said. “All right, we’ll put you smack in the middle. February 15th. Next.” I repeated the English words to myself. “Smeck in de middle.” What did it mean?

Aunt Bina only knew she was born in the month of Kislev. “What’s that, Kislev?” our official yelled to another. “December,” someone shouted. “Okay—another Jew for December 25th,” our Yiddish-speaking officer wrote down, laughing. “Next!”

Uncle Isadore said the ferry to New York City would be nothing, nothing at all after what we’d been through. I could see Rose hated the idea of getting on another boat as much as I did, but she walked up the ramp lifting her frayed skirts, holding her back straight.

“Do you think they call us greenhorns because of the color we look after coming across the ocean?” she asked from the spot she squeezed into by the railing.

“You do look a little green—though not as green as her,” I said, pointing to the Statue of Liberty as the ferry sounded its horn.

Uncle Isadore put his arms around us. Now that he had passed the entrance examination he was feeling expansive again. “Very good, Chava, very good. Yes, she’s here in the harbor to let us know everyone lands green. There’s no sin in that.”

“But what about the horns, Papa? How come everyone says green
horn
?” Aaron asked, scratching his beard.

Ephraim laughed. “If you’d ever take your nose out of a book, you’d know what goes on in the world. The goyim think Jews actually have horns.”

“But don’t they call Germans and Italians greenhorns too?” Aaron asked. Now I was confused too.

“Wherever it comes from, they won’t be calling us that for long. That’s why your mother and the girls have those wonderful hats,” Uncle Isadore said.

Aunt Bina pursed her lips and raised her eyes at him for a second. She turned back to look at the statue and the water towers rising over the receding spires of Ellis Island.

A thousand people must have been gathered in the park where we landed. At least as many peddlers as in Kishinev’s entire market, selling things I’d never seen before: long curved yellow fruits and strange fish, as well as familiar suspenders, tin cups, giant loaves of bread. Some men had ropes of sausages around their necks or dozens of hats balanced on their heads. People held up signs with family names or the names of towns: Bialystok, Kovno, Berdichev, Lodz, as well as many I couldn’t read in Germanic lettering. Rose pointed to a small man holding a sign that said Kishinev but it wasn’t anyone I recognized.

Under a tree near the peddlers, a man stood on a box making a speech in a language I didn’t understand, pointing his finger at the sky. A little farther off, a man in worker’s cap like the kind Uncle Elihu used to make was yelling in Yiddish. I could make out an occasional word—socialism, unite, bosses. I recognized Lena Reznikoff, whom I hadn’t seen since we got to Ellis Island, walking towards him. She caught my eye and waved. Closer by, two ladies and a man with a top hat had a banner for the United Hebrew Charities written in Yiddish, Hebrew and what I supposed was English. Many people were gathering around them.

“We’re not going to ask a charity for help the first minute we land,” Aunt Bina said, staring at Uncle Isadore.

“No, no of course not. Let’s just look around here and see what’s what. We’ll figure out what to do next, don’t worry.” He patted her shoulder, gazing wistfully at the elegantly dressed charity people.

An organ grinder near the dock had a small chained monkey that ran up to the crowd holding out a tin cup, just like a little boy. I wanted to get closer but Rose said it might bite if we didn’t give it American money. “American money, that’s what we need! Very smart, Rose,” Isadore said.

On the other side of the park were a couple of clean-shaven men with signs in Yiddish: Money Changed. “Take mine too,” I said, pulling the rubles I had left out of my coat lining. Isadore and Aaron went over while the rest of us waited, staring at the new world. It was as if soap bubbles were forcing their way through my brain and bursting. Each burst was a picture, like a photograph, that filled the space, crowding out what I used to know.

New York. The energy was jumping up from the streets—I could feel it through my shoes. Right in front of the market a one-car train with no engine stopped. It was being pulled from above by a wire, like a toy. Was there a giant on the other end, controlling the string? Sparks leaped when the train started up again.

“Electric trolley cars. I heard they were going to get these in Odessa next year,” Aunt Bina said. “It’s like Mrs. Finklestein said, New York is first in everything.”

“A landsman! He gave us a special rate,” Isadore returned, fanning a sheaf of American money. “Dollars! And for you, Chava, one dollar of your own.” When he gave it to me I tried to pass it on to Aunt Bina but she said I would need it while I looked for a job. My stomach danced like the organ grinder’s monkey as I folded the new dollar into a tiny square.

“And look,” Isadore had a scrap of paper, “he gave me the name of a man from Olgopol, where my mother was born, who rents rooms. I tell you, Mrs. Petrovsky, everything is going to be great.” He was beaming.

“Are you sure this landsman gave you a good rate?” Aunt Bina asked. Isadore paid no attention as he began to shepherd us through the streets, mumbling about how the money changer said to just go by the tall building and turn left. All the buildings were tall. Many of them had the dates they were built carved into their cornerstones, only a few over fifty years old. New York must have sprung out of the ground, quick and brown as a circle of mushrooms in the yard, overnight.

“How about one of those electric cars, pop?” Ephraim asked.

We all felt disappointed when Isadore said that we didn’t know where they went, that on the streets we were more likely to run into Yiddish speakers who would help us find this Essex Street. Aunt Bina agreed we didn’t have a penny to waste on getting lost.

As we headed into the maze of the great city I was surprised at how much trash there was in the streets, as if everyone in America had forgotten their manners.

After the second flight of stairs Rose put down her satchels and sat on them. The walls were covered in pressed tin, which I thought very elegant even though it was layered with grime. Sweat was plastering Rose’s curly hair to her cheeks, twisted like a yeshive boy’s sidelocks.

“You look like you have payes,” I teased her.

Rose quickly brushed her hair back. “No one said it was going to be like a furnace in New York in September.”

“This is just a warm day, girls, you should have been here in July when it was really hot!” The landlord called down from the landing above. The man from Olgopol had no rooms left, so he’d sent us on to Mr. Abrams, a German, who, he’d assured us, would charge an honest price. Bina rolled her eyes as she caught up. I rearranged my luggage so I could carry one of Rose’s bags.

“You don’t have to—,” she protested.

“It’s nothing. Besides, I owe you at least one favor from the ship.” We plodded up to the fourth floor. The stairwell smelled of urine and I could see bugs in the shadows on the third landing. Maybe not so elegant.

“Good air up here,” the landlord said. “More light than on the ground floor, too. Seeing as how this is your first place in America, I’m not charging extra—$17 a month—that’s all. And you don’t have to go to the yard for the toilet, there’s two by the stairwell. Good price for two bedrooms.”

“How many families use the toilets?” Aunt Bina asked, unimpressed.

“Well, there’s the Horowitzes, Liebermans, Brodys and you—not too many. The Liebermans are only five of them. You got a basin here in the kitchen. Cold water in the apartment, any time of day.”

Bina shook her head. He must have thought we all came from some backwoods shtetl. It was true that in Kishinev I got water from the pump in the yard, but it was our yard. Uncle Isadore and the boys were walking around the kitchen in a circle, opening the few cabinets. We stood in a plain, empty room, with a grease-spattered stove, washtub and old wallpaper peeling down to reveal an even older pattern of stained flowers. What little light there was came through the soot-blackened glass of the rear room, what the landlord called the “parlor.” There was a small window in the kitchen that looked across to another small window in a brick wall. Aaron tried to open it.