Family Secrets (4 page)

And just before she fainted on the floor of the dark coat closet Lavinia knew one terrible last thing: she had wet her bloomers.

At three o’clock Miss White opened the door and pulled her out and told her to go home. Lavinia went to the girls’ bathroom first and vomited into the toilet. Then she washed out her mouth and washed her face, drying it with the awful towels they gave you. She tried to wipe off as much of the dust and dirt and blood from her dress as she could. She smoothed her hair and then hurried downstairs and out of the building. She went home alone now, because she knew the way and Mama was busy with the other children.

She was relieved that no one she saw along the way paid her the slightest attention. They all seemed used to the sight of a little girl in a terrible mess and assumed she had been playing.

In the front of the apartment building where they lived there was a small yard—not much, just enough for some grass and a few flowers which the ladies like Mama planted to make the place look nice. There was Grandma, the old witch, in her black dress and her black wig which was always crooked, revealing some wisps of white hair, and her black kerchief tied over it, kneeling down in the front yard mumbling angrily to herself and burying something.

“Vas machst du, Grandma?” Lavinia called.

“Tref,” the old woman snarled, “Tref, tref.”

She was burying the silverware in the front yard, in front of the whole world to see!

“Grandma, why are you putting the silverware in the ground?” Lavinia asked her in Yiddish.

“The milk forks she used for meat, I saw her, and the spoons too. All of it, poisoned.”

“Mama?” Lavinia said, surprised.

“No, the girl, stupid. They have a girl now, to help, a Polish, a goy. She tried to poison us all.”

“But if you bury them we won’t have anything to eat from.”

“I’ll take them out tomorrow, stupid. Then they’ll be clean again.”

“How can they be clean from being in the dirt?”

The old woman looked at her for the first time. “Dirt? You talk about shmutz, you, queen of shmutz, shmutz-face? How did you get so dirty? Your poor mama doesn’t have enough to do without washing your dirty dresses too, and you’re not even her daughter?”

“I am so her daughter, you old witch,” Lavinia said, being careful to say ‘old witch’ in English so the old witch wouldn’t understand her.

“You’re not her daughter. You’re an orphan. Orphan. Orphan.”

“Oh, you’re crazy,” Lavinia said in English.

“Speak Yiddish!” the old witch said, furious at missing something.

“Why do you call me an orphan?” Lavinia said in Yiddish.

“Because your real mother is dead and your Mama is not your mama, she is only the mama of your sisters. You have no mama. I
know
, because I am the mother of both of them!” she finished triumphantly.

Lavinia felt a terrible fear. She couldn’t remember, but somehow she knew that what the old witch said was true. She remembered the dreams she sometimes had at night of a woman without a face, tall, in a dark cloak, running away from her, and of herself running after this faceless woman, not knowing who she was but somehow feeling herself choking with pain and knowing that she needed this stranger. The woman in her dream must have been her dead mother, but she could not remember her and she knew only her own Mama, whom she adored, and who loved her. If her Mama wasn’t her mama, why did she act as if she was? Maybe she didn’t know either. Maybe only the old woman knew. If Lavinia didn’t tell her then she would never know. Did Papa know? She was tired from her horrible day and it was all too much to figure out. She went into the house.

By the time anyone noticed her she had put the soiled dress and stockings and bloomers into the wash hamper for the new girl to launder and had washed her face and hands very well with good soap and dried them with her own clean towel. She brushed the top of her hair—luckily not much could happen to braids—and put on clean bloomers and stockings and her play dress. Mama was in her room, lying on the bed.

“So, mein kind? How did it go today?”

“Good, Mama.”

“Did you learn well?”

“Yes, Mama.” She could not bear to wait another minute; she threw herself on top of her mother and buried her face in her neck, the way she used to when she was a baby. “I love you, Mama.”

“I love you, too, shaina maidel. Oooh, what’s this, such a big hug? You have to be careful now, Lavinia, my big girl. I’m going to have another baby.”

“A boy?”

“Maybe.”

“That’s why we have the Polish girl to help out?”

“You saw her?”

“Yes,” Lavinia lied.

“You can help teach her English,” Mama said. “Now that you’re such a good student.”

“All right. And look, I lost a tooth. I saved it for you.” She held out the tooth proudly.

“Thank you.”

She noticed how tired her mama sounded, as if it were hard for her to breathe. Her face was flushed but her hands seemed damp and cold. It must be hard to have babies.

“Are you having the baby now, Mama?”

“No, no, not until the spring. I want to rest now a little. You go in the kitchen and see the Polish girl makes the baby’s food right.”

“Yes, Mama.”

She went to the kitchen to help out. She would be good, she would help, she would be smart in school, and she would never tell either Mama or Papa anything bad that ever happened to her, ever again. Then they would think she was perfect, and even if she really was an orphan they wouldn’t want to give her away. She would be the best one of all their children.

FOUR

The immigrants were coming in torrents. The ships disgorged them from steerage, tired, seasick, frightened, hopeful, excited. Some had come to join family, some for an arranged marriage, some just because it had been unbearable where they had been and America had to be better. Some of them had nobody to meet them. But those who were related to Adam Saffron, no matter how distantly, always had a scrap of paper with an address on it clutched in their hands and knew when they got there they would have a place to stay.

“Another greenhorn is coming,” Adam would say to Lucy, and then she would find someplace for the foreigner to sleep, even if it was the floor. Adam would find a job in a factory for the greenhorn, and at night there were classes in English at night school, so that although the apartment was always filled with strangers babbling in strange tongues and wearing odd-looking clothes, they were really hardly ever there, and so it did not disturb the pattern of family life very much. Although there was another mouth to feed there were also two new capable hands to help out, to wash dishes, to cook some special dish remembered from home with nostalgia, to hold a cranky baby.

When Adam had any extra money he sent it home to his family in Russia, for he knew Jews were having a hard time there and he believed America was to be his family’s salvation. His family in Russia saved too, and they came one by one, in order of age. First Isaac, his oldest brother, thirty-eight years old and set in his ways, who hated America with all its strangeness and went back to Russia as soon as he could save the passage money. A waste, the ingrate, everyone said; but then he was so old, and it was hard for a middle-aged man to learn new ways.

Next came his brother Solomon Saffron, with his wife, a cousin. They had been intelligentsia in Russia, spending long hours talking of intellectual things with their friends, respected. Now they were not respected, for they could no longer express their thoughts in this new tongue, and even when they spoke in the old one no one had time to listen. Solomon refused to work in a factory, so Adam set him up with a small candy store. Solomon felt humiliated.

Adam had better luck with his placid older sister Hepzibah, whom he brought over with her husband and their two children. They stayed, grateful and content, moving into a small apartment in Mudville. Hepzibah’s husband was a tailor, and did well enough.

Zipporah came over soon afterward, so close in age and temperament to her sister Hepzibah that they might have been twins. The two sisters were overjoyed to be together again, and Zipporah and her husband moved into an apartment right next door to Hepzibah’s.

Now there were only two more whose turn was to come: first it would be Bena, and finally, when the money was saved, the youngest sister, Rebecca. Adam had already spoken to a cousin about Bena, how good she was, how capable, how pretty. This cousin had a good job as a foreman in a factory, and he seemed interested in an arranged marriage, although he insisted on meeting the bride first. That didn’t bother Adam. It was better that two people should be compatible. He wrote to his mother, explaining his plans for Bena, and enclosed the ticket for the boat. It would be good timing, for it was spring, and Lucy had finally given him his first son, a fine lively boy.

Lucy seemed to have more and more trouble breathing. At first she had thought it was from carrying the child, who was a large one, but after the birth she was no better. One doctor said it was her lungs, another her heart. Neither seemed sure, but both agreed she should have rest and not have to care for her children until she was stronger. Bena could help with the baby, and in this family setting she could meet the young man who was intended for her, and he would be sure to be pleased. There was nothing like the sight of a pretty young woman with a child in her arms to inspire a man who was thinking of marrying; Adam knew that as well as anyone. He hadn’t seen Bena for a long time, but his mother wrote that she had grown up to be the prettiest girl in the family, and his mother was a wise and critical woman whom Adam trusted.

FIVE

It was not a very long journey from their town to where the ships would leave, but long enough so that Papa couldn’t go with them because he would miss four days of work. Rebecca helped her Mama pack Bena’s things, while Bena hurried to finish the tiny stitches on the fine new woolen dress she would wear on the ship. It would do for the cool days at sea, and would not be too hot for the nights below in steerage, for the girls had heard frightening stories of how crowded it was.

“Is it true people bring their goats with them?” Bena asked. She was not happy, and had not eaten anything for two days. She was nervous about the adventure. Becky envied her; if it were she who was going she would be singing with happiness.

“Goats?” her Mama said. “Of course not. Who would bring a goat on the ship with people?”

“Well, that’s what Fanny told me,” Bena said, looking near tears. “She said her brother wrote her that there were goats and chickens on the ship and it wasn’t fit for pigs.”

“And how would Fanny’s brother know about a pig?” Mama said. That was her way, to talk sideways, always to get out of things. She often said that it was her brains that had made Adam become such a success in America.

“You could bring your cat then!” Becky said. “Couldn’t she, Mama? It would be company for her and she wouldn’t get homesick.”

“She will bring no cat,” Mama said.

Becky knew that was true; there would hardly be enough room for the hamper of clothes and personal things Bena was bringing with her to America. It was hard to believe that once there she would never come back, and Papa and Mama would probably never see her again. In a few years, maybe sooner, Becky herself would be joining her, and then she would never see her parents again. She didn’t want to think about that. Mama and Papa could go to America if they wanted to, but they were too old and they didn’t want to. Her oldest brother Isaac had come back with a long face, saying the new land was no place for people of their age, and if he had not been able to adjust there then certainly their parents could not. Isaac the old bachelor lived with them, and helped Papa out in the store. Isaac and Papa liked to sit and read, and talk for hours about things which Becky couldn’t understand, like the philosophy of the Torah.

“Daydreaming again,” Mama said, giving Becky a nudge. “Go get the bread I made, and the cheese and fruit. Bena, go drink some milk. You won’t have fresh milk again until you get to America, and by then you’ll be so skinny and ugly that no man will want you, unless you fatten up now.”

Becky giggled. Bena was the sleek, plump, pretty one, and it was unlikely that the voyage would make much difference. All the boys in their village were after Bena. It was she, Rebecca, who was a scrawny little vons, twenty years old and looking sixteen, nothing to speak of on top and not much more below, and such tiny little bones that Papa could put his hands around her waist and his fingers would meet. Their Mama traveled around the countryside in her wagon, selling calico and woolen materials to the peasant women, and she had saved the best of all for Bena’s hamper.

“You’re a lucky girl,” Mama said to Bena. “Most girls go to America with hardly more than the dress on their backs, but you have everything you’ll need for years and years. A young man will be happy to marry a girl who’s not only pretty but won’t cost him a penny for clothes. And who has her wedding sheets so beautifully embroidered.”

For they were there, at the very bottom of the hamper: the beautiful wedding sheets, the finest linen, a fortune they cost. There were pillowcases too, everything made over the years by Mama and Bena.

How lucky Bena was, and she didn’t even seem to care. She had always had everything she wanted. It was Becky who had climbed trees when they were children, to pick the sweetest fruit, and Bena who was content to wait until they dropped on the ground. It was Becky who ran down the road when she saw their Mama’s wagon in the distance, excited to find out what stories she had to tell of the far-off places, even if they were only farms that were not so far away at all. It was Bena who helped Mama count the money, and Becky who begged for stories. Bena had a pet cat, a white one, while Becky indiscriminately loved every cat in the neighborhood; but Bena was leaving her pet cat behind and didn’t even seem to care. It was Becky who had dreamed all her life of going to America, and Bena who was going. No one had ever bothered to make beautiful clothes for Becky’s wedding because Becky was still growing, Mama said. But she was twenty years old! They all still thought she was a child because she was so small.