Portraits (22 page)

“Oh, my God. Jacob, you really mean it?”

“Do I look like Hershel? I don’t sell ribbons for ten cents a yard.”

“How will you get the money?”

“I’ll beg, borrow
or
steal, but I’m getting out of this damn store.” …

From the goodness of his heart, Hershel bought Jacob’s stock for twenty-five cents on the dollar.

Jacob had eighty dollars. He moved Sara and the children to live with his mother until he could find a job and an apartment in Oakland. He would send for them soon…

T
HIS TIME THE TRAIN
ride had been slightly different than the first. It was still long and exhausting, but it was terribly lonely without Sara and the children.

When he reached Oakland he stood on the platform watching other passengers going their separate ways with the families and friends who had come to greet them.

Jacob stood alone and felt the past come back to haunt him. Once before in his life he had waited on a platform with no one to greet him. How old was he? Seven? It was Frankfurt, but this was Oakland, California, U.S.A.

He picked up his paper suitcase and walked out of the station. He found a rooming house on Jackson Street near Seventh, where the dregs lived, he knew. But after he’d bought the train ticket for thirty dollars he had only fifty left…he couldn’t be too choosey.

The next morning he went to the Chevrolet plant where he’d once worked. They weren’t hiring. This wasn’t wartime.

For one whole week he wandered around, but it seemed there was simply no work.

His loneliness was so unbearable that at the end of the week he even went to see Molly. She had opened another junk store with the money she’d salvaged from the furniture liquidation, and for her life had once again fallen into a familiar pattern.

Jacob sat with her now at the round table in the back of the store and drank a cup of tea.

“For some people life just doesn’t work out,” she said, thinking of Louie. “My God, the mistakes we make and the regret we have.”

“That’s true,” he answered. “But people make their own breaks—and I’m going to make mine, believe me.”

Molly shook her head. If Jacob had read the letter she’d received only yesterday from Sara, he wouldn’t be so full of himself. It began…

Dear mama,

I’m so miserable, sometimes I want to die…What kind of a life is this? My mother-in-law isn’t the angel Jacob thinks she is, and I know she isn’t happy with us here. Gittel’s children are more important to her than mine, and of course it hurts my feelings. Hershel says terrible things about Jacob. I know he does it deliberately to try to antagonize me against my husband. He says Jacob will never amount to anything, that he has no ambition, that I should never expect anything to change, that Jacob is hopeless. Although I try not to listen, it leaves doubts in my mind. I’m simply desperate, mama. How long can I go on like this? If you can help, I beg you, mama, try…

“Jacob, have you heard from Sara?”

“Sure.”

“What does she say?”

“That she misses me and hopes we can be together soon.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“Nothing…Do you think it’ll be long before you find a job?”

“Listen, I’m doing the best I can.”

“How long can Sara go on like this? It’s hard for her, Jacob.”

“And what about me? You don’t think I miss my wife and children? I’m alone, but at least she has the family in Cleveland. Who do I have?”

“Jacob, if I ask you something, you won’t get mad?”

He shrugged.

“I have a few dollars. Please let me give it to you to bring Sara—”

“Thank you very much, but I have to do this on my own. No more loans, thank you.”

“This is not a loan…”

“That’s very kind, but I know your life too. Save it for your old age. Besides…somehow, I know I’m going to make it—”

“Well,
mazel tov
, no one would be happier than me.” …

On the way back to his room, he stopped in front of the pool hall and watched the men queuing up. Out of sheer loneliness he walked in, sat down and watched. He turned to the man sitting next to him. “You play?”

“Yeah, do you?”

“I have, once or twice.”

“Would you like a go at it?”

“No thanks, I’m afraid I’d be a pigeon. But I like to watch.”

“And I like to play. Takes my mind off a hard day’s work.”

“Yeah, what do you do? What kind of job have you got?”

“I work for a meat packing plant.”

“Do they need any extra help? I need a job.”

“I don’t know, why don’t you try?”

“I will. It’s something I never even thought of. By the way, my name is Jack Sanders,” Jacob said, holding out his hand.

“Smitty. Nice to know you. I’m going to get a beer, feel like one?”

“Sure.” Jacob took out a dime and handed it to his new friend, who soon returned with two foaming mugs.

As they sat and drank, Jacob began to feel a little better. He questioned Smitty about his job and the name of the place where he worked.

“The Hayward Meat Packing Company.”

“How long have you been there?”

“Since I was a kid.”

“I think I’ll go tomorrow morning. By the way, is it important to have experience?”

Smitty laughed. “When they bring those cows up on the chute, all you got to know is how to hit ’em over the head.”

That notion didn’t exactly appeal to him, but still…“Thanks a lot, Smitty. I really appreciate this…maybe I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Sure, Sanders, I have lunch out in the back lot. Let me know how it turns out.”

Jacob left the beer, said goodnight and went back to his room. He could hardly wait for morning to come…

God was good to him. He got a job with the Hayward Meat Packing Company, starting salary twenty-five dollars a week.

He lived frugally but it seemed impossible to bring Sara and the kids out. How could he rent a house and furnish it? As little as it took to keep him, he still had to pay rent, eat three meals a day and pay for a streetcar. He sent a little money to Sara every week, but at the end of the month he was lucky if he had fifteen dollars left.

After three months, he could no longer stand the separation and the letters from Sara had been more and more openly unhappy.

Finally he forced himself to go to Molly. “If you still want to, I’ll take you up on your offer, but under one condition. The money is only a loan. I have to bring Sara and the kids out, I have to—”

Quickly, Molly got up, went to the secret drawer and took out two hundred dollars and handed it to Jacob.

“God bless you, Jacob,” she said.

Jacob nodded uneasily as he looked at the money in his hand.

He wanted to give it back and run away. But the loneliness overpowered his reluctance to accept her charity.

He put the money in his pocket and forced himself to thank her.

T
HE LONELINESS OF HIS
childhood had never really left him. When he saw Sara and the children getting off the train, he realized more than at any other time of his exile how desperately he had missed them.

He had taken two rooms and there Sara and the children had finally come home to him…

When Sara registered Rachel and Doris in school she was shocked. If they were afraid to admit they were Jews in Collingwood, here she knew that was one fear she could eliminate. The neighborhood was more than half black, with a few Chinese and only a token number of whites. Boarding schools and Brussels seemed very far away. How strange, Sara thought, as she walked back to her rooms with Lillian holding her hand. After seeing this school she wondered if she had been so terribly abused after all. But as she recalled the longing she had felt and her frustration at not having anyone to guide her she decided that children were better off with their mother, no matter how modest the family circumstances, than being alone in a fancy school. Her children would grow up better adjusted, with fewer fears than she’d had…

Jimmy Smith’s one claim to fame was the announcement of his birth in the Chicago
Tribune
. He grew up in a house with too many siblings, too little money and a mother whose affections were devoted to the wares of the local bootlegger. His father worked at the stockyards and at age ten, when Jimmy decided it was time to get out and make it on his own, he followed in his father’s footsteps.

By the time Jimmy was nineteen there was very little about the cattle business he didn’t know. Jimmy had never planned to leave Chicago, but then he had never planned to get married and start a family either. He confided to his father, “I knocked up a girl and I’ve got to get the hell out of Chicago.” With his father’s blessings he hopped a freight train and wound up in Oakland, California.

He looked for the only kind of employment he knew, and went to work for the Hayward Meat Packing Company.

The most important day in the life of one Jacob Sandsonitsky, better known as Jack Sanders, was the night he walked into a pool room and met Jimmy Smith, better known as Smitty.

After working at the Hayward Meat Packing Company for three months, Jacob decided he wasn’t going to spend the rest of his life hitting cows over the head. At lunch one day he said to Smitty, “How’d you like to be my partner? I’m going into business for myself.”

Smitty looked at him and laughed. “You got to be out of your mind. You know what it takes to get into the cattle business? What the hell have I got?”

“It’s not money I need but someone who knows the business inside out.”

“You’re nuts. How would we make it without dough?”

“I’ve got some, enough to start.”

“Start what?”

“I’ve been looking and I’ve been listening. Buying calves is the cheapest and that’s where we begin.”

Smitty wasn’t laughing now. After a long moment he said, “It’s a hell of a long shot, but what do I have to lose? It’s your dough and a job like this I can get anywhere. Okay, Jack, you’ve got yourself a partner.”

Tomorrow was Thanksgiving. Tears stung Sara’s eyes as she looked at the two-burner hot plate and the crayon drawing of a big turkey that Doris had made for her and Jacob. She put aside the drawing as well as her painful feelings when the door opened.

“You’re home early, Jacob?”

He kissed her on the cheek, took off his jacket, went to the small corner sink and began to wash his face.

“Jacob, why are you home so early?”

Wiping his hands on the towel, he looked at her and smiled. “I just quit my job.”

For a moment all she could do was look at him. “You…what? Jacob, what’s
wrong
with you? You must be crazy—”

He sat down alongside her and took her hand. “No, I’m not crazy. This is the first time in my life I’m absolutely completely sane.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. How are you going to make a living?”

“I’m going into business for myself.”

“With what, what kind of a business?”

“I told you I work with a guy by the name of Smitty. You know the story of how I got the job. Smitty and I are going into business for ourselves.”

“You can’t be serious, Jacob. It takes money to get into business.”

“I have to start somewhere. We’re going to buy calves in the country, slaughter them ourselves and sell to the Chinese butchers. They’re not too particular what they buy.”

“I think it’s crazy, absolutely crazy. How are we going to live in the meantime?”

“With your mother.”

That meant still another school for her children…and another move to the back of a store. For a moment she looked at Jacob and saw Louie’s face. Gamblers…“You’re sure you know what you’re doing, Jacob?”

“You bet. Sara, do you believe in fate?”

“At this point I don’t believe in anything.”

“Well, maybe you don’t, but I do. The luckiest thing that ever happened to me was the night I met Smitty. Sara, as there’s a God above us, I’m not just going to make a living, I’m going to be rich—”

Yes, it was Louie speaking, from Johannesburg, Brussels, Monte Carlo…

This time he felt no guilt or shame when he asked Molly to loan him an additional three hundred dollars. She’d get all her money back, plus interest.

He bought a secondhand Dodge truck and moved Sara and the children to Molly’s place.

Doris and Lillian loved the excitement of living in the back of grandma’s store—especially Doris. She loved to wander through the maze of junk and make up stories about the people in the old tintypes in the gold oval frames. She loved to take Lillian to Fremont Park to show her off, and then go to the United Biscuit Company, where huge bags of broken cookies were sold for a nickel. Broken or not, they were delicious.

But best of all were Saturdays, when she
shlepped
Lillian to the movies, where the serials started at ten in the morning. Doris was always the first in line, grasping the brown paper bag filled with sandwiches, sponge cake and fruit to be eaten at noon while William S. Hart and his horse were falling off a cliff. She was madly in love with William S. Hart because he was so brave. Somehow he always seemed to defy the Indians—at least twenty at a time—while jumping from one side of the horse to the other. She wondered if William S. Hart was Jewish. If only she could look like Mary Pickford. Doris wondered if Mary Pickford was Jewish…

The one cloud in Doris’s life was school. She still found the classwork boring. Even worse was that the teacher’s response to her questions had passed from annoyance to studied avoidance. Well, maybe next year would be better.

Doris was not alone with her crosses to bear. Sara could not understand how Rachel could be so different from the other children, so difficult to handle and so moody. Rachel was even less happy with their move than Sara was. She hated sleeping with Doris and despised living in the back of grandma’s store. There was absolutely no dignity in living with all that junk in the store. She remembered the beautiful furniture her mother had sold before they first came to California and how her mother had missed it. But everything had changed so much, especially mama. If Rachel said the least little thing mama didn’t like she was slapped, but what made mama the angriest was that Rachel wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of crying, no matter how much it hurt. When she cried, it was alone. How could her mother discuss her so openly with grandma? If your own mother didn’t think you were anything, then how much of a person could you be? Mama criticized everything she did. She was never paid a compliment, and everything she did was taken for granted. Nobody knew how lonely she was…There didn’t seem to be anyone who understood. And since she’d grown up, even papa and she had grown apart…