The Last Princess (57 page)

“But Malka, dearest, let me share whatever I have with you, please.” Katie realized the Greenbergs were not really poor, they just didn’t have any money. She felt overwhelming gratitude for having a home to which she belonged, thinking what a beautiful word was
belong.
She now had a family, a job; she had reached the millennium.

Katie’s bliss was not felt completely by Malka. A girl going on eighteen should begin to think seriously of love and marriage, and quite frankly she was concerned about the absence of romance in Katie’s life. Wisely she reasoned that with Katie’s great need to feel safe and secure she might find things too comfortable in their family embrace. This and Katie’s shyness made Malka think that she might become an old maid. To Malka Greenberg this was unthinkable.

How wrong it was for Katie to be sitting around the kitchen table with Jacob and herself on a Saturday night, keeping Sammy amused while Birdie was at the movies with Solly Obromowitz seeing a Buddy Rogers picture. What was to become of Katie, wasting her entire girlhood, losing it in such a way? Youth disappeared fast enough. Something had to be done.

It was only ten o’clock when Birdie returned home. Malka looked up from her darning. “You’re home early. The movie wasn’t good?”

“It was good, I guess.”

“You guess?” Malka said. “So how come you didn’t stay?”

“Oh that lousy Solly,” Birdie said. “We had a fight.”

“This is how you talk about a nice boy like Solly? So what was the fight about?”

Birdie looked at her mother and smiled. How shocked her sweet mother would be if she told her that not only was it getting tougher all the time to keep Solly from going up to the roof, but to get him to keep his grubby paws off her was a whole battle. But damn it, she was going to fight him, and she didn’t know how long she was going to be able to hold out if she continued to see Solly, which she secretly hoped she would.

“Listen to me, Birdie,” Malka continued.

“So I’m listening.”

“Not only have I got a problem with Katie but I’ve got a problem with you.”

“So what’s the problem you got with me, mama?”

“I want you should be nice with Solly, that’s all.” She thought, oy vay, all she needed was two old maids in the house, one wasn’t enough.

“What’s nice?”

“I mean you shouldn’t always make out like you’re so stuck up. You see, Birdala, your problem is you go out with a boy a few times and right away you don’t like him.”

“So stop worrying, it’s not so serious. I’m going to see Solly tomorrow. Where’s Katie?”

“She went to bed early. You want a cup of tea?”

“You sit still, I’ll fix it.”

As Birdie put the kettle on the stove, she said to her father, “You want a cup, papa?” He mumbled something under his breath which meant no and kept on reading his paper.

“Take a piece of sponge cake, Birdie.”

Malka held the cup with both hands to her lips and peered over the rim, thinking how best to bring up the subject of Katie. “Birdie, why is it you never take Katie with you when you go out?”

“Because she doesn’t want to go.”

“Did you ever ask her?”

“Yes, mama, I did and I do. Tell me, what brought this up?”

“What brought it up is, I’m worried.”

“For you that’s nothing new. I don’t understand you, mama. What is she, an old maid?”

Malka was startled by the phrase. It was almost as if Birdie had read her thoughts. With pretended annoyance she said quietly, “Don’t get fresh, Birdie. Maybe in America they talk like that to a mother, but not to me.”

“O.K., mama, I’m not being fresh, but what’s to worry about?”

“I shouldn’t worry about a beautiful young girl who sits in a house every night and Sammy is her big companion?”

“Well what’s wrong if I am her companion?” Sammy asked. They’d forgotten him sitting round-eyed, listening to everything.

Birdie looked at him. “Big shot, you go to bed. This is not your business.”

“It’s as much my business as yours.”

“Don’t get fresh, Sammy.”

“That’s enough, children. Sammala, darling, go to bed,” Malka said. He objected but obeyed. On the way out he kissed first his mother, his father and then his sister, said good night, and went to bed in the hall between the kitchen and Birdie’s room, pulling closed the floral, cretonne drapery which separated them.

“Now listen to me, mama. I know how much you love Katie and all you want is what’s good for her, but you’ve got to realize she’s different from the boys on Hester Street. She doesn’t take to them and they don’t take to her. But she’ll meet hers, believe me.”

“Not unless you introduce her to someone,” Malka said adamantly. “I don’t want her whole young life to be wasted only working. She’s got to go out and have a little fun like other girls.”

Jacob, a man of few words, folded his glasses, put them in his shirt pocket, laid the paper down on the table, got up, and in a voice louder than usual said, “That’s enough already with the boys and the marriage and the marriage and the boys. When she’s thirty you’ll worry already. Come to bed; Malka.” He walked to the back bedroom off the kitchen and Malka followed.

Walking up and down in front of the Bijou Theater where he had been waiting for Birdie for the last thirty minutes, Solly wondered why he even bothered. Cold, never gave an inch. Who the hell did she think she was anyway? True, he was no Adonis, but he’d already stopped counting the girls he’d screwed since he was twelve, so anybody with a track record like that couldn’t be so bad. He should be furious with her for slapping his face—and hard—the night before, as they sat in the back row upstairs. In a gesture of pure love he’d thrust his right hand down inside her low-cut blouse, cupping her warm and round full breast in his sweating palm while, with his other hand under her dress, his fingers crept slowly up her thigh. But as he kissed her and tried forcing his tongue into her mouth, Birdie became so angry that she stood up and kicked him knowingly with her knee, slapped his face so hard he thought she’d broken his jaw, and through clenched teeth said, “You son-of-a-bitch Solly Obromowitz, don’t you ever do that to me again!”

Birdie had run out of the theater and into the street for several blocks with Solly calling out after her, “Wait a minute, wait a minute!” Tired, angry, and perspiring, she sat down on a door stoop when she heard Solly saying, “O.K., O.K., what the hell did I do that was so terrible? Tell me, what?”

Instead of answering, she sat clutching her purse and staring ahead of her. Solly simply could not stand the coldness, the being shut out. “Damn it, fight with me. Scream, holler, but don’t stop talking,” he said.

She finally looked at him, bit back the tears, but still there were tiny crystals of glistening moisture in the corners of her eyes. She said, “O.K., Solly, you want me to tell you why I’m so mad? So O.K., I’ll tell you. I’m no Hester Street tramp, the kind you can take to the movies for fifty cents and screw. I think I’m a little better than that. When I do get laid, it won’t be in the back of the Bijou Theater. Oh no, it’s going to be beautiful—you hear what I say—and with someone who loves me. So O.K., now you know.”

Solly was surprised at feeling unexpected guilt instead of his usual hostility and pain at her tirade of rejection. “You mean to tell me that you never necked?”

“That’s right, not the kind of necking you’re talking about. The trouble with you, Solly, is you think the same as every other Hester Street bum, that everybody’s alike, looking for a cheap, quick screw, button up your pants and go home. But you’re wrong. Life’s tough enough; it’s even tougher if you want to live it like a decent human being and for that you’ve got to work a lot harder in this place.” She started to cry.

Solly looked at her, then cautiously he put his arms around her, brushed away the tears with the back of his hand and kissed her softly on the mouth. He whispered in her ear. “I love you, Birdie. I’m sorry.”

They walked home in silence. When they reached Birdie’s house Solly said, “Can I take you to the Bijou tomorrow?” Birdie nodded yes and went up the stairs while Solly waited below until she disappeared, then he turned and walked home through the hot summer night.

Now, when he saw Birdie coming toward him as she crossed the street, he pretended he wasn’t hurt about the things that had happened the night before. “How come you’re late?” he said agreeably.

“I’m sorry, I had to help Mama. Solly, do you mind if we don’t go to the movies tonight, it’s so hot?” She added quickly, “It has nothing to do with last night, really. I just don’t feel like going, if you don’t mind.”

He grimaced slightly, thinking he really wanted to see the movie, but here he was saying, “O.K., we’ll do what you want.”

“Let’s go and have a soda, then we’ll see, O.K., Solly?”

They sat at a small round ice-cream table at Plotkin’s delicatessen and ordered a celery tonic. Solly was halfway through his when he noticed that Birdie had hardly tasted hers. “You don’t like it?” he asked. After all, it cost a nickel.

“It’s fine. Look, Solly, I have a problem I want to talk to you about.”

He felt flattered that she was seeking his advice. “Yeah, so what’s the problem?”

“You know Katie?”

He nodded his head. “So what’s the problem?” As she hesitated Solly popped a piece of ice in his mouth.

“Well, Solly,” she started out slowly, “I want you to do me a big favor.” She paused, then added quickly, “I want you to introduce Katie to David Rezinetsky.”

Solly nearly choked on the ice. “Say that again.”

“David Rezinetsky. I want you to introduce him to Katie.”

“You must be out of your mind—you think I’m going to ask him for anything.”

“Please, Solly, don’t get mad, this is important.”

“I will not. That guy never even talks to me. Like dirt under his feet he treats me.”

“Don’t be like that, Solly. You’ve known him all your life. You could overlook it if you wanted to do this for me.”

Solly scratched the back of his head. “I don’t know why it’s so important that she meets him. That’s number one, and number two is that that guy has lived in the same house two floors above me I forget for how many years, I went to school with him, I see him every day and never does he say hello Solly, drop dead Solly, go to hell, Solly, and you want me to go up to him and say, ‘Look Dave, have I got a girl for you’? He’d knock me on my can.” This was the advice she needed him for? The problem she wanted him to help her with? Like hell it was. She didn’t need his advice; she needed to use him, pure and simple, so her skinny girl friend could get a boyfriend she couldn’t get on her own. The hell he would humble himself, for what, why should he? What was in it for him? Not even the promise of feeling her tits in the dark movie.

Birdie’s eyes were cast down as she peeled off tiny bits of the cracked, dirty oil cloth that should have been replaced years ago. They both looked up when Mr. Plotkin called from behind the counter in Yiddish, “How long you going to sit there, till next shabbes? For a dime yet. I should charge you for sitting.”

Solly looked up, then around. There was no one in the store except Mr. Plotkin and themselves and the flies buzzing around the big slab of smoked salmon that lay on the counter. “You need the table for the big rush you’ve got coming in?” Up yours, he wanted to say to Mr. Plotkin, but he thought better of it because he knew his mother would give him one across the face even if he was going on twenty-one, because leave it to Mr. Plotkin to tell her how a son from the house of Obromowitz has profaned in his fine establishment. Aloud he said, “Come on, Birdie, let’s get out of here.”

They walked aimlessly for a while. There was really no place to go. Without looking at Solly, Birdie said, “Would you like to go up to the roof?” hoping that he would not misunderstand her motives, which were purely to divert his attention back to the mainstream of their conversation—her purpose. From the tone of his voice as he grumbled, “Oh what the hell,” she knew she could dismiss that problem.

They sat on the empty orange crates and felt the special heat of dusk. Birdie said, “I guess I hurt your feelings, Solly. I really didn’t mean to. I was just trying to do something nice for Katie.”

“Why that particular louse? I don’t understand, why him?”

“Because it’s a little bit complicated.”

“So uncomplicate it for me. I’ve got no place to go.”

“You know Katie lived in London with her mother when she was a little girl after she left Poland? Well, she’s had a really good education and the boys around here don’t appeal to her.”

“So that makes her some kind of a princess?”

“No, but what would she be able to talk to them about?”

“How would I know?”

Ignoring the sarcasm she went on, “I think my mother realized that she’d have a tough time getting a guy. Let’s face it, Solly, we’re slobs.”

That did it, Solly thought. “So I’m a slob? But David Rezinetsky the louse isn’t?”

“Now wait a minute, Solly. Don’t get mad—”

“Who the hell is he because he graduated from high school and I didn’t?”

“He’s a classy guy, that’s who he is.”

“Some classy guy, because he read a few more books than I did, so that makes him the Prince of Wales and me a slob?” He got up and paced back and forth, then angrily said, “Damn it, I had to go to work while he went to school because he had four older brothers. I got three younger ones. Him with his superior attitude, he runs around selling his fifty-cent insurance policies, big insurance man!” He turned to Birdie, looking her square in the eye, “Well I’m going to tell you, Birdie Greenberg, maybe you don’t think I’m good enough for you but someday the big insurance man will choke from envy because I got plans too, see?” Pointing to himself with both his thumbs he said, “I’m going to own my own theater someday, see?”

Birdie stood up and shook her finger at Solly as her voice crescendoed. “Damn you, Solly, that’s not what I meant and you know it. Skip it, forget it, if you couldn’t do this for me then you and I are through, understand? You and your crummy pride!” She ran down the stairs to her flat and slammed the door.

Solly remained on the roof for a long time, his head in his hands, shifting and kicking under his feet the small pebbles that stuck to the tar paper. Why was he debating with himself, he thought, when all the time he knew that he was going to eat crow for that frigid broad downstairs. He knocked on the door, and Birdie opened it.