Threads and Flames (14 page)

“Tsk.” Bayleh made a
what can you do?
gesture. “Well then, did you at least ask the Levis if you could have your sister's old place as a boarder?”

“I didn't have to ask; I heard. The Levis don't have room for us, either. I'd better start looking for somewhere else we can stay.”

“Try in this building first,” Bayleh suggested.

“I don't think that's the best idea,” Raisa said. “If we live here, we're going to run into you-know-who again, and then ...” She rolled her eyes.

“I see what you mean. All right, put your things in the bedroom and start looking. Mark my words, it won't take you long to find a nice place to live.”

Raisa did the best she could to pile the three bags out of the way in the windowless inner room, then headed for the door. Her hand had scarcely touched the knob before Brina dropped the broom and flung herself into Raisa's skirt, hanging on to the cloth as if her life depended on it. “Dearest, are you sure you wouldn't be happier staying here?” Raisa coaxed. “I don't know how far I'm going to have to walk. You'll get tired.”

“I can walk!” Brina declared forcefully. “I can go as far as you. You'll see.”

“But, sweetheart, don't you want to help Bayleh to—”

“I want to be with
you
!” Brina was plainly on the point of tears, and just as plainly struggling to hold them back.

“Take her, take her,” Bayleh said gently. “If she stays, she'll cry for you the whole time. Besides, there's nothing for her to do here except sit in a corner. We've all got work to do, and the children will be in school until the afternoon.”

“Longer!” Mottel put in proudly. “Today after classes is a special assembly to honor pupils who wrote the best essays about American history. There's one prize for a pupil in each grade, and
my
children are bringing home one apiece!”

“
Your
children?” Bayleh sniffed. “As if
you
gave birth to them? Just listen to yourself, taking all the credit and jabbering away about our precious babies in a way that's practically guaranteed to attract the evil eye, God forbid!” She spat three times to ward off the dreadful possibility. Wife and husband were still bickering over who loved their children more when Raisa and Brina slipped out the door.

A beautiful early-summer day filled the streets of the neighborhood. The weather was warm enough for Raisa to have left her coat behind, but not yet hot enough to double the impact of any foul smells.

Which way should I go?
she thought.
Bayleh said it'll be easy to find a place, but I should've asked her how to do it. Well, if it's
that
easy, any direction will do. Let's see what we can find.

At first, Raisa walked slowly, concentrating on at least one thing that would make each street and intersection memorable.
I can't get lost,
she thought.
I have to be able to find my way back.
She fixed her mind on a brightly painted yellow sign, a striking display of secondhand furniture covered in red velvet, the smell wafting from a fish market, the unnaturally colorful array of sugary treats behind the window of a candy shop. Once in a while she was able to read the name of a store she and Brina passed, but she didn't trust her ability to remember words as much as her ability to remember sights, sounds, and smells.

One street turned into another. Sometimes Raisa and Brina became part of a wave of people hurrying toward a mysterious destination or away from an unknown disaster. At other times, the two of them hugged the corner of a building at a busy intersection and watched the traffic lumber past. In all of her years of life, Raisa had never seen a tenth as many people as she saw in that single morning. Infants and grandfathers, happy souls and faces nursing a grudge against the whole world, hair of every length and color, eyes bright as new stars or milky white and sightless, clothing that was one step away from the rag pile and fresh, finely tailored garments; Raisa saw it all.

It's too much!
she thought desperately.
So many people, so much noise, such confusion!
Her stomach grumbled.
At least I know where to go to take care of
your
wants,
she told it. “Hungry, Brina?”

“Are you?” the little girl asked suspiciously, as if the question were a test.

“Starving.” Raisa crouched down and worked a few coins out of the hem of her dress.

Finding food was child's play. Every other shop seemed to sell a tempting variety of good things to eat, from fruits still carrying the perfume of distant orchards to plump, shining salamis hanging in a row from the top of a window frame. Then there were the pushcarts, and even individual women selling sandwiches and baked goods out of the big baskets on their arms. How to choose where to buy?

Raisa looked at the coins in her hand.
I don't know what these are worth. Any brat on the street could cheat me. How can I prevent that?
She walked from one store to the next, peering in from the doorway, trying to get a good look at the faces of the people behind the counters. She also watched the faces of the customers as they left the shop. Under a wide, red-striped awning she found a bakery where the woman selling the luscious-smelling cakes and pies had an open, friendly face.

She
looks
like an honest person. . . . I think. She reminds me of Glukel, and Glukel never cheated a soul
. Raisa lingered just outside the shop until several buyers came and went. Each one left the bakery looking satisfied with their purchase.
Well, that looks hopeful.
Raisa puffed out a breath.
Enough doubt. I've got to start making my own way sometime. It might as well be now.

Raisa's instinct was sound. The bakeshop woman welcomed the girls by offering Brina a sugar cookie twice the size of her hand. When Raisa tried to explain that they didn't want to buy sweets, the woman said, “But I want to give her one. Such a pretty child! I don't remember seeing either of you around here before. Are you new in the neighborhood?”

“We landed yesterday.” Raisa gave Brina an approving nod and got real pleasure out of seeing how avidly the little one demolished the cookie. “Are those onion bialys?” She pointed at a row of round, flat rolls in the bakery showcase.

“Only the best you'll ever taste.” The woman showed dimples when she smiled. “How many do you want?”

Raisa slid one of her coins across the counter. “Is this—is this enough for two?”

The woman's brows rose halfway to her hairline. “You
are
new. My brother the rabbi says it's a good thing that the Almighty watches out for greenhorns, or this city would devour you all. Do you have any more money?”

“Why?” Raisa took a step back.

“Do I look like a goniff, girl? I want to teach you what you've got so you won't be easy pickings for the first fast-talking swindler who crosses your path. You don't have to take me up on it, you know. I can't force you to learn. If you just want to buy something and leave, that's up to you.”

Raisa ducked to the bakeshop floor. When she straightened up again, her hands clutched the coins and paper bills she'd received on Ellis Island. She spread them out on top of the showcase. “Teach me,” she said. “Please.”

Raisa discovered that mastering the different values of American money came easily to her. She'd always had a natural talent for arithmetic, helping Glukel keep track of her accounts whenever she could. How Nathan had scoffed at his aunt for allowing Raisa to make entries in the ledger! “Keeping track of money is man's work,” he'd said. “All girls understand is how to spend it!”

The baker was impressed by how quickly Raisa learned. “What a clever girl! You ought to get a job in a bank.”

“I don't think I could,” Raisa said with a half smile. “Not until I learn English.”

“Maybe you can take classes someday. They offer them at the Educational Alliance. If you tell me where you're living I can tell you how to get there.”

Raisa scarcely heard the bakeshop woman's mention of English classes. She needed a place to live more than she needed a new language; she jumped at the chance to get help finding one. “Actually, we're
not
living anywhere,” she said as she put her money into her handkerchief and tied the corners together. “I thought we had a place, but ...” She crammed the small bundle deep into one of the pockets of her dress and shrugged, not wanting to bother yet another stranger, even such a kindhearted one, with her story. “Would you know of anyone who's looking to take in boarders?”

“Better you should ask who
can't
use a boarder or two to help pay the rent!” the woman replied. She rattled off the names of about a dozen families who had a little extra space in their tenement apartments, then tore off a scrap of brown wrapping paper from the roll behind the counter and drew a crude map while telling Raisa how to find them. Raisa paid close attention to every stroke of the bakeshop woman's pencil, trying to memorize her every word. She could read the house numbers, but the street names were in English. If she forgot the directions, she might never find her way.

Raisa and Brina left the bakery with the map, a couple of onion bialys, and a small paper sack containing some stale apple strudel and a fistful of broken cookies that the woman had thrown in for free. “Welcome to the Golden Land,” she'd said when she handed the bag to Raisa. The onion bialy really was the best Raisa had ever tasted. Everything looked better now that she had a little something in her stomach.

First I'll find us a place to stay, then I'll start asking about where I can get work,
she thought.
Next, I'll find someone to help me write a letter to Glukel. Oh, and another one to Reb Avner! Thank God I have the address Reb Laski sent me for our shtetl's Protective and Benevolent Association here. I don't know what they can do for me, but maybe once we're settled I can go there and they might be able to help me find out where Henda was working after the strike. Maybe they even have ways of learning where she is now!
Raisa tore another huge bite out of the bialy and relished the rich taste of golden baked onions.

Raisa's optimism carried her through until noon. In that time, she and Brina walked to every tenement on the bakeshop woman's map, spoke to one housewife after another, and always got the same answer: “If you don't have a job yet, how can I be sure you'll be able to pay the rent? And how do you expect to get a job with that child to look after?”

It didn't matter that Raisa had enough money to pay for two weeks' rent at some of the apartments she visited. The housewives had all dealt with boarders before. “Pay for one week, pay for two, and then it's nothing but excuses for three weeks after that! I didn't just fall out from under a horse's tail, girly. No one's going to pull that one on me a second time!”

Sometime between the sixth unsuccessful attempt to find lodgings and the noon hour, Brina ate all the broken cookies and half of the stale strudel. Raisa didn't notice until the little girl began to cry from a self-inflicted bellyache. “Oh, Brina, what am I going to do with you?” Raisa wiped the telltale crumbs off Brina's face, but couldn't think of what else to do for the child. At last she picked her up and continued walking through the streets, hoping that the next apartment would be the one to welcome them in.

It was no use. Meeting after meeting ended in rejection. Some were harsh and cold, some sympathetic, but a softened blow was still a blow. One housewife took pity on them and went into the room where her husband was cutting out pattern pieces for ladies' dresses. Raisa glimpsed him working over a thick pile of material, slashing through the layers with the long, hooked fabric-cutting knife. He paused just long enough to berate his wife for bothering him with such stupidity. “No job, no good, end of story.”

The woman murmured something inaudible and gestured at Brina, who was curled up miserably in Raisa's lap. A fleeting look of compassion touched her husband's face.

“Hey, you! Girly!” he called out to Raisa. “I'll tell you what; if you can guarantee that kid of yours doesn't get in the way here while you're at work, I'll put in a good word for you with a friend of mine who works at Triangle Waist Company. It's a good shop, very modern. I'd go there myself if they were hiring cutters. Just how good are you with a sewing machine?”

Raisa hugged Brina close. “Good,” she said. Her desperation gave strength to the lie.
I
will
be good running that machine. How hard could it be? I'll get someone to teach me. It couldn't take
that
long to learn.
“Very good.”

“Glad to hear it.” He spoke a few words to his wife, who beckoned Raisa. She set Brina down and followed the woman into the front room of the apartment, where a weedy young man, barely out of boyhood, bent over a sewing machine. The cutter ordered him away from his workstation and invited Raisa to show off her skill. She sat down in front of the machine, set her feet on the treadle, rested her hands on the cloth waiting to pass under the needle, and silently began to cry.

The shame of her useless lie weighed her down more heavily than Brina's slight body as she walked on through the streets. Still, she marched on. What choice did she have? The same anxiety that ate away at her hopefulness was a spur that drove her in spite of weariness, sore feet, thirst, and fresh hunger. One part of her mind argued,
Why are you so worried? If you don't find a place to move, do you really think Bayleh will force you out of her apartment and onto the streets tonight?
Another countered with,
Do you want to find out the hard way?