Threads and Flames (17 page)

“I understand.” Raisa bowed her head. “I swear, I'll find work tomorrow! I'm a good seamstress, except—except not with a machine. But if I can't get a job sewing, I'll look for something else, anything! I saw a couple of clothing stores downstairs. Do you think they'd want to hire me to make alterations? I'm good with numbers, too. I could sell candy, or tobacco, or—”

“Or the moon.” Mrs. Kamensky's laugh was a lot like her son's. “I hope you'll look for a job
beyond
the shops in this building. I have no doubt you'll find one, if not tomorrow, then the next day. It's good for a boss to see you're hungry for honest work, but never let him guess you're starving.” She reached for the cake plate and gave Raisa a big slice. “And once you have your job, don't worry about Brina. We will keep each other company. Isn't that right, sweetness?” she asked the child.

Brina's lower lip stuck out. “My tummy hurts.”

 

 

That night, Raisa and Brina sat down to their first dinner in their new home. A dose of ginger tea and a nap had settled the child's stomach. Mrs. Kamensky beamed to see what a good appetite she had.

The girls met Fruma just before dinner was served. Gavrel's sister came home from work so tired that she nearly tripped over the new boarders' bags by the front door. She stubbed her foot against Henda's battered leather satchel and staggered, her brown straw hat flying off.

“Oh! Let me get that for you!” Raisa rushed to retrieve the fallen hat. “I'm sorry,” she said as she handed it back to its owner. “I just brought those over here late this afternoon. I haven't been told where to store them yet.”

“You're our new boarder?” Fruma's curly brown hair framed a round face as white and delicately beautiful as a china doll's. “A pleasure to meet you, miss.”

“ ‘Miss'?” Gavrel echoed. “My dear Fruma, perhaps you're not aware that the proper way to address a royal princess's lady-in-waiting is . . . is ...” He scratched his head. “Well, I suppose it's ‘Lady.'”

“What princess?” Fruma asked.

“The one I dosed with ginger tea this afternoon, my darling,” Mrs. Kamensky said. “You'll be sitting next to her at dinner. Her name is Brina, that's Raisa, and your brother had better stop all his princess-and-lady nonsense before somebody mistakes him for a lunatic. Now, let's eat.”

It was a very enjoyable dinner. Mrs. Kamensky's cooking was simple but delicious. Most of the conversation centered around how Raisa, Brina, and Gavrel had happened to meet.

“That's what I call luck,” Gavrel said. “They needed a new place to live, we needed a new boarder, and old Mr. Fischel turned out to be the matchmaker!”

“Don't tell him that, or he'll want a fee,” Fruma said. She used her own knife and fork to cut up Brina's carrots.

“Why luck?” their mother asked. “Gavrel, all we've ever heard out of your mouth since you were nine years old was how you want to grow up to study Torah and Talmud, to teach, to become a rabbi someday! And when something like this happens, you call it luck and not the hand of the Almighty? Luck is for gamblers, not rabbis!”

“I'd say we could all benefit from a little luck now and then, Mama,” Gavrel replied. “Gamblers
and
rabbis. Papa, tell her I'm right!”

Gavrel's father grunted. It was the only sound he'd made at the table since reciting the blessing before the meal. As soon as he'd said “amen,” he'd buried himself and his dinner plate behind a copy of the
Jewish Daily Forward.
If he was eating back there with a fork or with the fingers not holding up the paper, no one could tell.

Raisa had never seen a Yiddish newspaper before. In the shtetl, Reb Avner sometimes got his hands on a Polish paper, though Raisa had had to take his word for it since the printed letters had no meaning for her. Now, gazing at the newspaper screen Mr. Kamensky had set up between himself and his family, Raisa was happily surprised by how much of the stories she could read. She became captivated, letting her dinner go cold while she strained to solve the puzzle of newsprint.

“Well, Mama, it looks like we've lost another one to the
Forward,
” Gavrel remarked with an exaggerated sigh. “That's not a newspaper, it's a swamp. It swallowed Papa long ago, and now it's gulping down Raisa, too!”

His teasing words startled Raisa out of her absorption in the newspaper and left her feeling deeply embarrassed. “I'm sorry, I didn't know I was doing anything wrong.”

“Reading isn't wrong,” Gavrel said. “Reading while your food just sits there, that's wrong
and
dangerous. Isn't that true, Mama?”

“Why ask me?” Mrs. Kamensky assumed a wounded look. “Putting a good meal on the table night after night isn't important. I
expect
it to be taken for granted.”

Gavrel winked at Raisa. “See?” Fruma burst into laughter, Raisa caught the urge to giggle in spite of her best efforts not to, Gavrel joined in, and Brina decided that if most of the grown-ups were having so much fun, she should go along with it, too, at the top of her healthy young lungs. An irate Mrs. Kamensky loudly berated them all for the sin of disrespect.

“
Excuse
me?” Mr. Kamensky lowered the newspaper. “Has something happened? Has the President of the United States of America made a new law saying it's no longer permitted for a hardworking man to read in peace in his own home?”

“The president doesn't make the laws, Papa,” Gavrel said. “Congress does. He only signs them into effect.”

“So smart.” Mr. Kamensky eyed his son coldly. “Such a genius. So tell me, Mr. Genius, who was the one who let those punk Irish kids steal three whole bolts of cloth from the store this afternoon?”

Gavrel squirmed. “I'm sorry, Papa. I wasn't paying attention.”

“Well, you'd better pay attention to the cloth starting tomorrow on the new job or you'll slice your hand off with the cutting knife, God forbid! Now, apologize to your mother.”

“Why are you telling him to apologize?” Fruma spoke up. “Do you even know what he did wrong? You weren't listening to us; you were reading!”

“Another county heard from.” Mr. Kamensky turned his stony stare on his other child. “This is not how a good girl talks to her father. Mark my words, this country is ruining our daughters. Back talk, defiance . . . What next, Fruma? Are you going to chop off your hair and parade around looking like a man in skirts?”

As soon as the words left his mouth, he took his first really good look at Raisa. “Ah! I beg your pardon, miss. I didn't mean to offend. Short hair . . . it's very attractive on you. So!” He folded the
Forward
and laid it down next to his dinner plate. “What brings you to our table?”

Once again, Raisa recounted the events that had brought her from the shtetl to the Kamenskys' home. She didn't burden her new landlord with the details of her journey, only letting him know that the one thing in her new life of even more importance than finding a job was finding her sister. All this was news to Fruma, as well, but whereas her father listened to Raisa's story in sympathetic silence, she was soon moist eyed and sniffling audibly.

“Frumaleh, this isn't the matinee for the
Jewish Queen Lear
!” her mother exclaimed. “Raisa feels bad enough about her sister without you carrying on as if the poor girl was already dead and buried. Don't be so quick to turn a mystery into a tragedy before it's over.”

“I can't help it,” Fruma said, dabbing at her eyes with an embroidered handkerchief. “I don't know what I'd do if Gavrel simply . . . disappeared. I'd die!”

“I'll remind you of that the next time you're screaming at me over something I didn't do,” Gavrel said, giving his sister's hand a squeeze. “Better yet, I'll disappear and make a fortune selling tickets to your big death scene!”

“God forbid!”
Mr. Kamensky boomed. “Will you stop being so
smart
for a change, boychik? To say such things about your own sister, just inviting the evil eye!” He spit three times to avert the curse, although Raisa noticed that he only went through the motions. She didn't want to see what Mrs. Kamensky would do to anyone who actually dared spit on her immaculate floors.

“Your mother is right, Fruma,” Raisa said, hoping to restore the family harmony. “You shouldn't get so upset. I'm not.” The lie fell out of her mouth like a stone. “I haven't even begun to look for her, not with any
real
effort. But now that my worries about where Brina and I can live are gone, I can take up the search with everything I've got!” She caught sight of the piercing look Mrs. Kamensky leveled at her and was quick to add, “When I'm not working, that is.”

Fruma put away her handkerchief and blinked back the last of her tears. “You must let me help you, Raisa,” she said. “It would do my heart good if I were the one to reunite you with your sister.”

“Would you listen to Mrs. Astor over there?” Fruma's mother made an expansive gesture at her daughter. “A society lady with all the free time in the world to look for needles in haystacks!”

“I'll do
what
I can
when
I can, Mama,” Fruma replied firmly. She looked at Raisa. “You can depend on me.”

That night, Fruma insisted that Raisa and Brina spread their mattress next to her bed in the tiny room she occupied just off the kitchen. It had the look of an oversize pantry that had been stripped of its shelves and stuffed with far too much furniture for comfort. When the girls added the three traveling bags and the mattress to Fruma's bed, wooden chest, and the pegs where she hung her coat and dresses, there was no room to move unless they stood on the bags, the mattress, or the chest.

Brina fell asleep as soon as she lay down on the mattress. Raisa covered her with a thin blanket Mrs. Kamensky had given them, then sat cross-legged in her nightgown watching Fruma brush her long curls.

“I wonder how soon it will be before I can do that?” she mused aloud.

“Oh, you'll probably have hair down to your shoulders by your next birthday,” Fruma replied lightly.

“You're trying to cheer me up,” Raisa said, smiling.

“Yes, and if I were as clever as Gavrel, I'd do a better job of it. First I should have asked when your birthday comes. If it's next week, you'll know right away I was lying about your hair.”

“You could have gotten away with it. I turned fourteen on the voyage over here. It was the day”—she glanced at Brina, who was deep in tranquil slumber—“the day after her mother died. I couldn't think about anything else that day.”
I didn't even mention it to Zusa,
she thought wistfully, missing her friend.

“I'm not surprised.” Fruma finished her work with the brush and began weaving her hair into a braid, to keep it from tangling while she slept. “In that case, your hair
will
be down to your shoulders by the time you're fifteen. Or at least down to your chin. It's better to be happy with little victories than none at all.”

“I'd be happy if it grew back enough to cover my ears again. I hate the way they stick out. I look like a man's shaving mug!”

Fruma chuckled. “I used to hate the way I looked when I was fourteen, too. Now that I'm twenty—”

“Oh! You're Henda's age!” Raisa gave a little gasp. Her hands clenched, and she leaned forward sharply.

Fruma was startled. “Raisa, what's wrong? Why are you
staring
at me like that?”

“Fruma . . . Fruma, when you were sixteen, did you look different than you do now?”

“Um, I guess I did.” Fruma's fingers froze in the middle of tying a baby blue ribbon around the end of her braid.

“
How
different? A lot? A little?” A note of urgency had crept into Raisa's voice.

“I—I'm not sure. Not
too
much, I suppose.” All at once, Fruma's bewildered expression became a look of understanding. “Raisa, come up here.” She patted the end of her bed. When Raisa was seated beside her, Fruma said, “You're afraid you won't know her when you see her, is that it? You're scared that you'll go looking for the sixteen-year-old girl who left the shtetl and you won't recognize her now that she's twenty. You're staring at me and trying to imagine what Henda must look like now, yes?”

Raisa nodded, then bowed her head. Fruma put both arms around her shoulders and hugged her. “Oh, Raisa, don't think such things! She's your sister; even if she's changed, you'll know her! And she's got eyes of her own; she'll know you, too, no matter how many years have passed. Believe it.”

“I want to,” Raisa murmured. “But I—I miss her so much, Fruma. I've waited four years to see her again, and just when I thought the waiting was over, she's
gone.
It makes me feel so empty, so alone, so . . . afraid.” She looked at Fruma. “You must think I'm acting like a child.”

“You aren't a child, Raisa.” Fruma sat back, hands folded in her lap. “Could a child take such good care of another child?” She indicated Brina's sleeping form. “I think you have every right to feel afraid. You love your sister, you're worried about her, and you're exhausted from everything you've gone through to get here and be with her again. That makes it all worse. Doubts and fears feast on weariness, but once you've had a good night's sleep, you'll rule them instead of the other way around.”

“Thank you, Fruma.” Raisa gave the older girl a light kiss on the cheek. “I hope you're right.” She slid off the bed, and got under the blanket next to Brina.