Contents

Birthday Cake

Exile

The Janitor’s Boy

The Corset

Hard Times

The Bride as Child

My Mother was a Queen

Rich and Married

The Ring

Cottage Grove

Yudl

LaSalle Street Station

The Dying Swan

The Runaways

The Visitor

The Bakery

College

Lucky

Mother of the Suicide

Roadblock

About the Author

About Seven Stories Press

Birthday Cake

A little sponge cake, topped with a handful of candles set in edible artificial rosebuds, stands on a shining tablecloth like a ship on a long pond. As the child comes in the room, the click of a switch dashes the room with light. Seeing the rosy-tipped cake, demure and sweet, matching her own tenderness, she cries out in surprise. It is her birthday.

Her father comforts her in her nearly insupportable happiness, strokes her, lifts her for a moment above his head, where the world turns strange and unmanageable and she loses the freedom to move.

In an excess of happiness she also loses the capacity to be comforted. No amount of stroking, shushing, and lifting to the ceiling quiets her. It is as though the child’s own angel of death is passing, carrying the deep bitter knowledge of what it is to live, reminders of that waiting day after day for the unexpected act of love that sometimes never comes at all. Maybe she is in tears because she knows the day won’t last.

Indeed the little girl is living a salty piece of life. She feels the love from her parents’ hearts; it is a love she never had to try for, hers simply for being. Wasn’t she born into this love as a birthright like food, bed, sleep?

Now she joins her mother and father and the other children with their parents around the table. As they hold hands which may not always be there for her, they move closer, arms on one another’s shoulders, become a swaying body. From inside her mouth climbs a song she never knew. Don’t songs sing themselves? As she holds her face up as to the open sun it is a little sun itself outshining the electric ceiling light.

The guests laugh with her; the room is as joyous as a vineyard and the rosy tipped cake flicks its candles. She puffs her cheeks, pretends she is the north wind and in a single big blow extinguishes the candles and the whole day.

It is over. The little girl who has been petted, embraced, and feted sinks into herself, sucking on the happiness now shrunk to the size of a large sourball in the mouth which eventually turns into a fragment and disappears. Time to go to sleep.

She is carried to her room at the end of the hall, under a single bulb hanging like a small planet to achieve her bed. There she pulls the covers up to her chin and lies staring at the dark. Light glances in from the hallway. Soon not to be alone she makes a population for this room. She doesn’t know them all. Who are they? There is the president of the United States, then there’s a grimalkin with long extruding teeth and ragged hair under a peaked bonnet to twit the president, and a new kind of angel completely transparent bearing the same white frosty rose-tipped cake. Here is the policeman lined with two endless rows of unbearably glittering breast buttons on his rounded front, a strap under his chin and a hat like a bowl upside down on his head.

From far off a voice comes. Good night, dear. It is the mother of her everyday life.

She pays no attention. Later will be time enough on another day, tomorrow for instance. The bed is warm; the cover settles around her, entering nicely into crevices around her neck and chin, closing off cold air. She’s a small furnace wrapped in a cozy.

The population in her bedroom has grown enormously. She tries to study them all; it cannot be done. They step all over and through one another and occasionally show signs of recognition. The grocery man nods to the lady next door in her hat with a veil that ends exactly at the bottom of her nose and who talks without opening her mouth very much. The janitor, usually a morose man, with a bucket of green paint, slaps wildly around and laughs as he never laughs during the day. The streetcar conductor holds his hand out to measure her height to see if she must pay a fare even though she lies snugly in her bed. Thank goodness, she is small enough. Her mother slips her free of charge into the streetcar.

A ballet dancer right in the middle is twitting with her feet which aren’t real feet; whoever heard of standing directly on one’s toes that way? The crowd goes on with its wild, busy, and interesting life. The little girl is happy again. She hears singing and begins to sing too. But all these people aren’t doing much good. She sings louder, opening her mouth, lifting her chest to make it come true, to bring back the birthday party, her own sweet private time back. This time it’s not a real birthday party.

Then the room is empty and black. A small nasty light comes in through the open door. Her song is loud and off-tune even to her ears. She cries.

What is it? a voice from far off says. Didn’t you have a good time, my little birthday girl?

The little girl cannot say, cannot sing anymore or stop crying, even though she truly has no idea why she is crying.

Her mother comes riding in along the pale light glancing sideways from the hall, leans over and says, Why are you crying?

I didn’t cry, she says. I was singing the birthday song with everybody.

They’re all gone. Her room is dark as the sea of night, unlike the clear sea of day that lets fishes and weeds be seen. The sea of night has no bottom. That’s where they’ve all gone—into the sea of night.

Hush, says her mother, you can stop crying. I’m here. Your father is over there near the place where the light begins. She points to the light coming in sideways. And why do you cry?

I wasn’t, she says, and lets the birthday song dribble out. It turns into sniffles and sobs. Strange sad noises like the queer secret noises grown-ups sometimes make by themselves have made their way into her mouth as though she has an advance vision of her life ahead.

My god, what is it? says her mother, who surely knows the larger range of sounds that are crying.

At just this moment the little girl bridges to these heaving sounds of grown people. They frighten her. She goes back to crying as a child with all her heart there in her bed in her room which only has dark corners. Nobody is there other than her mother who leans over and says, Hush.

Is it still my birthday? I was singing for my birthday. Please, please, she chokes.

Yes, it’s your birthday. Every day is a birthday. Now you can sleep, little girl. In one day you became a year older and you don’t need to cry anymore. You can sleep by yourself in your own bed in your own room. See, there’s a light to keep you company all night. Go to sleep, little birthday girl.

The little girl sinks back, her covers tucked into the crevices around her chin and neck, lets her eyes close, her body go soft, deep into the bed. Her head rolls back and she lets sleep take her.

Exile

What was happening in the dining room? In bed in her room, how could she know? Anyway, she was supposed to be sleeping.

Go to bed, Ellen, her mother had said just before.

She’d stamped her foot and said, No, no, I don’t want to. I want to be here.

Listen to what Mama says, her father then said. Go to bed. Then he winked at her. When this happened she stopped stamping her foot and went to her room.

Picking up her pajamas, she felt something heavy. There it was, in her pajamas pocket, a piece of chocolate wrapped in silver paper. It was a long time since her father had left her a piece of chocolate. As she found it he sometimes said, An angel put it there, and looked at the ceiling. Her father wasn’t an angel; he just liked to make jokes.

But what were they doing in the dining room? What were they talking about? Her mother, her father, and their guests were sitting at the round golden oak table, with tea glasses, fruit knives, small plates, and a bowl of fruit in the middle on a white tablecloth hanging to the floor. From the chandelier overhead, light came down through cigarette smoke.

Maybe her mother was asking her father for a cigarette. Except when there were other people around, she didn’t smoke. Come on, Yudl, she would say. Give me a cigarette.

No, Papa’d answer, ladies do not smoke.

I’m not a lady, Mama would say, and giggle, which made Ellen feel ashamed for her mother.

Papa always gave her the cigarette, though. Then Mama made a big business out of lighting it. She squinted, screwed her face up, pulled on the cigarette. Sometimes she coughed and had to put it down. When she finished lighting the cigarette, she sat back and breathed out smoke, looking pleased.

Tonight Mrs. Yonover was there too. Mrs. Yonover was a doctor, but nobody called her doctor. She always smoked. She wore pince-nez glasses that trembled when she talked and light danced on the lenses. She held her cigarette in a holder that had a small handle underneath a clip in the shape of a ring in which the cigarette sat. Every now and then she moved the cigarette to her mouth and smoked. I brought this cigarette holder with me from Europe, she said each time.

We know, her father would say. Sometimes Mr. Yonover would say so too and everybody laughed.

Wondering hard what they were doing now, Ellen opened her bedroom door, letting in a slant of light from the hall and sounds from the dining room.

She couldn’t understand what they were saying because they were speaking in Russian. All she could understand was the clink of teaspoons inside glasses and an occasional sigh. Each took a turn at sighing. She heard a cork being pulled from a bottle and then another sound of clinking. This time it was the clink of glass to glass with more Russian being spoken.

She knew how it looked. Sometimes Papa clinked his glass of water to her at the dinner table, pretending they were toasting one another in wine. Then he filled a wine glass for Mama and another for himself. Once she’d pushed her glass of water up to their wine glasses to make it three. Her father and mother had leaned back, laughing and pointing at her.

She wants to be grown up. Isn’t she funny?

Don’t hurry, little girl, Papa said. Plenty of time.

Now she seated herself cross-legged on the floor, huddled in her pajamas, next to the crack of the opened door and listened. The four grown-ups were excited, talking fast.

Shh, not so loud, she heard her mother say.

But she’s asleep, isn’t she? said Mrs. Yonover.

They all fell quiet. A moment later Mrs. Yonover began to sing.

The doctorke is singing, said Papa. There was nothing more to hear after that except Mrs. Yonover’s voice, low, soft, very sad, singing in Russian. Mama always said Mrs. Yonover should have been an opera singer instead of a doctor.

Terrible to be homesick, Mama said now.

More terrible to be there, said Mr. Yonover.

Mrs. Yonover didn’t stop singing until she finished the song.

You sing like this for your patients?

Yudl! her mother said, scandalized.

Then her mother began to sing too. After a while Mrs. Yonover sang with her. Mr. Yonover and her father hummed and sighed, one of them tapping a glass with his spoon. Once her father chuckled.

Her mother stopped. It’s so sad. Don’t laugh. Please. She started her song again.

These were not the kind of songs Ellen knew by heart that she sang in school. These songs she didn’t know; it hurt to listen to them. She started to cry, sitting on the floor with her head hanging, tears trickling onto her knees. The singing came to her as in a dream.

What’s this? A shadow cut off the slant of light, the door was flung open. Her father stood there. In the next instant he picked her up and carried her into the dining room, her face covered with tears.

Why should we put her in exile? Let her sit with us. He planted her on one knee in her pajamas and bare feet, and peeled an orange for her. Mrs. Yonover and her mother leaned over to wipe her face.

You can sleep later, her mother said, a cigarette between her fingers. Plenty of time. She used her father’s words. The room was full of cigarette smoke, the smell of orange peel, and the remains of sad songs she didn’t know.

The Janitor’s Boy

This morning, says Papa, I think I will start her at Sunday school.

A good idea. Let me get her dressed, says Mama.

Papa goes back to reading the Sunday newspaper and muses to himself, singing softly. Meanwhile Mama is dressing me in my party dress. She is also keeping an eye on baby in her high chair who eats all over as if she wants to swallow the world. Mama talks to us each in turn.

To me she says, Be a good girl and mind Papa.

Now she talks to herself. Sunday school. In my time who ever heard of Sunday school? Only here in this country, they have Sunday school, they have everything.

Finally Papa says, Ready?

In a minute. Mama combs my hair, slaps my cheek for love, and turns me toward Papa. Now go.

On the street as we go to the Sunday school, Papa begins to talk. He starts out as usual, You be a good girl. This I barely hear because I am waiting for him to go on. Since I haven’t yet started regular school on weekdays, this is to be my first day at a school.

Papa explains Sunday school. As he talks, he is also talking to himself and occasionally to a friend we meet on the street. As always I listen to everything. Sunday school, he tells me, is to learn about being a Jew, and there will be other little Jewish boys and girls in the class. Play with them nice, he says as we keep walking to Temple Judea.

It didn’t seem odd that I must go to school to learn what I am. I am already well separated from children who are not what I am. The playmates natural to me are like me; our shared alikeness is invisible, not to be touched or learned. It is.

I never think of playing with the children on the little side street that curves into the spacious boulevard where we live. We do not mix. Of course, I know a great deal about them, watching and listening as I do, and it is a rich show.

There is Louie the janitor’s boy for instance. He lives in a little frame house set low upon the ground on the little side street where I see him almost every time I go around the corner. But I don’t talk to him. Where he lives huge aged trees break through the pavement laid around them and the gutters are badly defined separations from the uneven road. After it rains big puddles shimmer with rainbows made by gasoline.

Louie and other boys overrun the street endlessly as they play their games. Like slippery fish they escape being hit by automobiles. On the cracked pavement they sideswipe people by a hairsbreadth on their bicycles while taking up all the sidewalk. One has to take shelter under the trees or step onto somebody’s lawn to make way for them. Wildly they ride and hurtle, rising and falling like horsemen. Danger rides with them. Louie is one of the rough boys. Even the girls on their street hang back from them.

Rough boys, Mama says when she sees them. Don’t play with them, as if there were any chance I would. Go play with the nice children out front, the children in the building. We live in a large apartment house.

Once Louie swerved around the corner onto our boulevard and waved to me as he held his bike between his knees. In the friendly open space I suddenly liked him and waved back.

Who’s that? Mama asked.

Louie the janitor’s boy, I told her, from around the corner.

From around the corner? The janitor’s boy? she said after me foolishly. The janitor collected our garbage and once took a smear off my coat with turpentine when painters were in our flat.

Uh-huh. But I don’t play with him.

That’s good, she said.

I waited for Louie to go around the block again and come flying back. Leaving Mama sitting on the grass out front, I went to play sky blue on the sidewalk. As I hopped from square to square, I waited for Louie to come again and wave. He never came. By suppertime as I went upstairs I felt I was leaving something behind. Then I forgot.

Papa who is now explaining Sunday school does not know Louie the janitor’s boy and doesn’t tell me why I only play with the children in front and why I never even think of playing with the children on the side street. I never let go of his hand as again he tells me what I know, that we are Jewish and today I am to begin to learn the history of the Jews.

At the corner we meet a friend of Papa’s. The two men shake hands and begin to talk politics. I listen to this too. Then Papa’s friend strokes my head. Fine, good girl, he says, a very good idea, Sunday school.

At Temple Judea we find the doorway crowded with other parents and their children. Some of them I know as Papa knows some of the parents. But he hangs back. He wants to finish what he is telling me about the way of the world.

In front of the temple where we stand apart, there are grass, trees, and bushes like a garden; young trees march along the path to the door. The story is about Esther and Haman the evil one who wanted to destroy the Jews, Esther, and all her people. I can see her in a flowing gown, beautiful, good. Haman doesn’t succeed; he is bested by Esther. In my heart, there is no pity for him. As Papa talks, his voice changes, solemn for Haman and out of the shadows into the sun for Esther.

The month of September is not the season for stories about Esther, which are for spring and the festival of Purim. Papa should be telling me about Succoth and the holidays for the turn of the year, the harvest and a good new year with promise and change. But the story of Esther is a good story and Papa loves to tell stories. He doesn’t always remember to draw a moral, but the moral leaps out of the stories from his way of telling.

And now do you see, little one? he says. Haman was wicked and therefore he was hanged and the Jews were saved by Esther the queen. I see Haman resplendent with evil as he is hanged on the scaffold, dangling on the top of a hill, small and black against the sky. This is the way of the world; I do not ask why it is not night during the day. Haman the wicked is dead. I am glad, and Papa is glad with his voice.

He is satisfied with Esther and with himself. I feel her goodness flowing into me and I am also satisfied. The story has ended well, the Jews safe and myself safe. With a crown on her proud head Esther is forever enthroned in my being and I’ll never forget the brave queen who risked her life for the Jews.

With the last corners we enter Temple Judea and Papa talks to friends again as we move slowly in, never letting go of my hand. I am still thinking of Esther the queen. At length I am enrolled and leave Papa to sit in a small chair in a classroom.

The teacher tells other stories but none catches me in the same way. Succoth, she tells us, is a festival when men sit in little houses made of boughs of trees which must be something like the courtyard of the temple. In this little house with sunshine coming in patches between the boughs I seat Esther upon her throne and then the class ends. I come out along to find Papa in front with friends.

So, how did you like Sunday school?

Fine, I answer, and say not another word.

We start out for home.

Tell me a story, I demand.

A story! he says. Now? A story? A story is for going to sleep, forgetting he told me a story on the way to Sunday school.

Tell me about Esther and Haman.

That’s not a story. That is history. I’m glad to see that you like history. In Sunday school they teach history and next Sunday morning we will go again.

Tell me about Esther and Haman.

With an inspiration my Papa turns on me like a gentle beast. You tell me a story, he says.

I do. I tell him the story of Esther and Haman, word for word, putting sunshine into the good parts but not for the bad and shadow for the evil, even raising my finger as if to say, See, that’s how it was, as he does.

We are going home by way of the side street instead of the boulevard just for a change. We see a crowd of people in front of the little tired frame house which I see for the first time stands in the shadow of our apartment building. The crowd surrounds the heavy old trees and includes them among themselves as they stand looking at the house.

Hah, says Papa, an accident, and makes firm his hold on my hand.

We slowly approach. It is plain that Papa wants to know what has happened. As we enter the crowd Papa asks. What happened? Nobody answers. Everyone is looking at the shut door of the house.

Suddenly the door opens. It is very quiet. A man in a white suit backs out holding one end of a litter held at the other end by another man.

On the litter Louie is lying with a blanket right up to his chin, seeing nothing. His eyes are closed. He is white as the pillow under his head. The trees overhead flutter peacefully. Today nobody is riding bicycles and Louie is moved quietly as though taken in sleep through the parting crowd to the back of an ambulance we hadn’t noticed was waiting. Behind him his mother comes carrying a shopping bag with Louie’s clothes. She is sobbing as if she didn’t know we are all watching. Some people turn away as if just then they decided they’d seen enough. She goes after Louie into the ambulance and it pulls smoothly away.

The crowd is gone. Only Papa and I are standing beneath a tree where the ground is covered with the first falling leaves. They crunch under our feet as we go slowly to the corner.

Louie has diphtheria, Papa says in his voice for secrets. As I was watching Louie go by on his litter, somebody finally answered Papa’s question.

Diphtheria is perilous. It is one of the hard wrong things of the world along with crossing streets alone, leaning out of the window, sharp knives, and razor blades. Mama always says, Be careful. Wasn’t Louie careful? I am scared and safe, glad I escaped diphtheria while Louie didn’t.

It is a serious disease, Papa goes on. His mama is worried.

Why?

He may die. He is going to the hospital.

But, I reason, it’s all right. Louie isn’t Jewish.

Papa stops and looks at me.

Ah-ha, he intones, ah-ha, and he slaps me. I cry and try to find wisdom again.

The Corset

Be independent, her mother gave her a Sunday school lesson in the kitchen. Ellen let it sink in and watched her mother cook.

In life her mother was not independent as a nation is independent. She was an imperialist predator, overrunning the life of her family but only to the boundaries of their flat, no further. When her father came home at night carrying with him the aura of printing from his newspaper, he was seated at a dinner of food of her choice. He ate everything.

This Sunday they did not eat chicken. Fish is good for you, her mother said. Eat it. You didn’t finish.

All three cleaned the bones of the whitefish lying across their plates.

Wash the dishes. I work hard, she commanded Ellen.

I don’t want to. I have homework. Rebellion.

I said wash the dishes.

Ellen went into her bedroom, closed the door.

Mama went after her. She opened the door. I said wash the dishes.

Ellen pretended she didn’t hear, willed her mother into oblivion. It didn’t work. She approached, stood silently while Ellen ran her glance over the page. Before she could notice whether she understood what she was reading, the book was torn from her hands.

Mama held it above her head like a torch. Later, she said. You can do your homework later.

How will I get on the honor roll? Wasn’t she sent to school to get on the honor roll?

Mama hesitated. You’ll get on the honor roll, don’t worry. I said so. She still had the book raised: she’d lost Ellen’s place.

Later.

Now.

So Ellen washed the dishes. She broke a cup, got scared and threw the pieces into the garbage, and went back to her room. Where was everybody? She heard voices in the living room. Not company. If it were, Papa would be there too, and he was sitting at his desk in the corner of the dining room humming over his papers in his private world.

Where was the book? Softly she went to the doorway of the living room. The book was on the end table. In the flowered easy chair next to it sat a strange woman who must have rung the bell and arrived too quietly to be heard over the chinking of dishes and silverware and water running.

She was stout with sleek sides, her breasts forced into a bolster under her chin. Her high-pitched expressive voice meant she was Russian. In fact it took a couple of minutes before Ellen could understand what she was saying or even be sure it was in English.

Her mother sat on the couch not quite all the way back in company posture, straight up, hands folded in her lap. Once in a while she wiped away a wisp of hair from her face.

Yes, she said for the second time that day, a woman must be independent.

Listen. I’m going to explain it.

I’m listening, said her mother.

From a long narrow box at her feet such as long-stemmed roses are delivered to the beloved, the woman took a pink corset dripping with garters and corset strings.

With this, she said, shaking out the corset, then holding it up just as her mother had held her book from her, you can do it. You won’t have to ask your husband for money. You will have your own money.

Mama’s eyes gleamed. I know how. I make dresses for my daughter, she said moving up a little. I can do it.

You are not the first, my dear, said the woman. After you’re a real corsetiere, you will see. Your life will be new. You won’t have time to make dresses. You’ll buy them in the store with your own money. Her eyes gleamed too.

I’ll be independent, said Mama in a hushed voice.

Ellen darted into