Read Online Up From Orchard Street by Eleanor Widmer - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Eleanor Widmer
Ads: Link
little finger than Ada has in her whole head. Right now you could speak with the president of the United States. If you met the president tomorrow you would know what to say to him. And Ada, that nar, all she knows is to dye her hair and to wink at men. Some married woman—she carries on like a streetwalker, a nafka.” Though Ada’s apartment was warm and her bathtub a treat by my standards, I restrained myself from bathing there again.
Instead, every so often on a late Friday afternoon, I went with Bubby to the public baths on Eldridge Street. The city provided the space and the boiling water for the showers. A hunched-over old crone, dripping wet from the steady stream of hot water, sat at the door and begged to cut your toenails for a few pennies. We couldn’t decide whether she had been born a hunchback or whether years of sitting cross-legged at the door had caused her back to curve into a half-circle. She still wore a wig as in the old country, and a black ragged shawl over an equally black ragged dress. Moving from customer to customer, she resembled a toothless black crow. The old woman terrified me.
The water for the showers came on at intervals of three minutes and lasted for three minutes. You had to wash and rinse quickly unless you wanted to stand and wait for the next cycle to begin. Most women languished at the public baths for an hour, but my grandmother got me in and out in a hurry, lest I catch cold walking home with damp hair. She’d bundle me in a large towel, hand me a fresh
shtinik,
a white cotton slip that served instead of an undershirt, and then put on my smelly sweaters again. I soon rebelled against the public baths. “I feel shanda,” I told my grandmother. I hated the cracked tile floor, the yellowing tile walls, the odd shapes and forms of strangers’ bodies. During our many years together, my grandmother’s policy and philosophy rested on not sabotaging my wishes. “You shouldn’t feel shanda in the public baths,” she soothed me. “In Russia, every Friday women run to the public baths to make themselves clean for Shabbas.” “I can’t stand this place!” I cried in rebellion.
“See how she opens a mouth to her bubby,” a woman in the next shower complained.
My grandmother bustled me out and offered to buy me a charlotte russe displayed in a candy store window—slices of imitation sponge cake placed on a circle of cardboard and topped with fake whipped cream and a cherry.
I refused, not easily placated after what I considered a humiliating experience at the public baths. “All right,” she said. “You don’t want a charlotte russe, why don’t you read me the signs as we walk home.” Bubby knew that I enjoyed reading the letters out loud and then sounding out the names of the signs. To be sure, I had them all memorized and it wasn’t much of a challenge, but afterward Bubby told everyone that even before kindergarten I could read every sign on Orchard Street. On the next to the last time that I visited the public baths, we went to a sweater store and Bubby bought me a thin maroon vest to wear next to my shtinik, and a navy blue one for my brother. “With such a nice vest,” she said with a smile, “you won’t feel a shanda if you have to go to the doctor and take off your middy blouse.”
4
Doctor, Doctor
THE DOCTOR WAS a constant in our lives. My mother, who was diagnosed with what was euphemistically called “a weak heart,” laughed and laughed when the insurance doctor told her that she couldn’t obtain a life insurance policy because he detected multiple murmurs and an uneven beat. When he remarked, “You’re too young to have such a weak heart,” Lil thought it a big joke. “Who doesn’t have a weak heart on the Lower East Side?” she asked as she skipped out of the house in her high heels, her blonde hair perfect, her dress and coat as fashionable as any woman uptown. How could she take her heart problems seriously when my father had bad lungs
Instead, every so often on a late Friday afternoon, I went with Bubby to the public baths on Eldridge Street. The city provided the space and the boiling water for the showers. A hunched-over old crone, dripping wet from the steady stream of hot water, sat at the door and begged to cut your toenails for a few pennies. We couldn’t decide whether she had been born a hunchback or whether years of sitting cross-legged at the door had caused her back to curve into a half-circle. She still wore a wig as in the old country, and a black ragged shawl over an equally black ragged dress. Moving from customer to customer, she resembled a toothless black crow. The old woman terrified me.
The water for the showers came on at intervals of three minutes and lasted for three minutes. You had to wash and rinse quickly unless you wanted to stand and wait for the next cycle to begin. Most women languished at the public baths for an hour, but my grandmother got me in and out in a hurry, lest I catch cold walking home with damp hair. She’d bundle me in a large towel, hand me a fresh
shtinik,
a white cotton slip that served instead of an undershirt, and then put on my smelly sweaters again. I soon rebelled against the public baths. “I feel shanda,” I told my grandmother. I hated the cracked tile floor, the yellowing tile walls, the odd shapes and forms of strangers’ bodies. During our many years together, my grandmother’s policy and philosophy rested on not sabotaging my wishes. “You shouldn’t feel shanda in the public baths,” she soothed me. “In Russia, every Friday women run to the public baths to make themselves clean for Shabbas.” “I can’t stand this place!” I cried in rebellion.
“See how she opens a mouth to her bubby,” a woman in the next shower complained.
My grandmother bustled me out and offered to buy me a charlotte russe displayed in a candy store window—slices of imitation sponge cake placed on a circle of cardboard and topped with fake whipped cream and a cherry.
I refused, not easily placated after what I considered a humiliating experience at the public baths. “All right,” she said. “You don’t want a charlotte russe, why don’t you read me the signs as we walk home.” Bubby knew that I enjoyed reading the letters out loud and then sounding out the names of the signs. To be sure, I had them all memorized and it wasn’t much of a challenge, but afterward Bubby told everyone that even before kindergarten I could read every sign on Orchard Street. On the next to the last time that I visited the public baths, we went to a sweater store and Bubby bought me a thin maroon vest to wear next to my shtinik, and a navy blue one for my brother. “With such a nice vest,” she said with a smile, “you won’t feel a shanda if you have to go to the doctor and take off your middy blouse.”
4
Doctor, Doctor
THE DOCTOR WAS a constant in our lives. My mother, who was diagnosed with what was euphemistically called “a weak heart,” laughed and laughed when the insurance doctor told her that she couldn’t obtain a life insurance policy because he detected multiple murmurs and an uneven beat. When he remarked, “You’re too young to have such a weak heart,” Lil thought it a big joke. “Who doesn’t have a weak heart on the Lower East Side?” she asked as she skipped out of the house in her high heels, her blonde hair perfect, her dress and coat as fashionable as any woman uptown. How could she take her heart problems seriously when my father had bad lungs
Similar Books
