The Boston Girl

He was a cute, good-natured baby, but I hardly ever got the chance to hold him because my parents wouldn’t put him down. To them he was a miracle. Mameh lit up like a candle when she saw him and grabbed him out of Betty’s arms the minute they came over. She covered his face with kisses and pretended to eat his fingers. “Look how delicious,” she said. “Look how handsome! Has there ever been such a boy?”

My father couldn’t get enough of his grandson, either, and even stopped going to shul in the evening in case Betty brought the baby to our house. Lenny was named after my father’s brother, Laibel, and Papa called him “my Kaddish”; he didn’t have a son to say the prayer for him after he died and that was ages before women could do it.

But Kaddish didn’t have anything to do with the way my father played peekaboo with Lenny or laughed at every sneeze and yawn. Papa was a completely different person with him. It was the only time I ever heard him sing.

But not even Lenny could keep my mother and my sister from fighting. Mameh would start complaining about something—­anything—until she got herself worked up about how bad America was.

Especially the food. Everything here was terrible: bread, eggs, cabbage: “The cabbages I grew were sweet like sugar,” she said. “You can’t get anything like that in this miserable country.” She went on and on until Betty couldn’t stand it anymore and grabbed Lenny. “I wouldn’t trade cabbages for running water and toilets. I was the one who had to carry water in those filthy buckets. Remember when you brought the goat inside so she wouldn’t freeze to death?

“What do you think, Papa? Is it better your grandson crawls on a dirt floor or grows up where he can go to school like a real person?”

My father smiled at Lenny. “According to that husband of yours, his sons will be doctors and professors in this country. Who knows?”

That would have been the nicest thing Papa ever said about Levine, but he couldn’t leave it alone. “Even a broken clock is right twice every day.”

You know—living life.

We didn’t call it the First World War when it was happening. When it started, almost everything I knew about it came from newsreels. We saw British soldiers marching in rows and explosions with dirt flying into the air, but the next moment soldiers were cleaning their guns or sitting up in hospital beds, with pretty nurses carrying trays. Then the movie started and it all melted together. None of it seemed real.

Some people in the neighborhood were worried about family in the old country, but we didn’t have anyone left over there. My mother’s only cousins had immigrated to Australia and South Africa. My father had an uncle who went to Palestine, but nobody had heard from him in so long he was probably dead.

For three years, most people weren’t interested in the war. They were just working, trying to get ahead, have a good time. You know—living life.

But not my brother-in-law. Levine read two newspapers every day and knew where the battles were and what the politicians were saying. He was sure that America was going to join the war sooner or later. “And when that happens, they’re going to need a lot of shirts.”

Levine got it in his head that the commander of the navy was Jewish and decided to go to Washington, D.C., and talk to him “man to man.” It turned out that Josephus Daniels was a Christian and Levine didn’t get anywhere near him, but he said the trip was a success because he’d met “people with connections” at the boardinghouse where he stayed. He was so sure of himself that he rented a much bigger space in the West End and borrowed money for sewing machines so he would be ready when the big orders came.

“Meshuggener,” my father said. “Crazy.”

Levine didn’t look so crazy in 1917 when the navy and army started ordering uniforms. He had to keep the factory open eighteen hours a day and he couldn’t find enough workers to keep up. After I finished up in the office, I pitched in and helped pack boxes.

The war was the only thing anyone talked about. When the draft started taking boys from the neighborhood, a lot of the older Jews got scared and talked about how young men used to be kidnapped by the Russian army; most of them never came back. But the boys I knew weren’t worried. They wanted to show how patriotic they were and went to enlist. In the beginning it seemed like a big adventure and everyone was singing “Over There.” The war was supposed to be over in a few months.

Of course it wasn’t. Coal got scarce and food prices went up. There were more beggars in the street and every week another ­business closed. One night, someone painted Hun on the door of Frankfurter’s Delicatessen and broke all the windows. The place closed for good, which was even sadder if you knew that the ­owners were Polish Jews who picked the name because they thought it sounded American.

It was a strange feeling knowing that my family was doing fine because of the war. I think it made Levine uncomfortable, too. I was the only one who knew that he had a drawer full of pins and medallions from having bought so many war bonds.

We moved in 1918, right in middle of the war. It was Betty’s doing. She found two apartments, first and second floor, in the West End. They were close enough to the factory so Levine could have supper with his children and she could put in a few hours here and there while Mameh took care of Lenny.

Believe me, I wasn’t the least bit sorry to leave that miserable tenement, even if it was the only place I’d ever lived. The new apartment had indoor plumbing and electricity, and I got my own room with a door I could close. It was worth walking a little farther on Saturday nights to see my friends.

I was still going to the Saturday Club again but the meetings weren’t exactly fun. We rolled bandages and knitted socks and the lectures were about things like using cornmeal instead of flour and chicory instead of coffee. There was no money for punch and cookies and it was so cold in the settlement house we had to keep our coats on, but I didn’t mind; I was there mostly to see Rose, Irene, and Gussie.

One night, Miss Chevalier told us that the Salem Street building was being sold and we would get together in the library instead. She tried to make it sound like it was all for the best, but I knew it killed her.

The library was crowded and stuffy but the girls and I kept rolling and knitting, doing our bit for the war effort—even if it wasn’t much. It was dull, except for the night Miss Chevalier brought a friend who had been an ambulance driver in France.

Her first name was Olive and she must have been as old as Miss Chevalier, but with her uniform and cap and the way she said things like “A-1” and “fed up,” she seemed more our age. She had signed up for the English ambulance service when she found out they let girls drive. “I learned how to change a tire in the trenches and all the boys had to admit I was as good as any of them.”

After she told us about driving through terrible weather and stories about the other women drivers, one of the girls raised her hand and asked

if they were still looking for volunteers. “I’d do anything to get behind the wheel of a car.”

“Would you really do anything?” Olive said it with so much bitterness, I swear the temperature in the room dropped twenty degrees. She glared at the girl who had asked the question and said, “Would you hold an eighteen-year-old boy in your arms while he died? A boy with a hole in his belly, who had soiled his trousers and was screaming for his mother? Would you do that?”

She went on like that until Miss Chevalier stopped her. Though not before the girl who’d raised her hand ran out of the room, sobbing.

After that night I found myself counting gold star flags hanging in windows—one for each son lost in the war. The next time I saw a picture of Mary Pickford selling Liberty bonds, I wondered which of the handsome soldiers around her were dead. And when I passed a man with an empty shirtsleeve pinned to his shoulder, I shuddered to think he might have been wearing one of our shirts when his arm was blown off.