Anyway, Rosie took good care of me. She cooed over me, took me into her arms, pressed me against her chest. She held me so tight, and then she very suddenly let me go, sent me downstairs to my mother. I remember it very distinctly. She said, “You belong with your mother.”
After that, I don’t know, a month or two maybe, Louis and Rosie leave town for a week. They ask my mother to keep an eye on the place. They say they’re going on the honeymoon they never had. My mother thought he had money buried in the floorboards. “Ill-gotten gains.” She joked about pulling up the floors while he was gone, but she wasn’t kidding. She thought he was pretending to be something he wasn’t so that no one would suspect him. She never thought they were ill-gotten before Rosie got there. Look, I liked Louis. He had legitimate business too. He owned the movie theater, he owned the candy shop. He invested in the community. And he was always giving everyone a nickel. Ill-gotten, who is anyone to talk?
Then when Louis and Rosie come back to town, they have two girls with them, Rosie’s little sisters. This is when I meet Mazie and Jeanie, the Phillips girls. About six months after the girls arrived, the whole family, Louis and Rosie and Mazie and Jeanie, moved across the street to a bigger apartment, a whole floor, five rooms I heard, but never saw. And then you should have heard my mother.
Mazie’s Diary, December 3, 1907
I lost you! And now I found you. But I don’t have anything to say.
Mazie’s Diary, March 13, 1908
I’m no good at this. Remembering to write in you.
Mazie’s Diary, June 3, 1908
I ain’t no liar, I don’t care what anyone says.
George Flicker
When they first got to town, Mazie was probably ten years old, Jeanie’s four or five years old. I must have been nearly seven by then. The two girls were always very nice to look at, although they weren’t necessarily prettier than anyone else. They looked not so different than the rest of the curly-haired, dark-eyed Jewesses on the Lower East Side.
But Rosie bought them beautiful dresses, and bows for their hair, and they were well fed. So they were not sick or sallow like those who could not get enough to eat, which was more than a few people on the streets those days. And Jeanie took ballet classes when she was very young, which seemed crazy to my whole family when there were no extras for the Flickers, and Uncle Al was sleeping under the staircase. But there she was walking around dressed up like a tiny ballerina, which we could all admit was at least nice for us to see, a little girl looking pretty.
Mazie had no use for me. I bored her. She always was looking for excitement, looking ten feet behind you like there was something better out there. And she seemed so much older than me. I guess there’s a big difference between seven and ten, but now I think it was just that she had been through more than the rest of us. Mazie was very smart. It wasn’t like she was book smart, none of us were. And she was street smart, but all of us were that, being city kids. It just seemed like she knew more about the world, and always did. She ran with the older kids on the rooftops of the tenements. They were a tough gang. Of course, my mother wouldn’t let me anywhere near them.
So no, I didn’t play with the Phillips girls. I just admired them from afar. Or from across the street, anyway.
Mazie’s Diary, July 8, 1909
I can run faster than any of those boys from the block. I told them I would prove it and I did. I raced them all tonight on the roof and won. I beat Abe and Gussy and Jacob and Hyman and not a one of them were even close. They were all spitting in my dust. Even in my dress I can beat those boys. Gussy said I cheated but how could I cheat? He’s a cheater for even saying that. He’s a crummy lying jerk. After, Rosie yelled at me for getting dirty but I told her I didn’t care. It was only a dress.
Louis told her to leave me alone, it’s what kids do, they get dirty. Rosie told him not to say another word about children, not one more word. That clammed him up. Then she started crying. Jeanie was hugging her, begging her not to cry. I started yelling that it was just a stinking dress. I ran outside, they couldn’t catch me. I ran a block, I ran another. I ran as fast as I could. It was just a dress. Why did she have to cry?
Mazie’s Diary, August 8, 1909
Gussy got a piece of my fist tonight. Call me a cheater one more time, I told him. Just one more time. Well he did and now he’s sorry.
George Flicker
She drew blood more than once. This scared us, and it impressed us. She was beyond being a boy or a girl.
Mazie’s Diary, January 4, 1911
You’re where the secrets go. I mean to write in you all this time. I mean to tell you everything. I mean to tell someone everything about my life but I forgot until now. I got all these secrets inside me. Only I just forget to let them out.
Mazie’s Diary, February 3, 1913
I wouldn’t let Rosie throw you away. She’s got nothing better to do than go through my personal private things all day. But you’re mine.
Mazie’s Diary, November 1, 1913
I turned sixteen today, and I’ve already fought with Rosie twice. I can’t listen to her another minute. She’s always yelling and screaming when I come home late. Treating me like I’m a brat. I’m not a brat! She’s an old cow. And I’ve been good for weeks. I’ve been doing everything she’s asked for days and days and weeks and weeks and years and years. One night I go out, and it’s my birthday. One night I come home late. One night!
George Flicker
Of course then she grew those bosoms of hers and everything changed.
Mazie’s Diary, May 12, 1916
I dug you out of my closet so I could scream at the top of my lungs without anyone hearing.
Rosie doesn’t understand what it’s like to love the streets. She doesn’t see the shimmering cobblestones in the moonlight, she just wonders why the city won’t put in another street lamp already. She doesn’t see floozies trying to sweet-talk their customers, earning every nickel they get, working as hard as the rest of us. She just sees crime. She doesn’t see the nuns and the Chinamen and the sailors and barkeeps — the whole world full of such different people. It’s just crowds to her, blocking her way. She sees a taxi whisking by and she thinks, what’s the hurry? And I think, where’s the party?
This is what I want to tell her! There’s a party.
Mazie’s Diary, June 1, 1916
All the girls I know have a fella except for me. But why would I want just one person loving me when I can have three?
George Flicker
Was she any wilder than the rest of us? She was wilder than me, I can tell you that much. But that wasn’t hard. I was a good boy, and she was a good-time girl. You see the difference. She was very…touchy-feely. What does that mean? You seem like a smart person. You know what it means.
She was still a brunette then, and she wore her hair in waves. Sometimes she pinned it up, but most of the time it was loose, though still tidy. Her eyebrows were plucked thin, and she powdered her cheeks white. She wore bright pink and red dresses, the brighter the better — she’d have liked to burn your eyes when you looked at her, I think. New dresses all the time. She was always swirling them around, flirting with her body. Day or night you couldn’t miss her. She wouldn’t let you.