“Well, well, if it isn’t Haman again!” Pinye declared. He looked about to go for the tailor’s throat. The tailor pretended not to notice. You would think he had been asked to give a public address, the way he piled stone after stone on our hearts with each trouble ahead that he listed. First, he said, we would be asked the names of friends and acquaintances. Then we would have to shell out money for telegrams and wait for them to come. We wouldn’t be released until they vouched for us and signed a guarantee.
Naturally, Pinye exploded. With a glance at Elye he asked the tailor how come he was such an expert on Ella’s Island. The tailor replied that he was an expert because he had met an emigrant aboard ship who had been to America three times.
He must have meant the old sea hand. He’s picked up all kinds of tidbits from him. He can even speak English and is already half an American. “Tshikn”—“kitshn”—“shuggeh”—“misteh”—“butsheh”—“bridzh”: those are just some of the words he knows. He won’t tell us what they mean, though. He says we’ll have to find out for ourselves. Pinye waved a hand and walked away as if to say: “Let the dog bark if it wants to.”
Don’t think that tailor from Heysen didn’t know what he was talking about. He had it right down to the last detail. After getting the third degree from the doctors, we were asked who we knew in America. “Who don’t we?” my mother answered, eager to list all our friends and acquaintances. She’s a pleasure to look at now that they’ve let her in. She glows like a young woman. I haven’t seen her this way in ages.
My brother Elye interrupted. He should do the talking, he said, because he had the addresses written on a piece of paper. That made Pinye declare that the officials wanted names, not addresses. Brokheh cut Pinye short. Both the names and addresses, she told him, belonged to our friends, not his. Pinye got sore. “Since when are Fat Pesye and Moyshe the bookbinder more your friends than mine?” he wanted to know. “I don’t give a damn about Pesye,” Brokheh said. “I’m talking about my father, Yoyneh the baker.”
Elye was right. They wanted addresses, not names. The fun and games began all over again.
Naturally, when it comes to reading addresses Pinye thinks he’s a world beater. He grabbed the paper from Elye, plastered it to his nose, and read aloud like a chanting rabbi. No one understood a word, especially since it all came out backwards. Elye snatched the paper back and handed it to a Shiny Buttons. The Shiny Buttons looked at it and said: “Awl reit.” No one knew what that meant except the tailor from Heysen. Awl, he explained, meant everything and reit meant to write. In short, everything was written on the paper.
We shelled out change for two telegrams. One went to Moyshe and Pesye and the other to Yoyneh. Then we sat down to breakfast. The food wasn’t so hot. Brokheh said the tea could be eaten with a soup spoon. Still, it was free. Everything is free on Ella’s Island. At least we weren’t waiting on an empty stomach.
Waiting was easier said than done. Our eyes were falling out by the time we saw our first acquaintances. They were Pesye and Moyshe. I mean we didn’t exactly see them, because we were in detention. We were told that a fat woman and her husband had come for us. It was maddening not to see them while they were being grilled outside. Someone suggested bribing a guard to have a look. Pinye said America wasn’t Russia. In America, he said, there were no bribes. “When it comes to bribes,” said the tailor from Heysen (there was nowhere that man didn’t turn up), “America and Russia are the same town. The rabbis say that money can even buy a father for a bastard.” For once Pinye had no answer.
The tailor from Heysen was right again. It cost us a kvawdeh, which are four to a dahleh, to get to see Pesye through some bars. She smiled at us with her sweaty face and double chin and my mother bobbed her head back. They both had tears in their eyes. Moyshe the bookbinder peered out from behind Pesye’s broad back. He had on a real hat instead of his old workman’s cap.
A minute later Yoyneh the baker turned up, looking as ornery as ever. He hadn’t changed a bit except for his beard, which — lord-a-mercy! — was gone. Riveleh-Chemise was there too. We wanted to shout hello, to hug, to kiss, to ask all kinds of questions. I was dying to hear about Bumpy and the rest of the gang, and about Brokheh’s little sister Alte. (You may remember we were engaged.)
Go sue! We’re still in detention. All we can do is look through the bars like prisoners or animals in the zoo.
I feel sorry for Pinye. He can’t look us in the eye. It’s a bad day for America. The way he goes around moping, you might think America was his personal property. He’s so mad that he’s begun a poem that goes:
I sure would like to see in hell a
Stinker by the name of Ella.
That made my brother sore because Ella sounds like Elye. Pretty soon he and Pinye were fighting. Then Brokheh got into the act with one of her sayings. “There’s no need to show a beaten dog the stick,” she said. Don’t ask me what that means.
AN OCEAN OF TEARS
Even without all the tears cried by my mother since my father died and we started wandering, you would think we had enough problems of our own. But no, she has to cry for the rest of Ella’s Island too! Every minute there’s a new sob story. My mother takes each one to heart. She wrings her hands, buries her face in them, and weeps to herself.
“You have no cause, Mama,” Elye says.
I agree. What’s there to cry about? Our homeless days are over. We’ve made it across the ocean. In an hour or two we’ll be free men in America.
But how can she resist? All the misery around her is like an ocean of tears.
I could talk all day and night and not get to the end of the hard luck we’ve seen on Ella’s Island.
For instance, here’s a case for you. A family of six, two parents and four children, are being held in detention. How come? Because one of the children, a twelve-year-old girl, can’t count backwards. Although she said “twelve” when asked how old she was, she couldn’t say how old she was a year ago. “Count from one to twelve,” she was told. She did. “Now count from twelve to one.” She couldn’t. Ask me and I’d have breezed right through it: twelveeleventennineeightsevensixfivefourthreetwoone. Big deal! But they won’t let that poor girl into America.
Her family is taking it hard. Their suffering could break a heart of stone. The mother stares at her daughter and sobs. Brokheh and Taybl can’t stop wiping their eyes.
Or how about this one. There was a woman with us named Tsivye. Her husband had disappeared, ditched her long ago. She sent letters trying to trace him and heard one day that he was in Sinsineteh. That’s a city in America. Well, off she goes to look for him. Aboard ship she’s told that when she gets to New York she should find someone to say he’s her husband. That way they’ll let her in.
The advice came from my old sea hand — I’ve told you about him. The tailor from Heysen put in his two cents too. The old sea hand arranged for a friend in New York to pretend to be the woman’s husband. But during the questioning the swindle came to light. The friend turned out to have another wife and was no more Tsivye’s husband than I’m her uncle.
I’m telling you, was there a scene! All Ella’s Island was up in arms. It gave Pinye a chance to settle scores with the tailor from Heysen. He couldn’t pass up a dig:
“Well, Mr. Needle Pusher, didn’t I tell you America wasn’t Russia? In America there’s no monkeying around. God bless Columbus!”
Did Pinye catch it from my mother! Brokheh gave it to him even worse. Even Taybl let him have it. They all but scratched his eyes out for laughing at such heartache. My mother treated Tsivye like a sister just to put Pinye in his place. But they’ll send her back to Europe all the same. Her phony husband is in for it too. They’re both in detention. My mother is beside herself.