I must have told you about our friend Pinye’s sweet tooth. Well, he got hold of some tshooinkahm, swallowed a whole pack, and had such conniptions that he nearly died. The doctors had to pump out his stomach.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s return to our first ride in New York.
Everyone kept talking while we rode the eleveydeh and the tsobvey. But talking is not the right word. There was so much noise, such a racket, such a rattle of wheels and shrieking of rails and clanking of cars, that you couldn’t hear your own voice. You had to shout as if speaking to a deaf man. In no time we all were hoarse. My mother kept begging:
“Pesye, my sweet …Pesye, my darling …dear, dear Pesye …let’s talk later!”
For a moment we fell silent and then we shouted our lungs out again. We were only human, after all, good friends and neighbors who hadn’t seen each other in ages. How could we keep quiet? There was so much, so much to talk about!
After shouting about this and that, we got around to discussing where to go and whose house to put up at. It took some arguing to decide that Pinye, Taybl, my mother, and I would stay with Pesye, and Elye and Brokheh would go to Yoyneh and Riveleh’s. Pesye wanted Mendl to come with her too. Nothing doing, Riveleh said: Pesye had enough mouths to feed. Pesye didn’t like that one bit. A mouth, she said, never has too many teeth and a mother can’t have too big a family.
“You know what? Let’s ask the dinner guest in person.”
So said Moyshe the bookbinder and asked Mendl which he preferred: his and Pesye’s place or Yoyneh the bagel maker’s. Mendl said he would stick with me. I wouldn’t have expected any less.
“The next steyshn is our stahp,” Yoyneh announced.
It had to be explained to us that a tsobvey has steyshns and that your stahp is the steyshn you get off at.
“In-law! When did you learn to talk the language?” my mother asked Yoyneh. Riveleh answered:
“I promise you, in-law, you’ll be talking it in a week too. Because if you go out into the strit and ask for a meat store, you won’t get the time of day.”
“What should I ask for, then?” asked my mother.
“You have to ask for a butsheh shahp,” Pesye said.
“A plague take them all!” exclaimed Brokheh. “I don’t care if they burst. When I want meat, I’ll ask for it. Meat, meat, meat, meat, meat!”
All of a sudden it was Yoyneh’s stahp. He grabbed Riveleh, Elye, and Brokheh and rushed from the car. My mother rose to walk her son and daughter-in-law to the door. Pinye got up to say good-bye to Elye and arrange their next meeting. Before he knew it, Yoyneh’s family was on the platform and the conductor was shutting the doors. The tsobvey gave a lurch. Pinye was still trying to figure it out when his feet slid out from under him. A second later he was lying in a Negro woman’s lap. The woman flung him off with both hands and he went sprawling while the cap flew from his head. The tsobvey car burst into laughter. Mendl and I laughed too. Did we catch it from my mother and Taybl. Go have a face of stone like Brokheh!
All things come to an end. We arrived at our stahp and climbed down to the strit. If I hadn’t known we were in America, I would have guessed we were in Lemberg or Brody. The Jews were the same, their wives were the same, the noise was the same, and even the garbage was the same. Everything was just louder and more confusing. The buildings were taller, too, a whole lot. Six stories is a joke in New York. There are buildings that are twelve. And twenty. And thirty. And forty. And even more.
We stood there in the strit with all our bundles. We had to go on foot the rest of the way. The Americans call that vawkink. We vawked. Moyshe vawked ahead on his short legs and Pesye vawked after him, so fat and heavy she could barely keep up. Pinye and Taybl vawked behind Pesye. Pinye’s vawkink is a scream. He dances more than he vawks, his long, thin legs getting in his way, one pants leg rolled up, the other falling down, his cap perched sideways and his tie pointing east-by-northeast. A weird-looking fellow! He’s just begging for someone to draw him.
Mendl and I vawked farthest back, stopping at every shop window. It gave us a good feeling to see that the magazines were all in Jewish and that there were all sorts of other Jewish things: siddurs, and tallis kotons, and yarmulkas, and mezuzahs, and matsos. Matsos in the middle of winter, months before Passover — talk about a Jewish town! But we couldn’t stop for long because my mother kept shouting: “Follow me!” We followed her.
Anyone who’s never seen a New York strit has missed something grand. What don’t you find there? Jews peddle their wares. Women sit and talk. Babies sleep in little wagons called kerredshiz. Every kerredsh looks alike. The babies drink milk from tiny bottles. The children play. There are thousands of games: button games, hoop games, ball games, curb games, rawlehskeyt games. A rawlehskeyt is a shoe on four wheels. You put it on and roll away.
The noise the children make is deafening. The strit belongs to them. No one would dare tell them to leave it. In fact, America is a land made for children. That’s what I love about it. Just try laying a hand on a child! My brother Elye learned that the hard way. He was taught a lesson he’ll never forget. Here’s what happened.
One day Mendl and I were playing tshekehz in the strit. Tshekehz is a game you play by shooting little round pieces of wood. Along comes my brother Elye in the middle of the game, grabs my ear, and gets set to whack me like in the good old days.
But before Elye can haul off and hit me, up pops this tall kid. He pushes me out of the way, rolls up his sleeves, and says something to Elye in American. Since Elye doesn’t understand much American, the kid spells it out with a punch in the nose. Pretty soon there’s a circle around us. Elye tries explaining in Jewish that it’s his job as my brother to teach me good manners. The circle answers back that America doesn’t work that way. In America you pick on someone your own size, brother or no brother.
I ask you: how can you not love such a place?
I’ve been talking so much that I’ve forgotten to tell you that we’ve reached Pesye and Moyshe’s house. I walk through the door and look around — not one of the old gang is there. There’s no sign of Bumpy or anyone. Where are they all? Just wait until you hear.
THE GANG AT WORK
The gang was at work, every one of them! But before I tell you what each of them does, let me tell you how a Jewish bookbinder lives in America.
First, the apartment. Back home in Kasrilevke, Fat Pesye would have been afraid to live so high. You climb what must be a hundred stairs until you come to a mansion with a bunch of what Americans call rumz. There are big rumz and little rumz, each with beds and mattresses and curtains on every window. There’s a kitshn too, which is where the cooking is done. Instead of an oven there’s an iron plate with holes; you turn a knob and fire shoots up as if by magic. And there’s water from the walls, all the hot and cold water you could want. You turn a faucet and out it comes.
Later that day Elye and Brokheh came to see how we were doing. Pinye took them to the kitshn, showed them the faucets, and gave them one of his speeches:
“Well, Elye, what do you say about Columbus now? Show me the Russky who’s worth his little finger! All they have back in Russia is vodka and pogroms. They deserve to croak, every one of them.”
Elye didn’t let him get away with that. “You may be big on Columbus now,” he answered Pinye, “but you sang a different song on Ella’s Island.”