Elye went on like that until one Sunday he came with us. Now he wouldn’t miss a moofink piksheh for the world. We all go together, the grown-ups too, Moyshe, Pesye, Yoyneh, and even Riveleh. Everyone except my mother. How can she go to the theater, she says, when her husband is buried in the ground? Her enemies shouldn’t live to see the day!
Life is not bad at all. But how long can we go on being house guests? It’s time to look for a dzhahb. In America you have to make a living. That’s what Elye says. He goes around looking worried. Every day he drops by to talk things over with my mother. Brokheh joins them. So does Pinye. Pinye is full of plans and projects. None is worth a hill of beans. I mean they’re good plans, it’s just that Elye doesn’t like them. And if he does, Brokheh doesn’t.
For instance, Pinye had the idea that he, Elye, Brokheh, and Taybl should go to work in a shahp and be tailors. In America a tailor sews on a machine and is called an ahpereydeh. For a high-class dzhahb like an ahpereydeh’s, Brokheh said, she didn’t have to leave Kasrilevke. “I suppose selling knishes on Essiks Strit is higher,” said Elye. Did that make Brokheh mad! Who was Elye to be talking about knishes? It was time he realized that her father’s knishes were all that kept us from starvation.
I’d love Pinye just for the things he says. It’s a joy to sit back and listen once he gets going. Now he jumped from his seat, waved his arms, and cut loose. I remember every word:
“O you primitive people! Deep in your hearts you’re still living in exile, in the dreary land of the accursed Tsar! America is not a pigsty to wallow in like Russia! Every millionaire and every billionaire started out working long and hard here, if not in a shahp than in the strit. Ask Rahknfelleh! Ask Kahnegi! Ask Mawgn! Ask Vendehbilt! Where were they when they were young? Do you think they didn’t work the strit? Do you think they didn’t run around selling peypehz and polishing shoes for a nikl? Take the king of kahz, Mr. Fawd, and ask him if he wasn’t once a plain dreiveh! Take the greatest Americans, Vashinktn, Linkn, Rawzvelt — I suppose you think they all were born prehzident! Take Prehzident Vilsn! You’ll pardon my saying so, but he was once a lousy heder teacher.”
That was too much for Elye. He interrupted and said:
“Eh, Pinye, show some respect! You’re talking about a man who is second only to God. He’s king of America.”
Watch out for Pinye when he’s got up a full head of steam! He only laughed at my brother.
“Ha, that’s a good one! King of what? King of where? There are no kings in America. It’s a free country, a democracy!”
“Fine, so the king of America is called a prehzident,” Elye said. “So what?”
“So plenty! A king is no more a prehzident than a horse is a house. A king is a king and a prehzident is a prehzident. A king is born a king and a prehzident is elected. If we elect him, Vilsn will be prehzident for four more years. If we don’t, it’s back to the heder. For your information, I could be prehzident myself one day.”
“You? Prehzident?”
“Me! Prehzident!”
In all the years I’ve known Elye, I’ve never seen him laugh like that. Elye, as you know, is a worrier. He doesn’t laugh much, and when he does it’s with half a mouth. This time he laughed so hard that he scared my mother to death.
Not that it wasn’t funny. It was enough just to look at Pinye with his hands in the pockets of his pants that were too short, his shiny new American shoes that were too big, his tie that Taybl couldn’t get to sit straight, his American cap that kept falling off, and most of all, his nearsighted eyes and long, pointy nose that stared right into his mouth. Good God, this was the future prehzident of America? A superman couldn’t have kept a straight face.
Elye finished laughing, turned to my mother, and said: “All right, our future is taken care of. We’ll sew clothes in a shahp. And Pinye doesn’t have to worry because he’s going to be prehzident. But what about the boys?”
He meant me and Mendl. He couldn’t stand the thought of our doing nothing. It made him sore to see us playing bawl or tshekehz in the strit. Each time he reached for my ear, he had to remember that I wasn’t his size.
“The boys should be your biggest problem,” Moyshe said.
That was Moyshe’s way of telling us that we hadn’t outstayed our welcome and had plenty of time to think about a dzhahb.
Don’t imagine we lived like spongers. My mother helped Pesye in the kitshn with the cooking, baking, washing, and cleaning. Taybl made the beds and swept the rumz. Pinye worked with Moyshe at his book stend.
Moyshe couldn’t depend too much on Pinye, though. That’s because as soon as Pinye sees a book, he’s into it nose first and bye-bye Pinye. That’s not the worst of it. The worst is that he’s a scribbler himself. He’s gotten hold of a funtinpen that never runs out of ink and paper is cheaper in America than borscht. He sits at Moyshe’s stend and scribbles away.
“Are you studying penmanship?” Elye asks.
Pinye doesn’t answer. He takes what he writes and sticks it deep into the breast pockets of his jacket. His pockets are so full that he looks like a stuffed animal.
Until we find dzhahbz, Mendl and I help the gang as best we can. I work with Log (I mean Sem) carrying cartons while Mendl is partly with Tomcat (that’s Villi) in the grawsri staw and partly with Filip (that’s Petelulu) selling the Jewish peypehz. For our pay we get tickets to the moofink pikshehz on Sundays and an eiskrim senvitsh and a sawdeh. Then we take a vawk in the pahk. There are lots of pahks in New York, all free. What a country! I go where I want and do what I like.
For a while I hung out at the stend of my old friend Bumpy — I mean Herry — in my free time. But Bumpy’s bawss didn’t like seeing me there. She knew he sometimes ate a carob pod or a couple of raisins and almonds on the sly. The two of us, she said, were more than her stend could afford.
So I don’t go there any more. But Bumpy always has something for me in his pocket when he comes home at night. Once Brokheh caught me chewing and ratted to Elye. Elye asked what I had in my mouth. “Tshooinkahm,” I said. Brokheh said tshooinkahm chewers made her nauseous. “They remind me of cows,” agreed Elye. Pinye objected to the comparison. He said:
“How can you take the greatest, the smartest, the freest people on earth and compare them to cows? Just tell me this: where would we be now if Columbus hadn’t discovered America?”
“In an America discovered by someone else,” Elye answered. He said it just like that, without even having to think about it.
Hallelujah, we have dzhahbz! No more twiddling our thumbs. Our freeloading days are over. We’re working in a shahp. I don’t mean me and Mendl. We’re too young. I mean Elye and Pinye. What’s a shahp and what do you do in one? That’s the next thing I’m going to tell you.
WORKING IN A SHAHP
Don’t ask me exactly what working in a shahp is like because I don’t rightly know. I’m not allowed in one because I’m under thirteen. I only know what I hear at night from Elye and Pinye. Do they have stories!
They come home bushed and hungry and we sit down to sahpeh. That’s a word Brokheh hates like a Jew hates pork. Another word she can’t stand is vindeh. Ask her to open a vindeh and she’ll say, “Vindeh is what comes before spring.” She has it in for stahkinks too. It doesn’t sound like anything she would want to wear on her feet. And dishehz is no better. Why can’t we say posude the way we used to? Or take lef l—you would think it was a good enough word. But no, we have to call it a spuhn! “Still, I suppose,” Brokheh says (she always has some new saying), “that if America is a kahntri, and steyk is a food, and a gopl is a fawk, English must be a language.”