The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street: A Novel by Susan Jane Gilman Read Free Book Online Page A

alley beneath the windows, I could hear chickens squawking, then their unearthly, strangulated cries as a butcher broke their necks with a single twist of his hands and a grunt. I ran to take a look. “Look, that butcher isn’t kosher!” I shouted, leaning over the windowsill and pointing. I felt rather proud that I could discern this.
    My mother shot my father another vicious look.
    “Mama,” said Flora, tugging at her skirt, “where’s the toilet?”
    “Ask your father,” my mother said. “And ask him, too, if you please: Is he fool enough to believe that this is better than Africa?”
    Come nightfall, the sound of chickens being slaughtered was replaced by the noise from the saloon downstairs: beer steins pounding on tabletops, stomping, singing, bullying, drunken love songs performed a cappella to the fire escapes. Bellowing men staggered into the courtyard to urinate by the chicken coop. It was even louder than Papa’s friends had been at the detention center in Hamburg. When the commotion died down late into the night, we could still hear muffled weeping coming from Mr. Lefkowitz’s tiny bedroom on the other side of the kitchen.
    Crammed together on the old velvet cushions, which buckled and grew damp with our sweat, surrounded by bolts of wool, tickled by fleas and cockroaches, my sisters and I flailed and tore at our nightdresses in the airless room until we were teary with frustration. Papa shushed us, then finally stood up. “Tell your mother I’ll be on the stoop.” Pulling on his pants, he grabbed his shoes and maneuvered his way over the detritus of us toward the door. Rose started to cry. “Papa, where are you going?” It was the middle of the night. This made Flora and me start weeping, too. Papa! Papa! Our sobs only seemed to fuel Mr. Lefkowitz’s staccato cries in the back room, which grew ever louder. Our father’s footsteps rang down the staircase.
    “Stop it,” my mother hissed. “All of you.”
    Walking over to the window, she stared down at the noisy, garbage-strewn courtyard and began twisting the frayed ends of her hem around her knuckles. “Again he leaves?” she spit. “On our very first night? That mamzer .”
    Sitting up on my cushion on the floor, I wiped my nose on the back of my wrist and coughed. My throat hurt; my arms and shoulders itched. I couldn’t for the life of me understand: Why weren’t we there yet? Perhaps there was still another ferry boat to take, or a streetcar. Perhaps we just hadn’t walked far enough into the city. “Mama? Maybe tomorrow,” I suggested, “we can go to America.”
    My mother turned and glared at me, her stare ossifying into something cold and hard, like agate. Then she gave a vicious little laugh. “Oh, you think so, bubeleh ?”
      
    The next morning my sisters and I awoke to the sound of scissors snipping. In the anemic yellow light of the gas jets, we saw Mama’s back bobbing over a bolt of fabric. Her back bobbed at sunrise, at midday, well into the darkness of evening. As she bent over the patterns, she muttered in Yiddish. In the kitchen Papa stood over the ironing board. As soon as one garment was finished and Mr. Lefkowitz handed him another, Papa heaved the heavy iron off the stove top with a grunt and smoothed it, hissing, over the fabric. He paced about constantly in between jobs, but in the tiny kitchen there was almost nowhere to move. Several times, Papa excused himself and headed out into the streets for a “break.” These were almost unheard of in those days, but Mr. Lefkowitz didn’t seem to notice. Seated at the sewing machine, he stared out the window in a sort of trance while my mother’s piecework piled up on the floor before him, waiting to be stitched. When he finally remembered to pick up a piece and begin, he often forgot that his foot was on the pedal, and he’d let the needle run clear over the edge of the fabric so that he’d have to redo the seam entirely. We could see why he needed the help.