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Overview
Born in Transylvania in 1899, Bella Spewack arrived on the streets of New York’s Lower East Side when she was three. At twenty-two, while working as a reporter with her husband in Europe, she wrote a memoir of her childhood that was never published. More than seventy years later, the publication of Streets recovers a remarkable voice and offers a vivid chronicle of a lost world.
Bella, who went on to a brilliant career write for stage and screen with her husband Sam, describes the sights, sounds, and characters of urban Jewish immigrant life after the turn of the century. Witty, street-smart, and unsentimental, Bella was a genuine American heroine who displays in this memoir “a triumph of will and spirit” (The Jewish Week).
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781936932122 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Feminist Press at CUNY, The |
| Publication date: | 12/06/2018 |
| Series: | Helen Rose Scheuer Jewish Women's Series |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 180 |
| Sales rank: | 735,904 |
| File size: | 11 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
PART I
Cannon Street
Cannon Street was the first of the streets on the Lower East Side that life scooped out for me. It stretches out of Grand Street north past Broome, Delancey, Rivington, and Stanton into Houston — a narrow gutter, flanked by narrower sidewalks. On the other side of Grand Street, where I used to go Saturday nights to buy my hair ribbons, it ascends like a runway in a theater. At the corner rose the sugary odors of a pie factory.
On the other side of Houston Street, a street of noble width, Cannon Street narrows and narrows until it is but the wink of a blind man's eye: Manhattan Street.
Thousands of people live on Cannon Street, occupying rear houses and front houses from basement to top floor. The houses are sour with the smell of crowded human flesh. So many words were spoken that words meant little. Blows meant more.
On this street, I spent the first ten years of my life.
On this street, I learned to fear people.
We landed in New York and were greeted by a short, frail blond man with pink-threaded cheeks. He told me that he was my cousin but he was not. My mother and I spent the first night in a bed with two others in a room back of the restaurant kept by Channeh Rosenthal. Her little girl was a waxen, famished-looking creature who was always whining for her "mommeh" and sucked her thin thumb. She was older than I was by two years. I remember her sulking jealousy of my red dress.
I could sing well in Hungarian and German and spoke a broken Romanian as well as a smooth, declamatory Yiddish. Before long I could mutter realistically English oaths. For all these, the patrons of Channeh Rosenthal's restaurant would pay me in coppers which I dutifully handed over to my mother.
My mother did not stay long in Channeh Rosenthal's restaurant. She went to an employment agency on Fourth Street between Avenues C and B, one of a number on the block. The same string of employment offices exists today with their blatant blue and white painted signs — "SERVANTS" — jutting out from the top level of the stores in which they are located.
I grew restive under the enforced waiting of three monotonous days. Mother and I would arrive in the morning, wait until twelve when we would go out and buy an apple from a street peddler, return and wait until four, and finally return home. I would play outside by myself or accept overtures from the "Yankee" children after they had teased me to their hearts' content.
When I grew tired I would sit on the floor of the office and watch. Employers, usually the womenfolk, would come down to interview applicants. Did the girl like children? Could she cook? Frequently the ever-ready assistant would be dispatched for a fortunate girl's suitcase left with her landlady. Sometimes the latter would refuse to give up the suitcase and would herself come down to the office. The girl owed her money. Who would pay her? Oh, the girl had a job! Well, the valise could go, but not before the address of the girl's situation is written out "black on white." Meanwhile the girl would be glancing apologetically at the face of her prospective employer and pluck at her hands in fear.
Then the employer, the newly hired servant, and the assistant with the suitcase would be off together in an uneven line.
We had to wait and wait because no one wanted a servant with a child.
Finally our turn came.
We went to the house of a man who wore his tightly curled hair parted in the middle. When he smiled, he kept his pink lips shut and wrinkles chased themselves across his face like ripples on water. His wife was in the hospital and Mother was to be the servant until his wife returned and was well enough to take care of the house and the three children.
I don't remember seeing any children, but I do remember the peculiar arresting odor of leather in the house. Of the day we spent there, I know nothing. At night, I remember my mother complained of the weariness she felt after scrubbing those five rooms and feeding the children. But we were glad to have found a temporary haven. Then she and I went to sleep.
Perhaps two hours later, I was awakened by the voice of my mother, shrill and sharp with indignation. By the side of the bed, stood her employer....
We finished the rest of the night in the bed of Channeh Rosenthal, after my mother had wept her story and received Channeh's pitying cluckings.
Again, we went to the employment office and waited for work.
By this time, it was summer and my mother went to work in the house of a middle-aged, sharp-eyed couple in Canarsie for sixteen dollars. These people kept a counter and restaurant, serving seafood, frankfurters, popcorn, etc. They had three sons, two of whom helped in the business, and the third, who was in the throes of a disease that makes people grow too much (I don't know what it is called), did nothing but sit on the beach and throw sand into the water after he had carefully molded it into a ball. There was an adopted daughter besides, a tall soft-breasted girl of seventeen who had hair the color of prune soup. She giggled when the diners talked to her and parted the wave in her pompadour with a pink, long-fingered hand.
I wandered about at my own will becoming a familiar and welcome figure in the beer gardens that at the time were as much a part of Canarsie as the salty air. In these beer gardens, one could order a mug and see a vaudeville show on the strength of one order. I would run errands for some of the actors and actresses and be paid liberally. I would imitate them and they would throw back their heads and laugh and I was happy. Very happy. I liked to make people laugh.
It was close to the end of the summer when something happened to hasten our departure. Mother and I shared the bed with Celia, the adopted daughter of our employers. Throughout our stay, there had always been bedbugs, but on that night, they seemed to have called a mass meeting, as Celia observed with her giggle.
I fell asleep while my mother mounted watch over me. It was in one of those half-veiled snatches of sleep that I felt the need of my mother's protecting hand on my uncovered feet. I opened my eyes and saw Celia sitting up against the wall, her arms crossed over her bosom, her hair falling about her like moon mist. She wore no nightgown but a short, thin petticoat and her shirt. My mother was moving about on the floor feeling her way to the matches. I could see everything by the white light that came from the night sky.
"I can't find them," my mother cried. "Where are the matches? I can't find the matches."
"You want the matches?"
My body stiffened. That was a new voice ... a man's voice.
"She wants the matches!" said a second new voice ... a man's voice. It was mocking and ugly.
"Let 'er look," added a third new voice. It belonged to the boy who was growing to death.
And suddenly through the dark room sped lighted matches deftly flipped from the corners of the room. I screamed as one touched me. Celia was crying and laughing wildly, while my mother shrieked and shouted, "If I only had a knife, I would stick it into you, murderers! God should punish you for what you are doing to a poor orphan." The orphan was Celia.
I do not remember how the night ended, and I will not ask my mother. She would probably lie about it and perhaps try to laugh — not to reassure me, but herself.
Three days later, we left. Celia wept when my mother left but shook her head when Mother asked her to go away with us.
"Where could I go? This is the only home I know. Oh, don't worry about me. I don't belong to anyone. No one cares what happens to me."
Then she began to giggle and patted the wave in her pompadour.
When we returned, we stayed with a woman whom my mother called the Peckacha, in a rear house on Ridge Street. She was a pock-marked, toothless woman of thirty-two who was always pressing her bladderlike breast to the mouth of a reluctant, sallow baby. Her husband had the saintly, shadowy look of a prophet. His face was delicately gaunt, with two deep-set, pale blue eyes and blond whiskers that grew at random, like grass in rocky ground. He was a baker. He slept during the day so Mother and I were able to sleep in his bed at night.
There were many children who, from the oldest — a long-legged and freckled-faced girl — to the two-year-old Mechel, who would wander out into the street as he was created, did nothing but swear at each other. They all had great dark slimy eyes as if gutter mud had been slapped into their faces and broad noses.
They pinched me and slapped me just as they did one another. Only when I "acted" for them did they give me peace.
The figure of a slight, sallow girl whose black dress merges into the shadows of my memory will not evade me. She lived underneath us, boarding with an old man and his wife. I cannot remember this girl ever smiling — not even her eyes. They were like still, stagnant sewer pools in her V-shaped yellow face. Her hair she wore like the girls of the day, in a pompadour to the front and a Psyche knot in the back. She always seemed to be resting her slight weight against the side of the open door — never going out into the street, frequently retreating with frightened backsteps into the yard. I never saw her during the daytime.
My mother called her "the night birdie."
My mother did not like me to go with her to the employment offices and so she left me behind to the mercies of the young Peckachas. I avoided them as much as possible. I was afraid of them.
I found living on the floor below us a fat man with a wooden leg who could play the accordion melodiously well. He played Romanian folk music mostly but now and then would change the programme to include "Take a Car," then in vogue. The Peckacha children dubbed him my "fella." When I did not seem to mind, they stopped calling him that, and after they discovered that I was honorable — I did not betray them when they lied or when they beat a child younger than themselves — they took me with them on one of their forages to Attorney Street. Attorney Street, like Orchard Street, is a market where fruit and vegetable dealers sell to the street and store vendors. Cases, bulging with oranges or apples and watermelon, line the streets, while men with live, dirty hands darted among them with eyes that took in everything. People live on these streets as well, rotting in their cases with the overripe fruits.
The Peckacha children went in a group. Manny, the oldest boy, pointed out a case of large ripe oranges to me.
You see that place where the stick is broke? Go over there an' take an orange," said Manny. "If you get it, run." His nose resembled a round mass of putty, wet and gray. He drew it up in the manner of one who knows that he was talking to a faint heart. Then they all walked to the corner and waited for me.
I walked to the case and without even looking around, stuck my hand into the aperture and plucked a large, overripe orange. My heart pounded against me. I wanted to run, but my feet were stuck to the ground. There I stood with the stolen orange in my hand.
"Go to hell, run!" shouted Manny.
I threw the orange at him and ran in the opposite direction.
My mother found a new situation at fourteen dollars a month in a home where there were two little girls of my own age. I remember nothing of this home, except its cleanliness and that the "boss" was a jovial, middle-sized fellow who always brought me what he brought his two little girls. When my mother took the children and me for a walk after her work in the kitchen was over, we always stopped outside a large fruit and grocery store. The memory of its clean, spicy smell still stays with me. Above us, at intervals rumbled the "L."
Then Mother decided that she wanted to work in a shop ... that cooking, housework, and washing were a little too much for her. The middle-sized man was not jovial now but long-faced and offered to give her a raise if she would only stay.
But my mother had made up her mind to go. She was really meant to be a rover, and the idea of going to work in a factory had taken possession of her. Although I did not understand everything she told me, I comprehended some of her arguments. First, in a shop, she would have so many hours to work and then she would go home and be her own boss. Second — repeat the first argument; third, repeat the second argument and add, one could see friends besides.
She found work as an operator in a ladies' shirtwaist shop at $7.50 a week.
I was afraid that I would have to go back to the Peckacha children, but Mother had found a Mrs. Pincus, a widow on Cannon Street near Delancey Street, who possessed an only, hulking, tongue-tied daughter, Clara. Mrs. Pincus was a pious old lady who possessed large glass earrings that bore a striking resemblance to her eyes. She wore a wig with a ribbon atop it, or perhaps it was just a black lace covering worn green with constant use. Her eyes were sore and always filled with water, lending a certain suitable trimming to her show of dreary piety.
Her daughter, Clara, also had sore eyes, but hers seemed to be in a constant state of shriveling up. Her lids were always red with the lashes sticking together in straight, upward strokes. Clara went to school, and although she went unwillingly, I laid at her feet my worship for her scholastic prowess. I longed for the day when I would be able to go to school.
My mother and I were given the bed that, during the day, was a bureau burdened down by glass pitchers and painted glasses, making up lemonade and punch sets. In the morning, my mother would wake me up crying that she had to do so.
"You look so pretty in your sleep. It breaks my heart to make your eyes open. You look at me with such reproach," my mother would sigh. She would press warm milk to my sleepy lips and then dress me hurriedly, but not carelessly. Then, because I was barely able to stand upon my numb feet, my mother would half drag, half carry me to the Brightside Day Nursery on the next block.
The first day I was introduced there, Miss Rachel, the matron, a broad-hipped, small-faced woman, patted my head and assured my mother that her baby would be well taken care of.
"Haben sie keine Furcht?" she asked in a soft, gutteral German.
My mother bent reverently at that and kissed her plump hand.
There were many other children like me, whose mothers worked during the day. Them, their husbands had deserted. Others were widows with memories of love words and deathbeds.
The nursery building, of gray stone, imperturbably restful, clean, and calm-eyed, stands out on Cannon Street to this day, a thing apart from its neighbors.
We children were herded into the basement by our parents, who left us there. It was gloomy but much warmer than the rooms all of us had just left. Our mothers and some fathers would risk being late and docked for a few moments to breathe in the luxuriant warmth that came from the walls.
Mothers who had infants would go upstairs to the nursery with the sleeping babes in their arms. I can imagine how they felt when the children, slipping from their caressing grasp, uttered low cries, opened startled eyes, and reassured, fell back into their clean cribs into sleep again. Sometimes, the babies cried long, unrelenting wails and mothers would steal through our midst in the basement, their hands to their eyes.
Then Miss Fannie came down. She had long red cheeks, and black, laughing eyes with chimney-black frowsy hair that stood out about her head. Her striped blue dress with its white apron was to me the embodiment of all splendor. I later mentally fitted all my princesses with Miss Fannie's uniform.
Upstairs we went to don our checked pinafores that covered us from chin to knee, and some to shoe tops. Then we sang "Father, We Thank Thee."
The room here was large and yellow-floored with a stained window in the rear corner through which the sun never shone. Gay paper chains decorated the walls. There was also a piano, a mysterious thing that cried and laughed when Miss Fannie touched it. (I had surely seen a piano in Canarsie but it had made no impression, probably outclassed by the brass instruments and the drum.) Behind this room, across a hiccough of a hall, was the dining room where long low tables and green-painted "baby" chairs were lined.
Here at noon we seated ourselves, folded our hands over the table, and bent our heads over our hands. Under the prompting guidance of Miss Fannie or Miss Rachel, we thanked God for many things, none of which I remember, at least not indelibly. We always had hot watery cocoa, prunes, and rice served in gray tin dishes.
I don't know how many children and babies the Brightside Day Nursery held, but they were many — too many for me to remember. So that today, I have only the memory of a pallid, gray-eyed little girl of my own age and a red-headed boy of six who would get under the table and pinch our legs. The girl always screamed but would never tell the reason to Miss Fannie. When the boy pinched my legs, I kicked him.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Streets"
by .
Copyright © 1995 Lois and Arthur Elias.
Excerpted by permission of Feminist Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
TITLE PAGE,
COPYRIGHT,
Publisher's Note,
Introduction by Ruth Limmer,
Chronology,
Prologue,
Part I: Cannon Street,
Part II: Stanton Street,
Part III: Lewis Street,
Part IV: Goerck Street,
Part V. First Avenue,
Afterword by Lois Raeder Elias,
ABOUT THE AUTHORS,
ALSO BY FEMINIST PRESS,
ABOUT FEMINIST PRESS,
