Her Mother's Daughter (25 page)

Belle cried. She was only twenty-five and her life was over. Her life had ended. Ed had no job, they had no money, she was no longer a carefree young flapper concerned about clothes and outings and piano lessons and violin lessons and art school and her wonderful friends. That was all over, over forever. She would never have it again, and in truth, she hadn't had much. Now it was done, and all she had was this creature, this clamorous thing that demanded to be fed from Belle's own body, when after all, how could there be anything in it? She nursed for a few weeks, then gave it up. Her milk was thin, sporadic, laced with luminal; the baby screamed and clutched its little fists, it was hopeless, Belle was a failure at this just as she had been a failure at everything else. Wally went out and bought some bottles for her.

Only once did she laugh, and that was at Thanksgiving dinner. Momma brought a roast chicken to the table—they were all in trouble, Wally too had lost his job, and Eddie and Jean had had to take cuts in pay. And Wally looked at Anastasia lying in her box on a dining room chair, and said they should have roasted and eaten her, she was bigger than the chicken. The laughter that followed required handkerchiefs to wipe away the tears, and Wally thought he had been really witty. He would repeat the joke to Anastasia many times as she grew up.

Then, one evening, Ed drove up and Wally let him in. Everyone looked up: but no one knew exactly what had happened. No one had asked any questions. He was stiff and tense, and so were they. He asked for Belle. She was in bed, crying. He went up.

Ed sat on the bed beside her. He took her hand and bent to kiss her, but she wrenched her head away violently. Tears sprang into his eyes and throat, but he remained beside her. He cleared his throat. He tried to stroke her brow, but she again turned her head swiftly, hard, away.

“I got a job, Belle,” he whispered.

She looked at him. Her head lay still. She waited.

“I'll be a tester and troubleshooter for Brooklyn Edison. It pays twenty dollars a week.” He was proud of himself. It was not negligible to get a job right after the Depression struck; he got it only because he had had a year of college. She saw this, and her mouth tightened. She knew it was a real accomplishment, that he must have tried hard for this job; but she had contempt for how easily he was satisfied. What did he think they could do with twenty dollars a week?

“We can't live on that,” she said.

He bowed his head. He did not dare to ask her to return to his father's house, nor to ask if he could come here. She watched him. She understood. There were no words.

“We can live in this room,” she said finally.

And he bent and kissed her forehead, and she let him. He sat there, stroking her hand for a long time. They did not speak. Then he said he had to go and would be back the next evening. The next night, he walked from the trolley stop with his suitcase. He had sold his car to pay the hospital bill. He moved into the dark little room where they would live for the next three and a half years.

Belle forced herself to get up each morning. Anastasia slept late and never woke her mother in the mornings, so Belle would rise and put on a robe and slippers and go downstairs and drink coffee while Momma cleaned up the dishes from the others' breakfasts. Ed Dabrowski rose first, at six, and prepared his own cereal and boiled egg and toast; but Momma still prepared breakfast for her children, for Eddie and Jean, who went out to their jobs at seven forty-five, and coffee and toast for Wally, who left at eight every morning just as if he had a job to go to. After several cups of coffee, the last shared with Momma who sat down with her, and two cigarettes, Belle would go upstairs and fetch the sleeping baby, who often did not want to be wakened, and was sullen and sleepy.

Belle heated a bottle and prepared Pablum for Anastasia. Then Frances would close all the kitchen doors and turn the gas jets of the stove up high and set an enamel basin in the sink and fill it with warm soapy water. When the room was warm enough to make most people faint, Belle would undress Anastasia, set aside her dirty diaper, and immerse her in the basin. Momma hovered holding a great towel. Belle rinsed the baby from the long arm of the tap and Momma grabbed her and covered her and dried her. Then Belle dressed her in fresh clothes, and laid her in a cushioned basket on the kitchen floor. Only then—neither woman noticed that they were staggering with the heat—did they turn off the gas jets. They did not reopen the kitchen doors for some time afterward, lest the baby catch a chill.

Belle would empty the diaper into the toilet off the kitchen, carry it down to the cellar to soak in the deep tub along with those from yesterday. Then she went back upstairs and scrubbed her hands, then toasted some bread and spread marmalade on it and ate, while Momma—who would
never
leave Anastasia in her basket—bounced and spoke to the baby, calling her “
moja kochana,
my sweetheart, my little hammer thrower, Babcia's girl.” (Did the words pierce Belle's heart, still addressed to another?) Belle went back downstairs and scrubbed the soiled diapers on a board and rinsed and wrung them and carried them back upstairs in a basin. She pulled her coat on over her nightgown and robe, and went out to the tiny back porch and fixed them on the clothesline, which squeaked with each tug on the rusted pulley.

Then the two women straightened the house, made the beds, dressed. Around eleven, it was time to go out. Belle put on a dress and hose and high heels, and powdered her face and put on lipstick; Momma always wore her old cotton housedresses and the brown sweater with the hole in the sleeve and her shabby ancient black coat and a straw hat with a wilted brown rose on it. Anastasia was piled into layers of flannel and wool, every inch of her covered except her tiny face, and set into the carriage, a fine English pram that the brothers and sister had chipped in to buy. Momma was always very cheerful as they set out, whatever the weather: this was the high point of her day. They would walk to the Boulevard and stop at Momma's favorite markets. Momma knew all the shopkeepers—the German butcher, the German baker, the Italian vegetable man, the Scottish grocer. She always smiled and chatted with them, and they laughed and joked with her and made little lights go on in their eyes, and sometimes they even kissed her hand. This made Belle look at her mother in a new way. Momma, after all, was forty-eight years old now, an advanced age in Belle's eyes, and since she had stopped working, she had gained fifteen pounds—120 was too heavy for her small frame. Her fine hair was still long and wound up into the same unfashionable bun, and the blond color had darkened into a mousy grey. She had a gentle face and a sweet smile but her face was etched with pain in hundreds of tiny fine lines. She walked a little too slowly, her legs swollen from years of hard work, her frame a bit bent from years of bending over sewing machines; and her clothes were shabby and shapeless. She looked like a worn-out peasant woman. Yet these men—could her mother possibly be thinking of—impossible! But there was no mistaking the way these men acted, the way Momma acted, almost fifty. Even the gaunt surly owner of the stationery store where Belle stopped every other day for a pack of Luckies smiled, showing his yellow teeth, and called Momma “Dear Mrs. Brez.”

The women would buy only what they needed for the day. Although they had an icebox, they could not carry too much at one time even with the carriage, and besides, Momma loved the daily outing. And Momma loved being with Bella (she never adopted Belle's new name) and Anastasia, and Belle felt somehow calm being out with Momma, and all of them walked home looking forward to lunch. For lunch, Belle would scramble eggs or make grilled cheese sandwiches for her and Momma, while Momma fried bacon slowly until it was dark and crisp, then crumbled it into bits and laid them on Anastasia's tongue. And Belle, eating slowly but with relish, would feel that this was the best time of the day, and would think—Grandma, mother, and baby, three-way, that's the way it should be. Then Momma would clean the kitchen while Belle changed Anastasia's diaper and gave her a bottle and set her in the basket for a nap. And Belle would look at the clock that hung on the kitchen wall over the stove and see that it was only two o'clock and her heart would sink. Anastasia would sleep for about two hours now; and Momma would go up to her room and sew. She was making a pink silk coat and hat, with embroidery, for Anastasia for the spring. She had lined the coat with white crepe de chine, and Belle had embroidered, in a paler pink, small flowers on the coat collar and the side of the hat. Belle was proud of the outfit, remembering the Ostrovskys' shop: no rich child had anything finer than this. But her part in making the outfit was done. She would pick up a book and go up to her room and lie on the bed and start to read. But soon she was crying again.

She did not understand why she cried so much. She tried to think, to cut through the tears with reason. But the back of her head was filled with a whirling fluid hot as tears, painful as cut flesh. And this hot crimson-purple fluid dyed everything it touched, heaved up like waves and drowned thought. It whirled her thoughts around too, so that she could not make them come out in neat lines, or squares, or sort out right from wrong. Was she wrong to be so miserable? Should she be happy? Was she neurotic, like Poppa, like Wally? How was it Ed was happy? Was he wrong to be happy, having so little to make him so?

She would think: I'm a miserable neurotic. I should be happy. After all I have a healthy baby, a nice place to live, we could be living in that slum, the old neighborhood! I have good food, and I don't have to go to work every day in a sweatshop. Ed is devoted to me. He has a job. Wally doesn't. Ed isn't standing on a street corner selling apples. She would think: it's nice here all day, just Momma and the baby and me, it's peaceful, and if I don't have a beautiful house and servants like rich ladies, I have clothes as good as theirs, and so does Anastasia; I eat as well, probably better, because rich ladies have things like one lamb chop and peas and a Waldorf salad for dinner, that's what their maids told Momma when they lived in the old neighborhood and Momma had lots of friends.

But as soon as she managed these thoughts, they would be overwhelmed with a horrid flaming rage: why wasn't Ed doing as well as her brother Eddie, or Eric Terschelling, Jean's boyfriend, who took her Out to dinner in a restaurant every Saturday night and went to actuarial school nights to better himself? The fire would mount and transform itself into a great wave of grief that would knock her down. She would burst into full sobbing. It seemed to her that she was standing over her own coffin, seeing herself, her face primly made up with powder and lipstick and eyebrow pencil and set in the calm smile she tried to give it, lying there in her good navy silk dress with a flower at the bosom, and the thought would burst through that her life was over, over, that there was no longer anything for her.

Had she not watched her own mother grieve herself into old age in a few years? And now she was a mother too, no longer a person but someone who was supposed to care only for her child, a person permitted no other life, no other joy. All the past seemed futile beating against bars: the piano and violin lessons, the dreams of being a decorator, the years at art school. The truth was she had no abilities, none whatever, except maybe for the dancing, and what good was that? In her three years at Pratt she had learned nothing; Madame Ostrovsky had known what she was doing when she made Belle into a messenger girl. She couldn't even play parts well in her little drama group productions. She had no talent, no brain, she was good for nothing; all her longings had been stupid dreams, childish, infantile, ephemera that had not deserved to exist. What she had to do was set aside her dreams, grow up, accept what it meant to be an adult woman….

But this last thought rarely achieved full development before she was overwhelmed with a new burst of sobbing, which subsided very slowly, and left her weak with weariness. Then she would sink into sleep.

Momma would let her sleep as long as she needed to, going into the little dark room and softly picking up the basket that held the baby and carrying it downstairs. Then she would start dinner, talking all the while to the baby, feeding her bits of pie crust or
chruściki
or bakery cake, contented as she peeled vegetables and roasted meat, baked pies or bread, happy to be preparing dinner for her children, and for her little granddaughter. When Belle came down, newly powdered and lipsticked, her hair fixed in its marcel waves, and only her eyes dull with sleep and luminal, Momma would smile and bob her head and say, “Have coffee, Bella, pour some for me too,” and sit down with her daughter and chat about the baby, the wonderful baby, the miraculous new being in her life.

Belle would gaze at the infant in the basket on the floor and think about how it came out of her. She would never be the same as she was before—her hips were even broader than they had been; there were stretch marks on her smooth pale belly and her buttocks; and her feet, already a source of embarrassment, had grown even larger, to an 8 ½. She had lost a tooth. And all of this came from a single moment, an act of darkness, a sin, the priest had said. Yet married people were supposed to do this. But not people who weren't married.

By now, Momma would have Anastasia on her lap. She'd bounce her and call her “my little hammer thrower!” and hug and cry out
“moja kochana!”
and the words would pierce Belle's consciousness and she would look up and see her mother and the baby far away, like strangers seen through a window, when you pass by on a cold night shivering and look in and see them, mother and child, in warmth and the light shining on their hair, and you stand and watch for a moment, acutely aware of the freezing pane of glass that separates you from that scene….

Then that thought would be swallowed up in activity. Wally would come home first, dejected from another futile day, or guilty because sometimes he did not hunt for a job but went instead to a chess club in Manhattan, a smoky smelly loft peopled with old Russian men with pipes, where he played for hours, beating most of them, forgetting his situation. Once he beat the world champion in this club—but as it was not an official match, it served only to bolster his image with his family. He sensed that all of them looked down on him, and he walked in always with a certain swagger, and talked tough, as if he knew the real world and they were mere innocents. But he forgot all that when he saw Anastasia. He reached for her with a great smile and lifted her up and bounced her and took her into the living room while the women got dinner ready and put her on his leg and played horsie.