The Smartest Woman I Know (7 page)

After she graduated from high school, Tootsie found a job as a gofer in the garment district. The job lasted only three days. Mr. Levy, the owner, had made a pass at her. She ran crying into the bathroom and stayed there until five o’clock.

She told Ettie what happened and that she was worried about what Mr. Levy would think. “Never worry what anybody thinks. Only worry what God thinks,” Ettie told her.

“There is no excuse for a married Jew to make hanky-panky with someone who is not his wife, especially with a young girl who is my granddaughter.

“A Jew should not do such a thing to a young girl, to his wife, or to the Jewish people.

“A Jew doesn’t have to be so special like Albert Einstein or Sophie Tucker, but after five thousand years of trouble, why look for trouble?

“You did the right thing,” Ettie told her. “Levy did the wrong thing. Imagine, a married man. Imagine, a Jewish married man.”

Ettie thought everyone should get married. Especially women. “But not to a Mr. Levy!”

She told Tootsie and me several times, “Marry a doctor. Everybody needs a doctor in the family, and with a doctor, you’ll always know he’s got a job because sooner or later everybody gets sick. And with a doctor, you’re already a somebody. You’re not just a Mr. and Mrs., you’re a Dr. and Mrs. Plus, if you have a little chafing, a little wheezing, a little pain, you got somebody right there.”

“Get them when you’re young,” Ettie advised us, “before somebody else gets them. Because if you aren’t married by the time you are twenty-five, you will be an old maid. Nobody will ever want you, not even in a card game. You’ll work as an assistant bookkeeper, live in a dark, tiny apartment, and have a cat that sheds on everything and ruins the vacuum cleaner. On Saturdays, you’ll go to a movie with another old maid, then maybe splurge on a chocolate sundae with two scoops at Schrafft’s.”

“A man is different. If you’re a man over thirty-nine and you’re not married, it’s a whole different ball game, a different kettle of fish, and horse of a different color. Nobody will ever call you an old butler. People will call you a bachelor, think you’re a good catch, Cary Grant will play you in the movies, and unmarried women will make you noodle pudding.”

You got to shop around to find a good fit

When Tootsie told Ettie that she and the boy from Westchester wanted to get married, Ettie wasn’t as happy as Tootsie.

“You didn’t look around enough,” Ettie said, “A husband is like buying new shoes. You might see something you fall in love with right away, but if it’s not a good fit, it will never make you happy.”

“Well, at least he’s Jewish,” Tootsie said.

When Mr. Goldberg heard Tootsie’s big announcement his response was: “Does he have a job, because I’m not hiring and I’m not supporting.”

Despite Ettie’s worries, something about The Announcement brought out a side of her I’d never known.

One afternoon when the store was empty, she started reminiscing. “Mr. Goldberg once told me he remembered the sound his footsteps made when he walked on the autumn leaves in the woods in Russia. I told him I remembered the crunching sound my boots made when I walked in the winter snow in Russia.

“I also remembered when I saw him for the first time in New Orleans and how I fell in love with him on the spot. But I didn’t tell him that.”

T
OOTSIE WANTED A WEDDING dress with a veil and a train like the Junior League debutantes whose wedding announcements and photographs by Bachrach she saw in the Sunday
New York Times
.

Ettie was reluctant to spend the money for such a dress. “You want a long, white dress with a train? Where are you going to wear it again? To the butcher?”

Tootsie and the boy got married in the living room. She wore a white wedding dress with a veil and a train.

It was the first time Ettie met the boy’s mother. After the ceremony, Ettie took Tootsie aside and said, “I met the mother. So just make believe she’s like a neighbor you hope you don’t run into, but if you do, you say hello nicely and make believe she’s a friend you’re happy to see but you’re in a hurry to go someplace else. God will forgive the lie.”

Ettie handed her an envelope when Mr. Goldberg wasn’t looking. Mr. Goldberg handed her an envelope when Ettie wasn’t looking.

Nine months and a day later, Tootsie gave birth to a boy. “A great-grandchild, that’s interest on the interest,” Ettie said.

We had a bris. Mr. Goldberg held the baby with his eyes closed.

Ettie cried more than the baby. “At someone else’s bris,” she said, “I don’t cry so many tears.”

Tootsie didn’t know whether to breast-feed or not. “Not even King Solomon could give you an answer,” Ettie told her.

“Before there were bottles and formula, you didn’t have a choice. But today, there is a modern way to do everything.

“Nobody should tell you what to do. Especially not your mother-in-law. Tell her to mind her own business—in a nice way.”

“Some people think the only way is to breast-feed the baby. But some women don’t have enough milk. Some women don’t want to.

“Whichever way is okay by me. But no matter what you decide, whichever way you do, you should always hold your baby close.”

R
ELATIVES

E
VENTUALLY, MR. GOLDBERG’S father came north and eventually they started talking to each other.

After a few more years, Mr. Goldberg invited his father to the Passover seder.

I was supposed to call his father, my great-grandfather
Zayde
, but I never called him anything because I never spoke to him.

Zayde wore black from head to toe. I could see what he’d just eaten by looking at his beard. He spit when he talked. He’d run after me to tickle me and I’d run into the bathroom.

Three sisters, Minnie, Sarah, and Rose were cousins of Mr. Goldberg. They never married and lived from hand to mouth in Brooklyn. Sometimes they came into the store.

Minnie was an elementary school teacher, Sarah was a social worker, and Rose cooked and cleaned for her sisters, listened to Woody Guthrie records, and wrote letters to Henry Wallace, the 1948 Progressive candidate for president of the United States, endorsed by the U.S. Communist Party.