you felt like shit. So you wanted to run out of there, and keep on runnin.
“Why’d you want to know that? Who is asking you such things? Somebody been askin you? Like at that school? Somebody spyin’ on us?”
Like a match tossed into kerosene it was, how Ma would flare up excited and stammering if you asked the most innocent question. If you said some words Ma could not comprehend or had not even heard clearly (Ma was always humming and talking and laughing to herself in the kitchen, she’d pretend not to notice you when you came inside, not even glancing around, like a deaf woman) or asked some question she could not answer. Her mouth went ugly. Her soft sliding-down body began to tremble. Her eyes, that seemed to Rebecca beautiful eyes, immediately flooded with tears. Her voice was hoarse and cracked-sounding like dried cornstalks when the wind blows through them. Through her life she would speak her new language with the confidence of a crippled woman making her way across a patch of treacherous, cracking ice. She could not seem to mimic the sounds her children learned so readily, and even her husband could mimic in his own brusque way: “Anna, you must try. Not ‘da’�‘the.’ Not ‘ta’�‘to.’ Say it!”
Poor Anna Schwart spoke in a whisper, cringing in shame.
(And Rebecca was ashamed, too. In secret. She would never laugh openly at Ma like her brothers.)
There were stores in Milburn, the grocer’s for instance, and the pharmacy, even Woolworth’s, where Anna Schwart dared not speak but mutely handed over lists hand-printed by Jacob Schwart (initially, though in time Rebecca would make up these lists) so there could be no misunderstandings. (Still, there were misunderstandings.) Everybody laughed at her, she said. Not even waiting till her back was turned or she was out of earshot. Calling her “Mrs. Schwarz”�“Mrs. Schwartz”�“Mrs. Schwazz”�“Mrs. Warts.” She heard them!
The boys, Herschel in particular, were embarrassed of their mother. Bad enough they were the gravedigger’s sons, they were the sons of the gravedigger’s wife. God damn!
(Ma can’t help it, her nerves, Gus told Herschel, and Herschel said he knew it, fuck he knew it but that didn’t make it easier did it? Two of em not right in the fuckin head, but at least Pa could take care of himself, Pa could speak English so you could make sense of him at least and also Pa had, what’s it called, had to hand it to the old man, Pa had dignity .)
Once, when Rebecca was a little girl too young yet for school, she was in the kitchen with Ma when a visitor knocked at the front door of the caretaker’s cottage.
A visitor! She was a middle-aged woman with fattish hips and thighs, a wide, ruddy face like something rubbed with a rag, and a cotton scarf tied around her head.
She was a farmer’s wife who lived about six miles away. She had heard of the Schwarts, that they were from Munich? She, too, was from Munich: she’d been born there, in 1902! Today she was visiting the cemetery to tend to her father’s grave, and she was bringing Anna Schwart an apple kuchen she’d baked that morning…
And there was Ma trembling in the doorway like a woman woken from a nightmare sleep. Her face was going sick, sallow as if blood were draining out of it. Her eyes were blinking rapidly, flooded with tears. Stammering she was busy, she was so busy. Rebecca heard the visitor address Ma in a strange harsh speech, yet warmly, as if they were sisters, uttering words too quickly for Rebecca to grasp� Sie? she heard� haben? � Nachbarschaft? But Ma shut the door in the woman’s face. Ma stumbled away into the back bedroom and shut that door, too.
The rest of that afternoon, Ma hid in the bedroom. Rebecca, frightened, shut outside, heard the bedsprings creak. She heard her mother talking, quarreling with someone in that forbidden language.
“Ma?”�Rebecca jammed her fingers into her mouth, to keep from being heard.
She was
“Why’d you want to know that? Who is asking you such things? Somebody been askin you? Like at that school? Somebody spyin’ on us?”
Like a match tossed into kerosene it was, how Ma would flare up excited and stammering if you asked the most innocent question. If you said some words Ma could not comprehend or had not even heard clearly (Ma was always humming and talking and laughing to herself in the kitchen, she’d pretend not to notice you when you came inside, not even glancing around, like a deaf woman) or asked some question she could not answer. Her mouth went ugly. Her soft sliding-down body began to tremble. Her eyes, that seemed to Rebecca beautiful eyes, immediately flooded with tears. Her voice was hoarse and cracked-sounding like dried cornstalks when the wind blows through them. Through her life she would speak her new language with the confidence of a crippled woman making her way across a patch of treacherous, cracking ice. She could not seem to mimic the sounds her children learned so readily, and even her husband could mimic in his own brusque way: “Anna, you must try. Not ‘da’�‘the.’ Not ‘ta’�‘to.’ Say it!”
Poor Anna Schwart spoke in a whisper, cringing in shame.
(And Rebecca was ashamed, too. In secret. She would never laugh openly at Ma like her brothers.)
There were stores in Milburn, the grocer’s for instance, and the pharmacy, even Woolworth’s, where Anna Schwart dared not speak but mutely handed over lists hand-printed by Jacob Schwart (initially, though in time Rebecca would make up these lists) so there could be no misunderstandings. (Still, there were misunderstandings.) Everybody laughed at her, she said. Not even waiting till her back was turned or she was out of earshot. Calling her “Mrs. Schwarz”�“Mrs. Schwartz”�“Mrs. Schwazz”�“Mrs. Warts.” She heard them!
The boys, Herschel in particular, were embarrassed of their mother. Bad enough they were the gravedigger’s sons, they were the sons of the gravedigger’s wife. God damn!
(Ma can’t help it, her nerves, Gus told Herschel, and Herschel said he knew it, fuck he knew it but that didn’t make it easier did it? Two of em not right in the fuckin head, but at least Pa could take care of himself, Pa could speak English so you could make sense of him at least and also Pa had, what’s it called, had to hand it to the old man, Pa had dignity .)
Once, when Rebecca was a little girl too young yet for school, she was in the kitchen with Ma when a visitor knocked at the front door of the caretaker’s cottage.
A visitor! She was a middle-aged woman with fattish hips and thighs, a wide, ruddy face like something rubbed with a rag, and a cotton scarf tied around her head.
She was a farmer’s wife who lived about six miles away. She had heard of the Schwarts, that they were from Munich? She, too, was from Munich: she’d been born there, in 1902! Today she was visiting the cemetery to tend to her father’s grave, and she was bringing Anna Schwart an apple kuchen she’d baked that morning…
And there was Ma trembling in the doorway like a woman woken from a nightmare sleep. Her face was going sick, sallow as if blood were draining out of it. Her eyes were blinking rapidly, flooded with tears. Stammering she was busy, she was so busy. Rebecca heard the visitor address Ma in a strange harsh speech, yet warmly, as if they were sisters, uttering words too quickly for Rebecca to grasp� Sie? she heard� haben? � Nachbarschaft? But Ma shut the door in the woman’s face. Ma stumbled away into the back bedroom and shut that door, too.
The rest of that afternoon, Ma hid in the bedroom. Rebecca, frightened, shut outside, heard the bedsprings creak. She heard her mother talking, quarreling with someone in that forbidden language.
“Ma?”�Rebecca jammed her fingers into her mouth, to keep from being heard.
She was
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