did you defrost it yourself?’ they’d say, and giggle like Ben. Anyway, that was unfair, not everything needed to be thawed. Sometimes she opened cans or packets as well. But the notion that meals were something carefully assembled, to think about, to take pride in, as Perle took pride in her chicken fricassee, stuffed cabbage and pot roast . . . her chopped liver, egg and onion, fresh challah laden with schmaltz. No, not at all. Addie ate them, made the right noises ingesting and thanking, but she didn’t care. She took no pride in eating either.
In the morning she made toast, dark brown and crispy, and scrambled some eggs, which she would crack directly into a frying pan hot with butter, stir quickly with a fork, as globs of albumen floated amidst the overcooked yolk. The kids were fussy eaters, would pick at their plates, though she didn’t care if they finished or not. They had recently decided they didn’t like eggs, nor indeed oatmeal, which Addie produced in great lumps because she couldn’t be bothered to stir the pot. Instead they developed a passion for the new wonder cereal Sugar Frosted Flakes. With a sliced banana! They tried to get Poppa to try it, but he made a face, turned away, disgusted.
How could they possibly understand? Maurice was born in ‘the old country’ in 1892 – ‘the same year as Eddie Cantor,’ he’d say proudly, ‘only I’m eight months older!’ As a child – he didn’t remember how old, perhaps nine or ten? – he saw in the new century as a steerage-class passenger on a steamship to America, his mother and older sister with him, their tiny Bolekhov tannery hardly able to support the family. His father would join them later in New York, with the boys. Next year perhaps, or the next. God willing.
He remembered it well enough, the noxious smells that permeated their home and clothes, the rough trappers with their filthy clothes and dripping pelts, the vats of hot boiling water, the drying racks. He wouldn’t, perhaps couldn’t, talk about it. The children weren’t interested anyway, though he told them the story of having been given a soft and browning banana with his on-board supper, and told to peel and eat it. He’d never seen one, threw away the brown soggy fruit and tried to eat the peel. He made a face when he told the story.
‘I’ve never eaten one,’ he said. ‘They’re horrible!’
‘But, Poppa, you should try! You eat the middle bit! They’re good! We have them with our Sugar Frosted Flakes!’
He made the face again.
‘Never! Oy schtinksi!’
What do the children know of such things? He remembered the voyage clearly enough, in a series of images and feelings that had become constituent elements of his adult incarnation. The smell of hot iron and machine oil, vomit and urine, rotting sauerkraut and the rancid odour of unwashed bodies, the heat, the constant rolling of the sea, stumbling and tripping on the stairwells and decks, clutching the handrails wet with spray and sweat. It was such a long way from the bowels of the ship to the decks, and he felt so ill during the eleven days of the crossing, that he spent most of his time in his hammock, green and listless, as the ship tossed about like a toy in a hyperactive toddler’s bathtub.
What little he could eat and drink came back up soon enough. His mother wiped his face with a filthy cloth and let the older children look after themselves. He was the youngest, and her darling, born some eighteen years after her first.
It was hardly possible to sleep, save from pure exhaustion, after an interminable night kept awake by the deep throbbing of the insistent engines that sounded like they were next door, the snoring of the people around them, the vomiting and moaning, the indescribable stench. A few feet away an elderly man moaned ‘Oy vey iz mir’ through the night, ‘Oy gottenyu!’
He shook off the images, looked at the kids, whom he understood as little as they, him. Post-war – post two wars! – children of privilege, everything so easy that it had no value, had not been suffered for or earned. If they had souls, nothing would hone or refine them, they would get sloppy with lack of use. Best just to play, to tease and be teased, to keep away from what they could never understand, please God they would never have to.
They liked teasing Granny, too. Most evenings, when they had meat for supper, one or the other would ask if they could have bread and butter with it.
‘Please, Granny, please?’ they’d insist. ‘It’s to mop up the gravy!’
She never caught on, each time explained to them that it wasn’t kosher, wondered why they could never remember. Even Die Schwarze had learned within a week! That it was a childish joke would never have occurred to her. She was literal-minded, lacked any sense of humour, always asked to have a joke explained to her. Ben, who loved telling jokes, had long ago learned not to tell them in front of Perle.
‘Explain it to me . . .’ she’d begin, and since no explanation of a joke is funny, was confirmed in her lifelong opinion that they were stupid.
Unlike her mother, Becca wasn’t high and mighty, she was low and biddable. The little one was always delighted to help Granny in the kitchen, learned what was kosher and what was treif, stirred the bowl of cake mixture and got to lick the spoon (so did Jake, that wasn’t fair!), set the table for dinner, filled the glass dishes full of Jordan almonds and sugar-coated fruit slices, red, yellow, green and orange, and placed them on the side tables in the living room. She sensed that she was already a better woman than her mother, and rather regretted it.
She loved being with Granny and Poppa. You didn’t have to make your bed or clean up your toys or unset the table – constant areas of conflict in their apartment – because the Negro girl did that. She had the tiny bedroom next to the bathroom. She didn’t come out much, ate her meals in there, listened to the radio, read her magazines. She came out to clean the house, do the dishes and the laundry, wearily do the endless ironing, sometimes babysit if the grown-ups went to town. She never came to the beach, she hated the water, couldn’t even swim. She had a friend, Agatha, who worked in a house at the top end of their yard. She couldn’t swim either. They knew each other from the city.
The girl was called Ruby, but Poppa and Granny called her Die Schwarze, which meant a Negro like on Amos ’n’ Andy on the radio, but Ruby didn’t listen to that, made a face, went to her room and closed the door. Becca had no idea why; it was such a funny programme. ‘Ah loves you, Sapphia!’ Andy would croon. Or perhaps was it Amos? They both talked funny, the same. Ruby didn’t talk like that. She hardly talked at all.
In the back of the car, as they passed through the city and onto the Island, Becca gazed out the window, thought of going to the beach as soon as they got there, it was so hot, and sighed with anticipatory pleasure.
‘Are we almost there?’ she said.
‘Only an hour,’ said Addie. ‘Just hang on.’
But the kids were bored and restless, had eaten too many candies and drank too much Coke, and were beginning to push and nag at each other.
‘I know,’ said Ben, ‘let’s have a singsong!’
Addie looked alarmed. ‘We discussed this. No singsongs, you know how it yugs them up!’
A clamour arose from the rear of the car.
‘Yug us up! Yug us up!’
The kids had finished their sandwiches and jellybeans, demanded stops to have a siss, which they didn’t really need but used as a way of checking out the service stations for Twinkies and chocolate kisses. They were getting fractious, pushing the stick back and forth in fraught imperial combat.
‘I think we need some rules,’ said Addie. ‘The first rule is no more sisses till we get to the bungalow.’
‘What if I have to do a doody?’ Jake asked, loving a chance both to make a point and to say a rude word.
‘Yeah,’ said Becca, ‘me too! A doody!’
‘And the second rule,’ Addie said, ignoring them, already irritated beyond endurance by Ben’s constant humming of his arias, ‘is no more humming. And NO singing . . .’
‘That’s so unfair!’ interrupted