Part 8

The dining-room with its fine “set,” brought the habit of regular meals with it. In MacDougal Street there was a supper-time, of course, but the children weren’t always there and the other meals had been rather haphazard, half of the family standing up, likely as not. Now there was a regular breakfast in the morning, every one sitting down, and early enough for Rosenheim to get to work on time and Yetta and Ike and Carrie to get to school. Lunch was still informal, eaten standing around the kitchen. Supper was a grand meal, every one sitting down at the same time, the table all set with tablecloth and dishes, as if it were a party.

It was easy to settle down into the pleasant rhythm of East Seventy-seventh Street. There were big new tenements on each side of the street and before long each member of the family made lots of friends.

Rosenheim didn’t have as many friends as the others. He didn’t care for them. His hours were long and he was getting into the habit of working, sometimes, at night. It takes a lot of money to pay rent—six dollars every week—and buy clothes and food for a family and save a little, too. Rosenheim didn’t complain unless his usual solemn face and prediction of hard times can be called complaining. It never occurred to him that he had anything to complain about. Didn’t he have a fine home and a lot to eat, a home grander than he ought to spend the money for, even? When he wasn’t busy, he and Abrams and a friend of theirs, sometimes a man named Moses, would play cards long hours at a time, talking in loud, seemingly angry voices and smoking long cigarettes. Or, with coat, collar and shoes off, as he always sat in the house, he would read the paper—he could read English quite easily, but he preferred Yiddish. He didn’t talk much and the children were taught “not to worry Papa,” when he was at home.

Grandma grew to like the new home in time, though it never seemed quite as pleasant as that in MacDougal Street. She did all of the cooking, of course, and could order the children around as much as she wanted to, though they were good children as a rule, when you let them see who was boss. She would exclaim with clasped hands over the grandeur of things and beg her God that the people from her home-town might see “how we live like this.” She was always busy. She never learned to speak English well, and though at sixty-two she could drive a bargain as good as ever, she didn’t feel quite comfortable in the near-by shops as she had in MacDougal Street. Gradually her daughter took over the marketing from her.

The spirit of change had reached Mrs. Rosenheim and she did what she could to grasp it. She tried again to persuade Grandma to take off her _sheitel_.

“See, Grandma, these other people. Ain’t you as good as them? It ain’t nothing to be ashamed of, a _sheitel_, but here in America we do what others do.”

But Grandma kept her _sheitel_. She couldn’t yield everything to the customs of the unbelievers. She even muttered things about “forgetting your own people.”

Mrs. Rosenheim tried to acquire “elegant English.” She was very proud of her children because their language was unsullied by accent. But perhaps because she never liked to read and it never occurred to her that she might study, or because her tongue had lost its flexibility, she was never able to conceal her foreignness. She was becoming a little self-satisfied, too, a bit complacent with her own ways, and this may have hindered her progress. The new language issued forth in a strange, twisted form, the “w’s” and “v’s” transposed, the intonations of the Yiddish always noticeable. She managed to make nearly all of the ordinary grammatical errors of the native and a few pet ones of her own. Her sentences were full of inversions. Her voice, never very low, became louder and louder and the singing intonations more marked as she grew excited. Rosenheim spoke with an accent, too, which he always retained, but his voice was quite low and he soon overcame this strange sing-song of his native tongue. Then, too, Rosenheim never talked very much.

Mrs. Rosenheim bloomed in East Seventy-seventh Street. Her mother did the cooking and Yetta helped with the housework. Even then, with so many children in the house, there was enough to do, but she spent much time in visiting her neighbours, gossiping about her children, the prices of food, other neighbours. Although her family came first, she began to pay more attention to herself, buying clothes that were not absolutely necessary, cheap things that looked fine to her. She became ambitious, too. She found that there was another life not bounded by the tenements and that “other people,” the rich part of the world, were not much different outside of their possession of money. Her humility was wearing away. “We’re as good as anybody” came to her mind, and was beginning to fertilize. She didn’t want to associate with any one outside of her own group, but she liked to feel that others were not superior. The children, continuing their acquisitiveness, encouraged their mother.

Yetta had her fourteenth birthday soon after the family moved to East Seventy-seventh Street. She began to mature rather rapidly, arranging her hair in an exaggerated following of the fashion and even purchased and wore a pair of corsets. She had a high colour and her flashing eyes made her quite attractive. Her mouth was rather wide. Yetta did not speak with a foreign accent, but her voice was a trifle hoarse and was not well modulated. She had a lot to say about nearly everything and delighted in saying it. The niceties of conversation had not been introduced into the Rosenheim family life and most of the things Yetta thought of occurred when some one else was talking. Her favourite method of attracting attention was to interrupt or talk down, in a louder voice, any one who had the floor. Ike had this pleasant little habit, too, so between them conversation rose in roaring waves of sound.

Yetta felt that many things about her could be improved. She began to criticize things at home—her clothes; her mother’s language, which was too full of errors, too singing to suit her daughter; the actions of the younger children. She never liked to read, but she “loved a good time” and was always with a group of girls and boys, laughing and talking.

Ike was much like Yetta, though a bit more serious, more inclined to argument. He could argue over anything even at twelve. He, too, had definite notions about the upbringing of the younger children and the modernity of the household. He didn’t want any one making fun of the family he belonged to. His own name came in for his disapproval about this time.

He had a fight with a boy named Jim and Jim hit him and called him names. But the cruelest part of Jim’s name-calling had been merely to repeat, over and over again, “Ikey Rosenheim, Ikey Rosenheim.” For this cruelty Ike had fought Jim and had emerged not entirely victorious, bringing back a black eye and the memory of the derision in the mouth of the enemy.

“I’m going to change my name,” Ike announced at supper that night. “I don’t care what this family says. You make me sick, naming me Ike. You might have known. This family has terrible names. No wonder people make fun of us. After this I’m—I’m going to be—Harold.”

“Oh, no, not Harold,” Grandma wailed, with uplifted hands.

“No,” Mrs. Rosenheim groaned, “you’ve got to keep the letter, the ‘I.’ You were named after your Papa’s father.”

“There’s a lot of good names beginning with ‘I,’” Yetta encouraged. So, between them, they found Irving, which seemed satisfactory to every one. Little Irving, at school, told his teacher that Ike had been a nickname and that the family wanted him called by his own name, now. Jim, not satisfied with Irving Rosenheim as a reproach, had to find something else to fight about.

Carrie and Mannie and Dorothy were still too little to bother about names. They begged for pennies for lollypops on sticks, candy apples, licorice and other delicacies that the neighbourhood afforded, satisfied to tag after Mrs. Rosenheim as she did the marketing. They were nice children, though of course Dorothy was a little spoiled—the youngest child and always having her own way about everything.

VI

During the next year something came up in a business way that caused Rosenheim and Abrams to hold long consultations during many evenings. They nodded together over bits of paper on which there were many figures. Mrs. Rosenheim felt that they had “something in their heads” they weren’t telling her about, but, being a dutiful wife—and knowing her husband, and how useless it would have been—she didn’t press matters. A few weeks later she found out. E. G. Plotski had died suddenly, leaving no near relatives except a wife. Abrams had heard about the case. Mrs. Plotski couldn’t keep up the business alone. If she couldn’t “sell out,” complete, she was going to give it up and sell the machinery. She had some cousins in a far-Western place called, Abrams believed, Iowa, and was desirous of living with them. If Mrs. Plotski “gave up the business” there was a tremendous loss, it seemed to Abrams and Rosenheim—for Plotski already had operators, customers, “good will.” And with their knowledge of the pants business....

It seemed, indeed, a visitation, as if a whole pants business had descended to them as a direct reward for their long and faithful work. But Mrs. Plotski had friends, not just in a position to buy the business, it seemed, but quite capable of giving advice about selling it. And herein lay the need of much nodding and figuring. Finally it was settled. Abrams and Rosenheim went to their several banks—it’s never safe to put all of your savings in one bank, even if it does look like a fine big one—drew out their saving accounts, for of course they had no checking accounts, and, after the usual legalities had been concluded, were the joint partners of The Acme Pants Company, Men’s and Boys’ Pants.

After they had signed their names, Marcus L. Abrams and Abraham G. Rosenheim, Rosenheim allowed his stern face to relax into a rather sad smile.

“Good, eh, Marcus? Here, I’m only ‘over’ seven years and I’m partner in a business already. Of course, we can expect hard times, but, a business ain’t anything to be ashamed of.”

The family saw Rosenheim’s new signature and liked it. Irving wrote it above the letter-box. The G stood for nothing in particular, but Rosenheim had no middle name and of course he ought to have one. It was indeed American. The neighbourhood did not notice, it was used to changes.

Abrams and Rosenheim worked all day and most of the night. They “went over the books” with great deliberation. They looked into every minute detail of the business, and wrote numerous letters by hand on the old Acme Pants Company letterheads that they found in Plotski’s desk. When this paper was used up they ordered more, retaining the cut of the building at the top but substituting their names for the name of the deceased former owner.

They were very happy over their new business, though you would never have known it by their actions. They always wore long faces.

The factory did well. People liked ready-made pants, it seemed. The two men hurried around seeking new trade, satisfied with as small a profit as possible. They bought job lots of woollens from the factories and did numberless other things to reduce expenses. Rosenheim cut the pants and Abrams was not too proud to do his share of the menial labour. Before another year had passed the whole of the third floor loft belonged to the Acme Pants Company.

Mrs. Rosenheim was proud of her husband. It was mighty fine, these days, to speak of “my husband’s factory” to those women whose more unfortunate spouses were forced to exist on mere wages handed them by their overlords. But even this, in time, stopped satisfying. What good does it do for your husband to own a factory if you still live in a tenement in East Seventy-seventh Street? Mrs. Rosenheim knew that her husband was working hard and was nearly always worried over money matters, bills to meet, wages to be paid. But, as long as he actually was a manufacturer, and owner of a business, a payer of wages, it was unbelievable that they should live in a tenement. Weren’t they as good as anybody? Several months ago the Abrams had moved. Of course, with only two boys the expenses were less, but what of that? And the Moskowskis—now the Mosses—had moved, too. The Rosenheims had been in the tenement three years and now the neighbourhood was filling up with terrible people, straight from the Ghetto—or the old country—and bringing foreign habits with them. It was no place to bring up growing American children.

It was Yetta who precipitated the moving. Although he petted and humoured Dorothy, it was his oldest child who was Rosenheim’s favourite. Now Yetta tried all of her most endearing tricks.

“Papa,” she said, “I’m sixteen. I ought to get out of this neighbourhood. Ask Mamma. I’m almost a young lady. I want good things—a fine man like you with a factory shouldn’t keep his children in the tenements. All of my crowd are gone. I miss them something awful. You don’t want me to go with the—the ‘greenhorns’ who are moving in around here, do you?”

Similar arguments managed to convince Rosenheim. Anyhow, one night he nodded solemnly and consented to move.

“You women will ruin me yet, with all your spending,” he said, but Yetta, tall though she was, jumped on his lap and kissed his thin cheek.

“None of that,” he said, in assumed brusqueness, as he pushed her away. “You make a fool of your old Papa, eh? Well, go along and get your fine flat.”

Mrs. Rosenheim and Yetta, accompanied by Mrs. and Miss Graham, a recent and becoming transformation of their old friends, the Grabinskis, went apartment hunting. They decided on the Bronx, new and good enough for any manufacturer’s family. They had friends there and there were lots of stores. It was a nice neighbourhood, Yetta thought, with lots of young people who wore good clothes. She could have a fine time.

No longer were the Rosenheims satisfied with the first apartment shown them. Yetta and her mother had grown critical. Yetta’s ambitions had limitations, of course. She didn’t aspire to an elevator apartment or anything like that—but she didn’t want a tenement. She wanted a big living-room, for she was approaching the beau age and already was going to the theatre with MacDougal Abrams and Milton Cohn. They visited dozens of apartments, examining the kitchens and halls, exclaiming over the plumbing. Grandma wanted a big kitchen and she ought to have it, as long as she did most of the cooking. And they had been crowded for years—Yetta didn’t want any one sleeping in the front room, nor even in the dining-room. Young girls do get such notions! Mrs. Rosenheim wanted grand decorations in the lower hall.

After much step-climbing they found their apartment. It was on the fourth floor, rear, of a walk-up apartment, but the rent was forty dollars a month and they dared not pay more. Rosenheim looked dour when the news was broken to him, but, with sad headshaking and remarks about business being bad, he said they might take it.

The entrance hall of the apartment-house was of marble. The letter-boxes were of brass and shining. The stairs leading to the apartment were carpeted. The apartment itself had seven rooms. A few years before the Rosenheims wouldn’t have believed an apartment could be so large. Now they all accepted it rather indifferently. Wasn’t Rosenheim a factory owner? Didn’t some of their friends live just as grandly? The woodwork was shining oak. The floors glittered blondly. Mr. and Mrs. Rosenheim had a bedroom all alone, Grandma shared a tiny cubicle with Dorothy. Yetta and Carrie had their room and there was a room for the boys. All the rooms had new beds of white enamelled iron, fantastically twisted and with big brass knobs.

The Rosenheims got rid of most of their old things at a sale before they left East Seventy-seventh Street. Then Mrs. Rosenheim and Yetta bought things suitable for the grandeur of their new home at an instalment house in Sixth Avenue. There was a three-piece parlour set stained to a red imitation of mahogany. The round table had come with them, as had the vases. The dining-room boasted a new “set,” a round table that pulled apart and had four extra leaves and sat on a huge pedestal, and eight chairs—two with arms, making one for each of them. There were brand-new rugs, one for each room, most of them in patterns of birds and beasts and flowers in bright colourings, though the front room displayed a gay and exciting “Oriental pattern.”

One of the startling changes of the new régime was the name above the letter-box. A simple and chaste A. G. Rosen was announced in Irving’s most careful writing. Rosenheim explained that, at the factory, every one called him Rosen for short and it might make it confusing to keep the old name. The family hailed Rosen joyfully. Surely they were real Americans, now.

VII

They were settled only a few months when Yetta begged and got—a piano. Shiningly red, it matched the rest of the living-room furniture. It was an upright, of course, and Yetta draped a pale silk scarf embroidered in gold threads over it, with a vase at either end to hold it in place. Soon she and Carrie were taking lessons from a Mme. Roset of the neighbourhood, making half-hours horrible with scales and five-finger exercises.

There were now other forms of art in the household, too. For his birthday the children gave their father enlargements of the photographs of him and their mother. These were “hand-made crayons” in grey, with touches of colour on lips and cheeks and framed in wide carved oak, trimmed with gold. They were placed side by side above the piano, which stood slightly diagonally in one corner.

The children were growing up. Yetta felt herself quite a young lady and didn’t go to school. There was no use going any more—she wasn’t going to be a teacher, was she? She had a lovely handwriting, with fine loops at the ends of the “y’s” and “g’s.” It seemed a shame to spend her days in school when there were so many things to do outside. No one tried to persuade her to keep on going. Her father was slightly of the opinion that too much learning wasn’t good for a girl anyhow. Men didn’t like “smart” girls and Yetta was growing up. If she had wanted to go to school he might have consented, but she didn’t. She preferred putting on her best clothes, her hat an exaggerated copy of something she had seen in Broadway and had had made after her description at a neighbourhood shop, a cheap fur around her neck, high-heeled shoes. Thus attired, she went walking.

In the morning she had to help a little with the bedmaking, dusting and ironing. But in the afternoons she was free. She’d meet some of “the girls” or “the boys” and drink soda, laughing and giggling over things. She used the latest slang and talked rather loudly. At night there were dances or the crowd would go, in pairs or groups, to the theatre, sitting in the gallery, usually, and laughing heartily over the jokes. They were fondest of vaudeville. Yetta was awfully happy when she had enough spending money and a new dress—a bit more exaggerated in style than any of her friends. She couldn’t imagine anything finer than the new neighbourhood and the new apartment.

Grandma was just a trifle bewildered in the Bronx. She didn’t seem to fit in. The children, growing up, were developing unexpected opinions of their own that didn’t agree with her ideas. They called her old-fashioned and giggled at her advice. There was plenty to do and Grandma liked housework. But sixty-five isn’t young and Grandma had worked hard in her day. Four flights of stairs aren’t easy, either, so Grandma didn’t go out often. Occasionally, she walked around the neighbourhood, not knowing just what to do. Mrs. Rosen did all her own marketing or telephoned for things—there was a telephone in the new apartment. There were a few old friends to go to see, foreign-born women, like herself, and with these she would talk in comfortable Yiddish. But each one lived several blocks away. You didn’t talk to strangers in this neighbourhood, it seemed, and you could go for weeks and not see any one you knew. A funny place, America.

Still, there were pleasant things for Grandma—good food and the fun of preparing it, a comfortable home. Mrs. Rosen didn’t like to work as well as she used to, so finally she hired a woman who came in, one day a week, to do the washing in the morning and the scrubbing of kitchen and bath in the afternoon. Grandma was quite excited over this innovation. For the first time in her life she could fold her gnarled old hands and watch some one do the work for her.

“They should hear about this back home,” she would say. “Abe with a factory and us with seven rooms and a washwoman and all. We’ve got it lucky, ain’t it, Minnie?”

Mrs. Rosen, though annoyed at her mother’s simplicity, agreed. Already Mrs. Rosen was planning bigger things. It didn’t seem at all impossible to her that some day they might even have a regular servant girl.

Mrs. Rosen was well satisfied, generally. Occasionally she, too, regretted some of the pleasant things that Seventy-seventh Street had meant for her. She had liked the friendly chatter of the neighbourhood. Here in the Bronx you had to be “dressed” all the time. In Seventy-seventh Street you could go out in the morning in your housedress, with a basket, and spend a pleasant hour or so bargaining with the shop-keepers and talking with friends, always meeting little groups you knew. On the steps, in the evening you could call back and forth. Money was good; she was glad she had it. A servant girl would be fine; it was a lot of work for her and Grandma, cleaning up after five children. But this neighbourhood was stylish enough. You knew some of your neighbours here, even if they weren’t so friendly. Maybe, after you got better acquainted....

It was nice, having a lot of rooms and new clothes and all that. Mrs. Rosen finally met new acquaintances and liked them. She played cards in the afternoons now and a few months later joined a euchre club which met every Tuesday afternoon at the homes of its members in turn. There were “refreshments” after the game, cold meat and potato salad, usually, and the prizes were hand-painted china and “honiton lace” centrepieces. Mrs. Rosen won quite an assortment as the months passed.

Irving was getting to be a big boy. He looked a little like his father, thin, a trifle sallow, with a slightly aquiline nose—but much handsomer, his mother thought. His eyes were not strong and quite early he had to wear glasses. He adopted nose-glasses and before he quite got used to them he had formed the habit of tilting his head up, to keep them from falling off. He had rather a sharp chin and wore his black hair straight back and sleek.

When the family moved to the Bronx he was fourteen, had on a first pair of long trousers, and was in the first year of the high school. He was quick in his studies and would argue with his teachers about anything under discussion. He still liked long dissertations at home and had about decided to be a lawyer. In the years that followed he read quite a little, not so much for the love of reading—he had little of that—but from a desire “to keep up with things,” so he could discuss and dissect and argue. He liked the theatre as he grew older, but preferred serious dramas.