The Featherbed. Джон Миллер
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listen to the troubles of her friends and remain cheerful, no matter how tiresome the complaint. At the factory, she must be dependable to her co-workers, and a diligent employee. Only her friend Hattie didn’t demand much of her, because she was so independent, but Hattie was going to college now and so she hardly saw her.
During her walks home, Rebecca could breathe. If at other times she found the noise of the streets distracting and upsetting, at this time of the day she could shut it out. The sounds faded into the background, and, once the nagging hunger in her gut was sated by a nice piece of bread, she would retreat into her thoughts.
It was six-thirty when Rebecca rounded the corner to Ludlow Street, the earliest she had been home all week. The sun had already dipped behind the tops of the buildings when she had left the factory, and now it was almost dark. Rebecca snapped to attention in time to avoid running into the pushcart that was blocking the front stoop of her building.
“Good evening, Ribecceh!” said Mr. Zussel. He was closing up his herring cart. “Careful, kinderleh! Ein bissel fish for your papa?”
“Good evening, Mr. Zussel. No, thank you.”
Mr. Zussel looked down from his considerable height, squinting one eye and frowning at her. In two giant steps he rounded the corner of his cart, his lanky torso following after in syncopation. Because of the way he moved, and also the way his lower jaw jutted out, he reminded her of a pelican. She tried to picture him holding his fish in his teeth.
“Such a good tochter like you, and no herring for your father? Nu, they don’t give you money for this hard work such you do at the factory?”
Rebecca’s face burned. “You know very well that if I’m to be a good daughter I have to give all of my wages to my father. My mother didn’t come buy from you today?”
“Aach! Two weeks, your mother goes to Sender on East Broadway. A good woman she is, sure. Always the bargains for her family, she finds. So good, she’s killing me!” He brought his hands up to his throat.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Zussel. But maybe if you lowered your prices a penny or two every so often...”
“Ayy! Exactly like her mother she is. A shark! A shark!” His hands made teeth marks in the air. “All the Ignatow women — beautiful and smart, yes, but so heartless. Like sharks. And I should live from what, lowering my prices — a thank you from your mother and a blessing from God?” He waved her away.
“Good evening, Mr. Zussel,” she chuckled, and left him still muttering as she pivoted on the stoop and ran in the front door. When she heard the doorknob click behind her, she leaned against the wall and fished a box of matches out of her coat pocket. Her eyes blinked several times, but it was futile. The darkness fell damp and cold upon her face, sending shivers down her spine as it seeped through her.
Sometimes, but rarely, a person opened a door to an apartment and an oil lamp spilled some weak rays onto the floor-boards. Not today. Today it was heavy and pitch, making it an effort to keep her eyes open. She struck a match against the wall and held her palm around it to shield it from the draft she felt biting at her ankles.
Her family lived on the top floor, because her parents took the cheapest apartment they could find when they came to New York and then never moved. When they got off the boat from Poland, someone in line at the Castle Clinton processing centre introduced them to his cousin, who showed them the building at number fifty-five. According to her mother, her father believed at first that they had outsmarted the landlord in that the rent on the top floor was cheaper and there was less noise from the street. But her mother knew they were getting what they paid for because every day she had to carry groceries and a small child five flights up the dark stairwell.
Rebecca was used to the apartment, having known nothing else, but when she thought of her future she wanted more than to live like old Zussel’s herring, packed together in cloudy brine. Not too much more, maybe a room of her own someday, instead of sharing with a boarder. Some privacy and a toilet in the apartment. Some air and a bit of light coming in.
Some light. Every time she climbed the stairs, day or night, Rebecca thought of nothing else. She had been climbing them on her own since she was three years old and started carrying small packages of matzoh meal up the stairs for her mother. By seven, she was running errands alone. But instead of getting used to it as she got older, the stairwell began to frighten her more and more. Partly it was because she heard ghost stories from the girls in the factory, but mostly it was because she simply knew more about the world, and more about the things men could do to women.
So she lit matches. It was the only other thing that she spent her wages on, except that in this case, her mother and father knew about it. It took her three matches to get to the top floor, if she was good and didn’t stumble. One she lit right after closing the front door, the second on the landing to the second floor, and the third on the landing to the fourth.
To take her mind off her fear, she made it into a game: to see if she could make it up to the fifth floor with only two matches. She had not yet succeeded, but she was determined. It was an unusual game in that speed and slowness were equal opponents: too fast and the match would be blown out by air currents, too slow and it would burn out on its own. Rebecca believed that her agility and concentration would eventually beat these worthy adversaries. If she was lucky and didn’t have parcels to carry, the trick was to get her legs moving fast but isolate her upper body so that her hand could remain steady to shield the match.
Today, she made it to the middle of the fifth flight before her second match blew out. The closest yet. She struck another one against the wall and continued up to the apartment. Outside the door, she blew it out, quietly turned the handle, and slipped inside. Once she stepped in from the hallway, she was already in the tiny kitchen. Her mother was at the wash basin making a loud scratching noise with a scouring pad and didn’t immediately turn around. But then the smoke from the match must have reached her nostrils because she craned her neck over her shoulder and looked Rebecca up and down, standing there at the door all sweaty and out of breath. She raised an eyebrow, shook her head, and turned back to the dishes.
Rebecca opened an eye and peeked at her mother as she lit the shabbus candles and said the benediction. Her eyes were closed, her chin tilted down, and the corners of the lace kerchief that she had placed on her head hung down in points over her cheeks. The hair from her black wig could be seen through the holes of the creamy cloth, and Rebecca thought that this made her look like those floppy-eared dogs on fire trucks.
When her father blessed the wine, Rebecca again glanced up but caught her mother staring at her, so she quickly turned her gaze down to her plate. When she noticed her watching her again during the blessing for the bread, Rebecca looked down at her dress to see if it was unbuttoned, but it was not. Her mother completed the blessings by burning a very small piece of challah as an offering to God, which she blew out immediately, vigorously waving away the smoke.
Her mother brought a pot to the table and served lentil soup. She seemed distracted as she ladled some into a bowl, looking to Rebecca’s father, then to her. She began to pick her head up as though to say something, but a subtle shake of her father’s head stopped her.
“What is it, Mama?”
“It’s nothing darling. Later, after dinner, there’s something we want to talk to you about.”
Rebecca was about to press for information, but her mother spilled a drop of soup onto the sleeve of her black dress. “Ach, the one day I buy some shmaltz to add a little flavour, and I get it on my dress. As if God were punishing me for being extravagant.” She sucked the material quickly into her mouth, then rushed off to blot it with a cloth.
Everyone stared at the spot on her sleeve while her mother resumed her task and, starting with her father, skimmed most of the fat from the top of the pot into his tin bowl. Next she served Ida, the boarder who shared a room with Rebecca. After Ida, she divided what was left between Rebecca and herself. This was exactly why Rebecca didn’t feel bad about not bringing any bread for her father. He always got the tastiest piece of food: the fat from the soup, the skin from the chicken, the crust from the noodle kugel.
Thank