The Silents

5

CHAPTER s M AMA ASKED the crazy janitor to bring up the Passover dishes from the basement. She wrote her request on a piece ofpaper in her dainty penmanship, crossing her t's perfectly and writing "Mrs. Herzberg" so ornately that the H curled under the rest ofher name in a big swirl. The janitor lugged the dishes up the stairs, one carton at a time, while Adelaide and I were sitting on the landing. He got as far as the step below us and smiled. I shivered, but he smiled again, and I let him pass. Mama gave him a tip, smiled at him, and shooed us into the apartment. "Poor man," she said to herself. She unwrapped the dishes, put them in the sink, and started washing them. The light went on in the dining room, and, before Adelaide opened the door, I knew it would be Zadie. He lived only two blocks away on Fairfield Avenue, so he visited every Tuesday and sometimes Wednesday. When he was really worried about something , he would show up every day dressed in a three-piece suiteven in the hottest weather-because he would be on his way home from the synagogue. His face was permanently red from the heat stored up in his clothing, and his gray mustache with its little red hairs drooped from the sweat. Zadie, or Grandpa Sam, was Mama's father. He and Mama had almost the same conversation each time he came to see us. Zadie, staring straight at her, nose to nose, so she could read his lips, would say "Nu?" "So? Everything fine?" "Sure, Pa, fine, fine." 3S "Joe is working?" "Yes, Pa. Joe is working. Don't you worry." "You have money?" "Yes, Pa." "Nu. Good-bye." "Good-bye, Pa." He'd turn to Adelaide and me and ask, "Nu, everything is fine?" "Sure, Zadie, everything is fine," although we really didn't know if everything was fine, trusting that my grandfather's and mother's eye-to-eye contact had told Zadie more than we would ever know. I loved Zadie. He was the spitting image ofMaurice Chevalier, the good-looking French singer who had charmed me from the screen ofa darkened movie house. He and my mother shared the same high cheekbones, dark eyes, and intense look when speaking . Because his English was poor and I knew only a few words in Yiddish, our conversations limped along. But all he had to do was smile, say "Nu," tweak me under the chin, and I was a goner. Zadie asked, "Is Papa coming to shul?" "No, Zadie. He can't go to synagogue." Then I changed synagogue to shut so he would understand. "He has to work, but he'll come to your house after work." He didn't look happy when I told him, but I knew that ifPapa had gone to shul, he would have lost what he called a decent day's pay. I was never sure ifit was a decent living. The Roosevelt Chair Company had plenty ofrental chairs to deliver, and sometimes Papa worked both Saturdays and Sundays, but many nights, when I went to the bathroom, I found Papa sitting at the dining room table, writing numbers on pieces ofpaper, throwing his hands up in the air, scrunching the papers, and throwing them on the floor. Sometimes, he'd fingerspell to himself with his hand down his side, the way he did when he didn't want anyone to see him thinking out loud. "Rent, gas, lights...." That's all I ever saw, but it clearly worried him, and taking off a day would only mean more paper scrunching. "But Mama and Adelaide and I are coming to shul," I assured Zadie. "Nu. You coming to shul?" "Yes, Zadie." "Goot." And then he left. Mama got down on her knees and searched the floor for bread crumbs-the biggest taboo for Passover. It was the last ofher rituals . She had cleaned, scoured the stove, wiped out the ice box, and thrown out every piece of bread except the loaf that Papa insisted on eating. He told her he wasn't about to change his ways. He'd been doing it for years, even in his mother's house, so she carried the bread by the tips of her fingers like it was poison to the farthest corner of the pantry and stuck it...