The Book Borrower Page 3

  “I’d like that,” said Sarah seriously.

  “Better to stay in America,” said my father, equally seriously. “Even with this President Harding they’ve just elected, who is not an intelligent man, even with him, better to stay here.” He patted Sarah’s arm and my mother reached out to pat her other arm.

  “President Wilson, President Harding,” said my mother, leaning across the table, trying to get it. Her gray hair was untidy and she still had her apron on. I’d been attempting to teach her to read. I wanted her to become a citizen, but she didn’t for many years, not until reading was no longer required. Women were about to get the vote and I’d been telling her about voting, but she had no interest.

  “Ah, President Wilson,” said Papa. We’d all heard this before. “If only people had listened to President Wilson.” Woodrow Wilson was the only American politician who had been enough of an idealist to appeal to my father. Wilson understood that Europe was a real place and that people there were human. If President Wilson had prevailed, Papa was al-ways telling us, and the League of Nations had been set up to match his envisioning, we’d have had true peace, not this skittish peace that Americans celebrated with foolishness and noise, this flimsy peace full of suspicion and hate.

  “And poverty. And injustice,” interrupted Jessie, also not for the first time, not that she had much faith, ever, in Presi-dent Wilson. “Your President Wilson deported Emma Goldman.”

  “He’s a sick man. Others did this. Wilson did not do this.” Papa had gradually stopped attending the anarchist meetings as the complexities of life in America had become more interesting to him, and now he had become afraid of radical activity, worrying that he’d be deported even though he was an American citizen. The Screamers no longer came to our house, but wherever they had gone, Jessie had followed.

  Papa ignored Jessie and kept talking. I was the only one listening, not that I couldn’t already recite what he was saying. My mother couldn’t understand English, Sarah couldn’t understand politics, and Jessie couldn’t understand President Wilson, that mild compromiser who allowed people to be rounded up and imprisoned out of fear of radicalism. But I see myself looking daughterly as Papa explained that Presi-dent Wilson respected all countries, not just this one. Daily my father had exhorted Congress, from our dining room table, to ratify Wilson’s treaty and support the League of Nations, but he had failed.

  “If Wilson had won—”

  “Oh, Papa, enough,” Jessie said, stopping on her way to the kitchen with a platter. “There are troubles in this country that President Wilson didn’t know how to fix. You know there are. You yourself are a worker.”

  “I see no Cossacks. I hear of no pogroms in this country.”

  “But there’s hatred of Jews. I feel it at the mill. And how do they treat Socialists? And what about Emma Goldman? But worst is the poverty.” Jessie carried the platter into the kitchen and I stood up to help. I could hear Jessie clattering plates. Then she came back. She could never keep from making a speech. “When they send me on an errand through the cutting rooms,” she said, a little hoarsely, her dark eyes bulging, “or the floor where the machinery is, I’m shocked at what I see—creatures so pale and wrinkled with hard work, they’re scarcely human.”

  “I know about hard work, my daughter.”

  “And wages are being cut everywhere—”

  “Your wages?” said Papa. “At the mill?”

  “No, not so far, but the trolley men—”

  Suddenly Father was in a rage, standing up, pounding the table. “I do not want to hear about the trolley men! I do not want to hear about my daughter screaming in the streets, throwing stones at police! They will rape you and kill you! This will be my shame for letting you hear those foolish men, when you were a baby!”

  He sank to his chair and buried his face in his hands, but Jessie was shouting louder than he. “In a country where business tells the government what to do, what can workingmen do except strike? And how can decent people not support them? A strike is honorable. Helping strikers is honorable. You expect them to take a twenty-five-percent cut in wages?”

  “Not my daughter!” he screamed. Sarah ran crying from the room, and I followed her, but I continued to hear their voices.

  Jessie didn’t stay to help finish washing up. The announcement that Sarah and I would be taking the Lake Avenue trolley out into the country on Sunday had been lost in the debate, which had given Sarah and me half a headache each, we said as we worked in the kitchen. I felt close to Sarah, for once. She was able and smart at the sink if not in school, and got the joke about half a headache, somewhat to my surprise. I felt distant from Jessie, who had gone out into the night with her crazy notions, and it made my throat tight and my stomach queasy to feel distant from Jessie.

  —You never came.

  —I started reading. Deborah and the little girls stood in front of her. Squirrel had fallen asleep in Ruben’s arms. She yanked her shirt down.

  —What are you reading?

  Ruben laughed. That book.

  —Jeremiah’s favorite book? Is it any good?

  —I don’t know. She should have gone to the park. Now she wanted to be with Deborah.

  —They want you to teach at the Center. I was saving it to tell you in the park. She called me last night. She’s calling you tonight.

  —Who?

  —Carlotta. The director. Can you start next week?

  Ruben was afraid to drive a car and so she contrived not to have one; cars shriveled in her care. The next week, she took the bus. She found the building: an old school, remodeled and turned into a day-care center. She walked in through a crowd of children, some black, some white, who chased one another like puppies. She had to ask two grown-ups before someone led her to the basement, where five women sat at a round pressed-wood table in the middle of a huge, shadowy room. The school table had an aluminum base but the edges tilted when Ruben or the students put their elbows on it. All but one student were black. They didn’t smile. Ruben talked too much. The women were ashamed at what they didn’t know. They made the table rock, then backed away from it, discovering reasons to hurry back to the babies they cared for. What efforts someone had gone to, winning them time off, winning them Ruben. The director, it turned out: Carlotta, a big, loud, black woman who hurried through after half an hour, shouting encouragement. Her voice resounded in the bare room, which had been the school’s gym. Far across the room were two high windows, with squares of sun below them, but otherwise the class-room was dark. Dusty bulbs hung in cages.

  —No, we don’t all work here, the friendliest one corrected Ruben. Me and Lily work here. The rest of these girls come from Barrett Street. The other city day care.

  —Oh, of course. But which one was Lily? One was Dorothy, but which? The friendly one, who turned nodding toward Ruben, was Emma.

  Deborah, who taught different students at different times, wasn’t there. Ruben had imagined classrooms, with Deborah down the hall.

  —Let’s see what you know, Ruben said. They knew nouns but not verbs. All but Emma could read, some haltingly. Ruben had no idea how to teach Emma to read.

  —What we really don’t know is math, said Cecile, the white woman. Emma, smiling, didn’t know what a third meant. Ruben tore paper in thirds, broke imaginary cookies in thirds. Emma, they all said with fondness, don’t you even know that?

  The day of the second class, the sleepy-looking sitter canceled because of a cold. Ruben brought Squirrel along. Ooh, said the students, as if they’d never seen a baby up close, as if there can never be enough babies. Emma took him from Ruben’s arms. Handed a baby, the class sat back and the table didn’t wobble. Each took her turn patting his back, smoothing his damp blue shirt. Ruben, distracted, had them read. A newspaper lay on the table and they passed it around. Patty Hearst had been captured! Friendly Emma could not read captured. She could not read radicals.

  The page in the math book was on graphs. It was hard to explain, and Ruben, too
, would rather have played with Squirrel. She tried to remember not knowing what a graph was. She liked watching other women hold her baby, though it made her feel young and ignorant. He settled unshyly against each bosom.

  In the park, next day, it was cool, and brown leaves blew into Ruben and Deborah’s faces. Rose cried with something in her eye, and Deborah stood her on a bench and got it out with the wet corner of a tissue. Crouching, Deborah was big, in a denim tent dress and a gray poncho. She grasped Ruben’s arm when she straightened herself. Well, did you see? Deborah said. They caught Patty Hearst.

  —When the baby comes, said Ruben, Squirrel will have someone to play with.

  —He’ll have plenty of people to play with, as soon as he can play, said Deborah. Squirrel sat up in an umbrella stroller. He didn’t have enough muscle tone yet not to look squashed. Deborah laughed at him, mushed in his bright blue sweater and hood, not much face, and Ruben looked and laughed, too.

  Jill was at nursery school. Now Deborah swung her arms, bending in the fallen leaves under gray clouds as if to chase Rose, though she didn’t; but Rose ran anyway, fell and ran, fell and ran, laughing.

  —I was so happy when she turned into a revolutionary, said Deborah. Now I want to sneak her out of jail.

  —Who?

  —Patty Hearst.

  —But that was totally unreal. How could she turn into a revolutionary? I was ashamed of her, said Ruben.

  —Why couldn’t she?

  —Because they were just a bunch of criminals. They kidnapped her. And I don’t think you can turn into a revolutionary.

  Deborah shrugged. They made her father give money to the poor. It was like a ransom.

  —But they were violent and destructive, said Ruben. Is violence ever all right?

  —Patty Hearst is an idealist, said Deborah.

  Ruben was irritated, but she didn’t want to talk about Patty Hearst. Patty Hearst made her feel guilty and uncomfortable.

  —Teaching is good, she said. But hard.

  —Don’t worry about it, said Deborah. They pay so little. Whatever you do is fine.

  Ruben looked to see if she meant it. But they want to learn!

  —Oh, they’ll learn.

  —How long have you been doing it?

  —A year.

  —Do they ever take the test?

  —One did. But she was different.

  In Ruben’s presence, two students had talked about Deborah’s class. We did laugh, they said, shaking their heads. We did laugh.

  The next day Ruben’s sitter was over her cold, and the class elbowed and rocked the table, backed away. Emma had not come.

  —Where’s Emma?

  —She’s no good at this. She can’t do it.

  But without Emma, Ruben was lonely. Nine chairs were at the table, the empty ones nearest the teacher.

  Nobody understood graphs.

  Ruben struggled, explaining what she read in the students’ book, her head tilted toward the door as she listened for Emma. Out of her anxious head came an idea, and she drew a bar graph showing how many children each woman had. She was on it. Hers was the shortest line. The five of them, she and the four who’d come, leaned over the table together, hands splayed. Big Cecile had four children, little Lily had five, while lively Dorothy had three and scared Mary two, but Mary also cared for her niece. Ruben didn’t know how to show that on the graph. The graph was in ink; finally she lengthened Mary’s line in pencil.

  —A niece is different? said Mary.

  Various voices: Not so different. Not different at all.

  Ruben heard Squirrel’s cry as she walked into her house. Her milk let down. She had not thought of him for three hours. She’d fretted her way home, thinking how to lure Emma.

  Too cold to stand in the playground and watch Rose run in the leaves, Ruben and Deborah walked, Rose in Squirrel’s stroller, Squirrel in a sling on Ruben’s chest.

  —All the way home, said Ruben, I fuss about the class. Good fussing. Yesterday I forgot Squirrel. I forgot I had him.

  —When I teach, said Deborah, I walk in thinking of God.

  —What does that mean?

  —You couldn’t teach if there were no God, said Deborah.

  —You couldn’t?

  —But that’s not what I’m talking about, said Deborah. I started in the wrong place. I walk in thinking about God, but then I forget God. I forget to worry about the babies.

  —The babies aren’t God.

  —No, said Deborah, the babies aren’t God. They walked some more and Deborah said, God wants the babies. God could kill the babies.

  —I don’t think I like your God, Ruben said.

  Deborah said, I think God doesn’t care much about whether they live or die. He has other plans for them. And maybe He wants them because we want them. They could die because we love them.

  —I think maybe you’re crazy, said Ruben.

  —Just because we love them, said Deborah, stopping and looking at her, they could die.

  —Not because.

  —Because. I think because.

  They stopped for a light. Ruben swiveled her head to watch for traffic turning when they crossed. Baby Rose in the stroller led the way into steel and combustible gasoline.

  —You think God kills babies because mothers love them?

  —I don’t know why anyone dies. Not many babies do, not many. Deborah patted her big belly. She had to stretch to push the stroller.

  —Do you want me to push that?

  —I’d rather push than wear Squirrel. My back would hurt more.

  Deborah was quiet for a while. Then she said, still pushing, It has something to do with love, the danger they’re in. I know it does. We put up with the students, but we don’t love them.

  —Oh, said Ruben, interested. This I have thought about. This is my only contribution to philosophy. This is the Three Levels of Stuff.

  Deborah laughed. I like the way you say stuff. You have a Brooklyn accent.

  —I do not, said Ruben, though she was from Brooklyn. She had worked out the Three Levels of Stuff when Squirrel was first born, during those frenzied, lonely weeks. There are three levels of stuff, she said. First level: food, shit, and sleep.

  —Sex?

  —I don’t know about sex. She hadn’t thought about sex when Squirrel was first born.

  —Go on. Second level?

  They walked. Let me explain third level first. Third level: art, maybe God, death.

  —The spirit.

  —The spirit, said Ruben. First level things make you think of third level things. When you take care of a baby you know he could die.

  —I think sex is both, said Deborah. It’s both first level and third level.

  —Maybe.

  —But what’s second level? said Deborah.

  —Second level, said Ruben. Second level is offices.

  —Offices?

  Where Harry had rushed when she was frantic because the baby had vomited in the wrong way, the dangerous, possibly fatal way she’d read about. Where she pictured Harry stopping as he walked down’ a corridor in which the sun made squares on the floor, holding a file folder open in his right hand, reading something slightly unsatisfying that had just been typed.

  Ruben said, Offices exist so the people in them can forget about death. Like the place where you get a dog license.

  —Oh, I want a dog! said Deborah.

  —Oh, me, too.

  Ruben couldn’t remember why she started to talk about the Three Levels of Stuff, but Deborah said, So you think teaching is second level, and that was why. Deborah continued, But teaching can be third level. Teaching proves the existence of God.

  —Now how is that? But Squirrel cried. And when he stopped, after Ruben shook him back to sleep, bouncing as she walked, Deborah turned, bigly and warmly, to Ruben, her mouth open in a loose oblong, her light hair on her face. Are all mothers afraid? she said.

  —I don’t know. But I’m glad I found you. Since I am and you are.


  —Oh, yes, said Deborah. But sometimes I think we talk each other into it.

  Ruben felt a stricture in her throat. You want to take this walk? It’s not too tiring?

  —Maybe we should turn back now, said Deborah, and Ruben said little on the way back.

  When the sleepy sitter had a toothache, Ruben brought Squirrel to class again. He cried and she nursed him. The group argued about breast-feeding. Lily said, Nobody’s eating from my breast but my boyfriend.

  —That is so foolish, girl, said Mary. Forget you said that, before you think how foolish it is.

  After class, Ruben didn’t need to hurry. Let me see where you work, she said to Lily.

  Lily led her, with Squirrel in her arms, upstairs where small children ran, mothers talked, teachers shouted—some affectionately, some coldly. A woman reached to touch Squirrel. Then Emma came out of a classroom, carrying two babies.

  —Emma, Emma, why don’t you come to school? said Ruben. But Squirrel was crying. She bounced him on her arm, but he cried.

  —It didn’t work out, said Emma. She smiled indulgently. It just didn’t work out.

  —But I want you.

  —That’s nice of you to say. Emma had a big body. The babies she held were both black, and Ruben felt outnumbered. Emma waited to find out whether Ruben wanted to say some-thing else, as they listened to Squirrel cry, and then she said, Naps for my honeys, here, hoisting the babies higher and letting them settle. One laughed. And she crossed the hall and went into another room.

  —Oh, drag her by the hair, Deborah said that night on the phone.

  —I’m going to go up and drag Emma down by the hair, Ruben said to the rest of her group, before the next class.

  —Don’t you touch her hair, girl, she spends hours straightening that hair! But they grinned.

  —And when I bring her, for God’s sake don’t insult her!

  Ruben tried three rooms where everyone pointed where she should go, agreeing—Yes, Emma should go—and finally walked into the room where Emma worked. Emma came, impressed. They walked down the stairs together. Ruben had pre-tended to be a certain kind of person and everyone had believed she was. As they walked down, Ruben asked, Why don’t you let your hair go natural? But now she’d gone too far.