Sister Mary Baruch: The Early Years Read online

  I wanted to see London’s Broadway, which I knew they called the West End; and Amsterdam, which I pictured with windmills on every corner, and people walking around in wooden shoes, and pointed hats looking like nurses’ caps, with embroidered pink and blue and yellow tulips growing around even more windmills. All the boys looking like the little Dutch boy on Dutch Boy Paints.

  Mama had a single Dutch wooden shoe, painted white with little windmills and tulips painted on it. She had gotten it in the mail all the way from Holland, from Berta, her pen-pal for many years, ever since World War II, I think. They never met, but would write almost every month to each other.

  Mama would always remember Berta’s birthday, and of course, we kids always made fun of the tongue twisting alliteration: Better buy Berta’s Birthday Box. Mama’s wooden shoe was a real Dutch wooden shoe, sent to her from Berta for one of Mama’s “berte-days.” She kept it on a shelf in the front parlor, and sometimes we’d find things in it, like rock candy and sour balls. I used to hold it and imagine everybody clopping around the sidewalks of Amsterdam in those clodhoppers. When I was older I read that one could visit the house in Amsterdam where Anne Frank had been hidden and wrote her diary. I saw the Broadway show when it first came out, and afterwards I wanted more than anything to write stories that would hold people spellbound, like I experienced that night on Broadway.

  I had two papier-mâché theatrical masks, the Comedy and Tragedy faces. They were hanging in my corner of the bedroom I shared with Ruthie. I understood what they meant and how spiritual it was to touch people’s souls, as Mama would say. Mama would say that her greatest spiritual experience, besides lighting the Shabbat candles, was listening to the cantor, especially on Yom Kippur. I knew what she meant. His voice carried you to another place inside of you. I liked that place. It wasn’t the same as the Broadway theater, but something akin to it. I was fascinated by it; I wasn’t afraid of it like I was afraid of buses and delivery boys on bikes, swerving and weaving in and out of New York traffic. I wasn’t afraid of it like sometimes I was afraid of the dark. Ruthie and I kept the Venetian blinds in our bedroom window slightly open, enough so we could see the street light. We were afraid if the light went out that it was an air-raid and we were going to be bombed, right on West 79th Street.

  We were all afraid of air-raids and even rehearsed them in school. We’d have to crouch down next to our desks with our heads almost on the floor. It was a most unladylike position, and once acquired, it caused giggles and fits of laughter among the girls. Once, Nola Finley, probably the smartest (and fattest) girl in our class, tried getting in “air-raid-position,” which was most difficult for her size, and she broke wind. Tommy Schultz shouted, “We’ve been bombed!” The whole class got hysterical laughing, even Mrs. Peterson, our second grade teacher. It makes me laugh today to think of it, but I also feel sorry for poor Nola Finley; nobody thought about how humiliated she must’ve felt, but I think she ended up laughing too. The next day, Tommy Schultz’s bike tires were mysteriously flat, and he had to walk home pushing his bike. I wonder what ever happened to Nola?

  When I was afraid, I could escape to my secret hiding place, like Anne Frank, but mine was inside. I could feel it on the other side of my rib cage. I think Mama escaped to her hiding place too when she prayed and closed her eyes and her voice became all mellow. Sometimes, it seemed I could find that place inside of me more at a Broadway play than at Temple—I could get all teary-eyed during a curtain call, more than the saddest lamentation on Yom Kippur. I didn’t think about it, but I knew those tears sprang up because something was touched in that secret hiding place. I didn’t analyze it when I was a kid, but that secret place, surrounding my heart, behind my sternum, I just knew it was always there, and I was safe there…it was my inner space.

  Ruthie shared my interest in show biz news, and we loved to go to the movies together, and if we were down around 57th Street, we’d go into Horn and Hardart’s for a piece of pie from the automat, and tea. We called it our afternoon high tea; we would both be “her ladyship” and addressed each other rather formally with our amateur British accents, but we were sure we were fooling the tourists who goggled at us British girls. We, of course, were dressed as properly as we could be for a matinee and high tea. We always remembered our white linen gloves, even when indoors, and I would pour as I was the elder, even if I was not as smart as Sally. I was a better “pourer” than Ruthie, who was too full of antsy energy to pour a decent cup of tea.

  If she were going to become the grand actress in the Feinstein family, of course she would have to change her name, so she informed us, every time she came up with a new one. For several months she was Edith Friend or Edie Stein…and that’s when she discovered a story in the New Amsterdam Jewish Press, about a German Jewish girl who was a Catholic nun, a Carmelite, who died at Auschwitz. It was a fascinating story which we knew we couldn’t talk about at home, at the dinner table, but Edith Stein was welcomed at our imaginary high teas at Horn’s. “Little steins” became our secret code word for “caramels”…the little brown square ones which were so chewy they could almost pull out your fillings, not the caramel in all its creamy thickness, hidden in Snicker bars or poured over vanilla ice cream, which was often served at our high teas, along with lady fingers. Ruthie loved lady fingers. We used to joke that if we ever became nuns we would be “caramelites,” like Edith Stein. Ruthie was my sister, but also my best friend, and the keeper of secrets. We also planned on being each other’s maids of honor when we got married under the white and gold brocade canopy at Temple.

  It seemed to all change overnight when we were both in high school, and boys became more interesting than afternoon tea parties. Fiddler on the Roof was all the rage on Broadway, and David, the eldest and firstborn son of Ruben and Hannah Feinstein, had the most brilliant idea for a gift to celebrate Mama and Papa’s twenty-fifth wedding anniversary: Broadway tickets to Fiddler for the whole family—except Josh, of course, who was in Vietnam. We had already gotten the Broadway album and knew the songs almost by heart. Papa was no Zero Mostel, of course, but he did have three daughters, like Tevye, who had five. Mama and Papa knew all the words to Sunrise, Sunset, and would sing out loud with the album, but they wouldn’t splurge and go see the show. David really paid for the tickets, but we each contributed something from our “Broadway Fund.”

  Ruthie and I had a joint fund. It was an empty Maxwell House Coffee tin, which we kept on the bookshelf under my Comedy/Tragedy masks. We would save quarters and dimes whenever we could. We still got allowances for the little chores we did around the apartment, and sometimes we could put half our allowance in our Theater Tin. We’d save and save for months, and sometimes cheated and used the savings for movies rather than the theater. But David accepted our contribution, which I don’t think paid for one ticket. Sally was coming up from Philadelphia and probably paid more than David, but let us think David did; he had come up with the idea. It was perfect—Tevye and his three daughters, off to break tradition, which we did…off to the theater on a Friday night. We ate before sunset so we wouldn’t be late for the theater, arriving in two cabs, which was a treat in itself. Hannah of a Thousand Silver Hairs looked so elegant in her powder blue dress and the pearls she wore on her wedding day. It had been years since she went to a Broadway musical, and I caught her getting all teary-eyed when the house lights went down, and the overture began. She and Papa held hands like lovesick newlyweds. David, always the proper one among us, leaned over me and Ruthie and whispered to them, “Now you two behave yourselves.” Mama blushed a little, but it made her face youthful and almost regal. I know when Tevye and Golda sang their love song together near the end, we were all holding back the tears. Such a blessing, I thought, to have my own Golda and her milkman.

  After the theater we took two more taxis home, and when we got in it was almost eleven o’clock, but Mama lit the candles for Shabbat, and we all ate cake and drank Mogen David’s Elderberry Wine, Mama’s favorite. David had a
nother surprise which had been hidden all night in the soup tureen on the dining room buffet table. It was neatly wrapped in silver metallic paper, which fascinated everyone, as metallic paper was not a common wrapping paper. It didn’t have a ribbon or bow on it; it didn’t need one, the paper itself was so pretty—very fancy for David, we all thought.

  Well, it wasn’t from David at all; he was just the delivery boy. It was from Josh, sent to David weeks before from Manila, where Josh had been deployed before going to Vietnam. Inside the box were two other smaller boxes, marked M and P. That was for Mama and Papa, not Military Police. Papa opened his first. It was a gold Timex watch with a Speidel expandable band. Papa was quite taken by it, as his old Bulova watch was always “on the blink.” He had actually taken to going watch-less for the last month, thinking maybe Santa would bring him a new one for Chanukah. We had a Jewish Santa, you see.

  And Mama’s gift was an exquisite brooch, which she said must have cost Josh six months’ wages. It was silver, appropriately, but an old, antique, burnished kind of silver, with ruby and sapphire chips set in a lace-like spread of tiny leaves with five tiny flowers in the center. She touched the silver flowers very gently and lisped through a tiny flood of tears rolling down her cheek, “How thoughtful of Josh, my five children.”

  Papa squeezed her shoulders and gently took the brooch in his hands and pinned it on her dress below her left shoulder. It looked even more beautiful with a powder-blue backdrop. Almost on cue, she took Papa’s new watch and slipped it onto his left wrist, “Mazel Tov, my Ruben.” And the Feinstein Family Singers shouted back, “Mazel Tov,” and sang “Happy Anniversary to You.”

  David opened another bottle of Mogen David, in honor of Josh. Of course, we put Fiddler on the hi-fi and sang most of the score to our hearts’ content, talked about how wonderful everybody was in the show, and wondered if we had a fiddler on our roof. Papa had us all in stitches pretending Fred, our Super, was Fred our Fiddler. Everyone in our building called him “Fred Mertz” (for Fred from I Love Lucy) because he could have been William Frawley’s understudy: Fred the Fiddler on the Roof.

  We needed a “fiddler on the roof,” without realizing it, that happy September evening in 1964. Two days later “Tevye and Golda” received the telegram every parent with a son or daughter in the army dreads to receive. Josh had been killed in action. Sally came up from Philly again that same night, and David with his three sisters surrounded them with love and grief. We were not conservative Jews, but we covered the mirrors, and rent our garments and Mama and Papa went without shoes…sitting Shiva and saying Kaddish. It just seemed to be the right thing to do. How poor we become when we lose the life of a loved one. How much Josh would have been moved.

  My brother, Joshua Hiram Feinstein, was only two years older than me. I was his first baby sister, he would like to remind me. I think he did that on purpose so I wouldn’t be jealous of Ruthie when she came along and I lost the position. Nonetheless, Josh was probably the most religious of the Feinstein kids. We always thought if there was going to be a rabbi in the family, it would be Joshua. He had a voice which was a cantor in the making, and a sense of humor like a stand-up comic at Grossinger’s.

  However, he wasn’t given too much to school work and didn’t want to go to college. Maybe he felt inferior to David, who was the eldest and the shining star. “My Star of David” Papa would call him. So if it wasn’t rabbinical school, Baruch College, or Grossinger’s—what would it be? Mama was always afraid he’d run off to a kibbutz in Israel and get married over there and we’d never see him again. Ruthie and I wanted him to audition for Broadway; he had the talent, and the looks, but not the ambition. And to everyone’s surprise, he enlisted in the army. David had beat the draft because he had flat feet and was partially blind in one eye. (“Such a blessing, your feet,” Mama said when he was rejected by the draft board.) Josh enlisted before he could be drafted, even if it was for a longer time, it would be better…he would be an officer.

  I think Josh’s death touched something different in each of us. We never played our Fiddler on the Roof album after that, although they are not really related except by the association of time. I don’t think Mama and Papa really celebrated their anniversary afterwards, except in a quiet private way. Papa never took his watch off, and Mama’s brooch, well, I don’t remember her ever wearing it, but she kept it in its box, with the tissue paper and metallic wrapping, in the top drawer of her dresser, where she had Josh’s photo in his uniform framed.

  David lost himself in his studies. He didn’t seem to come home as often. Sally came home more often, it seemed, and filled the house with her chatter and news, which was usually more annoying than informative. Ruthie became a distracted teenager who screamed over rock stars and got lost in her school activities, which weren’t always so savory.

  I graduated high school that next year and planned to go to Barnard College. Josh’s death affected me in ways that I couldn’t talk about. I still went to the movies, but took to going by myself and liked the escape into the darkness of the theater and my “hiding place.” That interior place I would go to became more like a second home. I was going to live at home, of course, and since David and Josh’s room was empty now, it became my room, for which I was very grateful. Ruthie was playing her music all the time and wanted an extension phone in the bedroom, which she got for Chanukah. I even gave her my theater masks as a “room departing gift,” and she gave me the Theater Tin. The family was still close, but it was different. Or maybe I was just different. Something was stirring inside me, which I didn’t know at the time.

  I loved walking in New York, at all times of the year. There are always a million people out walking, it seemed, but one could always be alone. My friend, Gracie, was probably my best friend from school. We graduated from high school together and had been good friends all during school, ever since we were on the Banner together. That was our school newspaper, which came out every two weeks. She was a reporter for the Banner and I was an editor. She was lots of fun to talk to, and wasn’t boy crazy like so many of the other girls in school. If we weren’t going to the movies, we’d go for long walks on Saturdays and Sundays.

  During the day it was pretty safe to walk through Central Park, and it was really like another world. For one thing, it could be very entertaining; you never knew what you’d see or hear. And the show was for free! Gracie and I would make up stories about the people we observed, like the bird-watchers going by with their binoculars and tweed jackets. I suppose Gracie took the place of Ruthie when we’d do things like go for coffee at the Boathouse Café and pretend we were actresses taking a break between takes. Gracie loved to ride the carousel. We’d jump on with all the kids and ride on a painted pony which moved up and down with the music. Sometimes when I’m feeling sad or lonely, I close my eyes, and I can feel myself riding the carousel; the warm air of Central Park blowing through my hair; and I can almost hear the carousel music and hear Gracie’s laughter. It can still make me smile.

  But I also enjoyed going for solitary walks. I found it very easy to think and get everything in focus. Living near the Park was “such a blessing, the Park,” as Mama would say. I think it must’ve been good for me too, in dealing with the stress of living in the city and all that meant, but I didn’t think about that and didn’t think I was under stress. I liked to think about more serious things. And I liked to read, which is not unusual, of course, but I didn’t read fashion magazines or romance novels or the more spicy novels the girls passed around at school.

  I liked biographies and what today we would call the “classics.” English Lit had become my favorite subject in school, which again, was not unusual. I always liked a good story; that’s why the movies and the theater were my second homes. But books! It’s a whole universe to explore, and everybody has a story. Every single life is a story in the making. That realization is probably what helped me get through the sad years after my brother’s death, my sisters’ running off to other worlds
, and my own—well, how should I put it? My own “falling in love.”

  It was a Saturday morning in early autumn when I had taken a crosstown bus to the East Side. Gracie had called me at daybreak to tell me she was in Mt. Sinai Hospital. She had been running around the Reservoir in Central Park the night before and became very weak and nauseous, and before she knew it she was being rushed by ambulance to Mt. Sinai. Apparently she had passed out, and another jogger ran to get the Park police, who called the ambulance. They kept her overnight, and she was feeling okay, but she was scared, and could I come over? I wasn’t sure they’d let me visit her this early in the morning, on the Sabbath yet, but I would try. I’d tell them I was her sister.

  Well, maybe that wouldn’t be the best thing, to lie. They wouldn’t believe me anyway. Gracie was thin, blonde, had blue eyes, and would never be hidden in an attic with Anne Frank. But even if we didn’t look like sisters, she was my friend, so I bundled off the crosstown bus at Madison Avenue and 98th Street. There was an entrance to the Guggenheim Pavilion on Madison and 100th Street, but I like the Fifth Avenue entrance. So I walked a block over. I remember it being rather chilly. My light jacket had a large collar which I raised up; I donned a pair of sunglasses, more to protect my eyes from the cold than the sun, and covered my head with the silk scarf that Ruthie had given me for my birthday. It came from Bloomingdale’s and looked very smart with light autumn jackets. Ruthie had one too, and thought they made us look older. She called them our scarves, but Mama called them bandannas. I thought I looked rather Broadway star-ish as I made my grand and confident entrance into the Guggenheim Pavilion.