Baila the Beautiful: A Memoir by Baila Markus

By Baila Markus

Baila was a Jewish Canadian, raised in Montreal and Toronto. A child of the 20's, her journey is one of feminist evolution in the days when the transition from sexpot to whole woman was uncharted territory. Early on, she validates herself only through the eyes of men - the sexual object par excellence. The road to self-discovery and independence takes her through marriage and motherhood, crack-ups and divorce, a hot love affair with a well-known political activist in the struggle for Quebec independence, visits to Cuba's revolution, a career in forensic psychiatry in Montreal and in France, an adventure with a spiritual cult in New York, and a wondrous trip to India. Baila's chronological story is interspersed with letters to Leo, her psychiatrist and her one true friend up until, and after, his death. Baila passed away on February 22, 2013. She was 88 years old.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: May 25, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483500034

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Baila the Beautiful

A Memoir

By Baila Markus

Copyright © 2013 by Just Enough Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Printed in the United States of America

Design by Louise Devaki Markus

First Edition

Contents

Preface

Part One: Childhood

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Part Two: Marriage

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Part Three: Love & Politics

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Part Four: Work

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Part Five: Spirituality

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Epilogue

Preface

Fifteen minutes after takeoff from Minneapolis airport the pilot announces that we have a mechanical problem, but not to worry, no danger, only keep your seat belts fastened. The announcement triggers ripples of tittering and repeated calls for booze throughout the plane. Cheery flight attendants rock the boat chasing up and down the aisles with drinks and with patter as diverse as the weather and the climate. The ambiance is festive, even though rumour filters through from the back of the plane that the latch on the hindmost exit door is loose or busted or kaput; no one knows for sure. Repeated announcements to keep your seat belts fastened send the two young women occupying the seats in front us laughing to beat the band.

Renée, my colleague, and I are discussing our paper on teenage murderers presented at an imposing symposium on killer kids the day before. My enthusiasm for a post mortem does not match hers. Not only was this my last professional appearance, my swan song as a clinician and researcher in the domain of forensic psychiatry, but, sad to say, I did not come out of that conference in a hail of glory. In fact it was the worst paper I had ever presented.

Renée, a young and inspired psychiatrist, had the pressure on ‘to publish OR...’ and I just went along for the ride as a last gesture of my fidelity to the cause. We each took a shot at it on the podium. Me last. A humiliating experience, the biggest flop of my twenty-five year career. A posse of experts stoned, tarred, and feathered us. Incomprehensible both in content and delivery (I spoke in a monotone, she with a thick French accent). No hypothesis, unrelated material, non-conclusive, dull, uninspiring and unscientific. I should have known we were headed for disaster. I should have nipped the project in the bud. But no, so light-headed with plans for a new and exciting adventure, I said to myself what the hell, I’ve had my strokes in the past. Besides, there was no way of discouraging Renée from her opportunity to arrive.

Well, it’s all over now. Here we are secured by our seat belts in an airplane with a mechanical problem. I tell myself to forget the mechanical problem. Forget that we bombed out at the symposium. Just think about that new and exciting life. But Renée doesn’t let go.

Those people, they do not know anything. We go too deep for them. Do not worry, I will prepare our paper for publication in an esteemed psychiatric journal.

God no, please don’t use my name. Fortunately for me I don’t have to live with this fall from grace for very long. Lucky me, I’m retiring in a couple of weeks and leaving my Canadian homeland, still beloved but... I’m leaving to settle in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the LAND OF ENCHANTMENT. So much to think about, I don’t pay much attention to Renée’s gung-ho plans for publication. I check my watch. Twenty minutes before landing in Detroit where we board another plane to Montreal. Renée becomes aware of my disinterest, picks up the airline’s magazine and flips through the pages. I look out the window at the fluffy clouds and I indulge in deep thought about my future.

What a coup! In only a two-week visit to Santa Fe I bought the perfect house. I’ll make a guest room out of the second bedroom for when my kids visit. I’ll make a study in the third bedroom for my work. Boy, I can’t wait to get started. Geez, it’s been about ten years now that I’ve been making notes for that book. I hope I remember where I put them. Let’s see, I think I’ll start the book with...

WHOOSH, the sound of an invisible vacuum overhead hisses through the plane like a spiraling cyclone. Jesus, what in hell’s name was that? I grasp the arms of my seat, shut my eyes tight in my scrunched-up face and sit on my heart.

In the aisle, plunk beside us, the crew hits the deck, plops on the floor face down in fetal position. Not a word to the passengers. Renée bends over, folding her body in two, head down, arms dangling. I follow suit, feeling stupid, but I figure she knows something I don’t. She must have read the safety manual while I was in the clouds. A barely audible voice comes through the static on the intercom... mechanical difficulty... instructions... vrack vrack... continue on to Detroit... altitude of... vrack vrack... cabin pressure... seat belts. No further information. No assurance of our safety. Intermittent calls to keep your seat belts fastened.

The crew gets to its feet and disappears through the curtain to placate the high rollers in first class, I wonder? Renée and I sit up. The girls in front have stopped laughing and cling to each other in silence. A couple of piercing screams from the back and my brain, my blood, my heart somersaults in my stomach. A woman behind us hyperventilates. The man beside her unclicks his seat belt and frantically charges back and forth in search of help. A flight attendant arrives and with the man’s help drags the gasping woman through the curtain. Some plaintive moans break through the silent chaos. My teeth chatter. I shake.

Oh God, a plane crash. I-am-really-pissed-off! I won’t make it to Santa Fe after all. This is definitely not the time to die, and what a way to die, flying through the air and then kerplunk — smashed to pieces like a juicy plump tomato. My book. My book. Why didn’t I listen to my kids, my shrink, and write it ten years ago? Never mind. No time for idle thinking now. Lots of work to do.

No longer an agnostic, I pray my guts out to my Jewish God and to my son’s guru, Maharajji. Please God, please Maharajji, please, please, please. I glance at Renée, who seems unflappable. She smiles and pats my knee in a comforting gesture that irritates me. Don’t distract me. This is not the time for sentimental crap. Mumbling my prayers out loud so my saviours will really hear me, I run my fingers through my gold chain necklace, back and forth like it’s a rosary. It can’t hurt to get some Catholic prayers in too. I pray so hard it feels like my head will explode. Such concentration I never had or I would have had straight A’s. It feels like wire springs are popping out of my head, coiled antennas tuned in to the gods. My eyes are fixed on the sky. I don’t dare turn my head away from the window. I pray and pray and pray.

A thousand hours later I think I see land. I put my hand to my forehead in a salute to make a shadow from the sun. I wish I had a telescope like those early voyagers at sea.

Keep your seat belts fastened. We’re coming in for the landing. I look straight down. Fire trucks. Ambulances. I make a last ditch effort to rescue the entire planeload with my prayers. Then, with one heavenly chug, a thump, and bump, bump, bump, we land on terra firma. Whew, I did it! I did it! Thank you God. Thank you, Maharajji. I love you too.

The hyperventilating woman is carried off the plane to the waiting ambulance. The crew — only the crew — is smiling. Thank you for flying with Air Blah-Blah. Buh-bye for now.

They can’t be thinking there’d be a next time. The passengers trudge into the airport like a funeral procession. We ask each other what happened. Nobody knows but they sure as hell are going to find out. Renée and I scramble to the gate of our connecting flight and catch up to the girls who sat ahead of us on the ill-fated plane. They have privileged information. One of the flight attendants leaked to them that the back exit door of the plane was about to blow open. Hangin’ by a thread it was.

We board the plane for Montreal, check the exits and seat ourselves. A smooth flight. Renée is all worked up over the insouciance of the Minneapolis flight crew. Soon as we land she struts up to the airline desk for a confrontation. Me? I don’t care. I’m here, aren’t I? Now I can die later, after I finish my book. A high ranker in brass tells her the flight was never in danger.

Quoi? she says. Pas possible... we were told that... He says the airline will compensate us. Good, she says, I want our money back right now. No money. They offer a free trip anywhere in the USA.

Any airline? I ask.

No, this one.

Shove it, I say.

A week later, Renée comes into my office as I’m making a list for my garage sale. How do you feel, Baila?

Great, I say.

Oh, that is good, she says, I was worried about you. You were in such a panic on that airplane. I could not believe how you shook, such extreme anxiety, such... blah blah blah. What should I tell her? I want to live? Sounds like an old movie from the forties.

What were you thinking about up there, Renée?

I had just paid off my mortgage and all my affairs were in order. I felt relieved that my family would not have to bear any financial burden.

Weren’t you afraid of dying?

No, nothing to be afraid of. You die before you hit the ground anyway.

But you are only thirty-five years old. You have so much living to do, so much fun ahead of you.

No, I never have fun. There is nothing in life that makes me happy.

I doubt if the telling of the airplane story made Renée happy but she sure enjoyed repeating and embellishing it, with me, of course, as the focus. I heard you were a real basket case on that plane, my colleagues were pleased to tell me.

No one knew my story, but I knew Renée’s. I was once there. Despondent. Wanting to die. Attempting to die. I was in my thirties too. I didn’t know that I really wanted to live until my shrink told me. Half a lifetime later I know better than ever that I want to live. I just have to tell my story... and then, kerplunk.

Yeah, Renée, I freaked out on that plane. So would you if at sixty-five all those yearnings, all that pain, all those illusory needs were behind you and you were as lucky as I am to begin a new life and new career with new self-knowledge.

Write a book, my shrink said.

Write that book, my children said.

Okay, okay already, soon as I get to that Enchanted Land.

Part One

CHILDHOOD

CHAPTER 1

What a year that must have been! In 1924 the Canadian National Railways introduced such delicacies as Buffalo tongue and tails in their dining cars; insecticides were first used in Canada; the huge cross atop Mount Royal in Montreal was lit up for the first time; Montreal beat out Calgary for the Stanley Cup; and, of equal importance, I was born at the Herbert Reddy Memorial Hospital on Tupper Street in west Montreal.

Mama, why’d you give me such a dumb name? Can you change my name to Rosalie?

Ma laughed. When she laughed real hard she snorted too. I was ready to cry. I always cried. I was one of those crybabies.

Come sweetheart, I’ll tell you how you got your name. Ma picked me up with a fake groan ‘cause I was a really shrimpy five-year-old. She set me down on her lap but I wiggled out and sat next to her on our chesterfield with the cane back and cut velvet seats. We hardly ever sat in the parlour because it was for company, but Ma was cleaning there so she didn’t mind, just this once.

Soon as Grandma saw you in the hospital she said... you know how Grandma talks...

I nodded and wriggled myself to the back of the chesterfield, but not way back ‘cause my shoes would touch. I clasped my hands on my lap; I looked up at Ma and waited. A story. Ma hardly ever told me stories.

Okay, you comfortable now? Ma grinned. She got a kick out of me, I could see that. Grandma said, ‘Oy, another goil. Dis one is so skeeny.’ Then she took you in her arms and waltzed around the room...

I giggled. What’s wallst?

Danced.

Oh. Did I laugh?

No, you fell asleep but she didn’t take her eyes off you.

‘You know what, Rae?’ Grandma said, ‘Dis is a shanen punim. Peautiful goil you maked.’ So right there and then I named you Baila. It suits you, my baby, and it’s a good Jewish name."

I ran to tell my sister. Anita, Anita, you know what my name means?

What?

It means, oy, peautiful.

You are so silly, Baila.

It wasn’t my fault I was born beautiful.

The day Anita and I were kept home from school we didn’t even see our mother. One of the uncles, I don’t remember which one, said, You have to stay home today and we’ll come to get you later. No fooling around with us this time, even though we tried. He just left us there, at Grandma’s house, with a deck of cards on the huge mahogany table so big it could ‘sit twelf peoples.’

Any sevens?

Baila, I just gave you three sevens. You have all of them.

Oh yeah, I forgot.

Anita put her cards down and went to the window. I picked them up to see what she had. She didn’t say but I knew the game was over. I went to the window too. Anita went back to the table, leaned on it with her elbows and held her head in her hands. I did that too. We looked at each other. We looked at the door, waiting, waiting for someone, something to happen. We didn’t say anything. Ma always wanted us to be quiet.

Anita stood up and I followed her into the kitchen. She was hungry. Anita was always hungry. That one’s a pleasure to feed, Ma said about her, and about me, it’s like forcing a mule to get Baila to eat. After one bite of a sandwich from the pile Grandma had left in the icebox for us, I put it back because I heard someone coming up the stairs.

We ran to see. Uncle Solly, Ma’s youngest brother, came up the indoor stairs, one step at a time. Grandma lived in an upper duplex on Esplanade Street where all the houses had high winding outdoor staircases. In winter you could kill yourself on those stairs but all five of Ma’s brothers would race up them. We were lucky to have all those uncles. We were the only nieces ‘cause Ma was the oldest, so they gave us presents, mostly clothes from the factories they represented. Except for Solly, they were fast-talking, chain-smoking, skirt-chasing traveling salesmen. Big sports they were, big spenders, big teasers, but they made Anita and I feel real important. Uncle Al filled our brown lisle stockings every Christmas with candies and little kewpie dolls but mostly with onions and potatoes. Grandma said it was a sin to give us Christmas presents. You a shagitz, now? she said to Uncle Al. You should gib dem Chanaka gelt. They did that too.

Uncle Solly was different. He never made trouble. Grandma’s favourite, Ma’s favourite, and Anita’s and my favourite, Solly was no sharpy like the others. Grandma was disappointed when he quit school at fifteen but he just couldn’t make the grades. He got a job as a delivery boy for the grocery store at the corner and after school he took Anita and me along on his route in a horse-drawn cart, the three of us up front in the open cab. Solly sat me on his lap and let me hold the reins. Giddy up, giddy up, I yelled down the street until Anita covered my mouth with her hand. She must have thought that Ma wouldn’t let us make noise anywhere.

So when Solly, my sixteen-year-old uncle, came up those stairs, I knew by the look of him it was not the time to ask if we were going on deliveries. Dressed in a dark suit, Solly looked at least twenty. He didn’t smile.

Come sit down, he said. We went back to the dining room. He pulled his chair out away from the table, leaned over low, picked up the deck of cards and slid them back and forth on the shiny table. You know... He chewed on his lip. You know... you know... your father was very sick, uh, uh... very sick. Kids, your Daddy died in the hospital last night. Solly’s voice sounded like he had rocks in his throat. He dabbed at his forehead with his handkerchief.

Anita burst into tears. My heart raced. I clasped my hands on top of my head, hid my face with my elbows and felt my whole body go tight. Where’s Mama, Solly? Where’d she go?

Put your coats on. A taxi is waiting downstairs and we are going to your grandfather’s house. Your mother is there, Baila.

Solly buttoned up my coat to the top. I remember going into the taxi on that cold November day. It was the first time I had been in an automobile. I shivered.

You should have worn a scarf. Solly put his arm around me to keep me warm.

Anita had her head turned. I didn’t know if she was still crying or just looking out the window. From the back seat I watched the driver in his stiff visor cap spinning the steering wheel to turn the corners. If only we could go on driving right past Zaida’s house. We had to call that grandfather Zaida ‘cause my father’s family wasn’t modern. He gave me the creeps that Zaida did; he never looked up from his prayer books to know who Anita and I were.

I got on my knees to peek out the back window of the taxi and saw the people in the street trying to get a look at us. Only important people rode in taxis. Ma took us in streetcars to visit her friends, which was boring but not as bad as going to Zaida’s.

I like the taxi, Solly.

He smiled. Okay kids, we’re here now.

Solly paid the driver, then lifted me off the running board to the sidewalk. Maybe Solly will be like our father now, but I wasn’t so sure my real father was dead. I looked at the crowd gathered around the long black hearse at the curb. They stared at us and I wondered if they knew that Anita and I were the children of the dead person.

Solly took our hands and we went into the house, into the parlour full of relatives. I dropped his hand and snuck into a corner as far away as I could from all those people standing around the open coffin. Zaida stood at the front of the coffin, holding his prayer book, his lips quivering in prayer. Ma stood at the other end of the coffin, probably at Daddy’s head. I only saw her back. She had her arm around Anita and she swayed back and forth.

Where’s the little one? I heard her say. She left the coffin to come and get me. Now I cried.

Come, Baila. Come say good-bye to Daddy, Ma said in sobbing gasps.

As I had a habit of biting my sister when I was angry, I wanted to bite my mother. But my kind and wise auntie said, Leave her, Rae. She’s just a baby. Let her remember her father in life. I wiped the tears off my cheeks with my fists.

You’d think I’d mind being called ‘just a baby’ but I didn’t. I could get away with things that way. Anita always stuck up for me when Ma yelled at me or tried to take a swipe at me. Leave her alone Ma; she’s just a baby, my sister would say.

We slept at Zaida’s house, in my kind auntie’s bedroom—Ma, Anita, and I in one bed. Ma cried all night and sometimes even let out a wail. My father’s corpse was in the next room. I heard some low muttering from somewhere in the house, probably Zaida praying. And wouldn’t you know it? I had to go to the bathroom. Terrified, I shook Anita who came around the bed and took me to the bathroom. She was scared too. I could feel her tremble. All the mirrors in the house were covered with sheets. I didn’t know why, except that it was the Jewish thing to do. It couldn’t have been more ghostly. We got back into bed and Ma hugged us so close to her I thought I’d choke. For a little person, only five feet tall, she sure was strong.

The next day I had instructions to stay in the house with the goy from next door who came regularly to light the stove on the Sabbath. Only now she came to mind me. The goy told me a story about her childhood on a sheep farm in Scotland, all the while clacking her false teeth. I didn’t go to Daddy’s funeral but I tried to remember him when the goy told me to take a nap.

I didn’t know my father. He was in and out of hospitals and sanitariums for two years before he died. Cirrhosis of the liver, the doctor said. I couldn’t pronounce it and later on, when I could, always the same question — was he a drinker? Boy, did that get me mad. Some drinker. My father sipped Manischewitz wine at the seders once a year because God told him to.

Daddy owned a coat factory and then he went broke because he was an ‘intellectual,’ not a ‘business man.’ One night after work, when Anita and I were going to bed, my father came to our bedroom with raincoats he’d made for us in his factory. I must have been happy because I remember jumping up and down on the bed. Did he ever tell me stories? Did he ever hug me? Did I ever sit in his lap? Did he love me? Ma wouldn’t know. She didn’t pay attention to things like that. Only once, in one of her dreamy moods she said, Daddy loved you two kids.

When I woke up from my nap there were a lot of goings-on in Zaida’s house. Ma’s friends, and she had a bunch of them, came back from the funeral to get ready for the shiva. They placed sawed-off chairs for the mourners in the parlour and prepared food in the kitchen. I came in rubbing my eyes and they clucked over me like I was a real baby. I didn’t like being that kind of a baby so I backed away from them, wouldn’t let them touch me.

Poor little thing. She’s upset. No wonder...

I’M SEVEN.

When the cars came back from the cemetery with all the relatives, one of Ma’s friends brought out a bucket of water and a towel. Zaida was the first to swish his hands around in the bucket and give a dab with the towel. I thought they all had dirty hands from digging Daddy’s grave. A year later I had to go to the cemetery for the unveiling of Daddy’s gravestone and every year after that I had to go on the high holidays. I tried to play sick but Ma dragged me there anyway. I put up such a fuss that she let me sit in the car while she and Anita and the other relatives went to my Daddy’s graveside.

Soon as Ma washed her hands and came into the house, I didn’t leave her side. She looked a mess. All in black, which wasn’t her colour, swollen eyes, red nose, she held on to my hand real tight. The mourners, Zaida and Daddy’s brothers and sisters, took their seats on the little chairs. Anita, Ma and I had to sit shiva with them too, but when Ma saw the house fill up with people, ‘well-wishers’ carrying trays of candy, cakes and fruit ‘to sweeten the bitterness of death’ and ‘pay their respects,’ she said she had to lie down for a few minutes.

Come, Anita. Come, Baila. Let’s go to Auntie’s bedroom.

I hoped she wouldn’t start crying again. That was the worst part of Daddy’s dying. Please, please don’t cry, Mama.

Sit down girls. She took my hand and then Anita’s. She didn’t cry. Your father is dead, girls. It’s up to you now.

Final. Now there was something I had to do. It gave me cramps in my heart.

CHAPTER 2

What’s a widow, Anita?

A widow? I dunno. I think it’s a tree. No, that’s a willow. Ask Mama.

I shouldn’t have asked. Ma rolled her eyes at me and blinked back her tears. You ask too many questions, Baila. Grandma’s a widow; I’m a widow, okay? When Daddy died I became a widow. And now you and Anita are orphans.

What’s an orphan?

When you haven’t got a father, you’re an orphan.

So now I knew two more ‘five-dollar’ words. I liked learning new words but I had to ask Anita if I could say them because once I made a terrible mistake. I had heard Uncle Al say that a man had ‘committed suicide’ because of the crash. I kept saying those words over and over so I wouldn’t forget. I wanted to surprise the grown-ups.

Ma, Grandma, Anita, and my uncles were all in Grandma’s kitchen waiting to get fed. Grandma was cross about something so I had a chance to make her laugh. Grandma, I said, spinning around on the linoleum floor, my arms straight out for balance, Grandma, why don’t you commit suicide?

It didn’t work. They all almost wrung my neck.

For a whole month we had to stay at Zaida’s house and we didn’t get back to school until after the Christmas holidays. Lighting the Shabbas candles in that house started the funeral all over again. Every Friday night when Ma lit them she sobbed and sobbed for my dead Daddy. The aunties controlled themselves, just a few tears and deep breaths. Ma called them all ‘a stoic bunch.’ I had to control myself too.

Stop crying, Baila. I don’t know what you should do. Go read a book like Anita. That’s all my mother could think of.

My father’s family tried to keep me amused but I was shy with them, not like I was with Ma’s brothers. Daddy’s brother teased me one day, handing me an apple, taking it back and handing it again. I smacked it out of his hand and bawled my head off, worse than Ma’s sobbing. Next I got tired of my Auntie’s game. She rolled up her handkerchief, made it look like a mouse and then popped it out of her hand. It worked for a while.

How’d you do that? I had to look away to smile.

It’s magic, Baila. She kissed my cheek and I rubbed it off.

The aunties liked to tell stories about their nieces and nephews when they were ‘little ones.’ The same stories over and over. Remember when Anita pulled down the drapes? Remember when Anita lopped off Baila’s curls?

Always Anita, never me.

They don’t like me, I went crying to Ma.

Go on, Baila. Of course they like you. They’re your Daddy’s sisters. They just don’t like to see you cry.

We couldn’t do much at Zaida’s on the Sabbath, not even play cards, so Ma took us visiting the rich relatives which was okay ‘cause I got to play with my cousin Rita. Her mother was Daddy’s sister and her father was a rich ‘greenhorn’ in the fur business with Daddy’s brother. The story (from Ma) went that my Daddy started that business and they eased him out of it. Now, why would they want to do that when all I ever heard was that my Daddy was the finest of men?

Those relatives lived in mansions way up the hill in Outremont. Rita had a pink room; wall to wall carpets and she wore pink silk panties. (Anita and I wore cotton bloomers.) I always beat Rita at jacks and her mother let us play on Shabbas because my father had just died so God would forgive us.

Guess what day it is, Baila. My Auntie turned over the page on the huge Coca Cola calendar hanging on the kitchen wall in Zaida’s house. I know. It’s 1932 today.

Ma came into the kitchen and she and Auntie kissed each other. Happy new year, Rae. We should all have a better year.

Believe me, my children deserve it, that’s why... that’s why... we are going to live with my mother... until... you know... we get settled with the insurance. Besides, they have to go back to school and it’s right across the road.

That’s fine, Rae. You have to do what’s best for you and the children. Go in good health.

Anita was reading the Bobbsey Twins when I told her we were going to live with Grandma. She opened her eyes real wide and let her mouth drop open like she couldn’t believe it. Just two days later we packed our clothes, said good-bye to the aunties and uncles, then to Zaida who still didn’t recognize us, and Anita and I climbed into Uncle Al’s rumble seat even though it was snowing in chunks. The outside stairs at Grandma’s house were covered with a foot of snow that made crunchy sounds as I pressed my foot down on them. Grandma, in her baker’s apron, no coat, had started shoveling off the top stairs. Uncle Al waved to her and got back in his car.

Where you going? she yelled down to him. Come here this minute, you no good bum. You come shovel snow. Is okay you let your old Mama...

Uncle Al was already halfway down the street.

I’ll do it Grandma. I can shovel the snow, I said licking the snowflakes off my mouth.

Oy vey, give a look atchoo. You going to catch cold. Anita, Baila, go quick in the bathtub. Grandma took off our tuques, shook them out, grabbed us by our coat collars and marched us to the bathroom.

I looked around at Ma. She winked at me. Even though she was twenty-nine years old, Ma looked young again. She looked sunny again. I hoped she wouldn’t mourn anymore. Mourning did not become Ma.

Every morning I stood outside and waited for Leanora who lived up the street. Soon as I saw her leave her house I met her half way and we walked to school together. Sometimes we wouldn’t even talk. It just felt good to be beside her, almost like we were the same person. She wasn’t so pretty. Her teeth stuck out and her nose had a bump in the middle but she had this light all around her, like an angel. She asked if I’d like to sleep at her house and Ma let.

Grandma and Ma were always scrubbing and cleaning but I had never seen a house as tidy as Leanora’s. Not a thing out of place. And no people in it. Leanora took me into the parlour. We sat on the chesterfield and I made sure not to put my feet up.

Where’s your mother and father, Leanora?

My mother works and my father is gone.

Is he dead? Are you an orphan?

No, I don’t think so. He’s just gone.

Oh. Are you the only kid?

Yup, just me. Why do you live with your grandmother, Baila?

Because my father died and we don’t have any money. I wasn’t ashamed to tell Leanora that I didn’t have a father because hers was ‘gone’ too. But when I had to tell someone else they looked at me funny and I wanted to run away and hide.

We don’t have any money either. Leanora jumped off the chesterfield. Are you hungry, Baila? It’s supper time.

Aren’t you going to wait for your mother?

No, she doesn’t get home until eight o’clock but she makes the supper in the morning.

Leanora brought two dishes out of the icebox and set them on the kitchen table already laid out with a checkered tablecloth and cutlery. I ate everything, salmon salad, two slices of fresh buttered challah and apple pie and milk for dessert. Ma wouldn’t believe that I drank the milk. When Leanora’s mother came home the dishes were done and put away. I had never done dishes before. It was like playing house for real. Leanora’s mother said she was ‘delighted’ to have me so that Leanora didn’t have to eat all alone.

Their duplex was like Grandma’s, outside and inside stairs, only it was smaller and there was a sign nailed to Leanora’s bedroom door that said, QUARANTINED. MONTREAL HEALTH DEPARTMENT. Leanora didn’t have a window in her room so no one was allowed to sleep in it. I promised I wouldn’t tell.

When we went to bed, in our bloomers and undershirts, I told Leanora about my rich cousin Rita’s pink silk panties.

I’d like to be rich, she said.

Me too. Maybe I’ll marry a rich man.

Baila, do you know what a ‘bosom’ pal is?

No, what is it?

It means we will be friends forever and ever.

Even though Leanora was my best friend, my only friend, after school I’d sit on the curb and watch a gang of boys play baseball in the street. Leanora didn’t like baseball and wasn’t good at gym like me. One day when one of the boys didn’t show up they let me play with them. After my first homer they said I was a ‘valuable’ player. Only, Grandma would have a fit when I came in with scraped knees.

Why you play rough? You a goil, not a boy.

Leave her, Ma said. She has to blow off steam.

Leanora couldn’t sleep at Grandma’s house because it was too crowded. Everybody had to double up in beds. I don’t know why but I had to sleep with Uncle Solly. I couldn’t sleep. Solly was one pain in the neck. He kept wriggling his fingers inside the elastic leg of my bloomers and I kept pulling his hand out. All night I stayed awake holding my legs together real tight in case he’d do it in his sleep.

What’s wrong with you Baila? Ma asked. You have black rings around your eyes. I told you not to stay up so late.

So I told on Solly. Only I said that he jumps around all night and I couldn’t fall asleep.

Well, what can I do? We haven’t got any more beds so just try to fall asleep.

I tried and when I did fall asleep I had scary dreams. My father’s head would pop out of a wall and stare down at me. I’d go wake up Ma who slept on the chesterfield and she finally had Anita and I switch beds. I was sleeping with Grandma now and Anita with Solly. I never thought he would do the same thing to her.

It wasn’t so easy all of us living in that crowded house, but Ma and I had special times together there. At Zaida’s you couldn’t listen to music for a whole year of mourning but Grandma wasn’t so ‘crazy religious.’ Ma put a record on the gramophone, cranked it up and watched me dance to some ‘red hot jazz.’ She laughed and said I had rhythm, just like the song.

Ma, can I take dancing lessons?

Ma didn’t mince her words. No money.

But later she enrolled me at the Rialto Dance Studio on Park Avenue. Grandma bought me black patent leather tap shoes with ribbon bows on top. Once a week for twenty-five cents an hour’s lesson, I learned to tap-dance — one... two three... four five. After six months the money ran out. It was ‘up to me’ not to cry. I knew not to ask for the impossible.

Every night Anita asked the same question. Baila, don’t you have any homework?

They don’t give homework in first grade.

I had homework in first grade.

It’s only ‘cause you like homework.

Okay, wait until you see your report card.

Anita didn’t have to worry. To her surprise and mine too, because I wasn’t so good in arithmetic, I ranked first in class on my report card. Ma said that Miss Abramsky told her I was very ‘competitive’ and Grandma pinched my nose and said, You such a pip-squeak, you got to win all the time, even baseball.

We’re home, Anita called when we got back from a trip to the library. No one answered.

Grandma didn’t look up from her sewing machine. Peddling a mile a minute.

Where’s Ma?

Your Mama is in the bedroom.

The door was closed so Anita and I gently opened it.

Ma, we’re back. We had a good—

SHUT THE GODDAMN DOOR AND KEEP IT SHUT.

I didn’t know where I felt that wallop, in my head or in my stomach. We backed out of the doorway and I started to cry, real hard I cried.

Shut up Baila. Grandma, what happened?

Anita, do not say shut up to your sister. You know why? I will tell you why. Your Mama, today she say shut up to me. You ever hear such a thing? A daughter who says shut up to her Mama? She got some temper, your Mama.

Ma had swollen eyes the next morning. Come, we’ll go to Solly’s room, she said to us. Sit down on the bed, girls.

I hoped she wasn’t going to tell us someone else died.

It’s no good. We have to move into a place of our own.

But we have no money, Anita said.

We can manage. I have a little money from Daddy’s insurance policy. You won’t understand but I invested it in a mortgage with a Chinaman, so we can pay rent and have enough to eat but don’t ask for anything else.

I didn’t understand but I wondered what the Chinaman looked like. We never asked what Ma and Grandma fought about because they had already made up.

CHAPTER 3

Be careful with those dishes, Baila. Let Anita put them away. She can reach higher. Ma sang her orders. So what do you think, girls? Not bad, eh?

Not bad? We had moved ‘up,’ not way up to a mansion like the rich relatives but to the older and still ‘respectable’ part of Outremont. Our modern one bedroom apartment on the corner of Durocher Street, right across from Alfred Joyce School, was the newest, tallest (three stories!) and only apartment building on the block. No wavy linoleum floors in this house. The small kitchen, half the size of Grandma’s, had hardwood floors. Compact, not a small kitchen, Ma said. Look, everything is so convenient. She pulled up the drop-leaf table nailed to the wall to show us that three people could sit at it comfortably. And best of all we had an electric refrigerator under the cupboards, not sticking out like an icebox. A regular magazine kitchen. The living room (parlours were for grandmas and zaidas) looked out on a courtyard so you could see the neighbours coming and going. Anita and I were never bored until Ma would yell, Get away from that window.

Ma had sold all our furniture after Daddy died except for her bedroom set and the oriental carpets, the carpets that the aunties thought ‘extravagant’ of Ma when she bought them. The three of us slept in Ma’s bed; we slept in one bed until I got married, only I never got used to it. Bad enough I was squashed in the middle, but Ma snored and Anita kicked. Even when she bought a studio couch out of the Chinaman’s mortgage check, Ma wouldn’t let me sleep on it.

Shut up, Baila. Who needs to wash and iron extra sheets? You going to do it? Ma curled up her lip and let out a little snort. I guess you’d call it sneering. Grandma did the same thing to her. Both of them, sneerers.

I finally got a look at the Chinaman. I’d say he was cute. He wore a dark suit and white shirt with cuffs halfway down his hands. Every month he came with a check, made a little bow, patted Anita’s head and mine and gave us each a present, like a fan or a bag of lychee nuts. Once he brought a white silk scarf with fringe for Ma.

Oh, it’s so beautiful, she said. Mr. Wong, you are just too good to me. I don’t know what I’d do without you. She always said things like that to him (and to everybody) but soon as he left she’d pull the check out of the envelope, give a long look at it, smack it against her hand and mumble to herself, Okay, it’s all here. Money always drove Ma crazy.

I like Mr. Wong. He’s so nice and he must be rich. Why don’t you marry him, Ma? He’s short like you.

I had heard whispers a few days earlier that a second marriage for Ma was a possibility. While she was making Mr. Wong’s special Cantonese tea, Ma’s lady friends in the living room got a few words in to each other.

Why not? With her face, that smile, that personality and those boobs, giggle giggle, she’ll find someone — one, two, three. Don’t you think Rae looks like Janet Gaynor?

Come to think of it, you’re right. Sh, here come the children.

Ma choked and said, Baila, are you crazy? Where do you come up with these things? Mr. Wong of all people. She laughed so hard she had to hold her boobs from bouncing up and down.

Soon it got to be no joke. Not that Ma or Mr. Wong looked at each other that way, but once Ma took up with that Millie person, she started ‘stepping out.’ Millie lived next door to us with her husband of one year and her baby, Cookie. Millie had a telephone and a radio. Before you knew it, Ma and Millie became best friends. Ma could phone Grandma every day to tell her what good girls we were, well, not always me, and Anita and I got to listen to Millie’s radio. She’d even knock on our door when something good was on.

Hey squirts, ya want to hear Rudy Vallee? Millie talked tough like that. She didn’t remember anyone’s name so she called them, Hey you and she’d tell them to shut their traps if she didn’t like what they said. But I wasn’t scared of Millie because she treated me almost like a grown-up.

Hey kid, what’s up with you? She was sweeping underneath the sofa.

My mother smacked me.

Well, what d’ya expect when ya act like an asshole? Waita sec, I gotta empty the dustpan. She ran in and out of the kitchen. C’mon ya pretty little runt, come to Millie. She held me until I stopped sobbing. Hey, how’d ya like to knit a scarf for Cookie? I’m gonna teach ya how to knit. She pulled out a ball of soft pink wool and two knitting needles from the flowered sewing basket that she made herself, covered my hands with hers and in two seconds I was knitting.

Wool over, then under and off. Get it? Okay, you’re on your own. Millie went to get Cookie from her nap, singing on the top of her voice, Under, over and off.

I never stopped knitting after that. Ma was so proud of me. I don’t know where she gets it from, she said to Millie, not from me anyhow. Ma was no good at those things. She tried to darn our stockings but gave up and sewed the toes together making them shorter and shorter.

After my Ma, Millie was the prettiest lady (even though Grandma said she was no lady) I had ever seen, and Millie could do everything. She sewed frilly pinafores for Cookie. She baked three-layer cakes and filled them with chocolate cream. She made lace to trim her teddies. And she danced, like a stage dancer she danced, to any tune and with any partner. How did I know that? Millie let Anita and me see. She had a plan, a serious plan. Anita listened carefully.

Now remember. Look out your window for a guy with a round face, black hair and a mustache. When he comes in, wait ten minutes and then knock on my door. You got it?

Hardly breathing, Anita and I kneeled at the window, our heads showing from the eyes up. ‘There he is!" Anita raised her arm and counted the minutes ticking away on her watch. I giggled and Anita told me to be quiet, she had to concentrate.

Shush. Time’s up, let’s go Baila. Hurry up.

I don’t know why but I got scared when Anita knocked on Millie’s door. What if whatever we were supposed to do didn’t work?

Hi kids. C’mon in. I forgot I was supposed to mind you today. Want a chocolate? Millie opened a red-ribboned box and smelled the chocolates to make sure they were fresh.

I got a whiff of the sweet sweaty perfume on the round, now red-faced man and I felt like holding my nose. He had round eyes too, like Jiggs in the funnies.

Hey, Millie said to him, "These are