Jew Store by Stella Suberman Page B

webs. In her presence, therefore, a rapid shuffle went on between English and Yiddish.
    With my grandmother at last sitting, my mother gathered herself to tell it all. Out it came: My father didn’t like New York, didn’t like selling from a pushcart, wanted to go back to the South.
    Aunt Sadie was a “spitter.” In Yiddish with its gargling
ch
s and exploding sibilants, she was a-splash, and even in English she sent forth sprays. “To the
South
?” she said, moisture molecules flying.
    My grandmother clapped her hands to her face, and my mother’s heart leaped up at what might be a promising sign. My grandmother, however, was showing not horror but interest. She had brought to mind a family story about a nephew, Zelig—my first cousin once removed—who had left New York to go to Cleveland and who, according to his mother, my Great-aunt Tillie, was doing well there. “Cleveland,” my grandmother repeated.
    Aunt Sadie responded with a no-nonsense “Cleveland,schmeve land” and asked if my father wasn’t just trying to get my mother to go out and work for him. My mother immediately envisioned one of my great-aunts, a woman in her sixties who still set out daily with a pack on her back to peddle soft goods—whatever she had picked up cheap—to pushcart vendors. Did Sadie think this was what my father wanted her to do? Did she think my father was lazy, of all things? “He’s just a man likes to do what he likes to do,” my mother answered.
    Aunt Sadie said she knew all about the South (though it’s a good guess that she knew almost nothing) and all of what she “knew” was bad. First of all, she “guaranteed” that my mother would not like it there, even if it turned out the place they chose had a confirmed Jewish population. “The Jews they got there I can imagine,” she said to my mother. And
oy
, the Gentiles—the goyim—my mother would have to associate with, “the hillybillies, the yokels.”
    As my grandmother poured fresh tea, no doubt taking the usual pains to pour against the spoon so that the glass would not crack, she had a word for her daughters. Little in stature and underlanguaged though my grandmother was, she knew her imperatives. “Go, go with your husband,” she told my mother, while my mother’s heart bumped around. “Be a warm stone in his pocket on a cold day.” Where, my mother wondered, where was my grandmother’s outrage at somebody leaving the family?
    My mother snatched at her one remaining hope, that maybe my grandfather would object. Maybe
he
would be the one to keep his daughter and his grandchildren from going God knows where.
    My grandmother only scoffed. My grandfather would lend the money, of that she was sure. After all, she said, when they had left Russia, had they not left behind a father, three brothers, and four sisters? “Tell Aaron not to worry,” she said to my mother. “Pa will lend.”

CHAPTER 5

G OD’S (S O TO S PEAK ) C OUNTRY
    W hen my father used to describe how he felt after my grandfather agreed to lend the money, he’d say “I was on top of myself.” He immediately sat down and wrote a letter to Bronstein, who wrote back—in a letter penned by his son—confirming that Nashville had plenty of Jews and that the rest of Tennessee was “wide open.”
    Miriam and Joey have said that they were wildly excited by the prospect of a trip on a train and that my father, though not
wildly
excited, having been on a train before, was nevertheless pretty well fired up. Of course my mother was neither wildly excited nor fired up, only acutely anxious. She was clinging to a single mandate: Food must be taken along. Dining-car food would be too dear, and could you expect kosher? Of course not.
    The day before the two-day journey, she gathered together two large brown paper grocery bags. Except for a few things