closed the window and tried to understand. Why was he calling on Sunday, when she’d suffered the first heart attack Thursday? From what he said, on Friday she’d improved a bit; then Saturday morning she’d had the second attack. She’d wrestled with the Angel of Death, kept up the fight till evening. . . .
I couldn’t listen any longer. I hung up the phone and went back to bed.
My husband and children had slept through it all. Why should I wake them now?
She’d waited for me, hoping I would come. Why on earth hadn’t they called? Why had they done this to her, to me? Abruptly I sat up in bed. I wanted to call the home and scream: Murderers! Robbers! To save the cost of a lousy phone call you shatter the lifelong dream of a poor old woman?
But instead of going to the telephone, I went to the window and parted the curtains. I looked out at the tree swaying in the wind. The snow had turned into a heavy rain. I saw that the bare branches of my tree were filled with keening women wrapped in black shawls. They had settled on the bushes and on the barbed wire fence, and in my aunt’s voice they were speaking to me: “Remember, be sure to do what I deserve, as I asked you to. . . . Do not disgrace my dead body. . . . No lipstick, no powder. . . . Examine my shroud, make sure it’s not full of mites, God forbid. . . . Do not forget the Willett Street rabbis. I’ve made my donations so they will say Kaddish and study Mishnah in my name. Remember! Remember!”
“I remember,” I answered into the pillow.
I pulled the covers over my head, but the wailing women in the March wind kept up their lament. They commanded me to read and understand the wind-blown pages of my aunt’s life. Eyes shut, I gazed upon the narrow lane where she was born and grew up. Here she is as a little girl, playing with the boys who study at her father’s school. And now she’s a grown woman, sitting at the machine, sewing bridal garments for other women’s weddings. She sews and sews, until white begins to show in her jet-black braids. Then she bows to her father’s wishes and marries a widower with grown children. When her father dies, her husband takes over the school and his children leave for America. My aunt’s mother moves in with her older daughter, my own mother. Just before the Second World War, my aunt and her husband arrive in New York.
Her husband didn’t last long. The strange new country sapped his will to live, and he fell ill and soon died. After his death, his children washed their hands of her. Alone in a strange world, without a relative or a protector, her old home in ruins, my aunt drifted from place to place, hungry, not knowing where to turn, until someone suggested she clean houses for a living.
To ward off the humiliations of the outside world, my aunt took refuge in the secret passages of her own being. There she found a strength that guided her and motivated her to go on with her life. With every punishment in this world of lies and falsehoods, she attained a higher moral standing in the world of truth beyond the grave. She looked forward to the just and agreeable world to come, knowing that there she would be rewarded. Every moment of every day, every day of the year, she prepared herself for the journey to the other world. Mondays and Thursdays, in accordance with the old custom, she fasted half the day.
When we arrived in America, we tracked down my aunt on Powell Street in Brownsville. She was living in a dark cubicle; the landlady kept the toilet locked. That very day, we moved her in with us on Ocean Avenue. We gave her a room with a window overlooking Prospect Park. My aunt, who was barely sixty years old, was already well along on the road to the other world. She didn’t meddle in the running of the household. She cooked for herself in her room, kept kosher, prayed in the morning and in the evening. Forever bent over her holy books, she rarely lifted her eyes to see what was happening here on God’s earth.
As evening fell, when her room began to grow dark and the shadows pressed in from every corner, after she had finished eating and recited the blessing after the meal, made up her bed and placed a bowl of water on the night table for the next morning’s ritual hand washing — then my aunt would emerge from her room to tell the children a story.
She’d recount the tale of the little old lady who had lots and lots of children — dark, charming little girls and boys — Jewish children who spoke Yiddish, studied Torah, and feared God.
Once, when the little old lady had to go into the forest to gather kindling, she warned the children to be good and say their prayers before bed so that no evil would befall them.
The children did as they were told. They said their prayers and went to sleep.
Then a brown bear came running, not from the forest but from far away, from the great cities of the civilized world. And this bear gobbled up all the children. But it so happened that the youngest, the weakest and finest of them all, little Yisrolik, was spared.
Yisrolik was a stargazer. The distant stars called to him. He conducted nighttime vigils high up in the mountains or deep in the valleys. There he read the signs of the Zodiac as they wandered across the heavens. But when Yisrolik came home and saw the disaster that had occurred, he took up his spyglass and set off for the land of his ancestors.
On Friday nights, with the beginning of the Sabbath, my aunt came to life. A special spirit shone from her gray eyes and her face became smooth and unwrinkled. She bought meat from the kosher butcher who adhered to the strictest standards, stewed carrots and baked a sweet kugel. She took her best dress out of the closet and laid it on the bed, next to the white silk kerchief with golden fringes that she wore to bless the candles.
My aunt had brought this kerchief with her from Poland. It was the only memento she had from her mother, and she had decided to wear it when the time came to stand before the Lord of the Universe. She had also sewn for herself a shroud with long sleeves and a high, ruffled collar, as befitted a pious woman.
With every passing day, my aunt became more devout, more observant, withdrawing all the more from the material world.
“Why don’t you go to the park now and then?” I would ask. “Fill your lungs with a little fresh air, chat with the other women. . . .”
“I don’t have time, my child,” she’d say. “I still have so much to do . . . and for me the sun is already beginning to set.”
When our family expanded and the apartment on Ocean Avenue became too crowded, we decided to buy a house on Long Island. Unexpectedly, my aunt refused to come with us. She wasn’t familiar with the neighborhood — maybe it had no synagogue. Now, at her advanced age, she wasn’t about to live among gentiles — not even Jewish gentiles.
My aunt was seventy years old when she went into the old age home. She turned over everything she owned and began to save again. Every penny I gave her she put away — to support the rabbis, the scholars, long, long after her death. She wouldn’t allow herself a piece of fruit or a dress. Everything went into the little purse that hung around her neck like an amulet.
My aunt had no children of her own. No matter how much I did for her, she always felt that children of her own would have done better: a son would have said Kaddish, a daughter would have donated to charity to save her soul from disgrace in the other world. The way things were, the entire burden fell on her shoulders.
Every Sunday, I visited my aunt in the old age home. She was busy there, perhaps reciting a chapter of the Psalms for a sick person or penning a letter for a poor soul who didn’t know how to write. As time went by, I noticed some odd remarks creeping into her speech.
“You see that woman over there? She’s the youngest daughter of our kosher slaughterer — you remember her from back home. There she was a big shot, but here she’s a sad case, poor thing. She’s ashamed
