The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

did.
    Already, you see, darlings, the fates were converging.
    By 1913, numerous services had also been established to help immigrants landing in New York. Each ethnic group seemed to have its own sort of welcome wagon, a small legion of interpreters, advocates, and social workers who met know-nothings like us right on Ellis Island. When my family staggered off our ship, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society was already waiting. Women in skirts, in these voluminous blouses with navy bows at their necks. Mustachioed men in tweed jackets and derbies, with clipboards—all looking so modern, so wealthy and clean! These were Jews?
    They stood in the disembarkation area holding signs in Yiddish, then whisked us before a phalanx of doctors. I was tugged at, my shirt was lifted. A man pressed a frigid metal disk to my chest. My eyelids were pulled back with a buttonhook to determine if I had trachoma. Officials went through the lines putting chalk marks on some people’s jackets. I wondered if this was a good thing, a lucky thing, until I heard the women shrieking, wailing, pleading.
    In a cold, forbidding room, officials asked our parents: Did they have jobs awaiting them, relatives, marketable skills? My mother shot my father a vicious look. The Jewish representatives in their fancy American clothes swept in. Their association would be lending us the twenty-five-dollar debarkation fee, they announced. Surely two people with skills such as my parents’ could find work quickly enough. Why, they could provide us with references. One of the social workers hoisted Flora up in her arms and gave her a soft pinch on the cheek. “The children, all four of them, are healthy and robust.”
    Remarkably, our parents’ silent treatment of each other went unnoticed. Most immigrants seemed to be struck dumb when they arrived. When anyone spoke to them, they just nodded and nodded. It almost didn’t matter that they had a translator. A couple would stand before a health official, nodding as he spoke. Then, as soon as they were released, the woman would turn to her husband. “What did he say, Yankel?” And the husband would look at her, alarmed. “I have no idea, Bessie. I thought you knew.”
    After our family had been thoroughly inspected, examined, and given the stamp of approval like so much kosher meat, we were “deloused” with violent sprays of powder from a can. The Hebrew Immigrant Aid workers then pulled my mother, Bella, and Rose behind a curtain.
    Today, everyone wears the same schmattes : the blue jeans, the T-shirts, those terrible tracksuits. My grandson, Jason—his idea of fashion is to rip up his T-shirts, then pin them back together with safety pins. “You know, you could save yourself a lot of time,” I tell him, “by not tearing them up in the first place.” I know, I know: It’s a “look.” He tells me he’s making a “statement.” But back then in Europe, we all had a look. We all made a statement—whether we wanted to or not. People’s clothes were like identity cards. You could instantly tell if someone was from Bavaria or Silesia or Galicia just by the embroidery on a bodice or the cut of a topcoat. Different villages had their own styles. Certainly, you could tell the Jews from the gentiles.
    Before our family was even permitted to set foot in America, my mother and older sisters were given modern haircuts. Their tattered, filthy clothes from the old country were disposed of and replaced with secondhand “American” dresses. Flora, perhaps because she was the prettiest, was given a small straw hat with felt violets on the brim. And, finally, a sweet-smelling woman in a striped blouse attempted to remove my gray coat.
    “Let me take that, kindeleh ,” she said gently, trying to unbutton it. “It’s springtime here, and very warm already. We’ve got better for you now.”
    “No!” I hollered, as loud as I could. It was the geschrei I had been practicing since Vishnev, a geschrei designed to scare