Rachel's Roses Read online

  “Especially you, Beryl.”

  Mrs. Berger’s cheeks turned bright red.

  “Mama’s face is fancy now, Papa,” said Hannah. “Just like the material.”

  Mr. Berger laughed.

  “You don’t miss a thing, my little Hannah,” he said, and went to wash for supper.

  • four •

  BUTTON SHOPPING

  “Mama is letting me pick out the buttons,” Rachel told her friends on the way home from school the next day. “She gave me a whole nickel to buy them from Mr. Solomon’s trimmings store. I’ll get buttons that are so special no one will think I look like Hannah even if we are wearing the same skirts.”

  “We like to wear the same clothes,” Mollie and Simcha said. “We fool people all the time, sometimes even our parents.”

  They laughed.

  “They think I’m Mollie,” said Simcha.

  “They think I’m Simcha,” said Mollie. “Bet you can’t tell us apart if we turn around.”

  With their backs to Rachel, in their identical long-sleeved white blouses and blue skirts, it was hard to tell them apart.

  “But you’re twins,” said Rachel. “The same age.”

  “I’m older,” said Simcha. “By three whole minutes.”

  “Big deal,” said Mollie.

  “That means I’m more grown-up.”

  “Does not. Sometimes you whine like a newborn. Even Mother says so.”

  “And sometimes you should stick your head in the mud.”

  “Now you’re going to have to apologize for starting a fight because it’s almost Rosh Hashanah. Father says we have to ask to be forgiven for all our misdeeds or we won’t be written in the Book of Life for a good year.”

  “I’ll apologize when you apologize for being mean to me. And maybe I won’t forgive you anyway.”

  “You wouldn’t!”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  They had come to the corner. Rachel and Sophie turned but Mollie and Simcha continued arguing down the street on their way to their parents’ grocery store.

  “Those two always end up fighting,” said Sophie.

  It was funny that Simcha wanted to be the big sister while Rachel was looking for a way not to be.

  “Want to help me pick out the buttons?” Rachel asked Sophie.

  “May I?”

  “I’ll meet you on your stoop in five minutes.”

  Rachel ran up the two flights of stairs to their apartment and burst through the door. Bubbie was folding laundry. Mama was on the floor cutting out the pattern she had made to fit Mrs. Golden’s measurements. It felt strange having Mama home.

  Rachel dropped her schoolbooks in the corner.

  “I’m going to buy the buttons today, Mama.”

  Mama was so busy she just nodded.

  “I’m coming too,” said Hannah.

  “No you’re not,” said Rachel. “Not this time.”

  She reached for the jelly jar on the shelf over the coalburning stove where she had put the nickel for safekeeping.

  “Here,” said Bubbie. “You’ll drop this off for Sophie’s mother on the way.”

  Bubbie wrapped the clean laundry in brown paper and tied the package with string.

  “And Racheleh,” said Bubbie as she patted Rachel’s cheek, “get pretty ones.”

  “I’ll get the prettiest buttons in Mr. Solomon’s whole store!”

  She took the package and ran back down the stairs.

  Sophie was on her stoop, writing in her notebook.

  “I’m almost finished,” she said. “I just want to get down Mollie and Simcha’s argument for my father. You never can tell when he’ll be back and I don’t want to forget anything.”

  “The book is getting full,” said Rachel.

  “He’s been gone six months,” Sophie said. “Wouldn’t it be nice if he showed up for the holiday?” She scribbled a few more lines. “There. I’m finished. Now I’ll run up and put the book away. It’ll only take a second.”

  Rachel gave Sophie the laundry to take up too. She was glad that Papa was a shoe salesman in a store and not a peddler on the road all the time like Sophie’s father.

  “I have to buy five buttons,” Rachel said when Sophie returned. “Two are for Hannah’s skirt and three are for mine.”

  They had just arrived at Mr. Solomon’s store when Izzy raced up behind them. He tugged one of Rachel’s long, dark braids as he passed.

  “Ouch!” she cried.

  Izzy laughed and kept running down the street.

  “I’ll get you, Isadore Shapiro!” Rachel yelled after him.

  Izzy turned around, stuck his thumbs in his ears, and wiggled his fingers. Then he disappeared around the corner.

  “He is such a pest,” said Sophie.

  “I can’t be bothered by Izzy right now.” Rachel pushed open the door to Mr. Solomon’s store and walked in.

  Mr. Solomon was having a lace sale. The small store was very crowded. Rachel and Sophie squeezed through the shoppers at the front tables where the lace was and went straight to the button bins at the back. Their high-button shoes scraped the worn wooden floor as they walked.

  There were three boxes filled with buttons. One had button cards. Some of the cards had three buttons on them. Some had five buttons to a card. All the cards cost five cents.

  Rachel picked up a five-button card. That was how many she needed for both skirts. She had just enough money for one card, but then she would have the same buttons as Hannah. She put the card back down.

  She looked over at the next box. Some buttons were on a card, while others were loose in the box. There was a handmade sign that said ON SALE. Rachel hoped she could find two buttons of one kind and three of another for the same five cents. But the sale buttons were mostly plain. None of them were pretty enough for her skirt.

  On the third box was a sign that said FANCY. There were no cards, just loose buttons. Rachel knew those buttons would be too expensive. She wouldn’t even look.

  She went back to the first box and picked up the cards, one by one, trying to find the perfect buttons.

  After a while she stopped looking and sighed.

  “I’ll never find them, Sophie.”

  “How about these?” Sophie said.

  She showed a card to Rachel. There were five small round buttons with colorful polka dots on them.

  “They’re just right for Hannah,” said Rachel, “but I want something really unusual for my skirt.”

  Her eyes kept peeking over at the loose buttons in the FANCY box. Maybe just a little look, she thought.

  At once, Rachel saw what she wanted: three round glass buttons with perfect little red roses inside. The roses looked as if they had grown in there.

  “Look, Sophie,” she whispered as if talking out loud would make them disappear.

  Sophie, who had just learned how, whistled.

  “Shh,” said Rachel when one of the women looked over.

  She scooped the buttons out of the box and held them in the palm of her hand.

  “Did you ever see anything so beautiful? I could buy these for me and get two others for Hannah. Oh, I hope they don’t cost too much.”

  Rachel brought the three buttons to Mr. Solomon at the front counter.

  “Ah, you have good taste, Rachel,” Mr. Solomon said. “Those are my finest buttons. And there are only those three.”

  Mr. Solomon’s finest buttons! Rachel swallowed hard before she asked, “How much are they, Mr. Solomon?”

  “Ten cents apiece,” Mr. Solomon said.

  Rachel nearly stopped breathing. Ten cents apiece. She only had five cents to buy all five of the buttons she needed. Her eyes blurred with tears. She started to return the buttons to the bin.

  Sophie held up the card with t
he polka dots.

  “These other buttons are a bargain, Rachel,” she said.

  A bargain!

  Rachel remembered how her mother always bargained at the pushcarts that lined the streets and in the stores. The merchant would say one price, her mother would offer another, lower price. The merchant would lower his price a little and her mother would raise hers a little until they both agreed.

  Rachel would bargain with Mr. Solomon for the buttons.

  “Ten cents apiece is too much money, Mr. Solomon,” Rachel said. “I will give you fifteen cents for all three buttons.”

  “Fifteen cents?” said Mr. Solomon. “Why, if I sold them for fifteen cents, I would lose money. You can have them for twenty-eight cents.”

  “Twenty cents,” said Rachel.

  Mr. Solomon shook his head.

  “Twenty-five and I’ll throw in a button card of your choice for free.”

  “All right,” she said.

  She held out the nickel her mother had given her.

  “Here is five cents on account.”

  “And what about the rest?” asked Mr. Solomon. “Buttons like these are in demand. I can’t hold on to them forever.”

  Rachel didn’t need forever. She only needed until the holiday, which was ten days away.

  “I’ll pay you by Rosh Hashanah,” she said.

  “It’s a deal,” said Mr. Solomon.

  He took the nickel. Then he picked the buttons from Rachel’s hand and put them into an envelope. Rachel took the card with the polka-dot buttons from Sophie and gave them to Mr. Solomon. That went into the envelope too. He put the envelope on a shelf under the counter.

  “I will save the buttons until Rosh Hashanah, then. When you finish paying me, I will give them to you. Otherwise, they go back in the box.”

  Rachel felt very grown-up as she and Sophie left the store. She had bargained just like her mother. She would have her roses, and buttons for Hannah too!

  “How will you get the rest of the money?” Sophie asked as they walked back home.

  Sophie’s question stopped Rachel right in the middle of the street.

  “Why, I…I…I’ll get a job, that’s how.”

  When she said goodbye to Sophie, Rachel didn’t hurry upstairs. Her thoughts were all jumbled. What she had done made no sense at all. She had spent her mother’s money and had no idea how she would get any more. She wondered if having dreams was catching.

  • five •

  FEELING MEAN

  “Did you get the buttons for the skirts, Rachel?” Mama asked after supper.

  “Not yet, Mama.”

  Bubbie raised her eyebrows.

  Rachel looked away.

  She wasn’t lying. She hadn’t gotten the buttons yet. They were in an envelope under Mr. Solomon’s counter. She hoped her mother wouldn’t ask for the nickel back. But Mrs. Berger began helping Bubbie wrap the laundry for the next day.

  When Rachel finished her homework, she went to the bedroom she shared with Bubbie and Hannah. She reached into her drawer in the bureau and took out the small cloth purse her mother had made for her last birthday.

  She dumped out the pennies she had been saving. It looked like a lot of money spread out on the bed but when she counted, there were only six pennies. That plus the nickel she’d already given Mr. Solomon came to eleven cents. It was less than half of what she needed. Where would the rest come from?

  Sometimes Uncle Duvid gave her a penny for a birthday present. But her birthday came after Rosh Hashanah. Even if Uncle Duvid gave her two pennies, it would be too late.

  “It’s bedtime, little Hannah,” Rachel heard her mother say. “Now, where is she? You’d think in an apartment this small, you could find a child.”

  Rachel scooped up the coins and shoved them in the drawer just before her mother came in.

  “What are you doing, Rachel?” asked Mrs. Berger.

  “I was just…looking at something.”

  “Well, since you are at the bureau already, please take out your sister’s nightgown. If you help her get ready for bed, I’ll have more time to sew.”

  Mrs. Berger was sewing Mrs. Golden’s dress by hand because she didn’t own a sewing machine. She sewed all day and most of the night. Rachel was surprised that being your own boss could be such hard work.

  Bubbie brought Hannah into the bedroom.

  “I was doing homework just like you, Rachel,” said Hannah.

  “You don’t have homework,” Rachel said.

  “Yes I do. Look.”

  Hannah held up a scrap of brown paper with pencil squiggles on it.

  “That’s nothing. You’re too little to do real homework.”

  “No I’m not. I’m this big.”

  Hannah measured with her hand from the top of her head to Rachel’s chin.

  “See? I’m almost as tall as you.”

  Mama and Bubbie laughed. Rachel didn’t think it was a bit funny.

  “Mama, she’s not measuring right,” said Rachel. “She’s much smaller than me.”

  Rachel’s mother sighed. “I’d better get to work,” she said. “Mrs. Golden is coming in soon for a fitting.”

  “That’s good,” said Bubbie. “I notice the fish is up a whole penny this week. The sooner you get paid, the better.”

  Rachel looked down at the floor. How could she spend twenty-five cents on buttons when Bubbie was worried about a penny for fish?

  But she knew she had to have them. They were something of her very own, something that no one had owned before, something that Hannah did not have. When people saw those special buttons, they would think Rachel was special too.

  She was feeling so guilty that she said to Hannah, “I’ll go to bed with you if you don’t make a fuss.”

  Hannah let Rachel help her into her nightgown. When she was in bed, Rachel put on her own nightgown and snuggled into the bed beside her.

  “Isn’t this fun, Rachel?” said Hannah. “I’m going to ask Mama if we can do this every night!”

  “We can’t,” said Rachel. “I have schoolwork to do at night.”

  “You can do it when you come home,” said Hannah.

  “I have to run errands for Bubbie after school, Hannah, and sometimes I play with my friends.”

  “Then I’ll run errands too, and I’ll do schoolwork and play with your friends. Then we’ll go to sleep together.”

  “My friends don’t want you to play with us and neither do I. You’re still a baby.”

  “I am not a baby,” said Hannah.

  She turned over with her back toward Rachel. When Rachel tried to tuck her in, Hannah shrugged off the blanket.

  Sometimes Rachel wished she didn’t have a sister. A sister could make you feel angry and mean at the same time.

  She wondered how Simcha and Mollie could stand each other. Then she remembered how many fights they had. Maybe they didn’t like having a sister any better than she did.

  Bubbie shuffled into the room.

  “Is something wrong, Racheleh?” she whispered so as not to disturb Hannah. But Hannah was already sleeping.

  “Bubbie, why do I have to be responsible for Hannah just because I’m older?”

  “The first wave in the sea shows the others the way,” Bubbie said.

  “What does that mean, Bubbie? And please don’t tell me that I’ll know someday. I want to know now.”

  “Did I ever tell you how your great-uncle Harry came to this country?”

  “No.”

  “Ah. Well. I was the oldest of ten children. Harry was the next oldest and a boy. The family decided he should go to America. But Harry was afraid. He didn’t know anyone in America who could help him. He wouldn’t have a job. How would he live? While they argued about him going, I got a job watching the butcher’s baby and s
aved enough money for a ticket and came by myself. In America, I worked in a grocery store and sent every penny I could back home. Now Harry knew someone in America so he wasn’t afraid. He bought a ticket and came to America too.”

  “So you were the first wave, Bubbie?” said Rachel.

  Bubbie smiled.

  “Am I a wave for Hannah?”

  “Could be,” Bubbie said.

  “What if I don’t want to be a wave, Bubbie?”

  “Does the sun choose to be the sun or the moon choose to be the moon? It’s just something that is. You came first and Hannah will always follow.” Bubbie yawned. “Another day over. Now it’s time for us all to get some sleep.”

  Bubbie kissed the tops of their heads as she did every night. Hannah squirmed in her sleep but didn’t wake up. In the darkness, Rachel could hear Bubbie moving around. Then the springs in Bubbie’s bed squeaked.

  The household was beginning to settle down. Rachel heard her father get into the bed in the front room. She listened to the tired breathing of her mother as she worked by the dim gaslight in the kitchen.

  Rachel thought about being a wave in the sea. She had been to Coney Island so she knew about the waves and how each one was different. One might be small and gentle and the next so fierce that it knocked you down, but they all came to the shore, one after the other.

  Bubbie started to snore. The low, even sound soothed Rachel. Slowly the stillness of the house wrapped around her and she drifted off to sleep.

  • six •

  GETTING A JOB

  “Let’s play jacks,” said Simcha on the way home from school the next day. “I’ve been practicing. I got all the way to sixies yesterday.”

  “I have to help my mother,” said Sophie. “A new boarder just arrived.”

  “Another one? Your house has too many people in it,” Mollie said.

  “It doesn’t have enough,” said Sophie. “My father isn’t there.”

  “He’ll come back soon, Sophie,” Rachel said.

  Sophie shrugged.

  “How about you, Rachel?” Simcha asked. “Can you play?”