The Featherbed. Джон Миллер

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СКАЧАТЬ and clears one’s mind to think more objectively and more creatively. She says, “First write about what happened, write about it fully, then write about how you feel about it.” So that is what I will try to do. I am not sure I will be able to do this every night, especially since I have to do it by the light of a single candle if I don’t want to disturb Ida (she is so sensitive to light when she is sleeping) and try to keep as quiet as possible afterwards when I grope my way under the covers.

      Nevertheless here I am, it is well past eleven, and I am sitting on the floor against the bed with my candle beside me barely illuminating the page. It is so low on the ground that if I move it any closer I might set my nightgown on fire. Now that would certainly wake up Ida!

      My friend Hattie gave me this diary some months ago as a birthday present. Hattie wants to be a writer, and perhaps her diary will become a published book some day. She says even if it doesn’t get published, it will be a record of her life that she can show to her children when they grow up. Mrs. Pearson says I should think of being a writer too, but I don’t think that will ever happen. But then again, who can tell everything that life will bring? She says I am at the top of my class, and that I should be proud of that, even if it is only because Hattie graduated and is now in college.

      One thing seems certain: since Papa wants me to marry, I will one day be a mother. But unlike Hattie, I would never show my children what I write in a diary. It’s not that I disagree with Hattie that it will be important for my children to know some day who I am. But unlike her, I will probably only use this diary as a record from which to select the important things that I shall tell them myself. That is because I wish to follow Mrs. Pearson’s advice and write from my heart, and matters of the heart are not shared just like that, except with one’s diary. Not like events. Events happen and children need to know about them. They are history. But the two should remain separate — emotions and history, that is.

      I wish Mama thought this way. I have today discovered only for the first time an important piece of my parents’ past. I do not understand why parents do not just tell children about the events in their lives, plain and simple. To me this is entirely different from telling them about secrets of the heart.

      Mama says that because I am only sixteen, I do not understand that one’s history is connected to one’s heart, and she tells me that when I have some history of my own I shall understand. But I do understand. The difference between me and Mama is that I believe history should be separated from the feelings that get in the way of the telling, if at all possible. I want to know the story of people’s lives, but I also believe that what lies in their hearts should not necessarily be discussed.

      Mama cannot fully separate her emotions like this, but in her case I believe it is partly intentional. That is to say that she uses the emotion to make me feel ashamed. I do not want to be the kind of mother who inflicts this unpleasant effect on my children. Mama has a special gift for making me feel just awful, and sometimes I believe she is happy to make me feel that way.

      Tonight was a perfect example of why I believe this to be true. On the way back from work today, the heel of my shoe came unstuck again. I trussed up the sole to the upper with some strong thread that I pinched from work, but the solution was makeshift and didn’t really hold things together very well. The shoe was flip-flopping all the way home. I only mention the shoe because I have been wishing this week that I could buy a newer, better pair of shoes, and Mama’s story of course made me feel grateful to have any shoes at all. It was all about how she used to have to walk barefoot through the snow back in Russia. It was quite maddening. Sometimes I would swear she can hear all my selfish thoughts, and even that she has discovered my guilty secret.

      Of course I must confess my secret to my diary, and here it is: Instead of taking the train, I walk home from work. It does not sound so bad when one looks at the words on the page, but I will explain. Every day, after we are let out of work, I walk partway with my friends, to Prince and Broadway, and then I say goodbye to them and continue on to my regular stop at the Cristobaldi Family Bakery. For my secret daily ritual. And although it is wrong, I cannot give it up.

      Ever since I started at the factory two years ago, the meals Mama prepares do not fill me up. So, I save on the cost of the ticket for the El, and stop for a bun before dinner. The only way to truly avoid feeling terrible about this is to stop buying the bread, but I simply cannot do it. I am so hungry all the time.

      It is wrong for me to be spending money when I am not sharing it with my family. It is not that I feel bad for Papa; Mama always gives him more food anyway. I do, however, feel guilty about Mama. The problem is that she would never simply take extra food if I brought it for her; she is far too dutiful a wife and mother not to share it with the family. And of course sharing with the family would mean a big piece for Papa, two tiny pieces for me and Ida (our boarder), and only after we all had, she would take the tiniest piece of all for herself.

      This would never happen anyway, because I am supposed to turn over all of my wages, except for my train fare, to Papa, and they would consider buying the bread wasteful. So, walking home instead of taking the train is really the only way I can save money. I have tried to convince myself, in order to soothe my guilt, that Mama is not actually as hungry as I myself am, and that because I am only sixteen and still young I need more food than she does. But because I know this to be a lie, it does not work, of course.

      Also, I see the way she eats. She raises her fork to her mouth so slowly it is almost shaking. She is trying with all her might not to tear at her food. She only restrains herself out of pride, and so as not to set a bad example with table manners. But whenever we finish a meal, such a look of sadness comes over her face, and she tries to hide it by looking down at her plate, and then she fidgets by wiping the plate repeatedly with her last morsel, making sure no drop of sauce or kernel of kasha is wasted. When this happens, I turn my eyes downward too. Seeing her do this gives me a lump in my throat exactly the size of my pre-dinner bun.

      What is worse is when Mama announces that she will not be eating with us, and she tells us to go on without her because she wants to get a head start cleaning the pots. When she does this, I know it is because she is extra hungry and cannot bear to slow down her eating that day. I know this because on occasion I have caught a glimpse of her crouched over the wash basin either before or after we have all eaten, rapidly shovelling food into her mouth as though she should hide the fact that she eats at all.

      I don’t know what my own children’s lives will be like, but I most sincerely hope that they are never trapped in circumstances like these. It is a terrible thing when a person cannot escape her trap except to deceive, and then that deception does not really make her feel any better, because she is sick with guilt.

      But as I wrote at the beginning, if I had children of my own, I would not necessarily share these thoughts with them. They would be told our history plain and simple: at age fourteen I quit day school to work in a shirtwaist factory, food was scarce in our house, and my mother made great sacrifices for her family.

      I have just re-read what I have written and do not feel at all that my thoughts are sorted out. But then I suppose that I am not properly following Mrs. Pearson’s advice. Perhaps I am jumping about too much, not waiting until I have finished telling the story before leaping in with how I am feeling about it. So let me begin again, maybe starting from the scene of my crime, and continuing on from there.

       1909

      The foreman let the Jewish workers out early on Friday afternoons, but he expected them to make up for it by working overtime and on Sundays. So when Rebecca stopped at the bakery, there were so many reasons to feel shameful. On the eve of the Sabbath, when she should have been rushing to help her mother prepare dinner, she was wasting time walking home, secretly spending her train money on food, and, to make matters even worse, was about to eat food from a bakery that didn’t keep kosher. The bakery’s air was thick СКАЧАТЬ