Laurie Graham - The Unfortunates

I allowed her to keep talking until I was sure I understood her meaning. Then I upended tea and seed cake all over her and the Turkish rug.

‘Good,’ Harry continued, as though an overturned tea tray was nothing remarkable, ‘so that’s settled. And you’ll be interested to hear I’ve just acquired a little jobbing printers, so your cards and so forth can be changed at advantageous rates.’

‘I’m not changing my name,’ I screamed. ‘I shall always be a Minkel. Always, always. I’d rather be a German than a Minton.’

It fell to Aunt Fish to slap my face and express loud regrets that I had returned from my afternoon amongst the wild Asiatics of Stanton Street rebellious as well as lousy.

‘Now, now! Nothing’s decided yet, Pops,’ Uncle Israel called after me as I ran from the room. But it was. Harry had already made moves to change his name to Grace, and wherever Harry led, Ma would follow.

I hid in Pa’s closet and wept. Down in the parlor another part of him was being taken from me, and it seemed – perhaps it was the crying affecting my sinuses – but it seemed that his clothes hardly smelled of him anymore.

‘If they do it, Pa,’ I whispered into his gray worsted, ‘I shall change it back to Minkel the moment I’m of age.’

I did too. And though Honey may have gone to her grave a Grace instead of a Glaser, to this day I address my correspondence with Sherman Ulysses to Mr S. U. Glaser. He complains and says it causes confusion and inconvenience to the staff of the Pelican Bay Retirement Home, but I tell him, the money he’s paying he’s entitled to discommode a few people. They’re all foreigners anyhow.

Nineteen fourteen turned into nineteen fifteen. The Misses Stone continued their work trying to uplift the unfortunate Hebrews, Uncle Israel Fish joined a relief committee and Harry, correctly anticipating a trend for changing disadvantageous names, bought two more printing firms.

In May the Germans sank the Lusitania with the loss of one hundred and twenty-eight American lives, and Ma and Aunt Fish reviewed their invasion precautions. There was an evacuation plan, involving dollars stuffed inside corsets and a secret address in Cedar Rapids. Iowa was apparently to be given a second chance. Priority of travel was awarded to Honey and to Sherman Ulysses, carrier of the blood of Abe Minkel, if not of his name, and they would be accompanied by Ma. I was to bring up the rear with Aunt Fish. This didn’t bother me. Much as I longed to escape the monotony of West 76th Street, a Hun invasion sounded too exciting a prospect to miss.

In the event, the closest Ma and Honey came to running for port was when the Atlantic Fleet was anchored in the Hudson and German agents were caught planning to blow up the guests at a Grand Naval Ball that was to be held on 72nd Street.

Defeated by the concept of traveling light and traveling fast, Ma was so unable to decide which hats to leave behind that the moment passed. The Germans were deported. The fleet, having danced till dawn, sailed safely away. And I was left, untangling the silks in Ma’s embroidery basket, wondering what an invasion might feel like.

I redrafted my letter to Cousin Addie, hoping to capture her interest with the news that I had been as close as four blocks to the barbarian invaders. I obtained her address and a postage stamp from Ma’s writing table, and I dropped it in a mailbox on the way to my weekly visit with Sherman Ulysses. As to how I would explain the arrival of Cousin Addie’s reply, I felt that Providence would inspire me when the moment came. All that talk of war made audacity seem the order of the day.

I followed the war as best I could using my old school atlas. Honey and I had enjoyed a brief exposure to education at the Convent of the Blessed Redeemer. We both started late, due to measles, whooping cough and Ma’s conviction that paper harbored disease and all books were written by socialists, and I finished early, almost immediately after Honey graduated, due to scarlatina and the nuns’ inability to warm to me once my blonde and sainted sister had left.

‘We pray you may find somewhere more suitable,’ Sister Diotisalvi wrote to my parents, and Pa said, ‘Let her go to the Levison School.’ But the Levison was on the East Side. I’d have had to cross Central Park every day, a journey Ma and Aunt Fish equated with finding the Northwest Passage. Worse still, the Levison was getting a reputation for turning out bookish and disputatious students. One of the Schwab girls had attended for just one year and had emerged so deformed, so stripped of delicacy, that Mrs Schwab had had to search as far afield as Winnipeg, Canada, to find her a husband.

So I was not enrolled there, nor anywhere else. From the age of thirteen I had been tutored at home. By which I mean I received erratic visits from teachers of French, piano and dancing, and Ma taught me the correct way to serve tea. Of the Balkans, or Belgium, or Kaiser Wilhelm, I knew nothing. But I was a fast study, and Ma depended entirely upon me to explain about the Eastern Front.

‘All this rampaging around is most unsettling, I’m sure,’ she said. ‘If only people would be polite and stay in their own countries. Prussians and Russians and Macedonians. It’s all too hectic.’

I was a little confused myself whether the brave Russians who had taken on the Hun were the same ones who had cruelly chased Malka Lelchuck from her home, and I should have liked to ask the Misses Stone about it, but they never called anymore. They were too busy with war work.

Then the Ballet Russe came to the Century Theater and as a reward for recent good behavior I was invited to join Aunt Fish and Uncle Israel to see the opening performance of Petrushka . Preparations began immediately after breakfast when Honey arrived with her burnt-orange Directoire gown and a chocolate-brown velveteen evening coat.

Burnt orange, it turned out, was not my color, but with a little help from Ma’s seed pearl choker and a dab of cream rouge my skin was coaxed out of a tendency to mealiness. The shoe problem was not so easily solved. Honey’s tapestry evening slippers were size 4. My feet were size 7.

The Irish was assigned to do the best she could with a can of boot black and my battered day shoes.

‘No one will see,’ Ma said, ‘if you are careful to take small steps.’

After luncheon I was excused all further duties and sent to my room with instructions to double my dose of Pryce’s Soothing Extract of Hemp and lie still with my eyes closed.

‘Attending a ballet is a very draining business,’ Ma advised me. ‘You must conserve yourself, otherwise you will be no use to me tomorrow and then what shall I do?’

At six I was collected by Uncle Israel’s driver. We no longer had one of our own. After Pa’s death Ma had given him notice.

‘After all,’ she said, ‘we shall hardly be going anywhere.’

Ma had plenty of money, but she seemed always to derive pleasure from small economies.

‘Remember, Poppy,’ Ma called after me as I bounded downstairs to the front door, ‘small steps.’

We ate an early supper of clear soup and epigrams of mutton, and I was supplied with an extra precautionary napkin, to be tied under my chin.

‘It would be a tragedy,’ Aunt Fish said, ‘if Honey’s beautiful gown was ruined, when she has been generous enough to lend it.’

It wasn’t all that beautiful a gown.

Uncle Israel asked, ‘What is it again we’re going to see?’

‘It will come to me momentarily,’ Aunt Fish said, ‘though why you ask I cannot fathom. I see you are quite determined to dislike it, whatever it’s called.’

I suppose musical comedies were more to Uncle Israel’s taste. I suppose he took along the evening paper as a fall-back in case of boredom.