Henry Roth - Call It Sleep

David’s mother stroked her shoulders soothingly. “Hush, dear sister! Don’t weep so, child! You’ll break your heart!”

Aunt Bertha only lamented the more, “Why did I ever set foot on this stinking land? Why did I ever come here? Ten hours a day in a smothering shop — paper flowers! Rag flowers! Ten long hours, afraid to pee too often because the foreman might think I was shirking. And now when I’ve bought with the sweat of my brow a little of what my heart desires, that butcher rends it. Ai!”

“I tried to save you, sister. You must know what he’s like by now. Listen to me, I have some money. I’ll buy you a new pair.”

“Oh! Woe is me!”

“And even the ones you have there may be mended.”

“May his heart be broken as mine is, they’ll never be mended.”

“Look, they’re torn exactly at the seam.”

“What?” Aunt Bertha opened grief stricken eyes. She stared at the drawers a moment and then jumped frenziedly from her chair. “He threw them at me too, dashed them in my face. He flung me to the wall! I’m not going to stay here another minute! I’ll not endure it another minute. I’m going to pack my things! I’m going!” She made for the door.

David’s mother hastened after her. “Wait,” she pleaded, “where will you run at this time of night? Please, I beg you!”

“I’ll go anywhere! What did I leave Europe for if not to escape that tyrant of a father. And this is what I came to — a madman! May a trolley-car crack his bones! Slaughter him, Almighty God!” And she ran weeping loudly into her bedroom.

David’s mother followed her sadly.…

* * *

Although Aunt Bertha did not move out of their house as she had threatened to do, the next day and the next, there was no exchange of communication between her and David’s father. Dinners at night were eaten in silence, and if either of them required anything of the other, David or his mother were impressed as intermediaries. However after several nights of this embarrassing constraint, Aunt Bertha’s self-imposed shackles grew too much for her. Quite suddenly one evening, she broke them.

“Pass me the herring jar,” she muttered — this time directly at her brother-in-law.

His face darkened when she spoke, but sullenly though he did it, he nevertheless did push the herring jar toward her.

Thus an armistice was signed and relations, if not cordial, were at least established. And thereafter, as much as it was possible for her, Aunt Bertha kept her peace.

“He’s a mad dog,” she told her sister. “He has to run. There’s nothing to do but keep out of his way.”

And she did for many months.

VI

“A HEART full of pity!” said Aunt Bertha derisively. “Yes! Yes, indeed! For plucking a tooth out, he asks only fifty cents. You understand what that means? What will hurt me most is only fifty cents. After my teeth are gone, and I look like my grandmother, God rest her where she lies, then his price stiffens. I can see through these bandits, never fear!”

Aunt Bertha had been indulging herself in enormous quantities of sugary, vanilla “bum bonnies” as she called them, “pinnit brettlich” and “turra frurra” ice-cream. Severe toothaches had followed. Aunt Bertha had claimed that during the last few nights she had felt her mouth expand to the size of half a watermelon. Whether it had actually grown that large, David didn’t know, but looking at her green teeth and red mouth he could see a certain resemblance. After much urging, her sister had finally succeeded in getting her to go to the dentist. Tomorrow night he would draw several of her teeth.

“In Veljish,” she continued, “they say that ‘kockin’ will clear the brow of pain. But here in America — didn’t he call it that? ‘Kockin’?—will clear the mouth of pain.”

His father’s newspaper rustled warningly.

“Cocaine?” said her sister hastily.

“Oh, is that how you say it?”

‘Kockin,’ as David had learned long ago, was a Yiddish word meaning to sit on the toilet.

“And another thing,” his aunt indulged in a sly laugh. “I am going to lose six teeth. And of the six teeth, three he called ‘mollehs’. Now isn’t this a miracle? He’s going to take away a ‘molleh’ and then he’s going to make me ‘molleh’.”

David didn’t know what ‘molleh’ might mean in English. He did know that ‘molleh’ in Yiddish had something to do with circumcision. Aunt Bertha was being reckless to-night …

But if his father had suffered because of Aunt Bertha’s puns, the next night it was Aunt Bertha who was suffering. His mother related what had happened. She had sat down very meekly and very quietly in the dentist’s chair, she had shut her eyes when the needle was put in her mouth, she had behaved very bravely. But when the first tooth was drawn and Doctor Goldberg had told her to spit, she had spat — not in the cuspidor beside the chair, but at Doctor Goldberg.

“Very worthy of praise!” his father snorted. “An example for sages!”

“So!” Aunt Bertha forgot her dolor. “May they pull all your teeth out soon. We’ll see how brave and how clever you are then! At least, it gives me satisfaction to think I spat at him, not at myself. And you!” she turned petulantly on her sister. “You’re very clever too! You saw I was stunned with fright! You saw my eyes were shut because my head was whirling so hard I didn’t know where I was. He said open your mouth, I opened it — wide as a sack! Shut it. I shut it. Spit—! Go look for a spittoon when you’re ready to faint! It serves him right for standing in the way.”

His mother’s lips trembled in laughter, but she pressed them soberly together. “I didn’t mean to hurt you, sister. I know how much you’ve suffered already. I’m sorry! But come! You’re three teeth nearer to those golden kernels you admire so much.”

“Nearer?” She touched the bare red gums gingerly. “Emptier you mean. You’re sure he won’t plant the new ones in the holes he’s made?”

“No! No!” His mother reassured her. “He told you, didn’t he? They hang like a gate.”

“Britches, he called them, no?” Aunt Bertha cheered up ruefully. “Pritchig, he ought to call them, a hearth in other words, there’s such a fire in my mouth. But I will look handsomer soon, won’t I?”

“What else!” Her brother-in-law’s cheek scrolled into a sour smile.…

* * *

After Aunt Bertha’s gums had healed, she began visiting the dentist’s twice a week, and at first complained bitterly and went there only with the greatest reluctance. In the space of a fortnight, however, her attitude underwent a remarkable change. She now began to go there eagerly, expectantly, and to stay sometimes twice as long. There were no longer any complaints, no longer any detailed descriptions of the various types of pain different dental instruments could inflict. All that seemed to have been forgotten. A new excitement had seized her, a guilty excitement that made her run to a mirror and regard herself closely and then look about to see if she was being watched. She began to fuss with her hair and blouse, arch her short neck, smile in a way that would reveal her temporary gold crown, dowse herself with densely redolent perfume. Something was wrong. At least twice a week David was excluded from the kitchen while she bathed in the washtubs. And here it was Autumn. And she bought face powder which caked and flaked on her cheeks and looked very queer and white flecking her reddish eyebrows. Something was very wrong. Presently her visits to the dentist’s increased from two to three times a week and shortly to four.

This unwonted frequency, unwonted eagerness and strange behavior in general had aroused not only the curiosity of David and his mother, but his father’s silent, impassive questioning as well. To his mother’s circumspect inquiries, Aunt Bertha had at first explained that there was much work being done on her teeth, work of a subtle and occult nature, a delicate prying and adjusting that could only be felt but hardly demonstrated. Of course, she confessed with a cryptic giggle, were she to insist, she could probably get the same amount of work done in two visits as easily as in four, but she really preferred going there as many times as possible. It was so pleasant being there now, she explained. There was hardly any pain, or at least so little it wasn’t worth mentioning. One grows accustomed to sorrows, she elucidated. And beside, the waiting room where all the patients gathered was so homelike, and the people so fluent in English that it was both pleasant and instructive to be among them. Also, it was disclosed, Doctor Goldberg’s wife frequently came into the waiting room to chat with them in really “fency Engalish.” And what especially put everyone at their ease was that while Mrs. Goldberg conversed in this very superior English, she also carried on some homely domestic duty such as chipping noodles or mixing the batter of a sponge-cake. Aunt Bertha would show his mother some day how to make a sponge-cake. And so it was all homely and refined. And of course, one had to look decent! And she, Mrs. Goldberg, had introduced Aunt Bertha to a very fine man, albeit a Russian, who was a children’s leggings’ cutter and who was having the identical type of work done to his mouth that was being done to Aunt Bertha’s. His name, by the way, was Nathan Sternowitz, and was he jolly! And so, all over again, it was all very homelike, very jolly and very refined.