My mother never let me out of the house on Saturday night without making a stink. “Those women, they smile in your face but behind your back they’re laughing at you and calling you a filthy Yid.”
I didn’t say anything back. We both knew that I was going to go—no matter what. Levine was paying me good money, which meant she could buy chicken every week and didn’t have to do as much piecework sewing at home.
I kept enough to save for Rockport Lodge and even buy myself something now and then. The first thing I bought was a green felt cloche. You know what I’m talking about? A hat that’s shaped like a bell and fits around your face.
In my whole life I never enjoyed buying anything more than that hat. It wasn’t expensive but it was stylish and I felt like a movie star when I wore it. I loved that hat.
My mother took one look and said it made me look like a meeskeit, ugly. That hurt my feelings and made me so mad, I told her I wasn’t going to talk to her unless she used English. And by the way, she knew enough to understand every piece of gossip she heard in the grocery store.
I said it was for her own good. “What if you had an emergency and I wasn’t there?”
“So then I’ll be dead and you’ll be sorry,” she said, in Yiddish, of course.
After that, when she suddenly needed me to run to the store or get my father at shul—always on a Saturday night—I shrugged and slammed the door on my way out. I was feeling my oats, as they used to say. What could she really do? Without what I earned, she would be back to sewing sheets ten hours a day and eating potatoes every night.
Money is power, right?
Maybe I wouldn’t be a wallflower after all.
I’m not sure how much you want to know about your grandmother’s love life. Not that I had so many boyfriends.
My first kiss was that summer in Rockport when I was sixteen. There was a dance, and since there was a coast guard training camp in town, there were always more men than women, so all the Rockport Lodge girls knew they’d be dancing.
I had never been to a dance so Rose taught me the fox-trot and the waltz. She said I was a natural. “If anyone asks you to do anything fancy, just say you’re out of breath and would he like to sit this one out with you.”
Of all the girls, I really did not have anything to wear, but Filomena tucked and basted one of Helen’s dresses so it looked like it had been made for me. Irene pomaded my hair and piled it on top of my head and Gussie pinched my cheeks for color.
When they were finished, I went to look at myself in the bathroom mirror. It was like one of those before-and-after pictures. When I looked in that mirror on the first day I was there, I saw a pale, scared girl with circles under her eyes. But here was a grown-up woman with a daisy behind her ear, smiling to beat the band.
My brown hair was lighter from the sun and with it pulled back and all fancied up, I could see that Celia wasn’t the only Baum girl with an oval face and wide eyes. Maybe I wouldn’t be a wallflower after all.
The dance was in an empty barn that smelled of bleach and horses. There was a Victrola in the corner playing a waltz, but the town girls were all bunched up in one corner, whispering and staring at the coast guard cadets in their sharp white uniforms, who were leaning against the opposite wall, smoking cigarettes.
“Elegant, ain’t it?” Irene said.
When we walked in, the cadets straightened up, and right away Helen, Irene, and Filomena were out on the dance floor. Rose took me to the refreshment table, where a very tall cadet was standing near the punch bowl. “Allow me, ladies,” he said and filled us each a cup.
He was so tall that I had to tilt my head up to look at him. His hair was as black as Filomena’s but very fine and parted on the side. His eyes were dark blue—almost purple—with the kind of long eyelashes girls dream about. He looked me over and said, “Green suits you.”
I was so nervous I almost said, “You, too.”
He asked if I liked to dance.
Rose said, ‘‘Addie can really cut a rug. What about you?”
“I’m not bad, if I say so myself. My mother taught me. By the way, I am Harold George Weeks from Bath, Maine.”
Rose shook his hand. “I’m Rose Reard
on and this is Addie Baum. We’re from Boston.”
“Nice to meet you, Miss Reardon. First time in Rockport, Miss Baum?”
Just then the record changed and he grabbed my hand. “The turkey trot is a snap. Four steps in a box and then you hop.”
Before I knew what was happening, we were on the dance floor and he had his hand on my back. He leaned down and whispered, “Don’t think,” and the next second, I was hopping and spinning around the room and having the time of my life. We were practically flying in circles but somehow I wasn’t getting dizzy.
I was completely out of breath when the song ended but Harold didn’t let go when a fox-trot started playing. I was counting the steps in my head, but I kept losing track and stumbling. Harold pulled me closer to him—he smelled like lemons and leather—and said, “You’re thinking. Just follow me and you’ll be fine.” He really knew what he was doing, because the way he steered me around the floor made me look good.