“This shul was built for us by our own people.” She said this proudly, and her finger went up and waved in the air. She knew her mother meant, of course, not that Jews had actually built it with their own hands, but that they had footed the bill.
“They hired the same boys who decorated the homes of the Vanderbilts! That’s America for you girls; we go to a fancy shul even though we live in a poor neighbourhood. Did you know that over in Europe, Bubbe and Zayde have to worship in a nearby storefront?”
Anna understood perfectly well when a question was rhetorical. Her mother might be lecturing, but she wasn’t giving a test — not yet. Nevertheless, she was intrigued.
“You mean like the three synagogues on our street?”
“That’s right, Anneleh, like the ones on our street. Some people still like to worship in those cramped and dark places, and we don’t judge them for that even though we don’t understand why, except that maybe it reminds them of the past. But just look at the place we go to! The architects made sure we had the best. Look at those beautiful doors! So simple and stately. And inside? They made an ark from a tree all the way from Italy. Even that wasn’t grand enough, so they put red velvet lining inside to make sure the Torah had a proper place to rest. And then they built windows so high up they were almost in the ceiling!”
Her arms reached to the sky, and her shirt pulled out a little at the sides, revealing cream-coloured underpants.
“The sun was so bright the day the synagogue opened its doors that people rubbed their eyes to get used to the light pouring in. That was before your mama was born, kinderen, wasn’t it?”
Her mother looked from Anna to her sister and back again. This question wasn’t rhetorical, but how were they to know the answer?
“I dunno.” Anna shrugged, and she looked at Sadie, who did the same.
“Of course it was! That was long before I was born. I’m not that old, you know!” she laughed and gave them both taps on the bum. Then when she looked up again at the street, Anna and Sadie craned their heads back behind their mother and rolled their eyes.
Her mother yanked them forward to continue the story. “This synagogue is a gift — a gift to all of us, and I’ll tell you why. There has never been a shul with a sanctuary that so deserved its name. Doesn’t it feel, girls, that when we breathe in the air inside that hall and feel the warmth from the sun coming in through the windows, and when our ears — oy! — for once in the week, our ears can rest from all the shouting and the haggling — doesn’t it feel like we’re in a sanctuary, girls?”
She pulled them toward her, the end of her story punctuated by the squashing of their faces into her stomach.
Anna observed the building now as she stopped to catch her breath. The doors needed a varnish, and the brickwork was pocked. It was ignored by the crowds of people who crisscrossed in front. She looked up at the awnings on the Chinese storefronts that surrounded it. An old man had set up a rickety table in front of a shop and was sitting behind it on a low stool hawking ties for two dollars apiece. Despair immobilized her for a second — this man could be her father sixty years ago. The same struggle, the same hope, undiminished by any evidence of how seldom America fulfilled her promise.
She pushed aside her cynicism, deciding that it was unsuitable on the day of her mother’s funeral to be thinking of anything but her. She stopped at the foot of the synagogue’s stairs and took a moment, while she caught her breath and smoothed her hair, to admire the height and width of the great wooden doors. Even faded, the deep earthen-brown panels conveyed a feeling of sturdy dignity.
The sweat on her back made her blouse cling to her skin. She had only come a few blocks, but this was July in New York, and she had been rushing. At almost seventy, she should know by now to forget about saving money and just take a cab. She cursed the Manhattan summer, worse than Los Angeles, where at least they had the sense to plant a few trees for shade.
A few deep breaths calmed her before she went down the stairs to the basement. It did not please her that they had to perform the service in the basement, but the main sanctuary had not been used since the ’50s.
The synagogue no longer had a resident rabbi, but her mother wanted to have her funeral in the place where she had worshipped her whole life. Anna had tried to honour her wishes as much as she could stomach them, so she made sure to find someone who could perform the necessary rites, but she had drawn the line at an Orthodox service. She offered to make a donation to the synagogue in exchange for their allowing her to bring in a Conservative rabbi. It was a gamble, but the cash-strapped members let their pragmatism overrule tradition, and agreed.
When she entered the room, she tried to ignore the heating ducts that clung to the ceiling on both sides. Now that she surveyed the room with people in it, she was sure that it would be more than large enough to hold everyone. Pews were set up facing three sides of a raised oak bimah. Her mother’s coffin sat up front, and there was an ancient man sitting beside it reading a tattered paperback.
That Sadie would be coming at all had come as a surprise. For many years now, Anna had wondered if her sister was still alive. When she received the call, it was the first time Anna had heard her voice in over fifty years. Was she somewhere in the room now?
She looked around to see whom she recognized. Her mother’s landlady, Mrs. Huang, gave her a weak smile and then looked away in embarrassment. Mrs. Gutstein, an old neighbour of her mother’s, was being helped by her daughter Danielle to settle into the bench. Her neighbours the Teitelbaums were at the back to the left talking to one another. Other friends sat in the first pew, as she had asked them, to give her support.
She looked around again in case she’d missed her. No, it would be the same old story, Sadie would not show.
For years she had constructed dialogue to prepare herself just in case Sadie ever did reappear, but today, when she had real reason to believe she would finally see her, she could not think of a thing to say. What words could bridge a gulf as wide as half a century? She tried to imagine what Sadie would look like today, but the picture that came to mind was her eighteen-year-old self, a tall girl with a flapper hairstyle. And the way her cheeks were so smooth and tight, especially when she used to smile with her mouth wide open. But that was silly, her face would be quite different now. She pictured someone much older, maybe like Katherine Hepburn. But she shook that image away too, self-consciously snorting to herself.
Sadie would be seventy-two years old, but the voice that played on the answering machine did not sound like the voice of a feeble old woman, and so it complicated her imagination. The message was simple and cold as it echoed against the brick walls in her Jersey City brownstone. She had heard their mother had died and wanted to know if it would be all right to come to the funeral. She left a phone number in Toronto.
Toronto? She had gone to Toronto? For some reason, she had always imagined Sadie in Chicago or San Francisco. Why on earth would she have gone to Canada?
Anna had obsessed before returning the call, and even though she was relieved to get a machine, she was nevertheless so nervous by the time the beep came that before she could catch herself she let out the huge breath that she had been holding in. She cringed, afraid that on the message tape it would sound strangely like a sigh. Never mind, she left simple instructions regarding the service and was grateful not to have to engage in a conversation like that long distance. She did not invite her sister to stay.
Now, here in the synagogue basement, she regretted not extending the invitation, because she found herself twisting in her seat, as she had at her father’s funeral, when she was seventeen years old. As she had at every funeral and every wedding throughout her life.
Then she saw her.
When Sadie stepped through the doorway, Anna recognized her instantly for her height. From her seat, she watched her sister scan the room. She had steel-grey hair, cut shoulder length, and it was parted at the