My two sisters and I shared the one bedroom in the apartment. We were each five years apart. I was the youngest. My parents slept in the living room on a roll-away couch. Once my parents got up on Saturday morning, I plopped into the upholstered chair that looked out to the fire escape where during the spring I grew morning glories in wooden cheese boxes with seeds ordered from the New York City public school system.
Some weekends I’d listen to my mother talk with her friends at the kitchen table as they ate slices of her home-baked cake downed with cups of freshly brewed coffee. They discussed everything—which supermarkets were having the best sales, shared tidbits about their children and husbands, and gossiped about the next-door neighbors who were always fighting. I couldn’t understand how they knew when to speak or move on from one topic to the next.
“Tell your change-of-life baby to leave us alone,” said Dodie, my mother’s friend whose Italian alcoholic husband had died a few years before, an event that she celebrated in her apartment. My mother smiled. She had given birth to me after she’d turned 40 years old, an age when most of her generation was done with having children. Whenever my parents wanted privacy, they spoke Hungarian. But since my mother’s friends only spoke English, they wanted to talk among themselves, and wanted me to leave.
“Oh, let her stay,” said my mother, running her hand through my dark hair. “She won’t bother us.”
Yetta, who lived on the ground floor on our side of the building, didn’t say much. My mother had told me that Yetta was sitting shiva, mourning for her canary that had recently died after seven years of flying around her living room. “How could you?” Yetta spat through the silver bridge wires of her mouth.
“Do what?” said my mother.
“Come downstairs the two of you dressed in black?”
“But Yetta,” said Dodie, chewing on a slice of my mothers yeast cake stuffed with chocolate and nuts. “We knew you were upset about Charlie,” the name of the dearly departed canary. “How could you think we were making fun?” Dodie smelled like an expensive cosmetic counter, always applying moisturizers to her face and body.
Dodie pulled Yetta’s blouse up on her shoulder, which revealed a lavender bra strap. “Matching panties?” Yetta’s husband gambled and gave her a sizable weekly allowance. She was the only one who could afford such luxuries. Later, I found out that one of her son’s was a heroin addict.
Yetta indignantly pulled her blouse back down. “Yes.”
“Tomorrow,” said my mother, “let’s go shopping at Alexander’s. They’re having a sale.” They took a deep breath and sipped hot coffee and placed the cups on the table. Yetta always left a bright pink cupid’s bow on the rim of her cup.