Dave at Night Read Free Page B

dead.
    I heard the clop clop of a horse and cart on Canal Street. Our street was empty. I couldn’t believe anybody lived in the buildings, they were so quiet.
    Only the candy store on the corner was open. The light from its window spilled into the street. I walked around it, staying in the shadow. Mr. Goldfarb was alone inside, leaning on the counter and reading a newspaper. I turned the corner onto Grand Street. The appetizing store was closed. The barrels of pickles that sat on the sidewalk during the day were inside for the night. I tried the door, but it was locked. Too bad. I could have gone in and had a feast—some smoked fish, a few pickles, and, for dessert, dried fruit and pistachios. I could have paid Mr. Schwartz later out of the money the relatives gave me.
    I found three pear wrappers, not at all muddy, in the street outside the appetizing store. I picked them up and held them carefully. People fight over them because fruit wrappers are softer than anything else for wiping your backside.
    I was freezing, so I turned back. Upstairs, Ida was still sleeping. I rolled myself up in the blanket. If Gideon went to Chicago without me, or to Australia, I didn’t care. I could have more fun without him. He would never go outside in his underwear.
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    When nobody was sitting shiva with us, Ida sewed blouses. I hated staying in the house, but she wouldn’t let me go out and play. Most of the time I drew in my school notebook. I copied the animals from Papa’s carving, or I drew faces. Once, I accidentally drew Gideon’s face. I turned him into a girl with long hair and smoochy lips.
    Sometimes I couldn’t sit still. Then I tried to teach myself to walk on my hands, till Ida told me to stop. I did somersaults across the front room, till Ida told me to stop. I hopped on one foot, till Ida told me to stop.
    On Monday my friend Ben Weiss came with his mother.
    â€œWhat’s going on at school?” I asked him.
    â€œNothing.”
    â€œDid we win any stickball games?”
    He shook his head. “Sammy’s been playing first.”
    Sammy! He ducked if a ball looked at him cross-eyed.
    Ben fished in his pocket and pulled out a marble. “I found it in the gutter outside of school. You can have it.”
    It was a beauty, a cloudy yellow-white with a swirl of purple. “Thanks.” Papa dies and people keep giving me things—money, marbles, the carving.
    â€œIzzy beat Sammy up.”
    â€œWe have to go.” Mrs. Weiss stood up. “I have to start cooking.”
    â€œHe gave him a shiner and a nosebleed,” Ben whispered. Then he said out loud, “See you in school.”
    Maybe. Maybe not.
    Aunt Lily and Aunt Sarah came on Tuesday. I didn’t ask Aunt Sarah what she had meant about giving me up. I didn’t want to in front of Ida. Aunt Sarah didn’t say anything about it either. Probably she thought Ida had forgotten and she didn’t want to bring it up. But I knew Ida hadn’t forgotten. She didn’t forget anything that had to do with money. She remembered the exact number of blouses she couldn’t make each time she had to go to school because of me. She remembered every penny Papa ever lost at pinochle. So she wouldn’t forget giving me up. If she could have sold me, I’d have been gone before Papa was dead an hour.

Chapter 4
    W HEN I WOKE up on Wednesday morning, Ida was packing my clothes into a suitcase. Papa was dead a week, shiva was over, and she was giving me up.
    I pretended I was still asleep and watched her. There wasn’t much to pack, only the suit I wore to Papa’s funeral, a change of underwear, Gideon’s cast-off knickers that didn’t fit me yet, and my winter coat, which was too short in the arms and which barely buttoned across my chest. She didn’t pack Papa’s carving or my treasure box, so I got up and put them on top of my clothes. I didn’t ask where I was going. Wherever it