Family Secrets Read Free Page A

ya.” Adam nodded solemnly. “Now, you remember that we are still going to buy that land. Next week, on Monday, I’ll be here to meet you and we’ll start to work.”
    Yussel nodded and clasped Adam’s hand. “Work is good medicine for grief. My mother used to say that, may she rest in peace.”
    “Your mother was a smart woman.”
    It was not so bad in the apartment in the evenings, for then the men came back from work and Adam had someone to talk to. He could never talk to women. He looked around at the faces of the people he had known for years, so many of them married to relatives, so many of the faces alike, all of them looking for security in a hard world and a strange land. A man should be married. A man should not live alone like a dog.
    The baby screamed in her bed in the night. Polly’s younger sister, Lucy, rose immediately and went into the dark room to comfort her. She came out carrying the baby, soothing her with soft words and little kisses. Adam watched them. Lucy was so young and small, only twenty. She almost never spoke, which he liked, and when she did her voice was gentle and she never said anything stupid. She was small, but she was not frail looking. Polly’s height had been deceptive; she was thin and she had not been strong and she had died of an illness that took old people and babies. Looks could fool you. He followed Lucy into the kitchen.
    “I’m making tea, Adam. Would you like some? Or would you prefer coffee?” She was speaking to him in Yiddish.
    “You don’t speak English?” he asked.
    Lucy blushed. “Oh, yes,” she said in English. “I studied at night school. But sometimes, with the family, I feel more comfortable when I speak Yiddish …” She smiled shyly and buried her face in the baby’s soft hair. She still had the child cradled in one arm, the child half-asleep now, her face cuddled in Lucy’s neck, drooling on her clean white shirtwaist. With the other hand Lucy kept on measuring the spoonfuls of tea. It was a small, square, capable hand.
    “There’s nothing wrong with that,” Adam said.
    “I’ll put her back to bed soon,” Lucy said. “She had a bad dream. She misses her mother and she doesn’t understand what happened.”
    “She needs a mother.”
    Lucy nodded and hoisted the baby higher on her hip.
    “She’s too heavy for you,” Adam said.
    “No, it’s all right.”
    “I’ll take her. You make the tea.” He took Leah Vania from Lucy’s arm and realized how heavy the child must have been for her. He liked a woman who loved children. The baby recognized him in her sleep and put her fat arms around his neck. Lucy smiled at them.
    “What a pretty picture that makes,” she said.
    “A sad picture,” Adam said. “A young man alone, twenty-four years old, and an orphan child. I suppose they’ll put her in an orphanage now.”
    Lucy paled. “Oy, no! We would never let them do that!” She put her fingers delicately to her lips and made a soft puffing sound into them: her way of spitting on the floor to keep away evil, her gentle New World version of the coarse Old World custom she still believed in.
    “I have to work hard all day to make a living,” Adam said, “Who would take care of the child?”
    “We will! All of us. I promise you, Adam, they would have to kill me first before I would let them take away your child.” The color had returned to Lucy’s face and she was having trouble catching her breath. He hoped she wouldn’t cry. He hated women who cried. She didn’t cry: she turned to the kettle in which the water had begun to boil and deftly wrapped a dish towel around the handle, then poured the freshly boiling water over the tea leaves and put the cover on the teapot so the tea could steep. Then she looked at him again. She was breathing normally.
    “I think I would rather have coffee,” Adam said.
    “Yes? All right,” she said calmly, and took the tin of coffee from the shelf.
    “No, don’t bother,” he said. He put his