The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street: A Novel Read Free Page B

moment, I hadn’t known that my father smoked. “Ah, but so what?” As he ground out the butt with his foot, he winked at me with a delicious look of conspiracy. “We got to see plenty, didn’t we, kindeleh ?”
      
    Back at the immigration hostel, Papa described what we’d seen to the other men. Since I was too little to be left on my own, he’d smuggled me into the men’s dormitory. He placed me on his mat in the corner, where everyone promptly forgot about me. It was a bit like being in synagogue. Most of the men in the room kept their hats and yarmulkes on and bowed over prayer books. Some sat propped against the wall with their eyes shut. But Papa had a coterie of friends who seemed to have carved out a special club for themselves in the back. Their hats and jackets lay flung about. Pale tobacco smoke filled the air. Men were dealing cards and passing around a flask. Papa sat on a stool with his legs splayed out, his collar unbuttoned, his shirtsleeves rolled up. He was far livelier than he ever was at home—commanding, jovial—sitting in the center of the men like a little czar, slapping some of them on the back, doling out cigarettes, kibitzing with all of them.
    “What you saw today, that was a ‘moving picture,’” a heavyset man said. He had pockmarked cheeks, and every time he slapped one of his cards down on a stool, the flesh of his jowls shook. The air around him smelled of wet wool, smoke, rotting onions. “These moving pictures, they come from America.”
    “Keep watching them, Herschel,” a scrawny man said, patting my father on the back. “In three weeks’ time, I’ll be in one of them.”
    Papa hooted.
    “What?” The scrawny man insisted, “You think I’m going to America to keep being a tailor? You can be anything you want there.”
    “Not a lot of moving pictures in Africa, from what I hear, H ersc h.” The pockmarked man grinned. “What kind of Jew goes from Russia to Africa, I’d like to know.  It’s not enough we spent forty years wandering in the desert already? You want you should go back for forty more?”
    “The Cossacks aren’t enough for you, Hersch?” teased another man in a torn brown coat.
    My father leaped up, kicked aside his chair, and motioned to him. “Okay, Yossi, you big macher .” Papa rolled up his sleeves and stood in a pose with his hands cocked, beckoning. “Friends.” He grinned magnanimously. “Who wants to bet?”
    The men laughed nonchalantly. My father lunged forward and began pummeling Yossi. There was a violent explosion of shouting, cheering. Stools fell over. I saw Papa wallop someone in the head, then the man in the brown coat lock his elbow around Papa’s neck.
    “Papa!” I shrieked.
    The men stopped and turned to me.
    “Stop! Don’t hurt my papa!”
    All of them, including Papa, burst out laughing. I started to cry.
    “Oy, you’ve scared the child,” someone said. “Very nice, you two.”
    The man in the torn brown coat released Papa and took a step back. “Saved by your little girl, Hersch. Lucky schmuck.”
    Papa looked at me. “We’re just playing, kindeleh .”
    Tears were running down my face. “Papa,” I wailed. “I don’t want you to die!”
    He gave a little incredulous laugh. “No one’s dying.”
    When I wouldn’t stop crying, he shook his head. “Ach. Come here.” I was reluctant to approach him in the midst of all the big, ungainly men, but Papa held out his arms. He knelt down and rumpled my hair. His embrace felt marvelous.
    Motioning for the flask, he took a swig, then wiped his mouth on the back of his wrist. He grabbed my right hand firmly in his. “Make a fist,” he ordered.
    Somebody laughed. The men were in a semicircle around us. A few of them had rotting teeth, breath like sour cabbage. I tried to ignore their gaze.
    “Tighter,” Papa instructed. “Like a rock. Okay. Good. Now the other one, too. Very good. Now hold them like this.” Reaching out, he adjusted me in a pose, with my