The Matchmaker's Gift(9)
For the first three months, before Hindel married, Sara slept in the kitchen beside her sister. They scrubbed the wooden dining table every evening, covered it with a blanket, and curled on top of it like cats. Their parents took the smallest, windowless room—the only one with a proper bed—and the three boys shared two cots in the living room. Once Hindel and Aaron were wed, however, Sara was forced to share a cot with her youngest brother, George. Night after night, she lay awake in the dark, listening to the ghastly, perpetual concerto of her brothers’ snores, her sister’s sighs, and the shouting that wafted in from the street. She woke in the mornings stiff and exhausted, took a few bites of bread, and walked with George to the public school on East Fourth Street.
No matter how little she’d eaten or how tired she was, Sara felt a surge of energy when she entered the classroom. Civics and history, arithmetic and reading—there was not a single subject that did not interest her. In Kalarash, only the boys attended school, but in America, half of her classmates were girls. They were not particularly kind to Sara, with her hand-me-down dresses and messy braids, but that did not bother her in the slightest. Living in such cramped quarters with her family meant she longed more for privacy than friends. Loneliness was an unimaginable luxury.
Because of her enthusiasm for school, Sara learned to speak English faster than her siblings. Soon enough, she was borrowing books from her teacher and visiting the Tompkins Square library branch once a week. At night, while her brothers groaned in their sleep, she sat by the window and read her books by the streetlamp’s muted glow. The stories snuffed out the racket down the hall. They quieted the stomping from the neighbors above. They charmed and distracted her just enough so that she was able to let go of the clamor in her head.
The downside, of course, was that she slept even less, and all the squinting in the lamplight weakened her eyes. When her teacher noticed her struggling to see the blackboard, she moved Sara to the front row and sent home a note.
Sara’s mother’s hands trembled as she unfolded the paper. Of course, she could not read the English words. “What does it say?” she asked her daughter. “What is wrong?”
“There’s nothing wrong. Mrs. Stewart says I’m an excellent student. She wrote the note to you and Papa because she thinks I may need eyeglasses. She noticed that it’s sometimes hard for me to see.”
With eight mouths to feed and rent to pay, there was no money in the Glikman home to spare. Sara’s mother refolded the teacher’s note, slipped it into her apron pocket, and frowned. “Don’t worry, Mama,” Sara said. “Mrs. Shapiro owes me some money for helping with her baby. There are a few men selling eyeglasses on Orchard Street. I’ll ask Aaron if he knows who has the best prices.”
The next day, the air of the outdoor market was ripe with the scent of vinegar and salt. Barrels of pickled mushrooms and radishes, cucumbers, and cabbage blocked the street. Pushcarts were piled high with carrots, ripe red apples, and sweet golden onions. Children gathered in clusters around peanut carts while their mothers haggled over the price of fresh eggs. Tempted as she was to buy a cup of borscht, Sara ignored the rumblings of her stomach. Before she bought anything to eat, she needed to know how much the spectacles would cost.
At last, Sara spotted the man she was seeking. Baruch Tunchel sold wire-rimmed spectacles from a pushcart on the corner of Orchard Street and Rivington. A black felt fedora sat high on his head, and a silvery beard cascaded from his chin. Somewhere in the middle, between the hat and the beard, was a noncommittal mouth, a forgettable nose, and eager eyes watching for customers from behind a thick pair of spectacles. Tunchel’s cart was wedged between a hawkish tinsmith and a one-eyed woman selling bananas. Sara tried not to stare at the fraying patch that covered the socket where the woman’s eye should have been. “It’s not easy to sell spectacles beside a blind woman,” Tunchel murmured. “Tell me, young lady, how can I help you?”
“My teacher wrote my mother a note about my eyesight. It’s difficult for me to see the blackboard at school.”
“You’re lucky to have such a kindly teacher. She recommended me to you then, did she?”
“No—my brother-in-law, Aaron, gave me your name. I don’t have a lot of money to spend.” She glanced at the piles of wire rims and lenses. “Which of these is the cheapest?”
Tunchel snorted. “Before you ask the price, you need the proper prescription. You say you have trouble seeing at a distance? What about up close? How is it when you read?”
“Reading is easy enough,” she said. “Though sometimes my eyes get tired at night.”
Tunchel made Sara take ten steps back. He held up a chart marked with large and small letters and asked her to read them, line by line. Then he gave her a pair of lenses to try and asked her to read the letters again.
They repeated this exercise several times, with half a dozen pairs of lenses, until Sara could read even the smallest letters with ease. “That’s the pair!” Tunchel shouted. “Keep them on for a bit. Have a good look around.”
She had been so focused on the chart that she hadn’t once turned her head to see elsewhere. When she did, she could scarcely believe her own eyes. She could discern every spot on the blind woman’s bananas and every outline of the bricks on the buildings behind her. The sky was not simply a great swath of blue—it was thin lines of clouds and wispy patches of gray. Suddenly, Sara was achingly aware of the edges of every cup and kettle stacked on top of the tinsmith’s cart. New York was not as shadowy as she had supposed.