Sima's Undergarments for Women Read online

  She sat next to Lev the next time he came over with Art and Connie. He told her a few jokes, made her smile. She liked the way he looked at her, softly complimented her earrings—nothing, she told him, fake rubies she’d won at a carnival with Connie when they were thirteen. And while she wished she were back there, on the Ferris wheel holding hands and shrieking, giggling, coasting through the black night above the bright lit-up booths with the buttered smell of popcorn in the air and the excitement of the crowd below and money in their pockets; while she turned to Connie to remind her and saw her arms wrapped around Art’s neck and whispering; while she felt inside the downward swoop of the Ferris wheel as it descended, too quickly, toward the dark parking lot pavement, she found herself saying yes, she was free next Saturday night, yes, she’d like to see a movie with him.

  He whispered to her in the dark of the theater, his breath warm against her skin, made her laugh so that an older couple sitting behind them said, “Sshhh!” and Sima, thrilled to be taking part in such a display, leaned her cheek against his shoulder and thought how nice it fit.

  After the movie he walked her home, hands held warm together as they strolled down quiet streets. They pointed out the houses they liked best—one with a wide porch, another with a slim, ivy-draped balcony—and Sima thought how it could always be that way: looking into their future as easy as looking through the windows of other people’s houses, gold squares of light in a dark night.

  Sima walked along 13th Avenue, Boro Park’s main commercial boulevard, on her way to meet Connie for lunch. Friday afternoon and the sidewalks and streets were packed with pre-Shabbos shoppers, a chaos of double-parked cars, blocked hydrants, beeping horns.

  In the sidewalk-crush beside a peddler (psalm-inscribed key chains and pictures of Jerusalem arranged along a folding table), Sima had to step aside to let a brigade of strollers pass. Nearly all the women wore tailored suits (light shirt, black skirt cut just below the knee, nude stockings, low heels), their makeup neatly applied, their wigs (brown or auburn, less often blond, but all of them perfectly straight) cut in clean lines around their face. The women pushed strollers: single, double, triple; the older children trailing behind or rushing ahead (“Menachem, stop at the corner!”) or, if old enough, pushing an extra stroller themselves.

  Passing Netanya Grocery, Sima stopped to say hello to its owner. Eddie wore jeans, a worn T-shirt, and a knit kippah; a gold magen davod, Star of David, hung from a chain around his neck. “What can I get for you?” he asked. He mentioned the melon, the pamelos—special from Israel. “On my way home,” Sima promised, stepping aside as Eddie bent down to greet a curly-headed three-year-old clinging to her mother’s leg.

  A cluster of yeshiva girls stood gossiping on the corner, backpacks slung over button-down shirts, dark tights under pleated skirts. Sima knew the yeshiva by the uniform: Bais Rivkah a white blouse, blue sweater-vest, and tartan blue skirt; Bais Tzipporah a powder-blue shirt worn with a navy skirt. Across the street, a few teenage boys averted their eyes and looked, averted their eyes and looked again. They dressed exactly like their fathers: black suits, white shirts, black hats and shoes, curled payot dangling beside their ears. The only exception was their lack of beards; they grew stubble on sweaty upper lips, rubbed at patches of thin hair on their cheeks. Sima knew what they couldn’t quite believe—the beard would come.

  And with it the wife, the children.

  Sima passed the girls, nodding hello to one of them—Sarah Gold’s daughter, though Sima couldn’t remember her name.

  As she crossed the street, a man rushed past her—close, but careful not to touch. Sima watched him as he walked away, talking loudly into his cell phone in Yiddish. Although she couldn’t walk 13th without running into someone she knew, aside from the store owners, those someones were almost always women. Men were an anomaly in her shop; she wouldn’t recognize the husbands of some of her most loyal customers. And though Sima could identify each Hasidic sect by subtle differences in the men’s clothing—this hat, that coat, this stocking—she was herself, as a nonobservant Jewish woman, an outsider.

  Boro Park had always been her home, and her store was a neighborhood fixture. But no one gathered at her table for Shabbat dinner, no one caught her up on the gossip outside synagogue on Saturday. Lev talked sometimes of moving—Florida, like everyone else. But she knew she’d never survive there: the highways, the shopping malls, the streets that curled one into another, stealthy cul-de-sacs that entrapped.

  She liked the numbered grid, ugly as it was. She liked even the noise, the traffic, the rudeness; for every shopkeeper who smiled hello there’d be another who shouted into a cell phone, gesticulating angrily.

  Boro Park was a community.

  Sima could glance in some of the passing baby carriages, see through the baby’s sleeping face and into the grandmother’s just like that—the generations known to her. Together they moved through the days, weeks, seasons: the rush and then rest of each Shabbat; the joy of each holiday. By late August the shop windows were displaying their best for the High Holidays: dark velvet for the girls; wool suits for their mothers. A few weeks later and you could buy from parked trucks lulav and etrog—palm frond, willow, and myrtle woven together, citron on the side— while families erected their own sukkot, makeshift outdoor huts, in the alleys and on the balconies in honor of the harvest holiday. Simchat Torah brought dancing in the street; Hanukah doughnuts in the bakeries. For Purim, costumes crowded the children’s stores and every school prepared its own carnival. In the days before Passover small piles of bread product burned in the streets, the fires carefully tended by shop owners who shooed away the eager school children.

  Even for Sima, who participated in so little of it, the holidays brought excitement and comfort. In Boro Park there was order to the passing of time.

  It helped.

  Sima stopped at the butcher, bought chicken breast and brisket. Sharif, a young Turkish man whom the locals nicknamed Sheriff, rang up her purchases while she dropped a quarter into each of the counter donation boxes: the local ambulance service, kosher food packages for Israeli soldiers, and money for infertility treatments: “I will greatly multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens” the last box read.

  Outside the Dairy Delicious, Sima ran into Tova Braunschweiger, an occasional customer. They kissed hello, Sima asked after her grandchildren, Tova promised to stop by soon. After an exchange of “Good Shabbos,” Sima stepped into the restaurant. She saw Connie wave to her from one of the sought-after corner booths; the woman sitting opposite Connie turned too, smiled hello. Sima smiled back, trying to remember if she’d met the woman before. She was disappointed that Connie had brought someone; Sima always felt a little possessive of Connie, who had so many friends.

  “Meet Suzanne,” Connie said, as Sima approached, “Art’s new secretary.” Art was a partner in a local family law firm; a terrible business for Boro Park, he’d joke, where hardly anybody divorced. “I’m showing her around, your shop is next.”

  Suzanne (divorced, two teenagers, Bay Ridge born and raised, Connie casually dropping each detail in between debating and then placing a food order while Suzanne filled in the sketch: a “good for nothing” husband, twins, the house a wedding gift from her parents) would be pretty if she didn’t try so hard: makeup like a teenager herself, Sima thought, and the dangling diamond cross only drawing attention to poorly supported cleavage.

  Their food arrived as a Hasidic family sat down at the table next to them. Suzanne looked over and then back to Connie. “Tell me,” she asked, her voice just above a whisper, “is it true they do it through a sheet?”

  Connie rolled her eyes. “This is the number one thing people ask,” she said, unwrapping the straw for her Diet Coke. “Honest, we go on vacation to wherever—Hawaii, Bermuda—and if I get talking about where we’re from, what it’s like, everyone wants to know this.”

  “Well?”

  “Ask Sima, she knows all their secrets.”

&
nbsp; Suzanne looked at her with wide eyes, waiting. “Right. All their secrets. And by the light of the moon we prick our fingers and mingle our blood.”

  “Really?”

  Sima stared at her. “What ‘really’? I’m joking. I have no idea what they do and don’t do, though I’d be pretty surprised if it involved holes in sheets. One thing I can tell you, though, whatever they do, it works.” She motioned with her chin toward the crowd of strollers at the front door.

  Suzanne looked, laughed. “So many kids. God. How do the women stay so polished? When Mark and Mel were little, I was a wreck; it was all I could do to shower.”

  “Me, with Howie and Nate,” Connie said, “two boys—”

  Sima pasted on a smile and stabbed at her salad, waited for the meal to end and the crush to carry her home, where she wouldn’t light the candles, wouldn’t make a special meal, no challah, no wine, just her and Lev and quiet before goodnight.

  2

  TIMNA RETURNED THE NEXT WEEK. “WAS THERE A problem?” Sima asked, remembering the stare, but Timna said no, just her cousin had put an old bra in the dryer and the underwire had bent. “Luckily,” she told Sima, “I knew where to come.”

  “Well then,” Sima said, “let’s see what we can get you.”

  Sima went straight for the most intriguing lingerie this time, choosing a deep green bra with leaf-embroidered straps and an ivory tulle demi-cup popular with brides. They both cost more than Timna could probably afford, but Sima had already resolved to bring down the price. It was worth it to see such gorgeous bras on the right body, and the green wasn’t something she’d have an easy time selling otherwise; she’d bought it on a whim, unable to resist it when she saw it in the catalog.

  As she approached the dressing room, the doorbell chimed again. Sima pressed the bras into Timna’s hand and turned to see Sylvie Rosenthal walk in, asking for slips.

  “I’m going on a cruise to the Caribbean,” Sylvie said while Sima drew aside hangers on a clothing rack, searching for a size 5. “For one of the ship dining rooms, you need to dress for dinner. Poor Herbie, I haven’t even told him yet that we’re going to need to buy him two new suits.”

  “Two? What, are you going to eat there every night?”

  “Absolutely. You think I’m going to give up a chance to dress for dinner? I’ve always wanted to do that. It’s like something out of an old movie.”

  “If only life really was like in the old movies,” Sima said, handing her two beige slips, “an orchestra playing, and everyone so beautiful.”

  Timna pulled aside the curtain as they neared the dressing room, modeling the green bra. “Why were you hiding this one last time?” she asked Sima, teasing. “It’s the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  Sima looked at the lay of the green silk against her skin, a lizard asleep on desert sand—dangerous, alluring. She shook her head, admiring. “You’re right. It couldn’t look better.”

  “Is that gorgeous,” Sylvie said, kicking off her heels as Sima, stepping inside the dressing room, closed the curtain behind the three of them. “I’d try it myself, but I think it’d give my husband a heart attack.”

  Sima watched the two women change: Sylvie grown thin with age, the outline of bone visible beneath pale-veined skin; Timna all soft curves as she buckled the ivory bra across her breasts, slid her shoulders through the straps.

  “Finally one that’s not quite perfect,” Sima told Timna as she stood back to evaluate, “just a touch too big. Here, turn around.” While Timna faced the mirror, Sima moved behind her and pulled at each side of the bra. “See how much better?” she asked, drawing two pins through the tulle to mark the alteration. “Now you’re ready for the wedding.”

  “Right. And the green bra I wear on the honeymoon.”

  Sima grinned; turning to Sylvie, she angled her head to check the hem. “And you, unless you’re going to be wearing a train, that slip has got to be shortened.”

  “So, what else is new?” Sylvie took off the slip and gave it to Sima. “Where’s the Russian?” she asked, pulling on her skirt as Sima opened the curtain, the ivory bra and beige slip draped over one arm like a waiter, “You never do alterations yourself.”

  “Her husband took a job upstate,” Sima told her. “I’m looking for another.”

  “Are you hiring?” Timna asked, pulling on her navy T-shirt that, Sima noticed, did not quite cover the curve of her belly. “Because I really can sew. My grandmother was a seamstress, and she taught me—”

  Sima looked at Timna, surprised. She thought to dismiss the suggestion—what would someone like Timna want with her shop, all day in a basement with middle-aged women—but didn’t want to seem rude.

  “Oooh, hire her,” Sylvie said. “You’ll get a seamstress and a model in one.”

  Sima forced a smile. “Let me ring up Sylvie, and then we’ll talk.”

  Sylvie paid in cash and, kissing Sima, promised to return the next day for the slip. Timna waved goodbye to her like a beauty queen.

  “So,” Sima asked, leaning over the counter, “tell me, how did you find my shop anyway?” She’d been wondering about it all week, fantasizing that she’d made it into an Israeli tour book of New York City.

  Timna touched her necklace—a thin gold chain—twisted it lightly. “Actually, I was just walking down the street and I saw some women leaving with bags—”

  “What? Last week?”

  Timna nodded. “So I asked, was there a shop inside the house, and they said yes. I’m looking for work, and I’d already stopped in a bunch of clothing stores on that main avenue—”

  “Thirteenth—”

  “But no one was hiring.” Timna paused a moment, looked down at the counter and then up at Sima, smiling. “The truth is, I came back today to see what happened with your seamstress. I haven’t had much luck so far—I don’t exactly have a work visa, which complicates things—and you’d mentioned she might be leaving—”

  Sima leaned back from the counter, too impressed by Timna’s resourcefulness to be disappointed about the tour book. So many of her customers complained about their children, “They’re so lazy, they don’t know what it is to work,” while here, she told Timna, was a young woman literally walking the streets for a job. Timna shrugged off the praise, explained that she didn’t know her cousins, didn’t want to take advantage, and Sima warmed further to that dismissal—she believed in brushing off a compliment.

  Sima asked how it was she didn’t have an accent, and watched as Timna, her hands thrust casually into her back pockets, explained her flawless English: a year in Australia when she was nine—something about her father’s business that Sima didn’t quite catch: importing, electronics—then later shedding that accent for an American one mastered through movies, television, music. She marveled at how simple Timna made it sound: language like clothing you could try on and take off, choosing the best fit.

  “Any more questions?” Timna asked, her head angled toward her shoulder, teasing.

  Sima glanced at the counter, avoiding Timna’s wide smile. She worried whether her customers would be put off by Timna’s beauty; her store was a space they could trust, one where the only evaluation they underwent was how well something fit—the body the given, the clothing forced to work for it. And then there was Timna to think about: she was young and energetic; she’d die of boredom.

  “There are so many Israelis moving to New York all the time,” Sima told her, “there are cafés, bars—you could probably get a job where you’d have a chance to meet more young people, no?”

  Timna paused, a slight frown as she withdrew her hands from her pockets, brought them together before her. Sima listened to her assurances—she’d waitressed before and didn’t want to do it again; she was interested in fashion, planned to study design, and looked forward to the opportunity that this job might afford her—and though she suspected the last line was well rehearsed, Sima was pleased despite herself to hear Timna’s enthusiasm: she’d never had a seamstress ex
press such interest before.

  “How long are you here for?” Sima asked.

  “Nine months, until—”

  “Until your boyfriend gets out of the army, that’s right.” Sima looked down at the counter, scratched at an imaginary stain. “The hours here are ten to six, Sunday through Thursday. The pay is only ten dollars an hour, but then it’s off the books.”

  Timna nodded. “That sounds great.”

  Sima looked up, forced herself to resist one final time the pull of Timna’s tentative smile. “To be honest,” she told Timna, so that she might always be able to say I warned her, “I don’t know if this is what you’re looking for. It’s not high fashion here; my biggest sellers are support bras, and the alterations we do are basic—there’s only so much you can do to a bra. As you can see,” Sima said, gesturing weakly across the shop floor, “it’s function rather than fancy.”

  Timna turned, and Sima followed her gaze. The store was crowded with furniture: a cluttered wooden sewing table; a few fold-up chairs for sitting; two oval metal racks thick with slips, nightgowns, and bathrobes. Along one wood-paneled wall hung a few faded posters sent free by lingerie companies—a manicured hand unhooking a nursing bra; a bouquet of lilacs fanned against a white silk camisole—along the other long shelves stacked high with boxes stretched above the counter, marked in a code only Sima understood. A dusty ray of light from the shop’s sole window shone on the sea-green linoleum floor, illuminated curved indentations long since gone to gray.

  Timna looked at Sima, smiled. “I just, I’d so much prefer working in a neighborhood shop like this to working with beer and French fries.”

  Sima hesitated a moment, but her urge to please Timna won. “Welcome aboard,” she said.

  Timna clasped her hands like a child.

  Sima looked out the living room window as Timna approached, ten minutes early for her first day of work. She’d hardly slept for worry—what would they talk about, what might she say—eventually convincing herself that Timna wouldn’t come at all, a conviction that alternately relieved and annoyed her.