“How can you stand so much noise?” she asked in dismay when passing under the elevated subway tracks. Little did she know that twenty years later she would live right next to “the el,” as it was called – and would not be able to sleep during a train strike because of the lack of noise to which she’d become accustomed.
* * * * *
During the next two weeks Freida Sima explored the streets of Manhattan, attempted to eat an unknown fruit called a banana – with peel intact – and practiced crossing streets, trying to avoid the unfamiliar, never-ending traffic.
Wanting to sound “American,” she carefully pronounced her first English phrases exactly like her aunt, unaware that even after seven years Tante Marium still spoke like a “greener” and that “coss de stid” and “wayfa monyee” were actually “cross the street” and “wait for Monday.”
And then there were the names. Marium and Sheine had become Molly and Sadie, Yossle was Joe, and she too was expected to Americanize her name. “Why not call yourself Bertha?” suggested Aunt Sadie, a popular name sounding like Babaleh.
“I’ll think about it,” Freida Sima replied tactfully, still unwilling to completely relinquish her European identity.
During her second week in America, Uncle Joe explained that she would soon have to support herself. As her childhood accomplishments of bareback horse-riding, milking cows, and climbing trees were of little help in finding a job, her only option was to find employment as a domestic, just as her aunts had done during their first years in America.
Within days, her family found her a place as a live-in nanny for a traditional Eastern European Jewish family with several children whose father was a pocketbook manufacturer. For the princely sum of three dollars a week she would sleep on a folding cot in the kitchen, take her meals with the family, be responsible for the children, clean the house, and be given Sunday afternoons off to see her family.
But what about her education? That was what had brought her to America in the first place. For years in Europe she managed to continue learning through negotiations with her father, allowed to attend cheder long beyond what was customary for girls in her hometown. Now, for the first time, she found herself in a non-negotiable situation. Daytime school was out of the question and even night school was impossible, as she had to care for the family toddler around the clock.
Freida Sima did not give up easily. Realizing that as a nanny her educational options were limited, she made a tactical decision.
“First, I’ll learn to speak English from the children,” she told herself, especially from the older ones who already attended school. Once she had a decent command of the language she could reevaluate her employment options and begin to fulfill her dream.
The first part of her plan was easy to implement. She developed a natural rapport with the children, who were happy to speak English with her rather than Yiddish, as they did with their parents. Within a few months she spoke a halting but unaccented English and other than a slight inflection, she could pass as a native speaker.
She learned to read English from the children’s schoolbooks and within a year understood newspaper headlines. She was a natural autodidact. On her visits to her aunts and uncles she realized she spoke English better than they did, even though some had been in America for years. She also decided to adopt the American name Bertha, which her family subsequently pronounced “Boytee,” as did their children.
