The Lady Business

Another post from my off-again, on-again coming of age novel.

by Susan Matthewson

In our city neighborhood, the blocks were divided by single-lane, gravel-top alleys lined on either side with an eccentric assortment of fences in various states of repair. Every summer morning we gathered in the alley to begin our day and it was there that our imaginations spilled over. We searched for treasure in the trash cans stacked along the fences, fought pretend wars behind trash can barricades, and slew monsters hidden in the fiery incinerators behind each house.

It was also in the alley that we learned about the differences that divide people in more ways than physical boundaries ever can and about the hidden parts of family life that can only be seen from the back alley.

It was from the back alley that we spied on Mrs. Gersten, the lady from somewhere in Europe with the strange accent and dark eyes. The Gerstens had moved in the previous November but an early and harsh winter kept us huddled in our homes and their arrival went almost unnoticed until spring when we’d see her working out in her yard and gradually became aware that she received a steady stream of women visitors at various times during the day.  Soon our mothers began to whisper about Mrs. Gersten and certain repeated phrases wafted over the backyard fences and stuck in our minds without our completely understanding their meaning—phrases like “a camp survivor,” “numbers tattooed on her arm,” “a Jew,” “intellectual,” and “very bohemian.”

We began to spy on Mrs. Gersten because of these whispers and because she was so different from our mothers. Our mothers wore their hair in short permed bobs or stylish chin-length waves. Mrs. Gersten’s hair hung in a heavy, dark, wavy mass down to her waist. She tied it back with colorful scarves, the ends floating free like the wings of a butterfly.

Our mothers wore knee-length Bermuda shorts with crisp cotton sleeveless blouses in the summer or tailored wool pants with silk blouses or button-down oxford shirts in the winter. Mrs. Gersten’s wardrobe knew no season. All year-round she wore black tights and a black leotard covered by wrap-around skirts of a gossamer-like fabric in colorful prints or brilliant solid shades of flamingo, buttercup, sapphire, and emerald. She was a brilliant tropical parrot in a neighborhood of sedate little wrens and sparrows.

Our mothers only wore earrings when they dressed up for church or a special evening out. Their earrings were clip-on designs no bigger than a large button usually set with imitation gems. Mrs. Gersten had pierced ears and wore earrings all the time, even while working in the yard or sweeping her porch. Her earrings did not sit sedately on her ears like our mothers’ earrings did. Mrs. Gersten’s earrings dangled down to her shoulders, they danced, they tinkled, they flashed, they fandangoed like gypsy dancers, and they fascinated us.

Mrs. Gersten was also different from our mothers because she worked and most of our mothers did not work except for Mrs. Clark who taught music at the elementary school and Mrs. DeGrazia who was a nurse in a doctor’s office. But Mrs. Gersten worked at home and it was what she did that we spied on from the alley behind the big concrete incinerator.  For Mrs. Gersten taught modern dance to a collection of similarly clad, leotarded women, many with foreign accents like her own.

We did not exactly understand modern dance so at first we snickered at the grown women contorting their bodies in Mrs. Gersten’s empty dining room, but gradually we fell under her spell and loved watching as she led them through their movements with the soft lights of the chandelier glinting off her blue black hair as it swayed back and forth in rhythm with her body. We came to love her deep rich voice with its strangely accented syllables as she caressed her ladies into celebrating the rites of spring amid the faint echoes of flutes and French horns from the record player.

 “Now my lofflies,” she’d say in her heavy accent, “ve must bend to da breeze and blossom vit da sun. Bend now, tendu, degagé, lift, point the toes, round the back, raise the head, and bloom, bloom, bloom.”

Oh, my, how desperately we wanted to bloom, bloom, bloom and to be one of Mrs. Gersten’s “lofflies.” There in the alley, hidden behind the incinerator, we would point our toes, arch our backs, and lift our heads to the sun. We wanted to bloom, bloom, bloom. We wanted black tights and a leotard, we wanted a feathery filmy skirt that wafted around our legs, but even more we wanted pierced ears and a pair of dancing, dangly earrings.

So we let our mothers’ cautionary whispers about Mrs. Gersten waft away and dissolve in the summer sun while we whispered a promise to each other: we’d have pierced ears by the start of school or die trying.