Hastings Street Blues (Detroit Series Book 2) by Sabra Waldfogel

Author:Sabra Waldfogel [Waldfogel, Sabra]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-07-11T16:00:00+00:00

Abe insisted on driving to Black Bottom to pick Azulee up. “What else should I use my gas coupons for?”

When her father turned down Hastings, Bess glanced down the street. It looked different at night. The groceries and drugstores and dry cleaners were shuttered, but the block was lit up by the pawnbrokers and the liquor stores. Stein, Wexler, Katzman: the names on those storefronts were Jewish. Jews lived elsewhere, but they still did business here.

She said, “I see that Katzman’s is doing a good business.”

Sol Katzman was a distant relative of her father’s, also from Mogilev. In business for himself since he got off the train in Detroit, he opened the liquor store as Jews began to move away from Hastings Street and Black people began to move in.

“Katzman!” her father said. “The capitalist.”

Anna said, “Abe, he’s mishpokhe. He has to make a living, too.”

“Don’t defend him. I know he gouges his customers. He should be ashamed of himself.”

Sol Katzman was too prosperous for Twelfth and Dexter. He now lived in a big house in Northwest Detroit, the ritzy Jewish neighborhood, and he was proud that every year he could buy a new car for himself, and for his wife, a new fur coat.

Abe said to Bess, “Can you believe that this was all Jewish when your mother and I came to America? Kosher butchers, Jewish tailors, delicatessens, shuls. You could hear Yiddish spoken on the street.”

Now the smell of barbecue floated down the street and the sound of lifted voices was Southern and Black.

Azulee waited on the steps of a house that had seen better days. She hadn’t buttoned the old, too-thin coat she wore. Bess now wondered if she couldn’t afford a better one. Once in the car, Azulee pulled her coat around her. She leaned forward to say to Abe, “Mr. Horowitz, thank you so much for taking the trouble to come to get me.”

Abe twisted around to smile at her and to say, “No trouble for a friend of Bess’s! And please, call me Abe.”

Anna also turned around and extended her hand. “It’s good to meet you, Azulee. I’ve heard so much about you from Bess. I’m Anna.”

Azulee gave Bess a quizzical look.

“What?” Bess asked.

“I was raised to call people Mr. and Mrs.”

Was that Southern etiquette or racial protocol? Please, not more of this tonight, Bess thought. “We’re all comrades here,” she said, in the teasing tone from work. “My father is in the UAW.”

At the theater, her parents had just walked inside the door when a woman grasped her mother’s hands. They hugged as though they hadn’t seen each other for months, even though Bess knew full well that they met weekly in the women’s group of the Workmen’s Circle. Her mother’s friend hugged Bess, too. “You’re looking well,” she said. “You’re doing all right in your defense job?”

“Of course,” Bess said. Before her mother’s friend could say anything, she explained, “This is Mrs. Azulee Smith, who works with me at Detroit Aluminum.”

The woman smiled.

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