The Milkman’s Daughter
Teplitsky tipped his hat as Mrs. M passed, Solly in her arms, Gilbert clinging to a fold in her skirt, behind her the pretty blondela Minnie herding Ruth and Lillian. At home, Teplitsky knew, Mrs. M’s son Frank slept, while Eva and Clara laundered their father’s work clothes in the battered wringer-washer. Teplitsky knew because he knew everything about almost everyone in this little corner of North Philadelphia. Strawberry Mansion it was called. Funny. The only mansion for the refugees who settled here was a wish in the mind.
Every morning from a bench in front of his candy store he observed Mrs. M turn the corner on to York Street and slip into the bakery for rolls, the butcher for marrow bones or brisket. In the dairy shop, a pinch on Minnie’s cheek came with an extra slice of butter from a gentleman from the Ukraine whose future granddaughter in another century would be a judge. About that, of course, Teplitsky did not know; in 1936 such a thing was not in his wildest imaginings, that a Jewish girl could rise to such heights.
Mrs. M nodded to Teplitsky. She felt no love for this man, the bane of mothers he was, hiring their sons to run numbers, enticing them to a fool’s game in his den of evils. She raised her chin and marched on, her babies kvetching in the August humidity, and allowed herself a moment of delirium, an image of a muslin easy chair, her feet upon a fringed stool. Perhaps some day…
“Tell Frank I need him this afternoon,” Teplitsky called after her, no aggravation intended; he didn’t know what she was thinking. He folded his Yiddish newspaper, sick at heart from the daily reports of a tyrant threatening to kill every Jew in Europe, then turned into his shop where, indeed, he did make book for the sons and husbands of exhausted women like Mrs. M, and run a nightly pinochle game in his back room. From all over Philly they came to sit under a single light bulb hanging from the cracked ceiling, cigarette smoke curling up, around and between them, aspiring, dissipating like dreams.
* * *
At home, Mrs. M checked on the progress of the laundry and woke Frank. “Teplitsky the gonef needs you, he said I should tell you.” Frank rolled over, his shirt soaked with sweat, and stretched. All night he played cards, all morning he slept, all afternoon he ran numbers. And each week he tossed a few coins into the household pushka; for this she was grateful. But not for the surprise visits from the police, the raids, when she would rush to gather the tell-tale numbers and flush them down the toilet, while he managed the questions in the front room. From those occasions she had palpitations and struggled to quiet herself.
The bread-and-butter sandwiches and sliced banana Mrs. M placed on the table soon vanished and a settled calm fell over the room. Frank put on a clean shirt and wandered out, Ruth and Lillian lolled on a settee that tipped precariously to one side. Clara and Eva returned to their chores. Minnie . . . Minnie was Minnie, preening for a blackened mirror as if for an audience. Sunday, at the flea market, maybe we can find a better mirror, thought Mrs. M, as she washed Solly and Gilbert, wrapped their bottoms with clean rags, and placed them in her bed for naps. A lovely girl should have a real mirror to see her possibilities, to map a future.
She heard the call of the iceman in the alley and ran out as he placed a chunk of ice in a metal box near the kitchen door. “Shush! The babies are sleeping,” she whispered.
“And the milkman’s daughter?” he called over his shoulder, mounting his wagon and urging his nag forward.
“You stay away from my Minnie,” warned Mrs. M, fed up with the lewd comments endured by her pale beauty. Where did she come from? they asked. How did she land in a family swarthy as Gypsies? A pogrom, Mrs. M never said but wondered. Or a rape on a dark lane beyond the shtetl, in another country, another time. Century upon century, havoc, terror. Memories etched in the bones, the brain, tattoos on the long arm of time.
But here in their tiny house with its marble stoop and bouncing floors and neighbors like family there was a sense of safety. Not a feeling in the heart. That could never be for Mrs. M and her old-world friends. Safety would exist in the hearts of her children and their children, God willing.
For her Minnie, maybe. Her Minnie had airs. No one’s mind worked like hers. What she saw for herself they did not understand. One day she was a movie star, another day a princess. (Was the rapist a prince? Mrs. M sometimes mused.) Her daughter drew pictures of castles, houses with flowers and trees. When she read books about other children, she longed for their lives. Their parents wore beautiful suits and dresses and helped them with their homework. Police did not barge through the front door and scare them. Everyone spoke English.
Mrs. M’s husband, Jake, often ordered her to shake Minnie free of her daydreams, prepare her for her lot in life. She would marry a boy from the neighborhood, maybe a roofer like her father, with a little luck a shopkeeper. She would have babies. There would be no flowers, no trees. Just these endless rows of dilapidated houses, peeling linoleum, rag men traipsing through the alley. Of what use are daydreams? he would shout. They are steps on the path to a good life, Mrs. M would think, but never say aloud. Her Jake did not tolerate defiance. A few years later, wracked with lung cancer, he would mellow and she would be in charge. But now, she protected her daughter’s freedom to dream in silence.
* * *
They didn’t go to the flea market that Sunday. It was too hot. A new mirror for Minnie would have to wait. Instead, they piled into Jake’s tar-splattered old truck at dawn and headed for the beach. Joy as they crossed the Delaware River turned to tears on the White Horse Pike, as the motor overheated and they waited for it to cool. The children were nauseous from the smoke, the heat, the rocking of the truck bed, but as they approached Atlantic City, the ocean breeze vanquished their misery.
Mrs. M had arranged to visit her sister, whose husband owned a small hotel on the boardwalk. “Minnie, you come with me,” she announced, when Jake parked the truck. “We can’t all pile in, but Rivka will be happy to see at least one of my children.”
Minnie groaned. “Do I have to?” She wanted to fly across the hot sand and dive into, under and over the white crests of the sea.
“You have to.”
Rivka was waiting in the lobby when Mrs. M and Minnie arrived. “Such excitement,” she said, hugging and kissing them. “I couldn’t wait for you to get here.” She led them up a flight of stairs and into her apartment, which was the entire second floor. “Max is with his partner, so it’s just us for lunch.”
“Don’t go to any trouble,” said Mrs. M. “We’re only here to say hello. Jake and the kinder are on the beach already.”
“Okay, okay. You’ll eat and then you’ll go to the beach. Meanwhile, I’ll get to know my niece. Now, both of you, go wash up.”
When they returned, Rivka ran her hand through Minnie’s thick curls. “What grade are you in now? Do you like school? A boyfriend?”
Minnie ignored the questions, drawn to a shelf covered with tchotchkes. “What’s that, tante?” she asked, pointing to a crystal object.
“A giraffe, my darling. A gorgeous animal from far away. Do you like it? You can have it.”
“No,” said Mrs. M. “She doesn’t need an animal we don’t even know what it is. It’s enough we have a hundred stray cats where we are.”
Rivka laughed. “Like the Colosseum.” She saw that Mrs. M was bewildered. “A place I visited on my honeymoon. It was filled with stray cats.”
“I want to see it,” said Minnie.
“You will, my darling. You’ll see everything, go everywhere, like your Aunt Rivka.”
“When?”
“Some day,” said Rivka, placing a plate of sandwiches and a pitcher of lemonade on the table. She pulled out a velvet-covered chair for Mrs. M. “Sit, Anna. Enjoy.”
“But, when?” Minnie asked again.
“Some day,” said Mrs. M.
“The Milkman’s Daughter” appeared in the Fall 2026 issue of Vistas & Byways.