Two Sisters

by Barbara Krasner

Two wizened, petite widows in little black dresses slammed the screen door behind them. My grandmother, Rose, and her older sister, Tante Sarah, linked arms as they sashayed onto the porch of my aunt’s home in Flushing, Queens. They could have cushioned themselves on the padded seats of the porch swing. Instead, they settled on the brick and concrete stairs.

My grandmother and Tante Sarah were sharing secrets. They huddled together, arms still linked, heads leaning toward each other. They giggled, as if they were still barefooted girls in Ostrow Mazowiecka, Poland, wondering about their futures. Their shoulders moved in unison as if the two bodies were conjoined.

My grandmother and her sister had come a long way from Poland. Their older brother, Abie, came to America first. Then their father, a blacksmith. Then, according to my mother, my great-grandmother Esther Toby sent Tante Sarah, known then by her Yiddish name, Sheyna. The two men would need a woman to care of their needs and keep them out of trouble in the Goldene Medina.

Sheyna/Sarah came to America in 1913, just five days after her father. A year later, just weeks before the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the onset of the Great War, Esther Toby came with my grandmother, Abie’s wife and kids, the candlesticks, the featherbeds, and determination.

Though no birth certificates could ever be found, Rose might be about three years younger than Sarah. There had been a brother born between them, but he died at the age of four. How Esther Toby must have missed that coveted boy named for her grandfather. Perhaps because of the boy’s death, she doted on Rose, keeping her home with her while Sarah made the journey alone to Bremen to board the ship to New York.

Despite the separation, the sisters remained best friends. As young single ladies in America, they posed for a photographer in his studio. In the photo, a tintype, Rose and Sarah both wore white shirtwaists and dark, front-pocketed skirts, their hair rolled up and resting against their necks. Rose’s left and Sarah’s right hands rested on a wooden stand. Their bland expressions stared into the camera. They looked nothing like each other physically.

Perhaps Rose took after their father and Tante Sarah after their mother (both Esther Toby and Tante Sarah, according to my mother, had pug noses). Neither parent ever posed for a photograph; they believed a camera would steal their souls, a belief that did not extend to their children.

As the younger sister, Rose had an obligation to be the next to get married and to have children. Both Rose and Sarah married “landsleit,” men who come from the same region of Poland. Sarah married in 1917 and Rose in 1918. Sarah lived in the Bronx and raised four children. Rose lived in Brooklyn and raised three children.

Both gave birth to their first children within nine months after the wedding date (Sarah in six months, Rose in eight). When I asked my mother about this, she said, “That was my father.” As the younger sister, Rose might have thought she needed to follow Sarah’s example and to live up to the expectations and standards created by the elder.

But what if the age difference is in minutes, not years? On the day my grandmother and Tante Sarah sat on the stoop, my twin sister and I must have been too full of energy. We were maybe four years old. We were told to take a nap. Someone led us upstairs in my aunt’s house, into a kind of forbidden territory. We had never been upstairs before.

We scrambled onto my aunt’s bed, which was covered in a white chenille bedspread, hardly inviting. My twin and I giggled. We weren’t in the least bit tired. But eventually, somehow, we fell asleep and, when I woke up, our arms were wrapped around each other. Someone commented about this, how adorable this was; this person, maybe our mother or an older sister, must have come in to wake us.

Although my arm was stiff, we must have often slept this way, even in the womb. We were used to holding the other for comfort and safety, like the time our eldest sister took us out in our carriage, and her friend’s German shepherd peered in, drool splashing our faces.

Or the time our caregiver made us walk a mile to Robert Hall’s discount clothing store when we were toddlers. Or the time we delighted in our father’s arrival home for dinner and then the doctor emerged from behind him to treat our scarlet fever. We huddled in terror, holding on for our lives.

Maybe Grandma and Tante Sarah held onto each other in fear, too. Maybe in solidarity. Maybe like my twin and me, they had their own secret language. Would my twin and I-when we have white hair, that is, when we stop dyeing it-would we steal out to the porch and giggle, too? Would we remain close and sleep with entangled arms? And would anyone still think that’s adorable?

I have a photo of Rose and my grandfather, Max. It could be called a wedding photo, although she’s not wearing a white wedding dress and veil, and he’s not wearing a tuxedo and top hat. She stands behind Max, in a satin ensemble, the bodice and skirt both embroidered with double-stitched diamond shapes connected by double-stitched lines. The long sleeves have seven tiny shank buttons along the side. She wears a wristwatch on her right arm over the jacket sleeve. She’s also wearing a square-cut diamond ring on her right hand.

My grandfather, hair graying at the sides (although he’s only about twenty-six years old), sits in front of her, arms folded across his chest. His cravat appears fancy, not an everyday choice. The photo itself is pasted onto an oval piece of metal. An illustrated rope strand joins four sets of white and yellow poppies to form the photo’s border. It looks as though the photographer processed the photo within this border.

Recently on Ancestry, I came across a family tree produced by Tante Sarah’s great-grandson. He uploaded her 1917 wedding portrait to the Gallery: She holds a large bouquet of roses. An embroidered velvet headband, like an embroidery hoop, fastens the veil to her head. The veil itself is embroidered in leaves. Her face shows no emotion. Her lips are slightly pursed and closed. Her eyes shift to her right, probably at the photographer’s instruction. Her unplucked eyebrows suggest innocence. This is a treasured find, of seeing Tante Sarah so young, when I remember her so tiny and so much older.

This oval portrait features the same kind of border as my grandmother’s picture. Which raises questions for me. Did Rose and Sarah decide to have their photos taken at the same place? Is Rose’s picture not from her wedding day but rather from Sarah’s?

Or did their mother insist on identical framing to ensure she didn’t differentiate between her two daughters, to ensure one didn’t feel more privileged than the other? My mother often practiced this to reduce the inherent competitiveness between my twin and me. When we created pieces of art, my mother would say, “They’re both very nice.”

My grandmother and Tante Sarah lived apart: first a year of separation during immigration, and then in different boroughs, after Sarah’s 1917 marriage. Still, I sense closeness within this family instead of members dispersed like dust particles when separated from the Old Country and the graves of ancestors. How Sarah and my grandmother must have relished those moments when they could return to their girlhood and laugh like crazy. Maybe they would fall asleep with their arms wrapped around each other underneath the featherbed.