I can sense Ash relaxing into the retold family tale. He taps the two middle fingers of his right hand on the tabletop in a gesture that seems to help him continue. “With the financial aid of some private organization—I forget the name of it—my grandmother traveled by boat with a neighbor lady my great-grandparents paid to take care of her during the passage and then get her on the right train from New York to Chicago. Bubbe’s dad pinned a piece of paper in her coat with the name and address of an uncle there. Her mom sewed her engagement ring into the hem. The way Bubbe tells it, the ring was a flawless diamond. The plan was that her uncle Harry could sell it at a pawn shop to help pay for living expenses for the two of them when Bubbe reached Chicago.”
“Good thinking,” I say while wondering if I could ever send my own daughters off to a foreign land at that young of an age. As a mother, it’s devastating to even imagine such a life-and-death decision. I would take Simon leaving over shipping off my girls any day.
“Yeah, smart until the neighbor lady took the coat from my grandmother at Penn Station and hopped her own train. Bubbe never saw her again. Lucky for her, she had memorized Uncle Harry’s address in Chicago and told it to a ticket agent. That address was the only English my grandmother knew.” Ash looks right at me, and I can tell we are both willing the tears pooling in our eyes not to fall.
“The agent not only gave her a ticket free of charge, he called Uncle Harry from a payphone to give him Bubbe’s arrival time. Then he bought her a sandwich and waited with her at the platform to make sure she got on the right train. Her whole life, Bubbe’s been haunted by the fact that she was never able to find that ticketing agent, despite her best efforts, and thank him for what he did.”
I push the now-empty snack bowl back toward Ash. I don’t even have to ask. He dumps the rest of the tortilla chips into the dish.
“Keep going, tell me the rest.”
“My great-uncle Harry was about twenty-two when my grandmother showed up. He worked days peddling fruit at South Water Market, and at night he played the sax with a bunch of Black musiciansin South Side clubs where he lived. He was always gone, and he did not know what to do with a little girl. Luckily, shortly after my grandmother’s arrival, Uncle Harry was introduced by a bartender at one of the clubs where he played to a mom who lived a few blocks away and was willing to watch Bubbe. That mom was Evangeline Hubbard, and she had a son named Eddie.”
“I may not know much about Judaism, but I remember enough from Sunday school to know the name Evangeline is not Old Testament.” I wish my mom were here. I have a feeling this story is about to get better than any romantic comedy we’ve ever watched.
“No, the Hubbard family was Black. Evangeline was from Mississippi. After high school she came to Chicago to attend an all-Black secretarial school. She was also pregnant.”
Ah. I don’t need the rest of that part of the story spelled out for me.In those days plenty of girls were sent away from home when they got into “trouble.”
“Anyway, Uncle Harry paid Evangeline what he could, in cash and damaged apples, to watch my grandmother. Sometimes he was out all night at the clubs and then would have to head straight to South Water Market in the early-morning hours, so my grandmother had to stay the night at Evangeline’s house. Eventually Bubbe and Eddie became good friends.”
“In the forties I bet people thought that was strange,” I assume more than ask.
“At that time the South Side of Chicago was considered the Black Belt, but poor immigrants had been coming in over the years, and Jewish people were considered the least desirable of them all. On their own blocks it wasn’t as scandalous as it was in other Chicago neighborhoods, but you’re right—at the time Jews and Blacks intermingling was not at all common. Years later my grandparents did have to fight to be together.”
“Which they did,” I fill in cheerfully, knowing a few bits and pieces of the story from my cart rides with Mrs. Eisenberg.
“Eventually they did, yes.” Ash smiles back, meeting my delight. “First, though, when Bubbe was twelve, things took a turn. One morning, during a particularly bad midwestern January snowstorm, Uncle Harry was driving a produce-delivery truck that slid on black ice and flipped several times, killing him instantly. He was the only family my grandmother had in America. And worse, by that time, every other French Eisenberg that my grandmother was related to had been killed by the Nazis. There was nobody for my grandmother to go back to in Europe. And even if there were, there was no money to send her. Thankfully Miss Evangeline and her new husband, Otis, who played trumpet in the same band as Uncle Harry, took my grandmother in regardless of their neighbors’ raised eyebrows.”
“Then how is your grandmother Jewish and not Baptist?”
Ash puts his fist up to his mouth to clear his throat, but his eyes give away another crest of brewing emotion. I should probably announce that it’s time for me to get home to my girls, and surely Ash needs to go home to his wife. Instead, while Ash gathers himself, I find two beers in the fridge, pop both tops, and pass one over to urge him on.
“Let’s just say Miss Evangeline was no fan of bullies,” Ash continues after taking a chug of his beer. “She didn’t like the ones who teased Eddie because he stuttered, not the ones who beat Great-Uncle Harry to death for wearing a yarmulke, and definitely not Hitler. Evangeline was determined to keep Bubbe’s Jewish heritage alive. Otis took Eddie to Monumental Baptist Church on Sundays and Evangeline used her day off on Saturdays to bring my grandmother to the KAM Isaiah Israel temple. Evangeline didn’t know it at the time, but she was escorting my grandmother to the oldest reform Jewish community in Chicago. My grandmother loves to repeat the line Evangeline would whisper in her ear when she was the only Black woman at temple and the subject of much whispering,Same God just different houses to worship him in, and then she would give my grandmother a LIFE SAVER. Bubbe still sucks on that candy to remind her of Evangeline, her own personal life saver.”
My own tears now fall at Mrs. Eisenberg’s origin story, and the way Ash retells it with such adoration.
“When my grandmother was nineteen, she followed in Evangeline’s footsteps. The two of them took the train into downtown Chicago together, where Evangeline worked for the Board of Trade and my grandmother was the private secretary to the president of Inland Steel. But at night, when Evangeline headed home, Bubbe enrolled herself in evening business courses at a community college nearby. My grandfather decided to follow in Otis’s footsteps and become a trumpet player. Grandpa Eddie could play one hell of a trumpet, but he was terrible at getting his new venture, Maxwell Street Records, off the ground. He thought being good at music would translate into being good at making money from other people playing music.” Ash chuckles recounting his grandfather’s story, and a small grin reaches his lips just before his beer bottle does. I take note that this is the most relaxed I have ever seen my old professor.
“With the promise of an engagement ring one day when they could afford it, Bubbe married Eddie. She left her secretarial job and took her skills from a handful of accounting courses over to Maxwell Street Records to make sense of the finances my grandfather was running into the ground.”
“But your grandmother’s last name isn’t Hubbard,” I state the obvious.
“Aren’t you old-fashioned?” Ash calls me out for perpetuating a waning tradition. Sharing his family history, which I can see Ash takes great pride in, reveals a sentimentality I would have never guessed he had.
“Turns out people eventually care a lot less about your personal business when you have money lining your pockets. And having the name Eisenberg, my grandfather thought a few more doors in the music industry would open for them. Plus, Sammy Davis Jr. was on the rise, and he was a brother who had also converted to Judaism, and suddenly it became a little more okay.”
“But you seem so ...” I stumble with the right words.
“Handsome? Smart? Entertaining?” Ash offers on his behalf.
“Black. Like, all the way Black,” is all I can think of to say.
“Ah. Yeah, that too,” Ash agrees with a grin like we’re in on a joke together.
“My grandfather was very dark,” he explains. “His family was from Central Africa by way of a Georgia plantation. Somehow, he escaped the telltale signs of race mixing over the generations. My father was much darker than his sister. Then my lighter aunt married a blond exchange student from Norway, and they got Livy, a legit redheaded, fair-skinned daughter. My father married a Black woman, and boom, they got me.”
“So, wait a minute. Does that mean you and Livy are Jewish? Or are you Blackish?” I stumble through guesses, trying my best to keep it all straight.
