hands into the box. Familiarity shoots through my fingers like an electric buzz.
Cotton. Wool. Gabardine. Twill. The coarse butcher linen used for homemakers’ aprons, the nubby, textured Shetland used for winter suits. My hands get lost in the fabric. Deep inside the crates, I can identify them by touch. If I couldn’t touch them, I could probably identify them by smell. The quiet musk of a flannel suit; the pungent blush of taffeta transformed into a woman’s first party dress. The doll dresses I made as a child, dozens of them, out of the scraps of fabric my father brought home. The handkerchiefs, the coin purses.
Even more than walking into my family’s abandoned apartment in Sosnowiec, the expectedness of these clothes feels comforting. It feels like home.
Around me, women pluck sweaters and skirts from the crates, holding them up to one another for size or slipping them on right there over the clothes they’re wearing. The unwanted garments are left spread on the tables, a chaotic kaleidoscope of color.
“Oh, can I try that if it doesn’t fit you?” one woman says, pointing to the skirt another is wriggling over her hips. “Robin’s-egg blue is my favorite color.”
“It’s yours,” the other woman promises, stepping out of the skirt again. “But help me find something in a floral pattern. I always wore flowers.”
There’s something so tender in the discerning, critical way these women pick through the clothes. Not just grabbing things because they’re warm or because they fit, but looking for clothes that will help them reclaim the pieces of themselves they had to give away.
That’s what my family’s business did, at its best. Zayde Lazer was a businessman, and so was Papa when Zayde first hired him. But Baba Rose was the one who understood that clothing isn’t always a practical business. Customers buy things that make them feel more like themselves.
A young woman jostles into me, trying to maneuver her way into a fitted woolen jacket. “I love this, but I can’t raise my hands above my head,” she complains to her friend, demonstrating the tight squeeze, the strained threads.
“You just need to insert some extra fabric under the arm,” I say automatically.
She turns to me. “Is that difficult?”
“It shouldn’t be. You don’t even have to remove the whole sleeve. Just cut away the bottom, and sew in little ovals the size of eggs.”
She looks skeptical. “Are you sure?”
“It fits you everywhere else. See? It’s not straining at your shoulders. It’s straining here, by your armpit.” I pinch the fabric to show her.
The advice came from a part of my mind I haven’t used in a while, a bear waking from hibernation. The girl’s mouth drops open in gratitude, and she immediately begins to make plans for the jacket. She’ll wear it to a job interview, she tells her friend. She heard that one of the camp administrators is looking for a typist; this jacket is exactly the kind of thing she was hoping to find.
As I’m basking in the long-dormant sense of feeling useful, Breine taps my shoulder.
“I’ve found it!” she squeals, holding up a wrinkled garment from the bottom of a box.
Yellow silk, butter not marigold, the bodice dotted in tiny seed pearls. She holds the dress against her body, swaying back and forth so the fabric swishes at her calves. “Isn’t it perfect?”
This dress isn’t remotely close to the gown Breine described wanting, and it won’t look right on her at all. It’s cut for someone with a much bigger bust than Breine’s, and wider shoulders. Someone older, too. The color of the fabric is youthful, but the style is for a matron. It’s the kind of dress an older woman would order if she didn’t want to admit her age.
“Feel the silk; it’s so delicate,” she says. “I think Chaim will love it.”
Quickly, I scan the rainbow of fabrics on the table for something better to suggest. But most of the dresses are shirtwaists or practical housedresses, nothing a woman would want to get married in. The only other formal option I see is a dark-colored, strapless velvet, appropriate for an American cocktail party but not a wedding gown.
Besides, Breine’s eyes are shining. She pulled it out of the crate and declared it perfect, but I know if the dress had been green or brown, or if it had lace instead of beads, she would have said that was perfect, too, because Breine wants to get married.
The other women see the same thing I do—the light