Page 103 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

A marriage proposition
looking promise the most money. The boy has had no say in the
choice; the elders decided, and the young couple signed on the dotted
line after it was all cut, sewn and pressed. After the honey month, the
suffering by both parties begins. Sometimes the young man leaves his
wife, runs away to another city or to America, and the families
become enemies.
My father was not different from other fathers. He had six
children, he would be glad to have me married, and matchmakers
watch for these opportunities. A family living a block from us had a
girl coming of age, maybe sixteen or seventeen years old. In fact six
families were involved, including the girl’s father’s and brother’s, who
also lived close to us and knew me, as well as our big family, with all
my father’s brothers and my mother’s brother. The girl’s father was
in the meat business, wholesale slaughtering and selling in the
Warsaw meat market, where the butchers gather every morning and
buy quarters or whole beef. He was a bookkeeper and cashier who
went to work at that market early in the morning, like the fruit
market in Los Angeles. I can only remember his first name, Mottel.
The girl’s mother’s family lived across the Vistula River in another
suburb of Warsaw; they were in the dairy business. The daughter, of
course, looked like the mother. I had seen the girl many times in
town, but never talked to her.
A cousin of mine who lived in that suburb became the
matchmaker, found my father and made a deal with him. My father
would not have to spend any money or make a pledge—which he
could not have done, anyway—and in return he would get meat and
butter. I would get a wife and a job in the meat business. My father
was hesitant to tell me the news of the marriage proposal, so he
commissioned my mother to break it to me. He himself never
mentioned the proposal, which everyone else knew and talked about,
until one morning when he accompanied me on my regular six-mile
trip back from Warsaw.
With great effort he gathered up his courage and mumbled out the
news of the great event: that it was time for me to get married, that
Mottel was willing to take me for a son-in-law and give me a job as a
checker and collector for a wholesale butcher. For a while silence
prevailed between us two males. My father, who always submitted

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