“Periodically,” reports Louis Zara, “Mama Kramer rises to plague me: I shouldn’t be surprised if she ends up in a volume all her own.” Meanwhile, we present the third Kramer story to appear in this department (the last one, “Boarders,” was in the November 1950 issue). Again Mama Kramer’s bustling practicality collides with Papa Kramer’s Jewish pride, and we are given a new version of the eternal triangle—the third party being in this case a dressmaker’s dummy.

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The dressmaker’s dummy, headless and buxom, with an iron wire-skirt and a tripod foot, stood in a corner near the icebox. Because there were small children in the house, Mama Kramer covered the metal nakedness of the bosom with an old plaid sleeveless jacket. Otherwise, summer and winter, it presided silently over stove, sink, and table, and the affairs of the kitchen.

From behind his newspaper Papa Kramer muttered, “She counts every bite you put in your mouth. Who needs her here?”

“Does she ask for bread?” his wife countered. “Does she ask for drink? She stands there, let her stand.”

“Like an iron mother-in-law!” he growled. But it was true that she did not ask for bread and she did not ask for drink. Still, to show his disapproval, he sat with his back to her. “How many women can live in one flat?”

“She does not utter a word! Does she say as much as one word: ‘Hello’ or ‘Goodbye’?”

“Ha, that’s all we need!” he snapped. “If she opened her mouth I would throw her out with my bare hands—though I am a peaceful man.”

Such remarks were often exchanged in her presence; the iron mother-in-law stood silent. Sometimes Mama Kramer fitted a blouse or a skirt on her. Once Harry tossed his baseball cap on the metal neck. “Who puts a baseball hat on a woman?” demanded his mother and would have slapped his bottom.

“Have respect!” Papa Kramer put in. “For an older person have respect.”

She frowned at her husband. “How does it look—a baseball cap?”

“Some people stand from boarders,” said the man. “We have her.”

The winter of the big snows, when the drifts piled up six feet on either side of the street and the whole city churned like a flour mill, Papa Kramer came down with an inflammation in his chest. He swallowed pills, sipped honey in hot milk, and suffered compresses and mustard plasters. But the only one it did any good for was Shmulevitch the corner druggist, lately from Odessa with three unmarried daughters.

The invalid groaned, wheezed, and sneezed. When he raised himself for a cough the windowpanes rattled.

“Be careful!” Mama Kramer begged.

“Let them stick new putty in the frames!” he retorted. “When a man has a cough should he worry about frozen glass?”

Naturally, since he was home, Papa Kramer was not earning.

Another week, and the snow turned to ice and his cold to a burning fever. Once when he got up—as obstinate as an ox, that man!—and went to blow a hole in the frost on the kitchen window to peer out—he sighted the dummy in the corner.

“The shviger is still here!” he sighed. “Hot, cold, she doesn’t get consumption. The Devil doesn’t snatch her, while I, father of a family, cough like a bass drum!”

“Have mercy!” pleaded Mama Kramer. “What harm does she do?”

“Harm!” He clutched at his chest. “She gives me the Evil Eye!”

Immediately she clapped her hand to his forehead, became pale, and ushered him back to bed.

That night the children asked, “Is it true, Mama, about the iron mother-in-law? Can she give the Evil Eye?”

Mama Kramer was beside herself. “How can she when she has no head?”

From his bedroom her husband bellowed, “Those are the worst ones, the shvigers that have no head!”

“I’ll call a doctor!” she threatened.

“I’ll throw him down all the stairs,” he replied smugly. “Sick as I am, I’ll do it. When one of the children grows up there’ll be a doctor in the family. Till then I’ll not support a stranger with my sweat and blood.”

By the third week Mama Kramer was feeding her family on credit. Slemo Marcus the butcher made no complaint, but he trimmed off more suet when she paid cash on the counter. At Lebke’s Grocery Mama Kramer cut her weekly purchases in half. She bought barley, grits, and rice, and decided that they should subsist on milk dishes: everyone eats too much meat anyway. For the Friday evening dinner she prepared chopped beef liver instead of gefilte fish and stuffed her knishes with mashed potatoes instead of ground veal.

On Sunday morning she rummaged in all the secret jars in the pantry for the loose change put by for the gas bill, the milkman, and the tea-and-coffee man. She regretted the new curtains from the installment peddler—only a quarter a week—but the old ones had been so threadbare.

She was stirring the barley porridge when her glance fell on the iron mother-in-law. She puckered her mouth, and shook her head from side to side. Then, she smiled to herself. She looked in on the sick man, sponged his forehead and, over his protests, made him swallow the last pill. She struggled into her good corset and her black dress with the peplum. She took her coat with the wolf-fur collar, told each of the children to keep an eye on a younger one, and hurried out.

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She trudged through the drifts down to Twelfth Street and calmly paraded past the shops. She studied the fashions, eyeing each dress carefully. With forefinger to cheek, she absorbed the details of the flares and waists, sleeves and necklines. Then she began to call on her neighbors. It was true that the peppery Mrs. Epstein was an excellent dressmaker, but she was also independent and her rates were high; and Mama Kramer knew every one of her customers.

Mrs. Kirchberg, whose husband owned the chicken market, was her first prospect.

“Mama Kramer! Goldie! On such a day you’re out in the street?”

“Who can stay inside all day?” Mama Kramer smiled. “Mrs. Kirchberg, today I was looking at my Singer. It stands idle, and the fingers itch to sew. Pillowcases, sheets, blouses, skirts—nothing fancy. But I have a little time and—between old friends—the pockets are a little empty since the Mister is in bed. When I was a girl I did it. So in the morning Goldie Kramer becomes a seamstress again!”

Mrs. Kirchberg was so astonished that she stopped thinking about how she had received her caller without slipping on the new diamond ring that had cost her so many tears in the night.

“But I have enough sheets—”

Mama Kramer waved one hand peremptorily. “It’s a big house—God bless it!—and if you don’t need anything, your little ones God bless them!—do. Come, come, when Goldie Kramer knocks on the door to ask for work, don’t you sing me songs, Sadie Kirchberg.”

“Except for what is torn.”

“I can do mending, too. Proud I am not.”

That settled it.

The next stop was at Mrs. Mayer’s. Her husband delivered pop and had a good route.

Mrs. Mayer confessed that she needed guimpes and kimonos, perhaps also a corset-cover. “And it would be only right if you bought something from my man, too.”

Mama Kramer shrugged. “When we have a wedding in the family I’ll order pop.”

“And beer, too.”

“A whole case.”

By noon she had orders for a dozen sheets, two dozen pillowcases, four corset-covers, two kimonos, and three guimpes, and the material for a ruffled petticoat, a middy blouse, and black bloomers for Mrs. Cohen’s little Shirley, and a sofa slipcover for Mrs. Gratz, the undertaker’s wife.

As soon as she had fetched her parcels home she took the cut-glass vase off the Singer and pushed the machine from the dining room into the kitchen. While the children clamored around her she opened the table-top, raised the machine, and cleaned the arm and the moving parts. Harry got down on his knees to work the treadle and screamed as he caught his forefinger in the moving belt.

After she had served the family dinner and made the patient comfortable, Mama Kramer cleared the table. She brought out her scissors and tape measure and went to work.

“What is she doing there?” the invalid asked Dave as the youngsters ran barefoot through the house before bedtime.

“Mama’s at the Singer.”

He was thoughtful. “Is this a time of day to be at the Singer?”

“She’s making a new dress for the mother-in-law.”

All evening he listened to the Singer, but the treadle never ceased its jogging. “You’ll wake the neighbors! Are you sewing for a bride over there?”

“Sleep, sleep! What I’m sewing must be sewed.”

He subsided.

When at last she came to the bed he said good-humoredly, “By you the Singer goes like a machine.”

“It’s a machine so it goes like a machine.” She was weary; the leg that had pumped the treadle ached.

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The next morning she was up at dawn. It was her baking day, so she built a fire in the cookstove and, when the kitchen had warmed, mixed the yeast dough and set it to rise.

Before either her children or her husband had stirred, she was stepping about the iron mother-in-law, pinning and basting, quietly humming as she fitted the guimpe to Mrs. Mayer’s measurements.

At noon the smell of the baking made Papa Kramer’s stomach growl. He came down, yawning and rubbing his unshaven jowls. “Fresh bread!” he exulted.

“There’s tea, have tea. And put on slippers. The floor is cold.”

He frowned. The table was strewn with pieces of yard goods. His wife sat at the machine, her foot working and her head bowed over, while the cloth slid swiftly under the chattering needle. His gaze darted toward the iron mother-in-law. “Ho, ho!” he boomed. “What goes on here?”

She did not look up. “Sit down. The tea will get cold.”

He placed a cube of sugar between his lips and sucked the steaming hot liquid from his glass. “On the shviger—for who is the ball dress?”

“Is not a ball dress.”

“Is it a fur coat?” he flung at her.

“A guimpe for Mrs. Mayer.”

“For her you have to blind your eyes, Mama? He sells pop, he makes a good living.”

“He takes nothing from our mouths.”

He munched the sugar and poured the tea into his saucer. He saw her take up the material for a corset-cover, observed that it was indeed for a stranger, and blinked. When she began to hem a sheet he squirmed restlessly.

“With the children and the household, and the cooking and the baking, you have not enough to do? Must you sew rags for every silver fox in the neighborhood?”

The Singer stuttered as she ran a long seam. “I do not do this from charity.”

His jaw dropped. “For money!”

She ran another hem.

Weakly he got to his feet. “By us in the family the women were not labor-workers.”

She shrugged.

“Give back the rags!” he commanded. He glowered at the shviger. “I make a living.”

“Lying in bed?” she wanted to retort, but held her tongue.

“Because I have not been working?” he prodded gloomily. “So when a man is sick his wife has to be a labor-worker.”

She did not reply, and soon he shuffled back to the bedroom. She heard him groaning as he burrowed under the sheets. He would lie there staring at the ceiling.

The bell rang. Mrs. Mayer had come to fit her guimpes and kimonos. Mama Kramer hurried to shut the door to the bedroom.

That evening even the children were subdued over the grits. For each spoonful that their father lifted was accompanied by an angry glance at the kimono draped on the mother-in-law. He was still coughing, and his eyes were rheumy, but now he cleared his throat. “My mother never came to live with us, your mother never came to live with us. But this ugly shviger, a creature without feeling, we give the room.”

Mama Kramer crimsoned. “Eat, children, eat!”

When he went to the bathroom to shave and complained about the hot water she understood his intentions.

“The oldest boy is in high school,” she murmured at his elbow. “Expenses. A mechanical drawing set costs money. Carfare costs money. Notebooks cost money—”

“By us in the family,” he spoke from the midst of his lather, “the women didn’t work.”

“Not to support the family,” she pleaded. “For his school.”

“By us the men didn’t lay in bed all day like bankers while the women brought in the money.” He addressed his shaving mirror.

“Avram, a few sheets and dresses.”

“You learned that from the shviger! I should never have let that woman into the house!”

She wrung her hands. “I must finish what I promised—”

“Then finish the rags! But no more. Do you hear?”

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She pleaded that he return to bed, but he was adamant. The next morning he had no sooner dragged himself out of the house than she attacked her sewing furiously. In two days she could be done with the work.

But Mrs. Kirchberg had recommended her to a sister-in-law, Mrs. Loew, and, in the afternoon, Mrs. Mayer sent two of her cousins who wanted cottage curtains. Mama Kramer excused herself from the complicated tasks. However, she could not refuse the simple sewing. If she cleared everything away before he came home how would Avram know?

Each evening Papa Kramer eyed the shviger suspiciously. After his day’s toil he was sorely fatigued and had no energy for disputation. She did not open the Singer in his presence, so he asked no questions.

Then he observed that every evening now brown paper bundles lay near the mother-in-law. But she had promised—He lifted his forefinger at the shviger: “That woman will degrade us all yet!”

Mama Kramer was silent.

“I say that until she is out of the house we will have no peace.”

She pretended she did not hear him.

“King Solomon had a thousand wives, and what did he say about them? Was there one woman of worth—” His resort to Solomon’s wisdom was generally his most crushing rebuke, but Mama Kramer did not reply.

One evening another heavy snow began to fall. Thick white flakes descended all through the night. By morning the skies cleared and left the roofs and windows crowned and bearded with white. The children whooped through the streets. They made snowballs, tried their sleds, lost their mittens, and reveled in the glorious winter.

On his way home from work Papa Kramer observed his youngsters rolling a huge snowball down the walk. The snow was soft and the sphere grew rapidly. As they paused to set another large ball on top of the first he lingered.

“It’s a snowman!” shouted Harry.

“A snowman!” echoed Dave.

At supper he declared soberly, “On such a day it is a pity not to be young again.”

Mama Kramer was not listening. She was nervous lest he chide her about the paper of pins stuck in one shoulder of the shviger. He smiled bitterly. She was ignoring his instructions. He went to bed early.

This time it was he who arose before the others. When Mama Kramer offered to make his breakfast he patted her shoulder. “Sleep, sleep, what is there to get?”

As soon as he was dressed he tiptoed to the shviger. “Miserable woman!” he hissed tragically. “Ugly creature! Lilith!” He tore away the paper of pins and sneered at her. Carefully he embraced the figure and carried it through the back door, out upon the porch, down the stairs, and into the snow in front of the house. The sun was not yet up.

He stooped, and with his gloved hands began to plaster large gobs of snow on the iron shape. Fortunately, no one was abroad to see Avram Kramer busily sculpting a snowwoman about the dressmaker figure. When he had satisfied himself that the framework was concealed, he rolled a huge ball for a head. Then he grimaced, shook his coat, slapped his gloves, and went back for his lunchbox.

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Not until the children had left for school did Mama Kramer miss the shviger. Her heart sank. She scurried to peer into the closets and quickly jerked open the pantry door. But it was nowhere. Heavily she dropped into a chair and covered her face with her hands. He had hidden it, of that she was certain. But where?

True, she had continued with her sewing and had not kept her promise, but why was he so obstinate? She only wanted to bring a few dollars into the house. She dashed out on the porch and down into the alley. Nowhere! But time was wasting, and she had much to do. When she had calmed herself she approached the Singer and, sorrowfully, proceeded with the sewing.

Coming home for their lunch at noon, Harry and Dave located the snow-woman. With glad cries they hailed the rare find. They fixed stones for eyes and buttons and pushed a stick into the mouth for a cigar.

After school the entire neighborhood of children gathered around the figure. They supplied her with a bustle and quickly chose up sides for a snowball war.

In the evening Mama Kramer awaited her husband on the stoop. “Avram, what did you do with her?” She plucked at his sleeve.

“You are talking to me?”

“I am talking to you. The shviger. What have you done with her?”

“Something has happened?”

“Something has happened; and you know what has happened.”

He shrugged.

Indoors, before he could reach for his paper, she put her arm on his shoulder tenderly. “One doesn’t throw a creature like that out into the street.”

He did not lift his eyes. “Who threw her out?”

“Then you must have hidden her.”

“Why should I hide her?” he rumbled. “She came by herself, she went by herself.”

“There is work I promised to do.”

“No, no!” he retorted solemnly. “You must have finished that work long ago. You promised.”

She bit her lips.

Later that evening the doorbell rang. Mrs. Kosoff had arrived to have her dress fitted.

As she entered, Papa Kramer’s face darkled. “I do not want this going on in the house.”

“The shviger is gone,” she moaned, “so I have to fit on the body.” She led Mrs. Kosoff into the dining room.

When he peered in at them a trembling seized him. For kneeling before the other woman was Mama Kramer, the pins between her lips, the yellow tape measure over her arm, while she basted the hem of Mrs. Kosoff’s dress.

He could hardly contain himself until the neighbor had left. “I do not want you kneeling before people!” he boomed. “She is not the Kaiser that you should kneel to her.”

“I did not kneel to her.”

“I saw you kneeling, Goldie. You were on your knees, Goldie. This is America, and in America people don’t kneel.”

Her eyes glinted. “When the shviger comes back,” she murmured, “I won’t kneel.”

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He did not address her again all evening. In the morning he was once more the first to arise. This time he was outdoors before he had found his muffler or put on his overshoes. He walked around and around the snow-woman, scratching his cheek perplexedly. The children had patted so much snow on the figure that it would take him two hours to get the shviger out. He dug frantically at the shape. But the rascals had poured on water, and the whole mass had frozen overnight.

Someone was stirring indoors. He skipped back into the house.

Every morning now he kept a sharp eye on the snow-woman. But the temperature remained near zero, and the shviger was bluish-white and frozen solid. In disgust he struck the stick out of her mouth and broke away part of her face. It was no good.

Each evening another of the women called for a fitting. He scuffled his feet and rattled his paper fiercely, but Mama Kramer offered no more apologies. She marched her women into the dining room, and there, deliberately, it seemed to him, went down on her knees. He was so angry he read the same column three times. However, as long as the frost continued what else could he do?

At last the weather became milder, and a thaw set in. Long icicles formed over the windows, the streets turned to slush, and the roofs dripped. Day after day he watched the ice melting from the snow-woman.

One morning the first iron rib showed. He struggled to break off the caked parts.

A shiver went up his back. Behind him someone was tapping.

Mama Kramer was standing at the window! As he turned she dropped the curtain.

Red-faced, he stomped back inside. “So now you know!”

“What?”

“Where she is.”

“Who?” she asked blandly.

“Who? The shviger.”

“The shviger?” she mocked. “The shviger is gone, lost, kidnaped.”

He wished he could have a fit of coughing and arouse her sympathy. “The shviger is out there in the snow.”

“I did not see her.”

“Let the ice melt, and you’ll see her.”

Mama Kramer tossed her head. “Now I don’t need her.”

His mouth opened. “Is it better to kneel, to stoop before these women, a pop-driver’s wife, a chicken-butcher’s wife?”

“I do not mind.”

“Mind!” he exploded. “To get down on your knees—”

“They are nice women. From them I earn money for the boy’s high school. Why should I mind?”

“As soon as the shviger melts I will bring her inside.”

She planted her fists on her hips. “Inside my house I’ll have no rusty shviger!”

Mama Kramer was right. When the snow had finally melted, the dressmaker figure was no longer black. Every exposed metal part had yellowed with rust.

He carried the shviger up the porch stairs.

“Out!” commanded Mama Kramer at the door.

“Mama! You need her, you want her.”

“My house is not a junk shop. Out!”

Helplessly, he lifted the shviger in his arms. “What should I do—”

“Out!”

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In despair he planted the shviger on the porch. In his tool chest he found an oil can, a large file, and several sheets of dark emery cloth. “It’s dark outside.”

“The stars are shining.”

She concealed a smile as he took his flashlight and stormed out to attend the shviger on the porch. The rasping file set her teeth on edge, but she would not even look out the window.

Harry and Dave pulled on their overshoes. She clapped her hands. “Inside! My children are not junkmen!”

“Mama!”

“In!” she cried.

They went in.

For three evenings Papa Kramer worked on the shviger. When at last he had removed the rust and rubbed the metal clean, he mounted the threshold with the figure. “Happy New Year! Look who’s here.”

Mama Kramer did not speak. She watched him worry the figure into its corner.

That evening Mrs. Kirchberg called. Papa Kramer looked up from his paper. But his wife again marched the woman into the dining room.

“How long will this go on?” he asked despondently when the visitor had left. “The shviger is back, clean and fine.”

“One woman in the house is enough.”

“Goldie!”

“And King Solomon had a thousand wives—”

He grinned ruefully. “And a thousand shvigers. But if we have only one here, is it so bad?”

“I am a woman, too. What do I know?”

His joints cracked as he rose.

“Avram!”

Before she could stop him he had reached for a half-sewn guimpe and flung it over the shviger. “Then, Goldie, let me show you. A pin here, and a pin there!”

She pulled at his hands. “You’ll tear—” He was so strong. “It’s not mine.”

Stubbornly he tugged at the dress.

“It’s upside down!” she chuckled. “What does a man know?”

Dismayed, he stepped back.

She took off the garment and brought it down properly over the figure.

“Like so?”

“Like so.” She found her pins and swiftly took in the waist. “Now you see?”

With a sigh he returned to his chair. Through the corner of his eyes he watched her working happily on the guimpe. He cleared his throat and rattled his newspaper. “Goldie, here’s a story—listen good!”

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