The Doll Shop Downstairs Read Online Free

new.”
    â€œWhen?” asks the man. It seems to me he is rude, but Papa speaks to him politely anyway.
    â€œNext Thursday,” says Papa. As he is writing up the ticket, a lady comes in. She is with a girl, a little younger than me, in a sky-blue linen dress. The girl’s eyes are redrimmed, like she’s been crying; in her arms she clutches a great big baby doll with a cracked head.
    â€œDo you think you can fix her?” the lady asks Papa when he is finished with the man. The girl stands shyly behind the lady, still clutching the doll.
    â€œMay I?” Papa asks the girl. He takes the doll and gently runs his fingers over her head. Then he looks at the girl. “I know I can,” says Papa with a smile. She sniffs a bit, but she manages a small smile back at Papa.
    Then two more people—a short man whose white hair is very thick and a lady wearing gold-rimmed spectacles—come into the shop. They are both carrying dolls that need mending. So many dolls that need Papa’s and Mama’s loving hands. What would they do without them?
    Finally, the customers are gone and Papa is able to put a big sign on the door that says CLOSED. Mama has packed a lunch that Papa carries in a big straw basket. We walk to the Second Avenue El and climb the stairs that lead up to the platform. Papa buys us each a ticket, which we then drop into the chute of a big wooden ticket chopper. A man in a uniform and cap works a handle to chop up the tickets. Trudie is a little bit scared of the ticket chopper and doesn’t want to go near it. But I reassure her that there is no way the chopper can grab her hand, and she finally is willing to drop her ticket in.
    The shiny brown train comes almost right away and when the doors slide open, we step inside. The car is very new and smart looking; the floors are red and the seats are covered with wicker. When the train pulls out of the station, we girls are jolted a little bit and we laugh. “Hold on!” Papa tells us as we each grab a strap. “Hold on tight!”
    We ride for about twenty minutes, and when we get off at Thirty-fourth Street, we are in a different world. We have left behind the packed, narrow streets of our neighborhood—Essex, Delancy, Orchard, Ludlow, Hester, and Rivington—that are crammed with shops, horses and wagons, pushcarts, and crowds of people. You can buy almost anything you want on those streets: poppy seeds and pocketknives, socks and soap flakes, buttons and bagels. And there are so many languages you might hear: Yiddish, German, Polish, Romanian, and Russian, sometimes all at once. Our parents are from Russia, so they speak Russian and Yiddish. They only learned English when they came to America, before any of us were born. Sometimes Mama and Papa speak Yiddish when they don’t want us to understand what they are saying.

    But here we find wide streets, like Fifth Avenue, that are filled with fine shops selling silk parasols, evening gloves, and the most amazing hats I have ever seen. Some are decorated with fake fruits and flowers, or even, in one case, what looks like a real stuffed bird. And the people are so elegant here; they stroll rather than hurry and push the way they do downtown. I don’t hear any Yiddish or Russian, only English. At least Mama and Papa know how to speak English, even if they have accents and sometimes forget a word or two and have to go fishing for it in another language. My friends Batya and Esther both have parents who speak only Yiddish.
    I glance at Mama, whose clothes are not as expensive and well tailored as most of the other ladies who walk past. But no one else has Mama’s perfect posture, or that special way of tilting her head when something she likes catches her eye. I feel proud of her, and even though I think it is sort of babyish, I slip my hand into hers as we walk. Mama smiles down at me.
    Soon we come to the toy store at the corner of Fifth Avenue and