Excerpt

Sima surprised herself by blushing at the round perfection of
the young woman's breasts. For thirty-five years, after all,
breasts had been her business: she knew the slight curve of the
preteen breast, its nipple rigid when unveiled in the cool air of
her basement shop; the engorged, aching breasts of pregnant women,
skin shiny and striped from stretch; the parchment breasts of the
elderly, liver-spotted, soft with down; she knew breasts with pink
nipples, olive nipples, brown nipples; nipples pushed in and pulled
out, tiny as dimes, large as the ringed stain of a coffee cup; she
knew heavy breasts on thin women and thin breasts on heavy women;
breasts 28-A, 52-K, and breasts with a cup size between them. She
even and of course knew the knotted red scar of the breast that was
no longer there, the twisting keloid marker of what science had
stolen away.

But this young Israeli in tight jeans and platform sandals,
slightly worn, revealing fuchsia toenails—in all those years
Sima had never seen breasts so beautiful as hers.

Sima thrilled to the swirl of the nipple, the soft shell of the
skin. She remembered eighth-grade geometry: planting the sharp
point of the compass on a friend's notebook and, with the stubbed
yellow pencil carefully belted in, tracing perfect circles of
friendship. This girl's breasts, Sima was sure, would be 360
degrees by the pencil's lead trace.

"I brought you a few to try," Sima said, approaching the
dressing room. The girl stood in the center, the
curtain—orange cloth, grayed at the edges—pulled to one
side. It was a large space, big enough for five women at a time to
preen, choose: a bench on one side with hooks above, a rectangle of
carpet (slightly frayed, lavender wool unraveling) below, a wide
mirror angled against the back wall. Sima dangled three bras, each
a shade of beige, before her. "See which you like."

The girl eyed the bras suspiciously, held one against
herself—thick, with a high, wide cut—so that her
breasts pushed through the satin, frowned at her reflection in the
mirror. "Do you have anything sexy?" she asked.

Sima forced herself to carry on the usual conversation. "You
like lacy? Demi?" She saw herself in the mirror behind the girl,
gray hair pulled into a tight bun, rounded body all in black. The
old witch in the fairytale, Sima thought, selling apples to a young
beauty.

"Doesn't matter, just so long as my boyfriend will like it. Not
that he'd notice—men just like to take them off, no?"

Sima smiled. Years in the basement bra shop had taught her the
ease of a conversation teasing men. With knowing looks and careful
shakes of the head her customers commiserated with one another,
complained about them: their stupidity, their cheapness, their
emotional distance; their inability to remember birthdays and
anniversaries, the location of their own kitchen appliances, the
day to pick their suits up from the drycleaner.

"My Lev," Sima said, "doesn't even know how to tell one bra from
another. You think he pays attention? I've had this business for
three decades, and we've been married, what, forty-six years? Ten
dollars he couldn't even tell you what underwire does."

The girl laughed, revealing a smile made more beautiful, Sima
thought, by the slight gap between her two front teeth. "Forty-six
years is a long time. Mazel tov."

Sima shrugged. "People act like being married a long time is
some big accomplishment. Let me tell you, it's the easiest thing in
the world. We married young, and that was that." She made a brisk
motion with her hand, as if smoothing the covers over a bed. "Now,"
Sima said, reaching for the bras she'd brought the girl, "What did
you say your

name was?"

"Timna."

"Timna, I'll bring you something special, yeah? To make his jaw
drop."

Sima closed the dressing-room curtain and walked behind the
counter. Three shelves stretched ten feet across, each shelf filled
with boxes, each box filled with bras. Sima never spent a cent on
advertising and never had to—though the dressing room rarely
filled to capacity, she kept busy enough that her legs ached each
evening from too many trips

up and down the stepladder, each in pursuit of the perfect fit.
Sima's regular customers, and almost all her customers became
regulars, would enter the store already pulling off their coats,
unbuttoning their starched blouses. "Something for my cousin's
wedding, to keep my tummy in and these" (a quick shove to the large
breasts) "up while I dance."

"For my daughter, for her bas mitzvah. Can you believe? Seems
just yesterday I used to rest her stroller behind the counter."

"Something simple. Cotton."

"Something lacy. Black."

"Something with underwire."

"Without underwire."

"On sale?"

Sima's wasn't the only hidden business in the neighborhood:
Farrah sold purses and shoes, Shoshana designed stationery and
invitations, Gussie carried wigs and head scarves, Bernie and Ida
Neuman's basement was filled with suits for boys. A secret downtown
hidden beneath the red and orange brick two-story homes of Boro
Park, Brooklyn.

Those who didn't know Sima stood awkwardly for only a
moment. In a glance she could see their size, the back and the cup
combined. "Thirty-six-D" she'd say, and, pointing to the
dressing-room curtain, "Over there." In vain the women protested,
"But I'm a thirty-four. I've always been—" "You've always
been wearing the wrong size," Sima told them, and when on her
advice they slipped back on their shirts to evaluate the shape a
new bra gave, they inevitably agreed. "Isn't that something?" the
women said, smiling at the high curve in the mirror, "After all
these years."

"How long have you been in Brooklyn, Timna?" Sima called when
she'd found what she wanted, let the box lids fall to the floor in
her eagerness.

"Only one week. I'm staying with some cousins while I wait for
my boyfriend to finish the army, and then we're driving to San
Francisco."

"A beautiful city," Sima told her, though it had been decades
since she'd been there. As she hopped off the stepladder she felt
her ankle curl beneath her: a spot of pain and then gone. She
paused a moment, regained her composure. She couldn't help but be
excited to fit this

girl, she told herself; if she thrilled to imagine the smooth
lay of her bras on Timna's skin, it was no more unnatural than a
dentist admiring a flawless arch of pearl-white teeth. Sima handed
Timna two bras, the kind she thought of as most wild—crimson
lace on one, the other, black, cut low and wide for maximum
cleavage. She pulled the curtain closed while Timna tried on the
crimson, waited until she heard the usual sounds—a step
backwards, a turn to the side—that signaled readiness.

"Everything okay?" Sima asked.

Timna opened the curtain. "What do you think?"

Sima took her in. Timna looked like the women on the covers of
drugstore romances: cream-smooth skin arched over full curves, the
lace covering just enough to promise removal. Sima felt something
like a sigh inside, swallowed it down.

"Lucky for me," she told Timna, forcing herself to do what she
always did—spread a hand against the cup to check the shape,
smooth the fabric— "this bra looks like it was made for you.
My seamstress isn't in today and I hate sewing, so here I was
praying—let it fit just right."

"And it does?"

"Like a glove. Just a little adjustment—" she tightened
the strap on Timna's left shoulder, her fingers almost trembling to
touch a dark brown beauty mark perfectly placed on the soft slope
between neck and shoulder—"and voilà. Try it with your
T-shirt," Sima told her, stepping back, "and you'll see how nice it
fits." She looked away as

Timna slipped on her shirt, the act of dressing somehow even
more intimate than that of undressing. "Of course," Sima told her,
as Timna pivoted lightly before the mirror, admiring, "the crimson
is a little dark for that lavender shirt, but with a dark sweater
or dress, or—"Sima paused—"to really impress this
boyfriend, on its own—"

Sima colored: it was a joke she'd normally never dare, and
certainly not with a new customer. She swallowed, desperate for
something to say—Israel, she thought, ask something about
Israel—but Timna laughed, said, "Absolutely," and Sima
grinned wide like she'd guessed the right answer: what was behind
which door.

Timna closed her eyes, clasped her hands together, and reached
into a stretch. Sima watched as she raised her arms above her head
and breathed in deep, her whole body supple and soft as a child's.
She gazed at Timna: her eyelids the palest shade of purple, her
lips parted slightly, bright with gloss, her neck soft white,
arched toward the ceiling, and her breasts—Sima couldn't
resist glancing at Timna's breasts, the full round of them waiting
perfect beneath the lavender tee, the crimson bra.

Timna opened her eyes.

Sima looked quickly away but knew, by the catch in Timna's
breath, that she'd been caught.

Sima's Undergarments for Women
by by Ilana Stanger-Ross [5]

Genres: Fiction [9]
hardcover: 304 pages
Publisher: Overlook Hardcover
ISBN-10: 1590200896
ISBN-13: 9781590200896