The majority, p.1
The Majority, page 1
Also by Elizabeth L. Silver
Fiction
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Nonfiction
The Tincture of Time: A Parent’s Memoir of (Medical) Uncertainty
Riverhead Books
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
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Copyright © 2023 by Elizabeth L. Silver
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Silver, Elizabeth L., 1978– author.
Title: The majority / Elizabeth L. Silver.
Description: New York: Riverhead Books, 2023.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022044475 (print) | LCCN 2022044476 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593331088 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593331101 (ebook)
Classification: LCC PS3619.I5475 M35 2023 (print) | LCC PS3619.I5475 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23/eng/20220929
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022044475
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022044476
Cover design: Grace Han
Book design by Amanda Dewey, adapted for ebook by Cora Wigen
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Contents
Cover
Also by Elizabeth L. Silver
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Part One: Brooklyn
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Part Two: Cambridge, Massachusetts
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Part Three: New York City
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Part Four: Washington, DC
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Acknowledgments
About the Author
_144228924_
For Avital and Levi, always
I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.
Sarah Grimké, 1792–1873
Laws are a dead letter without courts to expound and define their true meaning and operation.
Alexander Hamilton, 1755–1804
Found in the Desk of the late Sylvia Olin Bernstein, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
Half of the United States is waiting for me to die. The other half stands by, candles in hand, praying for me to hang on. At least that’s what they tell me. At least that’s what they say. But people never really want what they think they want.
Every Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday from October through April, the main doors of the Supreme Court open at eight. There are only fifty seats available for the general public, and by nine thirty a.m., those eager visitors who waited outside for hours will have secured most of them. Sometimes, when nobody’s there, I walk into the main courtroom to sit in the back of the gallery. The perspective is different, almost more ominous. From there, I can see four marble columns standing tall before deep mahogany curtains edged in gold. When I was younger, I used to stare at the curtains in pictures and later in person, sometimes wanting to hide in them. Now I know better than to hide.
On the days we have argument, a court crier pushes the buzzer, warning the crowd that there are five minutes to prepare and take a seat. The nine of us wait in the robing room backstage, where no one can visit, beginning the process of coming out into the courtroom. We have a private pregame ritual, a rotating handshake among all nine of us, as if to say, yes, we are all in this together. Everyone takes part in this tradition, now between six men and three women who sometimes like each other and sometimes hate each other when the robe is on, and tolerate each other when it’s off.
The court crier opens his mouth.
“Oyez, oyez, oyez.”
We walk out of the robing room to take our places behind our specific chairs at the bench. Mine is marked with a tiny gold plaque carved with the initials S.O.B. I take my seat. The chief justice glances to either side and picks up his gavel, slamming the wood with a single pound. It pierces the silence as I scan the gallery. My eyes are old, though. They don’t always see what’s in front of them. My hair has faded from the yellow, stubborn blond of my youth and I’ve lost some of my height; though having started at five feet eleven inches, I’m still taller than most of the men who have surrounded me for decades.
As arguments open, all eyes are on me, wondering what I’m thinking. But it’s my own eyes, still a clear, light blue, that are the first to reveal the truth. If you look closely enough, you might have to reconsider everything you know about me, everything you thought you knew about the first female Supreme Court justice of the United States of America, the Honorable Justice Sylvia Olin Bernstein.
The first time I sat in that chair, I felt an unnecessary distance from a breathing life, as if I were meant to be protected by an older code. Outside, people waved signs of praise, of hate, of hope that the Contemptuous S.O.B. might make a change.
I hated the name.
“Just call me bitch,” I wanted to say. “I’m nobody’s son.”
You see, everyone thinks that I broke the rules, but I didn’t. Not really. I just oiled them up a bit for everyone else. But biographers want to present me like that: pretty but rough, demanding but kind, a model for how to get to the top as a woman and be remembered in history with elegance and idealism. This is the true story, though: I wouldn’t be here if I’d had the luck of my cousin Mariana, or if I’d fought the fight like my friend Linda. Still, history chooses whom to crown an iconoclast, whether they deserve it or not. History is only as good as the historians, and I’m no longer trusting them to tell my story.
Part One
brooklyn
1949
Chapter 1
I was twelve years old when one half of my father’s twin cousins came to live with us. It was nearly four full years after the end of the war and it took nearly all that time for her to emigrate from Germany to the United States. Over one thousand days; two hundred longer than she and her family had been in the camps. After the liberation, she moved to Munich and lived there among a small handful of survivors until America welcomed her to its shores. She settled in Brooklyn with us. The rest of my father’s family lived in internment camps, awaiting passage to somewhere that wasn’t Continental Europe. Somewhere like Great Britain or Australia, Canada or Israel; maybe even Argentina. We were simply the first to come through for Mariana. Had London called a month earlier, my life might have turned out very differently. Would I have found the law? I might have become a secretary to a businessman, a wife and mother, maybe a teacher? It’s hard to imagine.
It was spring of 1949 when my father brought Mariana home, trailing behind him in the doorway like a stray dog. We lived in a tiny two-bedroom apartment off Kings Highway in the old Midwood section of Brooklyn. Together as a team, my parents owned the deli downstairs, drawing a few looks from the religious communities: Marty, a man raised in a black hat and tzitzit, with his wife, Susan Henrikson-cum-Olin, whose thick blond strands baffled the kosher crowds, but didn’t stop them from coming to eat.
Though my mother was born C
Mariana’s presence shifted the dynamic in our family. In a matter of days, my mother was no longer the gatekeeper to my life. It happened almost immediately. The minute one person enters, another’s role shifts, and it can take a lifetime to understand what that means.
“Sylvia,” said my father upon their entrance, “I want you to come here and meet your cousin.” His face was solemn, his hands still.
I was sprawled out on the couch reading Life magazine. Jimmy Stewart was smiling in a slant against the flash of the camera. When I looked up, my mother was standing behind the couch, frozen, almost as if she knew what was about to come next.
“I want you to meet your cousin,” he said again. “Mariana—”
“Olinovsky,” Mariana said, intentionally completing the name with an emphasis on the third and fourth syllables.
My father nodded, his head dropping up and down mechanically, saying the two names distinctly in my direction. Ours first, “Olin,” and then Mariana’s, “Olinovsky,” two, three, four times, until I understood the difference in the names—that there was and wasn’t one.
“Hello,” I said, waving from the couch. I didn’t bother to stand up.
Mariana nodded with her mouth closed tight, sealed with an invisible lock around the lips. She carried a single bag half-filled with a few belongings. When she walked, you could barely hear her. Her footsteps were silent, her movements invisible, unnoticeable.
“She’s been traveling for quite some time,” he said to me. “And she’s very tired. Why don’t you help me make the bed?”
I looked around. We lived in a small two-bedroom apartment, sharing three hundred square feet between the three of us before Mariana arrived. On a good day, each corner was piled high with bags and belongings. On a bad day, you couldn’t find any corners.
“Sylvie,” said my father again. His voice was hurried. “Your room. Sheets. Now, please.”
Mariana stood emotionless at the front door, still, stalled in thought before turning away, clutching her bag close to her chest. My mother tried to take it from her, help her, comfort her, but she refused.
“This couch is fine,” said Mariana. Her accent was deep. The th sound seemed to convert seamlessly to a d at times, with all s’s landing as z’s. Dis couch iz fine. I von’t be here long. Thank you for—
“Please, Mariana,” my father said, smiling. It was the kind of smile that a man knew would get him what he wanted. “We’re family. Never thank me again. Okay?”
My mother echoed.
“Please, Mariana—” she said.
It could have been for anything, though.
Please be kind. Please stop. Please rest. Please don’t talk to my daughter about what you went through.
But Mariana placed one hand out, just in front of my mother’s face, stopping her from finishing her thought. A single hand that seemed to materialize out of nowhere.
My mother, never questioning anyone’s authority—at least not outwardly—paused. “I’m sorry?” she said, confused. At first, she stumbled over her words. “D . . . did I say something? I’m . . . I’m sorry.”
Five seconds ticked the clock forward as they shared a kind and appreciative glance. What they exchanged in that look, I’ll never fully know. But looking back, it seems they traded places in that moment, shifted their roles, creating a triangle between the three women in the room.
“It’s okay,” said Mariana, reluctantly. Everything in our home seemed to come as a surprise to her. The softness of the carpet beneath her shoes, the heat inside the building, the internal questioning of those around her. “Thank you,” she added.
It was as if she didn’t know how to say those two words. Or perhaps she had forgotten. Words lost from language can rust, and it often takes restoration to get them back to their proper use and luster. Thank you was only a small part of that loss.
That first night, Mariana slept on the couch, unwilling to take my bed or my parents’. My mother didn’t push.
“I’m fine out here,” she said to us repeatedly. “Proszę. Bitte.” Please.
My father glanced at my mother, whose head dipped down, and then together, my mother and I spread sheets across the couch, tucking them loosely around the corners. I walked to my bedroom to gather an extra pillow and brought it out to Mariana. In the minute I was gone, she had moved from her stance by the doorway to sitting on the edge of the couch, exhausted, her eyes closed. I left her there, slumped over the arm of the couch, her forearm supporting her head like a pillow, two lines engraved between her brows.
Later that night, I tiptoed out of my room to use the bathroom. The only way to get to the toilet was to pass the couch. I looked down the hall to my parents’ room. The light was off. I continued toward the main room, stopping in front of Mariana, who was asleep but still sitting up on the couch over the sheets, the makeshift bed partially made, her body stiff against the cushions as if it were no longer made to rest. Though unconscious, she was still fully dressed, her arms now placed closely beside her belly, between the pillow and her bag, like puzzle pieces fitting.
I couldn’t help myself. I stood over her, waiting for something to happen. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I couldn’t look away. A thin strip of moonlight reflected the light from the kitchen, slashing her in the face, just under the eyes. It lit the rest of the room in pale yellows, enough so that I could see how bony and frail she was, even years following what I would soon learn was the end of her starvation at Auschwitz. A pulse beat quickly in her wrist. Her feet, still wrapped with socks and shoes, were resting on the floor as if she was prepared to run.
Then, my parents’ door opened and my mother emerged as if she was already a ghost. She was standing on the other end of the room with two hands placed on her hips.
“Sylvia,” she whispered, furious. I stepped back and stubbed my toe on the edge of the coffee table. Footsteps filled the room as my mother walked toward me, grabbing me.
“Stop staring. Go back to your room.”
I tried to ignore the pain in my toe, but stumbled again as I waited for it to subside.
“I taught you better than to spy on our guests,” she said quietly, helping me up and leading me back toward my room. “You have school in the morning. And Mariana is exhausted. Please don’t bother her.”
A strand of loose hair had fallen into my mother’s eyes. I could see that she was looking straight ahead at me, disappointed. Her disappointment is something I still carry with me around my wrists like handcuffs.
“It takes time for someone to be comfortable in a new place,” she said. “Especially after what she went through.”
“Is she leaving?” I asked.
My mother glanced at the sleeping Mariana.
“No,” she said, placing a hand over her chest. “I don’t think so.”
We looked to each other without speaking, until she decided to break the silence.
“Please, Sylvie, just give her some time. You don’t know that she will want to share her experiences with anyone. Please, don’t bother her.”
A loud thump sounded in the living room. We turned toward the couch.
“She’s not bothering me,” said Mariana, her voice coming out of the silence. She tried to push herself up from the couch and leaned on one foot more than the other as she sat up.
“Mariana,” said my mother, shocked. She turned around, tapping her chest with the heel of her palm. She didn’t surprise easily. “I thought you were asleep.”
