Her Sister's Tattoo

by Ellen Meeropol

  Maybe Esther had tried to tell her.

  Every single day for the past thirteen months, Rosa had ruminated about her choice. Which was better for Emma? Going to prison, or going underground? Every single day, she replayed those four days in the courtroom and what came after. And sometimes, after Emma was asleep, Rosa let herself think about Allen, enormous in his absence. Missing him was bad enough, but taking Emma away from him was worse. Usually when his ghost image joined her on the mattress on the floor, Rosa had to get up, make tea, smoke a joint, anything to banish him.

  Rosa let the phone ring four times before answering with the code word. “Tattoo.”

  “Your Pop’s dead,” Maggie blurted.

  The words slammed into Rosa’s throat. She couldn’t speak. Strained to catch her breath. Not possible. He was still young. Not yet. Not now. Not before she had time to patch things up between them.

  “I’m so sorry,” Maggie said.

  “How?”

  “A massive coronary. He died instantly.”

  His heart? He never had heart disease. Sure, his blood pressure was a little high, but he took pills for that. Was it stress? Stress could lead to a heart attack, couldn’t it? Was this her fault?

  “When’s the service? I’ve got to see Mama. I have to be there for Mama.”

  “You can’t come, Rosa. They’ll be waiting for you.” Maggie paused. “Your Mama has Miriam. And Esther and Jake are in town.”

  “I have to.”

  “It’s not safe. Pop wouldn’t want you to risk prison. Think about Emma.”

  “I have to say goodbye.”

  “Say it long distance. Pop won’t know the difference.” Maggie’s words were tough but her voice was soft. She promised to comfort Mama and report everything that happened at the memorial service.

  Rosa couldn’t recall the rest of the conversation, except that she never got around to revealing her own disturbing news. That was probably just as well. She had already delayed telling Maggie until it was too late to do anything about it. Rosa was embarrassed about giving in to loneliness and lust, trying to be quiet on the living room sofa so they wouldn’t wake Emma in the curtained-off sleeping alcove. Mortified that she’d forgotten to use her diaphragm. Maggie would have lots to say about that too.

  She sat for a moment in the stillness of the phone booth thinking of Pop. Now she could never fix the way things between them had gone sour. It had really started her freshman year at college, when he had argued with every new idea she brought home from Ann Arbor. She remembered how his face grew mute with disdain when she described their campus protest against Kennedy’s actions during the Cuban missile crisis. He’d hurled her treasured mimeographed copy of the Port Huron statement—with its revelation of participatory democracy—onto the floor of the living room.

  “Student power?” He spit the words. “Mishegas.” Craziness.

  She never gave up trying to make him understand. Politics were more complicated than just unions and workers these days. The world was more complex, with Black Power and the Women’s Liberation Movement and gay rights. But Pop didn’t want to talk about abortion rights or racial divisions. He refused to discuss the issues that mattered to her. Like the day she was tabling on the Diag for a women’s sympathy picket in support of the Woolworth’s lunch counter picket in Greensboro. A crew-cut student with the engineering school logo on his shirt sauntered up to her flanked by two buddies.

  “There’s an awful lot of cunt around here today,” he said, smirking at his six-foot buddy to his left.

  Rosa thought she must have heard him wrong. “Pardon me?”

  “I said there’s a lot of cunt here.”

  Without stopping to think about it, Rosa punched crew-cut in the face, missing his nose but connecting to his left cheekbone with a satisfying crack. He socked her back just as fast, his blow landing on her upper arm, and then turned to leave without touching his face. He walked away, laughing with his cronies. She clutched her arm, trying not to cry with the pain.

  The red splotch turned blue to green to yellow over the next ten days. The X-ray at the health services center showed no fracture. Two weeks later, when the sling was removed and the soreness faded, she signed up for a beginner’s karate class. She called Pop that night, even though it wasn’t Sunday with the lowest rates, and told him proudly about her decision, leaving out the details of what the guy said.

  “Karate? That’s not politics.” Pop’s contempt was clear. “Better you should forget this cockamamie women’s lib stuff. Study history. Learn how to organize the working class.”

  So what if Pop didn’t approve of self-defense classes, or the abortion work, or the rape crisis center? Deep inside, he was still really proud of her, wasn’t he? Pop had shaped her politics. Pop and Loon Lake.

  A sharp knock on the glass of the phone booth brought Rosa back to the present. “Sorry,” she muttered to the scowling businessman. She hurried to pick up Emma, Pop’s face swimming in front of her eyes.

  CHAPTER 16

  Esther

  In the front row of the union hall, Esther sat between Mama and Jake with Molly asleep on her lap. Stroking Molly’s back, she listened to Pop’s buddies tell stories about union elections and strikes, about scabs and head busting. She wondered if Rosa was hiding in the crowd, incognito in a teased blond wig, or oversized sunglasses and a butch cut. She must be; how could she stay away? At least Allen must be here somewhere, paying his respects. He couldn’t be that selfish, could he?

  Who was she kidding? She was the selfish one. She hadn’t seen her parents since she and Jake drove their rented U-Haul trailer out of Detroit on a frigid February morning ten months earlier. They had swung by the shoe store to say goodbye, waving as Mama and Pop shrunk in the distance. She had planned to visit much sooner, for Molly’s birthday in March, or maybe Passover, but once she left it was hard to contemplate returning to that place. With Rosa who-knows-where, Mama and Pop had needed her even more and she let them down. And now Pop was gone.

  While Pop’s friends spoke about his commitment and leadership, Esther twisted around in her seat, searching the crowd in the back of the Union Hall. Rosa must be here somewhere. The Feds must’ve expected Rosa too, because Esther identified three undercover cops in the crowd. They weren’t hard to spot; they really did wear trench coats.

  Molly woke up cranky when the mourners sang “Solidarity Forever,” giving Esther a perfect excuse to wander through the crowd looking into faces, searching for her sister. At one point she thought she caught a glimpse of Maggie near the cloakroom, but whoever it was had vanished by the time Esther elbowed her way to the corner of the hall.

  She paced back and forth across the lobby, murmuring Dr. Seuss rhymes to keep Molly entertained. In the grim months between August and December, Pop had loved reading the fantastical stories to Molly, who giggled with glee at his silly faces. Those were the only times Esther saw her father smile in those days. But she had been too selfish to bring Molly back to visit him, too chicken to face Mama and Pop and their enormous losses, too cowardly to try to make peace in their ruptured family.

  She had never been good in the family peacekeeper role, especially since Rosa’s big fight with their parents during her senior year of college. When the sisters came home for their holiday break that December, Rosa told their parents that she could only stay home a few days, that she and Allen were delegates to a national student activist conference in Ann Arbor. Mama and Pop could’ve been Republicans for all their support and understanding. But Rosa left anyway, right after Chanukah, just like she said she would. Esther had stood between their parents on the frosty front porch and watched Rosa skip down the steps, long red hair bouncing, to join Allen waiting on the sidewalk. She ran with him to the bus stop, one hand swinging her backpack and the other brushing snow from Allen’s beard.

  “College know-it-alls,” Pop had muttered, turning away from the street toward the warm house. “Allen at least should know better.” The icy cloud
of Pop’s disapproval fogged his glasses.

  Esther had grabbed his arm. “Rosa says this new organization is much more than just student rights. This is part of a worldwide movement and it’s really important.”

  Pop did not turn around. Eighteen-year-old Esther waited on the snowy front porch, watching until the bus pulled away from the curb in a blur of exhaust. She wished that she could be on it with them.

  Rosa was still leaving her behind, and now Pop was gone too.

  When the service was over, Jake caught a flight back to Massachusetts and Esther stayed. The next day, Bubba and his friends moved Mama’s furniture to the spare bedroom in Max and Miriam’s apartment. Mama and Molly played hide-and-seek on the bed while Esther filled the walls with pictures from Mama’s old apartment, jumbled remnants of her family’s life. No way they would all fit. Esther lugged the leftover artwork to the locked wire cage in the apartment complex basement, saving her favorite for last.

  The Italian painting was too large for the bedroom wall, but the serious faces and drab browns and grays seemed at home in the dim shadows of the storage locker. Sitting on a carton of Pop’s union organizing pamphlets that Mama refused to discard, Esther met the determined gaze of the barefoot woman holding her baby. There was a new sadness in Hannah’s eyes, as if the frame were a window, or a mirror. As if the painted heroine could see right into Esther’s heart and was ashamed for her.

  After lunch, Esther unpacked Mama’s collection of porcelain cocker spaniels. Mama never had the bizarre hobby when Esther and Rosa were girls, but over the past few years her collection had grown to cover every horizontal surface. Bubba and Max hung shelves and Mama carefully arranged the dogs in small “families” while Esther tried to keep Molly from grabbing at the delicate figures.

  Later, while Molly napped and Mama rested, Esther went to clean the old apartment, grateful for a few minutes alone. She wandered around the home where she’d grown up. She stroked the scuff marks on the hallway floor where she and Rosa practiced broad jumps, ran her fingers across the holes in the walls where the dozens of pictures hung. The white glove treatment, but instead of dust or dirt she was searching for particles of family history, motes of memories. She couldn’t find any leftover fragments of her past until she opened the refrigerator and saw the jar of Spanish olives in the back corner of the bottom shelf.

  Rosa invented the olive game when they were little. Mama would give them a bowl with four fat Spanish olives with pits, two for each of them, and the goal was to make the olives last. Esther was good at waiting, and she hoarded her first olive whole in her mouth, so at first she didn’t understand why Rosa always won. Then one day she got it. Rosa cheated. Rosa ate both of hers while they still had flavor, then snuck Esther’s second olive from the bowl. When Esther finally gave in and chewed her first olive for the tiny remaining burst of salt, Rosa screeched, “I won, I won,” and opened her mouth to reveal Esther’s second olive, whole and smooth.

  Even after all these years, even though there was no way she could have known about the olive game, even with Rosa gone, even though Pop always grumbled that they were too expensive, Mama kept a jar of colossal green olives for her daughters. Esther sat on the floor in front of the open refrigerator, resting her forehead on the vegetable crisper drawer.

  After supper, Deborah came over. She hugged Mama, then her own parents, handing Max her daughter, Sarah, six months older than Molly. When the two toddlers were ensconced on the couch with their grandparents, surrounded by picture books and puppets, Deborah crooked her finger at Esther, mimed drinking a cup of tea, and pointed to the kitchen.

  A few minutes later, Deborah looked up from her steaming cup. “I need your help.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Bubba lost his job and I’m pretty sure he’s seeing another woman.”

  Esther put her hand on Deborah’s shoulder, an uncomfortable gesture. Deborah was always the aloof cousin, a haughty contrast to Danny’s impish fun.

  “I’m pregnant again,” Deborah whispered. “And I can’t have this baby. No money. Soon maybe no husband. Do you still have that contact?”

  Esther hadn’t used the Waltonville number in over a year, but she found it scribbled in pencil on the inside back cover of her address book. The guy answered the same as always, making an appointment at a grungy motel, never the same place twice. Surprising that he hadn’t been closed down. Some of the women in Esther’s women’s health collective had worried that it was too dangerous, both for the woman and her accomplice, but the sisters argued that it was necessary and right. They called him the Butcher, but there wasn’t anybody else, and they didn’t know firsthand of anyone who had actually died, just some nasty rumors, and you couldn’t believe everything you heard. Especially if you had no better choice.

  Two health collective members always escorted their clients for the procedure. They told themselves they went together for security reasons, in case something went wrong, not because they were scared. This was the first time Esther made the trip without Rosa, and now she knew the truth.

  Deborah didn’t speak on the drive, but when they pulled into the motel, she put her hand on Esther’s arm. “Thank you.” She mouthed the words without sound.

  Walking across the gravel parking lot, Esther wondered who the Butcher really was, and whether he did this work for money or altruism. Rumor had it that he lost his license, something about a home birth that went very wrong. He opened the door on the first knock, stepped back to let them enter.

  Drawn Venetian blinds darkened the room. The desk had been pulled into the center of the room, with folded blankets and pillows arranged on top of shower curtains to catch the expected fluids. A crookneck lamp clamped to the edge of the desk threw a circle of light on the sheet. Esther looked away from the machine sitting on the low dresser, from the tray of instruments, the loops of rubber tubing, the metal bucket on the floor.

  Once he pocketed Deborah’s cash and examined her, the doctor turned on the radio, loud. The first time she made the trip with a pregnant woman, Esther thought he liked to work to music, was inspired by the crashing cymbals and majestic horns. Silly you, Rosa had said afterwards: the symphony was to cover up the noise if a woman screamed or cried.

  Deborah didn’t make a sound, just clutched Esther’s hands against her chest. Esther didn’t know where to look. Not into Deborah’s eyes, that was too private, and certainly not at the bloody stew being sucked through the tubing and into the bucket at the doctor’s feet. What would he do with that? Flush it? A mascara trail snaked from the corner of Deborah’s eye and disappeared into her hairline. Esther squeezed her eyes closed, thought about Molly, left with Mama for the afternoon with two bottles of breast milk and a long list of instructions. The orchestra advanced to a softer movement. The bedside clock ticked with a minutely irregular heartbeat. The suction machine whirred, gurgled, and stopped.

  Before, Esther and Rosa had always been adamant about after-care. They drove the woman back to Rosa’s apartment to rest for a few hours, brewed tea that the clerk at the health food store recommended to contract the uterus after a miscarriage. When the woman was ready, they delivered her home and returned the rental car. They checked in with her twice a day, ticking off the questions Maggie had written down for them.

  “You’re so good at this,” Rosa had told Maggie. “Why don’t you come with us?”

  “Too risky,” Maggie said. If she were busted, she’d never get her nursing license.

  This time it was only Esther, which might be just as well. Rosa had always been hypercritical of Deborah with her ironed hair and nose job, said she had the politics of a banana slug. There was no safe apartment to return to, and she couldn’t call Maggie to ask whether three pads in an hour was too much bleeding. When the guy was done, Esther helped Deborah get dressed with a tenderness that surprised them both. They drove around for a while, stopped for a milkshake at the rest area on the interstate. Then they had to drop off the rental car and take t
he bus to their mother’s apartment to retrieve their babies. After Deborah and Sarah headed home to Bubba, Esther snuggled on the sofa with Molly while Mama dozed on Pop’s recliner. Esther wished she could call Jake and tell him everything went okay, but he’d still be at the hospital. He had been worried the evening before when they talked on the phone.

  “Helping someone abort a fetus is a criminal offense,” he had said. “You could go to prison.”

  She didn’t answer that part, couldn’t think about it. “It’s important,” she’d answered. “And someone has to do it.” I may not be a real activist anymore, she told herself, but I can do this.

  When Mama woke up, she looked at Esther. “You girls must have really shopped hard. Deborah looked exhausted. What did you buy?” Mama looked pretty tired herself. Depleted. Could sadness and loss cause those blue rings around her eyes?

  Esther shrugged. “Nothing fit right.”

  Mama pushed herself out of the recliner. “You’ve been a big help, but I’m okay now. It’s time for you to go home to Jake.”

  Molly released Esther’s breast and said, “Dada.”

  Esther brushed a rusty colored curl from Molly’s forehead. “That’s right. Daddy. Jake.”

  “Dada,” Molly repeated, then pulled the frayed edge of her baby blanket to her lips.

  Esther scrutinized her mother’s face, trying to read the family tree in the new wrinkles around her mouth, trying to extract Rosa’s news from Mama’s crow’s-feet.

  “Before I leave, can you tell me anything about Rosa? Did she have the baby?”

  Mama looked down. “If I say a single word to you, Rosa swears she’ll cut off all contact with me, and that’s precious little to begin with. She’s furious at you. I think she’s wrong, but I have to do like she says.”