Gone to Soldiers: A Novel

by Marge Piercy

  Sandy talked of nothing lately but, After we graduate. What colleges are you going to apply to? Naomi always said she didn’t know. She wasn’t going to go to college, because she wasn’t going to finish high school, but she did not tell Sandy that. She was going to bear a bastard and die in childbirth, in her bed or in the alley where she had thrown up. They would all say what a bad girl she had been, but they would feel sorry for her. If only she could get the dying over before Jacqueline arrived and learned what kind of sister she was crossing oceans to find.

  Everyone was speculating on what would happen when Jacqueline arrived. The general assumption was that she would be staying in Detroit, looking for work. Naomi did not think so. She thought that Jacqueline meant to take her back to Paris, but she also must want her journal. What Jacqueline meant to do mattered little, Naomi thought, because what Jacqueline expected to find was a sweet little invented sister who was still twelve years old, still French, still good, still virginal. She knew from the journals that Jacqueline had slept with Henri, and that gave her some hope; but that had been for food and Henri had not been a married man with two babies already borne by his wife, David and the new baby Linda.

  Sometimes she told herself that she had loved Leib, but if so, it had dissolved in her misery like chalk in water. All she could remember of what she had called love was the feeling of being held in place, transfixed. She did not know if she had lost something precious or awakened from a fantasy, but what she had wakened to was worse. Sometimes she imagined drawing her savings out of the bank and running away with her baby hidden inside.

  She sounded out Sandy. “Do you ever think of doing it with a boy?”

  “Sure, I think about it, but my mother would break my neck. Every time I go on a date, she waits up with the porch light on and she has to know every single minute.”

  “Do you tell her everything?”

  “Most of it. Who wants to tell their mother about necking?”

  “But what happens to girls who do it? Do they all have babies?”

  “If all the girls who do it had babies, half our class wouldn’t graduate,” Sandy said smugly. “Or one third, anyhow. That’s what condoms are for. I explained them to you years ago.”

  “But if they get pregnant anyhow, do they always have babies?”

  “Some have operations and some have babies. Mostly they go away to homes and the babies get adopted. But sometimes, like Magda Revitch and that colored girl with the braids, they keep their babies and raise them. Then they’ve really had it.” Sandy mimicked slitting her own throat.

  That was the sum of the information Sandy knew: nothing about abortions other than that some fast girls who got caught had them. It seemed hopeless. If a girl had a baby, then obviously she hadn’t gone, so it was no use asking her; if the girl had an abortion instead of a baby, nobody would know, so you couldn’t ask her either. Finally as December first passed, she had to speak to Leib. After weeks of avoiding him, she found it impossible to catch him alone. Leib had passed his real estate license and gone into business with Fats and Moose and some silent partners whom Trudi said were crooks, with money from numbers and prostitution. Trudi was angry with Leib because he was always out. She had quit the hospital again to stay home with the baby. Now she said it was worse than when he was in the Army, when he had written her twice a week. At least if he wrote letters, she’d be more in touch than feeling him climb into bed two hours after she’d gotten in, observing him eat his eggs in the mornings and watching him rush out the door when Fats tooted the horn on his De Soto. Trudi was not as friendly to Naomi as she had been. Lately she always asked Sandy to babysit.

  Finally Naomi got a chance. Leib came downstairs one evening saying he’d run out of cigarettes and was off to the drugstore that stayed open till ten. The guy there usually had some under the counter at a high price. “Anybody want something from the drugstore?”

  “I’ll go with you,” she said. “There’s some shampoo I want.”

  “So you can stay even longer in the bathroom?” Sharon asked. “What’s wrong with the Halo I use?”

  “My hair’s too curly for it,” she said. Any nonsense to get out. She had already put on her coat and stood by the door.

  “Let her come along,” Leib said. “I like company.”

  “Okay, get me some corn plasters.” Rose counted out the change.

  When they were walking down the street, Leib said, “So after playing hard to get for a month, you decide to throw yourself at me when it’s freezing down to hell. What do you think, we can do it in the park tonight?” He put his hand heavily on her arm. He still limped but he could move more rapidly than he had in the summer.

  “I have to talk to you. Leib, I’m pregnant.”

  “Impossible.”

  “It’s true.”

  “By that lumpy kid?”

  “You know I never did it with him.”

  “Maybe you better start.”

  “That’s not possible,” she said angrily. “No.”

  “How do you know you’re pregnant? Have you seen a doctor?”

  “What doctor could I trust? I’ve missed two periods, I have morning sickness and my breasts are sore. I looked up all the symptoms in Aunt Rose’s doctor book.” That was an encyclopedia of information about illnesses and parts of the body. Coming on Naomi looking at it, Ruthie had confessed to her that she had tried to find out about sex from it when she was thirteen, but while the doctor book was strong on inner organs, it stopped there. Naomi wished she had to look through books to learn about sex.

  “The first step is to get you to a doctor. Lots of girls think they’re caught when it’s nothing. Then I’ll figure what to do.” He gave her a slap on the buttocks. “Seems like every time I touch a woman, I knock her up.”

  Naomi began to cry. He took hold of her by the shoulders, shaking her. “Stop that. You want to walk in the house weeping? Quit worrying. I’ll take care of you. I got a sense of responsibility toward you. What I have to figure out is the timing, whether I’ll have enough money coming in by the time the baby’s due to set you up.”

  “Leib, how do women get abortions?”

  “Don’t worry. I have connections for whatever we need.” He paused as they passed an alley, then drew her into the darkness to kiss her. “Your breasts are growing. If it wasn’t so cold, I’d do it right here, but my pecker would get frostbite. Listen, Sunday I’m looking at lots. Afterwards, I leave her at her parents. We’re eating with them.” He took her face between his gloved hands, cold leather against her cheeks. “I say I forgot something, so I have to pass by the house. About five-thirty.”

  “I’m still at the bakery.”

  “Seven then. You be upstairs. Now I get it, why you’ve been playing cold. You’re scared, but there’s nothing to be scared about. It’s copacetic. What belongs to me, I take good care of. Either I’ll set you up in a cosy little apartment right off or we’ll drop this baby and go that route when you finish high school.”

  “But Uncle Morris and Aunt Rose won’t let me do that.”

  “You’re sixteen. You can just walk out one day and if they don’t know where you went, then they don’t know where to look for you. They’re just poor Jews anyhow, they’ve got nothing to offer you. The future is formula houses by the thousands out where the land is cheap. I see that and I’m going to make a killing. Little saps like Ruthie and that schlemiel she married, Sharon and Arty, they’re all going to be looking for six-, seven-thousand-dollar houses with a VA mortgage. They’re going to be lining up. I’m moving Trudi and the kids out there.” He pulled her hard against him. “See you Sunday, seven P.M. upstairs.”

  “They’ll hear us.”

  “Sunday night Morris always has a meeting.”

  She lay awake with her hands clasped on her belly. He would help, but he would make her do whatever he wanted. She did not exist any longer. She was a vehicle to bear or not to bear Leib’s child as he chose. She had lost one family, and now she was
going to lose her second. As angry as she was with Ruthie, and she realized that night as she lay in bed that she was very angry, she did not want to be cut off. Nevertheless, maybe the kindness she could pay to all of them was to disappear as if she too were dead, like all the rest of her family. But the baby was not Leib’s, it was all hers and she called it Rivka. Rivka was hers and hers alone and she knew it. Rivka was Rivka returned, to grow up again and be loved.

  All dead except Jacqueline, who was coming. Leib knew that, but clearly it had not registered on him. What difference could it make, finally? A wasted trip. Unless Morris and Rose were right, and Jacqueline did mean to live in the United States?

  She lay under Leib again and by the end of the week, he took her to a doctor, a real doctor with a waiting room out by Seven Mile Road. The doctor took a urine sample, but remarked that he thought she was pregnant. Leib gave her a dime store wedding ring for the visit. She imagined herself alone in an apartment with the baby, waiting endlessly for Leib as Trudi waited in the new suburb. It would be better to die.

  Maybe she should kill herself, but she could not until Jacqueline came. It would be wrong to add one more death to the pile. She owed it to her sister to wait and to tell the truth, so that Jacqueline would be released from whatever false caring was dragging her thousands of miles. Naomi ought to die, but Rivka ought to live, little Rivka hiding in her belly smiling.

  A phone call came from New York. Aunt Rose was speaking Yiddish on the phone. Then she called Naomi, who was listening to “The Green Hornet” while she did her American history. The voice was familiar yet different. “Naomi, ma soeur, Naomi, je viendrai te voir jeudi. J’arriverai à six heures du soir, j’ai tout expliqué à notre tante. Pendant ces trois jours, je donne encore cinq conferences au sujet des juifs après l’Holocauste. C’est Joint qui paie mon passage, tu comprends? Mais je me dépêche le plus possible, ma soeur. Tu es en bonne santé? Je t’embrasse. J’ai un désir fou de te voir à l’instant même.”

  She tried to catch Leib the next morning, but he was not up. That evening she tried again. He was briefly in the living room getting the car keys from Morris. Behind Morris’s back, he nodded at her, winking. Meaning she was pregnant, as if she hadn’t known already. She tried to signal to him that she had to talk, but he was out the door with the keys.

  Thursday arrived. Rose and Morris went to the train station with her. In spite of the afternoon’s snow, which had stopped, leaving the night stark and bitter, the train was on time. Morris made a big sign with Siegal on it. He said, that way nobody would be embarrassed if they couldn’t recognize each other after all these years. Naomi’s heart pounded. She had to run to the bathroom to throw up. When she got back, she saw a woman with Morris and Rose, a tall woman, very thin and very beautiful in an army greatcoat and a beret. Naomi moved forwward slowly, slowly, as the station spun around her and voices rose into babble. Sweat broke out on her face. It was and it wasn’t her sister. Naomi slid to the floor as Morris bounded forward to try to catch her.

  When she came to in a ring of staring faces, she was ashamed. They were not the only people meeting Jacqueline, for there was a formal delegation from the local Jewish group handling her visit and a photographer shooting off flashbulbs at Naomi fainting before she could be pulled to her feet. “For shame,” Rose was saying, “this is a private thing, she should meet her sister come back from the dead without light bulbs in her face.”

  Jacqueline was handling the reporters in English. There would be a formal meeting with the press tomorrow at eleven. She would be glad to answer any questions then. She had a presentation for them and press packets. Now she was tired and wanted to see her sister.

  Jacqueline was not staying with them, but at the Statler. “I had them book a double room.” She was holding Naomi’s hand and staring into her face. Her eyes were the same hazel. “I wanted you to stay with me, at least tonight. We have so much to talk about. Will you come?”

  Naomi was crying. She only nodded. At least that way she could tell her what she had to right away, tonight.

  Finally they were in the room with Jacqueline’s suitcase and briefcase bulging with papers, charts, mimeographed statements in four languages. “You’re so big, so blooming, so gorgeous, Naomi!” Jacqueline said to her in French. “To see you again, I can hardly keep my hands off you. I hope I didn’t shock you, appearing suddenly. They thought I was dead, but I was among the living dead, in a camp.”

  “Jacqueline, there are things I have to tell you too.”

  “Don’t cry, my darling, don’t cry. Sit. Please, sit down as if you mean to stay a little while with me anyhow. I know you have a life here. I know that.”

  “You wasted your time coming for me.”

  “To see you is not a waste of time. If you want to stay here, I’ll understand, but don’t make up your mind till we discuss all possibilities.”

  “You don’t want me. I’m of a bad character. I am pregnant.”

  “Pregnant?”

  Naomi could only nod, tears flooding from her eyes. Now two people knew her shame and Jacqueline would thrust her out, send her home and scream at Morris and Rose for letting her be ruined, when it had been only her own fault. She tried to say that, but she could not speak for sobbing.

  Jacqueline came to her in two long strides and sat her down on the edge of the twin bed that was to be hers. “Baby sister, my only, my dear, why do you cry? Do you think I care whether you went to bed with some boy? You’re young to have a baby, but you’re strong. You have the baby or you don’t have the baby—how far along are you?”

  “Two months and a couple of weeks.”

  “If you don’t want to have the baby, we should act soon. I think in New York I could fix it. If you want to, that’s fine too. What about the father? Do you love him?”

  “I thought so, but I don’t.” She stopped crying. Pressed against her lean sister who had taken off the greatcoat and wore a sweater and skirt, she slowly relaxed and talked. The tears began again but not spasmodically. Slowly, slowly, like the blood she had hoped for every day, warm slow tears were trickling onto Jacqueline’s sweater where Jacqueline held her to her breasts, smaller than Naomi’s.

  “I think I may cut his balls off,” Jacqueline said cheerfully. “I’m going to take you away for sure. I don’t want you in the same city, on the same continent, with this bastard. What’s wrong with Aunt Rose that she can’t keep him off you?”

  “But it was my fault! I wanted him. Not what happened. I didn’t know what I wanted. I thought he was a big hero and I had a crush on him from his wedding day.”

  “It’s not your fault, little one.” Jacqueline was stroking her shoulders. “It’s not a big bad sin. I’ve seen too much death and not enough life. Everyone’s on my back to make babies. You want a baby, I’m telling you it’ll be just fine. The father’s Jewish, even if he’s a momzer.”

  Naomi had cried herself out. Her eyes were swollen and sore. She lay against her sister, touching her hair, her arm. “What’s that?”

  “My number. From Auschwitz.”

  “Was it bad there? I saw pictures, in the Yiddish papers. Piles of bodies. Was that where Maman and Rivka died?”

  Jacqueline began to shake against her, and now Naomi was holding her big sister and comforting her. Jacqueline shook and could not speak, while slow tears slid from her eyes. Finally she uttered in a choked voice, “I can’t talk about it to you. Not yet. I shouldn’t be alive.”

  Jacqueline needed her too, Naomi realized, and sat up straight on the bed. Jacqueline needed love, needed holding and coddling and looking out for. She stroked her sister’s tight hard body, racked with convulsions of grief. “Will we go back to the apartment in Paris?”

  “I don’t think I could bear Paris. I went to the apartment. There’re French people living in it, and they acted as if I was impossible. I saw Maman’s lace tablecloth and they denied it. The Germans took half the things anyhow. I got a few keepsakes from the butcher downstairs who
saved them for us and put them with his things when he went into hiding. Maman’s candlesticks. Her brooch.”

  “Are you going to stay here, the way Uncle Morris and Aunt Rose expect?”

  “Here? No!” Jacqueline laughed, touching Naomi’s face again. “How precious to see you. I have friends in Toulouse, they’ll be your friends. Don’t frown with worry, they’re not bourgeois. They’re crazy like me, friends from the Resistance and the camps. I’ll tell you all about them, my sister, my darling, my baby, and they’ll be family for you too.”

  “Will we live in Toulouse?”

  “That will be our base. We’re going to Israel. In the meantime I’m raising money and making speeches. I turn out to be good at that. I have an odd set of talents.” Jacqueline laughed, more sharply. “Would you like a little schnapps? I have a bottle in my suitcase. Just a little, not to make the baby drunk.”

  “I can have the baby?”

  “If you really want to. You’re young to have a baby, but if you want it, it would make the others happy.”

  “Why should they be happy if I have a bastard?”

  “Vera was sterilized in Ravensbrueck.” Jacqueline poured the brandy for both of them and lay back against the pillow to talk about the people she said were waiting for them in Toulouse. Rysia who was a year older than Naomi she talked about, who had red hair and was Hungarian; Vera and Lev who were married she talked about; and Ari she talked about the most.

  “Is he your boyfriend?” Naomi asked, wondering if she had got back her sister just to lose her as she had lost Ruthie.

  “No, I don’t love him. I can’t love any man yet.”

  “Me neither.”

  Jacqueline kissed her. “You have already loved enough for a while! You’re so big and gorgeous and healthy, everybody will fall in love with you, you’ll have to get used to it.”

  Her sister seemed to her mysterious, more powerful than Leib, crackling with a hard energy. “But if Ari is so nice, won’t you change your mind and love him? It may happen anyhow even if you don’t want to.”