No Place I'd Rather Be

by Cathy Lamb

  When I was done, I put the roofing supplies and shoes away, washed my hands, grabbed paper towels and cloth towels for drying whatever was in the box, and headed back up to the attic. There was so much tape wrapped around the box that had gotten wet, I had to go back downstairs to get a knife. It was as if whoever put the box up there never wanted anyone to get at the contents.

  I paused. Should I open it? Should I leave it and tell my grandma? Was it private? I put my hand on the top of the box. It was soaked, and my grandma was at the clinic. It was probably old photographs of my mother and me and Chloe or our school artwork or gifts made out of clay or papier-mâché we’d given Grandma and Granddad. I would lay whatever was in it out, up here in the attic or downstairs, so it could dry.

  I used the knife and cut through the layers of tape, then opened the top. I sat back on my heels when I saw what was in there, stunned. For long seconds, I couldn’t move.

  I carefully pulled out Grandma’s white wedding dress and veil. My grandparents had a photo of themselves on their wedding day in their bedroom, but I had never seen the dress. The dress was white, lacy, straight. The veil was made of the same lace. It was elegant, delicate, stylish. We asked her about her wedding dress one time and she had waved her hand and said, “I don’t know where it is anymore,” which was odd, but it was one more thing she didn’t want to talk about, and we had left it at that.

  I found an old, white nurse’s uniform. Forties? Was that dried blood? Not surprising. Grandma had been a nurse during the war. I found a dark blue dress, too. High style in the mid-1940s and a classic. Straight lines for the skirt, a jacket with a vee and blue buttons, a belt to cinch in the waist. A matching hat with dark blue flowers and a white ribbon completed the absolutely darling outfit.

  I found a tin box with an old-fashioned picture on the lid of ladies dancing in fancy ball gowns, their dresses filled with lace, flounce, buttons, and bows. Inside I found two hair clips, one shiny red butterfly, one purple. I picked up two charm bracelets, each with a red pomegranate, a Star of David, a faux-blue stone heart, a lion, a tree of life inside a circle, a four-leaf clover, a cat, a dog, and a key. There were colored pencils, old photos, and letters addressed to Gisela and Renata Gobenko in London.

  At the bottom of the box I found a small, silver menorah, maybe six inches high.

  A menorah. She had saved a menorah.

  And there it was. Part of Grandma’s truth: Grandma was Jewish.

  This was not surprising. We knew that Grandma had lived in Germany, and we knew when the attacks began on Jews. We suspected she was Jewish, but as she didn’t talk about her past, we didn’t know.

  At the bottom I found an old, thick, heavy book, the leather cover cracked, a pink ribbon, fraying and stained, tying it together. I untied the pink ribbon carefully, afraid I would tear it. I could not read the inscription on the inside front cover as it was in another language . . . what was it? Yiddish. I recognized it from when I took a class on Jewish history in college.

  The pages were burned around the edges. Some had clearly sustained water damage. There were recipes, pages and pages of recipes, some in Yiddish, some in . . . was it Ukrainian? German, for sure, and English. Some of the recipes were taped to the back pages. “It’s a cookbook.” I laughed out loud. A cookbook! What a treasure! What a beautiful find!

  Pictures were drawn around the edges of the recipes, below them, and on the pages facing each one. The early pictures were drawn with pencil—exquisite, detailed pictures of a handsome smiling man with a beard, riding a horse, working on a saddle with a tool, on a farm with a rake, and in a garden. There were pictures of a family, children, grandparents. In one picture they were all gathered around a long table eating, Shabbat candlesticks lit, a fire in the hearth. The women and girls were in long skirts and kerchiefs, black boots. The men were in suspenders, fur hats, beards.

  A small home, made from stone and wood, with a brick chimney, took up another page. In other drawings there were chickens and lambs outside, and sometime inside the home. There were benches, chairs, and several tables, all solidly made, reminding me of the tables that Granddad had made us. There were shelves on a wall with baskets and pots, dried flowers hanging from the rafters, pillows on the backs of chairs, and drawings of herbs and a vegetable garden.

  On other pages there were pictures of a village—late 1800s? Stone homes. In the distance there appeared to be a city. There were men holding two silver pails attached to a stick over their shoulders, women with shawls and kerchiefs on their heads, people riding horses, donkeys pulling carts, sheep being herded in the street, a rooster, cats, cobblestone streets. There was a menorah in a windowsill. I picked up the menorah I’d found. Could it be the same one?

  I turned the page, then turned back. The author had changed. The previous recipes were in Ukrainian and Yiddish, these were in German and the handwriting was different. But this artist drew herbs and flowers. Some were tracings, clearly drawn with a flower or leaf underneath the paper, and a colored pencil over the top. There were recipes named “Esther’s . . .” or “Alexander’s. . .” in German. I also recognized the words, Isaac, Gisela, and Renata over other recipes, as if those recipes had been named after those people. Gisela. There was Grandma’s name in this old, old cookbook.

  There were stains in the cookbook. I peered closer. A few pages looked like they had dried blood on them. That couldn’t be. Could it?

  Within the pages I saw the fragile flakes of a pressed rose; two thin, heart-shaped gold lockets with a hook on top for a chain; a white feather; a charm in the shape of a sun; red ribbons; a few old photographs; and what looked like poems in Yiddish and German.

  I could hardly breathe. I stared at the cookbook.

  And there it was. Finally.

  My grandma’s past. Her history. Her family.

  Her tragedy. I sniffled. I bent over and hugged the battered cookbook close to me. I cried for my grandma, for what she had been through, and my tears soaked into the leather. I cried for what she had lost that we didn’t know she had lost but had sensed, had known, had always known. When I was done crying, I opened the book again.

  I went back to the first signature, on the first page.

  Ida Zaslavsky

  Who was Ida Zaslavsky?

  December 1904

  Odessa, the Russian Empire

  Ida Zaslavsky, great-great-grandmother of Olivia Martindale

  Ida Zaslavsky finished her drawing of her family at the dinner table. She had only a pencil and a flickering candle. She had started drawing to calm her nerves, to still her racing, fearful thoughts.

  Her own mother, Sarrah Tolstonog, had given her the thick, leather bound book, with blank pages when Ida was married six years ago. “Fill it with your thoughts and drawings. Put your recipes in there, and mine and Grandma Tsilia’s, so you’ll always have them. You are an artist, Ida. You have true talent.” Sarrah had written, “To Ida Zaslavsky, Love Mother,” in Yiddish on the inside front cover.

  Sarrah had gotten it from a man she worked for as a maid. He made books for the wealthy but had seen her interest in them and had put together the leather cover and the pages for her. She had wrapped it in a pink ribbon to hold the book together.

  Ida had decided that she would write her recipes on the right-hand side and that she would draw pictures of her family, her farm and garden, and her neighborhood, which felt like a village, poor and on the outskirts of Odessa, on the left-hand side and around the edges of her recipes. She wrote down the recipes that she and her mother made together, and the recipes that she had from her grandma, Tsilia Bezkrovny. Beet root soup with pepper and onions. Braided egg bread. Fish from the sea with garlic, but never sturgeon. Jews did not eat sturgeon.

  She wrote down her husband’s favorite recipes, including fried fish with ginger and garlic, and drew him, careful with every detail. Boris was so handsome with his beard and broad shoulders, and his smile. She loved his smile. She drew him working on the saddles he made an
d sold. She drew him working on their patch of land, their garden, though the soil and weather were often unforgiving. She drew him with their children at the table, a fire in their hearth, and giving the blessing, the light from their Shabbat candles flickering in front of him.

  She drew her parents, Sarrah and Efim, and her grandfather and grandmother, Aron and Tsilia Bezkrovny. She drew her five siblings, even Iosif, who had died at the age of two.

  Her parents had wanted her to marry Boris when she turned eighteen. He was a fine young man, they told her. Strong, healthy, gentle. His parents had wanted him to marry her. He was twenty-two, time to settle down. Their parents were friends. She had known Boris since she was a child, but she couldn’t imagine marrying him. In fact, Ida had her eye on another young man.

  Boris and Ida finally acquiesced because they loved their parents, but both had been resentful, angry . . . until they had fallen madly and passionately in love. She smiled. That was why they had so many children already, she thought. They could not stay away from each other at night, when the children were asleep. She giggled, then told herself to stop giggling.

  She would give birth again within a week or two, and that made her happy, so laughter was at the tip of her lips. The baby would join his sweet siblings, Esther, Moishe, and Zino.

  Ida drew her home, so drafty in winter, but it was filled with their love. It was made of wood and stone. She and Boris had done much of it themselves. It had two rooms, and she was grateful for both and her brick fireplace. She drew their chickens and lambs, which were brought into their home in colder months so they didn’t freeze.

  Inside, Boris had built her a long, strong table for dinner and two shorter tables so she could cook. He had also built three chairs and two benches. He had built three long shelves and attached them to a wall so she could store their food, baskets, pails, and pots. He had even built a bed in the corner for the children. Boris could build anything she wanted; he was so smart. She hung dried flowers from the rafters to add color during their long and harsh winters and sewed pillows with whatever scraps of fabric she could find.

  She drew their garden, and their herbs, the countryside and their village. She drew people on horseback on the cobblestone road; men holding silver pails attached to a stick over their shoulders; donkeys pulling carts; the women shopping with their shawls, kerchiefs, and long skirts; the men going off to work at factories or at the port. She drew sheep being herded, a rooster, cats, and their silver menorah on the windowsill that her grandfather had made for her when she married Boris. She drew her lace head covering that had been passed down from her grandmother.

  She did not draw the times when she thought they all might starve or be murdered in their sleep by an angry mob or when the snow was so incessant she thought it might bury them alive if they didn’t freeze to death first.

  That night she decided to write another recipe in the book, this time in Yiddish. If it was a recipe from her mother or from her grandmother, it was in Yiddish. If it was her recipe, she wrote in Ukrainian. This recipe was for cheese dumplings, from Tsilia, so it was in Yiddish.

  Ida loved her family first, her recipes and cooking second. She chastised herself. She should have said she loved God first. But where had God been lately? Why had he not protected the Jews from the pogroms? There had been attack after attack over the years. The government had looked away or endorsed it. They hated the Jews, their money, their success, their religion.

  Homes and buildings and businesses were burned. People beaten and killed. Women raped. Homes robbed. Jews were fleeing. She, too, would escape with Boris and their children soon. They had to or they would die, even though the government tried to prevent them from leaving.

  They would leave soon. They were all in danger. Even her parents, who had lived through a pogrom here in Odessa when they were children, told them to go. They were not healthy enough to make the journey, but they wanted their children and grandchildren saved. Ida would not leave her parents if she was not so desperate to save her own children.

  They would go to Germany and have a new life.

  She felt the baby move and put a protective hand on her stomach. It was a boy, she knew it. They would name him Liev.

  Boris came to her. They smiled at each other. He held out a hand. She placed her hand in his and he kissed it. Such a romantic man.

  * * *

  When I returned home from the grocery store there was an envelope underneath the mat in front of my front door. It was a check from Jace. He had attached a note: “You are half owner of Martindale Ranch. This is your share of the profits.”

  It was a huge check. I wanted that money, I did. Mostly so that I wouldn’t have to worry about making payments to my attorney, Claudine Wren, and to pay off the hospital, but I couldn’t take it. I had not worked for this money. Jace had. I didn’t deserve that check, for many reasons, and that was the honest truth.

  I ripped it up.

  * * *

  My phone rang the next morning.

  I saw the number.

  I didn’t answer.

  Later, I listened to her message.

  I listened to her swear at me. I listened to her tell me how manipulative I was, how greedy, how hateful.

  I listened to her tell me that she would make me regret this for the rest of my life. Every. Single. Shitty. Day. You bitch.

  I closed my eyes.

  * * *

  “I’m going to put the kids in school tomorrow and find a job.”

  My mother nodded. “Those girls need to be in school so they can master basic skills as I move them toward biology, anatomy, and chemistry.”

  I laughed, she winked at me, and I handed her a piece of pumpkin cheesecake. We were on my deck that night at the log cabin, in jackets and hats, admiring the snow-topped Dove Mountains. We could hear the Telena River rushing through the darkness, constant and smooth, soothing.

  “Thanks, Mom, for being so great with the girls.”

  “I love them.” She crossed her legs and leaned against the railing. She was wearing beige cowgirl boots with silver trimmings. “They’re my granddaughters now. They’ve got grit.” She raised a fist in the air and shook it, her brown/gray hair slipping out of her bun. “They’ll both feel comfortable digging bullets out of people, as I am. And gushing blood they will see as a fountain that must stop, not someone bleeding out.”

  “They’ll be the doctor-daughters you didn’t get with me.”

  “Don’t remind me of my ongoing hell, Rebel Child,” she grumbled. My mother had so wanted me to be a doctor. Preferably a surgeon. “Tell me what happened, Olivia.”

  I told her about Carter and how I felt compelled to throw a chicken at him, not a live one, and maybe an egg or two, then I told her about the calls and what my attorney had said, and why my bones were almost frozen together in abject fear.

  When I was done she was quiet for a while, then said, “What a dang mess. You have many things going wrong in your life. One . . .” She started holding up her fingers. She is a very precise woman. “The girls are endangered. Two, you have no job because you threw a chicken, not a live one, I’ll give you that, and eggs, at Carter, I hope your aim was true, and three, you’re almost broke because of the attorney’s fees and your adventure at the hospital.”

  “That about sums it up.”

  “I will give you money.”

  “I would not accept a penny.”

  “Olivia, don’t make my estrogen rise. Get your head out of your mule’s butt. You are so stubborn. It is not endearing, it’s irritating.”

  “No. And I am paying you and Grandma rent for the cabin.”

  “Hell’s bells, you are not,” my mother said. “Your grandma would never accept it, either. Don’t you upset her with this inane drivel.”

  “Mom, yes, I am.”

  “Olivia. You’ve been through a heckuva hard time. Let me help you. For the girls, not for your sorry nondoctor self. Oh! Will I ever stop my mourning at your career choice? No.
I won’t. The torture continues. Please stop arguing with me. You’re giving me a headache. I have to see twenty patients tomorrow and I do not need your sass.”

  “Mom, I can’t accept help.”

  “Why, ridiculous daughter?”

  “Because of how you raised me.”

  “And how did I raise you?”

  “To be independent.”

  “You are independent.”

  “I’m paying rent, Mom, or I’m leaving and I’ll pay rent somewhere else.”

  She knew I meant it. She knew I could not move into my grandparents’ log cabin and feel like I was mooching off of her and my sweet Grandma.

  “You are like a bullet out of a gun. Unstoppable.”

  “Got it from you.”

  “Take the truck until you get a new one, as you demolished your car when you made a poor choice in a blizzard. What were you thinking? Must have been rocks in your brain that day.”

  “Now, that I’ll take you up on.”

  We ate the pumpkin cheesecake in peace for a while and watched two falling stars take their last dive through space. The river rolled, and the snow shone in the dark on the mountain peaks.

  “You’re going to apply to be a chef in Kalulell, then?”

  “Yes. I thought I’d look for temporary chef positions until I figure out what to do. We had to get out of Portland quick until things are settled, and I know the girls will be safe there in the future.”

  “Jace is looking for a chef.”

  That hurt. “It won’t be me.”

  “That’s a dang shame.”

  I knew what she was talking about.

  She held my hand. “I love you, Olivia. Lord knows you have given me a run for my money with your wildness in high school with Chloe, the pranks, still talked about today in town, and your unwillingness to be a doctor, but I forgive you for it because you make delicious desserts.”