Watch Over My Child: Book Three in the Michal's Destiny Series

by Roberta Kagan

  There was a mezuzah that had been attached to the corner of the building by the entrance door and because Sharon kissed her hand and then touched the mezuzah every time she went in and out of the apartment, Gilde learned to do the same.

  “So, tell us about your family,” Mrs. Lawrence asked one night at dinner. “What do you hear from them?”

  “Nothing. I sent another letter to my sister last week and I haven’t gotten an answer. I don’t know what to do,” Gilde said.

  “So, you won’t worry. You won’t think about it. I’m sorry I brought it up. The war will end soon and then you’re going to invite all of us to your parents’ house for a nice dinner. We’ll bring a roasted chicken,” Mr. Lawrence said, smiling and winking at Gilde.

  Gilde knew he was trying to comfort her. But the chances of her ever finding her family again were growing bleaker every day.

  One Friday afternoon Gilde and Sharon were braiding dough to make challah for the Sabbath when an idea came to Gilde. “Sharon, will you help me learn to speak English the way you do? I want to lose my accent. If I can get rid of this German accent, I think my life will be a lot better here in Britain.”

  “Of course I’ll help you. We’re friends.”

  It was fun to learn to speak without her accent. Sharon would enunciate words and Gilde would say them over and over until she was able to sound just like Sharon. They put so much energy into the project that it helped distract them from everything going on in the world.

  A committee came to the Lawrence home and offered to take Sharon and Gilde to the country.

  “You two want to go?” Mr. Lawrence asked. “It would be safer.”

  “I don’t want to go, Papa,” Sharon said.

  “Gilde?”

  “If you want me to go, I will, but I don’t want to. I feel at home here.”

  “So you’ll both stay with us. I would prefer that anyway.” He smiled.

  Still, even though Gilde felt loved and wanted by the Lawrences, every few weeks she tried to send a letter to Lotti or Alina, but she never received an answer.

  CHAPTER 22

  Elias

  Elias was never one to pay much attention to gossip. When he heard rumors about himself, he brushed them off like dust on a dark coat. He’d grown up in an orphanage, had very little recollection of his family, and few ties to anything. So when he moved in with Glenda he wasn’t concerned about his reputation. He had none. But Glenda was a hard girl, with a mind of her own. She knew that Elias adored her, but she had a special relationship with her pimp, Bart, and she wasn’t about to give him up. Elias couldn’t understand it. Glenda earned the money, but Bart controlled her like a puppeteer. There was no doubt that Bart was a handsome devil of a man, with Clark Gable good looks, dark hair, brooding eyes. The hold that Bart had over Glenda drove Elias crazy. He hated to see Glenda with other men, but she ignored him when he begged her to leave what she called “the life.” Elias was smart, very smart, and perhaps sometimes too smart. Many times when cash was not flowing, he’d devised illegal plans that had helped the bookies grow their business and in turn, he earned more money. His mind was quick and he learned fast. Ever since he was a child, he had been able to repair anything. In fact, he’d even built a radio with used parts he’d found and stolen from scrap yards. When he heard about a job opening at the local newspaper office, working the printing press, he applied. Although he’d never worked a printing press before, he lied and said he had experience. Elias was so convincing that the boss believed him when he said he could handle the job and would be an asset to the department. On his first day, the other men watched him and analyzed his ability to work the press. One of them reported him for lying. The boss listened to the complaint but decided to give Elias a chance to prove himself.

  It was true, Elias knew nothing about printing newspapers. But, Elias was learning. He would learn every aspect of how the machine worked and from then on, he would be the master. It was in this way that his brilliant but troubled mind operated.

  There was no doubt that Elias knew how to be charming when he wanted to be. And because he was handsome, by the end of the day the women typists were helping him to learn what he needed to know in order to run the press. They weren’t experts, but they’d been at the job long enough to help Elias figure things out. By the end of the week, he ran the printing press like a pro. He’d gotten this job to prove to Glenda that he could earn a legitimate living. Perhaps this would convince Glenda to quit selling her body.

  “I can support you. We can get married and have a normal life. I’m tired of working with bookies, and seeing you with johns. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just have a few children, maybe buy a house somewhere far away from here?” Elias told her. But Glenda just smiled at him as he if were nothing but a boy.

  It made him angry. He left the apartment, walked for miles smoking cigarettes he’d stolen from the jacket pocket of one of Glenda’s rich johns. What the hell is wrong with me? Why do I need a woman’s love so much? He kicked a stone on the ground. Both of the women he’d fallen head over heels for were older than Elias. Neither of them treated him like an equal. Elias knew he was handsome. He worked hard to be a wonderful lover. And he’d heard girls his own age refer to him as a sexy young man with a rebellious streak.

  All of these qualities made him appealing to older women, but they never seemed to take his feelings seriously. So, regardless of how much he tried to do for Glenda financially, she refused to consider leaving her pimp.

  Damn, maybe I am the way I am because I never had a mother, Elias thought. But he would never share that weakness with anyone.

  Bart came to the apartment often. And every time he did, Elias would sit on the sofa glaring at him, not daring to verbally challenge him. Not out of fear of the fight, but out of fear of losing Glenda. He would leave the room as she took a wad of pounds out of the garter holding up her stocking and hand it to Bart as if he had done something to earn it. This ignited a fire in Elias’s belly. One day after Bart had picked up the money from Glenda and left, Elias went into Glenda’s bedroom to find her sitting on the bed and counting the few pounds that Bart had left her.

  “Why do you do this? Sleep with strange men, let them do terrible things to you and then give all of your money to that bastard?”

  “Because he loves me. He understands me.”

  “I love you,” Elias said, his heart pounding in his neck.

  “You’re a boy, Elias. He knows me. He knows things about me that you will never understand.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like that I need someone to take charge. When he tells me what to do I feel safe.”

  “I could tell you what to do. Leave him. That’s what you should do.”

  “Elias, you don’t understand.”

  “And when you come home with a black eye and I know he is the bastard who gave it to you? What about that?”

  “He only hits me because he loves me. He gets jealous when he thinks he’s losing me. In fact, you and I are the only thing that I have ever stood up against Bart about.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He wants me to get rid of you. Bart says you are messing up what we have. I refused.”

  “And?”

  “And, so far, he says that as long as I don’t let you get in the way of him and I and what we have, you can stay.”

  “Well, that’s generous of him. What exactly does he do for you, Glenda?” Elias asked, his voice bitter with sarcasm.

  “He protects me and lets me know that I am beautiful, desirable, loved.”

  “And the son of a bitch does all of this through pounding you with his fists when you don’t behave.”

  “Please, Elias. I can’t lie to Bart and if you don’t stop challenging my relationship with him, I will have to send you away.”

  “How the hell can I convince you that the guy is using you for money? How many other girls does he have that he put out on the street just like you?”

&nb
sp; “I don’t know, maybe five.”

  “Five others, but he loves you, right? Isn’t that what you’re telling me?”

  “Listen, when I met Bart I was just a kid, not even thirteen. My mother died when I was born. I ran away from home really, it was my stepfather that I was running away from. I’d already miscarried my second child by my stepfather. He’d started raping me when I was eight and I couldn’t take it anymore. I stole money out of his pants pocket one morning while he was still asleep. Then I paid for bus fare into London. But I had no idea what I was going to do when I got here. I hadn’t thought that far ahead. All I knew was that I wanted to get as far away from my stepfather as possible. I wandered the streets for a few days, hungry and alone, and need I say, terrified? Then I met Bart. He was so kind and understanding. The first thing he did was feed me.” She smiled a nostalgic smile. “Then he put me up and for a while it was just him and me. There were no johns in the beginning. That was the first time anyone had ever made love to me. It’s a lot different than being raped.”

  “Yeah? Is it? Because in my book he was raping you. He was setting you up for this pitiful life where you sell your body to give him money and make him happy. Is that really alright with you, Glenda?”

  “You can’t begin to understand my relationship with Bart. He is my oak tree, Elias. When I needed someone he was there. He has always been there for me.”

  “So what am I?”

  “Bart says you’re my companion as long as you don’t cause problems.”

  “Damn, I wish you could think for yourself.”

  “I am thinking for myself, Elias. I love Bart. If you want to stay here with me, you won’t try to change that. If not, you can go now.”

  He knew she meant it. And Elias thought about leaving, but he was comfortable and happy with Glenda. So, he tried to make believe that in time he would be able to find a way to change her way of thinking.

  Elias had an untamed sex appeal that made the girls he saw on the street shoot him smiles and sometimes even winks. He would return their gestures. Occasionally he spent an afternoon in bed with a pretty girl, but for some reason his heart brought him back to Glenda. Sometimes he would take long walks and dive deep into thought about the women he had cared for. Mary and Glenda had not been as different as people may have thought. Although Mary had a respectable job and Glenda was a prostitute, both women had another man in their lives. For Mary it was her husband, for Glenda it was Bart. Neither of them thought of him as someone they would ever marry. He wondered if that might not be part of his attraction to them. He knew that neither of them would ever try to tie him down. He was confused in his own mind. What did he really want? Sometimes he thought he wanted marriage and a family, but then when he met a sweet young girl who he might be able to marry and start a family with, he would find that he was not romantically interested.

  Glenda had made it clear that if Elias wanted to stay he was to make himself scarce when Bart was around. Even worse, Glenda also told him that if he forced her to choose between himself and Bart, she would choose her pimp. When Elias was angry with Glenda, he considered moving back into the small apartment he’d shared with his friends. He could always go back to running numbers. He hated punching a clock and working a full day at the printing press. At least when he was living with the other fellows and running numbers, he had some form of self-respect. Here with Glenda, he felt like a chachka (he still remembered the Yiddish word for toy), something to be put back on the shelf and ignored when Bart came around.

  Elias continued working at the press, but he didn’t make nearly as much money as he’d made with the bookies, and he felt like a failure. Glenda earned more than he did and gave most of it to Bart each week. One evening after Glenda’s john slithered out of the flat, she came into the living room, where Elias was smoking a cigarette. He couldn’t stand to look at her clients, because he knew what was going on in the bedroom and it made him sick. How could he ignore the moaning he heard through the walls? He knew Bart didn’t give a damn about Glenda. If Bart cared at all, he would feel the same way about Glenda selling her body as Elias did. One of the hardest things about Glenda’s johns was that even after they left, their smell would linger in the apartment and haunt Elias for the rest of the day or night.

  “I’m tired. Have you eaten anything?” Glenda asked Elias. She was stretching her back. She wore a silk Japanese-style robe. It must have been a gift from one of her clients. It was slit up the front and her long shapely legs were exposed as she walked.

  “No,” he said. When he thought about his life and his relationship with Glenda, he lost his appetite.

  “Come on, come with me, let’s go to the pub down the street, I want to go and get something to eat. There’s nothing here.”

  Elias’s shoulders slumped in defeat. “Why do you do this? I’ll never understand it.”

  “I told you before, he loves me.” Then she turned to him and glared. “I’m tired, Elias. I don’t want to go over this again.”

  “How can you be so stupid?” He shook his head. “If I were a different kind of a fellow I’d knock some sense into you.”

  “Oh Elias, you’re too young to understand. I am his favorite. I am the only one that he really loves. Now please can we go and eat?”

  “You can’t believe that! I know you can’t believe that he loves you. If he did he wouldn’t use you like this.”

  “He isn’t using me. I offered to do this for him, for us….”

  “So, where the hell do I fit in to all of this?” Elias asked.

  “Oh my God, you ask the same questions over and over. I told you I’m tired, exhausted. So, where do you want to fit in, Elias?” She put a cigarette to her lips and turned to him, leaning down to the chair where he sat so that he could light it. Instead her grabbed her wrist and stood up. Elias was over a foot taller and far stronger than Glenda.

  “Stop playing games with me!” he said. His voice was raised.

  “You’re hurting me.” She looked at him and he saw the fear in her eyes.

  He released her arm.He hadn’t realized how hard he was squeezing her wrist. “I’m sorry.” He cleared his throat. “I just want you to know that I care about you. I care a lot. I am working at this lousy job right now, but I promise, I’ll do something great. I’ll make money, plenty of money. Just quit this way of life, leave Bart. I love you, Glenda.”

  “Love doesn’t pay the bills, honey,” she said, taking a deep drag on her cigarette.

  “Bart gives you just enough of the money you earn, to stay alive. Do you realize that?”

  “He takes care of me. He manages everything. He finds the johns, makes sure they’re not dangerous.…”

  “And have you had any that were dangerous? I would bet you have.”

  “Yeah, once or twice, I have had a problem or two.” She shrugged. “It happens.”

  “See? Do you see? He’s not doing anything to help you. If he loved you, he couldn’t put you in danger. I know I couldn’t.”

  “Oh, Elias, you are such a sweet boy.” She went to hug him. “Come on, let’s go get something to eat.”

  “I’m not a boy.” He shrugged her off. “I am a man and you don’t respect me.”

  “Of course I do….”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “So? If that’s how you feel then what? You want to leave?” she asked.

  “You know what, Glenda? I think I do,” he said. His pride was hurt. His ego was bruised, and he was furious. He went into the bedroom and packed the small cardboard suitcase that he’d brought with him when he was on the train to London from Germany. Then he went back into the living room. She was sitting on the sofa. A deep wrinkle had set between her eyes.

  “You sure you want to do this? You sure you want to go?”

  “No, I don’t want to do this,” he said. His hands were trembling with anger. “I want things to be different.”

  “I’m sorry, Elias. But, this is the way things are and the way they
are going to be….”

  He felt the blood rush to his face. He wanted to hit her, to push her, to knock some sense into her beautiful little head. But instead, he turned and walked out the door.

  For several days, Elias did not return. He spent the nights sleeping on the street with a bottle of whiskey. In the mornings, he was too hung over to go to work. In a drunken stupor, to prove to himself that he was attractive and desirable, he tried to seduce a young girl who was having lunch alone on a bench in the park, but she ran from him. He saw the terror in her eyes and realized that he must have looked like a derelict.

  Elias went into a public bathroom in the train station and tried to clean himself up. When he looked into the mirror, his bloodshot eyes and greasy hair alarmed him. He looked older than his years, and even worse, his decrepit life had made him look like he was ill. Elias washed his face, combed his hair, and straightened his wrinkled shirt. He rinsed his mouth with water, hoping to kill some of the stink of liquor on his breath, and walked to the newspaper office where he worked. When he arrived, he was greeted with looks of disgust and a reprimand from his boss for not showing up for work for several days. Then he was given his final pay envelope and a swift dismissal. Now, not only was Elias miserable in his love life, but he had just been fired.

  Dejected and disgusted with himself, he crawled back to Glenda’s apartment. Since he had a key, he had no reason to knock. As Elias had expected, Glenda was asleep. Elias hated to accept it, but he doubted that she was alone. Many of her johns spent the night. The thought made him ill. He felt powerless as he threw the cardboard suitcase on the floor. His head was pounding. It felt like his temples were being hammered. After kicking his shoes off, he lay on the sofa and tried to fall asleep only to awaken and rush to the bathroom to vomit. Apparently, the noise of his retching awakened Glenda, and by the time he came out of the bathroom she was sitting on the sofa waiting for him.