Keeping Secrets

by Bina Bernard

  While she couldn’t explain her father’s sudden burst of affection toward her, Hannah knew she didn’t want to do anything that might jeopardize his new warmth. If Harry wanted to go down memory lane for a bit, she was willing to go along. Overriding her usual trepidations, she decided to answer his question.

  “My memories are pretty spotty,” Hannah lied. “Not something I like to think about,” she added, truthfully. “I remember Grandma Sonia and Grandpa Jakob. I used to play in their store, behind the bookcases,” she said, and paused.

  Hannah bit her lip and started to wring her hands. A weak smile appeared on her face as she pictured herself, not quite three years old, standing on the counter in her grandparents’ bookstore, reciting limericks her grandmother had taught her.

  “Whenever a customer came in, Grandma Sonia put me up on the counter, and watched, proudly, as I performed,” she said.

  Suddenly, in a childlike voice, Hannah started to recite her favorite limerick about pears, apples, and plums:

  Wpadła gruszka do fartuszka,

  a za gruszką dwa jabłuszka.

  A śliweczka wpaść nie chciała,

  bo śliweczka niedojrzała.

  The image of her grandmother’s beaming face broadened Hannah’s smile. But soon the tears flowed, and she stopped talking. Seeing Hannah blot her cheeks with the back of her hand, Harry took out his handkerchief and gently wiped her tears. As she let her limp body lean against her father’s boney frame, he kissed the top of her head, and pressed for more:

  “Do you remember . . . any of your playmates?”

  Hannah shook her head.

  “What else do you remember?” he prodded, patting her hand.

  Although Hannah would have preferred changing the subject, the pleased look on her father’s face made her answer his question.

  “I remember your father. He walked with a cane. It had a silver handle that was always polished. He was very tall, and had a long gray beard. He never smiled. He scared me.”

  “I think he scared me, too,” Harry confided. “Not when I was grown up. But when I was a child,” he added, smiling. “Anything else?”

  She searched her mind for happy images.

  “Uncle Leo’s wedding. There was music and dancing.”

  “That’s right!” His look of approval kept Hannah talking. She made herself revisit that celebration. A fleeting image of a little girl dancing flashed through her mind, and vanished.

  “I think I got sick at the wedding,” she said.

  “No. Not you. But . . . ” Harry stopped mid-sentence. For a few moments father and daughter sat in silence. Harry tenderly stroked Hannah’s hair.

  “Do you remember how you got your Polish name?” he asked.

  “Only half and half,” Hannah said cryptically. “I always assumed I was named after my big wooden doll, Zofia. I affectionately called her Zosia. When you got the false papers for me I became Zofia. But I never knew how you picked my last name, No-wa-kow-ska.” She enunciated the name syllable by syllable, giving each equal weight. Now Hannah let her mind wander back in time.

  The morning they sent her away, it was still dark outside when her mother put Hannah, half asleep, on the double bed in their master bedroom. The small lamp on the mahogany night table provided the only light. Hannah rubbed her eyes as her mother and Grandma Sonia began to dress her. Nearby, her father and Grandpa Jakob watched. The silky down quilt felt good against her bare bottom and she smiled. Everyone else in the room looked glum. Once she was dressed, Sonia removed the Star of David from around Hannah’s neck and replaced it with a shiny gold cross. “You will be safe now,” she said as she cupped the child’s face in both hands, and kissed the top of her head.

  Sonia was wearing her sky-blue wool sweater with a gold zipper on the breast pocket. Whenever her grandmother picked her up wearing that sweater, Hannah would playfully open and close the zipper as Sonia hummed, pretending the zipper was making music. Their duet made them both laugh. In her grandmother’s arms that morning, Hannah tinkered with the zipper as usual, and Sonia hummed as usual. But this time there was no raucous laughter from Sonia. “I love you,” she whispered solemnly and squeezed the child so tight Hannah had trouble breathing.

  Hannah’s memories rebelled, refusing to be repressed. She spoke in a flat, halting voice.

  “The morning I was sent away, everyone was watching me. Nobody smiled. You told me your friends, Ela and Janek Wyszyński, were going to take me on a trip to Kielce . . . to stay with a nice Polish family they knew. I never could remember the name of those people,” Hannah muttered under her breath. “You said they were going to care for me for a while. I was to be a good girl and do what I was told . . . .”

  Through tear-filled eyes, Hannah looked around her parents’ familiar living room, seeing only color and blur. But she no longer needed Harry’s questions to keep her talking.

  As her grandmother’s solemn face appeared before her, Hannah’s voice began to crack. “I didn’t understand Grandma . . . was saying goodbye. I remember how smooth her cheek was. During the war . . . when I was alone . . . and scared I used to rub my earlobe. It reminded me of her cheek. It made me feel safe.”

  Sitting next to her father, her head resting on his shoulder as he gently wiped her tears with his now damp handkerchief, Hannah felt closer to him than ever before. Clearly, reliving the past brought them together in a way she could not have imagined an hour ago. What amazed her even more was that it felt natural for them to be talking about a time that had been off limits all these years, and Hannah no longer wanted to change the subject.

  “Do you remember being in Kielce?” Harry asked.

  “I cried a lot then, too. Expecting the perfect child you probably told them they were getting, they were unprepared to deal with me. I wouldn’t eat. I talked only to their dog. And I prayed to the Black Madonna. Remember? Mother gave me a framed picture of the Madonna, who would watch over me.”

  Hannah let out a chuckle. “That’s how the patron saint of Poland became my personal protector. Every night I begged the Madonna to take me back home.”

  In Kielce, the room Hannah slept in was narrow and dark. Her bed was wedged between two mahogany bookcases. With the embossed navy wallpaper and burgundy Oriental rug that covered the dark floor the room was too grown-up for a child. The small window at the far end was so high she could not look out.

  A weepy Hannah spent her days curled up on a chaise on the balcony off the living room talking to their collie, Sasha. She regaled her canine friend with stories about her family, particularly her grandmother. “When I go home, I will send you a big ball to chase,” she promised. “My grandmother has many toys in her store that you would like to play with.” Sasha proved to be her faithful companion.

  “I don’t think I stayed with those people very long. I remember I finally stopped crying when Ela came to get me. I thought the Madonna had answered my prayers. I thought I was going home,” Hannah said.

  “There was no home for you to go back to. By then I was living in Warsaw. So was Mother,” Harry said.

  Hannah nodded. “Ela brought me to Warsaw. I remember we went to a hotel near the railroad station. Hotel Polonia, I think. Once she promised I was going to see Mother the next day I went to sleep happy. In the morning she told me I had slept through a bombing. I could hardly believe it.”

  “That’s what saved your life and Ela’s that night,” Harry said. “She got you out of Kielce fast, before I could arrange for new false identity papers. The couple feared their maid was beginning to suspect they were harboring a Jewish child and might report them to the Gestapo. At the hotel, Ela told the policeman checking identity papers that you were very sick. Luckily he believed her. He assumed only a sick child would sleep through a bombing, and he forgot to ask for the papers you did not have. You were very, very lucky that night.” Harry squeezed Hannah’s hand.

  With her head still resting comfortably on her father’s shoulder, Hannah and Harry sa
t quietly for a time, enjoying their new intimacy. Without any prodding from Harry, suddenly she started talking again.

  “The next evening when Mama came to the hotel, she told me we weren’t going home, but we had to leave Warsaw. I didn’t care where we were going as long as I was going with her. I kept hugging her and kissing her hand.” Hannah paused and remembered how happy she was at that moment to be with her mother again, and how that feeling soon changed. “As we were about to leave, Mother gripped my shoulders firmly with both hands and in a stern voice said, ‘From now on you must call me Aunt Marta, never Mama!’ Seeing the shocked look on my face, Mother said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll explain later.’ As she closed the hotel door, she added, ‘No talking in the street!’”

  Hannah blinked. “It took a long time before I felt it was safe to talk in the street. Even when we got to New York, seeing people chatting and laughing outside, I was still afraid to do the same. I don’t remember when that changed.”

  Ela bought the tickets inside the station before the three of them boarded the night train to Skawina. They found an empty compartment and settled in. Hannah took the window seat even though it was pitch dark outside. That night the moon was obscured by clouds and because of the wartime blackouts there were no lights anywhere.

  “Best thing to do now is to get some sleep,” her mother told her as she folded a coat into a pillow.

  Hannah was content. With her body touching her mother, she closed her eyes. When she felt her mother moving away, Hannah opened her eyes a little. She saw Ela asleep on the seat across from her, but standing at the door of their compartment was a German officer. Hannah squeezed her body further away from her mother and pretended to be asleep. She was scared.

  “Guten Abend, Fraulein,” the officer said to the only person who appeared to be awake.

  “Guten Abend,” she answered, smiling weakly.

  Hannah held her breath. The mere sight of a German officer always meant danger. As he was about to enter the compartment, another soldier appeared. He saluted, whispered something and pointed to the next car. The officer clicked the heels of his shiny boots, and in German said, “We have a sleeper in the next car. Gute Nacht, Fraulein.”

  Mother and daughter let out a nervous giggle in response to the averted disaster, which awoke Ela. After being told what had happened while she peacefully slept, Ela made the sign of the cross and thanked God for their good fortune. Hannah snuggled next to her mother and fell asleep.

  As Hannah recalled that trip to Skawina, the fear she felt that night washed over her.

  “Once again you were lucky.” Harry pinched her cheek.

  Hannah grinned, remembering her father doing the same thing when she was a toddler.

  The station was deserted when the train pulled into Skawina early in the morning. They walked to the safe house Ela had rented. No one noticed them. As they approached the uninhabited building along the railroad tracks, Hannah tightened her grip on her mother’s hand. She thought the house looked haunted. It was dark and cold inside. Once her mother started a fire in the cast iron stove the place seemed less menacing. But it was nothing like home.

  “Are we going to be here for long?” Hannah asked, while Ela was out getting some supplies.

  “We’ll stay until your father finds a safe place for you to live.”

  Hannah was stunned. She cried out, “Don’t you want me anymore? Can’t I live with you?”

  “Of course I would want you to live with me,” her mother assured Hannah, rocking her in her arms. “It hurts me that we can’t be together!” Sadly she could not alter their circumstances. She was now Marta Wilakowa, a single woman, working as a live-in housekeeper in Warsaw for a well-to-do family with two daughters, a few years older than her own. There was no room for a child in that arrangement.

  Soothed by her mother’s touch, Hannah listened intently to her explanation of what had to be. Most important, for them to stay safe, no one could know that they were Jewish. Two months before she was to celebrate her fourth birthday, Hannah was forced to accept the fact that they had to become different people. Her mother had to pretend to be her aunt. The only good news was that both of them would be living in Warsaw. “So I can come see you on my day off,” her mother promised. Hannah vowed to be a big girl and keep the family secret.

  Before she left, Ela made sure the house was stocked with flour, sugar, potatoes, a little butter, bread, some milk, and a few eggs. Mother and daughter made the most of their reunion. They played games and hugged a lot. Meanwhile Hannah was being prepared for her new life. She learned to say Christian prayers, when to kneel and how to cross herself in church and whenever she walked past one. An apt pupil, Hannah was soon flawlessly reciting her newly-learned prayers as she kneeled at the foot of the bed.

  To conserve coal they only fired up the stove during the day. At night, mother and daughter huddled in bed, fully clothed, under the goose down quilt they’d brought with them. In the morning, next to her mother Hannah awakened smiling. Until she was reminded of what was coming.

  “Don’t forget, once we leave here, you can never call me Mama. In Warsaw, when I leave you with Ela at the train station, please, please, please, no crying.”

  Hannah could suppress her tears, but she couldn’t keep the tightness in her stomach from turning into cramps.

  Toward the end of their stay they ran out of coal. A major crisis! They needed it to heat that drafty house in February, and to cook their food. As they watched from the windows, they saw trains loaded with coal speeding by, with chunks falling onto the tracks. When her mother announced she would risk going out under the cover of darkness to pick up some coal, Hannah pleaded to come along. “The two of us can carry more and do it faster!” she reasoned.

  Each carrying a bucket, they walked unseen along the tracks. They had filled their buckets and were ready to go back when a watchman appeared out of nowhere. Hannah felt her mother’s hand over her mouth as she pushed her under a standing boxcar, and rolled herself next to her. Both of them held their breath waiting for the guard to pass. Hannah bit her lip so hard she drew blood.

  After they’d lugged their bounty safely into the house, they celebrated their successful quest, eating a special omelet made from the two eggs they had left. On their last night in Skawina, Hannah tried to stay awake as long as she could, cherishing the closeness with her mother.

  The next morning when Ela arrived with identity papers for Hannah, she was reborn as Zofia Nowakowska. At the train station in Warsaw, Hannah, now officially Zosia, watched her mother disappear into the crowd. She did not cry.

  Later that day when Ela brought her to live with Aunt Emma, it was Zofia Nowakowska, not Hannah Stein, who curtsied as she was introduced to her new caretaker.

  “I’m glad you are a proper Polish girl,” were Emma’s welcoming words. No hugs followed. Whenever she missed her mother, she thought about their time in Skawina playing silly games under the quilt. In Aunt Emma’s apartment she often got under the covers and pretended her mother was there with her. If Emma admonished her for being too raucous, she played in silence. But she never felt like a child again.

  “You had to grow up so fast,” Harry said, almost to himself.

  Hannah shrugged. “It’s not like I had much choice! I think we stayed in Skawina for two weeks. We never ventured out in the daylight. Ela had warned mother that it would be too dangerous.”

  “Amazing, you remember so much! Not many people remember things as well as you do from such an early age,” Harry said.

  “Thank God they don’t have to,” Hannah said, alluding to the punch line of a famous Jewish joke. She wanted to lighten the mood, to return to the present.

  But as she looked around the well-appointed living room, a picture in a silver frame on the Steinway baby grand took her back to another time. The strange lighting in the photograph made the little girl with round cheeks and huge saucer-size eyes, dressed in silk pajamas, look unreal.

  “That day yo
u took me to the photographer’s studio to have this picture taken . . .”

  “My God, you remember that? You weren’t even two years old!” Harry shook his head.

  “After the photographer finished shooting, you told me this was to be our secret. Not to tell anyone.”

  “It was to be a surprise for your mother,” Harry explained.

  “I didn’t tell anyone. I liked that we had a secret, just the two of us.” Hannah thought about how close she had felt to her father. She searched her memory, trying to pinpoint when things between them changed.

  That evening, instead of eating in the kitchen as they usually did, Molly set the table in the dining room. It felt like a special occasion even though she did not use her “good dishes”—the white porcelain china with cobalt blue and gold trim that now stood in for the treasured Rosenthal set that had been a wedding present from Molly’s parents. Actually, Hannah thought the made-in-Japan American version was a poor substitute, but she was glad her mother hadn’t opted for a set of the real thing. Buying anything German was verboten as far as she was concerned. Besides, recreating the past was not part of Hannah’s agenda. She preferred the white Russel Wright Iroquois china she picked out the day she signed a lease on her first apartment.

  Whenever she recalled her exchange with the salesclerk at Bloomingdale’s, Hannah chuckled to herself.

  “So when’s the wedding day?” the woman asked once Hannah had made her choice.

  “There’s no wedding date! I don’t need a husband to have dishes I like to eat on,” Hannah shot back defiantly.

  Not sure how to respond at first, the woman finally said: “Good for you!”

  Hannah took a bow. She was tempted to confess she’d already treated herself to a set of George Jensen flatware but decided not to.

  At dinner everyone was on good behavior. Hannah wondered how long it could last. They started talking politics. Harry confessed that in spite of himself, after reading the excerpt of Final Days in the recent issue of Newsweek, he really felt sorry for Richard Nixon.