Keeping Secrets
Page 6
The sky was clear and the ocean not too choppy for most of their nine-day passage. Ideal weather for crossing the Atlantic. The mood on board the ship was festive. Having survived the war, the nearly seven hundred expatriates from Poland, Germany, Latvia, the Soviet Union, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and Rumania, breathed a communal sigh of relief now that they were headed to a country where the streets were paved with gold. During the day, almost everyone stayed on the promenade deck. People sang, sunbathed, and played cards. Mother and daughter played bridge. Hannah taught herself solitaire.
Women and children were billeted on the upper decks. Men, housed below, slept on hammock-like berths, stacked one on top of the other—their quarters, hot and airless, the equivalent of steerage.
Many passengers fought seasickness. Those who were able took their meals in the cafeteria-style mess hall. Eating in shifts, they waited in line for food, which they then carried on metal trays to long metal tables arranged in rows. The decor of the mess hall was battleship gray.
Hannah only felt queasy at mealtime. A finicky eater, she was reluctant to try the foods offered. She insisted Wonder Bread tasted like cotton. The sight of powdered eggs, scrambled and covered with ketchup for breakfast, and chipped beef for lunch made her feign seasickness. But Hannah loved desserts. Actually, she would have been content with a steady diet of chocolate pudding and chocolate bars.
By the time her mother woke Hannah up on May 20, 1946, the ship had already docked in New York Harbor.
“Hurry up and get dressed! Your father is waiting for us on the deck,” she told Hannah.
Her mother’s anxious tone of voice made Hannah uneasy. She dressed quickly, closed her small suitcase, and grabbed her mother’s skirt as she followed her topside. On deck, seeing the welcoming throng on shore, Hannah held on tight. She remembered her panic when she had playfully spun around and lost sight of her mother in the crowded Warsaw Central Station, where they had been squatting for days along with hundreds of women and children, waiting to be transported in sealed boxcars to the countryside after the Germans had leveled Warsaw. She thought she had lost her mother forever then. Now, in this foreign country Hannah feared being separated even more. But she needn’t have worried. Just like baggage, each refugee had an identification tag around the neck and was destined to be turned over to a waiting sponsor.
Clutching her mother’s skirt, Hannah stood at the railing, her eyes and mouth open wide. She was stunned by the sight of the New York skyline. It seemed as if they had landed on another planet. Everything was larger than she had imagined, and more frightening.
Hannah watched her father scan the crowd on shore looking for familiar faces he had only seen in photographs. His two brothers, Joseph and Jake, who were coming to greet them, had left Poland before little Hershel was born.
Having arrived in the Promised Land, the refugees on board were eager to disembark. Walking as fast as the crowd would allow, Hannah followed her father and mother toward the gangplank. Once off the ship, the line of refugees moved at lava speed through several immigration checkpoints. When they were cleared, Hershel, Malka, and Hannah Stein had morphed into Harry, Molly, and Hannah Stone.
Waiting in the crowd, Harry thought he recognized his oldest brother, Joseph. Standing next to him, someone was waving a placard with STONE spelled out in huge block letters.
“Follow me. I see them!” Harry signaled. With a battered suitcase under each arm, he rushed toward them. Molly and Hannah trailed behind, dragging their own bags.
“Joseph! Jake! We’re here!” Harry yelled in Yiddish.
Only Joseph, his son Michael, and Jake were there to collect the refugees. Sam, brother number three, a manager of a pajama factory in North Carolina, hadn’t come up North because it was the middle of his busy season. Harry was disappointed. Sam was the one brother he actually knew.
As she and her mother stood off to the side, Hannah watched her father. She was surprised to see tears well up in his eyes as he embraced his brothers.
Hannah coolly scanned Uncle Joseph from his shoes up. When she finally reached his unsmiling face, Hannah was amazed at how much her uncle resembled his father, minus the long beard. Joseph was just as tall and seemed just as stern as the grandfather she had always feared. Uncle Jake, who had no children, seemed more welcoming. He picked Hannah up and swung her around till she felt giddy.
All around her on the dock, Hannah heard snippets of conversation she did not understand. People were speaking English faster than any language she was used to hearing. She was amused, watching their mouths move rapidly. When her cousin Michael spoke to his father in English and she could not figure out what was being said, Hannah stopped being amused. She realized she had made a mistake refusing to learn English in Zeilsheim. Hannah resolved to remedy that as quickly as possible. For now she was forced to speak German to her relatives, and they, Yiddish to her. The Stone family in New York did not speak Polish.
Joseph hustled them into a Checker cab for the trip to the North Bronx where he and his family lived. Sitting on one of the folding seats, Hannah trembled anxiously when she looked through the sunroof and saw a train speeding by on the elevated train tracks. She prayed to the Black Madonna to keep the train from crushing them. As soon as she saw the open sky, Hannah breathed easier. Everything seemed to be bigger and faster than she had imagined.
It had been decided that Joseph and his wife Beverly would make room for the arriving relatives since they had the largest apartment. Their two-bedroom, fourth-floor walk-up, in a residential section of the North Bronx, was part of a large complex. The neo-Tudor buildings were connected by a common courtyard, with well-tended hedges along the walks. The nearby park, complete with a children’s playground, was in full bloom. To Hannah it felt as if they had moved to the country.
In that apartment Joseph and Beverly had raised their two sons. David was in the Navy but Michael, the oldest, three years younger than his Uncle Harry, still lived at home. Since his bedroom had been appropriated by the refugees, six-foot-tall Michael had to sleep in the living room on a small foldout cot from the Army & Navy store. But he didn’t seem to mind. As he heard his uncle’s war stories, Michael felt embarrassed that his flat feet had kept him out of the army.
For several weeks Aunt Beverly’s floral living room couch, protected with clear plastic, was occupied by a steady stream of visitors. They were eager to hear first-hand what happened in the war. During the day the wives came and Molly, sitting in Uncle Joseph’s overstuffed easy chair, presided. Husbands arrived in the evenings after work. Harry took center stage.
Whenever guests came, Hannah positioned herself off in the corner of the living room. As they talked, she struggled to translate the spoken Yiddish into German and then into Polish. Some subjects were too painful to hear. As Molly tearfully began talking about what happened to her parents, Hannah bolted from the room.
The female visitors often talked about the wartime hardships they had to endure.
“Believe me, it was no picnic here!”
“Everything was rationed. I had to wait on long lines to get some sugar.”
“Our married daughter is still living with us. They can’t find an apartment.”
It was clear to Hannah that the visitors wanted the refugees to know that they too had had to struggle because of the war. Life in America was harder than they had dreamt, Molly and Harry realized. Once he found out he could not practice medicine without going back to medical school, Harry’s initial optimism turned into paralyzing sadness. Financially, medical school was out of the question, even if his English had been good enough. They had arrived in America with only the two new one-dollar bills that a soldier had given Hannah in Germany.
One night, some weeks after they arrived, while they thought she was asleep, Hannah heard her parents whispering in their bed next to hers.
“Coming to New York to my brothers was a mistake,” Harry confessed. “I should have taken the Army’s offer. If I had
joined the U.S. Army and stayed in Germany, I’d still be a doctor. Now I’m nothing.”
Hannah saw her mother squeeze her father’s hand. “We agreed we didn’t want to stay in Germany,” Molly said. “Remember, we decided that everything was worth giving up to come here to your brothers. That’s why I went to that doctor to end my pregnancy once the papers came for you, me, and Hannah. We have to make this work!”
Hannah didn’t fully comprehend what she overheard that night, but she remembered how sad her mother was after seeing that German doctor.
In those early weeks, Molly helped Beverly in the kitchen after dinner, and Hannah watched her father often disappear into their bedroom. Peering into the room, she saw her father sitting in the dark at the foot of the bed staring into space, his stethoscope hanging around his neck, clutching his medical bag. Hannah knew that that bag was all that was left of his life as a doctor. She wanted to comfort him, but never did.
Hannah made herself believe that no matter what her mother said about their making things work, they would soon be heading for Palestine. She kept her suitcase packed, ready to leave at a moment’s notice. Aunt Beverly complimented Hannah for using the suitcase as a substitute bureau in the cramped apartment.
In spite of his deepening depression, Harry had never considered leaving the U.S. and the only family they had left. But it didn’t take long for the general atmosphere around the apartment to become tense. Joseph and Beverly did not have the space or the financial means to support another family.
The brothers said all the right things to each other about blood being thicker than water, but the distance between Joseph and Harry seemed to widen with each day. Joseph did not understand what being a doctor meant to his younger brother. Harry’s expressed disappointment at not being able to practice medicine made Joseph impatient.
“When I came to America I had no family to take me in. I got any job I could. So you can’t be a doctor! You’ll be something else,” Joseph said.
“I’ve never done anything else. What can I do here? If I’m not a doctor, who am I?” he said to his brother. Harry was actually asking himself those questions.
After one of their chilling conversations, Harry always reminded himself that he felt close to Jake and to Sam, who phoned often. Whenever Jake and his wife Leah visited, Jake managed to cheer Harry up.
“You’re a smart boychick,” Jake teased Harry. A tailor who’d never finished high school, he was very proud of his kid brother, the doctor. “You’ll do okay here. First you’ll learn English and then you’ll go to medical school. You’ll be a doctor again!” Jake predicted. “For now, rest a little!”
Harry wanted to believe Jake’s prediction, but rest was the last thing on his mind. One thought consumed him: How will I support my family?
The source of Molly’s sadness was different. Not only were Joseph and Beverly not her blood relatives, they made her feel like an indentured servant. Beverly expected Molly to clean the house, do the dishes, haul the laundry to the Laundromat down the hill, then iron every piece to perfection. What Molly dreaded most was being upbraided in front of her daughter whenever Beverly was displeased. Timidly Hannah took her mother’s side, but that never stopped her aunt’s tirades. When Molly complained to Harry, expecting some verbal support at least, she got none.
“We have to be grateful they took us in,” Harry said, dismissing her complaints. “You want Beverly to thank you for living in her apartment and making her son sleep in the living room on a cot? It’s a good thing David is in the Navy and not living at home!”
Molly felt trapped. During the war she clung to the hope that at some future time things would go back to prewar conditions. Now she knew that was not to be. There was no brother to comfort her, or father or mother. Molly didn’t even have Harry in her corner.
She remembered hearing stories as a child about some of her father’s relatives emigrating to the U.S. Desperate to improve her situation, Molly called every Landau listed in the New York phone book. When she connected with Harold Landau, who turned out to be a distant cousin, everything changed for Molly. Harold, his wife Lee and their teenage daughter Marion gave her a new perspective on life in America. She not only had her own family again, but Harold looked so much like her father that the sight of him made Molly happy. A hug from Harold wiped away a week of Beverly’s taunts.
The Landaus often took the newcomers out for a Sunday ride in the country in their black Buick sedan. A favorite destination for Hannah was The Log Cabin, in Armonk, New York, where she got to eat apple pie with vanilla ice cream, topped with chocolate syrup, until her stomach was about to explode.
Ironically, since she had had no expectations about life in America, Hannah was not disappointed. The remoteness of her aunt and uncle seemed natural. To her they were strangers, family in name only.
Gradually the idea of leaving the U.S. and going to Palestine began to fade from Hannah’s consciousness. She could not pinpoint the exact moment when the prospect of living on a kibbutz in Palestine stopped being her dream. It could have been shortly after eating pizza became a treat she looked forward to rather than something that turned her stomach. Or once she taught herself to blow bubbles with the Double Bubble gum cousin Marion Landau gave her. The gum and her prowess at blowing bubbles remained a secret pleasure. Harry had forbidden Hannah to chew gum.
By the beginning of July, the household had settled into a regular routine. Joseph got Molly a job as a seamstress in the children’s coat factory where he was a foreman. While the work was hard, she preferred toiling in a sweatshop to being under Beverly’s thumb. Besides, she was bringing in a sorely needed paycheck. Though it was meager.
Monday through Friday after washing the breakfast dishes Molly went to work with Joseph, grateful she didn’t have to make the long subway trip into Manhattan alone. She returned with him in time to help Beverly with dinner. As tired as she was, Molly continued to do whatever chores Beverly assigned her. Before she went to sleep, Hannah gently massaged her mother’s newly callused fingers with soothing Jergens lotion from Aunt Beverly’s secret drawer. Hannah loved its almond scent.
Harry spent his days pacing in the Stones’ living room, or sitting with his Polish/English dictionary on his lap, trying to read the newspaper or a basic medical text that Jake bought for him. He spent his nights brooding. For the first time in his life he saw himself as unemployable and a financial burden. While Harry was grateful Joseph had gotten Molly a job, it was humiliating for him that his wife was now the family breadwinner. Instead of applauding her for earning money at a job she had never done before, Harry rewarded his wife with indifference. No sign of affection passed between them.
Hannah managed to stay out of her father’s way. Her main focus was learning to speak English. Her teacher was the radio Aunt Beverly had on all day in the kitchen. Sitting at the kitchen table, Hannah softly repeated the words she heard, without knowing what they meant. She practiced, determined to become perfect.
Whenever Aunt Beverly encouraged her to go down to the courtyard to play with the youngsters her age, Hannah resisted. She preferred watching from the safety of the apartment. One day as she peered down from the fourth-floor kitchen window, Hannah, her mouth opened wide, was fascinated by what she was witnessing. Three girls were gliding around the concrete walks on shoes that seemed to have wheels attached. She leaned out farther than was safe. Hannah managed to grab the window frame in time and trembling, she pulled herself back to safety, relieved Aunt Beverly had been busy cooking and did not notice her near fatal mishap.
When she saw two girls standing several feet apart twirling a rope, as a third girl jumped in, Hannah looked to her aunt for clarification.
“What are they doing?” she asked in German. Hannah was now adept at translating Aunt Beverly’s Yiddish answers into German. It wasn’t ideal, but they understood each other.
This time Beverly opted for English. ‘They’re jumping rope,” she said. Seeing Hannah’s blank expre
ssion, she added in Yiddish, “You could be jumping with them and having fun.”
Hannah bit her lip. “Nein,” she said shaking her head violently. “I cannot speak to them,” she answered in German. But in truth the language barrier was only part of it. Hannah didn’t know how to be a kid. Comfortable taking part in a conversation with adults, expounding on world politics, she didn’t know what to say to her American peers even if she could speak English fluently. Also, they could play games she had never tried. Hannah preferred keeping her shortcomings a secret. Then there was the way she looked. Her hair and her clothes made it crystal clear she was not one of them.
Before she rushed off to work with Joseph each morning, Molly carefully braided her daughter’s hair, anchoring the braids with two large navy taffeta bows on top of her head, as was proper for young girls in Poland. In America, wearing childish handmade dresses with smocking and puffy sleeves, instead of shorts and polo shirts, only emphasized her being different.
One day Aunt Beverly insisted Hannah accompany her to the market. But when she spotted two girls playing jacks on the stoop of the building next door she pulled a reluctant Hannah by the hand toward the girls.
“This is my niece Hannah,” Beverly said. “She doesn’t speak English, but I’m sure you can still teach her to play jacks.”
Both girls nodded and waved to Hannah. She managed a weak smile and waved back. Hannah started to follow her aunt as she was walking away. Aunt Beverly shook her head. “Stay,” she ordered in Yiddish, and pointed to the girls on the stoop.
At that instant, with the two girls staring at her, she was almost as panicked as she’d felt years ago when Aunt Emma had left her alone in the apartment in Warsaw. Hannah wished her mother had not put those big bows in her hair that morning.
At Aunt Beverly’s urging, grudgingly Hannah began to venture downstairs to the courtyard. She soon understood enough English to know they called her “four-eyes” because she wore glasses, and made fun of her hair and her clothes. But she was determined to learn the games they played, and never let on that she understood what they were saying about her.