Keeping Secrets

by Bina Bernard

  In Poland being Jewish made Hannah an outsider. Now in America, in a neighborhood that was primarily Jewish, she was still an outsider.

  Slowly things did change for the better. As Harry’s English improved, so did his spirits. For Molly the anticipation of weekend visits with the Landaus made the hard work endured during the week bearable. And Hannah, masquerading as the fly on the wall, found solace in her special secret. She now understood everything. Although she still had not uttered a single word, she was pretty sure she could. Hannah was unwilling to let an English word escape her mouth until she was absolutely certain she could speak like a native. No Mistakes Allowed. She was waiting for the right moment to spring it on everyone.

  When it came, Harry briefly considered an offer from Sam to move to Asheville.

  “We have a big house and you can work for me in the factory. You won’t be a doctor, but you’ll make a good living. I’ll see to that,” Sam said.

  Harry was tempted by the prospect of earning money and once again being the family provider. But he was not ready to give up being a doctor. He turned Sam down. However, when Sam sent train tickets for them to visit Asheville, it was decided that before Hannah started school in September the three of them would make the trip to the South. Harry was euphoric at the prospect of finally being face-to-face with the brother he had not seen since they were children. But the euphoria was mixed with a great deal of apprehension about their making the trip alone.

  Michael took them to Grand Central Station. Before they boarded their train, he handed Harry a fistful of change and a stack of three-by-five index cards. To lessen Harry and Molly’s anxiety about their not being able to speak English, he had written out questions they might need to ask. WHERE IS THE BATHROOM? WHERE IS THE RESTAURANT CAR? WHICH WAY TO THE INFORMATION BOOTH? WHERE IS THE PUBLIC PHONE? One side of the card had the questions in English, and the Polish translation was on the other. All could be answered by pointing.

  The train was packed. Michael helped them onto the next-to-last car where there were still some seats available. Hannah spotted two together and a single, several rows behind.

  “You two should sit together,” Hannah said, hoping her parents would agree. “You can always look back and see me.”

  The vacant single was next to a lady. Her parents agreed. Hannah was pleased. She had a plan. It was so important it overshadowed her usual fear of being separated from her parents.

  After Michael left, Molly and Harry became uncharacteristically calm. So much so that after the conductor had punched their tickets, the motion of the train lulled them into a sound sleep.

  The woman sitting by the window greeted Hannah with a smile, which she returned. “Do you live in New York?” the woman asked after a while.

  Hannah nodded. The word “Yes” got stuck in her throat.

  “Are you on holiday or going for a visit?”

  Hannah wasn’t sure how to answer. Both were true. Finally, very slowly, she said, “We . . . are . . . going . . . to . . . visit . . . my uncle.” Hannah took a deep breath. Her palms were damp, but she’d done it and she was pleased with herself.

  “Where does your uncle live?”

  “In Asheville,” Hannah answered without hesitation. And their conversation began.

  As soon as Harry opened his eyes, he reached for one of his medical books.

  When Molly woke up, she saw Hannah talking animatedly to the well-dressed woman and assumed that woman was Polish.

  “The woman sitting next to Hannah looks like an American but she must speak Polish,” Molly told Harry. After a moment she added, “Maybe she knows German.”

  Harry and Molly both turned and waved. Hannah and the woman waved back.

  “Read your book, Harry,” Molly said. “I’m going to talk to Hannah and her new friend!”

  When she reached them, Molly stuck out her hand and said in Polish, “I’m so glad to meet you. I’m Hannah’s mother.”

  Confused, the woman took Molly’s hand, and addressed Hannah, “What language is she speaking?”

  “Polish,” Hannah answered, in a whisper.

  “Is this your mother?” she asked.

  Hannah nodded.

  In a loud voice, as if she were talking to someone who was hard of hearing, Hannah’s traveling companion said to Molly, “I’m Janey Everett. You have a fine daughter!”

  Molly let go of Mrs. Everett’s hand, and asked Hannah. “Is this woman an American?”

  Hannah bobbed her head up and down.

  Puzzled, Molly asked, “Does she speak Polish or German?”

  “No. She doesn’t.” Hannah sighed.

  Mrs. Everett patted Hannah’s hand, warmly. “You talk Polish, too! Good for you!” she said. “Please explain to your mother, that unfortunately I do not speak anything but American. And I must admit when I visit New York, I often think I speak a different American than y’all do.” She grinned, waiting for Hannah to translate.

  Hannah abridged her translation. She repeated that Mrs. Everett did not speak Polish or German.

  “Then how were the two of you talking?” Molly demanded.

  “In English,” Hannah answered, sheepishly.

  “You speak English? You speak well enough to have a conversation with an American?”

  “Tak.”

  A mixture of feelings washed over Molly. “Why didn’t you tell us? You knew how worried we were about making this trip and not being able to speak English!”

  “I’m sorry. But before I said anything to anyone, I had to make sure I spoke perfectly, like a real American.” Hannah defended her deception. “Talking to Mrs. Everett was my test.”

  “You can’t always expect to be perfect, Hannah,” Molly said. But her daughter’s explanation was totally in character. As her anger ebbed, it was replaced with relief. Molly hugged her daughter. “I’m proud of you. Now we won’t need Michael’s cards. We have you to speak for us.”

  For the rest of their journey, Hannah spoke for her parents.

  She earned her stripes as a translator in North Carolina. There was no problem with Sam. He could speak Yiddish and Polish. But his wife, Melanie, a convert to Judaism, spoke only English, and with a deep southern drawl. She and their two-year-old daughter, Josie, were only able to talk to Hannah. But in spite of the language barrier, Melanie made them all feel welcome. Sam had been a widower for many years before he and Melanie got married. She was glad to finally meet Sam’s family from up North.

  Home for Sam and Melanie was a comfortable redbrick colonial on the outskirts of town, with a screened-in porch and two spare bedrooms for guests. The quiet suburban life in Asheville, North Carolina, was a surprise to Molly, Harry and Hannah. They had assumed all of the United States was like New York City. Everything in Asheville was slower. People didn’t talk as fast, and they weren’t eager to do much in the hot August sun.

  Sam, who had to be at the factory before the first shift of workers arrived each morning, took Harry with him to work. The brothers were long out of the house by the time Molly and Hannah got up for breakfast. Mother and daughter stayed close to home with Aunt Melanie and Josie. Molly didn’t seem to mind not having anything to do nor that Hannah was the only one she could speak to during the day. She reveled in her leisure, she wrote letters, read and even creamed her face and callused hands with the lotion Melanie had given her as a present. Unlike Beverly, who expected Molly to do chores, Melanie treated her like a welcomed guest and wouldn’t let her do any housework. Molly was grateful. Hannah was happy listening to country and western music on the radio, carrying Josie around the house and practicing her English.

  When Melanie needed to do some shopping, they drove into town. Both Hannah and Molly were impressed with Melanie’s driving skills.

  “I drove practically before I could walk,” Melanie said when Hannah asked how long she’d been driving. “Of course, it wasn’t a car, it was my daddy’s tractor,” she chuckled.

  During one of their trips into town, Melan
ie insisted they stop at her sister’s beauty salon.

  “You have beautiful hair,” Melanie told Molly. “You shouldn’t always tie it back like that.”

  Hearing Hannah’s translation, Molly blushed. She wasn’t used to compliments.

  Molly not only got her hair done, she also had her hands professionally massaged and her nails painted.

  “You pick the color,” Molly told Hannah.

  Carefully studying the many bottles, Hannah finally selected “Dither,” a dramatic purplish red that was brighter than what her mother might have picked. With her new hairdo and painted nails, Molly felt like a movie star.

  “Thank you. Thank you so much,” she said to Melanie in Polish, and hugged her.

  Hannah didn’t have to translate.

  Melanie made sure they were back home in time for her to have dinner ready when Sam and Harry walked through the door. That night, Molly and her new look were the sole topic of conversation.

  Usually a poor eater, Hannah became addicted to Aunt Melanie’s specialty: southern fried chicken, black-eyed peas, and cornbread. To her delight, her father temporarily relented and allowed Hannah to wash it all down with 7-UP.

  In Asheville Hannah never lost sight of her major objective—perfecting her English skills. Even setting the table became a learning opportunity. Hannah thought Aunt Melanie’s bright-colored Melamine plates were more festive than the green Depression glass dishes Aunt Beverly favored in New York, but helping her aunt set the round dining room table was secondary to Hannah’s higher purpose. It was an easy way for her to practice translating her Polish thoughts into English sentences.

  After taking the stainless flatware out of the top drawer of the mahogany breakfront in the dining room, Hannah asked, “How must I arrange the knives, forks, and spoons?” She enunciated each word perfectly.

  “I think what you meant to ask was, ‘Where should I place the knives, forks, and spoons?’ Right?” Melanie said, eager to help her niece improve her English.

  Grateful, Hannah nodded and restated her question correctly.

  “The forks go on the left of the plate. The knives, then spoons on the right,” Aunt Melanie instructed cheerfully.

  And the lesson continued.

  “These pretty napkins, where must I put them?” she asked, then quickly corrected herself. “Where should I place the pretty napkins?”

  “Next to the fork!” Melanie pointed, and showed Hannah how to turn a napkin into a flower with the help of a plastic napkin ring.

  While Sam, Harry, and Molly talked in Polish during meals, Hannah continued to practice her English chatting with Melanie and baby Josie, who sat in a highchair between the two of them. All the practice paid off. Intermittently Hannah found herself actually thinking in English. By the time they left Asheville, her role as her parents’ translator was firmly established, and she now spoke English with a slight Southern drawl.

  They arrived in New York the Friday before Hannah was to start school. On Monday morning Uncle Joseph went with Hannah to register her at the grade school both of his sons had attended. Biting her lips, Hannah walked alongside her uncle in silence. The closer they got to their destination the faster Hannah’s heart raced. She wanted to run back to Aunt Beverly’s kitchen, but Joseph held her small hand in a tight grip until they entered the school building. In front of the administration office her uncle told Hannah to wait on a wooden bench in the reception area. She sat, eyes focused straight ahead, but out of the corner of her eye Hannah saw several of the girls she knew looking at her and laughing. She pursed her lips and waited.

  Hannah sprang up as soon as Uncle Joseph came out of the office with Mrs. Reiner, the assistant principal.

  “Don’t worry, dear, you’ll be fine,” she said, just as a loud bell sounded. Hannah relaxed a little. After she said goodbye to her uncle, she followed Mrs. Reiner to meet her class. As they entered the classroom Hannah felt all eyes on her.

  “Class, I want you to welcome a new student who came all the way from Poland to America!” Mrs. Reiner announced. “Say hello to Harriet Stone.”

  “Hello, Harriet!” the class said in unison.

  Hannah started to shake her head frantically.

  “No! No! No! That’s not my name, that’s not my name,” Hannah kept repeating. “My name is not Harriet. I’m Hannah.”

  Until that dreadful moment when Mrs. Reiner introduced her to the class as Harriet Stone, Hannah had no inkling her uncle had planned to change her name. When Mrs. Reiner left, Hannah once again insisted to Miss Banks that she wanted to be called by her real name, Hannah, not Harriet. But her teacher shook her head and dismissed the request.

  “You’re in America now, Harriet, dear. You need an American name,” Miss Banks said emphatically. “Harriet is a much better name for an American girl than Hannah.”

  Without any warning, she was metamorphosed into a person to whom she felt no connection. During the war, Hannah understood it was necessary to become Zofia Nowakowska to stay alive, but this name change was unnecessary. She had accepted the translation of Stein, to Stone, but losing her given name was different. Hannah was who she was. She knew she had to get herself back.

  That afternoon, when she recounted her first day at school, she was disappointed by her father’s response. Harry, who had had no problem with Hershel Stein becoming Harry Stone, was not sympathetic.

  “We all have to make sacrifices to become Americans,” her father told her.

  “If we can’t be who we really are, what’s the point of staying here? We could have stayed in Poland, and you would still be a doctor,” Hannah argued.

  “You’re acting like a spoiled child, Hannah,” Harry reprimanded. “Harriet is a fine American name. It should be enough for you that to us you’ll always be Hannah.”

  That was the end of the matter as far as Harry was concerned. But not Hannah. She didn’t know how, but she was determined to get her name back. Until that time, every morning, a dispirited Harriet faced Miss Banks and her second-grade class, where each day she fell further and further behind the rest of the class. Because she spoke English flawlessly, no one suspected she could not read. Hannah was ashamed to reveal she couldn’t. She was terrified whenever Miss Banks said: “Class, open your readers!” That was a cue for Hannah to sink into her seat and take cover behind her textbook, hoping to avoid being called upon. The words she feared most were: “Harriet, please stand up and start reading the homework assignment out loud!”

  Red-faced and in a cold sweat, terrified Hannah stood trembling beside her desk. She tried to guess at the words. The ordeal always ended with Miss Banks saying, “Sit down, Harriet. You must do better!”

  School became a place of torture. At home Hannah tried desperately to teach herself to read. She’d stare at the letters through the blur of her tears, trying to sound out words in her school reader. She did better with the Wonder Woman comics her cousin Marion gave her. The pictures helped her guess at the words. But her feeling of incompetence washed away all the years Hannah had felt smart. The precocious child who could recite poetry at an age when other children were still making gurgling sounds was gone. In her eyes she was now a dummy. It never occurred to Hannah someone should be teaching her to read. She thought she was supposed to do it without any help.

  Although Hannah didn’t feel smart anymore, being of help to her parents made her proud. She dutifully accompanied Harry and Molly when they registered for night school and went with them in the evenings to the very place that was her torture chamber during the day. But after three weeks, Harry and Molly became night school dropouts. Molly was too tired after a full day’s work to go to school and Harry found a better way to improve his English after Harold Landau gave him a set of recordings of an English/German Berlitz course. While Molly was at work, Harry sat in the living room in Uncle Joseph’s chair and diligently practiced his English. By the middle of October, with the aid of Berlitz and his Polish/English dictionary, Harry was able to translate all
the medical books he’d gotten out of the library. And as soon as he felt his limited verbal skills were adequate enough, though he spoke haltingly, and with a thick accent, Harry volunteered at Montefiore Hospital. Within weeks he landed a paying job as an orderly. Surprisingly, Harry did not view his demotion from doctor to orderly as demeaning. It was a way of getting back to medicine, which was what he wanted.

  Once Harry started working, he was nicer to Molly and generally more pleasant to be around. But he had few kind words for his daughter. There were nights Hannah cried herself to sleep trying to block out Harry’s litany of complaints about her.

  “Why does your daughter think her little problems are so important?”

  “Your daughter thinks she knows everything.”

  “Your daughter expects everything to be the way she wants.”

  The coldness in her father’s voice as he enunciated, “your daughter” made Hannah question, “Does he think I’m not his daughter?” In the morning, seeing her reflection in the bathroom mirror while brushing her teeth confirmed the undeniable fact that Harry was indeed her father. Puzzled why everything she said or did seemed to irritate him, Hannah wished she could talk to her mother about it. But she didn’t want her parents to know their secret conversations had an uninvited audience.

  Helping her parents with English continued to be a source of pride for Hannah. But seeing an unexplained flash of anger cross her father’s face took away some of that pride. To avoid his wrath, Hannah kept to herself as much as possible. But in the overcrowded apartment there were few places for her to hide. The only room that had a lock on the door was the bathroom, which always seemed to be in use. Hannah wondered how long Uncle Joseph and Aunt Beverly would put up with the inconvenience of living with another family.