Keeping Secrets

by Bina Bernard

  Several weeks after Harry received his first paycheck, Hannah got her answer. During their Friday night supper Joseph brought up the possibility of making other living arrangements.

  “It won’t be easy, but we need to start looking for a place for you to live,” Joseph said in one breath, and then complimented his wife on her gefilte fish.

  With Yiddish the language of choice at the table, at first Hannah wasn’t absolutely sure she had understood what Uncle Joseph had said. When her mother squeezed her hand under the table, Hannah knew she had translated her uncle’s words correctly.

  “How can we afford a place of our own?” Molly asked. “It would be nice,” she added wistfully. The mere possibility of living somewhere else made Molly happy. Mother and daughter smiled at each other between bites. But not Harry.

  “We can’t pay for an apartment. Even with Molly’s salary and mine we make next to nothing,” Harry said in Yiddish.

  “You can’t afford a palace, but we’ll find you something. If not an apartment, then maybe a rooming house. Jake, Sam, and I have talked about it. We will help you,” Joseph said calmly, but firmly.

  It was obvious that Harry had nothing further to say in the matter.

  Joseph, Harry, and Molly started the difficult search the following Sunday. Uncle Joseph would not travel on Saturday. The Sabbath had to be observed. When the three of them returned at dinnertime, Hannah could tell that her mother had been crying. Harry went into their bedroom and closed the door. No one said anything about what they’d seen.

  Armed with a list of addresses, and directions for what trains or buses to take, the next time Harry and Molly went apartment hunting, Hannah, their translator, went along in place of Uncle Joseph.

  “This is the best we’ve seen so far,” Molly said as Mr. Rossetti, the building’s superintendent, showed them around the dingy flat.

  “Take your time. Look around,” Mr. Rossetti said. “The next people be here in ten, maybe fifteen minutes. I wait outside,” he said, giving them privacy to make their decision.

  The ground-floor brownstone apartment on East 186th Street between Washington and Park Avenues was small, dark, and smelled of exterminator spray. Harry and Molly huddled in the kitchen, where a sliver of afternoon light streamed in from the courtyard. Hannah explored the empty icebox in the hall. “The iceman delivers once a week,” she heard Mr. Rossetti tell Molly.

  Hannah heard her mother say, “I can do it. I can make this place home for us!” just as Mr. Rossetti returned to tell them the next people were waiting outside.

  Harry wasn’t so sure, but he went over to Mr. Rossetti and said, “Ve vant to take it.” Mr. Rossetti said nothing until Harry handed him a crisp one-hundred-dollar bill.

  Hannah was overjoyed. She knew that once they moved to their new apartment she would be going to a new school and that meant she’d be escaping from Miss Banks and her torture chamber. But even more important than that, she was determined to get her rightful name back, and to leave Harriet behind with Miss Banks. The week before they were to move Hannah approached Mrs. Reiner’s assistant after school.

  “Miss Swanson, what do I have to do to get my real name back?” Hannah asked tentatively.

  “I’m not sure I understand, Harriet, dear. Tell me exactly what you mean.” Miss Swanson looked perplexed.

  Armed with a copy of her birth certificate, and practically hyper-ventilating, Hannah poured out her story. Miss Swanson listened intently, and once Hannah finished pleading her case, she had her sit and wait while she went to see Mrs. Reiner. When Miss Swanson came out smiling a few minutes later, she knew she was officially Hannah again. That afternoon her smile never left her face. But Hannah never told anyone what put it there.

  The refugees relocated to their new home in mid-December, with the help of Michael, Joseph, and Jake. Molly bought the furnishings they needed at the nearby Salvation Army Thrift Shop. The one extravagance she insisted on was hiring a mover to transport the upright she appropriated from one of Beverly Stone’s more affluent canasta players.

  “If you can take the piano out of here, it’s yours,” Mrs. Mandelbaum offered cheerfully. They were getting a new one, paid for with green stamps, so their little Marlene could practice and one day she would become Miss America, just like Bess Myerson.

  For Molly the piano, draped with an embroidered silk shawl, and topped with her mother’s silver candlesticks they’d brought from Poland, was a symbol of better times. It provided a touch of class to the largest room, which served as living room by day, and Hannah’s bedroom at night.

  Even with their limited resources, Molly transformed the small, airless railroad flat into a pleasant home, but she could not eliminate the smell of roach spray. Each week Molly experimented with different air fresheners to hide the oppressive smell. For Hannah the scent of air fresheners and roach spray remained forever fused.

  When they lived with Uncle Joseph and Aunt Beverly, most of their neighbors were Jewish. In this new neighborhood, they were the only Jewish family. There were many Italians, a few Irish, and other assimilated American families living in the shabby brownstones off the tony-sounding Park Avenue. Their working class neighbors, still trying to acquire a piece of the American dream for themselves, were not particularly sympathetic to the plight of new refugees.

  Hannah’s first day at her new school was uneventful. But not what she did before. After Harry and Molly left for work, Hannah removed the taffeta bows from her hair, undid the braids and tied her hair back at the nape of her neck. Determined to change the way she looked, she pulled a few hair strands in front, and with her mother’s nail scissors gave herself wispy bangs.

  “That’s better,” she said to the person staring back at her from the mirror. Hannah couldn’t do anything about her clothes, other than to cover up her embroidered blouse with a cardigan sweater. Changing her hairstyle was enough. Feeling more confident, she walked to P.S. 85 on Marion Avenue by herself, along the same route Hannah had taken with her mother as practice the day before.

  She presented her transfer papers to Miss Winters, the woman sitting outside of the assistant principal’s office.

  “Sit down, dear. I’ll find out what class you’re in,” Miss Winters said. She seemed glad to see her. Hannah was just another transfer student she was welcoming.

  Nobody had checked Hannah’s records carefully enough to note that she had arrived in the United States seven months before. They looked at her test scores. Her I.Q. was low enough to rank Hannah mildly retarded. No one explained her situation, and her own preference for keeping her refugee status a secret placed Hannah in a Special Education class. That turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

  In a class with physically and mentally handicapped students, Hannah became the star pupil. Her teacher, Miss Mullens, took a liking to the sad little girl and made a special effort to teach her to read.

  The first time Miss Mullens called her to her desk, Hannah’s stomach churned so loud she was sure her teacher could hear it. She held her breath and rubbed her clammy hands.

  Hannah finally exhaled when Miss Mullens said, “This is going to be fun. I have some books that you and I can practice reading together in class. Then you can take them home and practice some more.”

  She proved to be an apt pupil. After several weeks of tutoring, Hannah no longer feared being asked to read. Buoyed by her improved reading skills, she soon looked forward to reading out loud in class. Miss Mullens was very proud of both of their accomplishments, until Parents’ Day.

  Molly and Harry got all dressed up to meet Hannah’s teacher. When they entered the class, Miss Mullens was talking to another parent. Hannah showed her mother and father her desk and some of her work that was displayed on the bulletin board. She brought them over when Miss Mullens was free.

  “Ve arre verry glad to meet you alrready,” Harry said and extended his hand to the teacher. “Until yourr class ve vere afrraid Hannah vould never learrn to rread. It vas strange becaus
e she learrned to talk so fast. Ve came in May und by Au-gust Hannah vas speaking like a born Amerrican.”

  As Harry spoke, Miss Mullens realized Hannah’s inability to read was not because she was retarded, no matter what her test scores indicated. She felt deceived by Hannah. Why didn’t the child tell me that she was a refugee? Miss Mullens wondered.

  The following Monday, Hannah was confused by her teacher’s sudden coldness to her.

  “Have I done something wrong, Miss Mullens?” Hannah asked after she cancelled their regular tutoring session.

  “No, Hannah, you did nothing wrong. I just can’t be spending so much time with you. It is just not fair to the others. I have to teach them, too,” Miss Mullens explained.

  “I could help you,” Hannah said.

  “That is a very sweet offer, dear,” she said, and smiled in spite of herself. “Actually, you are going into another class. Now that you read so well, you don’t belong in this class anymore.”

  That was Hannah’s final gift from Miss Mullens. She had her transferred out of Special Ed. and into a regular second-grade class, where Hannah had to start fending for herself. The switch into Class 2B went smoothly. Now that she could read, Hannah felt almost normal. But she wouldn’t feel smart again for a long, long time.

  Hannah liked not living with Uncle Joseph and Aunt Beverly, but there were some things she missed. There was no longer celebration of the Sabbath. After working overtime most Fridays to earn extra money, Molly was now too tired to prepare Shabbat dinner. Harry was happy to eat a sandwich while he studied his medical books. Hannah missed the ritual.

  When Nora Florio, who lived a few doors down on 186th Street, asked Hannah one Saturday if she wanted to go to church with her and some kids from her Catholic school, Hannah decided it would be okay and she went.

  Our Lady of Mount Carmel, on Belmont Avenue and 187th Street, was not as grand as the church she attended with Aunt Emma in Warsaw, and it did not smell of incense. But Hannah knew what to do. She kneeled, crossed herself with holy water and s aid the same prayers she had said in Poland. After confessing a minor sin, she went up for the wafer and Communion along with her friend. Hannah knew she was Jewish, just as she had known during the war. She didn’t see any harm in being blessed by a Catholic priest in New York. She liked being part of the group, and the ritual. The priest was very welcoming.

  “It’s nice to see a new face,” Father Dominic said the first time he gave Hannah the wafer. By the fourth week he urged her to bring her parents.

  “I know you like to come with your friends. Your parents could come to a different service. We like to have the whole family be part of our parish. You should suggest they come! Just to try it.”

  Hannah didn’t want to lie, especially to a priest. She just shrugged.

  The next week when Father Dominic asked her what church her family normally attended, Hannah told the truth.

  “My family doesn’t go to a church, Father,” she said, without elaborating further.

  “Maybe if you brought them here, they would want to start coming, just as you do,” Father Dominic said.

  “No. No they wouldn’t,” Hannah insisted, still not revealing the truth.

  “Next week, you bring your family,” Father Dominic said firmly.

  “They won’t come. We’re Jewish,” Hannah blurted out.

  After hearing that confession, for a moment Father Dominic stared at Hannah without saying anything. Then he blessed her, as he had all the other times. But they both knew that she would not be back. Her new friends didn’t understand why Hannah stopped coming to Communion.

  Hannah enjoyed the freedom she had being on her own. When she didn’t want to eat the breakfast her mother laid out for her before leaving for work—two hard-boiled eggs and a glass of milk—Hannah flushed the milk, but heeding her mother’s admonition against wasting food, she hid the eggs throughout the apartment. Molly only discovered her daughter’s deception later when they packed to move. She never told Harry. Amazingly the eggs did not smell up the apartment. Hannah’s other secret: on alternate days, she put aside the money her mother gave her to buy milk and cookies in school, and when she had enough saved, treated herself to a verboten Milky Way bar.

  Elani Zographos and Hannah started walking home together from school once they realized they lived on the same street. They were in different classes, and Elani was younger than Hannah, but that didn’t matter to the girls. Her family owned the dry-cleaning store around the corner on Washington Avenue. After school, under the watchful eye of Mr. Zographos, Hannah and Elani did their homework on the floor next to the front counter of the store. Seeing how her father supervised everything Elani did, Hannah was alternately envious of his constant attention and relieved that she herself had more freedom. Elani cautioned Hannah that her father had a bad temper, but he did not scare Hannah. Although Mr. Zographos shouted a lot, Hannah decided he didn’t do it to berate anyone, he just had strong opinions. Particularly when he talked about politics. Elani was not interested. But Hannah was.

  “You know everybody pretends that President Roosevelt was a saint. He did many bad things nobody wants to mention,” Mr. Zographos told a surprised Hannah.

  She remembered that in the DP camp when people mentioned President Roosevelt’s name it was in tones usually reserved for a deity. But Mr. Zographos could not forgive President Roosevelt for dumping Henry Wallace, his Vice President.

  “He replaced him with Harry Truman because Henry Wallace is too close to the people,” Mr. Zographos said. To rectify Roosevelt’s mistake, in 1948, Mr. Zographos supported Henry Wallace, the third party candidate for President, instead of Harry Truman or Thomas Dewey.

  “If Truman or Dewey become President, wait and see, you’ll have soldiers running the country,” Mr. Zographos warned Hannah. She wasn’t sure how it could happen, but she knew she didn’t want soldiers running her life again. Although Hannah had reached the point where she might approach a policeman for help if she were lost or in trouble, uniforms were a source of fear, not safety for her. Even when Martha Kavanaugh, a girl in her class she greatly admired, assured Hannah she would really like being a Girl Scout, it was their uniforms that kept her from joining. Uniforms reminded her of the Hitler Youth groups she had heard about in Poland. And feared.

  In an effort to keep soldiers off New York streets, something Mr. Zographos warned would happen with Truman reelected, ten-year-old Hannah took the Wallace for President buttons Mr. Zographos had given her and stood outside the Third Avenue El train station handing them out to people returning home from work.

  One night at dinner, trying to impress her father, Hannah proudly mentioned her campaigning efforts on behalf of Henry Wallace.

  “Are you trying to get this family deported?” Harry shouted, his face beet red.

  Hannah was bewildered by her father’s response. “Of course not!” she insisted, and looked to her mother for support. But Molly eyed her plate of food and refused to take a position. “Mr. Zographos told me if Harry Truman becomes president, soldiers will be everywhere,” Hannah said, trying to explain her entrance into U.S. politics. She could not understand why her father had misinterpreted her actions.

  “Vat you are doing is putting dis family in jeopardy by supporting a communist for President.” When Harry became angry or anxious, his accent was more pronounced.

  “Mr. Zographos said Henry Wallace is for the people. Is that being a communist?”

  “Everything he told you . . . sounds to me like he’s a communist. Having friends like that could put us in big trouble!” Harry shouted. The fear Hannah heard in her father’s voice frightened her.

  It was simpler during the war, she thought. Obviously, there were things that could harm them in America that she did not understand. Harry insisted Hannah limit her contact with the Zographos family. Although he didn’t object to Molly’s patronizing their cleaning store.

  A contrite Hannah told her father she would give the Wallace for Pre
sident buttons back to Mr. Zographos. Her promise to stop spending afternoons with Elani at the cleaning store was more difficult for her. But she did it. No Mistakes Allowed!

  Hannah decided the only election that was safe for her to actively participate in was electing the next Miss Rheingold. Standing outside the Bartello grocery she campaigned for her favorite Miss Rheingold. Hannah always wanted the brunette to win.

  When Harry Truman was reelected and the soldiers didn’t come, Hannah was relieved. But the possibility of another war breaking out that could reach the United States always hovered in the back of her mind. The day President Truman announced he was sending American troops to protect South Korea, Hannah remembered what Mr. Zographos predicted, and worried. As she waited for her parents to come home that evening she tried to reason herself out of her panic. Korea was not near New York, she told herself. To temper her panic, she did what she had done during the war when Aunt Emma left her alone. Hannah paced back and forth from the kitchen to the front door of the apartment, counting to a hundred, over and over again. As soon as she heard a key in the door, she rushed back to the kitchen. Her father found her, sitting at the table, doing her homework. Until President Eisenhower declared it was over, Hannah listened intently to the news on the radio, hoping the police action in Korea was not about to reach her front door.

  On Sundays, if Harry decided he could take a break from studying his medical books, they often went to Times Square. Usually they ended up at the Stanley Theater, but only if a foreign film was playing that Harry wanted to see. Unfortunately for Hannah, her father was only interested in war movies. From the opening credits, Hannah sat in the darkened theater, her eyes closed, her fingers in her ears, trying to drown out the awful sounds of gun battles and exploding bombs. But her fingers could never block out enough and when she couldn’t stand it anymore, a tearful Hannah would run into the lobby. Mr. Rosoff, the theater manager, a balding man with eyeglasses perched on the tip of his nose, and a cigarette dangling from his mouth, befriended her. He not only let her in for free, knowing she would never watch the movie, but had a comic book and a candy bar for her whenever she raced out. It was Mr. Rosoff who introduced Hannah to Archie Comics and Almond Joy.