Alon stared at her. “For how long?”
“Just a few days. Before the holiday. Maybe a week. It’s not—”
Tikvah cut herself off. She had tried calling Talya this morning, too, but there had been no answer. She was so caught up in Ruby, Cane, and her dharma, she hadn’t realized that her own daughter was surely in trouble.
“He’s kidnapped her already!” Alon exploded.
Tikvah went faint. Her heart dropped down to her stomach. She put her face in her hands.
Alon kept yelling. “How could you not tell me the minute you knew? What’s going on with you, Tikvah? I knew the dog, that Ruby woman, your disappearing into the valley . . . I knew it all meant trouble. But I had no idea it had gone this far. How could you jeopardize Talya’s safety?”
Tikvah trembled uncontrollably. Her cellphone fell from her hand to the street. Then she went down too, convulsing and moaning as she hit the pavement.
TIKVAH LAY IN her bed in Rambam hospital in Haifa, nibbling on her nails and waiting for Alon to return. He had been furious with her when she told him about Udi and Talya; but after her attack, he had put that aside to care for her. She could tell he felt guilty, that he thought he had brought on the relapse. She was not the only one tiptoeing around the minefield of their relationship so as not to set off an explosion.
But after seeing to her, he went to find Talya. They both agreed that was of the utmost urgency. Tikvah’s cellphone had broken when it fell to the ground. She had none of her daughter’s friends’ numbers to call—they were all saved in the phone—and Alon certainly didn’t. He did not even know the names of her Jaffa friends, let alone their phone numbers.
“It’s okay, I have contacts,” he had said.
She knew he meant the army kind. He was retired from the IDF, but he was still connected. It took much effort for him to pick up the phone to call anyone at all, let alone someone from his army days. He had wanted to leave that all behind. Knowing that had made her even more concerned about Talya. He would only have called those contacts if he knew it was an emergency. And when he did call, he discovered he had reason to be alarmed. Talya had boarded a boat with an Arab man. It was a cruise ship of sorts, although it was not registered; and there were many other Arabs aboard as well. And Jews. All mixed couples. The Shabak had its ways of knowing.
“I knew it!” Alon had cried. “It may be too late.” He was frantic. He had left early that morning to the Haifa naval base to see if he could get some help from his contacts there.
Alon had been right to be angry. She should not have kept Talya’s relationship from him. Their daughter had wanted him to know from the beginning. She had wanted to be open and honest with her father. It was Tikvah who had insisted they keep the truth from him. It was Tikvah who went to Ruby’s village when she knew Alon would be so upset. It was Tikvah who had created this web of secrets, no different than the one she had escaped when she boarded the plane to Israel decades before. Even if she had been trying to protect her husband, her daughter, and her marriage, she had ended up putting them all in danger. Her intentions had been good. She had wanted to spare everyone the pain. But in the end, she had only caused more pain by not telling the truth.
Tikvah thought of her mother. She too should know now what was happening with her only child—even if she did not want to hear it. This was their reality, whether she liked it or not. She looked at the phone. She picked up the receiver and dialed. She would insist that her mother speak to her. No more secrets. She should have told her mother about her MS as soon as she was diagnosed. She should not have taken the easier route and let her mentally ill mother cut her out of her life. She had wanted her mother to be open with her, and she should have been open with her mother. Her mother was as much a victim as she or Ruby or anyone else was. And still, despite her fragile state, she should know the truth. Trying to evade reality or protect others from it had backfired.
The phone rang on the other end. “Long Island Rest Home,” a woman’s voice said.
“This is Tikvah Vitali. Hope Vitali. Miriam Leon’s daughter. I would like to speak with my mother, please. She will say no, but tell her I insist.”
There was silence. “You must have had a premonition,” the woman finally said. “Your mother passed away a couple of days ago.”
Tikvah was surprised by the lump in her throat, the tears welling up in her eyes. She did not anticipate being so moved by her mother’s death. Even in her mother’s saner days, they had never been close. The veil that had surrounded her mother kept even her only child at a safe distance. And since she had started refusing to accept Tikvah’s calls, Tikvah had already said an emotional farewell to the woman who gave birth to her, she had thought. She had been wrong. That woman was still her mother, after all.
Tikvah gulped. “How?”
“She had cancer. She wouldn’t let us tell you.” That did not surprise her. More secrets.
“Will there be a service?”
“Your mother asked to be cremated with no service. We were surprised, since she was Jewish. Most of the Jewish residents here want to be buried and have a rabbi officiate. But we honored her request, of course. It was all very simple.”
Despite their difficult relationship and Tikvah’s illness, she would have flown in for a service if she could have found a way to manage it. It was like her mother, though, to take care of it in this way. She had never been devout. Her parents were not religious people. Her mother’s Jewishness had been, if anything, cultural. But even that was a stretch.
“Yes, of course.”
“She had a will. You’ll be hearing from her lawyer about that. But she did have one other request, too. It concerns you.” Tikvah gripped the phone receiver. “She wrote something before she died. A long letter of sorts. She asked us to send it to you after her death. We sent it registered express. You didn’t receive it yet?”
Tikvah remembered the mail Alon had brought her that morning, before he had left for the Haifa port. Where had he put it? “I don’t know. I’m in the hospital.”
“That explains why we couldn’t reach you. It seems there is something wrong with your cell phone. We left a message on the house phone answering machine, but no one got back to us.”
Alon was never good about checking the machine. That was one of Tikvah’s jobs “Yes. That’s why you couldn’t reach me.”
“I’m sorry. Are you okay?”
“I have MS. I wanted to tell my mother that. But now it’s too late.”
“Maybe it is best this way. Your mother did not have an easy life. If it is any comfort to you, she seemed more at peace in the end than I had ever seen her.”
“That does make me feel better.”
“I’m sorry for your loss, and about your illness. If you need anything else, please let us know.”
“Thank you.” Tikvah hung up the phone and sank into the stiff mattress of her hospital bed, taking in the fact that her mother was gone.
This would not change her life in any significant way. But she was sad for what had not been. She looked out the window. It was dark outside already. When would Alon return with news of Talya? And where had he put the mail he had brought her from home? She looked over at the bedside table where the phone sat. There was no mail there. She opened the drawer of the table, and looked inside. Yes, that was where he had put it. She removed the envelopes. Alon took care of their official mail, so all he had brought was her personal letters. There were a few Jewish New Year cards from regular guests. One letter stood out from the rest. It was in a large manila envelope. She opened it.
MIRIAM
September, 2000
My Dear Hope,
Forgive me for how I have fallen short. Life has not been kind to me.
They tell me I don’t have much time left in this world. The cancer is spreading rapidly, and I am not fighting it. I am ready to go. In fact, I would have been long ago. If not for the story I have been carrying around with me for all of these years. I do n
ot want to die with my secrets. I would like a proper confession before my soul leaves my body. I don’t know if you can forgive me, but perhaps that is not what matters now. What’s done is done. But you should know the truth. I have never known who I really am, and I will die not knowing. That is my fate. But I do not want it to be yours, too.
Let me begin at the beginning. My father was a Jewish intellectual. A professor. A historian, I think. I was a Jewish girl in a regular school. I had a best friend, Emma; we jumped rope on sunny days and played five stones on rainy ones. My mother died when I was too young to remember her. But I do remember a housekeeper. Hanne. She sang to me in Flemish. I think I was happy.
The last memory I have of my father is of the day we were driving out into the countryside. I didn’t know where we were going. We lived in the city. It felt like a long drive. I looked out the window as he drove. I remember everything looking wet, but I am not sure if it was raining or if I was just seeing everything through my tears. He told me he could not take care of me anymore. This was early 1940 and I was ten years old. He said it was just a matter of time before the Nazis invaded Belgium, and he wanted me to be safe.
As he drove, my father kept talking, in an urgent way that made my stomach clench into a knot. He said it was time I knew the truth about my identity. My mother was a devout Catholic, he told me, whose parents disowned her when she married him. When I was an infant, she had me baptized, he said. It was her wish that I be raised Catholic; but she was dying, and she knew my father would not comply. He was an atheist. Jewish by birth, but an atheist at heart. He did not believe in God. That much I do remember about him. He told me that day as he drove that he was finally complying with my mother’s wishes by bringing me to a convent. Since he couldn’t take care of me, he would put me in the nuns’ hands.
I knew nothing of this before that day. I thought my mother had been Jewish, like my father. That is the impression my father had always given me. And one thing I remember about my father was his honesty. He never treated me like a child. He was always straight with me. He never sheltered me from the harsh reality of the world. So I thought I was dreaming. I kept thinking I would wake up from that nightmare any minute. I pinched myself so hard I broke the skin. But if it was a dream, I am still sleeping now. Because I never saw my father or Emma or Hanne ever again.
The nuns had to pull me away from my father. I would not let go of him. He let the nuns take me by force. He turned his head away and left. I think I saw tears in his eyes, but I am not sure. Maybe I imagined them. That’s what is most painful. I don’t even know what are real memories and what is just my own romantic creation of a childhood lost. My inner world is what kept me going when the outer world disappointed me, as you know. It has been hard to know the difference between what is real and what is my own mechanism for coping with life.
At first I cried when my father brought me to the convent. I refused to eat, too. I wanted only to go home. But after enough time passed that I was not even sure anymore what home was, when the convent started to be the only home I knew, I settled into the rhythm of the place. There was something comforting about the structure, the rules, the predictability. Especially when the Nazis invaded a few months after my arrival, and the world outside of the convent walls was in chaos.
My father never visited. Not once. When I realized he was not coming, when the convent became the extent of my world, I gave myself to it completely. I hated my father for abandoning me. I assumed he didn’t care about me. I began to idolize my mother. I saw her in the face of Mother Mary hanging in the sanctuary. She was watching over me. If this is what she wanted for me, I would not only go along with her wish, but I would become the best Catholic I could be. I would make her proud.
We prayed as soon as we woke up. We prayed before we went to sleep. And we prayed many times in between. My father did not even bring any of my clothing with me from home when he dropped me with the nuns. We all wore the same uniform. Scratchy woolen skirts with high-collared blouses and jackets embossed with the emblem of the order. Stockings. Braids in our hair. Loose hair was immodest. Besides, braids were better at keeping the lice away. I had no possessions. None of us girls did. The food was tasteless, but it filled the belly, which we knew was more than others outside the convent walls were getting once the Nazis invaded.
We knew there was a war going on outside, but the nuns did not let it come in. After the Nazi invasion, Jewish children started arriving in the secrecy of night. They were hiding in the basement where it was safest so we did not see them often. Only when it was necessary for them to come upstairs. It was forbidden for us to say a word about them when we had visitors. Once some soldiers came snooping. I was scared they would find those children downstairs. But when Mother Superior told them they were welcome to come inspect, but that they should be warned that there were some girls with typhus inside, they said they would come back in a few weeks. They never did.
In hindsight, I know that was towards the end of the war, and things were not going well for the Nazis then. They were rounding up as many Jews as possible in a last desperate effort to kill as many as they could before the Allies won the war. Later that night, Mother Superior told us it is permitted to lie in order to save a life. That’s when I understood that if those soldiers had found the children hidden downstairs, our lives would be in danger. She did not explain. But we girls talked afterwards amongst ourselves, wondering why we should risk our lives for Jews who had killed Jesus. That was very confusing for us, I remember, but we trusted the nuns; they knew what was best. And now I see that was my first lesson in unconditional, universal love. The kind Jesus himself preached. That is what the nuns were trying to teach us.
Now if you have read this far, my child, my Hope, I want to tell you about the second time my world was turned upside down. It was no less traumatic than the first.
It was some time after the war ended. Maybe a year. Mother Superior called me to her office. I had been in the convent for more than six years by then. I was already seventeen years old. A young woman. But a sheltered one. I had been outside of the convent walls only to take walks with the nuns and the other girls in the surrounding hills.
Mother Superior never called any of us girls to her office unless it was serious. This I remember like it was yesterday. Mother Superior was sitting behind a huge oak desk, like a queen on her throne, her wrinkled, gnarled hands folded in front of her. She was wearing her habit and wimple, of course, so I could see only her face. In all the years I was there, I never saw her hair. Not once. But I imagine it was gray. She was an older woman. At least that is how I remember her. Not frail. She was sturdy and broad. She wore her age like a badge of honor.
I stood there, in front of this imposing woman—who, you understand, was more than mere mortal to me in those years—trying not to fidget. The nuns were strict about that. “Hands are for service, not for pleasure,” they used to say. They taught us to sew and knit and cook and clean. Anything to keep our hands busy and productive. “Idleness will lead to foolishness,” was another one of their mottos. I worked hard to do what they said, so I could not imagine what Mother Superior was going to tell me. I had done nothing wrong, nor had I done anything especially worthy of commendation. I tried not to stand out. That would be considered boastful or haughty behavior. Self-serving, not God-serving.
Finally, Mother Superior spoke. “What I am going to tell you, child, is going to be hard for you to hear, but it is the truth.”
I looked down at my boots, at my big toe which was almost poking through the scuffed brown leather. I did not want to hear what Mother Superior was going to tell me.
I heard Mother Superior’s deep voice. “Look up at me, child. You must hear this straight.”
I lifted my head and caught Mother Superior’s eye. It looked watery. I had never seen her shed a tear.
She continued, and I had no choice but to listen. “I am sorry to tell you this, but you were not born to a Catholic mother. Your mo
ther was Jewish, like your father. He gave us fake papers in order to save your life. You were never even baptized, it seems.” It was a sin to take Holy Communion without being baptized. Had I been sinning all these years without realizing it? That could not be true. She had to be mistaken. Why was she telling me this if it couldn’t be true? I reached up and touched the silver cross, the crucifix, on the rosary around my neck. The feel of the cold metal comforted me, somehow. Reassured me of my own existence.
I knew I should not interrupt Mother Superior, but I couldn’t help myself. “But–” I managed to squeak out.
“I know you didn’t know. None of us did. God is a forgiving God. He will not judge us for defiling a sacrament in times when normal rules do not apply. But the war is over, and you must leave the walls of the convent now. Someone has come for you from the Comité de Defense des Juifs en Belgique.”
I shook my head, trying to block out her words. Why would such a committee need to defend me? I was not Jewish like those children in the basement. They were gone now. I was still here, in the convent, where I belonged. I began to recite the Apostles Creed in Latin, silently, in my heart.
Mother Superior stood from her chair and came to stand by my side. She put those gnarled hands on my shoulders. They were shaking. “I am sorry, but your father is dead, child. He was sent to Breendonk, and from there to Buchenwald, where he was murdered by the Nazis.”
I looked up at Mother Superior pleadingly. This could not be true. If papers lied about my baptism, how did she know they were not lying about my father’s death? Nothing was true anymore. I could believe no one about anything. I touched the first large wooden bead on my rosary. Our Father Who art in Heaven, blessed be Thy name, I heard echo through my head. I touched the next, small bead. Hail Mary full of grace, I recited in my heart.
“There are eyewitnesses from the camp,” she said. “There is no doubt.” I saw an actual tear escape from Mother Superior’s eye. I knew then she was telling me what she, at least, thought was the truth. “But you are a child of God. Always remember that. Even Jews are God’s children. Misguided, but still God’s children. If God wants to punish you for your sins, let God do the work. The Nazis are not God’s messengers. They are the messengers of Satan.”
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