Orphan #8

by Kim van Alkemade

  My coffee had turned cold. I went back to the reading room to find the librarian gathering up my sources. “I’m not done with those yet,” I said, reclaiming the volumes.

  “I’m sorry. You disappeared, so I just assumed.” Deborah leaned over to place them back on the table. I’ll admit, this time I did stare. I guess I needed some distraction—I even imagined she stared back—not that it worked. As soon as I was alone with Dr. Solomon’s article, I read it again, more angry and indignant with every line. This time, though, I examined the chart in the appendix. It showed the cumulative X-ray exposures for each child in the experiment. We weren’t named, of course—we were just orphans, “institutional children,” expendable, disposable, numbers on a graph. Suddenly it made sense to me, the embroidered number stitched on my collar. What was it? I remembered the endless circles I would trace with my fingertip, following the stitches around and back, over and around again. Tracing the chart with my finger, I found #8 and followed its line.

  There I was, the most exposure of them all.

  IT FELT AS though I’d been cooped up in that reading room for months. Looking through the window, I saw green treetops and a cloudless sky. I was desperate to be outside, sweltering though the midday heat would be, but there was one more article I’d had the librarian find for me. I pulled the volume closer, figuring I might as well finish what I’d started. I’d certainly never be coming back here again. It was that recent study, published just a couple of years ago. I checked the bibliography—it was Mildred Solomon’s tonsil article he cited, but why this Dr. Feldman would have referenced it I couldn’t imagine. With a slack hand I lifted the cover. Newly sewn into the binding, the pages of Modern Oncology resisted. I had to stand and bring weight into my arms to hold open the pages. I skimmed the article until my eyes caught a sentence. For women who were exposed to excessive radiation as children, malignancy rates are markedly increased, with tumors becoming evident as these women reach their forties.

  My thoughts flew to the other side of the world, to that Japanese fisherman on the Lucky Dragon. I pictured the radioactive ash sifting down on him from miles and miles away, how he brushed the mysterious flakes from his sleeves and went on hauling up his nets. It was only later, safely ashore, that the dying began. With a deep sense of foreboding, I started Dr. Feldman’s article from the beginning.

  By the time I finished, I was a wreck. I needed to collect myself before leaving the Medical Academy. Deborah wasn’t around, so I lifted the counter and went through the stacks, letting myself into the restroom. Staring into the mirror over the sink, I lifted my chin to expose the underside of my jaw. I’d always assumed they were birthmarks, those two shiny patches of skin, round as dimes. Now I recognized them as the faded remnants of an X-ray burn. I kept seeing that chart, as if it were a slide projected over my vision, the line for #8 rising steeply.

  I shrugged my shoulder where the armpit had been feeling sore. A wave of anxiety swept over me as I began to put two and two together. I had to check immediately, to reassure myself I was imagining things. Right there, in the staff restroom of the Medical Academy library, I began to unbutton my blouse. I had just reached back to unhook my bra when there was a light knock on the door.

  “Are you okay in there?” Deborah asked. “Do you need anything?”

  I managed to say I was fine. Worried the lock would give way and she’d see me with my shirt open, I fumbled to close the buttons. I splashed cold water on my cheeks, dried them with a paper towel, checked to see if my features were composed. My eyebrows, at least, hadn’t smudged. I opened the door to find her standing there. She didn’t step back but held her ground, blocking me in the doorway.

  “Have you been crying?” She touched my face, a tender gesture, her fingers cupping my jaw. She gazed at me with such frank, steady eyes I knew she had caught me looking earlier, knew now she’d known all along what it meant. I was so used to pretending to be something I wasn’t, it shocked me to be seen for what I was. In that vulnerable moment, that shock of recognition drew me to her. I hardly knew what I was doing as the slight distance between us closed.

  I wasn’t the one to get things started, but as soon as Deborah bent back my head I leaned into her, sliding my leg between her knees, filling my hand with the weight of her breast. Her lips were softer than I expected, her kiss tentative at first, then deeper as I opened my mouth to her. I didn’t know who I was in that moment. Someone more reckless and daring had taken my place. I could tell she liked this person, liked her very much.

  The sound of that stupid bell on her counter brought with it the reality of an impatient medical student lurking on the other side of the wall. She stepped back abruptly, her mouth shiny with my spit. “I’ll just go see what he wants.” Checking her watch, she said, “The other librarian will be here any minute.” Deborah trailed her hand down my arm, reluctant to leave. “Wait here, I’ll give you my number. For later.”

  I did wait, for a minute, trying to convince myself there’d be no harm in it. Then I pictured her, in Miami, asleep in the sun on a lounge chair, a paperback open on her thigh. She was the one I wanted to be with, not some butch librarian. I was so lonely with her away. I hated sleeping by myself, waking up alone, coming home to an empty apartment. I missed those times she’d push aside the coffee table and sway me in her arms to the sound of the radio. The way she’d brush the back of her hand against mine, as if by accident, as we walked down the street. How she’d take my hand in the dark movie theater, our fingers interlaced under the sweaters on our laps.

  It worried me to think how far I might have gone, caught up in the moment, if that bell hadn’t rung. I couldn’t risk waiting, not even to explain why I had to go. I found another way out of the stacks, took a back stair down to the ground floor, located an exit to the street. Outside, I was clobbered by the heat. Short of breath and dripping with sweat, I rushed to the subway, worried Deborah would come running up behind me, pulling at my sleeve, expecting me to be someone I wasn’t.

  Chapter Seven

  EIGHT CHILDREN CROWDED INTO THE TAXICAB: FIVE IN back, two more up front between the driver and a nurse from the Hebrew Infant Home, and Rachel, the smallest, perched on the nurse’s lap.

  “Does Dr. Solomon know we’re leaving?” Rachel asked as the taxi pulled away from the curb.

  Looking down at her, the nurse said, “Dr. Solomon’s experiment is over. You’re almost six years old now—a few of the others already turned six—so you’re all being transferred together.”

  Rachel had been surprised, that morning, to be dressed in street clothes. When she and the other children were taken from the Scurvy Ward, Rachel had looked back at the receding hospital wing, expecting Dr. Solomon to come say good-bye. “Are you sure she doesn’t need me anymore?”

  “I told you, she’s done with you. Done with the lot of you.”

  Crossing the bridge with its little stone towers, Rachel squinted against the brightness of the sun. She hadn’t been outside for months, none of them had. Exposure to sunlight was a variable Dr. Solomon liked to control.

  Eventually the taxi turned off Amsterdam Avenue. A brick building big as a castle seemed to turn the corner with them, its south wing extending halfway down the block, window after window after window. The wrought-iron fence rose in height as the street sank toward Broadway. By the time they pulled over, the stone foundations of the fence were level with the taxi’s roof, and Rachel had to tilt her head to see the pointy tops of the iron bars.

  “Wait for me here,” the nurse told the driver. “I won’t be long.” She stood Rachel on the curb, pulled out the other two, then opened the back door and herded those children out as well. “Come along, now, and stay together.” The nurse led them up some stone steps to an iron gate. It swung open on hinges that made a lonely sound.

  They emerged into a vast empty space. No grass or trees. No swings or balls or scattered bats. Just gravel and sun and, on the far side, the fence again with a matching gate onto the
next street. Rachel’s legs wanted to run across the open space, to see how long it would take to reach that far fence.

  “Come along to Reception.” Rachel turned toward the big building, then felt a hand on her shoulder. “No, this way.” The nurse pointed to a squat structure nearby. As they entered, Rachel heard ringing coming from across the gravel yard, loud as a fire alarm. She turned to see, but the door swung shut, smothering the sound.

  The children huddled together in a small lobby. The nurse talked to a woman who said, “I’ll go get Mrs. Berger, wait here.”

  Rachel tugged on the nurse’s skirt. “Where are we?”

  “This is the Reception House. You’ll have to live here for a while before going into the Orphaned Hebrews Home.”

  Orphaned Hebrews Home. The words resonated in Rachel’s memory. They reminded her of the dream in which she had a brother with brown hair and light eyes who taught her the alphabet. But if she was awake and this place was real, maybe the dream was real, too. Rachel was suddenly certain she really did have a brother. Maybe this was his home. She looked for someone to ask when another woman waddled into the lobby.

  “Oh, the darlings!”

  “Mrs. Berger? I’m from the Hebrew Infant Home.”

  “Yes, of course, Mr. Grossman told me to expect you.” Fannie Berger seemed made of ovals, the circles of her chest and the roundness of her hips separated by a thin belt around the waist of her dress. A couple of years ago, widowed and impoverished, she’d come to the Orphaned Hebrews Home to give up her son. By a miracle, Mr. Grossman, the superintendent, was, that very day, interviewing candidates for a position. Even as she signed away her son to the Home, Mr. Grossman hired Fannie Berger as Reception House counselor. Though they shared the same address, her boy lived in the Castle while she was confined to Reception, their time together limited to stolen minutes after school and Sunday afternoon visits. Fannie Berger was left to lavish the affections of a frustrated mother on all of her charges.

  Mrs. Berger knelt down and opened her arms, the flesh hanging like a soft hammock from armpit to elbow. “Come here, children, and welcome.” She gathered them all, somehow, into the circle of her embrace. When she stood, each of the eight still held some piece of her, her fingers distributed among four of them, a fifth pinching her wrist, the rest with fists full of her skirt. “I’ll take them from here.”

  “And their records?”

  “You can leave them with Mable, thank you very much.” Fannie surveyed the children clinging to her. “All completely bald?” Rachel looked up. Like the others, she’d been given a knit cap to wear, even though the day was warm. She reached up and pulled it off. A chill passed over her scalp, a little damp with sweat, and Rachel shivered. Fannie stared at her face. “Even the eyebrows?”

  “That’s what the X-rays did to them, yes. But Dr. Solomon thinks the hair might grow back. For some of them, at least.”

  “Poor things,” Fannie said, shaking her head. “Well, my kittens, at least I don’t have to shave your heads, now do I?” It was the task that bothered her most. And these eight, coming from the Infant Home, would be easier in every other respect as well—apparently, they wouldn’t even need their tonsils removed. Transfers often went directly up to the Castle, but quarantine in Reception was being required for this group to see which, if any, would recover from their alopecia. Mr. Grossman had already decided to foster out the children whose hair didn’t start to grow. All new admissions to the Home were made fun of for their baldy haircuts, but a perpetually bald child would be mercilessly teased.

  Fannie Berger brought the children to the second floor of the Reception House. “This is where the girls will sleep,” she said, stopping in front of a cozy dormitory. Rachel saw a dozen metal-framed beds and a wall of washstands in a room that was bright from open windows and comfortable from the breeze passing between them. “The boys are just across the hall. The bathroom is here. And this way . . .” Fannie walked awkwardly with the eight children clutching her, but still she didn’t shake them off. “This way is our dining room. Come, sit, it’s almost lunchtime. Anyone need the bathroom first?” Some of the children did, so she left the rest of them seated on a bench at a long table. Rachel, at the end, was nearest the window. It faced the open gravel space, which was now full of children, the sound of their voices rising up on the dusty air. Rachel watched them running, skipping, shouting. There seemed to be hundreds of them. One hundred and one hundred and one.

  Maybe one of the boys was her brother.

  When Fannie returned, Rachel asked, “Mrs. Berger, does Sam live here?”

  “There’s a lot of boys named Sam here. Sit down,” Fannie said, intent on getting lunch ready and served. Mable was now in the kitchen, filling pitchers with water, dumping stewed prunes into bowls, making sandwiches from what was left of last night’s dinner.

  “My brother, Sam. When I went to the Infant Home, he went someplace else. Is he here?”

  “What’s your name again, dear?”

  “Rachel. Rachel Rabinowitz.”

  “Sam Rabinowitz?” Fannie stopped and stared at her. She could see no trace of the boy she knew by that name. “How old is your brother, kitten?”

  Rachel didn’t know how to answer. The last time she’d said her age, she was still four, her brother six. “Nobody told me if I had a birthday. When is my birthday?”

  “Never mind, dear, I’ll find out. Now eat.” The new children were joined for lunch by those already in Reception. Rachel compared those who had come with her to the other boys and girls crowded around the table. Their heads had recently been shaved for lice, so all were bald to some degree, from smooth scalps to transparent stubble to thicker growth that begged for the touch of a palm. It made her feel at home.

  Fannie made sure each child got an equal serving from the plates and platters on the table. Mable had poured half-glasses of water, which Fannie topped off and even refilled. She didn’t believe in the Home’s policy of restricting water. Intended to prevent bed-wetting, she knew it didn’t work. Anxiety, loneliness, fear—these were the reasons children woke in wet blankets.

  After lunch, the new children were supposed to join the others downstairs in the schoolroom, but Fannie knew that transfer day was exhausting, especially for such little ones. She took them to the dormitories, assigned them beds, and told them to rest. When she looked in on them after her own lunch, eaten with Mable in the Reception House kitchen, they were all asleep.

  Fannie got their files and opened Rabinowitz, Rachel. She read a summary of the police report and shook her head. “Poor dear,” she muttered. “Such a thing to see.” She read the litany of infections at the Infant Home: measles, conjunctivitis, pertussis. There wasn’t much detail about the X-rays, just Enrolled as material in medical research by Dr. Solomon. Then Fannie saw what she was looking for: Brother, Samuel Rabinowitz, assigned to Orphaned Hebrews Home.

  “So, it is Vic’s friend, Sam.” Like every other child, Sam had come through Reception. Fannie wouldn’t have remembered him so clearly except he’d become fast friends with her own son. Once Sam finished his quarantine, he’d joined Vic and all the other six- and seven-year-old boys in the M1 dorm. Vic had brought Sam into his circle of friends, sparing him much of the hazing other new admissions suffered. In turn, Sam was quick to raise his fists in Vic’s defense.

  Fannie shook her head, thinking of Sam and his temper. It was one thing to stand up for yourself—she knew the boys, especially, had to show they were strong—but Sam still hadn’t learned to accept the authority of the monitors. Fannie saw how often his cheeks were streaked red from their slaps. “At least now he’ll have some family of his own,” Fannie said aloud, closing the file and hoping his sister’s presence would calm the boy.

  Fannie woke the new children from their naps and sent them downstairs with Mable to be seen by the dentist, but Rachel she held back. “Your brother, Sam, he does live here. He comes over after school with my boy, Victor.” Fannie lifted her watch fro
m where it was pinned to her chest. “They’ll be here after three. That’s in one more hour. When you come back from the dentist, your brother, Sam, will be here to meet you.”

  It was like being told she’d have a circus as a birthday present: impossible to believe but gorgeous to imagine. Memories exploded in Rachel’s mind, like the time a photographer took pictures of the children in the Scurvy Ward—pop and flash and the smell of burning. A kitchen table. Cups of tea and a jar of jelly. Piles of buttons. A stripe of sunlight across patterned linoleum. A man’s stubbled chin against her cheek. Rachel shuffled through the images for a picture of her brother, but she couldn’t remember his face. This worried her more than the scraping of the dentist’s tool and the taste of blood in her mouth.

  While Rachel waited for the other children to finish with the dentist, she looked around the examination room. There was a chart on the wall made of letters from the alphabet. She got closer to see the tiny letters at the bottom. Beside the chart was a mirror. At first she thought it was someone else’s picture, but the image moved with her. She stared for a long time before accepting that the pale, smooth thing reflected there was herself. Rachel knew she was like the other children who’d gotten X-rays, had felt her hairless scalp with her own hand, but it hadn’t changed the picture of herself she carried in her mind’s eye. From looking in the little mirror that hung above the sink for Papa to shave in, she remembered herself with long hair framing dark eyes. Rachel had been worried she couldn’t remember what Sam looked like; now she worried he wouldn’t recognize her.

  After the dentist, Mable led Rachel upstairs to the dining room. With a hand on Rachel’s shoulder, she pushed the child through the doorway. “Here she is, Fannie.”