Orphan #8

by Kim van Alkemade

  Rachel stayed close to Naomi, keeping her in sight as she was carried along by the flow of children down a staircase and into the dining hall. It was a vast space, the ceiling held up by metal columns dotted with rivets. Sun filtered in through small windows high on the walls. A maze of long tables and benches somehow accommodated all the children who’d been crowded in the play yard. Rachel followed Naomi to a table and clambered onto the bench. Meals were supposed to be eaten in silence, but the collective whoosh of whispers gave the room a seaside sound. Monitors grabbed food from the platters first then passed them around their tables. Most children quickly devoured whatever was apportioned to their plates, hoping for seconds.

  Rachel ate slowly. She was entranced by the rye bread, soft inside with a chewy crust, and she let the vegetable pie and stewed peaches languish. The girl to Rachel’s left dove in with her fork, stuffing the peaches into her mouth until Naomi noticed, reached across the table, and gave her a hard pinch on the arm. Rachel pushed the rest of the bread into her cheek and quickly ate what was left on her plate.

  A thousand children were seated and served, fed and finished, in half an hour. Still silent except for the hiss of whispers, the tables emptied two at a time in a pattern everyone seemed to have always known. Groups of boys and girls, led by their monitors, filed out of the dining hall. Rachel saw they would be going past Sam, who was sitting with Vic at the M2 table. Ahead of her, Rachel saw Sam drop his slice of rye bread into Naomi’s pocket. Rachel hadn’t seen Sam since he’d returned from camp and she wanted say hello. She reached out for him but he drew back and turned away, leaving her fingers to brush across his shoulders.

  Rachel followed her group up two flights of stairs, down a wide corridor, and into the F1 dormitory. Huge windows were open on both sides, drawing in as much of the warm September air as possible. Most of the girls lined up for the sinks and the toilets, but Naomi pulled Rachel, Amelia, and the two other new girls aside.

  “I’ll show you your beds,” she said, her words muffled by the bread in her mouth. One hundred iron bed frames stretched along the sides and down the middle of the dormitory. Each was made up identically, cotton blanket carefully tucked, pillow centered, towel over the footboard. Under each bed was a cardboard case. Walking along the rows, they stopped at a bed without a towel.

  “Looks like this is yours,” Naomi said to Tess. “There’s your case. Take a new towel when you go to the lavatory, then come back here to hang it up. You’ll use it for a week, then they all go in the laundry and you get a new one. Underwear goes in the laundry every day, blouses twice a week, skirts once. Let me know when things start to get too small, I’ll tell the counselor you need a new size. Same goes for shoes. In the winter you’ll each get a coat and stockings. You all hear this?” Naomi turned to the three girls waiting behind her. They nodded. “Okay, you sit here a minute.”

  Tess was left sitting alone while Naomi led Amelia, then Sarah, and finally Rachel to their places. Rachel sat for a minute on the bed Naomi said was hers.

  “If you don’t wet the bed at night, you’ll get to keep the mattress,” Naomi told her, sitting beside Rachel and swinging her legs. “If you pee, though, they’ll take it away and just fold some blankets over the wires. You don’t wet your bed, do you?” Rachel shook her head no. “Good. One less thing to get you picked on. Say, don’t you have a wig?”

  “I do but I hate it. I put it in my case.”

  “Sure you don’t wanna wear it?” Naomi kicked at the cardboard under the bed with her heel.

  “It itches and it’s ugly. Mrs. Berger says I look like a boiled egg without it, but I can’t stand it.”

  “A boiled egg?” Naomi laughed, then looked thoughtfully at Rachel’s scalp. “They’re bound to call you something. You could do a lot worse. Listen, if anyone bothers you more’n just calling you names, you come to me. Sam told me to watch out for you special.” Rachel thought of the slice of bread in Naomi’s pocket.

  A bell rang. Naomi jumped up. “Come on, you still gotta wash up.”

  Rachel stood, then looked around. “How can I tell which bed is mine?”

  “You’ll get to know soon enough. For now, look, you’re in the middle row, facing west, see how the sun’s coming in? So just count.” They hurried down the row toward the lavatory, Naomi gesturing for the other new girls to follow her. Rachel tapped the corner of each bed they passed. Nineteen. She repeated it to herself as she stood at one of the sinks, above which was a long shelf of cups, each labeled with a name and containing a toothbrush.

  Rachel heard a flush and turned around. There was a row of toilets out in the open, some with girls perched on them, others with the seat up. A girl finished; as she stood, underwear disappearing under her skirt, the seat flipped up and the toilet flushed automatically. The next girl pulled the seat down, then sat. Rachel took her turn, and when she finished, she found if she didn’t stand fast enough the spring-hinged seat nearly pushed her off. She took a towel from the laundry cart, washed up, then ran back into the dorm, counting to nineteen, to hang it over her bed. Racing to catch up with the last of the girls, she followed Naomi out of the dormitory.

  “You’ll have to be faster than that once school starts tomorrow,” Naomi whispered. “You’ve only got an hour to come in for lunch, get cleaned up in the dorm, and get back to your classroom. But today’s a holiday, so now you’re gonna sit out on the fire escapes and watch the marching band practice.”

  “You’re not staying?”

  “I’m in the color guard! Gotta go.” Naomi rushed down the crowded corridor. Then she turned and shouted back, “See ya later, Egg!”

  Rachel was stunned by the betrayal. She saw Amelia, the red mark fading from her cheek, smirk and whisper to the girls near her. When Rachel got closer, Amelia said, “Don’t fall off the fire escape and crack your head, I mean, your egg!” She led the girls in a chorus of giggles. Rachel vowed to always hate her.

  The afternoon was long and hot. The marching band moved in rows across the dusty yard. Then Study Bell rang, and the girls of F1 shuffled back into the dormitory for a quiet hour. Rachel dozed on her bed, head heavy from the sun and heat. The Dinner Bell jarred her from sleep. Rachel’s stomach growled as platters of thinly sliced beef and bowls of carrots and loaves of bread landed on the table. This time, she shoved everything from her plate into her mouth as fast as she could, swallowing almost before the meat was chewed. For dessert there were stewed prunes. Rachel curled her arm around her bowl so she could spoon them slowly into her mouth, savoring their sweetness.

  After all the dinners had been eaten, the children dispersed, older ones going to the library or to a club meeting, the youngest back to their dormitories. For Rachel’s group, the bell after dinner meant getting ready for bed, even though the sun was still high. Rachel, having washed her hands and face and brushed her teeth and changed into her nightgown, lined up for inspection. The monitors, though only eight or nine years old themselves, prowled the rows of younger girls like drill sergeants, inspecting outstretched hands for clean nails. Naomi stopped in front of Rachel.

  “Show me your teeth!” she demanded, and Rachel bared her teeth in an exaggerated smile.

  “Now stand on one foot!” Rachel did as she was told, swaying slightly.

  “Okay, put your foot down, Egg.” Naomi gave her a wink. Rachel remembered what Naomi had said, that they were bound to call her something. Egg wasn’t so bad. Even though the girls down the row giggled, Rachel lifted her chin and winked back at Naomi. A bell rang. “Lights out, better hurry!” The girls, released from their inspection, scurried to find their beds. After the quiet routine of the Reception House, her first day in the Castle had been stimulating to the point of exhaustion. Despite the snuffles and whispers and coughs of a hundred girls, Rachel soon fell asleep.

  The next day, Rachel found herself awake even before the Rising Bell, her head swirling with thoughts of school. Jostled and jostling, she washed and dressed and bolted breakfast. The e
lementary school was turned to face Broadway, but its back was to the Castle. While children from the Harlem neighborhood held parents’ hands to negotiate sidewalks and cross streets, Rachel and the others from the Home simply crossed the yard, an orphan army five hundred strong. Rachel was so excited to finally go to school herself, she skipped across the gravel.

  No one had reminded Rachel to wear her wig. In the classroom, she realized her mistake and was afraid of being teased. But the rivalries and alliances so crucial in the orphanage were forgotten when the children went out into the world—even that portion of the world only a stone’s throw away. Mutual defense was the sworn duty of every Home child. The first time a neighborhood boy laughed at Rachel’s bald head, he found himself pinched, hard, by every Home child he passed in the hall, including Amelia. Teachers, too, favored the Home children, knowing they could be relied on to finish their homework and show respect. Their report cards were all sent to Mr. Grossman, who took it on himself to mete out any needed discipline.

  Sam had already taught Rachel everything first grade had to offer, but she wasn’t bored learning the lessons over again. Looking around the room, there was always something to interest her eye, and her hands loved the materials of school. Scratched wooden desks. Worn pages of books. Chalk and slate for learning to write that was replaced in later grades with paper, ink, and fountain pen.

  For the next six years, Rachel would hardly ever leave the two city blocks that encompassed both the elementary school and the Home. Even the transition to junior high would be circumscribed, Rachel one among a herd of Home children filing down Amsterdam Avenue to the nearest school. Only in high school did they begin to disperse, fare for the streetcar dispensed by the Home as orphaned adolescents fanned out across the city to pursue various courses: secretarial, industrial, college preparatory, nursing. Rachel would stay in the F1 dorm until she turned eight, then move up to F2, F3, F4, F5, each dormitory identical, different counselors but the same monitors, bossy girls perpetually two years older.

  Day to day, week to week, season to season, the routine of the Orphaned Hebrews Home followed the strict rhythm ringing through the building. Rising Bell. Dressing Bell. Breakfast Bell. School Bell. Lunch Bell. School Bell again, then Yard Bell. Study Bell. Dinner Bell. Club Bell. Washing Bell. Last Bell. On Saturdays there was synagogue led by Mr. Grossman, then marching band or baseball. On Sundays they had visiting hours, which Rachel spent in Reception with Sam and Vic. In summer, each child had a much anticipated turn at camp while those in the city crowded onto fire escapes to watch outdoor movies projected against the side of the Castle. Each autumn brought the start of a new school year. In winter, the occasional blizzard snowed them in. In spring, there was Passover dinner and a dance to celebrate Purim.

  Thus years could lapse, and did.

  Chapter Eight

  I HURRIED AWAY FROM THE MEDICAL LIBRARY, MY MEMORY still fragmented by the articles I’d read, my heart still racing from kissing that librarian. Scurrying down to the subway, I hesitated. The last place I wanted to go was our empty apartment. I wasn’t prepared, now, to confront the suspicious soreness in my chest, yet I needed to distract my mind from running wild with fatalistic scenarios. I decided to stay on the Lexington line until Grand Central, where I transferred to the Broadway, drawn back to the place I hadn’t called home in decades.

  Climbing up from the subway, the heat rose with every step I took. Starting up the steep block, I lifted my head and looked around. The apartment buildings across the street seemed unfamiliar. How many years had it been, I wondered, since I’d last come to the Orphaned Hebrews Home?

  The stone wall rose above my head. There was a break in it where steps led up to the yard. I reached for the gate, hoping it would swing open, but my hand groped at nothing. The gate had been removed. Only the iron hinges were still there, embedded in limestone, a relic of times past when they’d locked us in at night. They gave me a strange feeling, those hinges, like I’d seen them someplace else.

  I looked across the gravel yard. Hot and empty, it seemed too small to have once held the hundreds of us who stirred up dust with our running feet. I gazed up at the Castle. From the back it looked as solid and intimidating as ever. Instead of children’s voices, though, construction noise drifted down from the building. I tried to get closer, to see what the commotion was, but a fence had been unrolled between the yard and the rest of the property. Turning to the Reception House, I saw that it was gone, dismantled, its foundation a stockpile for bricks and pipes and salvage.

  Examining the Castle more carefully, I noticed the iron ornaments were missing from its roofline, gutters swung loose from the building, fire escapes had been torn off. I realized with a shock that it was being torn down. I knew the Home had been emptied before the war, the remaining orphans transferred to other institutions or siphoned off through the agency to foster homes. I’d always thought the Castle, though, would stand forever.

  I went back through the gap in the wall to the sidewalk and made my way up to Amsterdam Avenue. Rounding the corner, I was brought up short by what I saw. The mansard roof had been knocked in, leaving a yawning hollow where the clock tower used to loom. Windows were broken, glass shards reflecting sunlight at crazy angles. The double oak doors had been wrenched away. Just the brick facade stood, like a bombed-out building. The noise I’d heard came from men swarming over the structure, dropping pieces of steel, tossing bricks, stepping on broken glass. I stood by the missing front gate, mesmerized by the destruction until a worker noticed me standing there. He came toward me, hair caked in dust, taking advantage of the break to light a cigarette on his way.

  “Hey, lady, you can’t be hanging around here, we’re gonna start up the ball again soon as we clear some salvage outta the way.” He pointed up at a wrecking ball hanging silent from a crane. I didn’t move.

  He exhaled a deep drag, apparently in no particular hurry to get back to his crew. The man cast a curious eye over me. “Everything all right, ma’am?”

  “When did this happen?”

  “This job? We been at this about a year now. It’s built like a fortress, this thing. Tearing it down to make a park, but who knows how much longer it’s gonna take. They’re hauling most of the rubble down to the Battery for fill, but there’s some valuable salvage in there, you know? Copper’s not what it was during the war, but it’s still worth pulling the gutters and plumbing for scrap. And me, well, I can’t resist some of the flourishes. There’s these balustrades in white marble, beautiful stone. They’re a bitch—excuse me, ma’am—to haul, and I can only keep what I can get out before they start up the ball again. So.” He took a last drag and stepped on the smoldering butt. “I gotta get back to it, and you better step back.”

  “Can’t I watch?” My eyes were on the sky where the clock face used to be. “I lived here, back in the twenties. This used to be my home.”

  “You don’t say. When I started on the job the place was empty, just some old guy rattling around there all alone. Tried to chase us out when we first scouted the building to place our bid. And I knew the army’d used it as a barracks for a while. But yeah, once we got in there, saw all those toilets, I mean, I never seen so many toilets in my life, and the rows of sinks, and those kitchens? The old guy, he told us all about it, said he’d been caretaker since it was an orphanage.” The man stared at me. “So, you an orphan, then?”

  The question sounded strange in the present tense. I used to think that orphaned was something I’d been as a child and since outgrown. It occurred to me, though, that was exactly how I’d been feeling all summer.

  “I guess anyone alone in the world’s an orphan,” I said.

  A whistle blew. “They’re starting up the ball. Better cross the street if you want to watch it.” He hurried away.

  I crossed Amsterdam to the Avenue. The sun was beating down; I hid from it under a ginkgo tree that shaded a bench facing the Castle. There was a low rumble and a belch of smoke as the crane came to life
. The smell of diesel fuel wafted across the street. The ball began to swing like a hypnotist’s watch, knocking at the building as if asking to be let in. Each knock brought a cascade of brick and dust, exposing steel and splintering wood. The ball swung away, but the Castle hardly seemed to get smaller. I sat in the shade as the wind brought specks of the orphanage into my lungs. I felt as if I were living in two time periods simultaneously, images from the past projected onto my view of the present. There was the Castle, coming down brick by brick. And there I was, my first day in Reception, clinging to Mrs. Berger’s skirt. Or there, in the dorm, counting down the rows to find my bed. Or there, in the yard, having a catch.

  As I watched the Castle give up its bricks to the wrecking ball, it occurred to me where I’d seen those hinges before. At least, what they reminded me of. It was at some small gallery in the Village, an exhibit of photographs taken in Europe before the war. I couldn’t recall the photographer’s name, but I remembered standing, fascinated, in front of that one picture. Black and white, large format, close-up. Huge hinges in stone walls, the print shining silver where sunlight touched metal. The card beside the frame read: JEWISH GHETTO, VENICE, ITALY. The iron gates that once creaked shut each night had been gone since Napoleon, but the hinges were embedded too deep to extract. The hinges were all the photographer needed to evoke the plight of the Venetian Jews, locked in from sunset to sunrise. Just like we were in the Home.

  Wasn’t it Pieter Stuyvesant who said that first boatload of Jews could stay in New Amsterdam only as long as they took care of their own and asked for nothing? So take care of ourselves we did. They always told us how lucky we were to grow up in the Orphaned Hebrews Home, schooling us in its illustrious history. Didn’t we weather the blizzard of 1888, kept warm by our own stockpile of coal, fed from the ovens of our own bakery? And while children all over the city succumbed to cholera at the turn of the century, didn’t we emerge unscathed, the city’s water filtered before it reached our lips? After the Great War, people fell to influenza by the tens of thousands, but in the Home not a single child died. No matter how impressive, though, our Home was a kind of ghetto, the scrape of metal as the gates swung shut the same sound in Manhattan as in Venice.