Orphan #8

by Kim van Alkemade

  The subway ride to Coney Island was the longest Rachel had ever taken. On the way, Naomi told Rachel about her Uncle Jacob. He was her father’s older brother; the two of them had taken passage together from Kraków to New York. Naomi’s father was Jacob’s apprentice, but Jacob was too busy establishing their woodworking business to find himself a wife, so the younger brother married first. They all lived together in an apartment above the workshop. “I used to sweep up the shavings. I remember I had a collection of the nicest ones.”

  “Do you remember your mother?” Rachel asked.

  Naomi shrugged. “I remember how I felt when I was with her, and I know what she looked like, but I don’t know if that’s from my memory or from the pictures at my uncle’s house. I was only six when they died of influenza.” Naomi finished her story, telling Rachel that she was left with no one but her uncle. “Uncle Jacob was a single man back then, and my father died just when he took on a big order for the carousel. He didn’t have much choice except to take me to the Home. He told me I’d have more fun, with so many children to play with.” Naomi and Rachel sat beside each other in silence. Neither had to say that any child would choose a family of their own, no matter how shattered, over the rigors and routines of the Home.

  At the Stillwell Avenue station, families and couples surged toward the boardwalk. Naomi took Rachel’s elbow and steered her down Mermaid Avenue, the hot sidewalks emptying as they left behind the beaches and amusements.

  “There it is.” Naomi pointed to a brick building that looked like a stable. Rachel didn’t understand how this could be anyone’s home, but Naomi led the way up an exterior staircase to a second-story door painted glossy blue.

  A bearded man with gnarled hands opened it to her knock. “Naomi, dear, come in.” They embraced and kissed.

  “Uncle Jacob, this is my friend Rachel, from the Home.”

  Rachel, too, was kissed, Jacob’s whiskers tickling her cheek. “Welcome. Estelle, they’re here!” he called over his shoulder. He stepped back to usher Rachel into the sitting room of a tidy apartment. She could see through to a small kitchen from which Estelle emerged to join them.

  “Naomi, darling, how are you?” Estelle, whose hair was piled up in braids on top of her head, shared Jacob’s Polish accent. To Rachel they seemed to be from another century. The apartment’s furnishings—table, chairs, chifforobe—were all ornately carved and brightly painted. Instead of radiators, there was a woodstove with a black chimney pipe. The walls were decorated with framed pictures of temples and castles. Rachel thought they were drawn to look like lace, but as she stepped closer to the pictures, she saw the images were made of paper cut out to show every detail of crenulated rooflines and leaded windows.

  “You like that?” Estelle asked, coming to stand next to Rachel. “That one I did, but over here is one Jacob made.” She pulled Rachel toward a larger picture. Within the boundaries of the frame a whole city unfolded: cut paper trees and a cobblestone street, paper horses drawing a wagon, small houses with paper smoke rising from chimneys, and on a hill above the town a domed paper temple.

  “I’ve never seen anything like this,” Rachel said.

  “This one he made back in the Empire, before America. Now he doesn’t have time for the paper cutting, only the horses, always the horses. I don’t cut paper anymore, either. Now I am painting the horses. We will show you after we eat. Come now, Naomi, Jacob, come and sit.”

  They pulled chairs up to the table, already set for lunch with decorated plates, to eat their brown bread and pickled onions and slices of smoked tongue. Naomi’s news about the counselor position elicited warm congratulations from her uncle and his wife. Jacob was much older than Estelle, but Rachel could see their fondness for each other, and for Naomi. It made Rachel think of those Sunday afternoons in Reception, when she and Vic and Sam would gather in the kitchen with Mrs. Berger. A deeper memory stirred, an image of a table set with cups and a jelly jar and a woman with eyes like black buttons pouring tea. Then came the image Rachel tried to avoid by never attempting to remember a time before the Home: a spreading red pool and rising white buttons. She shuddered.

  “Someone walking on your grave?” Jacob asked.

  Rachel paled. It was like he was reading her soul. Naomi saw her expression.

  “He always says that when anyone shivers like you just did. It’s an old superstition. Don’t say such things, Uncle Jacob,” Naomi admonished him with a flick of her napkin.

  “So, Naomi, we have some news for you,” Estelle said, smiling at Jacob.

  Naomi brightened. “Are you going to make me an aunt finally?”

  A troubled look passed between them and Naomi blushed, apologizing. Jacob took Estelle’s hand. He said, sadly, “That is a blessing maybe not for us. When Estelle came off the boat we were thinking the house would be crowded already with babies. Otherwise, we would have taken you out from the Home to live with us. I waited too long, I think, to send for my beautiful Estelle.”

  “Don’t draw an evil eye to our troubles, Jacob,” Estelle whispered. She turned to Naomi. “Our news is we have for you something.” Estelle got up from the table, opened a small drawer in the chifforobe and pulled out an envelope. “For your high school graduation, and to help with the college.”

  Naomi opened the envelope. There were five- and ten-dollar bills, worn soft but clean and ironed flat.

  “Fifty dollars? Uncle Jacob, Aunt Estelle, it’s too much!” But they insisted, and Rachel could see this gift was both an investment in their niece’s future and an apology for her past. Naomi finally accepted, grateful. Even with room and board included with her position as a counselor, it would be a strain for her to pay tuition from her paltry earnings. She’d been about to go in front of the Scholarship Committee to beg her case. “Now I can walk into the bursar’s office after Labor Day and pay for all the classes in cash like a Rockefeller,” she said. This pleased her aunt and uncle, and they finished their lunch amid happy chatter. As Estelle cleared away the dishes, Jacob showed Naomi how to hide the money under the insole of her shoe.

  “You want to see the workshop before you go down to the beach?” Jacob asked. Rachel thought they’d go back outside, but instead he led them through the bedroom and out another door onto an interior balcony that overlooked a cavernous space. The smell of pine and turpentine rose to the rafters. Down below, Rachel saw the blocks of wood, the workbenches covered in tools, the jars of paint lining the walls on shelves, and everywhere the carousel horses. Horses with flaring nostrils, eyes rolled back and hooves beating the air. Docile horses with soft lips and broad backs. Fancy horses with braided manes and gleaming teeth.

  “Since the carousel at Coney Island, horses is all I get orders for,” Jacob explained. “Not that I’m complaining!”

  On the far wall above the big workshop doors was something different: a carved lion with a majestic mane and the uncanny eyes of a guardian spirit. Jacob saw Rachel staring at it.

  “Ah, that was my test, to show I was finished being an apprentice. You should have heard Naomi’s father complaining! First we haul it on a cart to the train station. Then we sit with it in the baggage car all the way to Bremen. When we are hauling it up the gangplank to the ship, my brother wails, ‘What for do we have to carry a temple lion all the way to America?’ ‘When you finish your apprenticeship, you’ll understand,’ I told him.” Jacob paused to sigh. They’d gotten so busy so quickly in America, he never took the time to subject his brother to the same grueling training he had endured. He shook the regret from his head.

  “That is not my first one! No, that lion is the third I carved. The first one my master in Kraków he rejects. Such a lion is not worthy to guard the Torah, he says. My second one also is not good enough. So I carve until the blood from my fingers soaks into the wood. Then, with this one, my master says in Yiddish, dos iz gute. I mount it on the wall over our workshop, so we don’t forget where we come from.”

  Rachel was entranced by the story. Sh
e had no idea where her people were from. Europe, she supposed, but what empire or country or village? If her parents had been born in New York, she and Sam would surely have been claimed by grandparents—unless they were dead, too. She envied Naomi her connection with family. Most children at the Home had some relative who visited them on a Sunday afternoon, bringing candy or coins. Many, like Vic, even had a living parent, and Mrs. Berger wasn’t the only widowed mother working at the orphanage. Sometimes it seemed to Rachel that the Home was like a big library, with children being checked in by relatives unable to care for them, then checked out when fortunes changed. She had decided long ago her father must have died, or he would have found a way to get her and Sam back, too.

  Naomi kept a bathing suit at her aunt and uncle’s, and Estelle lent hers to Rachel, saying Naomi could return it on her next visit. It was afternoon by the time the girls went down to the boardwalk. Ahead, the Wonder Wheel turned slowly and the Cyclone slunk up and over its tracks. They went past the amusements and toward the water. Sharing a rented changing booth, they stuffed their shoes and summer dresses into the straw bag Naomi carried and put on the knit suits, a bit old-fashioned but still exposing arms and legs. Naomi helped fit a bathing cap over Rachel’s head. Pulling open the curtains of the booth, the sun blinded Rachel as she stepped onto the warm sand. She liked the way it shifted beneath her bare feet. The girls spent some time basking before going into the water. In the roiling ocean, they stayed near shore, jumping over incoming waves and tasting sea salt on their tongues.

  The afternoon took on a dreamlike quality. With the summer sun suspended overhead, time ceased passing. The trips from sand to sea and back were timed not by the hands of a clock but by the evaporation of water from their swimsuits. The regimented ringing of bells was replaced in Rachel’s inner ear by the sound of surf bubbling onto the beach and the whoosh and plummet of the roller coaster.

  They stayed until the slanted light told a story of evening. In the close darkness of the changing booth, hips bumped as they bent to roll the damp suits from their salty limbs. Standing, their eyes met. For the first time in ages—maybe in forever—Rachel felt lifted by joy. In gratitude for the day, she kissed her friend on the lips. Naomi became so still and serious, Rachel wondered if she’d done something wrong. Then Naomi put a hand on Rachel’s waist and kissed her back, pursed lips pressed together. The moment stretched beyond friendship into an unmapped territory Rachel could not name. The sounds of surf and children on the beach faded as Rachel’s awareness exaggerated each tremor of lips, every shift in pressure. The tip of Naomi’s tongue touched her own, sparking an electric shock. Without meaning to, she pulled away, lips still tingling.

  A giddy joy bubbled up between them, filling the gloomy booth with their laughter and dispersing the tension. They finished dressing, Rachel covering her head with the cloche hat. Naomi made sure the money was still secure in her shoe. They stopped for Italian ice on their way to the station, turning their tongues red. On the long ride back to the Home, they sat with linked arms and dozed. When Rachel licked her lips, she tasted sea salt and cherry syrup.

  Manhattan felt crowded and dirty after the openness of the beach. Under the shadow of the clock tower, they pulled open the heavy oak doors of the Home. Naomi turned to say something to Rachel, but a bell rang. Both girls were stunned to realize they didn’t know which it was. Then they saw the children coming up from the dining hall. “Club Bell already! I’m late. Gotta go.” Naomi dashed off to her duties while Rachel went up to the Infirmary.

  “I almost didn’t recognize you, Rachel. You’re cheeks are positively glowing. And that hat makes you look so normal.” Gladys caught herself. “I mean to say, it looks so natural on you.”

  Reluctantly, Rachel handed the hat to Nurse Dreyer, exposing her bare scalp. The monitor’s warning about Naomi came back to her. She’s not a normal girl . . . she’s not natural. Rachel shivered, as if someone had walked on her grave.

  AS THE SUMMER came to an end, Nurse Dreyer finally had to let Rachel go. The Saturday before Labor Day, Rachel prepared herself to rejoin the girls in the F5 dorm, though it hadn’t quite been settled if she’d move that night or the next. Tuesday she’d start her nursing course, thanks to the support of the Scholarship Committee.

  “I don’t know what I’ll do without you, Rachel,” Gladys told her. She was lingering over her magazines as Rachel collected the lunch trays. “You’ve been such a help.” A bell rang, spurring Gladys up from the table. “I don’t suppose you’d mind going down to the office for me one last time? I’ve still got curlers in my hair.”

  “Of course not,” Rachel said. She took the back staircase from the Infirmary to the ground floor and followed the long hallway past the synagogue, the library, the band room. The club room door was propped open. Rachel saw Vic inside. Naomi had told her he’d started a new club, the Blue Serpent Society. Rachel had heard they were planning a party for next Rosh Hashanah. Vic saw her passing and dashed into the corridor.

  “Rachel, I haven’t seen you in months! How are you? You look like you’ve gotten some sun. Were you at camp?”

  “No, I’ve been here all summer, helping in the Infirmary. But Naomi took me to Coney Island last Sunday.” Rachel felt her cheeks redden. “I got burned, I’m afraid.”

  “No, you look lovely.” Vic smiled, and Rachel noticed again how blue his eyes were.

  They stretched the conversation. It was between bells and the corridor was quiet. Rachel told him about going back to the dorm and starting a nursing course. Vic had graduated, but he was staying on, too. He was going to be a counselor himself, in M2, and a freshman at City College.

  “What do you hear from Sam?” Vic asked.

  Rachel looked at the floor. “Nothing. I don’t know where he is or even if he’s all right.”

  Vic seemed confused for a moment. He opened his mouth as if to speak, then shut it, then opened it again.

  “What is it?”

  “No, nothing, it’s just . . . I’m sure he’s safe, Rachel, I’m sure he’s okay. Sam knows how to take care of himself.” A bell rang. The door of the club room opened and the members of the Blue Serpent Society came into the hall, jostling them.

  “Well, I gotta go. Why don’t you come to Reception tomorrow, visit my mother with me? She hasn’t seen you in so long, she asks about you all the time.”

  “Sure, tomorrow, I’ll meet you there. At Study Bell?”

  “Study Bell, yeah. Okay, see you then, Rachel.” Vic lifted his arms to make some kind of gesture, then seemed unsure what to do. He ended up placing his hands on Rachel’s shoulders and drawing her toward him. He kissed her cheek. “Take care of yourself,” he whispered.

  Rachel made her way through the corridor, now crowded with children. The place on her cheek where Vic had kissed her felt warm, and she put her fingertips there to hold on to the feeling. She smiled to herself, thinking it was the most natural thing in the world.

  Entering the office, she greeted Mr. Grossman’s secretary, who thought nothing of handing over the Infirmary’s small pile of mail to Rachel. On her way back, she sorted through the letters in her hands. One, addressed to Nurse Dreyer, had its stamp canceled in Colorado. Curious, Rachel turned over the envelope to see who had sent it. On the back no return address was written, but the envelope was printed with the name of a business, ink pressed into the rag paper. Rabinowitz Dry Goods, Leadville, Colorado.

  A coldness swept over Rachel, like a drift of snow. It couldn’t be a coincidence, she thought. The letter must have something to do with her. She hurried her steps, eager to ask Nurse Dreyer about it—but no. She stopped. No matter whose name was written on the front, if it was about her she had a right to open it. She could think of only one place where she could be alone to read it.

  Rachel climbed three flights of stairs, then slipped behind the small, secret door of the clock tower. The darkness blinded her at first, but as her eyes adjusted, she could make out the steep metal stairs, like
a fire escape, leading up to a landing. Beyond that, a wooden ladder stretched up to a dusty platform. She climbed up and settled herself in the dim light that filtered through the clock face.

  Again she examined the envelope, questions bouncing through her mind. Rabinowitz Dry Goods. Hadn’t her father been in the garment trade? Was that the same as dry goods? Leadville, Colorado. Could her papa still be alive? Maybe he’d gone to Colorado after the accident that killed their mother. Rachel had always believed it was their neighbor’s shrill voice screaming murder that drove her father to flee. Was it possible he was sending for her, now, after all these years? Or maybe Sam had tracked him down. Rachel’s heart beat very fast. The letter must be from Sam. It was addressed to Nurse Dreyer because Sam found out somehow that she was staying in the Infirmary. Maybe that’s why Vic seemed so confused when Rachel said she hadn’t heard from him. Maybe Sam had written to them both but Vic had gotten his letter already.

  The coldness that had washed over Rachel when she first saw the envelope melted away in this new understanding. She smiled, imagining seeing Vic on Sunday and being able to tell him that Sam had written to her, too, that she’d gotten the letter that very day they talked. She put her fingers to her cheek again, then tore the envelope and drew out the letter. Inside were two pieces of paper, one folded inside the other.

  Dear Nurse Dreyer, Please give the other letter in this envelope to Rachel. I heard from Vic she’s been staying in the Infirmary. Thanks again for all of your help after what happened with Mr. Grossman. I know I shouldn’t have gone after Marc like that but you know what he did was wrong and he had it coming. Sincerely, Sam Rabinowitz

  In her lap was the second letter, still unfolded. She was certain now it would be an invitation from her brother to join him in Colorado. To join him and Papa. With trembling fingers, she unfolded her letter.

  Dear Rachel, Vic says you’ve been staying in the Infirmary learning to be a nurse. You’ll be good at that. I’m writing to let you know I’m safe and you shouldn’t worry about me. I can’t tell you where I am cause I don’t want Grossman to find me, but just know I’m fine and take care of yourself and do good in school. Love, Sam