Orphan #8

by Kim van Alkemade

I took the coffee onto the balcony. The sky was dark enough to show a few stars despite the competing glow of streetlamps. It put me in a philosophical mood, and I gazed for a long time, my mind entertaining half-understood concepts like relativity, distance, and time. That I could see a star meant that its light had journeyed from the far reaches of the universe to land, on this night, at this moment, in my eye. A haphazard coincidence—or had I always been its destination, my upturned face on this Coney Island balcony foretold millennia ago? No, that way of thinking wasn’t for me. Like Mr. Mendelsohn, I didn’t believe in destiny or fate. Other people found comfort in imagining God pulling the strings on their lives, but it would drive me crazy trying to figure out His inscrutable reasons for everything.

  In the coming months, so much would be beyond my power, but there were things I could look forward to. Moving back to the Village for one. There wouldn’t be time, before my surgery, for Naomi to sell this place, but she and I could take a day to go apartment hunting around Washington Square, put a deposit down on a place with bright windows and water that wasn’t brown. We’d move as soon as I felt up to it. Our old friends would start dropping by again, the two of us free in their presence to be ourselves. We’d go out to our favorite restaurants, the occasional patron off the street clueless as to the true meaning of so many tables occupied by pairs of women. We’d stroll the narrow sidewalks, searching out those couples of men walking slightly too close together, the backs of their hands touching as if by accident. When Naomi’s uncle moved to Florida she had convinced me it was a good idea to move out here, and I had to admit the money we’d saved would come in handy now, but she knew what it meant to me—had come to realize what it meant to her, too—to know we weren’t alone in the world.

  There was something else I’d been putting off for too long. After we moved, once I had my strength back, I would go visit my brother in Israel. I knew Naomi wouldn’t like me to be so far away, but she’d have to let me grab my chance to see Sam and Judith and Ayal before it was too late. I wanted to meet this woman who was my sister, to feel the weight of my nephew on my lap. I thought of the wall they had built around their kibbutz, topped with barbed wire and patrolled by soldiers, men and women both. I hoped peace would come soon. I hated to think of Ayal growing up behind walls the way we had. Sam ought to know better than anyone that no child should grow up that way.

  I guessed I’d return to work after that, though I knew as soon as the thought crossed my mind that I could never go back to the Old Hebrews Home, not even for one last shift. Not that I feared discovery for what I’d done to Mildred Solomon—knowing their routines and regulations, I was certain I’d never be suspected. I could even imagine facing Gloria and Flo again. After all, wasn’t I practiced in telling them falsehoods? No, it was simpler than that. I was done with Homes. Instead I’d look for a position in an office, like Betty had with Dr. Feldman: more paperwork than caretaking, no heavy lifting of patients in and out of bed. I wished I could tell the truth about myself so I wouldn’t have to waste my energy on lies, but one false word could ruin me and Naomi both. It was such a little thing to say roommate or friend instead of lover or wife. I’d try not to let it tax me so.

  The stars were starting to fade as darkness loosened its grip on the sky. An engine idled in the street below as a stack of morning papers was tossed onto the sidewalk in front of our building. The custodian would come out soon, bring in the stack, cut the twine, walk the halls, drop the news on our doorsteps. I looked out at the emerging shape of the Wonder Wheel and cast my mind into the future. Dr. Feldman said the operation could buy me five years, maybe more. I swore to myself I’d live them well.

  I went inside and put up a fresh pot of coffee. It was about time I told Naomi everything, no waiting for morning. I carried two cups into the bedroom, set them on the nightstand, stroked her arm to wake her.

  “What time is it?” she mumbled, sitting up.

  “It’s early. I made coffee.”

  “I can smell it.” She switched on the light and lifted the rim to her lips, blowing at it before sipping. We looked at each other—me clean and smooth, her frowzy from sleep. It still seemed a miracle to have her back again. When our cups were empty, I took a deep breath. There’d be no more avoiding the tears that were in store for us today.

  “I have to talk to you about something, Naomi.”

  My tone must have alerted her. “What is it, is something wrong?”

  The word—cancer—caught in my throat, that hard C stuck like a swallowed bone. I struggled to push it out, stuttering like Mr. Bogan. I fished around for something to take the place of the word I meant to say, something that would meet the level of concern in her eyes.

  “Colorado,” I said, avoiding it yet again. “Do you remember back when I ran away from the Home, to Colorado?”

  “Sure.” She frowned, wondering, no doubt, where this conversation was going.

  “There’s something I never told you about that.” It was so many years ago it couldn’t possibly matter anymore, and yet I felt that wave of shame. “When I took your money, I didn’t know anything about my account. I had no idea you’d get paid back. The truth is, I stole it. I stole from you.”

  Naomi considered me for a long moment, as if trying to puzzle out the face in a Picasso portrait. “I never wanted to believe that, but maybe I always knew. I mean, that’s what I thought at first, and it made me feel so terrible, like you used me and then tossed me away when you were done with me. It made me feel as bad about myself as I did about you. But when Nurse Dreyer arranged for me to get paid back, it was the only thing that made sense, to think you meant it all along. I mean, it was the only thing that fit with how I felt about you, how I thought you felt about me.”

  “It did fit, more than what I did. I look back on it now and it’s like I was a hypnotized version of myself. I was so desperate to find Sam, to find my family, it blocked out everything else. Even you.”

  “So when you came back, you must have expected me to be mad at you.”

  “I didn’t think you could ever forgive me. I thought I’d ruined any chance I had to be with you.”

  “But you came back anyway.” She cupped the back of my naked scalp. “That was brave of you.”

  How much confession did one conversation require? Instead of explaining the haphazard coincidence of how I came to be on the carousel at that moment on that day, I simply nodded.

  “I would have forgiven you, you know that, if you had just asked.”

  “But I never did. I let you believe a lie all these years.”

  “It’s not too late, is it? Ask me now.”

  “Naomi, I’m so sorry I stole your money. I’m sorry I lied to you. Please forgive me.”

  She smiled and kissed me. “Done. Now, is there any more coffee? Or was there something else you wanted to talk about?”

  I was drawing my breath when I heard a dull thud as the newspaper hit our apartment door. “Just a minute, I want to check something.” I ran out for the paper, found the time for sunrise, checked the clock. Less than an hour away. It would be my last reprieve before telling her everything.

  I came back into the bedroom and tugged at her arm. “Listen, we’ll talk more later, but I want you to get up. I want you to come to the beach with me.”

  “To the beach? But it’s still dark out.”

  “No, it isn’t, it’s getting light. I want to see the sunrise. Please?”

  “Why don’t you just come to bed?” She pulled back the sheets, inviting me in. Any other day I’d have been tempted.

  “It’ll be my birthday present, this sunrise, okay? It’s all I want.”

  Naomi pouted. “That not fair, you’re bribing me.”

  “I know.” I tugged her out of bed, shoved her toward the bathroom. “Just throw something on.” I exchanged my robe for shorts and a top, not even bothering with a wig. “We have to hurry.”

  We could see well enough in the shadowless dawn, the silvery light coming ahe
ad of the sun like a crier. The boardwalk was deserted. Our sandals slapped over the wood planks and down the steps to the beach. Barefoot now, the freshly raked sand sifted through our toes. We sat down near the water, the horizon a distant line. The heat wave had broken and the air off the ocean was fresh. I hadn’t thought to grab a sweater.

  “Here, share mine,” she said. We each thrust an arm through a sleeve, the cotton knit stretched across our two backs.

  The planet turned toward the sun as it always does. We lay back on the sand as color claimed the sky: first pink, then lavender, and finally, blue.

  Acknowledgments

  MY SINCERE THANKS FOR READING AND RESPONDING to drafts of the novel go to Art Berman, Neil Connelly, Catherine Dent, Misun Dokko, Anna Drallios, Margaret Evans, Marie Hathaway, Alex Hovet, Stephanie Jirard, Helen Walker, Karen Walborn, Petra Wirth, and Rita van Alkemade. This story would not have existed without the inspiration of my late grandfather, Victor Berger, who grew up in the Hebrew Orphan Asylum of New York, and his mother, Fannie Berger, who worked there as Reception House counselor. I am also indebted to my grandmother, Florence Berger, keeper of our family’s history; to Leona Ferrer, Disclosure Coordinator of the Jewish Child Care Association; to Susan Breen and Paula Munier of the Algonkian Pitch Conference; to Jeff Wood of Whistlestop Bookshop; and to Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania. I am deeply grateful to everyone at William Morrow, especially Tessa Woodward, without whose guidance this novel would not be what it is today.

  References

  Here are some of the sources—books, museums, archives—that inspired and informed Orphan #8.

  Abrams, Jeanne E. Jewish Denver 1859–1940. Chicago: Arcadia Publishing, 2007.

  Beloff, Zoe, Ed. The Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalytic Society and Its Circle. New York: Christine Burgin, 2009.

  Bernard, Jaqueline. The Children You Gave Us: A History of 150 Years of Service to Children. New York: Jewish Child Care Association, 1973.

  Blair, Edward. Leadville: Colorado’s Magic City. Boulder, CO: Fred Pruett Books, 1980.

  Bogan, Hyman. The Luckiest Orphans: A History of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992.

  Caprio, Frank S., M.D. Female Homosexuality: A Psychodynamic Study of Lesbianism. New York: Citadel Press, 1954.

  Donizetti, Pino. Shadow and Substance: The Story of Medical Radiography. New York: Pergamon Press, 1967.

  Emerson, Charles Phillips, M.D. Essentials of Medicine: A Text-book of Medicine for Students Beginning a Medical Course, for Nurses, and for All Others Interested in the Care of the Sick. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1925.

  Friedman, Reena Sigman. These Are Our Children: Jewish Orphanages in the United States, 1880–1925. Hanover: Brandeis University Press, 1994.

  “Gilded Lions and Jeweled Horses: The Synagogue to the Carousel.” American Folk Art Museum, 45 West Fifty-third Street, New York, NY. February 2, 2008.

  Grodin, Michael A., and Leonard H. Glantz. Children as Research Subjects: Science, Ethics, and the Law. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.

  Hales, Carol. Wind Woman. New York: Woodford Press, 1953.

  Hebrew Orphan Asylum Collection, American Jewish Historical Society Archives, Center for Jewish History, 15 West Sixteenth Street, New York, NY.

  Hess, Alfred F., M.D. Scurvy Past and Present. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1920. Available online through HathiTrust Digital Library.

  Howe, Irving. World of Our Fathers: The Journey of the East European Jews to America and the Life They Found and Made. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976.

  Jessiman, Andrew G., M.D., and Francis D. Moore, M.D. Carcinoma of the Breast: The Study and Treatment of the Patient. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1956.

  Jewish Consumptives Relief Society Collection, Beck Archives, University Libraries, University of Denver, Denver, CO.

  Lesbian Herstory Archives, 484 Fourteenth Street in Brooklyn, NY.

  Lower East Side Tenement Museum, 103 Orchard Street, New York, NY.

  Mould, Richard F. A Century of X-rays and Radioactivity in Medicine: With Emphasis on Photographic Records of the Early Years. Philadelphia: Institute of Physics Publishing, 1993.

  Museum of the City of New York, 1220 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY.

  New York Academy of Medicine Library, 1216 Fifth Avenue at 103rd Street, New York, NY.

  Nyiszli, Dr. Miklos. Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account. 1960. Foreword by Bruno Bettelheim 1960. Trans. Richard Seaver 1993. New York: Arcade Publishing, 2011.

  The Unicorn Book of 1954. New York: Unicorn Books, 1955.

  Wesley, J. H., M.D. “The X-Ray Treatment of Tonsils and Adenoids.” The Canadian Medical Association Journal 15.6 (June 1925): 625–627. Available online through PubMed Central.

  Yezierska, Anzia. Bread Givers. 1925. New York: Persea Books, 1999.

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  Meet Kim van Alkemade

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  The True Stories That Inspired Orphan #8

  Reading Group Guide for Orphan #8

  About the author

  Meet Kim van Alkemade

  KIM VAN ALKEMADE was born in New York City and spent her childhood in suburban New Jersey. Her late father, an immigrant from the Netherlands, met her mother, a descendant of Eastern European Jewish immigrants, in the Empire State Building. Kim attended college in Wisconsin, earning a doctorate in English from UW-Milwaukee. She is a professor at Shippensburg University and lives in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Her creative nonfiction essays have been published in literary journals including Alaska Quarterly Review, So To Speak, and CutBank. Orphan #8 is her first novel.

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  About the book

  The True Stories That Inspired Orphan #8

  Motion to Purchase Wigs Approved

  In July 2007, I was doing family research at the Center for Jewish History in New York City, sifting through some materials I’d requested from the American Jewish Historical Society archives. The idea of writing a historical novel was the furthest thing from my mind when I opened Box 54 of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum collection and began leafing through the meeting minutes of the Executive Committee.

  The minutes gave intimate glimpses into the day-to-day operations of an orphanage that, in the 1920s, was one of the largest child care institutions in the country, housing over 1,200 children in its massive building on Amsterdam Avenue. On October 9, 1921, the Committee authorized $200 (over $2,000 in today’s dollars) to costume children for the “Pageant on Americanization.” The question of band instruments demanded much of the Executive Committee’s attention: in October 1922, the decision to change from high- to low-pitched instruments was deferred; in April 1923, $3,500 was approved to equip the band with low-pitched instruments; in January 1926, the theft of the new band instruments was reported to the Board. Syphilis was a concern, too, with the Committee instructing the superintendent in January 1923 to work with the physician regarding syphilitic cases; by October 1926, nineteen cases of syphilis were diagnosed in the orphanage, fourteen of them in girls.

  The Orphaned Hebrews Home was inspired by the real Hebrew Orphan Asylum in Manhattan. Dedicated in 1884, it occupied two city blocks until it was demolished in the 1950s. It is now the site of the Jacob Schiff Playground. Photograph from author’s collection.

  But it was a motion made on May 16, 1920, that caught my eye and became the inspiration for Orphan #8. On that day, the Committee approved the purchase of wigs for eight children who had developed alopecia as a result of X-ray treatments given to them at the Home for Hebrew Infants by a Dr. Elsie Fox, a graduate of Cornell Medical School. Questions cascaded through my mind. Who was this woman administering X-rays? Why did the orphanage have an X-ray machine, and what were the children being treated for? What might have happened to one of these bald children after s
he had grown up in the orphanage? How would this have influenced the course of her life?

  My description of the X-ray room at the Hebrew Infant Home was inspired by this 1919 photograph of the X-ray room at Vancouver General Hospital—where no medical research involving children was conducted. Courtesy of Vancouver Coastal Health.

  I remembered then a story my great-grandmother, Fannie Berger, used to tell about her time working as Reception House counselor in the Hebrew Orphan Asylum. She’d been hired by the superintendent in January 1918 when she went to the orphanage to commit her sons to the institution after her husband had absconded. One of Fannie’s jobs was to shave the heads of newly admitted children as a precaution against lice. It was a task she disliked, but refused only once.

  Rachel’s dormitory in the Orphaned Hebrews Home was inspired by this photograph of a dormitory in the Hebrew Orphan Asylum. Courtesy of The New York Academy of Medicine Library.

  We used to drive out to Brooklyn when I was little, my mom and dad and brother and I, to visit my Grandma Fannie. We’d often find her on a bench outside her building, chatting with other old ladies. Up in her tiny apartment we’d perch uncomfortably on the day bed while we visited—I can’t imagine, now, a child with the patience for such an afternoon. I remember Fannie telling a story about the time a girl with beautiful hair was committed to the orphanage. It may be my imagination rather than my memory that makes this particular head of hair so remarkably red. Fannie was so taken with this girl’s hair that she refused to shave it off, took her request all the way up to the superintendent, who finally gave permission. In my Grandma Fannie’s telling, it was a singular moment of bravery, her refusal to shave this one girl’s head of hair.

  At the Center for Jewish History, reading about the children who had been given X-ray treatments at the Hebrew Infant Asylum, I wondered what if these bald children were in my great-grandmother’s care when this other girl came into Reception, the girl with hair so magnificent Fannie would challenge authority to preserve it? I imagined the contrast between these two girls escalating into a rivalry, the hair itself becoming their battleground. That was the moment Rachel and Amelia were created, and with their inception the idea for a novel began to emerge.