Hello, America

by Livia Bitton-Jackson

  “It seems rather unfriendly. Are Americans unfriendly in general?”

  “No, this is just part of the culture. You’ll get used to it.”

  Mother is watching the women’s clothes—what do they wear, what’s the latest style?

  “The skirts are much longer here,” she remarks. “And the colors are rather dark. I see browns, grays, a lot of black. Amazing—I’d have thought it would be the other way around. Europe has the reputation for being conservative, not America!”

  In about half an hour we reach our destination. The walk from the subway to HIAS takes about five minutes. Although we are a little early the receptionist ushers my mother and me directly into one of the offices and bids Aunt Celia to wait in the hallway.

  “Laura and Elvira Friedman are here to see you.”

  A stocky, middle-age woman sits behind a massive mahogany desk.

  “I’m Mrs. Ryder, your social worker,” she says in a deep monotone voice as she rifles through the folders piled high on her desk.

  I realize Mother and I are one of the folders on Mrs. Ryder’s desk. Finally she locates the folder she was looking for and keeps perusing it while explaining the social worker’s function, which is to serve as our liaison with HIAS, monitoring the various forms of assistance provided by HIAS, helping us find housing, employment, and medical care.

  “Do you have any questions?”

  “Yes. May I translate for my mother and see if she has any questions?”

  Mrs. Ryder nods, and Mommy, after listening to my synopsis in Hungarian, exclaims, “Medical care? That’s very good. We need to see a doctor about your persistent stomachache and lack of appetite.”

  “We have a list of physicians who have volunteered their services to HIAS,” Mrs. Ryder responds. “Let’s find a doctor in the proximity of your home. Here is one. He is Dr. Alexander Hirschfield, a family physician with a specialty in internal medicine. His office is on Thirteenth Avenue in Brooklyn… .Shouldn’t be too far from where you live. Do you want me to make an appointment for you?” she asks as she picks up the telephone.

  “Oh, certainly. Thank you. That would be extremely kind.”

  “Dr. Hirschfield can see you this afternoon at two o’clock.” Mrs. Ryder covers the mouthpiece of the telephone with her hand. “Shall I make the appointment?”

  I nod eagerly, and she jots down the information on a slip of paper.

  Mother and I are overwhelmed with gratitude. I wish I could muster more elaborate thanks, but my English is rather limited. All I can say is “Thank you” once more.

  “Thank you,” Mother repeats as we walk out the door.

  We get home in ample time for a bit of lunch. Luckily Aunt Celia has taken the day off; she can accompany me to the doctor. It’s a complicated route with two buses to Thirteenth Avenue and Fiftieth Street, in the Borough Park section.

  To my great distress we arrive almost half an hour late for the appointment. I feel acute embarrassment for not finding the right English words to apologize, to explain that I arrived only a few days ago and Aunt Celia must have miscalculated the length of time the bus ride would take … and the time of waiting for transfers. I do not notice that Dr. Alex Hirschfield is not listening to my apology.

  Neither do I notice what Aunt Celia later describes as “a strange, dreamy look in the doctor’s eyes while he went through the motions of taking your history, as if in a fog,” and “the foolish angelic smile that settled on his face after the medical exam!”

  “A medical exam that lasted forever. He’s moonstruck, the poor fellow!” Aunt Celia winks. Despite my vehement protestations, Aunt Celia keeps up her banter all the way home from the doctor’s office, teasing me mercilessly about having “bewitched a perfectly nice doctor.” And when we arrive home, Aunt Celia bursts into the apartment to announce to Mother and Uncle Martin that my medical diagnosis was fine but “the same cannot be said of the poor doctor who is hopelessly sick—lovesick.”

  “Nonsense!” I shout indignantly. “Dr. Hirschfield seems like a careful doctor, that’s all. My ulcer’s acting up, and he’s sending me for some tests. What should he do—ignore a bleeding ulcer? In Munich I was hospitalized for months with my ulcer!” But nothing I say seems to have an effect on the three of them; they keep up their relentless teasing.

  In the evening the phone rings, and Celia’s voice is rippling with glee as she announces, “Elli. It’s for you. It’s Dr. Hirschfield!”

  “Didn’t I tell you? Is he moonstruck or what?” Celia gloats when I hang up.

  “What’s so amusing?” I demand to know. “The doctor phoned to ask about my health, and wants to see me in his office tomorrow. He has to set up all the necessary tests as soon as possible.”

  On Tuesday I no longer need Aunt Celia to accompany me to Dr. Hirschfield’s office. As a matter of fact, I discover a shortcut and this time arrive ahead of my appointment.

  A wide grin lights up the doctor’s tan face when he spots me among the patients in the waiting room. “Ah, Miss Friedman, you made it on time!” he exclaims with palpable delight, and I notice a dimple in his left cheek. “Please come into the office.”

  Dr. Hirschfield’s joy at seeing me seems totally uninhibited, like the joy of a child. His whole being seems to radiate a boundless capacity for joy. Like a radar, within seconds after entering the medical office I detect his vibes and get caught up in his excitement.

  The medical consultation turns into an emotional encounter. Dr. Hirschfield wants to know “everything” about me, about my life, especially the history of my experiences during the Holocaust.

  “In which concentration camp were you incarcerated?” he asks, and his deep blue eyes glisten with feeling. I can see compassion and pain reflected in them. And something else I cannot identify.

  “First in Auschwitz, and then—”

  “Auschwitz!” he interrupts, crying out. “Forgive me … but I’ve never before met anyone who had been in Auschwitz!” He takes my hand into his and his eyes overflow with tears. “My poor child. I want to tell you something I’ve never told anyone. I was born in Germany, and … both my father and my mother perished in Auschwitz. And you … you had been there … and came out of the inferno that consumed my parents. For me you are a messenger … my angel. Meine engel I’ll forever be grateful to HIAS for bringing you to me.”

  I don’t know what to say. I am shaken to my core by the virtual onslaught of emotions … his and mine.

  “I promise I’ll make you well. I will take care of you as if you were my sister. I want to make up for all you’ve been through … if you let me.” His eyes are pleading. “If you’ll let me.”

  “Dr. Hirschfield … “Tears well up in my throat, choking me. I cannot breathe … I cannot utter another sound.

  “Call me Alex, will you, Elli?”

  I take a deep breath. “Yes,” I croak, and a new barrage of tears threatens to drown out my words. “I’m happy to call you Alex. And I am very grateful. I must admit, I’m a bit frightened … afraid of America … a bit scared. There is so much I don’t understand. I do need a friend. Thank you for offering—is offering the right word? Thank you for offering to be my friend.”

  “My poor child. I’ll be happy to be your friend, Elli, if you let me. It would mean the world to me! My angel, I must go now. The patients are waiting. Here’s a list of tests you’ll need. I’ll make the appointments for you and arrange my schedule so I can take you, be with you through it all.”

  “How soon will those tests be? You see, Doctor … I mean, Alex, the Jewish holiday of Passover is in ten or eleven days …”

  “No problem. We can have them done after Passover. In either case it takes time to line up all the tests. Auf Wiedersehen, mein engel See you soon, my angel!”

  Alex’s embrace is energetic yet gentle and generous … and loving. The embrace of a friend—or of a father?

  When he holds me close I feel like Cinderella in the arms of Prince Charming. Is Dr. Hirschfield my Pr
ince Charming? Can it be? Can this be happening to me?

  In America are fairy tales real?

  Chapter Five

  PASSOVER PREPARATIONS

  “What perfect timing,” Uncle Martin declares. “We will celebrate your arrival in America, the land of freedom, together with the holiday of Passover, the Festival of Freedom. What a wonderful coincidence!”

  I am excited, and strangely moved, by the symbolism. Although Jewish tradition shuns omens, lists them as superstition and therefore forbidden, I confess I have always clung to a belief in coincidental occurrences as covert messages, and now cannot help but see in our arrival so close to the Jewish Festival of Freedom a good omen for our future in America.

  But for the Jewish housewife the days before Passover ironically are days of slavery. Even before cooking and baking for the holiday, particularly for the main event, the Passover Seder, the entire house must be free of leavened bread and other food fragments. My mother’s frantic cleaning campaigns before Passover made me dread the days before the holiday.

  Now Aunt Celia is feverishly engaged in spring cleaning and myriad other preparations for the holiday. She gets home from work after six and immediately plunges into housework.

  “Why don’t you let us help out?” Mother raises the issue for the umpteenth time. “Elli and I feel so useless watching you do all the work. Why don’t you assign some tasks for us to do?”

  “No way!” Celia waves her arms in the air. “No way! You are guests in my home. You have not yet had time to recuperate from the arduous journey. You’ve only been here three days. Take it easy for a while. You’ll have plenty of time to work later.”

  “Four days,” Mother corrects her younger sister. “We have been here four days and have had enough rest. It’s about time you let us help out,” Mother protests, watching helplessly as Aunt Celia rolls up the small carpet in the foyer, carries it to the window, and, unrolling it on the windowsill, beats it with ferocious urgency, tennis racket in each hand. The bucket comes out next and soapy water is splashed on the linoleum floor, while Mother and I retreat to the sides so as not to be underfoot, to clear the arena for my aunt’s mopping.

  “But this is absurd!” Mother bursts out. “How can we stand by idly while you labor like the devil after a long day’s work at the factory? You must let Elli and me share in the work.”

  “You don’t know my house, don’t know where things are, what has to be done and how. It’s easier if I do it myself,” Aunt Celia argues while the wet mop in her hands deftly spreads the suds all across the floor. “Why don’t you relax on the couch in the living room until Martin gets home. Then we’ll have dinner. Maybe after dinner we’ll discuss the issue of your helping out.” Mother, unaccustomed to obeying her younger sibling’s orders, or anyone else’s, for that matter, grumbles as she heads with reluctant strides to the living room, and I follow suit.

  “Aunt Celia,” I open the discussion after dinner in hopes of preempting Mother’s potentially argumentative approach and preventing a confrontation between these two strong women. “We know that you want to make us feel welcome by freeing us from household chores. But still, you’d make us feel more welcome if you allowed us to help out.”

  “Well put!” Uncle applauds. “My dear niece, I believe you should opt for a diplomatic career. But all joking aside, Celia, why don’t you assign some household chores for Laura and Elli if they want to help?”

  My aunt relents. “Okay, you eager beavers. You can do the shopping for me. By the time I get home, most of the stores on Kings Highway are closed. That would really be a big help. I’ll prepare a shopping list for groceries, bread, fruit, and vegetables and some household items. All the stores that you’ll need are on this side of the highway, except the bakery. There’s a Woolworth store beyond the subway station, there you’ll find all kinds of things I’ll include in the list, like thread for sewing, shoe polish, and toothpaste.”

  “Do you know all the English words for these?” Mother asks me after perusing the list Celia has made out in Hungarian.

  I glance at the piece of paper. “I hope so. If not, I can find them in the dictionary.”

  From the broom closet Aunt Celia produces an aluminum contraption. “See? This is my shopping wagon. You open it like this and it can hold all your bags, fruit, vegetables, everything. You don’t have to carry heavy packages in your hand.”

  My superpractical mother is fascinated with the shopping cart, especially with the way it folds into a flat object that is easily stored in a narrow space.

  In the morning after Celia and Martin leave for work, Mother and I set out on our shopping expedition with a sense of high adventure. Our good mood must be contagious: On the street people smile and wave at us. At the fruit stands we are enthralled with the abundance of fruit and vegetables; in the grocery store, with the lavish display of foodstuffs, the virtual paradise of dairy products. Even basic staples like flour, sugar, and salt, in Europe measured out of large sacks into brown paper bags, here are packaged in small, colorful containers that are attractively arranged on open shelves!

  At the bakery I learn a lesson for lifelong use. “If you want your bread and baked goods to remain nice and fresh,” the baker explains, “never put them in the refrigerator. In the refrigerator baked goods turn stale. Instead put your bread and your cake in the freezer while they’re still fresh. When you’re ready to use them you’ll find that they defrost very quickly, and are as fresh as the day they were baked.”

  Woolworth’s, a five-and-ten store where you can buy anything from a shoestring to a shopping cart, and where all small items cost either a nickel, five cents, or a dime, ten cents, is a newcomer’s Mecca. We purchase a hair comb, cotton thread for sewing, needles, wool for knitting, toothpaste, shoe polish, soap, a small mirror, and a miniature sewing kit as a present for Aunt Celia.

  Leaving Woolworth’s our jolly mood receives a sudden blow: The shopping cart we parked in front of the store laden with all our purchases is gone! How can it be? Perhaps we left it in the adjacent doorway. It’s not there. Perhaps someone rolled it into the store. We run to the store manager to inquire.

  “Where did you leave your shopping wagon?” the store manager asks, incredulous. “Outside the store? On the street? What did you expect?”

  What did we expect? We expected to find it where we left it. Just as it would have happened in all the European towns where we’d lived. One thing we did not expect: that this generous, openhearted country would have heartless thieves.

  Instead of being upset over the heavy loss Mother and I have incurred, Aunt Celia, with her impromptu knack for humor, turns our disaster into a farce, easing our sense of guilt.

  “Meet my family from Timbuktu!” she chuckles boisterously when she hears our sad story. “This is America, the land of limitless opportunity—even for incompetent thieves. You proved it today. You made some hapless thieves very happy today!”

  “Being a newcomer is a learning experience,” Uncle says amiably. “You’ve just had your first lesson: Never leave your belongings unattended, not even for a second. I’m sorry you had to learn it this way, but consider it a tuition fee.”

  All the neighbors who hear about our experience echo Uncle’s commiseration and repeat his advice. A number of the tenants in the building are new immigrants, and try to comfort us. They assure us that soon we’ll earn enough money to repay the damage, even forget it ever happened.

  “You’ll soon forget the whole incident,” one neighbor predicts.

  “But remember the lesson you’ve learned from it,” adds another.

  For me there is a second lesson, one that has less to do with the loss of material possessions. It has to do with the loss of trust—a blow that strikes a chord somewhere deep within me. I did not expect to be betrayed in America, in the city of Papa’s dreams.

  Before Passover begins Alex calls to wish us a happy holiday. His voice, the warmth it radiates, lifts my spirits.

  Passover is
a happy holiday after all. Aunt Celia’s house sparkles, the table is brilliantly set with newly purchased stainless steel cutlery and white Melmac dishes. Of all her silver objects only the antique candelabra was “brought from home,” dug up from the cellar floor where it had been buried during the Nazi era.

  The table is set for seven. Two guests join Uncle Martin, Aunt Celia, Mother, Bubi, and me for the Seder, Margit Fried and Miklos Benedict, both lone survivors. Margit, Celia’s “camp sister,” and Miklos, a neighbor from “back home,” have never met before, and my aunt has a secret agenda in inviting them.

  “Wear your navy blue silk dress,” she advises Margit. “The one with the white collar. You look very good in that dress. Miklos is eligible, and he likes good-looking women.”

  Margit, whose husband and son perished, each in another killing field, is wearing the blue silk dress and a polite, timid smile as she looks across the table at Miklos, whose wife and three children suffocated in the gas chamber in Auschwitz and who, painstakingly turned out in an immaculate white shirt and a checkered tie, is somewhat stiffly fiddling with his cutlery.

  We all wear our holiday best, and the men look resplendent in their new white shirts Mother sewed on a borrowed Singer sewing machine, her contribution to the holiday preparations. My heart is like the new glass tumblers in front of us overflowing with sparkling red Tokay wine. It is filled to the brim. With a sense of bliss I look at my brother whom I had not seen for so many years. With pride I listen to his scholarly discourse on the Passover Haggadah, and with gratitude I remember Alex’s friendship. How I wish he could have joined us tonight!

  The delectable aroma of Aunt Celia’s chicken soup mingled with that of roast turkey wafts in from the kitchen. Aunt Celia is an excellent cook, and the promise of dinner at her table stirs the company to sing the melodies of the Passover Haggadah with added vigor.