Ellis Island: Three Novels

by Joan Lowery Nixon

  Now, here in the forest, Mordecai put his arm around Rebekah’s shoulders, and she leaned against him, grateful for his teaching and his love. “We will soon be in America, Grandfather.” She chose to speak in English. That would be her new mother tongue. She was surprised at the rush of fear that shivered through her body.

  “Not America, the United States,” Mordecai gently corrected her. “We’ll soon live in the land of hope.”

  Hope. Rebekah clung to the promise. All they had left was hope.

  “Enough talk,” Herman said. “We must stay here no longer. We must continue.”

  Herman moved into the forest, leading the way, and the others followed. Rebekah realized that they were walking more quickly, as though their bundles had become lighter, and she wondered if their fear hadn’t weighed more than their possessions.

  Like the other refugees, the Levinskys had packed only the things they could carry. Elias had trundled his sewing machine in a small wheeled cart so that as soon as possible he could continue his trade as a tailor. Leah had bundled up her precious goose-feather comforters and pillows and strapped them to Jacob’s and Nessin’s backs. Grandfather Mordecai clutched a wicker basket that contained the family’s legal certificates, his books, the ram’s horn he blew on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, siddur and tallis for each of the men, and Leah’s treasured family recipes.

  Nessin carried a tightly bound case in which were packed a dozen silver forks, knives, and spoons, an ornamented silver kiddush cup, a menorah, and a pair of silver candlesticks. The bundles of clothing that Leah, Rebekah, and Sofia had slung across their backs contained both their workday clothes and their most beautiful hand-embroidered blouses and skirts, neatly folded and ready to be worn upon the family’s arrival in the United States.

  Their journey by train across Austria and Germany seemed interminable, and Rebekah’s excitement about going to the United States turned to numb exhaustion. She tried to hide the embarrassment and humiliation she felt as each family was questioned, quarantined, undressed, and even disinfected by strangers who processed the refugees. The authorities kept saying, “Hurry along. You will miss the train. Hurry. You will miss the ship. Hurry … Hurry … Hurry!”

  CHAPTER TWO

  “HOW much more must we go through?” Rebekah asked her father as the Levinskys were herded off the train in Hamburg, Germany, and into yet another long line at the docks. Ahead she could see the stacks of an enormous steamship, and her heart pounded. “Why can’t we just board the ship?”

  A tall, lean man wearing an official-looking uniform stopped as he heard her words, glared down at Rebekah, and answered in Yiddish, “Do you think this is pleasant for us? Not at all! But it’s necessary. When immigrants arrive in the United States they are examined at Ellis Island, and if there is a problem they are returned.”

  “Returned?” Elias echoed.

  Rebekah gasped. She had never imagined that anyone would be turned away.

  “Yes, returned,” the man said to Elias. “The steamship companies, at their own cost, must take the rejected passengers back to their point of origin. But will they accept this cost alone? Oh, no. They have involved the Prussian railway authorities.”

  “I don’t understand,” Elias told him. “How does this affect us? Is there something we should do?”

  The official tossed his head impatiently. “You must go through this extra examination, which means more work for all of us. With a supervisor from the United States consul at our sides, we must examine and check and make sure that every emigrant has his ticket to the United States and the thirty dollars that is required to enter the country. You do have your thirty dollars apiece, don’t you?”

  “Oh, yes,” Elias assured him.

  Rebekah listened quietly to every word the official said, but when he turned to leave she clutched her mother’s arm and asked, “Why are people turned away in America?”

  Leah didn’t answer, and Rebekah saw her own fear reflected in her mother’s eyes.

  Mordecai gently rested a hand on Rebekah’s arm. “Do not worry, little one. The United States government does not want to take in people who have mental illness or contagious diseases, or people who cannot care for themselves and will need the government to support them. We have no reason to fear.”

  “We passed the examination at Ruhleben,” Leah said, her voice trembling a bit. She tried to smile reassuringly at Rebekah.

  Rebekah had heard her parents speak of Ellis Island and knew that it was the entry point to the United States for most immigrants, but when she tried to visualize the place all she could see in her mind was an island that looked like some of the river islands she had seen from the train—small, forested plots with water lapping at their eroding shores.

  As Rebekah tried to imagine what Ellis Island must be like, a sudden commotion broke out just ahead of the Levinskys. Herman’s wife, Hava, shrieked in terror and began to sob. “I can’t go back!” she screamed. “I can’t! I will die!”

  “What is it? What has happened?” Elias called out, and questions began to buzz down the line like the swarms of mayflies that darted in small black clouds around the docks.

  Herman, tears streaking his face, staggered from the line, his arms wrapped around his wife’s shoulders as he struggled to support her and lead her away from the officials. “It is her eyes,” he cried. “Trachoma!”

  “I will go blind!” Hava wailed through her sobs.

  “What is trachoma?” Sofia whimpered.

  Leah’s own face was wet with tears as she answered, “I have seen Hava rubbing and rubbing her eyes, but no one thought … The air was dry … Maybe spring pollen … Her mother gave her an ointment to use. Hava told me about it. Who could have known?”

  The line moved forward fairly quickly, but Rebekah found it difficult to pick up her feet, which had become numb stumps of wood. It was hard work to move her head, to use her arms, to breathe, to think.

  Suddenly, Elias stood before the table, across from a man dressed as a ship’s officer. “Name?” the official demanded in German. “Age? … Native country? … Occupation? … Destination?” There were other questions, which Mordecai translated and Elias answered as the man wrote them on one line on a double page, filling in the form.

  “Next,” he shouted, and Mordecai edged Leah forward. Her voice trembled as she answered the questions for herself and Sofia, but she was soon passed on to an inspector who wore a white coat, and Rebekah’s brothers were questioned.

  Rebekah stood on tiptoe, trying to study this man in the white coat. Was he the one who had refused to allow Hava to go to the United States? She shivered, aching for Hava and her husband, dreading what the man might tell Rebekah’s own family.

  The officer called for the next in line, and Rebekah reluctantly stepped forward. “Ihren Namen, bitte,” he barked at her.

  Rebekah could only stare. She opened her mouth, but no words formed in her mind. To be sent back … how horrible!

  The official spoke again, this time in Yiddish. “Do you speak Yiddish?” he asked. “Do you understand what I’m asking you?”

  “I—I—” Rebekah began.

  The official turned to Mordecai. “Is the girl a simpleton?” he demanded.

  A simpleton? Before Mordecai could respond, Rebekah’s head snapped back, and she answered angrily, “I understand you, sir. I also speak Russian and English. I will be glad to answer your questions in any of these languages.”

  His eyebrows rose in surprise, and a whisper of a smile twitched at one corner of his mouth as he dipped the point of his pen in an inkwell. “We can begin when you tell me your name,” he said.

  “Rebekah Levinsky,” she answered.

  She watched as he wrote it: Rebecca.

  “That is not how my name is spelled,” Rebekah protested.

  “This is the way I’ve seen it written,” he said. “Next, what is your age?”

  “You mean that’s how it’s spelled in the United States?”


  “Yes, in the United States. Age?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “Country of origin … Russia,” he mumbled as he wrote.

  Rebekah answered his questions and watched him fill the line beside her name on the list of the ship’s passengers, but her mind was on the strange new spelling of her given name. Rebecca. She was going to the United States. She would never see her homeland again, and she couldn’t even take her own name with her?

  But it was Mordecai’s turn to be questioned, and Rebekah had to move on before she could say anything more. The man in the white coat stepped up and looked in Rebekah’s throat. Then, with a fat thumb, he pulled down her lower eyelids and nodded approval.

  Mordecai joined them and said with a broad smile, “We are on our way to the United States. No one will stop us now.”

  With Mordecai leading the way, the Levinskys picked up their bundles and baggage and followed directions toward a large building where they had been instructed to wait until it was time to board the ship.

  As they walked to the steamship company’s building, clusters of men shouted at them and jostled them, offering to sell food and discounted steamship tickets or to exchange money at top rates.

  Leah spoke softly. “Maybe they do give better rates, and we should take advantage of their offer.”

  “I have heard of these offers of so-called better rates,” Mordecai answered. “They are not better. These men will cheat us. We can save our rubles for the United States.”

  “But they spoke in Yiddish,” Leah said. “They are like us.”

  A corner of Mordecai’s mouth turned up, but he spoke seriously. “Crooks speak any language—even Yiddish.”

  It seemed to Rebekah that her family had met no one but crooks and thieves all along the way. Would it be like this in America? Or would Uncle Avir find them a good place in which to begin a better life?

  Until now, Rebekah had imagined that her new home in the United States would be much like the home she had left in Ostrog, except that it would be safely far away from the persecution of the czar and his cossacks. But from the time she and her family had crossed the Austrian border, through Ruhleben and Hamburg, Rebekah had seen nothing that was familiar to her. She had left forever her life in the shtetl, and she could no longer begin to imagine what sort of life awaited her in the United States of America. All she had left was her sense of hope.

  CHAPTER THREE

  AFTER an exhausting, sleepless night during which the Levinskys crowded into a small space with hundreds of other passengers, the emigrants began to board the ship.

  Formed into lines and led to the dock at which the ship was moored, everyone clustered tightly together. The air on the dock reeked of oil and fish and unwashed bodies, and Rebekah was eager to reach the deck of the ship and the chance of a fresh breeze.

  She tilted her head back and glanced at the two upper decks, where passengers had already congregated. Two women wearing large hats and fashionable ankle-length coats with nipped-in waists leaned on the upper rail and watched the parade of emigrants. Rebekah studied their clothing. Elegant faceted black buttons glinted in the sunlight, next to a trim of braid. Papa, with his expert tailoring skills, could easily make coats every bit as pretty as those.

  One of the women giggled and pointed. As the other laughed, Rebekah’s cheeks flushed a dark red. These women were dressed very differently from the women on the docks, who had kerchiefs covering their hair instead of hats and heavy shawls around their shoulders instead of coats. The fashionable women had no right to make fun of the others, Rebekah thought.

  Rebekah noticed that a girl nearby was studying her. She smiled and asked in Yiddish, “Where are you from in Russia?”

  The girl shrugged, spoke a few words in a language that Rebekah didn’t understand, and turned away.

  Never mind, Rebekah told herself, but her thoughts turned to Chava and her loss of her best friend. She had to fight back tears.

  “Look, Mama!” Sofia cried. “Look at the people on the top deck of the ship. That’s where I want to go so I can see everything!”

  Mordecai smiled and tweaked one of Sofia’s braids. “You will see enough from the lower deck,” he said.

  “But I will see more on top,” she persisted.

  “People who have a great deal of money have cabins on the top decks of the ship. That is called first class,” he explained. “People who can afford to pay more than steerage, but not as much as first class, buy cabins on decks below theirs. That is called second class. We will be below them in steerage.”

  Sofia’s lower lip curled out. “I just want to go to the top for a few minutes.”

  “There are rules,” Mordecai said. “Second-class passengers may not go into first-class territory, and steerage passengers must not go above the main deck.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Rebekah hurried to tell her little sister. “We will all be on the same ship. We’ll see the same ocean and the same seabirds. Maybe even whales!”

  As the crowd arrived at the first gangplank, people began frantically to press forward, almost knocking Rebekah off her feet. Terrified, she clung to Sofia and to Mordecai, grateful when Nessin swung in behind them to block the pressure or even butt away a too-persistent encroacher.

  Shoved and pummeled by countless elbows and knees, the Levinskys reached the deck and found themselves being pushed along a corridor made by two rows of the ship’s sailors to an open hatchway. Leading down from the hatchway was a steep stairway into the dank hold, which was lit only by a few lanterns. There Rebekah could see narrow rows of double-decked bunks stacked close together. The first steerage passengers who had descended had staked their claims on some of the bunks and were shouting and pushing others away in an attempt to keep the beds.

  Leah stopped in alarm halfway down the stairway. The onrushing tide of bodies nearly swept over her and she tripped, so that only her grip on the railing kept her from falling.

  Nessin, his eyes gleaming, jumped into the swarming confusion below. He found bunks together and pushed the members of his family into them to save their places. Occasionally Rebekah heard him shout gleefully, “These beds are ours! Move on!”

  As water trickles from a broken pitcher after the first rush, so the flood of bodies eventually slowed. Rebekah’s heart stopped pounding, and she took time to look around. Small, salt-encrusted portholes lined each side of the hold but—even if they hadn’t been so filthy—they were much too high to be able to see through.

  From her perch on a top bunk, Rebekah began trying to count the number of beds but gave up after overhearing a crewman remark that there would be nine hundred passengers altogether in steerage after the ship picked up a second group of emigrants.

  A second group? Rebekah wondered. How could there possibly be room for any more?

  The noise grew, bouncing echoes across the hold, and Rebekah held her hands over her ears to cut off the deafening babble. But all sound ceased when a ship’s officer called for attention and shouted instructions. There was a room with toilets and wash basins at each end of the hold. The prow for men, the stern for women. He repeated himself in four languages. Prow and stern? Rebekah wondered which end was which.

  Supper would be ladled out from kettles, the officer explained, and while the weather was fair, these kettles would be positioned on the main deck. Every passenger would be issued a plate, bowl, cup, knife, fork, and spoon, and each passenger would have the responsibility of cleaning them and keeping them in a safe place between meals so they would not be lost. Steerage passengers would be welcome on the main deck only. During rough weather, however, they must remain in the hold, and the hatches would be bolted shut—for the passengers’ own protection. The voyage would take close to three weeks, including the stop in Liverpool.

  Rebekah knew that Liverpool was in England. She had thought that England was a prosperous country. She spoke aloud to herself in English. “Why would English citizens need to emigrate?”

  “They won
’t be English. They’ll be mostly Irish,” a voice answered carefully in a rhythmic accent Rebekah hadn’t heard before. She turned to see a tall girl near her own age, seated across from her on the next bunk. The girl’s hair, as pale as a new moon in winter, lay in a single thick braid down her back, nearly reaching her waist.

  “They’ll be Irish,” the girl repeated. “I’m from Sweden. What country are you from?”

  “Russia,” Rebekah said and smiled. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to … to stare.” She stumbled over the word, then added, “I was talking to myself and was surprised at getting an answer.”

  The girl nodded. “I talked to myself a lot when I was learning to speak English. It’s a hard language to learn, and I know I make lots of mistakes, but my father said we would have to arrive in the new world well prepared.”

  “My grandfather taught me,” Rebekah said. “But he didn’t insist, because I really wanted to learn to speak the language.” Afraid that she had sounded like a gantser knaker—a know-it-all—she quickly added, “My name is Rebekah Levinsky.”

  For just an instant the girl gave Rebekah an appraising look, then smiled and said, “I’m Kristin Swensen. I’m sixteen—almost seventeen. How old are you?”

  “I’m fifteen—almost sixteen.”

  Rebekah glanced in the direction of a tall, blond couple who stood in the aisle with their backs to their bunks, looking as though they were guarding their daughter. People tended to move quickly past the man, who was large-boned and muscular. “Are those your parents?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Kristin said.

  “My parents are with me, too,” Rebekah said, “and my two older brothers, and my little sister, and my grandfather.”

  Tears suddenly welled in Kristin’s eyes. “You have such luck!” she said. “I had to say good-bye forever to my grandmother. I love her so much, and I know I’ll never see her again.”

  As Kristin’s tears spilled over, Rebekah quickly climbed across to the other bunk and searched the pocket of her skirt for a clean handkerchief. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to say anything to make you unhappy.”