Esfir Is Alive

by Andrea Simon

  But we had to wait, at least until that evening, because my grandmother Elke and Aunt Khane came over. My mother was angry because they just dropped by at lunchtime and she hardly had enough food for us. She managed to scrape together some leftovers, careful not to mix meat and dairy as my grandmother followed kosher rules, and added boiled potatoes and more carrots to the soup.

  While we were eating, Aunt Khane bragged that my grandmother had given her money to buy a new coat.

  “Oh?” Perl said. She waited for a word from her mother, but my grandmother was silent, smiling, proud that she could buy something for her daughter.

  Perl exploded, without warning. I must say I was a little scared to see her this way. “Just because I have a boardinghouse doesn’t mean I have all the money in the world.”

  “Do you have to begrudge your poor sister a simple coat?” my grandmother asked.

  “Yeah, it’s always about poor Khane this and poor Khane that.” Perl’s chubby cheeks expanded.

  “Perl Cohen Epstein! Your sister is all alone in this world with three children.”

  “You forget that my husband is dead, too.”

  “Oh Perl, Perl. There is nothing I can ever do to please you. You have things that Khane doesn’t.”

  Perl was too proud to tell her mother that she, too, had bills she couldn’t pay. The big difference was that Perl lived larger than she was and Khane was just the opposite.

  “It’s not just that,” Perl said, sounding like a teenager. “Other people can use things too, like your other daughter, Mother. Sheyne wears this worn-out coat from twenty years ago, and as I recall Khane already had a fairly new coat.”

  “I don’t need anything,” my mother said, in a way that showed she was pretending. She smoothed down the sides of her wool skirt, too big for her slim figure.

  “Don’t be such a martyr,” Perl said to my mother.

  “What’s a martyr?” I asked.

  “This is not your business,” Perl said.

  My face felt hot and I was holding in my crying. I didn’t remember Perl ever talking to me this way.

  “I’m sorry, bubele. I didn’t mean that.” She beckoned to me.

  I must have forgiven her because Perl was the one person besides Ida who could get me to her side in an instant. The nasty remarks went on, and I realized this was how my mother and her sisters always talked to each other. It was hard to believe that they were still vying for their mother’s attention at their ages.

  If she couldn’t cajole her mother and sisters, Perl had no trouble with her nephew and nieces. At bedtime, she walked upstairs to the attic with us girls in two beds and Velvel, who usually slept on the couch, on a perene, a featherbed, in the nearby storage area.

  “Children, I have something for all of you,” she called.

  Velvel lumbered to our side of the attic. We watched her with our mouths agape, like baby robins in a nest waiting for a worm.

  Perl carried over her large satchel, which she had brought up earlier. She opened the clasp. I thought it had been filled with her clothes even though she had also taken a small valise that she was using in the parlor.

  “Now, these are for Chanukah, like they do in America. It’s not a lot, but I want you should be modern, too.” With this announcement, she pulled out a skull-size box wrapped in red tissue paper and handed it to Drora.

  Drora looked stunned and kept the box in her lap.

  “Open it,” Perl ordered.

  Drora still didn’t move and when she realized that we were staring at her, she slid her fingers under the tape and lifted the paper gently so she wouldn’t rip it.

  Velvel said, “Just open it already.”

  Drora said, “But the paper is so beautiful. Maybe I can use it for something.”

  At that, we all sighed, realizing that Drora had to do things slowly and methodically. This was her way. Finally, she opened the box. It was a small globe on a stand. The continents were raised like brown and tan bumpy animals, and Drora ran her fingers over them as if she were tracing the route for an upcoming voyage.

  “It’s wonderful!” she crooned.

  I was happy for Drora but a little jealous. I couldn’t imagine that my gift could be half as good.

  Next, Perl handed a soft, bulky object to Rivke. It was also wrapped in tissue paper, only this time it was green. With these Christmas colors, I knew my parents—and certainly my grandparents—would have a fit. Unlike Drora, Rivke tore the paper open to reveal a brown-and-gold striped cardigan. Perl had knitted it, she said, just for Rivke.

  “Oh,” Rivke said, holding it up against her chest. I knew Rivke was disappointed. She wanted a store-bought present like Drora’s. With our prodding, Rivke tried it on. When she put her arms in the sleeves, it was obvious the sweater was much too small, so she didn’t try to button it. But Perl insisted, and Rivke yanked the middle button to its hole and it just about made it, straining the wool across her chest. Rivke wouldn’t button any more, clearly humiliated by her pudgy stomach. It was more than that, though. She hadn’t grown so much since Perl had seen her last. Perl was an expert knitter; she should have known Rivke’s size.

  “I’ll wear it,” Rivke said, without conviction.

  “Don’t be silly, Rivele. Give it to Esfir. I’ll make you another.”

  Rivke handed me her sweater; it was useless to protest.

  “And for you my little Esfir, I have something special.” This remark only made me feel more embarrassed for Rivke, so I couldn’t show my excitement. The rectangular box was the length of one and a half rulers. This one was wrapped in yellow paper. Being more like my sister Drora in some ways, I carefully unwrapped the paper. When I opened the box, I inhaled so deeply and held it in for so long that I almost fainted.

  It was a beautiful doll with a full-length, ruby taffeta dress trimmed in fancy lace. Her hair was blond like mine and she had a round, rouge-cheeked porcelain face with large blue eyes also like mine. Embedded in sockets, her glass eyes stared intently and were fringed in lush lashes that looked like real hair. She had a tiny upturned nose and red-painted cherubic lips. She wore dainty black velvet slippers. If there was ever a doll that looked like me, this was it.

  What my sisters didn’t know was that a few weeks before, Perl and I had gone to the market. On the way, we’d passed a small shop that sold women’s hats and accessories. In the window, there was a doll with a sign propped up against it, announcing a sale. At the time, I said to Perl, “Oh I would give anything to have that doll. If I had it, I’d never ask for anything again.”

  I hadn’t been hinting to Perl. There was no reason for her to buy me anything; I hadn’t yet known about her new Chanukah gift policy. And the doll cost more than two week’s groceries. It was a fortune.

  And wonder of wonders, this was the very same doll. To this day, I don’t know how Perl afforded it; then, I didn’t think about it. All I could do was stroke the doll’s dress and hold her tightly to my chest.

  “Oh, Esfir, she’s beautiful,” Drora said.

  “Can I hold her?” Rivke asked. Reluctantly, I gave her my doll, but for only a few minutes.

  Even though my sisters were too old for a doll, I can say this now, I don’t think they were really happy for me. It was bad enough I lived with Perl. But now, I got the best present by far.

  Perl sat on the bed, smirking. She didn’t make a motion and we were staring at her. There were no more gifts in her satchel, and Velvel glared at Drora’s globe as if he hadn’t noticed.

  Perl stood and reached into her sweater’s wide pockets. “Don’t think I have forgotten you, Velvel.” She handed him a tiny netted bag filled with gold-foil chocolate gelt. “I know how much you like sweets,” she added.

  “Thank you Aunt Perl,” he said, shoving the bag into his sweater pocket and not offering us a bite.

  I was enamored with my doll, grabbing it back from Rivke. I couldn’t wait to show it to Ania. She had a doll too but, compared to mine, it was nothing special.
I decided to call my doll, Mary, after Jesus’s mother and because it was one of Ania’s favorite names. Perl almost had a stroke. “Mary is not really a Jewish name,” she said, angrily.

  “But wasn’t Jesus Jewish?” I asked.

  Rivke said my name loudly in such a way that I knew I shouldn’t argue. So I renamed her Miriam and Perl was happy. I went to bed thinking that this was the only time I had such a wonderful gift, my first real doll. It was the best Chanukah in my life.

  THE DAY BEFORE Perl and I were leaving for Brest, at the beginning of the new year, 1937, I woke up early and surprised Rivke in the kitchen. She was sitting at the table massaging a soapy mixture into Miriam’s hair.

  Horrified, I snatched Miriam from Rivke and frantically dried the doll’s hair with a towel. “What are you doing?” I screamed. “You’ve ruined Miriam’s beautiful hair.”

  “I was only washing it,” she said, adding, “to surprise you,” as if those last words could convince me of her sincerity.

  “Why?” I asked, still bewildered that my beloved sister could do this behind my back.

  “So that Miriam has clean hair for your trip back to Brest.”

  I didn’t say anything more, but the rest of that day, I walked around with Miriam tied to my waist. I thought and thought about Rivke’s actions and was so hurt, I could barely look at her the rest of our time there. It wasn’t until I got back to Brest that Fanny and Liba used some of their hair products to get Miriam’s hair in an acceptable style. My Miriam was never the same, though I loved her even more.

  On the train back to Brest, I realized that it hadn’t been such a wonderful holiday. Yes, it was so cold and we had little to keep us warm except for our clothes and the kitchen stove. But there had been other kinds of hot and cold.

  When my grandmother and Aunt Khane came unexpectedly, my mother had been furious at them, and probably at Perl too for assuming she’d entertain in her stride. My mother’s normally pale complexion had reddened and her blue-green eyes—then more green—glowered. Perl had been enraged at her mother and jealous of Khane about the new coat. My sisters and brother were jealous of me. Jealousy was passed on like an outdated dress with patchwork hemlines.

  During that vacation, my brother became glum and had disappeared on mysterious missions causing loud arguments with my father. My father was away even more and didn’t appear to have missed me at all. My sisters, too, were busy, with what I can’t remember. I spent a lot of time with my next-door neighbor, Gittel, and my doll, Miriam.

  Yes, much happened during our time home that winter. However, there was a far more significant reason that holiday is seared into my brain. It was the last Chanukah my whole family spent together.

  Twelve

  I HAD BORROWED Perl’s satchel that first day of school after the vacation so that I could bring Miriam to show Ania. After my experience with Rivke and the hair washing, I didn’t want to leave Miriam out of my sight. I soon found out that bringing the doll was a mistake because I couldn’t fit the satchel under my desk, and the teacher made me hang it with my coat. Whenever I had a chance, I ran to the coatrack and checked on Miriam.

  Ania was very impressed with the doll and I could see that my status rose in her eyes. Before, she must have thought I was poor since I didn’t have many changes of clothes; now she looked at me in wonder as if I must be a wealthy person. She was careful with Miriam and admired her from a distance. It was worth my worrying, though I decided I would leave Miriam in my room from then on.

  That morning, I forgot my lunch bag, which happened routinely, so I went to get it from Perl’s (of course, taking Miriam) during recess. When I walked in her door, I was in a good mood. Usually, Perl was in the kitchen or the parlor. I couldn’t locate her so I assumed she was out doing errands. I went upstairs to find a safe place for Miriam. I laid her in a box without the lid so she wouldn’t suffocate, and slid it under my bed.

  When Perl appeared at my door, I screamed. “I thought no one was home,” I said. “You scared me.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, leaning against the door. She was wearing a wrinkled housecoat and an old, holey sweater and her upswept bun expanded like a flattened bird’s nest as if she had been sleeping on it.

  “I came back for my lunch. Did I wake you?” I asked.

  “No, Esfir.”

  I was beginning to get scared. She looked sick. I was praying it wasn’t her heart, too.

  “Sit down, Esfir,” she said softly.

  Dread struck me like an arrow. That was what she had said when my father suffered a heart attack. “Did Papa have another heart attack?” I asked.

  She nodded.

  Okay, I thought. This had happened before and everything turned out okay, or at least mostly okay.

  “Is he in the hospital?”

  Perl nodded again. Tears slid down her cheeks and she wiped them with her sweater sleeve. It wasn’t like Perl to be so slovenly. She usually wore a freshly starched and ironed blouse and she even ironed her apron. She was picky about anyone seeing her before her hair and makeup were perfectly done. Even when she slept at my house on the couch, she fussed in front of her hand mirror before greeting an early riser.

  I didn’t want to know any more. I didn’t feel like I was going to vomit like I had last time. I no longer felt my heart racing. I was as calm as Kobrin’s Mukhavets River on a stagnant summer day. My hands, on their own, palms outward, crisscrossed my face; it seemed easier than shaking my head. For the first time since I came to Perl’s, I wasn’t cold or hungry. I could have sat there the whole day with all my bodily systems still.

  Perl started crying for real. “Esfir,” she said under strangulated breaths, “your papa is dead.”

  “Okay,” I said. She sat next to me on the couch and put her arm around my shoulders, squeezing me toward her. I stiffened and pulled away.

  “Esfir, did you understand what I said?”

  “I’m not stupid,” I said, sarcastically. “How do you know? You could be wrong.”

  “No, bubele. I got a telegram when you were in school. It was from Velvel. There is no mistaking the news.”

  I must have risen because somehow I was in my room, bending under my bed. I took Miriam out of the box and sat on the floor, curving my arm around her shoulders just the way Perl had done to me. I sat there with Miriam for I don’t know how long. I have a slight recollection of Perl kneeling in front of me, her hand on my knee and me jerking Miriam away from her potential clasp. Out of all my memories until now, this day is the cloudiest.

  What I do remember is that I became crazy with time, like I was one of my father’s timepieces needing constant oiling and checking. I figured that he had died some time between the morning that Mr. Kozak picked us up in his company’s car and made two stops for his business, and early evening when we had arrived in Brest. This second day of the new year was the first day in my life that my father was not alive.

  DURING HIS LUNCH break, Mr. Kozak was kind enough to drive us back to Kobrin. There were cursory kisses and hugs all around, then hysteria from Rivke and muted tears from Velvel. My father’s parents, Morris and Ruth, appeared to have shrunken overnight. Drora and my mother were getting ready for the funeral, selecting clothes for us and sending a messenger to relatives’ homes.

  The day before, shortly after my father died, Grandpa Morris and Velvel, still in shock, went to the synagogue for funeral arrangements. In Jewish law, we had to bury him quickly and my mother was so worried that Perl and I wouldn’t arrive in time.

  Before we left for the funeral, my brother had produced a knife and made a slice into the collar of my blouse. He did the same for my sisters, my mother, and himself. I was horrified. Perl explained that it had something to do with my father’s soul lasting forever but I couldn’t understand the connection. And I couldn’t comprehend all these religious rites for a man who never went to shul except for bar mitzvahs.

  Befitting my father, everything was simple. His coffin was plain pine
; the rabbi spoke about my father’s accomplishments and read a short prayer glorifying God, not my father. My mother sat in the women’s section with Drora, Rivke, me, and my grandmother Ruth. Behind us were Perl, Grandma Elke, Aunt Khane, my father’s brothers’ wives, my cousin Leah, and other female relatives. The men went to their section and included, of course, Velvel, Grandpa Morris, my father’s two brothers, and my other grandfather, Yankel. The rest of the shul was full; at least as far as I could see turning around. There were neighbors, customers, members of my father’s political and social groups, and even peasants from the countryside who remembered my father delivering a repaired clock to them, carried in his old wagon led by Ben.

  I couldn’t believe my father knew all these people and that they could find out about his funeral in less than a day. As Ida once said to me, “Bad news travels like the wind.”

  When the cantor began to chant “El Male Rachamim,” I could feel my mother’s shoulders shaking. I pressed into her as if I could stop her movements. I didn’t understand most of the words, but I knew that the cantor was saying my father should rest in peace. Maybe it was those words or his whispering and wailing voice that got the women going. Suddenly I recognized Perl’s voice, sobbing so loudly that I turned around to make sure this was really my happy-go-lucky aunt. My grandmother Ruth kept murmuring, “Mayn zun, mayn zun.”

  My mother was still trembling but her face was dry. Her eyes were closed and she nodded silently. I squeezed her hand, which was resting on my thigh. “No,” I willed my mother. “Don’t cry, don’t cry.”

  My father was buried in the nearby Jewish cemetery in his family’s plot. We stood in the below-freezing weather while the rabbi said Kaddish, themourners’ prayer, and then we officially began shivah. Miraculously, at home, platters of food appeared on our table. The house smelled of hard-boiled eggs. Someone I didn’t know ordered me to remove my shoes and sit on a low bench that wasn’t from my house. That person instructed me not to leave the house or take a bath, not that I would do either in such freezing weather. When I went to check on my collar tear, the mirror was covered. I guessed that this had something to do with not looking at ourselves since we weren’t allowed to bathe.