by Andrea Simon
A lot of other strange things happened that week. Everyone who came said the same thing: “May the Almighty comfort you among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.” I recalled Ida’s chart and all the Zionist groups. Were people in Palestine already crying for my father? It wasn’t just this phrase, but all the talk of God and things we could and couldn’t do scared me. If I forgot to do one thing, my father wouldn’t get to visit God. I tried to study everybody and act right. It wasn’t so much of an effort because during that week, I hardly moved. People kept coming up to me on my bench and tried to stuff food into my mouth. I took a bite here and there to make them happy; anything I swallowed felt like a rock.
People were supposed to say nice things about my father. After a while, it seemed that everyone was competing for my father’s attention even though he was dead. My uncle Sam said he was the first to help my father rebuild the shed after a fire; his old business partner said he was the first one to go with my father to Warsaw; Perl said she introduced my father to Mozart—even I knew that one was not true. My brother said he was the first to go with my father on the new bus; Rivke was the first to show my father the latest baby chicks; and Drora had the first of her blinding headaches in my father’s lap. My mother topped them all: she was the first to find my father dead. There was not one thing I did that involved a first with my father, except that being the youngest, I’d be the first child to forget him. Even at the young age that I was then, I had the sense that I would be looking for something I never had for the rest of my life. Something big closed inside me.
My mother shut her door at night and we could hear her sobbing.
My brother snuck out late one evening, I’m sure for one of his secret meetings, and my mother, who had gotten up for a drink, discovered him coming home. I had never heard my mother scream so loudly. Usually she was quiet in her anger, sort of sticking it in your face when you didn’t expect it. Now it was: “Velvel I am so disappointed in you. You couldn’t even honor the shivah week; your father hasn’t been dead for five days even. What is wrong with you? Do you have no feelings for him or at least for us?”
“I’m sorry, Mama,” he whined. “I had to go; it couldn’t be helped.”
“What is more important than the death of your father?”
“I didn’t say that Papa’s death isn’t important. It’s not a question of what’s more important. It was something I was committed to. People expected me and I couldn’t let them down. Besides, Papa didn’t believe in all these religious customs.”
My mother didn’t answer him. She ran into her room, slammed the door, and I heard things shatter and bang all night. She must have disobeyed the custom of shivah because the mirror had to unveil as it crashed.
The next morning, the mother I knew was gone. In her place was a wild woman: My mother’s once-iridescent eyes popped out of darkened crescents; her fine tawny hair stuck out as if she had removed a sweater over her head and created static electricity. Only she also had bald patches. I once heard the expression, “tearing one’s hair out.” This is what described my mother.
Thirteeen
WE RESUMED OUR life in Brest. Ania, Ida, and all the boardinghouse girls treated me like I was a princess. Children at school gestured and whispered in small clusters, but generally they were nicer to me than usual.
On my first day back, my teacher, Miss Petra, called on me to read, lately becoming one of my most enjoyable activities to do in school. I had to admit I was a good reader and I liked to show it off. I read two paragraphs of a Polish book about a boy and his dog. I had no expression in my voice, and Miss Petra told me to sit down and called on Ania to continue, something that would have humiliated me in the past. Then I was relieved.
January and February passed and I was lonely all the time. It didn’t matter if I was surrounded by the girls at Perl’s or a yard of schoolchildren. Like when my father was sick, I had this awful feeling of guilt and misplacement.
I should have been helping Drora buy food at the market. I should have helped her store it in the cold cellar, ducking spiderwebs and sidestepping scattering mice. At the first good thaw, I should be helping her dig up the potatoes, packed with straw last autumn, buried deep in holes by the edge of our backyard garden.
I should have been helping Rivke on laundry day, soaking the piled-up clothes in a hot soapy tub, squeezing and rubbing them on the metal ridged washboard. I should have helped her lift the clothes to the huge copper boiler on our stove, where they “cooked,” and then rinse them in a clear-water tub, adding bleach when necessary. I should have helped her wring out the heavy clothes and hang them in the attic if it was snowing or outdoors on the clothesline to dry in the sun. I should have helped her lift the still-frozen shapes as if locked in a waltz position, to thaw inside, or fold them outside during the first warm days.
I should have been sitting in the cart with Velvel as he lugged pails of icy water from the well or from the river to supplement the barrels delivered from the horse-drawn water carriers. I should have been comforting my grandparents, who had lost their firstborn.
And with my mother, the list was endless. I should have been there for all.
Days, weeks, went by without me. Spring came and I wasn’t there to notice the first daffodils by our front door. Worst of all, nobody wrote or left a message for me to come home.
Not surprising, it was Ida who eventually got me to feel almost normal again.
Pesach came early this year. It was the last Friday in March and everyone was scrambling to get home before sundown. The twins left the night before, Rachel before lunch, and Freyde went to an aunt’s house in Brest. Perl and I were leaving on the two p.m. train, and I came home from school at lunchtime to get ready.
There was a strange man in the vestibule, sitting on the bench. He got up the second I opened the door. He didn’t do anything to alarm me, but I screamed anyhow. I always hated the unexpected. He was very tall and handsome, older than Mendel but younger than my father. My first reaction was that he must be someone with bad news, maybe an official from the government or post office. Then I thought he must be a theater actor since he was so good-looking and wore a stylish double-breasted jacket and silk blue tie. His hair was light brown and it was parted to the side, the top high with ridges. With his classy clothes and aristocratic air, the thought occurred to me that maybe he was related to Rachel, but I was shocked to see Ida run down the stairs right into his waiting arms; and he lifted her twice and spun her around as if she were a child and not a young woman almost his height.
A closer look to compare Ida with this man, her father, Iser Midler, and I noticed similar hair coloring and texture—and bearing, but that was it. Iser’s features were fine and sensitive; his long narrow nose ended in a dimpled tip, his eyes were powder blue. Physically, father and daughter didn’t go together, but their bond was as clear as his eyes. After they embraced and giggled like lovers, Ida introduced me and, surprise of surprises, he knew who I was. I couldn’t believe it. My father, or even my mother, hadn’t known the names of my schoolmates at home unless they lived nearby and they encountered their family at a social or political group. In my mother’s case, she could have recognized someone from our synagogue.
Mr. Midler remembered everyone’s names and asked about each girl. He had met Perl a few times during other visits to Brest and when he first brought Ida to school at the beginning of the school year.
“Are you going home for Pesach?” he asked me.
I whispered, “Yes.”
He took off his jacket and hung it on the hall coatrack. He wasn’t so fit on closer inspection. He was high-waisted and had a paunch. His tie was tucked into his belt, from which hung a pocket watch chain. I was about to ask him about his “fob” to show him I knew the name for this chain, when he said, “I’m very sorry to hear about your father, Esfir. I heard he was only forty-two, two years older than me. A shame so young.”
A glob of grief jammed into my vocal cords.
&
nbsp; “I wish I could have met him. I have a great interest in watches myself.”
“Thank you, sir,” I eeked out.
“No need to be so formal,” he said, crinkling his soft blue eyes.
“Esfir, do you mind if I show my father our room?” Ida asked.
She had to be kidding. Did I mind? I was so honored that this man was going to see where I slept that I felt as if someone reached into my gullet and siphoned out my salty tears, replacing them with a well of seltzer. I scampered up the stairs to make sure my bed was made well, and cleared the clothes that I had been packing from the bed so Mr. Midler could sit down if he wanted to talk to Ida across from him.
Ida and Iser were soon in the doorway. Ida directed her father to her books and showed him the view from the window, looking out on the large oak tree.
“Very beautiful,” he said.
“Esfir, do you have your journal?” Ida asked.
“Yes, it’s in my valise. Why?”
“I want you should show it to my father.”
“But Ida?” I was dumbfounded. Show my private thoughts to Ida’s father! I hadn’t shared my journal with anyone except Ida and my sisters. With my sisters, they just read some quotations, not my own words.
“Yes, Esfir. Just the parts from the authors and some of the pictures you drew.”
Mr. Midler joined me on my bed, and I flipped through the middle section where most of the drawings were. There were pencil sketches of Ida’s face, my horse Ben, the oak tree outside the window, Perl’s stubby hands, which she couldn’t keep still. Then I turned to the beginning with the quotations.
“This is one of my favorites, by the eloquent Yiddish master himself,” Mr. Midler said, reading a saying by I.L. Peretz: “You, as an artist, don’t react to things that are actually happening now. You deal in memories.”
I smiled.
“Do you understand that?”
“Not really.”
“Well, I can see from your drawings that you are very talented and display much promise for such a young person. You didn’t show me the section on your thoughts, but this means that you are a creative person, expressing yourself in different ways. There are those who need to do this, either because they are lonely or because they have something inside that compels them. For you, my little friend, maybe both reasons are true.”
All this fancy talk. I didn’t want Mr. Midler to think I was just an ignorant child, but I couldn’t think of a clever remark, so I just said, “Thank you very much.”
He patted me on the head and said to Ida, “So are you ready?”
That was something I knew the answer to. Ida had hung clothes on the line, and from the window I could see them flapping. There were books and underwear on her bed and her little suitcase was empty.
“Just give me a few minutes,” Ida said, throwing things into her valise.
Then Mr. Midler showed a different side. In a flash, he screamed, “Ida Midler, what is wrong with you? You knew I was coming. We don’t have much time or we will miss the train.”
“I’m sorry, Iser,” she said.
I did a double take, thinking I misheard when she called her father by his first name.
“You always do this, Ida,” Mr. Midler reprimanded. “Not everyone can conform to your time schedule.”
Ida rushed out the room and I heard her tumbling down the stairs. From my bed, I could see, beyond the oak tree, a hand yanking something from the clothesline.
Ida was ready in record time and she was gasping for breath when she hugged me and wished me a good Pesach.
“Yes, have a good holiday, Esfir,” Mr. Midler said, shaking my hand as if we hadn’t just looked at my journal together.
So now I knew more things about Ida. She was special to her father; she was often late; and her father was kind but had a quick temper. Surprisingly, the temper part made me feel better, like maybe this man whom I desperately had wished was my father, wasn’t so perfect after all.
THERE’S NOT MUCH to say about our Pesach holiday. It was a good time for me to be away from Brest because that Sunday was Easter and Ania would be busy with her family.
I expected that when I arrived home, we wouldn’t have a regular Pesach because of my father’s death. I was so right.
Last Pesach, Velvel had gotten a grown-up suit and Drora a new dress. Rivke and I had received hand-me-downs, but fixed to our sizes. For days, my mother had cleaned the house, from top to bottom. The day before Pesach, my mother bought meat and eggs and at night she went to the mikve, the ritual bathhouse. Last year, she had taken Drora who had gotten her first period that winter. Rivke and I washed in the wooden tub my father brought into the kitchen. The next morning, my father and Velvel went to the mikve.
Drora had described the mikve to me. The place was divided into two sections. The walls were tiled and you reached the water from steps. A large furnace heated the water. There were tubs that connected to hot and cold water and rows of overhead showers. The second section was a shvitsbod, steambath, where you lay on wooden benches and got enveloped by steam so thick you could hardly see anyone. On the bench, you rubbed or massaged each other’s backs with a short broom made from birch twigs. Afterward, you took a shower.
It was bad enough that blood came out of a woman down there, but this nakedness in front of others was beyond imagining. I swore that I’d never go.
I remembered we had eaten our last chometz meal at around ten on Saturday morning. It was challah and milk. Then my mother, my grandmothers, and my aunts prepared the Seder meal for the first night of Pesach. Prepare, prepare. There was so much to do, for the women, that is, but everyone was happy about being together and looking forward to the food and the reading and the singing.
This year, everything changed. There was no cleaning of the house, no mikve, no food preparation. We went to my uncle Sam’s house for the first Seder. Being the youngest, without a boy close to my age, I asked my uncle, my father’s middle brother, the Four Questions, with a little help in the reading department from Drora, starting with the main question, “Why is this night different from all other nights?” and following with the four subquestions. The questions should have been directed to my father, and the answers involved unleavened bread and herbs and matzoh, and slavery and freedom.
I didn’t pay much attention to the answers or the rest of the Pesach stories, songs, or rituals until I realized that Velvel’s voice was raised.
“The questions should be, ‘why are we different from all other people?’ ”
“Please, not now,” my mother said.
“No, let’s hear what the boy has to say,” Uncle Sam said.
“Jews are different, that’s all,” Velvel said.
“Yes, we are the chosen people.”
“Chosen to be defined by others. Like those German laws. What is a Jew? You must have three or four Jewish grandparents. And if you are a Jew, you can’t be a German citizen or marry one.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because the German race must remain pure.”
I didn’t understand what Velvel was saying. He went on and on about different categories of German Jews, but not measured by their religion but by their racial mixture. I thought of Miss Petra in school, who once confided in me that her cousin had just married a Jewish man and they wanted to have many children.
I snapped off little pieces of matzoh, smashed them under my glass, spit on my thumb, pressed on the bumpy bits, and lay them on my tongue. When I layered my entire tongue, I swallowed. The mixture got stuck in my throat and I started to cough until the coughs turned into chokes. My uncle Sam slapped my back and handed me his wine glass, ordering me to “drink.”
I took a few sips before I realized its sweet burning taste. My uncle was bald and had a graying mustache. Otherwise, he looked just like my father.
That night was different from all other nights.
Fourteen
THE PESACH AND Easter holiday break was over and I resumed my l
ife in Brest. Just as it had been in Kobrin, being in a Polish public school spelled trouble for Jewish children. Before Christmas, for example, the class memorized carols. Jewish kids were exempt from singing, but they had to attend rehearsals. I loved the songs and had a good voice. It killed me not to use it. I got up my nerve to ask Miss Petra if I could sing like the others. She was sorry, she said, but she couldn’t go against policy. To make up for the loss, Ania and I sang the songs loudly on our way home.
In the mornings, I joined the class for prayers, again banned from oral expression. I also went to religion class, though the priest never called on me and I spent most of the time drawing pictures in my journal. One that I worked on for a few days depicted a cartoon of a little girl sitting on a bench with a black-inked bubble over her head. Inside the bubble, it had the lyrics of “God Is Being Born,” a Polish Christmas carol. My latest was a copy of a drawing that was pasted on the wall of a lamb surrounded by large Easter eggs. I left out the huge crucifix painted in the center. When the priest passed me, he grabbed my journal and took my hand as I was holding a pencil and guided it to form a large cross in the middle of the page. He then nodded and walked away.
Ania had an eleven-year-old brother named Piotr. He was in the sixth grade and got great pleasure in torturing me. One day, after school, in early April, I went home with Ania. We planned to play jacks in her backyard. As I was throwing the little ball upward, Piotr reached and caught it. He kept tossing the ball way high and catching it, running in circles, yelling, “Come and get it.” At first, I was happy that he would spend time playing with us and held my wrists up chasing him. Ania didn’t join. She stood with her folded hands pressed into her waist, her legs splayed, as if she were going to dare somebody. And she did.