Mother and Me

by Julian Padowicz

  At the same time I put my face down so that I could watch the old man through my lowered eyelashes. I had never been this close to anyone so old before. I saw his legs and feet bundled up in a blanket in addition to the coat and hat that he wore despite the heat from the stove. I wondered if he could walk. I watched him moisten his yellow-stained fingertips to turn a page and then brush the cigarette ash out of his beard without, it seemed, interrupting his reading. Then he would cough again out of one side of his mouth, while he held the cigarette firmly in the other.

  I presumed that this was the Jewish priest who had grown too old to work. I wondered how he felt about his approaching death without the possibility of going to Heaven. I wondered if he knew about Heaven. It would be even worse if he knew about Heaven and knew he couldn’t go there. Here, sitting in the chair right next to mine, I realized, was a man who knew that he would soon be dying. It might happen next month or next week, or even tonight. When my grandfather died, he hadn’t been as old as this man and had had no idea he was about to die. But this man was just calmly sitting there waiting for it to happen.

  He was even reading. Reading to put new things into his brain even though tomorrow that brain might no longer remember anything. I recalled how I had felt when Kiki and I would build sand castles on the beach that I knew the sea would come and wash away soon. I didn’t feel bad for myself, because I could always build another sand castle, but I felt bad for the castle, which didn’t even know that its existence would be snuffed out by the next tide. But here was a man who knew and just sat there reading and waiting for it. It was so very sad—sad and so terribly fascinating. I could not take my eyes from the poor doomed man.

  Then the old man caught me. As I turned my eyes up from my bread, I found myself looking right into the eye on my side of his face. He hadn’t turned his head, but the eye bypassed the steel-rimmed glasses in the middle of his nose and was staring right at me. The brown pupil was set in a yellowish eyeball with red veins running in all directions, and it stared directly into my left eye.

  I looked away instinctively. I would not look up again. But I knew that he knew that I had been watching him. I tried to turn my attention to Meesh, but could not wipe out the sight of that eye looking at me and knowing that I had been watching him. I wondered who else knew that I had been watching him. I kept my eyes on Meesh, on my lap, on my shoes, and on the floor in front of me until the younger woman took Mother and me to where we would be sleeping.

  Three walls of our room were of stone, and the one window was a narrow slit just below the ceiling. I realized we were actually below ground level. A kerosene lamp that the peasant woman had lit for us, glowed on the table. Away from the stove it was very cold in this house. “We’ll keep our clothes on tonight,” Mother said. I had no problem with that.

  “Come here and sit down with me,” Mother said, seating herself on the bed. The mattress did not seem to give under her. “I want to tell you something.” In view of the day’s activities, this was not unexpected. I sat down beside her on the bed. The mattress was actually soft, but resting on something that did not give.

  “I told you, Yulek, that this is the home of a rabbi,” Mother began. “These people are very pious Jews. Do you know what that means?”

  “That they pray a lot,” I speculated.

  “That’s right, they pray a lot. And they also obey very closely the laws that God gave them.”

  This was getting interesting. “What kind of laws did God give them?” I asked.

  “Well, one of them is not to eat meat and milk or things made from milk, like butter, at the same time. That’s why you couldn’t have butter on your bread while the stew was on the table.”

  This seemed like a very strange issue for God to concern Himself with. “What other laws are there?” I asked.

  “Well, I’m not sure what the exact law is, but Jewish men and boys have to keep something on their heads all the time and never cut the hair in front of their ears.”

  God, I realized, must have been making fun of Jews. I didn’t say that aloud, though. Instead, I said, “That’s very different from the laws God gave Catholics.”

  “Oh, what laws are those?”

  “Well, they’re laws about being good. One is not to kill people and another is not to steal anything.”

  My mother surprised me by laughing at this. “Those are the Ten Commandments.”

  “Yes, there are ten altogether, about lying and going to church on Sundays.”

  “Yulek, God gave the Ten Commandments to the Jews. Don’t you know that?”

  Now I was confused. “Then how did Catholics get them?” This was more of a rhetorical question since Kiki had shown me a gray card with all ten printed on it.

  “My poor Yulechek,” Mother laughed. “What has Miss Yanka been teaching you? Don’t you know that the first Christians were Jews?”

  Mother was talking nonsense now.

  “Jesus,” Mother went on, “was a Jew.”

  This was outrageous! “What do you know about Jesus?” I demanded.

  “A few things.”

  “All right, where was He born?”

  “In Bethlehem,” she answered. “His mother’s name was Mary, and his father was a carpenter named Joseph.”

  She was right. She did know all about Jesus.

  “Bethlehem was in Judea, which is Palestine now,” she continued. “That’s where Jews used to live.”

  I knew that my grandfather on my father’s side lived in Palestine right now. “Well, if He was a Jew,” I asked, knowing that I had her now, “how come He’s in Heaven?”

  “Because God loves Him,” Mother said.

  “God loves Jews?” This question was rhetorical as well.

  My mother closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the wall behind her. “God loves everyone,” she said. “Didn’t Miss Yanka teach you that? He loves Jews and Catholics and Arabs—who call him Allah—and Chinese people who don’t even worship Him.”

  “How about Negroes in Africa and Indians in America?”

  “Even them. Even people who don’t believe He exists.”

  This seemed like a God that was much easier to live with.

  “So does that mean that the rabbi will be going to Heaven?” I asked. “Even though he isn’t Catholic? I mean when he dies?”

  “Of course. What kind of God wouldn’t let people into heaven just because they were born Jewish or Chinese? Would that be a loving God?”

  She really had me there. It would be a cruel God who sent people to hell forever, just because they hadn’t been born to Catholic parents.

  “Of course the rabbi is going to Heaven when he dies,” Mother said. “He is a very good man. If the Russians knew that they helped people like us to escape, he and his wife would be arrested. Maybe even shot. They’re not only very good, but very brave people.”

  Suddenly I had developed goose bumps. These funny people were real heroes, like the ones Kiki used to tell about, people who risked their lives to help Poland or to stand up for what was right, even if they were Jews. And here I was, right in their house.

  “You’re very kind to be concerned about the rabbi’s getting into Heaven,” Mother continued. “It means that you’re a very good person as well. But I’ve known that for a long time.”

  Of course what that meant was that I’d be getting into Heaven too, whether I was christened or not. And suddenly, there I was, hugging my mother in my joy.

  I could tell that it surprised her as well and, as she hugged me back, I could hear the little sniffs that meant she was crying. And it all felt so surprisingly good. Mother, still in her babushka kerchief, her eyes and her lips soft and vulnerable without their makeup and now crying, suddenly wasn’t a “grownup” anymore, but somebody that was somehow almost a part of me and of whom I was somehow almost a part, the way Kiki and I had been.

  We held on to each other for a while and finally Mother pulled away gently. “It’s so funny,” she said w
ith a little laugh followed by another sniff, “through all these layers of clothing. We feel so fat.” I laughed too, and it felt so good laughing together.

  Now, with a little wiggle, Mother slid a few inches away from me. “Yulian,” she said, as she resettled herself, “I’m going to tell you everything now. Max, Mr. Koppleman, didn’t want to frighten you, but I think you deserve to know the truth.” She sniffed one more time, wiped her nose with the back of her wrist, and gave a little, self-conscious laugh. “As I’ve told you,” she said, “we’re going on a very big adventure. Tonight we’re going to get a good night’s sleep here, and tomorrow morning a man is going to pick us and Max up in a sleigh.”

  At the thought of the horse-drawn sleigh, my happiness gained another level. I had never ridden in one.

  “The man,” Mother went on, “is a guide. He lives in another town not far from here, and he guides people over the mountains and through the woods into Hungary. There are a few guides like him who get paid a lot of money for doing this because it’s hard and dangerous. They come into Lvow and meet secretly with people who want to escape. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “Yes, if the Russians catch them, they’ll be shot or sent to Siberia,” I said.

  “That’s right. But it’s not dangerous for us, you understand, because the Russians don’t expect women and children to be going in all this snow. And what I’ve been doing all this time in Lvow is trying to find one of these guides and convince him to take us. You see, they don’t want to take a woman and a child. They don’t think we’re strong enough to climb the mountains, but they don’t know how strong you and I are and how far we can walk. Isn’t that right?”

  I nodded my head to show that I was still listening. “Mademoiselle and I walked from one end of Lvow to the other,” I said.

  “That’s right, but these guides don’t know that. Well, I finally found the best and the bravest guide of all the guides, and I offered him extra money if he’d take us. I had run into Max Koppleman, who was a friend of your father, and he wanted to go too, so we both had money to pay the guide, and he agreed to take us. The guide will carry you in the deep snow, and Max says he’ll help too.”

  Now Mother stopped and I saw her looking intently at me. I knew that she wanted to see if I was frightened, but now that I knew I was going to Heaven, Russian border guards held little terror for me. Wolves, on the other hand, were a different story. Wolves lived in the forest and ate people. They even chased sleighs to eat people that fell out. One wolf, I remembered, had even eaten a sleigh horse, eating his way into the harness until he was pulling the sleigh. “What about wolves?” I asked.

  “There are no more wolves in these woods. The hunters have killed them all. There are only wolves in zoos.”

  This reassured me. I understood that the stories Kiki read to me were intended for little gullible kids, whom you could tell anything, and that grownups all knew that they weren’t true. What Mother and I were about to do, was a grownup thing, and I would now have to start thinking like a grownup.

  “Now, this is the plan,” Mother went on. “Tomorrow morning the guide and his nephew are going to pick us and Max up in their sleigh and take us on a road that runs along the base of a small mountain. The border is at the top of the mountain, and when the guards aren’t looking, we’ll jump out of the sleigh and climb the mountain to the border. Once we’re on top, we’ll be safe from the Russians.”

  “What about the horse and the sleigh?” I asked, concerned.

  “The guide’s nephew will stay in the sleigh and continue driving to the village. Now, if the Russians stop us before we get a chance to jump out, the guide is going to tell them that he and I are getting married and he’s bringing us to his village for the wedding. Max, he’s going to say, is my brother, coming to the wedding too.”

  This was going to be a real adventure. “We’ll fool the Russians, won’t we,” I said. “I can pretend I’m sick, and they’ll be sorry for me and not suspect anything.”

  “That’s a good idea. But don’t say anything. Remember that we’re supposed to be peasants.”

  Mother went on talking, but I realized that I shouldn’t act too sick because if I really were, Mother wouldn’t be taking me out in the cold weather. Maybe I could pretend to cry a little as though my stomach hurt and I wasn’t brave. That would certainly allay any suspicions the Russians might have about our trying to escape. Nobody would try to make a kid with a stomachache climb a mountain.

  “You know, when I was your age—well, maybe a little older,” Mother said and brought me back to the present, “I used to love adventures. My brother, Pavew, was a year older, but everyone said I should have been the boy and he the girl. Pavew liked to read and play the violin, and I liked to climb trees, swim in the lake, go hiking…. Once we were flying a kite with your grandfather, and it got caught in a tree, and Grandfather said for Pavew to climb up and get it, but he wouldn’t. So I climbed up and got it, and when I got down, Pavew said, ‘She’s just too stupid to know that you can fall down.’”

  Mother laughed as she finished this story, and I did too. It really wasn’t all that funny, but it felt so good to laugh together.

  “Then there was one time Pavew and I were spending the summer on a farm with Grandmother, and I discovered that I could climb up high in the barn and jump down into this big stack of hay. Pavew wouldn’t do that either.”

  “Fredek and I did that on the farm too,” I interjected eagerly.

  “You did?” Mother said in surprise.

  “Yes,” I admitted, wondering what Mother’s reaction would be now.

  “And did you have the feeling for just a second that you were flying?” she asked.

  “I did,” I said, nodding my head enthusiastically. “I spread my arms like this,” I said demonstrating, “and I felt like an airplane.”

  We both laughed again. Mother put her arms out like mine. “When I was little we didn’t know about airplanes,” she said. And for a reason I couldn’t understand, we both found this absolutely hilarious—hilarious and delicious.

  When, minutes later, I finally saw Mother’s face sober up, I knew just what she was going to say. “You’d better get some sleep now,” she said. I wanted our talk to go on, but I knew that arguing would spoil the mood. “Come on, Meesh,” I said.

  There was a chamber pot for me to use under the bed and a pitcher of water and a basin on a little stand. But the water was too cold to wash anything but my hands. Then I took my shoes off and lay down on the bed with Meesh between me and the wall. Mother laid my coat over me on top of the blankets.

  “Don’t worry about anything,” she said tucking me in. “The guards don’t expect a woman and a boy to be trying to escape in this weather. They won’t be suspicious of us.”

  I reached my arms up, and Mother pressed her soft face against mine. “Kiss Meesh,” I said. Mother leaned across me and gave my bear a kiss. “Good night, Meesh,” she said. “Take good care of your master tonight.”

  “He’s my son,” I corrected her.

  “I’m sorry. Take good care of your father.”

  I hugged Meesh very tight and must have fallen asleep almost immediately.

  They were whispering when I woke up. The kerosene lamp was glowing dimly, and I could see Mother and Mr. Kopple-man sitting at the table.

  “They were dressed as women,” Mr. Koppleman was saying in a very agitated voice.

  “Maybe they weren’t very convincing,” Mother answered, the calmness of her voice contrasting to his. “Maybe they hadn’t shaved recently—how do I know. You discover two men in a sleigh dressed as women and what else are you going to think?”

  “Well, they’re all going to be on the alert now,” he said. Instinct told me to pretend sleep.

  “They can check and see that I’m a woman,” Mother said. She was sounding angry now.

  “That’s not going to save you when they see you jump out of the sleigh. No, Basia, it’s much too dangerou
s for us now. I’m not going.”

  “You’re not going? Max, please. I need you to help with Yulian.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not going, and you’re not going. The snow is a meter deep, and you wouldn’t make it even without the boy.”

  “I don’t care how deep it is. We’re going. Max, please. Be a man—I need you.”

  “You’re not going. I won’t allow it. I forbid you!”

  “You forbid me? You’re being ridiculous. You’re afraid. Max, you’re not a man.”

  “Yes, I am afraid. I’m afraid for you and the boy. I was Nahtek’s friend. What would he have said?” Nahtek had been my father, Nathan.

  “Nahtek is dead. Nahtek shot himself when things got too tough for him. He’s got nothing to say here. I’m taking his son out of this hell so he can grow up a stronger man than his father. Nahtek was a very good man—Nahtek was a saint, but he wasn’t strong enough. If we get through this, Yulek will have today to look back on for the rest of his life and know that he did something heroic. It’s the most I can give him.”

  “I am thinking of Yulek,” Mr. Koppleman said, but without much conviction.

  “You’re not a man,” Mother said again. “Go back to Lvow. Go on. I don’t want to look at you anymore!”

  “Basia, you don’t know what you’re doing. It’s suicide. I’m begging you.” Now he sounded as though he really were begging.

  “Go on, get out of here!” Mother hissed. I had never heard her so angry. “I don’t want to look at your fat face.”

  “You’re crazy, Barbara. You’re a crazy blah, blah.”

  Mother didn’t answer. I saw her begin to lay out her solitaire.

  “It was your crazy demands that drove Nahtek to his death,” Mr. Koppleman said. “All of Lodz knows that.”

  Suddenly I saw Mother scoop up her cards and fling them at the man’s face. Mr. Koppleman rocked back in his chair and almost fell over. “Nahtek killed himself,” Mother said, “because he couldn’t face what he thought he had done to his father’s business. His note said he didn’t want to lead a gray life…. If he had waited two more days….”