Lilli's Quest

by Lila Perl

  I had never been in an American apartment. The rooms were much smaller and lower-ceilinged than the ones we’d lived in on Heinrichstrasse. The walls were painted in colors like peach and aquamarine, and the rooms were crammed with furniture. The bathroom had blue tiles and wallpaper that depicted fish swimming in and out of intricate nets. There was a lot to look at.

  I was invited to sit in a very plush chair in the living room, sipping an ice-cold lemonade while Isabel and her mother bickered about something in the kitchen. As I stared at my unopened suitcase on the floor beside me, I thought of my many arrivals in many different places. Harwich, where the Kindertransport had deposited me; the Rathbone farm where Tim had been crying in the doorway; the farm hostel where I’d had my clothing burned, my hair cut, and been given a longed-for bath.

  Eventually, Mrs. Brandt entered the room. “All set,” she announced. “We have moved Arnold’s bed from the dining alcove into Isabel’s room. Once again you’ll be roommates. Just like at Shady Pines, and you’ll have space for your belongings. Come in, now, dear, and unpack.”

  The following day, Uncle Herman picked me up at the Brandts and drove me to the neighborhood junior high school, the same one that Isabel attended, to register me as a legal alien, entitled to be educated in the City of New York. I could start regular classes the very next day. I kept telling myself how much better off I was than at the Rathbones, or at the hostel, where I’d had no schooling at all. The American junior high had a ninth grade, after which I could transfer to a proper high school. All of this education was free, and maybe I’d even be able to go on to college.

  After getting me registered, Uncle Herman left me in the school clerk’s office so that I could walk home with Isabel when the dismissal bell sounded. To my surprise, as I waited uneasily in these strange surroundings, the assistant principal entered the room and offered to escort me to Isabel’s seventh-grade classroom. I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t going to be presented to the ninth-grade class, or at least the eighth, since my passport as Helga Frankfurter indicated that I was fourteen. As it turned out, the authorities at Singleton Junior High had quickly decided that my English spelling and grammar weren’t good enough for a higher grade. They had put me in the same home-room as Isabel! Shades of the village school that I had attended while at the Rathbones.

  But this humiliation was not the worst of it. Mr. Lockhart, the dapper little assistant principal, introduced me to the class as a new student who was a refugee from Germany. He did not mention that I was a Jewish refugee, and I doubt that the seventh graders even knew what a refugee was. The word Germany was all they needed to hear. Boos and whistles were directed at me from the back of the room, and one student raised his hand in the Nazi salute and stridently shouted out, “Sieg Heil!”

  We walked back to the Brandt apartment through a tumult of busy streets, filled with shoppers and auto traffic. I was escorted by Isabel and her apparently best friend, Sybil, a freckle-faced redhead with corkscrew curls. The latter had brazenly attacked my attacker, an overgrown boy named Danny Brill, in the schoolyard after dismissal. (He had received only a mild reprimand from Mr. Lockhart: Now, now … we’ll have none of that.) Sibby, as Isabel called her, had pummeled the chest of the towering brute, while enlightening him about my status and the awful thing he had said. She called him an “ignorant slob,” and accused him of having seen too many war movies. All the while, I cowered miserably in a corner of the schoolyard, harboring bad thoughts, very contrary to what I had hoped for in America.

  As we trudged home, Sybil tried to cheer me. After I sadly told her that the insult “didn’t matter,” she assured me that it certainly did, as America wasn’t Hitler Germany. “The trouble is that most Americans still know hardly anything about what Hitler is doing to the Jews,” she said. “When you meet Leona, you’ll learn how little has come out in the newspapers about the Nazi death camps, and Germany’s plan to wipe out the Jews and all other unwanted people.”

  Leona, it later turned out, was Sybil’s mother. She worked in a shipyard as a welder, taking the place of the men who had been called up to fight. Not too many American women had ever done that kind of job before, and she was one of the pioneers.

  I tried very hard to dismiss the turmoil of that first day at school, telling myself that Singleton Junior High was nothing but a temporary annoyance, and that Aunt Harriette would recover from her operation and I would soon be returning to live with her and my uncle in Westchester.

  But when Mrs. Brandt and I went to visit Aunt Harriette in the hospital several days later—once more by subway train and bus—I was stricken by her appearance. I told myself that her shocking pallor and the sunken and sharpened features of her face were due to the fact that she lacked the energy to apply her makeup. Her eyebrows were nonexistent, giving her an almost clown-like aspect. Her lips were bare and blistered; her glistening red hair dull and matted. Although she did her best to thrust her arms out toward us with enthusiasm, it was obvious that she was extremely weak, and also drugged for pain. We had been told that the operation had gone well, but this visit filled me with anxiety. Our time was cut short when Aunt Harriette called out for more pain medicine, the nurses hurried in, and we were advised to take our leave.

  *

  That evening at the Brandts, Isabel surprised me by asking me if I knew anything about the Kindertransport.

  “How did you hear about that?” I asked her.

  “Hmm,” she replied vaguely. “I guess it was when Sibby and I were talking to Leona. She told us you probably got out of Germany on the children’s train and then sailed to England. Is that right?”

  All of a sudden, Isabel appeared to care about my personal history instead of whether or not I had gotten a letter from Roy. Then I found out the real reason for her interest—she had to write a paper for her history class, and if I described my life in Hitler’s Germany and my escape to England, she could get a good grade by writing about me.

  Mrs. Brandt begged me to help Isabel, telling me she was a lazy student and that the only subject she cared about was French. So I told Isabel a little about saying farewell to Mutti at the railroad station, the train to Holland, and the ferry to England. She began to scribble notes and asked how to spell this and that. Mrs. Brandt, who was dabbing at her eyes with a table napkin, asked me when I had last heard from my mother. I told her it was a long time ago, and, suddenly overcome, fled to my room, where I started crying, for my lost past, my disappeared family, and now for Aunt Harriette.

  *

  I became curious to meet Sibby’s mother, Leona. She sounded very aware of the world for an American, and her “man’s” job in the shipyard was impressive. I could hardly imagine Mrs. Brandt or even Aunt Harriette working outside the home.

  My chance to meet her came about a week later, when I received an invitation to accompany her and Sybil and Isabel to a USO club that had recently been opened in our neighborhood. I had no idea what such a club was until it was explained to me that it was an informal gathering place where soldiers who were awaiting transport to the war fronts could spend some leisure time, have coffee and sandwiches, write letters, and even get their socks mended. The “hostesses” were all volunteers and were mostly older married women, like Leona, who was thirty-five.

  We all met in the lobby of the apartment building for our walk to the USO, and my first reaction to Leona was that I couldn’t believe she was that old. Like Sybil, she had freckles and red hair, except that hers was rust-colored. She had dark, twinkly eyes, a friendly, slightly tough manner, and a youthful figure. She commanded me to call her Leona rather than Mrs. Simon and, as there was going to be dancing as well at the USO, she told Isabel and me to get “dressed up.” So I put on Mutti’s flowered chiffon dress and a pair of black patent-leather pumps with heels that Aunt Harriette had bought me.

  “You’re gorgeous!” Leona exclaimed the moment she saw me. “You’ll be a real knockout at the club. No flirting with the soldiers, though. Even
a junior hostess has to be at least eighteen. So you’re my responsibility.”

  “And what about us?” Isabel piped up. “We’re only twelve.”

  “You two, also. So behave yourselves. You can dance with each other. Anyhow, we’ll be plenty busy making sandwiches and serving and cleaning up.”

  I was excited to go the club, as it reminded me of the thrilling weekly dances at the farm hostel, where I’d first met Karl. However, when we arrived, I discovered that the “club” was just an empty store, draped with American flags, colorful posters, and patriotic messages. Uniformed American soldiers sat around at small tables, over donuts, coffee, and soft drinks, or leaned against the food counter, smoking.

  In a flash, Leona decided that the glum atmosphere needed some cheering up, so she thrust some money into the jukebox. The new Hit Parade song, Deep in the Heart of Texas, immediately blared forth, and everyone seemed to snap to attention. In no time, a soldier who had been smoking morosely at the counter was up on the floor, dancing with Leona. Never in my entire life had I seen such rapid rhythmic whirling and stomping. It was heart-stopping. Leona could have been in her teens, the very same age as her jazz-crazed partner. (I would learn later that she had won all sorts of dance contests in her youth.)

  I was still beholding her, mesmerized, when a soldier who had been seated at one of the tables tapped me on the shoulder. I looked up at him questioningly. He was extremely tall and a little awkward-looking. I wasn’t old enough to be a junior hostess. Was it really all right to … ? Before I could say a word, he grabbed me in his arms and we were off on the floor. Soon the pulsating beat had me following his jumpy but rapid lead. Even though my heart was pounding recklessly and my head was throbbing, I was dizzily enjoying myself.

  When the music stopped and a slow number came on, the tall blond soldier asked me to dance again. I said yes, and we started to talk.

  “My name’s Lenny,” he told me. “You live around here?”

  “Yes, for the time being. I really live in Westchester.”

  “Got no idea where that is,” he said with a grin. “I’m from Montana. Missoula.”

  I couldn’t help laughing. “I’ve got no idea where that is, either.”

  Soon, the club began to fill up with more soldiers. The volunteers—who were mainly motherly women in hair-nets—bustled down to work making trays of ham-and-cheese sandwiches for Leona and we girls to pass around.

  I carried a tray to the table where Lenny was now sitting with three fellow soldiers. He reached up for a sandwich and reminded me that I owed him one more dance.

  “Ach, ya,” I replied. “Still I am dizzy from this song about the heart of Texas. It must be crazy in that place, but I would like so much to see it.”

  One of Lenny’s table companions looked at me suspiciously, as he caught my accent and my additional stupid and unnecessary words.

  “Oh, yeah?” he said. “Where are you from anyway, girlie?”

  Isabel, who was standing beside me with a tray of doughnuts, exclaimed irately that I lived right here in the Bronx with her family. The solider told Isabel she was a liar, called me a Fraulein, and declared, “I know a Kraut when I hear one!” adding, “What the hell’s she doin’ dancin’ with G.I.s in a USO club?” He then rose to his feet and spat out the words, “Spying! Gathering information for the enemy! Somebody call the M.P.s!”

  Lenny was also on his feet, and I watched, terrified, as he landed a crooked blow at the offending soldier’s head, and then took a really hard punch in return. Instantly, a melee ensued, as soldiers from all around the room entered the fray, wrangling and hurling fists at one another. Although many bloody noses were now evident, it was doubtful that most of the participants even knew what the fighting was about. Chairs and tables had been overturned, mashed food had been smeared underfoot, and spilled coffee and soda ran in rivulets across the dance floor.

  Suddenly, in the midst of the furor, a shrill whistle rent the air. The M.P.s or, as I would later learn, military police, had arrived, reminding me all too vividly of the brutal Nazi police in Germany. Even in America, I was responsible for anger and hostility, and for endangering human lives. I was reminded, as on that first day of school, that clearly I was not wanted here. Coming to America had been a terrible mistake.

  With the instinct of a fleeing animal, I snatched my coat from the clothing rack and fled out into the night, with no idea—none at all—of where I was going.

  Twelve

  With echoing thunder and the swift passage of air, a roaring subway train entered the dimly lit station beneath the Grand Concourse and screeched to a halt. The doors slid open. A large clot of passengers emerged and others, standing behind me on the platform, began to move forward. I quickly stepped away, fearful that I might be pushed onto the train without yet being certain that it was heading north and would take me to the same stop that Mrs. Brandt and I had ridden to twice before to board the bus to Westchester.

  My first instinct on fleeing the USO club before the arrival of the dreaded military police had been to head underground. Once I reached the subway station, it was a simple matter to drop my coin into the turnstile and clatter down the uneven concrete steps to the train platform. Even if I could just find my way to the hospital, to Aunt Harriette, arrangements could be made for me to be taken to her house. Uncle Herman was surely home, and Maggie, the housekeeper, was always present.

  More than ever, I needed a refuge, as my stay at the Brandts clearly wasn’t working out. Singleton Junior High (Isabel called it “Simpleton”) had put me in the awkward position of being in seventh-grade English, eighth-grade history, and ninth-grade mathematics. I was a stranger everywhere in the school, an odd duck who turned up here and there, had peculiar lunch hours, and couldn’t seem to make any friends. And, worst of all, that first day, when I had been greeted with “Sieg Heil,” had become the talk of the school. Explanations that I was a Jewish refugee, a rare survivor of Hitler’s murderous intentions, didn’t seem to lighten the stigma. Now had come the madness that I had wreaked at the USO club. I would be sorry to lose the companionship of Leona and Sybil, just as I had been sad to say goodbye to Isabel’s friend Ruth at Shady Pines. Why was it that I got along so well with Isabel’s friends, and not with her?

  Several trains had entered the station, coughed up their riders, taken on new ones, and rumbled away. I tried to recognize the abbreviated destinations on the cars and their route numbers or letters. But nothing seemed familiar. If only I’d jotted them down when I was traveling with Mrs. Brandt. Time was passing, my uncertainty was growing, and now, glancing down the long platform, I saw the figure of a New York City police officer. I told myself that I would board the next train wherever it was going. To be taken into custody before I could reach my family in Westchester was terrifying.

  Impatiently, I stared down the track, listening intently for the distant roar that announced the oncoming linkage of clanging metal, even before the beaconed first car came into sight. At the same time, approaching quickly, was the dark-blue-uniformed officer, equipped with a gun in his holster and a swinging club, so much like those the Nazi police used to powerfully bludgeon the heads of so-called troublemakers. When I had first seen this and mentioned it to Mrs. Brandt, she had assured me that, here in the United States, these weapons were called “night sticks,” and were only used on “drunkards found lying in the gutter.”

  “Help you, young lady?”

  I turned, cowering in the presence of the puffy, red-faced officer, who seemed so much larger up close than when I had eyed him from a distance.

  “I’m … waiting for a train,” I fumbled, “except I’m not sure which is the right one.”

  “Yeah,” he replied a bit sarcastically. “I noticed. You been walkin’ up and down here a long time. Where are you aimin’ to go?”

  “Oh, um Westchester …”

  “You live there?” The officer’s bleary, blue eyes, sunken and red-rimmed, perused me for truthfulness, instilling
a fear of oncoming doom. My deep fear of authority figures, whether the Nazi police, the ominous Mr. Rathbone, or a New York City officer of the law, overcame me. I dropped my head to avoid the officer’s gaze, and gave my captor the Brandts’ address on the Grand Concourse.

  Isabel opened the apartment door and immediately shouted out, “She’s here!” The living room resounded with exclamations of relief from Mrs. Brandt and Leona. Once released by the police officer, I ran so quickly to the room I shared with Isabel that the people in the apartment were a blur.

  From behind the closed door, I heard the burly officer deliver a warning. He had at first figured me for a runaway. On being told of my German refugee status by Mrs. Brandt, he advised her to keep “close tabs” on me. “There’s talk of spies getting into the country. If she finds herself in the wrong place at the wrong time, she could get into a lot of trouble.” Talk of being in “trouble.” I had experienced nothing but since that first day at school, where I had been teased with the undercover name of “Helga hot dog.”

  But far more serious to my mind was the fracas I had caused at the USO. Surely, this was only the first step in my encounters with the law in America. Bitterly, I thought again of my sins. It was not right that I should have come here instead of Helga, and the punishment I deserved was being meted out to me like small doses of poison.

  *

  A week later, there was encouraging news about Aunt Harriette. She was recuperating well, and almost ready to leave the hospital. As Mrs. Brandt was preparing for her son, Arnold, who had joined the Air Force, to come home on furlough, she assigned Isabel to accompany me on the subway and bus journey to the hospital.

  Aside from going to school, I had not left the apartment since the night I’d attempted to run away. Being out in public, even with the spunky Isabel, who really knew her way around, frightened me. For some reason, I thought I would be less visible to the police if I wore one of the khaki-colored caps and jackets that I’d brought with me from the farm hostel. I had chosen a cap with a visor and put all of my hair underneath it. Isabel eyed me suspiciously, but didn’t say anything about my appearance, which was surprising.