by Pam Lewis
Minke had been in America for two hours.
At the end of the line, uniformed doctors in smart khaki uniforms with bright red epaulets and caps with shiny black visors stood waiting for them, holding evil-looking instruments. The eye exam. “Let me see your eyes,” Minke said to Cassian. Her heart was beating so fast. His black eyes looked healthy to her. Any trace of an eye disease, and you were gone. She’d already seen people pulled from the line, taken up to the balcony that ran around the entire grand hall, and shown through a door that shut behind them.
When it was her turn, the doctor smiled kindly, and she took a deep breath of relief. Madame Gil had prepared her for hostility from the Americans, but that wasn’t the case at all. So far everyone was being kind. The doctor took Elly from her arms, laid her carefully on his examining table, and peered into the child’s eyes. He dipped his buttonhook into a beaker of blue liquid and used it to peel back the eyelid for a closer look. Minke made to snatch her baby back, but a nurse restrained her.
She watched, horrified, as the doctor proceeded to roll down Elly’s lower lids and upper lids. Elly made not so much as a whimper. The doctor turned to Minke. “Not Argentine, with those blue eyes of yours,” he said. His hands were gentle, and in spite of the terrifying instrument, she barely felt the exam. Before she knew it, she, Elly, and Cassian were moving on to the next station.
What Madame Gil had said turned out to be excellent advice. Minke felt each hurdle as a victory. They’d passed every test so far: the dreaded stairs, the long lines, and the eye exam. All that was left was the final check of their documentation.
They sat on long wooden benches. Ahead of them, the Russian family huddled together, taking up barely any room. As people’s names were called, others moved down to fill the empty spaces. Elly was fussing by now, squirming in Minke’s arms, throwing her head back so Minke would put her down. The Russian woman held out her arms to Minke, nodding quickly and indicating she could hold Elly for a time. Panic swept over Minke at the thought of handing over her baby to a stranger.
“I think it’s all right,” Cassian said. “She’s not going anywhere. You’ll need to learn to trust people again.”
She helped the woman take Elly into her lap, and Elly’s expression was comical, her chubby little face and her eyes unblinking at this strange woman. The woman and all of her children stared back at Elly the same way. The children broke out in giggles, drawing a tentative but unmistakably pleased smile from Elly. They touched her silky auburn hair. Elly turned and reached for Minke. She’d had enough. The family slid down the bench a few more feet as room was made. The closer Minke was to the document stations, the better she saw what went on there.
At each station, an official checked the papers. People she’d seen with white chalk letters on their clothing or eye infections were gone, sucked through doors that led to hospitals and infirmaries or sent back to their homelands. Those who remained were people like them, people on the cusp of reaching America.
“Remember to answer plainly,” Cassian said.
It was the Russian family’s turn. Minke, Cassian, and Elly slid to the end of the bench. An interpreter was called over to assist the Russian family. The father did all the talking; the official made notes.
It took a long time, but finally they were cleared. The mother waved goodbye to Minke before gathering up her children and setting off down the stairs. Then it was their turn. Minke rose, trying to keep from trembling, which could upset Elly, who was sleeping in her arms. They were called to the last station in the line, the one closest to a wide staircase leading down. Two brass banisters divided the staircase into three parts. Her heart leaped with recognition. This was the staircase of separation. Madame had said she could see Sander from there. She bent over, the better to see the area beyond the stairs. There had to be a hundred people down there, faces upturned, waiting. She trembled with excitement. Somewhere in that milling of humanity were her husband and perhaps Fenna. It was so difficult to tell. People flooded down the stairs, obstructing her view. Too much was happening.
“Miss!” a man shouted.
She flinched and turned. The official to whom Cassian was speaking was glaring at her. “He’s down there,” Minke said excitedly, pointing down the stairs.
The official indicated a white line across the floor. “No one is permitted to cross,” he said.
Cassian was smoothing out their papers on the official’s desk. He was speaking in English. She would do the same when it was her turn. Cassian said it showed their bona fides to have learned the language of the country they were trying to enter.
She still could not take her eyes from the crowd of people on the lower level. She thought she found Sander’s face. Her heart skipped a beat, but the man took off his hat, and it was not Sander.
“Your paper,” Cassian said, nudging her. “Pay attention!”
While the man read, she bent deeply, looking again for Sander. There he was! Yes! Her knees almost buckled at the sight of him, and the familiar luscious fever spread through her. She waved frantically with her whole arm. He saw her. Their eyes met. “Elly, see your papa?” She held the baby up for Sander to see.
A commotion erupted behind her. Four officials crowded about the desk, one of them an interpreter. The men conferred. Minke’s heart quickened. What was wrong? “Come here, madam,” the official snapped at her.
“He disputes our passports,” Cassian said.
She searched again for Sander.
“Madam, look at me.”
She raised her eyes to his. He was so impatient.
“Come with me.” The official led the way down one of the dreaded corridors. This couldn’t be happening. “Sander!” she screamed into the crowd and caught a fleeting glimpse of him. “My husband is right there,” she said. “He can fix anything.”
They were taken to a room with wooden chairs and families scattered about, children crying, women crying. The door shut behind them. They were told to sit. Another official was moving among the miserable inhabitants of the room, taking names, checking a heavy book for something. “What’s going on? What’s the matter?” she hissed to Cassian.
“They think we’re Argentine, but we sail on Dutch passports. It will be cleared.”
“That’s ridiculous.” She made to get up.
“Sit down. They are bureaucrats. They have all the power. Be respectful, for God’s sake.” Cassian had never spoken so sternly to her.
“Maceió, correct?” a new officer asked.
Minke nodded. Every time the door opened and more people came into the room, Minke’s head swiveled, sure it was Sander, sure they would be delivered. But only more people came in, shock registering on their faces.
“Mrs. DeVries. Dr. Tredegar.” The voice was different. “I beg your pardon. You are free to go.”
She didn’t wait but threw open the door and ran back down the corridor, Cassian limping along behind her. Once back at the passport desk, she waited impatiently for Cassian to catch up, desperate to find Sander and let him know all was well. The official stamped passports, stamped the ship’s manifest in several places. Thump, thump, thump. He pushed the passports back to her. “Welcome to America,” he said, but he was looking beyond her to the next people in line.
The noise, the smell, the people all came to life again. She clutched Elly and pushed her way down the stairs of separation, taking the ones on the right, where she’d seen Sander. Frantic with excitement, she jostled the people around her, Elly bumping against her hip. All over, people ran for freedom, and in the plaza outside, people hugged and kissed and children were swept into the arms of parents and aunts and uncles. She stopped, looked about, jumped to see over people’s heads. “Sander DeVries,” she shouted. Where was he?
A ferryboat was pulling up to the dock, and the crowd began moving toward it. She pushed her way through. If Sander thought she and Cassian had been denied entrance to America, he could be in that crowd. She didn’t dare take the chance. If
he left now, how would they ever find him? She shouted his name at the top of her lungs and pushed through the people, who swore at her in all languages. Clinging tightly to Cassian’s hand, she forced her way through the crowd, not caring whose toes she stepped on. She had to see if Sander was on the ferry. Onboard, she searched faces, and there he was, standing near the rear. “Sander!” Oh, she was so unbearably happy to see him, but he was white as a sheet. “What a fright we had,” she said when she reached him. “You saw it. We were almost sent back.” He looked like a person in shock. “Sander!” She covered his face in kisses, though his kiss in return was leaden, nothing but the coolest brush of his lips across hers. She appealed to Cassian and saw a glance pass between the two men. Something was very wrong. For the briefest moment, she understood. The plain fact. Sander hadn’t been afraid they would all be sent back.
He’d been hoping for it.
15
THE HUDSON RIVER glittered. Ice chunks banged against the gunwales. Her nose would be bright red. It always happened in this weather. Sander was all business, peeling off the tickets for the ferryman, shoving through the people to get seats together on a bench, and only then did he reach for Elly and hold her up in both his large hands. The two regarded each other like a pair of wary dogs.
“Sander?” she said.
He returned Elly to Minke’s lap, leaned back, and threw an arm on the top of the bench behind her. Around her shoulders but not quite touching.
“Cat got your tongue, Sander DeVries?”
“It’s been an extremely difficult period for me” was all he said. She didn’t need to be told that. Who’d had the worst of it since they had parted? Zef’s kidnapping had been much harder on her, and then childbirth by herself.
“What of Fenna?” she asked, studying him in profile.
He reddened. “What of her?”
“Where is she?”
“Not feeling well,” he said.
She sat back and held Elly tighter. She glanced at Cassian, who turned his hands over, finding something interesting to observe on his shiny fingernails.
The ferry pulled up to a wide wooden dock, and people pushed past, clogging the passageways with luggage. She, Cassian, Sander, and Elly were the last to debark.
She’d expected the yellow car, imagined them driving home, Cassian and Sander in front and she in the back, very much like the night she’d left Enkhuizen for Amsterdam and the Frisia. Instead of the car, though, they walked block after block. Great piles of slush met them at every curb, and she had to hop over them, sometimes landing ankle-deep in the wet filth. She practically froze in her black dress, which let drafts of frigid air in through the cuffs and sagging neckline. She must have looked so ugly to Sander. She kept Elly tucked tightly to her to keep her warm. In spite of the fumes and sounds, the hundreds of people, she was awed at the sheer height of the city, the way the buildings soared into the air.
Sander forged ahead without ever stopping to take his bearings. She hung on to his sleeve when the crush of people threatened to separate them, looking over her shoulder and asking him to slow down for poor Cassian.
They reached a place where trains thundered overhead and cars drove like racers underneath. A long set of stairs went to a platform, all enclosed, as big as a ballroom, with worn wooden floors and train tracks cutting down the middle. A train came and went, but Sander made no move to board it. Not theirs. He knew that somehow, and again she felt the old familiar pull toward him and appreciated his knowledge of things. She reached for him and squeezed his arm, pressed her fingers down the inside of his palm.
“The money is gone,” he said before the rattling of another train prevented further words. The doors opened with a screech. She stepped aboard. The train had rows of shiny butterscotch-colored wicker benches.
“How?”
He shook his head. Don’t ask.
She’d never been on a train, never gone this fast. It took her breath away. They careered over streets dozens of feet beneath them. She was dazzled and couldn’t think about the money. Sander would figure something out. Doors hissed open and then hissed shut. People got on and off, no one meeting anyone else’s eye. The crowd on the train thinned, doors opened again, Sander shepherded her and Cassian through the door against the press of people getting on. They were in another enormous station. Sander led the way down a set of covered stairs to the street level, where children ran in the streets shouting to one another in German and Dutch. Their mothers sat huddled on stone stairs, warming their hands over small fires. They watched suspiciously as Minke passed. A row of stores stretched up West 121st Street. The smell was of fish cooking. The whole was more like Enkhuizen than the New York she’d seen a half hour earlier. Sander was still the Pied Piper, several strides ahead of her and Cassian. The slush along this street was dirtier and deeper than in the streets around the ferry.
Sander finally stopped beside a grog shop with beer barrels in its windows, men on chairs looking dully out to the street and drinking from steins. One of them raised a stein to Sander. He opened a door on the left side of the bar, and she was reminded again of arriving with him in Amsterdam. But how different this was. How much more bleak.
The stairs were narrow and stank of garbage. They went up one story, then another and a third, until they reached a small landing with two doors, one marked 3A and the other 3B. Sander inserted a key into the lock of 3B and swung open the door to a darkened foyer. Ahead was a long hall with a filthy window at the end and doors leading off it.
They went through the apartment, Sander in the lead, then Minke and Cassian. There was a front parlor with only a couch and a chair in it, a small kitchen, and then two rooms, neither bigger than a cell. In one of the rooms, Fenna’s clothes lay in a heap on the floor.
“Where is Fenna?” she asked just as Sander swung open the door to the slightly larger room with a double bed. Their room. The bedclothes were pulled mostly off the bed onto the floor, as if the bed hadn’t been made in days.
“Right here,” a voice behind her said.
Fenna stood in the doorway in her nightdress, lank blond hair falling over her shoulders, her eyes and nose red. “Fenna?” Minke took a step forward, then stopped. She felt as though she’d walked into something very personal, something that didn’t include her. Fenna clutched at her stomach, moaned, and fled. Minke followed and found her sister slumped over the toilet. She thrust one hip to take Elly’s weight while she found a cloth, wet it with water standing in the sink, and held it to Fenna’s forehead. “Cassian,” Minke called. “Can you come?”
“Something I ate,” Fenna said. “You have to be careful in this stinking country.”
Together, Minke and Cassian helped Fenna to the room where they’d seen her clothing. Since there was no bedding, they spread her old green coat over the mattress, bunched up her other clothes for a pillow, and lay a blanket on top of her.
“Go to Sander,” Cassian said. “I’ll see to Fenna.”
Minke had been carrying Elly for a long time by now, and when she went back to the bedroom, where she’d left Sander, she needed to sit. Let him speak, Minke told herself. Don’t rush headlong into this.
Sander made a show of righting the bedclothes, to no avail. He stood arms akimbo at the window that looked onto the side of an adjacent building, and cleared his throat. She kept her determination to stay silent. At last he turned to face her. “You look tired,” he said. Elly swung her head around to see where the voice had come from.
Don’t speak, Minke told herself. If she said a word, the whole flood of her anger would come roaring out—his cold reception, this awful place, and above all, Fenna.
He sat on the bed, his body touching hers, and hung his head. She recoiled. He said, “We have had a very difficult time in this country.”
Minke kept her silence.
“Everything is up to me. Breadwinner for everybody now. You, the baby, Cassian, that sister of yours. I do my best.”
“The baby’s name
is Elly,” she said.
“Don’t look at me with those accusing eyes, Minke.”
“Where did our money go?” He’d spoken in glowing terms of America. The streets were paved in gold. He would find work easily. Fenna would find a magnificent house for all of them. “You were to have begun your business, found a decent place to live.”
“That’s all you care about. Money. I know you. I know what you’re thinking.”
“What am I thinking, Sander?” She waited, but he did not reply. “You don’t dare say aloud what I’m thinking, do you?”
“Mind your place, Minke.”
“I’m thinking—” She had to stop and take a deep breath. “I’m thinking that for this I gave up the chance of ever finding Zef.” Her lip trembled at the mention of Zef and brought back vividly the terrible night he was taken.
Her hysterical screams had drawn people to the beach. She’d been frantic, clawing at them. “My baby,” she kept calling. “Zef.” In her panic, all she could think was that the entire world had to stop, to freeze, until Zef could be found.
They led her from the beach, but she fought them all the way. What if Zef came back and couldn’t find her? She couldn’t leave him. Their small house was crowded. Everyone talked at once. Sander gave her a small amount of morphine because she was hysterical. She’d tried to fight him off. She must go back. She must find Zef. But hands held her down and slipped the spoon between her lips. The morphine clouded her thoughts but didn’t take away the jagged pain. She clutched herself as if pressing Zef to her. She thrashed until Fenna held her tight and told her to think of the baby inside her, to be calm or she would damage it.
Sander had become the grand inquisitor. Whom had she told about going to the beach with Zef? She had told no one. “What about that boy?” he had asked. “That German boy.” She’d slurred because of the drug, saying no, never, she hadn’t seen Pieps in months, but Sander pressed on, explosive in his conviction that Pieps had had something to do with it, and she had bolted from her bed and made for the door because no one was doing anything. They were only shouting and talking. She’d run to the path that led to the shore. “Zef!” she had screamed over and over, her voice just a hoarse cry.