The boy, Deshawn, walked us into the church and sat us in the second row in an area marked RESERVED. He said the Andersons would be so glad we came. He shook my hand and told me that my husband was the coolest guy in all of the Bronx. It was such a lovely day. The mother and father of the boy getting married—I can’t remember his name; it was a regular name like John or Joe—came to see us and make sure we were comfortable. The mother wore a hat with a lace veil on it, and she smelled like roses. Then the grandparents, the cousins, the uncles, the boy himself. Julius shook hands with everyone, and when they thanked him for saving the boy’s life, he said the boy had saved himself.
I think that was my favorite wedding of all, including my own son’s. A lady in a light blue dress sang a beautiful song, and everyone was crying. The groom was so handsome, and the bride was a tiny thing in a poufy white dress with a long train. I told Julius she looked like an African princess. He whispered, Just tell her she looks beautiful. I knew that! There were things I told him that I wouldn’t say to other people. Like when a Mexican man came one time to fix our pipes, and when he couldn’t understand me, I figured he did not speak English. I got the superintendent, and when he started speaking in Spanish, the man said, I speak English. I just can’t understand her. I wanted to die. When people hear my accent, they ask me where I am from. Washington Heights, I tell them, though I know what they mean. What am I going to say? If I say I am from Germany, they will think I am German. I am not German. I am a Jew. I never belonged to that country. I don’t belong to this one either. They tried to make a Jewish state in Israel, but the land the Jews should inhabit doesn’t exist anymore. Milk and honey, a land of sweetness and soft green hills, and enough rain and piercing sunlight. I think it is on the other side of the clouds. Not heaven. The promised land.
Julius did not like it when I talked that way. His family were Zionists. He was very proud of the state of Israel. We both went to Palestine after the war. Julius never told anyone else, not even his sons, that when we arrived in Palestine his family, who had left before the war, refused at first to accept him into their home. They were ashamed of him, ashamed of all survivors. We had let ourselves be led like lambs to the slaughter, they said. We didn’t fight like they fought against the English and the Arabs. Julius had let his wife and children be murdered—where were his scars, where were his bullet wounds? He should have died defending them. Believe me, this is something Julius thought himself, so when he stood there in the sandy street outside his uncle’s house, a house with glass windows and olive trees in the yard, and was told there was no room for us, he understood and walked away. It was only when the Jewish police went back with us and ordered his family to take us in—the shelters and hospitals were stretched thin, so if you had a relative, they put you there no matter what condition you were in—that they opened the gate and embraced him. Me, they said nothing to. Julius introduced me as his wife, and then the man—an uncle of an uncle, I think—looked me up and down, and said, Pretty enough. Julius was not angry with his uncle. He understood that they could never understand. He felt the same way about the guard who smashed his baby’s head against a wall. He was an animal, he said. We heard once of a child who fell into the tiger cage at a zoo and was, of course, destroyed. He said the guard was like that. They did not shoot the tiger. It was being a tiger. If he could find the guard, he would put him in a cage, but he would not kill him.
I am not like Julius. I can remember the face of the German soldier who dragged my mother down the stairs in 1938 on the night of the November pogrom that is called Kristallnacht in the history books. He had been in my brother David’s class at school; his father worked in the lightbulb factory, and his mother had skinny legs with dark hair, and she used to wait until a Jewish child walked by their house to sweep the dust and crumbs out their front door into the child’s face. Kurt Boller. He dragged my mother by her beautiful black hair, and then they harnessed her to an oxcart and made her pull the cart, along with my friend’s mother, tossing shit at them, emptying chamber pots on their heads. I can remember the face of the soldier who shot my brother Levi because he was deaf and did not turn around when the boys who were rounded up for deportation were told to turn around. My mother and I saw it from where we were standing, and she gasped but said nothing. Although I was a hundred feet away, I can remember his icy eyes, and the way he laughed, with a crooked front tooth, his hands red and inflamed with the cold, and wrapped around the butt of his rifle. He poked my brother’s body, and then shot him again. This man would now be eighty-eight if he is alive. I would know him if I saw him, and I would kill him. I would kill him in a terrible, slow way.
Annette insisted that I come to Elizabeth’s wedding even though I told her I am tired of weddings and funerals alike. No more celebrations or mourning for me. The time has come for me to pull up a chair and just watch. Annette sent Benjamin to get me. I haven’t seen him in two years, since he moved to Minneapolis. While I was waiting for him, I mentioned this to William the doorman. William asked me what Benjamin did in Minneapolis, and for the life of me, I couldn’t remember, and then I said, Who knows? Does it matter? I waited in the lobby for a long time. He was late. When the boy walked in, he looked around, as if there were a hundred little old Jewish ladies waiting for him, and then, having determined that I was the only one, he crossed over, and said, “Aunt Rachel?” I looked up at him. “Are you ready to go?”
Was I ready to go? I was sitting there in a dress with my purse watching them set up for lunch. Maybe he thinks this is what I do every day. “Of course,” I said. He walked quickly to the door, pushed it open, and then realized I was a dozen steps behind him. He held the door open, letting all the hot air in, and I waited for William the doorman to say something, but William was reading the newspaper and couldn’t be bothered.
The car was parked out front, a Mercedes. All the Jews drive German cars now. Benjamin did not open the door for me, and it took me a minute to work the handle and then figure out the seat belt. He said, “For the record, this is my father’s car. I would never drive a car like this.” He lurched out into the street. “Gas guzzler.”
We drove in silence. His mother must have told him that I hated the highway because he took the long way over the surface streets, past the gigantic houses that have sprouted up all over the city. My friend Mila Goldstein’s house was torn down, and now the Taj Mahal stands in its place. Mila’s house was lovely, and now, like Mila, it is no more. The obliteration of the past is a human hobby. Sometimes we try to re-create it in our own memory, but what’s gone is gone. If you cut down an apple tree and then plant another in its place, it is not the same tree. I was contacted by authorities in Hesse twenty-five years ago. They had received funding—probably from a Jew—for a new project. They were going to make bronze life-size statues of children to stand in front of the houses those children had been taken from. They would put their names on the statues—Yakov Spivak, age eight, murdered in the Holocaust—and when people walked past, they would think of the little boy. This was their idea. I said, Why are you doing this? Those who care already care, and those who do not never will. Give the money to hungry children in Africa. They said, But we must remember, and I said, Someone will put a baseball cap or paint a mustache on the face of the boy. It is such an easy mark. The best intentions always are.
The Germans and the Poles have made a great industry of the desire of Jews (particularly those with no personal connection to the Holocaust) to visit the places where their great-great-grandparents came from. It is a regular Jewish Disney World there now, with Shabbat services in the synagogue, Jewish restaurants, and klezmer music, but the funny thing is: there are no Jews. It is like the Museum of Natural History only we are the dinosaurs on display behind the glass. The truth is, this is a feeling I have everywhere. Someone from Annette’s synagogue asked me to come speak with the children on Yom HaShoah. One of the little boys asked to see my tattoo. When I told him that only people who had been in concentrat
ion camps had tattoos, he looked confused. Their idea of the Holocaust is shaped by movies and television, so seeing a survivor in person has the same excitement as seeing an elephant in the wild; something that is only rumored to exist suddenly becomes real. But then it does not fit their preconceived notion of what it should look like—too big, too small, not sad enough, not scarred enough, too sad, too scarred. When people ask me where I am from, I say Washington Heights. I know what they mean, but I say Washington Heights. When they ask me when I came to America, I say 1952, and when they ask me where I came from, I say somewhere else.
When we got to the wedding, Benjamin honked his horn and drove up the driveway. There was a large van in front of us unloading an elderly gentleman in a wheelchair. The boy said, “There’s Bubbie and Zayde.” An elegant woman in high heels was attempting to maneuver the wheelchair over the grass away from the van. I thought Benjamin should get out to help, but it was not my place to say anything. I also thought he should open my door, but he sat there with the engine idling, and he finally said, “You can get out if you want to. I have to help drive people up the driveway.”
A man I recognized took the wheelchair from the older lady. It was Annette’s brother-in-law. I have met him only once or twice, so I forgave myself for not remembering his name, just Annette’s complaints about him. He was not a man of great accomplishments, but look, my David is accomplished but not so nice, and here was this man caring for his father. I wished I had not come. They would be eating lunch soon at the tower. Agnes and I always took the first shift. Eleven-thirty, then we try to walk a little. If Julius were here, he would tease me. What’s the rush? But now, when I have all the time in the world and nothing to do, I wake at dawn. I watch the smoggy sunrise and think of all the people who have died. I can’t even watch television. Nothing makes sense. When I complained to Annette, she got worried. She took me to the doctor to see if I was maybe getting demented, but I am fine. I am completely sane. My memory is perfect. I remember what happened sixty years ago, and I remember what they served for dinner last night. In the end, the doctor agreed with me: nothing on television makes sense.
Everyone was walking in one direction, so I followed, and then found a row and a seat. It was an unusually hot day for April, but the sun was shining, and a nice waiter offered me a glass of water. Most of the other chairs were empty, and I realized I had arrived very early, probably because Benjamin had other things to do. Annette has a pretty house, big but at least it was not a monstrosity. It was in a modern style, with large windows. The wedding was being held in the courtyard that opened to the back where there were woods mostly full of scraggly pine trees, a few oaks, nothing like the woods in Germany. Julius once went to a meeting in San Francisco, and a colleague there took him to see the giant redwoods. He said that was the closest he ever came to feeling the darkness of the European forests. The giant trees, he said, looked like a fairy tale come to life, which was believable in Eastern Europe, where the wonderful and the horrible mixed so easily.
Annette must be busy. Usually, she would come and find me and make sure I was comfortable. She feels responsible for me, like the daughter I never had, even though we are distantly related by American standards. Her mother’s sister married my brother Michael. Annette’s mother used to bring her to New York to go shopping. They would come to Washington Heights for a visit. Julius nicknamed Annette the meshuga hun, the crazy chicken. She had so much energy, showing us the clothes she bought, telling us about the shows she saw, the Statue of Liberty—as if we had never seen it. She always wanted David and Simon to come with them, be tourists. Sometimes Simon would go if it was a museum. Shows and shopping he didn’t like. Simon was quiet and studious, like the little heder child he was, with his nose in books all the time, though they were books of fantasy with elves and witches. I would have liked for him to read something useful once in a while, history or science, but Julius told me that everyone grows up on his own schedule. The boys who got tallest early end up the smallest. Don’t rush him, Rachel, he would say. After all, the world is small and there really are not so many places to go. Walking through the noisy streets of the city, jostled by strangers, with cars honking and mysterious things falling from the sky—paper, drops of water, once even an egg fell and smashed right in front of me—I would wonder how he could say such a thing. To me, I had gone as far away from Lauterbach as another planet. I am one of the few people who can say she has lived in two entirely different worlds, the Earth and somewhere that has yet to be named.
David was the practical one. He didn’t care about where he was from, only where he was going. If I tried to talk to him about my brother, his namesake, he would shift from foot to foot for a moment before saying he had to go, he had baseball practice or a big exam or a date. He studied business in college, and then more business, and now he does something with money, I don’t know what, but he must do well, because the house is big, the swimming pool is big, the children each have a car, and they ski and take trips to Mexico and all have healthy tans. I am happy for him, but I do not know him. If I had not carried him in my body, I would wonder if he was my son. He idolizes his father; there are pictures of Julius all over the house, but I do not see Julius in this man.
People ask me if I think the Holocaust could ever happen in America. I usually say no, because that is what they want to hear, but I think human beings are capable of doing the most horrible things to one another at any time and any place. Nowhere is safe. This makes life rather bitter, I am aware, but anyone who has been tormented as a child by otherwise seemingly normal adults must know its truth. I used to play dolls with a little girl named Trudel. Trudel and I were the best jump-ropers in our grade at school, and every day at recess we counted higher and higher, trading off the title of champion with ease. Her house was not as nice as my house, but she had an excellent collection of dolls by dint of being the youngest of five girls. Her mother worked as a domestic in a big house, and her father was a truck driver, so they were seldom home. Her older sisters managed the house and cooked the meals. One day her mother arrived home early. She was an ugly woman. If you wanted to draw a witch, you might choose some of her features. She had a large mouth with a loose lower lip that drooped low almost to her chin. Large eyes, almost all white, with small dots of gray in the center, surrounded by chapped raw skin that she worsened by constantly rubbing. She stood in the doorway; I felt her presence for some time before she said anything, and I carried on playing, nervous for Trudel, because the presence of a silent adult usually meant someone had done something wrong. We had concocted a tea party, and Trudel’s doll asked my doll if she would like some more. Hep! Hep! Trudel’s mother cried from the door. At first, I thought she was coughing, but then she blocked out the light, her large shadow swooped over me, and she shouted, Hep! Hep! and clapped into my ear. Then she laughed. Hep, hep! She pushed me over. I scooted away from her, and she flapped her hands as if she were shooing chickens. Trudel stared blankly at me. Her mother clapped and flapped at me until I had no choice but to gather my schoolbooks and run away.
My mother was in the kitchen when I arrived panting and crying. I told her what had happened, and she forbade me to ever go to that house again. Hep, hep is a herder’s cry. It is used on cattle, sheep, chickens, and Jews.
Annette finally finds me at the wedding. She is in a rush, like always, meshuga hun, and fanning herself with the program. She sees that I am seated. There is some kind of problem with the caterer or the dress or the music, and she can’t stay. She asks me if I am hot, but when I say yes, she doesn’t offer to do anything about it. She rushes off. A man and a woman sit in front of me, and the woman puts her purse down to save a seat for someone. The man is large and broad shouldered, and I realize I will not be able to see over him, but I don’t care enough to move.
Other people’s children have never mattered much to me. Julius was different, but then Julius was a pediatrician. Other people’s children were his whole life. The boy who died w
as named Joshua. The girl was Judith. He refused to give these names to any of our children. He could not bear to speak them, and when he treated a child named Josh or Judy, he made up a nickname. He called the boys little bear, little sheep, and the girls little kitten. The parents thought he did this to all the children, but they were wrong, only those named Josh or Judy.
Sometimes, when I was sadder than usual, Julius brought me to the office. He said he needed help, but what did he need with my two left hands? He had good nurses to help, and I only made things more difficult. I couldn’t type or write prescriptions. He said people liked meeting his wife. He was proud of me. He would tell the young mothers to ask me how to soothe a crying child, how to make a baby go to sleep, how to break a fever. He said, Rachel, show them how you rub the baby’s back. The mothers handed over their babies with so much trust. I felt them, warm and hazy, in my arms. They nuzzled into my neck. Who hurts a baby? I would wonder. Their necks were damp and soft; there is a spot between a baby’s shoulder blades that you can press ever so firmly with your thumb, and it works like pressing a button. They get quiet and relax, and just like that, they sleep, suddenly slack against your shoulder, formless in your arms. Once it was a Joshua he wanted me to hold. He said, This little bear is making life hard for his mother. He doesn’t want to sleep. When the mother, a tiny little thing who still looked like a child to me, with her liquid black eyes and soft mouth, handed the baby to me, and said, Help me with my Joshua, I glanced over at Julius. He met my eyes and looked away. I knew what he was thinking. Somewhere in the human heart is the ability to take this small thing by its pink crinkled feet and smash it. Julius and I had to learn to live with that knowledge.
We Are Gathered Page 18