The Devil's Madonna

by Sharon Potts

  Kali nodded. She decided not to say anything about the violent attack on the aide last night. “I was hoping you’d have some suggestions on how to calm her down. She’s so frightened about everything lately.”

  “You weren’t concerned when we met this morning,” Guzman said. “Did something happen after that?”

  “It seems like anything and everything’s a trigger. This afternoon, someone left a package with lace doilies at the house and when my grandmother saw them, she freaked out.”

  “Doilies?” Guzman’s strange green eyes were fixed on Kali and his lip twitched. “Did she say what upset her about them?”

  Kali shook her head. “But she keeps returning to her past. Talking about things that don’t make sense to me.”

  “That’s certainly not unusual.”

  “I understand that, but something’s bothering her. I wish I could get her to open up to me more.”

  “It sounds like she is.”

  “Not really. She talks in riddles or in German.”

  His forehead went up again. “She speaks German?”

  “She lived in Austria when she was young.”

  “Again, it’s not unusual for the elderly to begin speaking their first language. But tell me, what do you know about her past that could be disturbing her?”

  “Well, I just found out she used to be an actress, though I’m not sure why that would upset her, unless she lied to my grandfather about it. But he’s been dead for ten years.”

  “What do you mean you just found out?”

  “She never talks about it, but I discovered some films she was in as a young woman.”

  “Interesting. Have you talked to her about them?”

  “I just saw them myself. At first I thought I should show them to her, that she’d be happy to see them. Then I became worried they’d only upset her more. It’s one of the things I wanted to ask you about.”

  He looked thoughtful as he tapped his chin with his folded hands. “I think showing her the films would be a good thing. If, as you say, she has something in her past that’s bothering her, this may be a way to draw her out of her shell.”

  Guzman opened the top desk drawer and took out a cigarette and a silver lighter. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

  “Actually, I’d prefer if you didn’t.”

  His lip jerked downward.

  She felt herself flush. “I’m sorry, but I’m pregnant and secondhand smoke isn’t good for my baby.”

  His gaze remained fixed on her; his distorted iris looked like a broken keyhole.

  “Maybe I’d better leave,” she said.

  “No, no, please sit.” The harsh expression evaporated and he put the cigarette and lighter back in the drawer. “My apologies. I never would have guessed you were pregnant.”

  “I’m only three months.”

  He gestured toward her hand. “You aren’t wearing a wedding ring.”

  She put her right hand over her left. “I’m an artist. I work with paints and chemicals. They don’t go well with jewelry.”

  “I see, so you don’t go by Campbell any longer?”

  “No, sorry. It’s Miller now.”

  “And isn’t Mr. Miller able to help out with your grandmother?”

  Kali shook her head. “No. My husband’s a lawyer. He’s, well—”

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to pry. I’m only interested in your grand-mother’s well-being.” He gave her a small smile. “And yours, of course. I can see how important it is to help your grandmother get back on track and relieve the strain on you.”

  “So I should show her the films? Is there anything else? Will you be coming to the house to talk to her?”

  “Ordinarily, I would. But since you mention paranoia, I’m concerned she might have an adverse reaction to such a visit.”

  Kali nodded. “You’re right. She’s very suspicious of strangers.”

  “But that doesn’t mean I can’t treat her from afar. And I certainly want to be sure you’re getting the support you need.” He opened the top drawer again, this time taking out his BlackBerry. “Why don’t you and I arrange to meet again tomorrow at about this time? You can tell me about her reaction to the films.”

  “I think that will be okay.”

  “That’s right. You have to make arrangements with your neighbor.”

  Kali nodded.

  “No problem. I’ll put it down on my schedule. If you can’t make it, give me a call.”

  “You haven’t mentioned your fees. How does that work?”

  “I charge a hundred and fifty an hour, but we run it through Medicare. I’ll coordinate with the hospital so we don’t have to bother your grandmother with paperwork.”

  “Thank you. I appreciate that.”

  They both stood. Guzman took Kali’s arm, like he was escorting an old person or an invalid. “Well then, Mrs. Miller,” he said, stressing the ‘Mrs.’ “I very much look forward to seeing you tomorrow and hearing how everything worked out with your grandmother and those films.”

  “Thanks for your time.”

  “My pleasure.” He pointed a finger at her abdomen like a pistol and clicked his tongue. “And do take good care of that little one.”

  42

  The sky was darkening as Kali pulled into her grandmother’s driveway.

  How many hours are in a day? Certainly she had been through many more than twenty-four since driving through the storm to get to her grandmother the night before. It was now six thirty in the evening. Only eighteen hours had passed since she and Seth were making love and got interrupted by the aide’s phone call. Eighteen hours since Kali’s life had been interrupted.

  She reached across to the passenger seat, picked up the small bag with the clothes she’d taken from her house, then used her key to get inside. She set her bundle of clothes down at the foot of the stairs and glanced in the living room. Neil wasn’t there, so she went to the kitchen.

  He was sitting at the table, a large book open in front of him.

  “Hey,” she said when he looked up.

  He put his finger over his lips. “She’s sleeping,” he mouthed. He gestured toward the back door.

  Kali followed him outside. It was still light enough to see, but only just. Above the canopy of the mahogany tree, the tops of royal palms were silhouetted against white clouds in a mercury-colored sky. The effect was surreal, but majestic.

  Her foot kicked a plastic dish on the cracked patio stone and the smell of cat musk hit her. She glanced down. The food and water dishes were empty. No one had been feeding the stray cats since her grandmother almost burned her house down over a week ago. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of it when she was here on Sunday.

  “Just one sec, Neil.” Kali picked up the plastic dishes and went back inside. She opened the bag of dry cat food on the étagère and poured some into one dish. Then she filled the other with water and went back outside. Her grandmother had always taken care of the cats, but Kali had kept her distance from the slinky, aloof creatures. Never quite “getting” them. Or maybe it was because they seemed so much like her grandmother.

  Neil was sitting on one of the PVC chairs in the shadow of the mahogany tree. He’d brought the book he’d been reading in the kitchen and was flipping through pages, using the light from his cell phone. Kali put the food dishes down near the edge of the step, then went to join him.

  A truck rattled by in the street. Kali lowered herself into the fabric frame of the chair, thinking about the cushions in the storage room. Maybe she should bring them down. She glanced up at the flowering crimson bougainvillea, which blocked the storage room window, then over at Neil. He seemed engrossed in his book.

  Should she tell him about what happened so many years ago? But how could that possibly help anything? She leaned back in the uncomfortable chair, the pipe cutting into her back. “I don’t see them anywhere. I hope they haven’t starved to death.”

  “What’s that?” Neil looked up from the book.

&nb
sp; “The cats. No one’s fed them and they’re not around. I hope they haven’t starved to death.”

  “Would that be a loss?”

  “Neil!”

  “Just kidding. Gizmo’s been barking at something in the bushes when we go for a walk. I’m sure it’s the cats, alive and well.”

  Kali nodded. “Thanks for watching my grandmother. Everything okay?”

  “Mmm-hmm.” He pushed his glasses up on his nose.

  “What? Something happened?”

  “Nothing bad. First tell me how your meeting went.”

  “Dr. Guzman thinks I should show her the films.”

  “Anything else?”

  “He wants me to come by again tomorrow around five to let him know how she reacted. I hate to keep relying on you, but—”

  “It’s fine. I can stay with her again tomorrow.”

  “I really appreciate it.”

  “No problem.” He put his arm across the book. “So did you go home?”

  She nodded.

  “And?”

  “I packed up some clothes and stuff. Seth wasn’t there.”

  “So no confrontations.”

  “No. No confrontations.” She lifted up her braid. “And what have you been up to? You seem pretty engrossed in that book.”

  He held it up. It was worn. “It’s an old history book. One of my dad’s. He had a collection about the Third Reich.”

  “And you decided to read this particular book for some reason?”

  “Actually, yes.” He opened the book to a page. “Have you ever heard of Kristallnacht?”

  “Wasn’t that the night a group of Nazis went around smashing Jewish shops?” She had an unsettled feeling talking about this. Like last week at Seth’s parents’ house.

  “You’re close,” Neil said. “It was an anti-Jewish pogrom triggered by the assassination of a German diplomat by a Jew. Kristallnacht is known in English as The Night of Broken Glass, but it wasn’t actually an organized Nazi attack. In fact, let me read what the Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels said in a speech.”

  He opened his cell phone and held it over the page. “The Führer has decided that . . . demonstrations should not be prepared or organized by the party, but insofar as they erupt spontaneously, they are not to be hampered.” He closed the book. “Actually the assassination is thought to be a pretext for the attacks. Kristallnacht was part of the broader racial policy of Nazi Germany including anti-Semitism and persecution of the Jews.” He sounded like the college professor he was. “There was a great deal of destruction on Kristallnacht. It’s believed that thousands of Jews were arrested and placed in concentration camps, their homes and businesses ransacked, synagogues destroyed. Many historians view this night as the beginning of Hitler’s Final Solution, leading to the genocide of the Holocaust.”

  “Why are you reading about this?”

  “I’ve been trying to figure out why your grandmother lit all of those candles last week. They were Yahrzeit candles, usually lit in memory of Jewish relatives.”

  Kali had already been down this road with Seth. Was Neil also starting to believe her grandmother was some kind of anti-Semite? “I know that. But what does her candle lighting have to do with Kristallnacht?”

  “Do you remember what date last Monday was?”

  She shook her head. She was losing track of time. Last Monday was when she’d had dinner with Seth’s family. The night the conversation about her grandmother’s past had turned awkward. Kali had broken one of her mother-in-law’s good crystal glasses, then gotten the phone call from the hospital.

  “Today’s Tuesday, November 17th, so last Monday, when your grandmother lit the candles, was November 9th.”

  He announced it like it was some obvious revelation, but Kali had no idea what he was getting at.

  “November 9th,” he said, again.

  “Right. I got that. So?”

  “November 9th, 1938 was Kristallnacht.”

  Kali felt a knife cut across her spine. “And you think my grandmother was somehow involved?” Her voice sounded clipped and harsh to her own ears.

  “No, Kali. Of course not. She was lighting candles, not burning crosses.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re getting at.”

  “Okay.” Neil held his hands up. “Let me back up. You were asking if anything happened earlier. And yes, something did. I went to check on your grandmother and she wasn’t in her room. I found her in your old bedroom. She was in the rocking chair facing your mother’s graduation picture and she was singing.”

  “She was doing that earlier. I heard her.”

  “Did you recognize the song?”

  Kali shook her head.

  “I’ll sing it for you.”

  “You know it?”

  Neil smiled and began to sing in a low, clear voice.

  Oyfn pripetshik brent a fayerl,

  Un inshtub iz heys . . .

  She recognized the wistful melody that her grandmother had been singing. “Do you know what it means?”

  He nodded.

  In the little hearth flickers a little flame,

  Warmth spreads through the house . . .

  “That’s pretty,” Kali said, “but I don’t understand why you’re so excited.”

  “My grandmother used to sing it.”

  “Your grandmother? She knew German?”

  “Not German.” Neil leaned closer to her. She could see his eyes shining behind his glasses. “Let me sing the rest of the verse.”

  Un der rebe lernt kleyne kinderlekh

  Dem alef-beys.

  “I’ll translate it for you,” he said.

  And the rabbi teaches little children

  The Hebrew alphabet.

  Kali stared at him, perplexed.

  “It’s a Yiddish folk song, Kali. I think your grandmother was lighting all those candles in memory of those who died in the Holocaust.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  He reached over and took Kali’s hand. “I’m pretty sure your grandmother’s Jewish.”

  Jewish? Not possible. That would mean Kali had been born Jewish. How could Lillian have known that and not said something when Kali went through the conversion process?

  “I don’t know, Neil. Why would she have hidden that?” Kali pulled her hand out of Neil’s, got up, and went over to the mahogany. She leaned against its rough bark.

  Neil followed her. “It’s a lot to process.”

  “Jewish.” She shook her head and pulled off a piece of bark—black and moldy. “There’s so much I don’t understand. About her. About me. All these revelations suddenly surfacing. It’s turning me upside-down.”

  “But isn’t this what you wanted? To find your past?”

  “But why is it all so mysterious? Why couldn’t my grandmother have told me she’d once been an actress? That she’s Jewish, if, in fact, she is or was.”

  “I think plenty of people hid their Jewish identities during the Holocaust. Then when they got to the United States they saw no point in revealing the truth. After all, there was a time in Europe the Jews felt they were safe, then along came Hitler. Who knows? Maybe your grandmother feared another Hitler might come to power in America. Better to keep her secret hidden.”

  Kali took a deep breath. Damp, decaying vegetation filled her lungs. It was a primal smell, like Kali imagined existed when the earth was first forming.

  “You really believe it’s true?” she asked. “That she’s Jewish?”

  “It fits, doesn’t it? The Yahrzeit candles, the Yiddish lullaby, the need to hide her true religion if she wanted to be an actress in Berlin in the 1930s.”

  It had grown darker. Tiny flashes of light from fireflies appeared against the dark shrubs and reminded Kali of Whistler’s painting Nocturne in Black and Gold.

  “You realize what that means about you, if it is true? If your grandmother is Jewish?”

  It meant she had an identity, a history, a past. Not one that she’d converte
d into, but one that she was born into. She would no longer be an impostor, a wannabe. “It means,” she said softly, “that I’m the real thing.”

  In the darkness, his eyes glittered like the fireflies. “You’ve always been the real thing, Kali.”

  Her heart began to race, and the blood that was pounding in her ears made it impossible to think. She studied his high forehead, mussed black hair, cleft chin, intense gray eyes hidden behind his glasses.

  A white cat ran across the yard.

  Kali stepped back. Whatever this was with Neil, it wasn’t real.

  She could hear the sound of crunching as the cat chomped down on the food.

  Kali slid her braid between her fingers. “But this is just speculation. I need to know for certain.”

  “Then ask her.”

  “Right. She’s been hiding all these secrets for something like seventy years; you think she’d tell me, just like that?”

  “It sounds like she’s ready for the truth to come out.”

  She pictured her grandmother rocking beneath the photo-portrait of Kali’s mother, sharing her memories, humming a Yiddish lullaby. Such lovely words.

  In the little hearth flickers a little flame,

  Warmth spreads through the house.

  Neil was right. Her grandmother wanted the warmth of the hearth. She wanted Kali to know the truth.

  43

  Lillian was certain she smelled paint. She sniffed the air, trying to pick up the source. It was her imagination. It had to be.

  She rolled her walker across the rug on her bedroom floor, then out into the hallway. The smell was coming from Dorothy’s room. She followed it, the scent becoming stronger as she approached the closet.

  But that was impossible. She had painted over the picture weeks ago, just as she had done with the others; there couldn’t still be an odor. Unless it had come back to haunt her.

  She opened the closet door. All white. Nothing more. She ran her fingertips over the smooth surface. She could feel the outline of an image. It was pushing its way through the outer layer of paint.

  She jerked her hand away, as though she’d received a jolt of electricity, and brought her fingertips to her lips.