“Girls here are spoiled and begin doing grown-up things much too early,” he snapped. “Can’t you see? They dress and paint their faces to make boys notice them and make passes at them.”
“So what’s wrong with that? A girl of fifteen starts thinking about boys. In Poland they do it as well, I bet. Only I am sure that they keep it a secret from their parents.”
“I don’t care what they do in Poland or in Canada, no daughter of mine is going to become a hussy.” Father stomped out of the room.
I went into the kitchen, and Mother looked at me with horror. “What have you done to your hair and your mouth!”
All this fuss about a little lipstick, I thought. Mother found a brush and parted my hair in the middle again. I didn’t want my hair parted in the middle. Pushing her hand away, I stomped off to my room, and quickly removed Miriam’s bra and all the toilet paper fell out. I looked at myself in the mirror. What a mess! I fell on the couch and wept bitterly. That evening I refused to eat dinner; I decided that I disliked my parents.
Later that evening, after I had gone to bed, Mother came in and said that I mustn’t worry.
“Soon you’ll be older and will do as you please. But in the meantime, watch out for boys. They only want one thing. I’ve heard that in the high school basements of Montreal, young girls are getting pregnant by the minute.”
The next day I returned the bra to Miriam. I didn’t feel that it made all that much difference to my looks. And anyway, the elastic band felt uncomfortable.
Right after school Miriam and I went to Woolworth’s to buy a lipstick. I chose a pale red. Each day, I would put on the lipstick on the way to school and take it off on the way back, so my parents wouldn’t know. They suspected something, however, because I heard Father tell Mother in the kitchen that my lips were always pink, that I was on the road to evil. But he said nothing to me.
In order to brighten my dull wardrobe, I bought two brightly coloured scarves and wore them each in a different way. Miriam said that I was original, but Esther Goldman said I was a show-off. A week later she came to school wearing a bigger and brighter scarf, telling everyone that hers was a “Chanel.”
Then one day my world changed again. Father opened a delicatessen. Uncle Urek had been finding it difficult to continue supporting us, so Father had looked around for a business.
I had always been proud of my father. He was a professional in Poland, a well-respected man. Suddenly I saw him selling salami and rye bread. My emotions were mixed. I loved him very much, but I thought he looked pathetically out of place, serving clients over the counter at a deli instead of defending them in court.
Father was hopelessly inept at some things. He wanted each package he wrapped to be perfect. The impatient customer would sigh and pace up and down, waiting for his parcel of herring to be wrapped like a birthday gift. And
Father could not cope with the customer type who didn’t know what she wanted, or the rude executive who felt he should be the first in line, while everyone waited.
So I came to his rescue. My afternoons after school consisted of piling bagels and buns in the window, and wrapping parcels of food. When it grew busy, and the language became mostly Yiddish, which Father didn’t understand, he would put his hands to his head and run into the back of the store, and I would have to take over. Even without knowing Yiddish I could understand what the customers wanted. Since business was good, I persuaded Father to hire Miriam, who was delighted to earn some money after school.
Miriam’s parents were very strict, too, and didn’t let boys come near her at home. Some afternoons after school, Miriam’s boyfriend, Mark, would come to visit her at the deli. I could see that Father didn’t approve, but he said nothing.
They always left as soon as her shift was over. Once I followed them and saw them disappear around the corner, kissing passionately. They didn’t even see me watching them. After that, I went back to the store and ate a large sticky bun. The bun was delicious, but I’d rather have had a kiss — not from Mark, of course.
Winter passed and spring was on its way. The dirty snow melted slowly, and the ice was replaced by puddles. The Jewish quarter moved onto the streets again, and I was surrounded by it once more — lively and colourful.
One day, Miriam brought a letter to school, which she gave me at recess. “A letter from a secret lover, eh Polachka?” she teased.
I couldn’t believe it. The letter was from Joshua. He wrote:
Dearest Liz,
You have not written as you promised, so I decided to write to you. By pure fluke, I happen to know Mark Hirsh, who is on your school’s basketball team. The team came to Rockville some time ago to play us. We got to talking and he told me that his girlfriend Miriam has a close pal called Elizabeth Lenski. I asked him for your address but he didn’t know it, so he gave me Miriam’s.
Strange how life happens. But I am so glad to have found you and to know that you have a pal. I am skipping a grade next year so I will be going into grade eleven next fall. After grade twelve, I am thinking of coming to Montreal to go to college.
And guess what! My team will be visiting your school soon. I will let you know when, as I would very much like to see you. Please write to me, and send a photo.
How are your studies?
Affectionately,
Joshua
I wrote to Joshua immediately, and he wrote back. The third letter he ended with, “Love, Joshua,” instead of “Affectionately.”
I read the letters to Miriam who shared my excitement. Each day I watched for the mail with such anxiety that my parents decided to interfere again. They wanted me to show them Joshua’s letters. I refused, took the letters to Miriam, and asked her to keep them for me. I also asked Joshua to write me care of Miriam.
A kind of cold war broke out between me and my parents, and it soon became worse when my spring report card showed that I had failed everything except French and Latin. My English mark was hovering between a pass and fail. My parents told me that if my marks did not improve quickly I would be grounded each night and on weekends so that I could I study harder.
The next morning I shared my problem with Miriam. Then I talked about Joshua for a whole ten minutes. I had never before said so much in one breath, and all in English. I was like a cloud that had been darkening and swelling to the bursting point. In the middle of it, the look on Miriam’s face stopped me. Her blue eyes were moist.
“I have to tell someone or I’ll die,” she said. “I missed my period this month, and I don’t know what to do.”
The bell rang, the washroom emptied and became terribly silent. I didn’t know what to say.
“What exactly does that mean, Miriam?”
“Naive little Polachka,” she exclaimed, shaking her head from side to side. “Don’t you know what it means? It means that I might be pregnant!”
If someone had hit me over the head I couldn’t have been more shocked. Miriam was still a kid like me. To be pregnant at our age was simply unthinkable, unless … “Miriam, did you and Mark play a married couple?”
“Finally you got it,” she said, smiling weakly. “Your parents did an even better job on you than mine did on me. You have been pretty sheltered.”
The next day we played hooky from school. I tried to cheer her up as best I could. She thought she was craving pickles, as her mother had when she was pregnant with Miriam’s brother, so I bought her four pickles. These upset her stomach. She cried a lot, too. I had not seen Miriam in this state before. She was always so strong.
At the deli I asked Father if Miriam could come to our house for dinner. He thought that Mother wouldn’t mind one more person, and he was right. Mother and Miriam got on right away. After dinner in the privacy of my room, we made a plan. Miriam was going to call Mark. After all, he was half responsible for this mess. She called him from my house and told him to meet her at the deli tomorrow after school.
The next day school was torture for both of us as we could hardly wa
it to go to the deli. Mark had made himself invisible. Even if he wasn’t in Miriam’s class, we thought that he might have come over at recess or at lunch. Miriam was beginning to despair.
When we arrived at the deli that afternoon, there was no Mark. “Maybe he’s late,” said Miriam hopefully, fishing a pickled egg out of a jar. But Mark never showed up. Miriam was beside herself.
Saturday and Sunday I made her go for a walk, and bought her lunch. She called Mark again but found that he’d gone out of town for a basketball tournament.
On Monday I went to school dreading the state Miriam would be in. When I met her in the hall she was all smiles.
“Guess what?” she whispered.
“You got it!”
“Shhhhh, Polachka. I got it!”
Because of Miriam’s close call, my mother’s words were beginning to make sense. Fearful for the fate of all womankind, I wrote Joshua a letter asking him if he went out on dates.
He promptly replied, “With whom?”
Around that time, Father decided to get out of the deli business. Although he felt completely unfitted for the job, it had been a good source of income. He would have continued, but his illness was growing worse, and that made him decide to sell the deli.
It took Father only two weeks to find a buyer. A Mr. Yankelman came to look at the deli accompanied by a rabbi. After spending some time examining the books, Mr. Yankelman closed the deal with a sizeable deposit.
On the last day at the deli, I was working as usual when I heard a groan in the back room. I ran back and saw Father bending over the table, holding onto one side. His face was twisted with pain.
I called Mother and she made an appointment with the doctor for that afternoon.
After Father left for his appointment, Miriam and I worked very hard cleaning the place for the new owner. When Mr. Yankelman came and looked around, he seemed pleased. “You girls have done a good job. Would you want to continue to work here?” he asked.
Miriam and I looked at one another and simultaneously nodded our heads.
“Thank you, Mr. Yankelman,” I said, handing him over the keys. That was great news, but my gladness didn’t last long.
When I returned home I found out that Father needed to have an operation as soon as possible.
The week of the operation was a struggle. I couldn’t go to school, because Mother spent all her time at the hospital. Loyal Miriam brought me my homework each day. I was learning fast that if you didn’t do your homework each day, you weren’t going to pass the subject. I didn’t want to fall behind, but it was hard to concentrate when I had to help out at home. I cooked, cleaned, did the dishes and looked after Pyza. That was good, because I got to know her better. She was three years old, only a year older than Basia had been when she left the Ghetto.
I played with her in the bathtub. Then after supper I sang her songs, and played more games with her. I hoped that by doing these things for Pyza, I’d make up for the way I had treated Basia on the last day I saw her.
Father came home from the hospital in time for a great celebration, which we shared with Miriam’s family.
It was May 14, 1948, and Israel was celebrating its forthcoming independence. We all huddled over the radio to hear the news.
There were only two families in the apartment, yet our living room seemed to be filled with people. I felt the presence of shadows from the Ghetto hovering about, listening. It felt as if all of them had gathered here with us. Grandfather, Mrs. Solomon, Sallye, the young teachers, Hala and Fela — and behind them, all the people who died in the concentration camps and on the typhus-ridden streets of the Ghetto. Basia wasn’t a shadow. I could distinctly see her dressed in her coat and hat with her arms stretched out towards me.
Mother spoke of all her sisters, nieces and nephews who had died in concentration camps. Father spoke of his father and Basia, and said that the catastrophe which befell the Jewish people during the war remained as much a tragedy for the living, as for the dead.
Why did I survive, I asked myself? Why me, and not Basia?
CHAPTER 12
Victory and Loss
(ZALESIE, POLAND, 1944)
I AM ELEVEN.
After I had almost given up seeing them again, my parents appear in Zalesie. It is a beautiful autumn day, but they seem like ghosts, pale, thin and shabby. Above all, silent. They’re tired. I sense their tiredness in the way they greet me. Babushka greets them with exuberance. Vlad offers them his peach liquor and brings out the glasses for special guests, the ones with silver holders.
I sit on Father’s knee while he speaks of the last days of the Warsaw Ghetto. “Your mother left the Ghetto with the last truck of Jewish workers who had permits to work on the Aryan side. We planned her escape. A doctor friend on the Aryan side, a Christian, to whom I had sent word, came to her place of work, and took her away on the grounds that she was ill with an infectious disease, and needed medication. They let her go. Then the doctor and his wife hired her as a maid, and she never returned to the Ghetto. We got her false papers, of course. Her name is now Zofia Mlynarska, and mine is Felix Mlynarski. We didn’t see one another for six months. During that time I was wounded in the arm and hid in a shelter built by the Jewish fighters. One day the Germans set our building on fire to force us out. Since anything was better then getting caught, I took a chance and climbed into the sewers below the building.
“I walked for a long time not knowing where I was. At various manholes, I poked my head out but each time the smell of the burning Ghetto told me to keep going. The tunnels were full of rats and sewage. After many hours, the stench and my own tiredness were too much for me and I realized that I had to get out. At the next manhole, I lifted myself onto a quiet dark street. By some act of mercy I had escaped the Ghetto.
“Then I went to find your mother. Her friends let the two of us stay with them for several days before we left for the country. We went to a village called Gloskow, where a man, who took us for Christians, rented us a part of his house. We still rent there; the man doesn’t suspect that we are Jews.”
My father is weary and stops speaking. Mother continues: “After we were settled we thought that we would see Basia first. So we went to Otwock, where she was staying with some friends of ours named Tomas and Anna, a Gentile couple who were childless. We wanted to take her with us, but Tomas insisted that Basia would be safer with them, so we left her.”
Mother’s face is very sad as she continues. “Tomas has grown very greedy and is now asking us for money. It’s like blackmail. If we don’t give him what he wants, he will not return the child to us. I don’t know how all this will end …” Mother can’t seem to go on talking.
Babushka suggests that they lie down for awhile. They rest for an hour then leave quietly, saying that they will be back but they don’t know when.
Months pass. One day I am sitting by the window on a rainy day, imagining that my parents are coming down the road. Then I see two specks moving along the road. It can’t be them. It is them.
“They’re really coming,” I shout to Babushka, jumping up and down. She bids me stay inside, while she goes out to greet them and brings them inside the house. That’s where we hug each other.
They don’t look as tired this time, but I can tell from their faces that something is wrong. Father doesn’t even take off his coat when he begins to speak.
“This morning Tomas came to Gloskow; he told us that one of their neighbours saw Mother and recognized her from before the war. This neighbour informed the Germans that Basia is a Jew.
“Last night the soldiers surrounded Tomas’ villa, and the Gestapo came in to question him. They checked all the papers and insisted that Tomas and Anna bring Basia to headquarters. We don’t know how all this will end, and we don’t dare go to Tomas’ house …”
Mother starts to cry.
I run into my room and close the door. I fall to the ground in front of the window and beg God to save my sister.
“P
lease, dearest God, keep my little sister safe, and forgive me for being so mean, for pushing her away. I didn’t mean it. If you save Basia, dear God, I will be the best person, I promise, and I will never, ever, sin again.”
I feel spent, but I make a pact with myself that if God listens to me this time, I would never again doubt his existence, as I did the day we entered the Ghetto.
My parents leave after supper, telling me to be patient and wait for their return. Days drag by.
I watch and wait.
God is on trial.
Finally Father comes to Babushka’s house. He has aged a hundred years. I have never seen him look like this before, but I know even without his saying anything.
“Basia is dead,” he tells us. “The soldiers have taken her away and murdered her.” Father struggles to get the words out. “To prove to us that she is dead, Tomas uncovered her grave. I saw her legs, her socks. Her face was disfigured, beyond recognition …” Father begins to weep.
“Then you have no real proof that the grave was hers,” says Babushka. “Couldn’t all this have been staged by Tomas and Anna? Maybe they simply didn’t want to give her back to you?”
There is silence.
“Maybe you’re right, Mama. Even so, how can I prove it now? Tomas swears that she is dead,” says Father.
I want to think that Babushka is right, that Basia is alive somewhere. Will I ever know?
After that I stop saying my prayers for good. God didn’t listen, and I am angry with Him for having made us Jewish.
In the spring, Father comes to take me away. I am sorry to leave Babushka, but she is ill. She has fainted several times. Vlad says that it was a mild heart attack. I feel that he blames me for her weak heart.
Father takes me by train to the village of Gloskow.
He holds my hand and explains the strangest thing.
“Listen carefully. In our papers, you are Irena Kominska, and we are Felix and Zofia Mlynarski. From now on you must call us Auntie Zofia and Uncle Felix. We will call you Irenka. No slips must be made or someone may become suspicious and inform on us. We must survive. Do you understand?”
The Old Brown Suitcase Page 10