Leah's Children

by Gloria Goldreich

  “Hello. Yes.” Annoyance tinged his greeting, but Lydia saw his face blanch. “I’ll accept the charges. Please. You must speak more slowly.” His grip on the receiver was so tight that his knuckles whitened. “Where? Give me the exact address.”

  Lydia held Paulette closely. Only once before had she heard Aaron use that same tone and ask questions so warily. Although the August evening was warm, she felt a chill and was grateful for the pressure of Paulette’s small body against her own.

  “What was the charge exactly?” ‘Aaron asked. She heard the fear in his voice and moved to his side.

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” Aaron said. “You take care of yourself.”

  Slowly, he replaced the receiver. Paulette whimpered softly, and Lydia passed a soothing hand across the child, comforting her automatically, although she felt the stirring of a deep, remembered fear.

  “What is it, Aaron?” Yehuda asked. ‘

  He motioned warningly toward the children.

  “Paulette, take David upstairs and build a block house,” Lydia said.

  The children, who had been quarreling only moments before, scurried out of the room, hand in hand, as though relieved to escape the sudden tension. But Seth chortled happily and flailed a chubby arm into the air as a monarch butterfly fluttered lazily past him.

  “It’s Michael,” Aaron said. “He’s been arrested in Mississippi. A trumped-up charge. Something about endangering the morals of the children of the state. Transporting obscene literature. He’s in jail. We’ve got to get down there as soon as we can, Yehuda.”

  “And Mindell?” Yehuda asked, his throat dry. He had remembered Mindell’s fear of closed places, of uniforms and violence.

  “It was Mindell who called. They let her go, at least. Saw her Israeli passport, I suppose, and decided that they didn’t need an international incident. The racist bastards. Lydia, get on the phone and find out the quickest way for us to get to a town in Mississippi called Peachtree. I’m driving over to my mother’s house. I don’t want her to hear about this from a wire service.” Aaron’s voice was clipped, decisive.

  “Aaron, you can’t tell them. Leah won’t be able to bear it.” Lydia hugged Seth to her, kissed the pink shell of his ear, rested her cheek on his jet-colored ringlets.

  “My mother will be all right,” he replied curtly. “And Boris has heard worse.”

  He was right, of course, she realized. Boris had borne the loss of his family in Russia, the struggles of the remnant of Jewry that had survived. He had been jailed and knew the reality of prison. And Leah Goldfeder was a woman whose life had been shadowed by danger, riddled with loss. Still, she had struggled always, fought and survived. She would grow pale, her hands would tremble, but Leah’s voice would be crisp, her actions determined. Lydia imagined her mother-in-law placing phone calls to Joshua Ellenberg, to friends in Washington, speaking softly, urgently, marshaling her forces. Weighted anew by her own fear, Lydia envied Leah her tenacity, her courage. She prayed then, in her native tongue, that Paulette, David, and Seth would inherit their grandmother Leah’s unremitting strength. Tears stung her eyes, and Yehuda moved toward her and placed a comforting arm about her shoulder.

  “He will be all right, Lydia,” he said. He understood that she could not bear to confront another loss. She touched his hand lightly, grateful for the rapport that flashed between them. She remembered how brightly the sun had shone as they sipped their coffee on the isle of Rhodes.

  “Yes. He will be all right.” She reached for the phone, and as she dialed, she thought, This is America, not Hungary, not Germany. We are safe here. This is America. Perhaps, if she repeated the words often enough, she would at last begin to believe them.

  *

  THE COURTHOUSE in the town of Peachtree, Mississippi, was a small white building that was newly painted each spring and properly landscaped each fall. The encroaching kudzu vines were cut away, and the branches of the twin magnolia trees that flanked its approach were carefully pruned. The American flag, furling and unfurling in a gentle breeze, was hoisted on a glistening white flagpole. A plaque next to it listed the names of the young men of Peachtree who had fallen in service to their country. Aaron had noticed a similar plaque in front of the black Baptist church. Even in death the people of Peachtree were neatly segregated.

  “It’s a pity that the town of Peachtree doesn’t give the American Constitution the same respect it gives the flag,” Aaron said loudly to Les Anderson and Yehuda Arnon as they entered the building together. A police officer who overheard him stared sourly and spat onto the pavement, narrowly missing Aaron’s shoe.

  “Not a bad quote. Can I use it?” Les asked.

  “You can use anything I say,” Aaron replied. “And if you think of anything I should have said and didn’t, let me know and I’ll probably okay that, too.”

  “I might just do that. We’re thinking in terms of a possible cover story. There’s a twin angle here—censorship and violation of civil rights. If it works out—and I think it will, coming just before the Ole Miss brouhaha—I’ll need every piece of material I can get.” It was Les’s instinct for the “twin angle” that had led to his rapid ascendancy at Metro magazine, where he was now features editor as well as a sometime field reporter.

  Les’s involvement did not surprise Aaron. He had known that his brother’s friend and roommate would be both concerned about Michael and see the news value of the situation. And he had been a lawyer long enough to know how the media could influence a trial, even how they could quash an indictment. He would never forget how he and Katie had triumphed against the McCarthy committee—a carefully prepared press packet had resulted in a summary adjournment of the hearing.

  Les had already filed his first story, an interview with Yehuda Arnon, international authority on terrorism. It had appeared in dozens of syndicated columns that morning.

  “Mr. Arnon, how can you equate the arrest of Michael Goldfeder by law enforcement officers with what you call the phenomenon of terrorism?”

  “There is a very fine line between harassment and terrorism.”

  “But the arresting officers were duly licensed by their state.”

  “As were the arresting officers who incarcerated Jews and Catholics and liberals in Germany in the thirties. Those arrests were also ‘legitimate.’”

  The interview had already caused some controversy, Aaron knew. Yehuda and Les had both chosen their words carefully and aimed them well.

  Mindell waited for Aaron at the courthouse doorway. She wore the pale blue, long-sleeved dress and the carefully polished white sandals that Lydia had packed for her.

  “Judges give different credence to the testimony of a girl in jeans and that of a young woman doctor in a neatly pressed dress and very clean shoes,” Aaron had told her. “Same girl. Same facts. A different reaction. A stupid game, I know, but we have to play it.”

  “Uniforms,” Mindell had said obliquely. “It all comes down to uniforms.”

  A small red-and-white rose was pinned to her collar, and he smiled at the courage of the gesture. A Cherokee rose. Katie had loved them. It was strange how he thought of Katie now with only lingering sadness, melancholy affection. She was a spectral memory, and he wondered sometimes if she had really existed, if he had really loved and married her. Lydia had so completely overtaken and filled his life. Lydia and his children, Paulette, David, and the baby, Seth. The recognition of his own good fortune strengthened his resolve to get his brother out of this mess.

  “Are you all right?” Yehuda asked Mindell in Hebrew.

  She nodded. “I’m fine. But they won’t let me see Michael.”

  Yehuda looked at her closely. He discerned the desperate worry in her voice, the anguish in her eyes. Her voice had trembled when she said his name.

  “It’s Mississippi law,” Aaron explained patiently. “They can hold a prisoner for seventy-two hours without bringing charges or admitting visitors. But you’re not to worry, Mindell. I’ve see
n him and we’re going to get him out.”

  An officer stopped them at the courtroom door.

  “I’m Aaron Goldfeder, attorney for Michael Goldfeder,” Aaron said pleasantly. “And this is Yehuda Arnon. Mr. Arnon is an international observer.”

  Yehuda produced the documents hastily obtained that morning from the United Nations Commission on International Terrorism. The officer frowned, turned to Les.

  “Les Anderson. Metro magazine. And assorted other places, if you read your morning paper.” Les grinned and flashed his battered press card. “Real hot, ain’t it? How high do you suppose it’ll go today?” His southern background did not desert him; he slipped like a chameleon into the skin of a “good ole boy.”

  The functionary was flustered. Yehuda’s documents frightened him; Les’s accent disarmed him. He stared at Aaron, Yehuda, and Mindell. He had been told to limit attendance at the arraignment, but he knew what the consequences could be if he barred a member of the press. Those damn northerners. Why didn’t they stir up trouble in their own part of the country? Send their Jew volunteers into Harlem? Les Anderson was the fourth newsman to present his credentials. Stringers from Time and Newsweek and the two big networks were already there. At least this Anderson guy was a southerner. He might bury his background but not his accent.

  “All right, go on in,” he said sourly.

  “And Dr. Krasnow is an affiant,” Aaron said smoothly.

  “Sure she is. Okay. Don’t block the doorway.”

  They went into the oak-paneled courtroom, where two propeller fans stirred the heat-heavy air and hummed like huge malevolent flies. Michael stood waiting for them at the witness table. Aaron’s heart turned. Michael’s lips were swollen, and an ugly purple welt covered his forehead. Dark shadows rimmed his eyes, and his clothing hung loosely from his gaunt frame. Aaron had seen him only briefly in a darkened room and had not seen the full extent of the bruises. Still Michael smiled, and his handshake was firm.

  “Thanks, Aaron,” he said. “I’m glad you’re here, Yehuda.”

  “Anything for the little brother,” Aaron replied. “We’d better get you cleaned up before Mama sees you. You look as bad as Josh used to look when the Irish gang on Pitt Street was through with him.”

  “How is Mama? Was she upset?” Michael asked.

  Aaron shrugged. “You know Mama.”

  Leah had been upset. Upset but in control. It had been Leah who tracked Les Anderson down and Leah who called Josh Ellenberg, who always kept a large sum of cash on hand in his Great Neck home. (“Josh needs to see money to remind him that he has it—that he isn’t poor and hungry anymore,” she had told Aaron once when he spoke derisively about Josh’s practice. “He remembers enough about the old country to know that you never can tell.” And now Josh’s vigilance had worked for them.) Leah had been very tired, very pale. Twice Boris had handed her pills. But her voice had remained firm and her eyes were dry. Always, Aaron had thought, remembering back through the years, in a crisis situation his mother’s voice was firm and her eyes were dry.

  “All rise.” The bailiffs command was almost genial, the voice of a barker anticipating an amusing show but keeping a wise eye on an unpredictable audience.

  Aaron watched the judge enter: an older man, his silver hair paper-thin and pressed into place across his freckled scalp. His considerable girth was enveloped in the well-pressed judicial robes. Aaron found the judge’s age and his weight to be oddly reassuring. They were ordered to sit. The court clerk conferred with the judge, who examined the docket folder, tracing each line he perused with a pointer. He was a careful man, then, and perhaps a fair man. Aaron had noticed that the two qualities went together in jurists. He motioned to the bailiff and requested permission to approach the bench. When the judge nodded, he made his way forward.

  “Your Honor, I am a member of the bar of the state of New York. Inasmuch as the defendant, Michael Goldfeder, who is to appear before you this morning, is my brother, I should like to represent him in this court. I respectfully request permission to be admitted pro hac vice for this purpose.” His throat was dry. He had asked the judge to permit him to practice in the state of Mississippi “for this time only”—a judicial courtesy that could be arbitrarily denied. If it was granted, Judge Archibald Merrill would reveal himself as a fair-minded man.

  Judge Merrill rustled the paper. He looked from the tall, dark-haired defendant to the attorney whose fiery hair was streaked with gray. He, too, had a younger brother in a distant state who resembled him not at all. It showed decent family feeling for the man to travel so far and so swiftly on his brother’s behalf. But then the Goldfeders were Jews, and the Jews, he had heard, had strong feeling for their kinfolk. That much, at least, they shared with Christian Mississippians. And the pro hac vice courtesy carried with it an unwritten reciprocity. If he denied it, a New York judge might deny it in turn to a Mississippi attorney.

  “Permission to be admitted to the bar of Mississippi pro hac vice granted,” he said in a gravelly voice, but he did not look up at Aaron, who nodded appreciatively and returned to his seat.

  “A preliminary hearing in the case of the People of Mississippi against Michael Goldfeder,” the bailiff read out importantly.

  The arresting officer, Sergeant Carey, was called. He was a burly, overweight man whose neck bulged within the confines of his starched collar; his fingers fidgeted nervously with the tight knot of his narrow black tie. The prosecutor spoke to him in the low, reassuring tones of a sympathetic colleague.

  “You just tell us all what happened that led you to make this here arrest, Sergeant Carey,” he instructed the officer companionably.

  “We were just patrolling the road routine-like when we saw this beat-up car with New York license plates speeding along. We asked the driver to pull over, and when we looked inside the car we seen all these cartons of stuff spilling all over the place. We opened them, and they were mostly books and such—magazines, pamphlets. Now, we got a special memorandum from Jackson to be on the watch for people bringing obscene literature into the state, so we put two and two together and impounded the books and arrested the driver of the car. That’s him sitting over there.” He thrust a fleshy finger at Michael who noticed a Band-Aid on the officer’s knuckle. He was pleased at the thought that the sergeant might have sustained a bruise from hitting him in the mouth.

  “What was your aim in making this arrest?” the prosecutor asked.

  “My aim was to protect the children of Mississippi from obscene literature according to…uh…title ninety-seven, chapters twenty-nine through thirty-nine, of the Mississippi Code of Law.” He read carefully from a worn index card. He had clearly been well prepared.

  “Your Honor, the people move to submit this sample carton of books in evidence as People’s Exhibit A.”

  The judge nodded.

  “Did you recognize any of the books?” the prosecutor proceeded.

  “Wasn’t one of them I got in my house,” the officer replied. “And my wife is a regular at the Tuesday Afternoon Book Circle.”

  There was muted, appreciative laughter in the courtroom. The judge allowed a thin smile to crease his lips.

  “Your witness, Mr. Goldfeder.”

  Aaron rose and stared hard at the officer. He studied the notes he had made during the man’s testimony, frowned, and cleared his throat.

  “You said that ‘this beat-up car with New York license plates was speeding down the road.’ Is that correct?”

  “That’s correct,” Sergeant Carey replied complacently.

  “I see. What is the speed limit on that road?”

  “Thirty miles an hour.”

  “And how fast was this beat-up car with New York license plates traveling?”

  “I didn’t clock him.”

  “That’s interesting. You didn’t clock him. I see. How fast, then, do you estimate that he was traveling? More than thirty miles an hour?”

  “No.” The sergeant shifted in his chair. The
bailiff brought him a glass of water, which he sipped appreciatively.

  “Less?”

  “Probably less.” Water dribbled from the corner of his mouth.

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Well, I didn’t have to put on any speed to follow him, and I don’t go faster than twenty-five on that bayou road—it’s got a tricky curve.”

  “And yet you said he was speeding.”

  “I didn’t mean going over the limit. Down here, when we say ‘speed along,’ we mean moving at an even clip. I said ‘speeding along.’ I didn’t say nothing about exceeding the speed limit.”

  “I see. Then this beat-up car with New York plates was traveling at the lawful limit or, indeed, below it?”

  “That’s right. We didn’t arrest him for speeding, did we? We didn’t have to trump up no charge.”

  “What made you pull the car over?”

  “We got a phone tip that there was going to be some action on the bayou road that afternoon. Some northern agitators transporting trouble like they do. Kids from New York. This car had New York plates and it wasn’t in great shape.”

  “But you saw at once that it had its proper inspection stickers, and the license of the driver and the registration were in order?”

  “Well, after we pulled him over, we saw that, but how would we know unless we’d done that?”

  “And yet despite the lack of irregularity, you proceeded to search the car?”

  “We’d’ve been remiss in our official duties if we’d done different. We got all sorts of people coming into this state these days. They call themselves freedom riders or civil rights workers, but some of them are selling marijuana and worse. We don’t want no northern drugs in Mississippi. Governor Barnett sent a directive to our chief to be extra careful. And then, like I said, we had this phone tip about a New York car coming down that road at about that hour. I did the right thing.” Sergeant Carey leaned back in his chair in the attitude of a man well satisfied by his performance.

  Michael turned his head and saw that Matt Williams and Kemala had slipped into seats at the rear of the courtroom. He was grateful to them for coming to Peachtree, yet something in the glance they exchanged disturbed him. He turned quickly away so that Kemala would not see his bruises. He did not want her to be upset.