Miriam's Secret

by Debby Waldman

  The room that the girls shared was dark, but Miriam could hear Cissy under the bed, her breath raggedy and quick. She obviously hadn’t heard the men laughing—or maybe she had, and that had scared her even more. Miriam reached for the metal chain hanging from the ceiling, turning the light on.

  “Come out, Cissy,” she said, crouching down to look under the bed. Cissy still looked terrified. “They’re not from an orphanage. They’re musicians!”

  “How do you know they’re not lying?”

  “They aren’t,” Miriam promised.

  “You ask for proof?”

  “They’re carrying musical instruments,” Miriam said. “The cases are so big. They’re big enough for us to hide in.”

  As soon as the words were out, she realized her mistake. Cissy slid farther back. “That’s to take me away. I ain’t coming out.”

  “You’re being silly,” Miriam said. “They don’t even know who you are. They don’t even know you’re here.”

  “Did you see the inside of the cases?” Cissy demanded. “Did you actually see any instruments?”

  Miriam shook her head no, but Cissy couldn’t see her from so far under the bed.

  “Did you see the inside of the cases?” Cissy repeated. “Did you?”

  “No!” Miriam said. “Now stop being ridiculous. Come out.”

  “Nobody’s going to take you away—you got a mama and a papa to go back to,” Cissy reminded her.

  “Bubby and Zayde won’t let anyone take you away,” Miriam insisted. “And those men aren’t here to take anyone away in the first place.”

  “Then how come they are here?” Cissy asked.

  “The weather’s too bad for them to drive to Utica,” Miriam said.

  “This ain’t a hotel. How come they didn’t find a hotel?”

  “I don’t know,” Miriam said. “Maybe they saw the hobo mark.” She knew that wasn’t possible—it was too dark to see anything.

  Cissy did not respond.

  “They came to the door and Mazel started barking and Zayde said they’re going to stay in the bunkhouse with the rest of the hired men,” Miriam said. She drew herself up to her knees and then stood. “Fine. If you want to stay under there all night, go ahead. But I’m going back downstairs.”

  Cissy poked her head out from under the bed. Strains of music were floating up from the floor below. The men were playing after all! Miriam didn’t recognize the tune, but it was so lively it seemed to have distracted Cissy from everything she’d been worrying about. Those few notes changed her entire mood. It was as if someone had cast a spell on her.

  “See?” Miriam said. “They do have instruments!”

  Cissy slid all the way out from beneath the bed and shook herself, the way Mazel did first thing in the morning. “Oh my goodness!” she said, standing in the bedroom doorway.

  “What?” Miriam asked.

  “My mama loved that song.” She began swaying gently, then singing quietly, “Two left feet, oh, so neat, has Sweet Georgia Brown. We used to dance around the kitchen to that tune when I was little.”

  “You should go downstairs and sing with them,” Miriam said.

  Cissy shook her head. “Uh-uh,” she said. “I’m staying here.”

  “They’re not from an orphanage,” Miriam promised. “Just come and see.”

  Cissy still looked doubtful—but not for the reason Miriam thought. “I haven’t sung with anybody since before Joe and I came up here. And sometimes musicians don’t want nobody singing with them anyhow.”

  “If they don’t want you to sing, we’ll come back upstairs and you can sing for me. But at least come down and say hello. Besides, Bubby was worried about you.”

  Miriam held out her hand, and together the two girls went downstairs.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The snowstorm that had brought the Johnstown Jazz Band to the farm showed no signs of letting up. By the next afternoon, it was clear that the band members would be staying for dinner. There was no hotel in Sangerfield, the hotels in Waterville wouldn’t give them a room, and the roads were still too dangerous. They had nowhere else to go.

  The Passover that Miriam thought would be the loneliest ever was turning out to be anything but. As she polished the last of the silver, she hummed the melody to “Ma Nishtana,” The Four Questions. The first question was, “Why is this night different from all other nights?” In the Haggadah, the answer was that it was different because on this night, on Passover, people ate unleavened bread. But standing in the kitchen, which was busier than Miriam had ever seen it, she could just as easily say it was different because it was truly going to be the most unusual, unexpected seder ever.

  Joe and Bart were carting a table into the house to make room for the extra visitors, who were in the living room. They were playing music while Bubby, Miriam and Cissy cooked. The concert had been Bubby’s idea.

  “It’s not often I have entertainment when I’m working in the kitchen,” she said to Antoine. He was the shortest, and he played the biggest instrument, the double bass. He stood slightly behind and to the side of it, his left hand sliding up and down its long neck as his slender dark fingers pressed down on the strings. His right hand seemed to dance as it plucked out a melody that was unfamiliar to Miriam, but impossible to ignore. Cissy seemed to know most of the band’s songs. “We used to do this all the time,” she said. “Everybody in town would gather at someone’s house on Friday for the hootenannies. Musicians would play all night long, and if you didn’t have your own instrument, you could sing.” She stopped talking and listened to the song from the next room. “That’s ‘Little Liza Jane.’ ” Tapping her fingers, Cissy began singing along.

  “Just go in there and sing with them already,” Miriam said, nudging her. “You know all the words.”

  Cissy shook her head. “I can sing just as well in here with you. Besides, you need my help.”

  Joe and Bart brought another table into the house. They were followed by Stretch, who was carrying a box so big Miriam wondered how he could see where he was going.

  Bubby directed him to set the box down by the table. She asked Cissy to unpack it. Cissy reached in and pulled out a small pillow. “You want me to make a bed?” she asked. “In the kitchen?”

  Bubby shook her head, smiling. “I want you to put one on everyone’s chair,” she said.

  “Like this?” Cissy put a pillow on the seat of the chair closest to her. “Or this?” She propped the pillow against the chair back.

  “Whichever you want,” Miriam said. “People will figure out what’s most comfortable. That’s what they’re for—because we’re supposed to recline at the seder, to be comfortable.”

  Cissy nodded slowly, approvingly. “I like that idea.”

  Miriam went back to piling the last of the silverware on the counter. Next, she counted out sixteen bowls for soup and stacked them. Finally, she counted out plates for the gefilte fish.

  “What are you smiling about?” Cissy asked.

  “I thought this was going to be the loneliest seder ever,” Miriam said. “But it’s not. The best thing about Passover is having everyone together. And listening to the stories about Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt and across the Red Sea. And looking for the afikomen.”

  “The what?”

  “The afikomen. I thought I told you about it.”

  “I think I’d remember a word like that,” Cissy said. “How come Moses was looking for the affy komin?”

  Miriam laughed, shaking her head. “Moses didn’t look for it. We do—me and all my cousins.”

  “What is it?” Cissy asked.

  “It’s a piece of matzah. This.” Miriam pointed to a box of matzah on the kitchen counter. “The person leading the seder breaks off a piece and hides it, and then later we look for it. And whoever finds it wins a penny, or maybe a piece of candy, or sometimes even both.”

  “Do you play other games at the seder?” Cissy asked.

  “Just hiding the afikome
n,” Miriam said. “But I was thinking it wasn’t going to be very much fun looking for it all by myself. So that’s another reason I’m happy you are here.”

  “Me too,” Cissy said. She thought for a minute. “How long’s this dinner, anyway, if you have to be hiding stuff and looking for it in the middle?”

  “Long,” Miriam said. “Sometimes I fall asleep before it’s over, but it’s hard to stay asleep because it’s so noisy. Everybody’s talking, and at the end everybody sings.”

  “I betcha you ain’t going to be falling asleep tonight,” Cissy said. “It’s going to be extra noisy.”

  The men arrived at the house at sunset, just in time for the seder.

  “Are you going to play?” Miriam asked Antoine, who had left his double bass lying on its side in the living room.

  “Not tonight, miss,” Antoine said.

  “Tonight it’s your granny putting on a show, not us,” added Felix, the trumpet player.

  It was true. Bubby’s table was a wonder, beautiful enough to rival Tante Malka’s. Sitting atop the white lace tablecloth were the crystal glasses, ivory plates with gold rims and bowls of all different sizes. Some were filled with salt water and others with parsley to dip into the water. Others held charoses and horseradish. The seder plate took up most of the space in front of the chair where Zayde would sit. Atop the plate were a hard-boiled egg, a shank bone from a lamb and more parsley, horseradish and charoses. Next to the seder plate was a small basket with three pieces of matzah, as flat and brown as sheets of corrugated cardboard.

  Everyone gathered around the table. Miriam took the seat between Bubby and Cissy. Instead of sitting on the other side, facing Miriam, Joe squeezed in beside his sister. When he discovered the pillow on his chair, he couldn’t hide his delight.

  “Ain’t this fancy!” he whispered, making himself comfortable.

  Felix and Antoine sat opposite Cissy and Joe. Banjo sat farther down, next to Arthur, the saxophone player. As they leaned back against their pillows, Banjo peppered Arthur with questions. Miriam wondered if he would rather play in a band than work on a farm.

  Zayde cleared his throat, a sign that the seder was about to begin.

  “What’s your grandpa doing?” Cissy asked Miriam. “Is he going to read during dinner?”

  Before Miriam had a chance to answer, Zayde held up his book. “This is the Haggadah,” he explained to Cissy and the rest of the guests. “It has been part of my family for many generations. It tells the story of Passover, and everything we have to do at the seder.”

  “That ain’t English,” Cissy said, pointing to the open page.

  “It’s Hebrew,” Zayde said.

  Cissy looked at Miriam. She spoke quietly. “You didn’t tell me this was going to be in a different language.”

  “It’s not—not all of it,” Miriam replied. “Otherwise nobody here would understand.”

  Zayde looked around the table. “Welcome to our seder,” he said. “Let all who are hungry come and eat. Let all who are needy come and celebrate Passover.”

  “Amen,” Cissy said quietly. Miriam reached for Cissy’s hand and held it.

  Miriam had wondered how people who had never attended a seder could participate, especially when only Zayde had a Haggadah. At Tante Malka’s, everyone had their own copy and could follow along. But it turned out that Zayde was such a good storyteller that nobody seemed to mind. He took care to explain each part of the service, starting with the food on the seder plate and the reason that the Israelites needed to escape from Egypt. When he explained how Moses first asked the pharaoh to free his people, Antoine and the other members of the band began tapping their fingers lightly on the table.

  “Can we offer you a song?” they asked. When Zayde nodded, they began to sing. Miriam recognized the words that Cissy had sung in the barn, and she couldn’t help but hum along. Joe and Cissy joined in, her voice soaring higher than the others.

  When the song was over, everyone fell silent, looking admiringly at Cissy. “My goodness,” said Felix. “You have a voice like an angel.”

  Cissy smiled. “Thank you,” she said shyly.

  When Zayde described the plagues, especially the river turning to blood and the frogs and locusts that overtook the land, Cissy looked at Joe. “You remember those locusts that summer when we was little?”

  Joe shook his head. “Not now, Cissy,” he mumbled. He seemed embarrassed.

  “It’s fine for Cissy to share,” Bubby assured him. “Everyone participates, whether singing or telling a story. Go ahead, Cissy.”

  “I guess we had our own plague,” Cissy said. “Those critters were everywhere—in the beds, in our clothes, even our food. But we didn’t get out of there. We didn’t have anywhere else to go. After a while, the locusts passed. Thanks be to God.” She shuddered.

  The dinner continued. Miriam could see that everyone was clearly having a good time. She overheard Antoine talking to Joe and Cissy. “You obviously got some good music in your family. And I hear you got kin somewhere in New York. He plays trombone? Or trumpet?”

  “Trumpet,” Joe said.

  “What’s his name? Maybe I know him.”

  “It’s Willis,” Joe said. “Or maybe Williams. Robert is his first name. But we haven’t got an address or any idea where he’s living. It’s been a good ten years since we heard from him.”

  “We’ll put the word out when we get back to Utica,” Antoine said. “You never know. I can’t be making any promises, but between the five of us, we work every end of New York State.”

  “You do that much gigging?” Joe asked.

  Antoine shook his head. “A few nights a month. Rest of the time I’m a Pullman porter, and so are they.” He nodded toward his bandmates. “We work between New York and Chicago, and we talk to plenty of people and lots of musicians. We’ll do our best to help you find him.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Joe said.

  Cissy looked at Miriam, her face hopeful. “Thank you,” she echoed.

  One of Miriam’s favorite parts of the seder came after the meal. That’s when it was time to open the door for Elijah. Miriam had never opened the door—that honor was always reserved for one of her boy cousins. And every year the same thing happened. The cousin would open the door, and the hallway outside the apartment would be empty.

  She wasn’t sure what would happen if Elijah actually showed up. From what her parents said, it had something to do with the world becoming a better place, a place where everyone had a home that was safe and peaceful. It never made sense to Miriam that one person could do all that. It still didn’t.

  Zayde was getting ready to lead the blessing over the wine. That meant that soon it would be time for Miriam to open the door. She remembered what Cissy had said in the barn the first time they talked about Passover. I don’t think he’s going to be coming to your house. That had made Miriam angry, but it had also made her think. What she liked about the Elijah part of the seder was the stir of excitement and promise, when it was possible to believe that the great prophet just might be standing on the other side of the door. Maybe he’d take the time to drink his wine and join the family for a chorus of “Eliyahu Hanavi.”

  Zayde reached for the bottle of wine to fill Elijah’s cup. As Miriam pushed her chair back from the table, a train rumbled past. She walked across the room and into the front hall and wondered if there were hobos on that train. She imagined opening the door not to Elijah, but to more travelers. Bubby and Zayde would find room and work for them and give them a home for as long as they needed.

  She opened the door. Instead of being greeted by hobos or an ancient prophet, Miriam was hit with a blast of cold. When the frosty air cleared, she took in the snow-covered farmyard and the finally clear sky, blistered with stars.

  No Elijah then, and not even more hired men. But this year, more than any other, she could feel reasons for hope. Mama and Papa were on their way home from the Old Country with Uncle Avram and Gabriel and Rafael. And she had a
new friend, who would soon have a home of her own.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Miriam’s Secret is a work of fiction, but many of the details about Miriam’s life come from my family’s history. All four of my grandparents emigrated from eastern Europe in the early 1900s. My father’s father was a teenager when he arrived in Boston in 1909. In 1921, three years after becoming a citizen of the United States, he returned to Lithuania to escort his mother, father and a younger brother to Boston, most likely saving them from certain death—twenty years later, the village where they had lived was burned to the ground by the Nazis.

  My mother’s father was also a teenager when he emigrated in 1906. At first he lived with an older sister on her chicken farm in New Jersey, then with an older brother in Central New York. Eventually he bought a horse and a cart and began working as a peddler, moving from town to town selling clothing and necessities at what we’d most likely recognize today as farmers’ markets. After he’d saved enough money, he found a farm for sale, but the owner didn’t want to sell to a Jewish person. My grandfather found someone else to handle the transaction.

  When I was growing up, my family went to the farm almost every weekend. Sometimes my sister and I spent the night. Like Miriam, I was always shaken awake when a train thundered by. The seeds for Miriam’s Secret were planted when my mother told me that hobos, as they were commonly referred to when she was growing up, used to jump off the trains and spend time working on the farm.

  My grandfather once asked one of the men, Why do so many of you come to my farm and not someone else’s? The man replied, Your house is marked. He wouldn’t show my grandfather the mark though. No one would. Mom had no idea what it could have looked like.

  When I began doing research for this story, I discovered that these migrant workers relied on a system of codes and symbols that warned their fellow travelers of danger, gave directions and indicated safe places to stay for a night. The mark on my grandparents’ house likely said something to the effect of Food here for work.