Miriam's Secret

by Debby Waldman

  Migrants weren’t the only strangers who turned up at the farm. My aunt Freda told me that one wintry night a group of black jazz musicians performed a concert at the farmhouse. The men had been caught in a blizzard. They couldn’t reach their intended destination, and no hotel would put them up. Go see Billy the Jew, they were told. He’ll give you a place to sleep.

  Mom had told me about the considerable anti-Semitism she and her siblings had faced growing up as the only Jewish family in the area, but I had never before heard my grandfather referred to that way.

  In earlier drafts of this book, the scene where Miriam overhears the nickname the locals have for her grandfather was quite negative. But my perspective changed in early 2011, after my cousin Debbie Friedman died.

  Debbie, who was Aunt Freda’s daughter, was a pioneer in the world of Jewish liturgical music. Her untimely death received a lot of attention. Among the comments that appeared on the many obituaries published about her, I was struck by one that said something along the lines of her grandparents were farmers in Sangerfield, New York. I think her grandfather was known as “Billy the Jew.” That was the first time it occurred to me that maybe there was a more benign explanation for Zayde’s nickname. The comment helped me reframe that scene and, ultimately, the story.

  No matter how far from home we travel or eventually settle, we never completely leave our origins behind—where we come from remains part of who we are. Identifying people based on their origins or background is natural—it’s an easy form of classification. It’s also linguistically clumsy and can be grating on the ears, but it’s not necessarily ill-intentioned.

  That said, I’m sure some people who referred to my grandfather as “Billy the Jew” did so out of racism, which existed at the turn of the nineteenth century for the same reasons it does today: ignorance and fear. The best way to overcome that ignorance and fear is also the same today as it was back then: by learning about and, if possible, getting to know people whose culture and origins are different from yours, identifying not merely what makes you different, but what you have in common.

  The desire to create that kind of relationship for Miriam was, in part, what inspired Cissy. As far as I know, no child ever hid in my grandparents’ hayloft, but Miriam needed a friend, and I’ve been fascinated with the idea of having a hidden friend from a different culture since reading Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene as a teenager.

  The brief references to the Underground Railroad are a nod to Central New York’s substantial role in the secret network in the late nineteenth century that enabled thousands of African Americans to escape enslavement in the American South. In fact, if you cross the railroad tracks that run alongside my grandparents’ house and drive sixty-seven miles west on Route 20, you’ll wind up in Auburn, NY, home and resting place of Underground Railroad “conductor” and American icon of courage, Harriet Tubman.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  If not for the stories that my mother and aunts told me about their life on the farm, there would be no Miriam. So thank you to the Chernoff sisters, Bessie Pollicove and Ann Binder (may their memories be for a blessing), Freda Friedman and Irlene Waldman, and their sister-in-law, Adele Kaye Chernoff Halligan, for sharing their memories with me. Thank you too to Phyllis Olshin Silverman, who was a child in Brooklyn in the 1930s and provided me with details about Miriam’s life in the city.

  I owe a big thanks to Robert Wuetherick, who set me straight on what it’s like to grow up next to train tracks, and to David Makowsky at the Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village in Alberta, who gave me free rein to poke around every barn on the property and treated me to a pierogi lunch as well. Thanks also to Otto Vondrak of the New York Central System Historical Society, Inc. for valuable information about pullman porters.

  Lorie White, Caterina Edwards, Karen Spafford-Fitz, Lorna Schultz Nicholson, Eva Colmers and my sister, Amy Waldman, have lived with this story for nearly as long as I have, and I am grateful for their time, patience and advice.

  Thanks also to the two people whose comments paved the way for Cissy: Christi Howes, who suggested that Miriam needed a friend, and Mar’ce Merrell, who gave me a much-needed kick in the literary pants when she looked at an early draft and said, This is really beautiful, but nothing happens.

  Sophia Salamon is a reader after my own heart, and I thank her for her enthusiasm and helpful feedback. I hope to return the favor someday.

  And finally, thanks to my family, Dave, Elizabeth, Noah and Chip, who provide me with more inspiration than they could possibly imagine.

  DEBBY WALDMAN is the author of a number of children’s books based on Jewish folktales, including A Sack Full of Feathers, which was named a 2007 Best Book for Kids and Teens by the Canadian Children’s Book Centre, and Clever Rachel, declared by Resource Links to be one of the year’s best for 2009. She is also the co-author of two books for parents of children who are hard of hearing. Debby lives in Edmonton, Alberta, with her husband, two children and a chocolate labradoodle named Chip. For more information, visit www.debbywaldman.com.

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  One

  “You’re here!” I sit straight up in my metal bunk bed, yank at the mosquito netting and wrestle my way out.

  Aracely stands in the doorway, laughing at me. “Of course I’m here. I live here, remember? You’re the one who takes off at the end of every summer, Dian.”

  I ignore that comment and zigzag between suitcases and boxes to hug her. She doesn’t have to know that I didn’t want to come this year. She’s the only person who might make this summer bearable, and I don’t want to hurt her feelings.

  She kisses my cheeks, tucks her black hair behind one ear and surveys my baggy, tie-dyed shorts and red polka-dot blouse. “It will never get better, will it?”

  I clench my teeth and shake my head. The clothes are one of the reasons I didn’t want to come. Every summer, my parents bring suitcases full of donated stuff to wear while we’re here and leave behind when we go. The outfits are almost always awful, and they’re never anything I’d choose. This spring, when I realized that my parents weren’t going to let me stay home with my grandmother while they came here, I lobbied for them to at least let me bring my own clothes to wear. (They’re secondhand too, because according to my parents, buying brand-new clothes exploits poor workers in other countries and impacts the environment. But at least in Canada I get to choose my own clothes.) Mom asked if I planned to leave most of my own clothes behind at the end of the summer, and when I said no, she and Dad looked at me like I was dumping toxic waste into the village stream. They gave me a long lecture on compassion being more important than vanity. I shot back that they should have some compassion for me for once. They hit the roof, and here I am, at the end of June, in polka dots and tie-dye. At least they promised not to take any pictures of me this summer. That’s their grand gesture at understanding what it’s like to be me.

  Aracely shakes her head. “If you were my size, I’d give you half my clothing. You know that, don’t you?”

  I smile because I know she’s trying to help. Last summer, out of pity, she dressed me up like the other girls our age in Cucubano, in a tight pink top and a short skirt. She said I looked hot, but I felt like a Barbie gone horribly wrong—too tall, too flat, too skinny. Aracely is only a year older than me, but she has curves in all the right places, and at fourteen she could pass for sixteen.

  The only sad thing is that big scar on her cheek. A donkey bit her when she was four, and someone stitched it up for her, but not well. It’s not like people here get free plastic surgery after an accident like they do in Canada. The scar takes up most of her cheek—a jagged line, rough around the edges where the donkey’s teeth scraped over the skin before biting through.

  The first time I saw her, I was terrified. Then again, at five I was terrified of most things, and it didn’t help that my parents had brought me to a tiny settlement in the Dominican Republic where t
he ground was orange and everyone lived in wooden huts and spoke a language I didn’t understand. I remember hiding behind my mother in the schoolyard, with all the local mothers and their kids watching us. The adults were smiling at each other, and the kids stared at me, wide-eyed. My mother had a firm hand on my shoulder to keep me from bolting, and her grip tightened when the little girl with the horrible scar marched over to me. The girl took a pink hibiscus flower from behind her ear and placed it behind mine, then took my hand and led me off to play. She taught me how to pick the sweetest oranges, where to find the best climbing trees and how to catch a butterfly. Along the way, she taught me Spanish.

  The priest who invited my parents here hired Aracely’s mother to do our laundry, cook our meals and look after me. I spent most of that first summer at Aracely’s house, and that suited me just fine; I loved feeling like part of a big family. As we got older, Aracely and I would take off on adventures of our own. My parents would assume I was with Aracely’s mom, and Aracely’s mom would assume I was fine because I was with Aracely. It worked out great, because no one would have let us do half of what we did if we’d actually asked permission.

  “Sorry I couldn’t meet the truck when you got here,” Aracely says now, smoothing her skirt. “Abuela needed to find periquito for my sister’s cramps. Abuela was convinced that some still grows over by Beto’s field, but it doesn’t, and by the time she believed me, we were too far away to get back before the aguacero, and we had to wait until the rain stopped.”

  “No worries,” I lie. I’m not going to tell her how I freaked out when I didn’t see her with everyone else. A lot can happen here between summers, and it’s not like she and I can text each other our news. Even if my anti-cell-phone parents would let me have one, Cucubano doesn’t have cell reception. Or reliable electricity. Every time we come back here, we have no idea who’s been born or died since the summer before, and this afternoon Aracely’s mom must have seen the panic on my face, because she cut through the crowd to tell me my friend was only away for the morning.

  I should have guessed, of course. Aracely and her grandmother—her abuela—often take off on expeditions to find some plant or another. Her abuela is a healer, and Aracely is learning. Last summer, Dad saw some of Aracely’s drawings of medicinal plants and asked her family if she could come to Canada to study someday. He says that with her knowledge of traditional medicine, she could make a great academic career for herself and then come back here and really help the community. Her parents were thrilled. Aracely is terrified, but she’s willing to do it if it’ll help. Now that’s courage. She’s never even been as far as Ocoa, the closest city, a two-hour bus ride away, but in a few years she’ll be living in Canada, which is so different from here that it might as well be on another planet.

  “Do you want help putting stuff away?” Aracely scans my family’s makeshift bedroom. Before we arrived, Aracely’s mom cleaned it within an inch of its life. The concrete floor shone, the bunk beds were made up as well as any hotel’s, the chalkboards were a spotless black, and not a speck of dust remained on the teacher’s desk shoved into the corner. (It’s like this every summer. Being invited here by the priest in Ocoa means people treat our arrival like a royal visit.) In just a few hours, my parents and I have managed to track in big clumps of the inevitable orange dirt, and we’ve strewn our things all over the place.

  I should clean up. Mom and Dad are in the other classroom, unpacking boxes for their summer medical clinic, and I came back here to organize but decided to take a nap instead—not that I had much success. Whoever thinks roosters only crow at dawn has never met Rafael’s roosters, and why our neighbor has to keep his snorting pigs and braying donkey right outside our window is beyond me. If I were at home this summer, I could sleep whenever I wanted—not that I would, of course. I’d be working at the bike shop, or lying on the beach, or going to the movies with Emily. In other words, doing what any normal Canadian teenager has the right to do in the summertime. Unless you’ve got parents like mine, who expect you to spend every waking moment saving the world.

  “The mess can wait,” I tell Aracely. “Let’s go somewhere.”

  “To the river,” she says.

  “Yes!” I flip open a suitcase to find my bathing suit. Two years ago, Aracely announced that she was too old to swim in the river. I thought that was hilarious, since she was only twelve, but she said, I’ve got boobs. I get my period. I’m a woman now, and respectable women don’t run around half naked and jump in the river. That’s for boys and marimachos.

  I asked her what a marimacho is. It means something like “butch woman” and is a big insult. No matter how much she tried to stop me from swimming, I kept doing it. She stayed on the shore while I swam. “So glad you’ve come to your senses about the swimming thing,” I say now. “How can you live so close to a fantastic river and not swim in it?”

  “I don’t, and I won’t.” She leans back against the bunk bed, arms crossed. “I have to get some berro, and I’m asking you along.”

  Berro. I rack my brain, trying to remember what that is. Every year, between summers, I forget way too much Spanish. A few times at home, my parents tried to speak it with me to keep theirs up, but it just felt silly. But when we’re here, they insist that I speak Spanish, no matter what. I spend the start of each summer rummaging for words I used to know or trying to understand things I probably understood the year before. I think berro is a little, flat-leaved plant that grows in clusters by the river. Aracely’s abuela collects it for one of her remedies.

  I unearth my swimsuit and stand up. “I’ll let my parents know where we’re going.”

  “I already told them.” Aracely links her arm with mine, pushes open the door and leads me into the sunshine. A dozen kids are playing in front of the school, on a patch of ground just big enough for a game of catch. Adults lounge along the wall, talking with each other or calling to my parents, who try to arrange boxes and socialize at the same time. The day we arrive is always like this, with everyone stopping by to say hello. Every other day is pretty similar too. The school is smack in the middle of the settlement, and anyone going anywhere usually stops in to chat.

  “Come on.” Aracely tugs on my arm. “Let’s go. It’s not just berro I want. I want privacy. I’ve got something important to tell you.”

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