But Nechama squealed happily in the bunk above me. “Pete was right. He said we’d reach Africa today.” She pulled on a skirt and shirt and was gone.
“Wait, Nechama. Put on something warm,” I ordered. Then I gave up, scrambling into my clothes and carrying Nechama’s coat under my arm as I chased my sister up the flights of stairs to the main deck.
It was still early in the morning; the sun had not yet risen. But below the skies, in the distance, was land. A surprisingly large, mistily purple, mountainous land. South Africa. We could see South Africa.
“Look at the mountain that’s completely flat at the top,” Pete called out to us as he hurried past. “That one’s called Table Mountain.”
A pure white tablecloth of clouds hung down over the edges of the mountain. It reminded me of something. “The table’s ready for Shabbes dinner,” I whispered to myself. But Nechama overheard and turned to smile at me. We were remembering the same Shabbes table. My eyes blurred with tears.
By the time I could see clearly again, the ship had drawn closer to the great land mass, which glimmered with thousands of lights. The white sparkles were woven into diamond necklaces swinging from the breasts of the mountains down to the dark sea.
I gasped. “It looks like fairyland in my English books.”
The sun came up slowly. All of us were on deck now, chattering and pointing. We could just make out small moving shapes on the dock.
“Those are people!” Nechama exclaimed. “Look at all the people waiting to meet us.”
“There must be hundreds,” I said.
“Thousands,” Laya said with awe.
“Yes, the whole town’s turned out to see what monkeys Daddy Ochberg has brought them!” Little Faygele giggled.
We laughed excitedly.
“They must really want us,” Nechama said to me, and we squeezed hands.
The crowd on the wharf became clearer. There were adults and children, swaying together from side to side. And gradually the sound of singing crept over the water and reached our ship.
A thrill rippled through me. “Nechama,” I said, “Papa taught us that song, remember?”
Nechama leaned over to listen and a faint recognition lit her eyes. “I think I remember. Sing it for us. What does it mean?” she asked.
I started to sing softly. In an instant, the children around me had picked up the words, or at least had remembered the beautiful melody, and we swayed arm in arm as we sang again and again:
“Hinei ma tov u’ma nayim
Shevet achim gam yachad.
How good and how pleasant it is
When families dwell together in unity.”
The group on the dock could hear us singing, too, and their own singing became louder. Back and forth the words traveled. Voices rose and linked across the water in the dawn’s light, a ribbon of sound threading us closer and closer, singing of safety and reunion.
HOME TO THE ORPHANAGE
1921
From our bus, festooned with streamers by the welcoming crowd at the Cape Town dock, I saw a strange world. How very different it was from Europe. My part of Poland was flat and brown and marshy; even London had been gray most days. But Cape Town in spring was like a painting from one of my books. It was as if someone had decided to draw the bluest of blue skies and an emerald ocean and golden mountains between. Then the sun had been painted in, with a wash of color kissing everything.
The people, too, were of many different colors. The Jews who had greeted us so kindly had been almost as white as we were, and I saw other whites walking and driving on the streets. Many people were a glowing and very definite brown. Those in between in color seemed to talk in a lilting singsong. Then there were lightly colored women with long, straight, and brilliant black hair, wearing slim pants underneath bright tunics.
“What are those people eating?” Nechama asked me, pointing out the window at a white woman and her little girl sitting on a park bench and sharing what looked like a large, curved, pale yellow finger. As we stared, the woman casually pulled off a thick skin. I shivered, remembering the whispers about cannibals I had heard in the orphanage in Pinsk.
The bus made a sharp turn into the shadow of the mountains and puffed along a gravel driveway through a forest of pines. It stopped in front of a large, gracious building. At the door waited a smiling woman in a starched white uniform and a white nurse’s cap. Hanging out of the windows of the orphanage were fifty, sixty, maybe seventy sturdy and tanned South African children, staring with unabashed curiosity. We stared back.
Daddy Ochberg stood up to greet the woman. “Lunch first, Matron, then playtime,” he called as he stepped out. “These children have been cooped up in close quarters for too long.”
We climbed down, nudging against Daddy Ochberg and one another like scared lambs. Nechama had lost all her breezy optimism about Africa. “Itzik said there will be spiders and snakes under our beds. Will there? I didn’t like the thing that woman was eating in the park. Will there be real food here?” she whispered. I didn’t have any answers.
After a few hours, we agreed that the food was as good as in London and that, although there were a few spiders, there didn’t seem to be any snakes. Then Faygele burst out laughing. “This place is so crowded that there isn’t any room for snakes!”
“The children are right,” Mr. Bobrow told Daddy Ochberg and Matron. “Even after half of the children leave for Johannesburg tomorrow, where will we put the rest? Your new wing won’t be ready for weeks.”
Half of the children leaving for Johannesburg? I turned to Daddy Ochberg in shock. After all this time together?
Daddy Ochberg saw my face and reached down to smooth my hair back. “Everything will be all right, Devorah of the big dark eyes,” he said. To Mr. Bobrow, he answered, smiling, “We will stretch the walls.” And we did. All of us slept in two long rooms, some in small beds and others on close-packed mattresses on the floor. Little suitcases spilled their contents everywhere.
The next day, one hundred of Daddy’s orphans were sent by train from Cape Town to the Jewish orphanage in Johannesburg. Nechama and Faygele sobbed as they waved goodbye to those who were leaving us. But my eyes were dry and the muscles in my face felt like stone. I wouldn’t say another goodbye; I couldn’t. I turned my face away as the bus rumbled down the driveway between the pines.
“Goodbye.” “Bye.” “Write to us soon.” “Goodbye.” When the shouts of farewell had curled up toward the mountains and disappeared in the Cape Town breeze, there was a long silence on the steps of the orphanage. Then we moved back inside, slowly.
I saw Daddy Ochberg glance at Mr. Bobrow, raising his eyebrows in an exaggerated movement and cocking his head toward all of us with a concerned look. Mr. Bobrow nodded back seriously.
“We can almost fit in now,” Itzik commented.
Daddy Ochberg brightened. “Time for a story!” he announced. We looked at him with interest as he settled himself on a narrow little mattress and leaned back against the wall. “Do you know the story of the man who complained that his house was too small?” he asked, patting the bed next to him to invite us to gather close.
“Tell us,” Yankel shouted.
“Once there was a man,” Daddy Ochberg began, “who lived in a tiny house with his wife and ten children.
“One day he complained to the rabbi of the town. ‘There is no room in my house for me to move around.’ The rabbi thought for a while and then he said, ‘Bring your donkey into the house with you.’
“The man was amazed but he could not disobey the rabbi, so he led the donkey into the house and gave it some of the family’s precious space. A few days later he complained to the rabbi. ‘Rabbi, now there is no room in my house for me to eat.’
“The rabbi considered the problem and then told the man to bring his goats into the house, too. The man was in despair, but he did as the rabbi advised.
“After a day or two he complained again. ‘Rabbi, now there is no room in my house
for me to think.’ ‘Take your goats out of the house,’ the rabbi replied.
“The man did so and marveled at the quiet and space he had gained. A few days later, the rabbi told him to take his donkey out of the house, also. ‘Oy,’ the man said proudly, ‘what a big house I have, with so much space for my wife, my children, and myself.’ “
Daddy Ochberg laughed deep from his belly and the children laughed, too, looking around at the room that now seemed just the right size.
Within a few weeks, the new rooms built by Daddy Ochberg at the back of the orphanage were complete, and the orphans were divided twelve to a room, by age group. For the first time in our lives, Nechama and I did not sleep next to each other. Excitedly, Nechama moved her things to the new room she would share with her little friends. But I tossed and turned in my bed at night. My arms felt empty. I know they can’t keep all the sisters and brothers together in the same room, I thought, but Nechama needs me. That’s why I came with her to South Africa.
A small number of Ochberg children left the Cape Jewish Orphanage during those early weeks. Two girls and a boy had cousins far north in Rhodesia; letters had arrived inviting them to come and live in the copper-mining towns. Three toddlers were adopted by Jewish families in Cape Town who couldn’t have their own children. Itzik and another big boy were sent to the country to live with a Jewish shopkeeper and a Jewish farmer.
Itzik had been in the orphanage in Pinsk when Nechama and I arrived there. He was the first boy to admire me, in my flour-bag apron in Warsaw. Of all the people in the world except Nechama, I’d known him and Mr. Bobrow the longest.
I listened anxiously as Daddy Ochberg read Itzik’s letters aloud. He wrote to say that he was earning a small amount of money working in his new family’s general store after school every day. “My plan is to save up and open my own shop when I turn eighteen,” he wrote. “I work long hours, but Mr. Katz is a fair boss. Mrs. Katz is very kind to me and a wonderful cook.”
I was relieved to hear Itzik sounding so well and happy. And I was glad that no more children were sent away. After three weeks in the orphanage, I felt as if we had lived there for three months. The big building was already home.
I loved London and the ship, I remembered one night, reaching down to touch the boxes of books still housed, at Mr. Ochberg’s instruction, under my bed. But I think I like Cape Town even more. It’s colorful and warm and safe. No more pogroms, no more hunger, no more sickness. And I see Nechama at breakfast every morning. It is good here. I hope Mama and Papa know that.
SAFE
1921
“If you are going to succeed in your new country,” Daddy Ochberg told us seriously one night when he joined us for dinner, “you need to learn better English. You will be outsiders here until you laugh in English, play in English, dream in English.”
I agreed silently. English is the key. I have to learn perfect English so that I can take care of Nechama and myself in the future.
In the late afternoons, the busy principal of Cape Town Central School, Mark Cohen, would drive up to our orphanage in his sputtering old car, bringing several of his teachers with him, all of them volunteers. His method of teaching was simple.
“Let’s go,” he called, waving his arms. When he had all of us, big and small, crowded around him, he started walking. Inside, outside, he walked, pointing at things and describing them in English. “Bird!” he bellowed.
That one was easy. Mr. Bobrow had taught it to us already. But Mr. Cohen was just warming up.
“Greedy bird,” he went on.
We looked at one another blankly. Did “greedy” mean that the bird digging its beak repetitively into the soil was very hungry or very patient? Or perhaps “greedy” was the name of a type of bird?
“Greedy!” he enunciated, stuffing imaginary food into his mouth until his cheeks bulged, pretending to vomit, and then eating more.
I poked Nechama. “Greedy—like you at mealtimes.”
“Shiny bird,” he continued, pointing at the Cape dove’s magically glistening feathers, pulling out his gold fob watch and angling it to reflect the sun, then holding up his hand as if the sun were blinding him. Finally he pulled out a brand-new coin.
We stared at him for a moment and then burst into explanation among ourselves.
“Shiny, like your curls, Nechama,” was my peace offering.
Mr. Cohen beamed and pointed again at the gleaming bird, digging endlessly. “The bird is greedy. The bird is shiny.”
We repeated with concentration, slowly: “The bird is greedy. The bird is shiny.”
I felt panicky. So much to remember and already Mr. Cohen was walking on. Dragging Nechama, I ran after him. “You’re pulling me,” Nechama complained.
“Come on,” I urged. “It’s important.”
We needed more than Mr. Cohen’s afternoon lessons. Soon Nechama and I, along with the other children who were twelve and younger, were told we would be going to Miss Rosa’s school. Rosa van Gelderen, a Jewish woman from Holland, was the principal of an elementary school on De Villiers Street. It would be a long walk, but there was no choice. None of the other elementary schools would accept such a large group of immigrants who could not speak English.
On the first morning before school, my stomach kept heaving. “I have to be strong for Nechama,” I muttered to myself as I hovered in the bathroom. “She’ll be even more scared of school if she sees me like this.”
But when I came out, Nechama was chattering excitedly to Mr. Bobrow. “Let’s go, Devorah!” she shouted. “Mr. Bobrow is going to walk with us today to show us the way.”
I began to trail after them, but Mr. Bobrow called me to the front. “Devorah, I need you to take charge of the nine-year-old girls.”
Me?
“This way, Nechama, Faygele, Malke, Jente; this way, all of you,” I found myself saying authoritatively. “Stay together now.”
Miss Rosa had prepared her school well. “Welcome, Devorah. Welcome, Shlayma and Zeidel,” a teacher greeted us warmly. “I am Miss MacKay. Please follow me to your classroom. Our pupils are looking forward to meeting you.”
I checked for Nechama, only to see her following a pretty young teacher into a different room without a backward glance.
“Wel-come, Duh-vor-ah and Shhhlay-mah and Zay-dill,” Miss MacKay’s class chanted in singsong voices.
I lifted my eyes quickly to see if they were teasing. But most of the faces were smiling with kind curiosity.
“These are your desks right near me, and I’ve given you each an exercise book and pen,” Miss MacKay continued. “Please sit and we will begin our day.”
I was relieved to be able to scrunch down on a little bench attached to a heavy wooden desk. When I found the courage to peek around, the others were all busy with their lessons. No one was staring at me. As the minutes passed, I felt my neck and shoulders gradually relax.
Miss MacKay was generous and patient. I would have died rather than tell her that I didn’t understand even half of what she was saying that first day, but she had a way of repeating explanations for the three of us very simply, in a quiet aside. I concentrated so hard that my brain felt painfully swollen inside my skull.
At last it was time to go home, and the Ochberg children gathered at the school gate to walk together. Looking at the group, I suddenly realized that in our school uniforms we could not easily be distinguished from the South African children around us. “We all look the same,” I said, smiling at Nechama. “Isn’t that wonderful?”
Nechama frowned doubtfully at her dull yellow button-up dress. “Why can’t we wear pretty clothes to school?” she asked. “The ones in the last donation box were beautiful. I could wear a pinafore over the blue velvet so it wouldn’t get chalk or ink on it, and you would look better in red or pink than in that yellow.”
“It’s safe,” I explained impatiently. “Don’t you see how much safer it is for us to look like everyone else?”
Nechama glanced away. She ne
ver wanted to hear my warnings about danger; she didn’t even seem interested in talking about the good times back home.
I straightened the flat cotton belt on my simple dress and thought about all the things I had liked at the school: the solid wooden desks with neat holes for the inkpots and long, thin “moats” for pens and pencils; the water fountain, which shot water into my mouth at the push of a pedal. Of course, I loved the books most of all. I had received eight of them to take home, eight books I did not have to share with anyone. A reader, a heavy red history book, a worn old geography atlas, a book of science experiments and another of biology, a mathematics text, a folio of music and songs, and a dictionary of Afrikaans, the other official language in South Africa. My favorite was the English reader, with little pictures at the beginning of each chapter.
The books. A new worry suddenly made me clutch them more closely. “How will we pay for all of these?” I whispered anxiously to Shlayma. But he was more interested in kicking an empty milk carton along the path.
My question was answered after lunch. Mr. Bobrow and Matron led everyone in the job of scrubbing the dining tables and drying them with extra care. Then the adults laid out huge rolls of new brown paper, stacks of shiny white labels, and many pairs of scissors. “Your schoolbooks do not belong to you; they belong to your school and have to be returned in good condition at the end of the year,” Mr. Bobrow announced. “In order to keep them clean and to strengthen the covers, each book has to be covered in brown paper, and your name must be neatly written on a white label glued to the front.”
“Each book!” Faygele protested. “I have so many.”
“Each book,” repeated Mr. Bobrow sternly. “Now gather around while I demonstrate the correct way to turn over the corners.”
We spent hours folding and wrapping brown paper carefully around our books; it was hard to cut the paper so that it fit well. And then there were the labels to be written. I loved the precision of the job and the appearance of my books covered in fresh, smooth-brushed brown paper. I even enjoyed being among all the other children doing the same task.
The Night of the Burning Page 9