by Sonia Pilcer
“I told you, I won’t touch it. If you give it to me, I’ll spit it out!” he responded. “Let me read.”
I watched from across the room, trying to make sense of this totally incomprehensible stranger. How he burrowed himself into books like an animal in its hole. I rarely saw him without something in his hand, a newspaper, Time magazine, a book about the Holocaust.
“Now I have to change my shoes,” Genia declared, sitting down to remove her pumps. “These hurt like hell.”
I had read somewhere that shoes were crucial for surviving. Once your shoes went, you couldn’t walk anymore. My father had wrapped newspapers around his feet during the war when he had to march for hours in the snow . . .
Genia reached into the shopping bag and took out a housecoat and a pair of gold fake leather slippers. “Ach, my feet burn.” As she eased the first slipper onto her foot, she sighed. “Only in slippers are my feet happy.”
Then she slowly removed the ensemble she faced the world in, the Americans. Standing in her full slip, she buttoned her daisy-patterned housecoat.
“Would you like tea, Mom?”
“No, I had already.”
“Nothing?”
“Maybe a piece of bread?” She removed several plastic containers from the bag.
Genia always brought food. Just in case some disaster befell them. Besides, she was convinced I was starving, living by myself with no food in my refrigerator.
“I brought you krupnik for two times, remember to take off the fat with a spoon, and a little cholent. I made it last week for company but saved some for you.”
“Thanks.”
I placed a loaf of black bread on a wooden board with a sharp knife. “Do you want jam or cheese?”
“Heniek,” Genia called, “Look what your daughter put out for us. Such a spread.”
“I don’t want nothing,” he repeated.
“Well, I’ll have a cup of coffee anyway,” I declared, pouring the boiling water through a filter. I stared down, watching the coffee solidify inside the white cone.
As my mother sliced the black bread, she said, “You know, the Russians gave Daddy two loaves of black bread a day. After the war, he was only forty-seven kilos. In four months—” She stopped and looked at me. “Why are you so sour, daughter of mine?”
“Because I told you I want you to call before you come.”
“You used to be such a happy child.”
“I need to take a shower.”
“What about your coffee?”
“I’ll take it with me.”
“Okay, I’ll clean up.” She ran her finger over the windowsill. “Look how much dust you have.”
“No!” I screamed. Then gentler. “Please, don’t.”
“You can’t just take a cloth and wipe the surface? You should be ashamed.”
“Mom, why do you have to do this to me?” I asked.
“What am I doing? That I don’t want you to live like this for the rest of your life?”
I didn’t want to get into it, but I couldn’t help myself.
“What’s wrong with the way I live?” I demanded.
“Alone?”
“Not always.”
She raised her right eyebrow, then said, “Like a dog. An orphan lives better.” Then her tone turned solicitous. “Not always? So . . . ” she clucked. “Is there someone, Zosha, in your life . . . ”
I didn’t answer.
“A nice Jewish man,” she said, “with a good job—”
“Get off it, Mom!”
“Okay, kill me. I worry for you. I want you should have a good life.”
“I have a good life,” I answered.
“Family life is everything for a woman.”
I said nothing, rolling my eyes.
“Children are—what can I say? Everything.” She looked seriously into my eyes. “Nu, Zosha?”
“I’m not ready yet,” I answered.
Genia’s voice turned sharp, like a barbed instrument. “How long you will wait? Till your eggs dry up and rot?”
“I’m taking my shower.”
My father did not look up from Our Bodies, Not Our Souls as I walked past him. With relief, I locked the bathroom door behind me. Slowly, I stripped.
I turned on the hot water. It scalded my skin. I didn’t want to move. Heal me, I am broken. I started to cry.
The righteous jets of water massaged my back and neck. I wished I could stand still forever, silver rivulets of water running over my body. Free of them and their painful history.
My father was still reading when I walked past him, wrapped in my robe. He did not look up. In my bedroom, I found my mother standing over my desk.
I rushed in. “What are you doing? You know I don’t want you looking at things on my desk.”
This time I caught her red-handed, holding a typed page from my manuscript. I tried to grab it from her. “Mom—!”
“What is it?” Genia asked.
“Something I’m working on.”
“So many pages,” she muttered. “Like a book.”
I reached for the sheet in her hand. “Mother—”
“Is it about us?” she asked shrewdly.
“I don’t talk about it,” I said, grabbing the sheet.
“You know how often I’ve told you to write for Martyrdom and Remembrance. They publish many Second Generation. Manya’s daughter, Eleanor, wrote such a touching poem. It made me cry!”
“I’m not interested in Martyrdom.”
“Our good friend, Bolek, is the editor, and he always asks about you. I’m sure he would be interested in your poems.”
“I’m still not interested in Martyrdom.”
I looked down. Where I had grabbed the sheet of paper from my mother, a jagged diagonal rip formed. I took a deep breath.
“First, you burst in on me when I’m sleeping. While I’m in the bathroom, you go through my stuff. What’s wrong with you?”
“You’re right. You’re always right,” she admitted. “I shouldn’t look at your things, but—” She paused for a moment. “We came to talk to you about something.”
“Oh.” I stopped in my tracks. “What’s wrong?”
“Your father and I are going to Poland,” she declared gravely.
“No!” I gasped. “When?”
“Next month. For two weeks.”
“I can’t believe it,” I said, shaking my head.
“I couldn’t sleep all night,” my mother muttered.
“I just can’t understand why,” I responded. “You’ve always hated the Poles. You said they were worse than the Germans, that they were still killing Jews after the war, that you would never go back—”
“It’s time,” she said. “We need to see. We have to do it, that’s all.”
I sat down on my bed, stunned. “I still can’t believe it. Are you going by yourselves?”
“Oh no, Stella Brumstein and Beniek are going, and Vatska and Nusen, some others from the Czestochowa Society you don’t know.”
“It’s the fiftieth anniversary of Warsaw Uprising,” my father shouted from the living room.
“I should go with you,” I said.
“Why?” my mother asked.
“Because I need to see it too,” I answered.
“It’s better not,” she said, shaking her head firmly.
“Why?” I demanded, staring at her. “You’re going to protect me—now?”
“It’s not for you to go,” she insisted. “You’re an American.”
“But you’ve told me all about the war.”
“Maybe I told you too much,” she said, shaking her head.
“I should see Poland for myself,” I insisted.
“It’s not there, Zosh.”
“Warsaw?”
“They destroyed everything. We almost didn’t get out after the war. The Poles didn’t have enough blood. We had to escape like criminals to Berlin.” She paused, looking sadly at me.
“You’re our daughter, so you h
eard things. You had no bubbe, no granny to sit on her lap, to hear good stories,” she continued. “I talked too much. I didn’t have my mother to help me, to teach me things.”
“I need to know where we come from,” I insisted. “Who we are. Who I am,” I added softly.
“But you don’t need to go there,” she asserted. “Go to Israel. Maybe there you’ll meet a sabra.”
“If that’s what I want, I’ll call Shalom Moving,” I answered.
“Always a wisecrack. Like when you went to school. Heniek,” she now cried, “come and talk to her.”
He looked up. “What do you want me to say?” he asked. “She’ll do what she wants. She always did.”
“What did I do?” I asked.
Slowly, he stood up. Walking into the bedroom, he looked around suspiciously, his eyes fixing on the double bed. He stared underneath the bed as if he might spot a lover crawling out on all fours.
“Your mother worries about you,” he began uncomfortably, as if he were once again the reluctant spanker, and I the paskudnyak evil girl.
“She worries about everything,” I responded.
“What, would you like parents who don’t care what you do?”
“No,” I admitted. “But there’s nothing to worry about.”
“I don’t know why you made me come, Genia,” he groaned. “I’ve got to go to work.”
“Your important work will be there in a few minutes. Talk to your daughter,” she insisted.
He stood there, glowering. Finally, he said, “So you want to go with us?”
I nodded. “I do.”
“You know what’s in Poland? Nothing,” he spat the word. “Nothing!”
“Why are you going?” I asked.
“Because we have to.”
“I do too, Dad.”
“You? Don’t be ridiculous!” he scoffed.
“It’s part of me too,” I insisted.
“You don’t know nothing about it!” His voice was getting louder.
“That’s not true. I’ve read books, seen movies. I know I wasn’t there, but—”
“You should only thank God you weren’t there!” he yelled.
“Why are you screaming at me?”
“Talk like a human being to her,” Genia said softly.
“Do you think I want to go back?” he asked. “But your mother, she gets these ideas.”
“Don’t worry,” I said angrily, “I’ll pay for myself.”
“Boje, boje. God, god,” he sighed loudly. “It isn’t enough that we went through it? Now you want to go? Why?” he demanded. “Why?”
“So I’ll understand.”
“Understand what?” he asked. “Auschwitz?”
“It’s part of me too. It’s something I’ve imagined in great detail!” I cried out. “I’ve been there. Don’t you understand?”
He shook his head sadly. “If you want me to lie to you, I’ll say I understand. I don’t understand! You’ve had everything.”
I turned to my mother. “Is anyone living in Warsaw?” I asked her, trying another tack.
“Not our family,” Genia answered.
“Not a single distant relative?”
Genia shook her head.
“Nobody from Daddy’s side?”
“You’ve met my cousin, Jack, on Grand Concourse,” Genia said quietly. “Daddy has Uncle Miecho in Israel and his family—”
“Just a minute,” I said, taking a yellow pad from my desk. “I don’t even know the names. I want to make a family tree.”
“A tree!” Heniek laughed bitterly. “Without branches or leaves.”
“We’re not in touch,” Genia added.
“I don’t care. I just want to be able to see the names. To know that these people once existed. I don’t even know their names,” I told my father.
“What does it matter?” he demanded. “It’s not real.” Heniek grabbed the pad, trying to tear it in half. “Names! They’re all dead! I don’t know even why we have to go.”
“Don’t start, Heniek! I want to see what’s there. My father owned property. People say some of the buildings still stand.”
“There’s nothing left. Just a giant cemetery for Jews. And even those stones are broken. Used for doorstops.” He started to walk to the door. “Choleras, all of them!”
“Heniek, just a minute.” She ran after him.
“The meter will run out,” he said. “You want to pay fifty dollars?”
“So stick a quarter in,” she said.
“I have to go.” He held the book under his arm. “I’ll give you this back next week.”
“Pick me up with the car before you go home,” Genia called after Heniek.
The door slammed behind him.
I opened the door, watching my father as he stomped down the stairs. The steel stairwell vibrated with rage. It was as if something terrible had happened. But what? And why was it my fault?
He turned to look up the stairwell at me for a moment, then continued walking down the steps.
I almost said—something. I don’t know what. Then, I called after him. “Daddy!”
He stopped, squinting up to see me.
I didn’t know what to say. “Dad?”
He stood still for several seconds. When he turned his face toward me, I saw a slight smile, or at least, I thought I did. For a moment, he resembled a younger, cockier man. Then he shook his head. “Ach, Zosha.” He sighed joylessly.
/ / /
I shut the door. Genia approached me. “It’s just too painful for him. He tries, but he just can’t talk about some things.”
“He can’t stand me,” I said.
“Don’t be stupid,” she said sharply. “Your father loves you. Why do you think he works so hard?”
“But why does he scream at me like that?”
“That’s the way he is. It doesn’t mean nothing.”
“To me it does.”
“Don’t you know your father yet? After all these years. He’s a good man, Zosh, who works too hard. But does he love you? How can you even ask?”
“What does he think of my writing?”
“What’s to think? You always wrote. He doesn’t read such things like poetry. Do you understand?” she asked me.
I shrugged.
“But you have a right to know,” she declared, picking up the yellow pad. “I know some of the names. Let’s make the tree.”
“It was a stupid idea,” I said ruefully. “Dad’s right. What does it matter? Everyone’s dead.”
“They weren’t born dead, Zosha,” she said, beginning to sketch an egg-shaped outline. “Warsaw was a big city before the war. This is where we lived, before they forced us out.” She was drawing a map of her past life in Poland.
“Marszalkowska was the main street with many fancy shops.” She filled in street names on the map. “We lived on the next street, Mokotowska Number Seven, in a building next to door of a hat store. I remember the name. Zygmund Kapelusz. A Jew. He was killed, of course, but his house still stood after the war. So did ours. Maybe still.”
She drew two tiny boxes. “Here was Ziemanska and Kapulski cafes where musicians played. The church Anna Maria on Chlodna Number Ten.” She drew a cross on the map. “We used to play Burn the Church. Even before the war, we hated the Poles. All the boys would open the buttons of their pants and pee at a can or box in the courtyard. They wouldn’t let me play. But once they did. I was so excited. They told me to stand in the center and close my eyes.” She started to giggle. “Suddenly all of them were peeing on me.”
“Oh, no!” I exclaimed. “What did you do?”
“I ran home and my mother cleaned me up.”
We both laughed. My mother’s laugh girlish, her fingers still hiding her teeth, which had long ago been fixed.
“Mom, do you know why you survived?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Lot of people were better people than me, smarter, and still they died. No one knows why.”
“How d
id you begin to live?” I asked. “After everything that happened—”
“Such a question. I don’t know. Life makes you live.”
“Was it difficult?”
“It just happened,” she said. “One whole day passes and you don’t think of nothing. Then you do. It’s not so good. It puts you in bad mood. So you don’t think about it. You think about something else and you’re careful not to think of anything. You make new friends, you buy clothing, you keep busy.”
“Did you ever think not to bring children into such a world?”
“Never,” she answered. “They killed us, not our seed.” Then she looked at me. “You were our greatest pleasure.”
My eyes welled up. “Mom—” I said hoarsely, reaching out to touch her arm.
“I never meant to pass it on to you.” She clutched my hand, stroking it. “You were my miracle. Without no scars. When you were born, your father said, ‘This is worth more than a million American dollars.’”
“He really said that?” I asked.
She nodded.
“I have an idea, Zosha,” she said suddenly. “Let’s go shopping.”
“Now?”
“To that store on Broadway. What’s it called? Job’s Odd Lot?”
“You mean, Odd Job Lot?”
She nodded eagerly.
“What about Dad? Didn’t you ask him to pick you up from here?”
“He won’t come so fast,” she said.
“But they only have junk, Mom.”
“What’s junk to one person can be diamonds to someone else.”
Other mothers took their daughters to Lord & Taylor. My mother examined plastic alarm clocks, fiesta-colored napkin rings, bedsheet seconds, discontinued Water Piks, electric curlers, and Israeli pantyhose. I followed behind her, strangely comforted.
I had spent a lifetime of Saturdays crawling with my mother through the aisles of Lane’s, Klein’s, and the street bazaar of Fourteenth Street, as colorful and glittery as anything Cairo could offer.
Now I dragged behind her as she stalked the aisles like a spy, filling her wire basket. “Look at this!” she cried out, picking up a pair of picture frames inlaid with iridescent mother-of-pearl butterflies. “These would look nice in your apartment.”
I shook my head.
“Knickknacks make a place friendlier.”
“No thanks.”
“Only two ninety-nine,” she exulted. “On Fifth Avenue, I saw exactly the same picture frames for ten dollars each. It’ll look great in the bedroom, above the bed.” She tried to put the frames in her basket.