Beloved Enemy, The (House of Winslow Book #30)

by Gilbert, Morris

  ****

  The bus that took Kefira, along with eight others, to the prison burned oil badly, and she wondered if it would make the trip. The tires, she had noted, were slick, and the engine backfired several times, making all the passengers jump at the terrific explosions. The road was smooth enough, but with every little bump, the bus seemed to have been struck with a gigantic sledgehammer.

  The passengers, five women besides herself and two men, were all silent. Everyone seemed to be under a cloud—every face taut, shoulders slumped in weariness. An elderly woman sat beside Kefira, and after casting several glances at her, said, “My name is Mabel. Who do you have on the inside?”

  “My brother. My name is Kefira.”

  “My, that’s a nice name. What does it mean, I wonder? Did your parents just think it was pretty?”

  “In Hebrew it means ‘lion cub.’” Kefira smiled as she saw the woman’s expression. “It’s a funny thing to name a baby, but my father was very fond of an aunt with that name, so I inherited it.”

  “It’s very pretty. Have you been here before?”

  “Yes, several times. Who do you have inside?”

  “My son. His name is Harold. He’s my only child now. I had a daughter, but she died.”

  “Do you live close?”

  “No, quite a ways from here. In Troy.”

  “Oh, that is a long way, ma’am!”

  “Yes, it is. I’ve been coming here for nine years now. I’ve never missed a visiting day.”

  Kefira took in the older woman’s worn clothing. Her eyes fell on the hands, and she saw that they were callused and chafed with work. “How much longer will your son have to serve?”

  “Oh, he’s in for life.”

  Kefira could not think of a reply. She finally said feebly, “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Yes, it’s hard,” the woman remarked. “But I’ve tried to give thanks to the Lord. My son’s healthy, and I get to see him every visiting day. What about your brother?”

  “He only has a year and a half more.”

  “Oh, won’t that be fine!”

  “Yes, I live for the day.”

  The two talked until the bus pulled up in front of the walls of Sing Sing Prison. The passengers disembarked silently, and Kefira walked along with the others, accompanied by two armed guards. Kefira thought it odd that the guards both carried rifles. Are they guarding the prisoners from us? That can’t be. The guards were hard-looking men, and she wondered what it would be like to be constantly dealing with prisoners who lived with no hope of a better future.

  She knew the way by now and followed the others into a large room with a modicum of furniture. A table along one wall held a commercial-sized metal coffeepot, and cups lined a shelf above it. Kefira sat down and waited, and after what seemed like a longer time than usual, the prisoners began arriving. She saw a heavyset man with weary eyes greeting the woman she had spoken with. Mabel reached up and embraced him, and he patted her shoulder. She could hear the man say, “You’ve never missed a visiting day, Mom. Never once in all these years.”

  A movement caught Kefira’s eye, and she saw Chaim walk through the door. Her heart felt a quick surge of pity as she remembered how handsome and full of life he had been. Now all the life and joy seemed to have been drained out of him, but she let none of this show in her face. She rose quickly, went over to him, put her arms around him, and kissed him. “Hello, Chaim,” she said.

  “Hello, sis.”

  “Come over and sit down. I brought you some blintzes.”

  She pulled him down and opened her box, bringing out a bag on the top. Unwrapping one of the blintzes, she handed it to him, and he downed it in two large bites. “Mmm, that’s good,” he said. “I wish they served Jewish food in here.”

  “Are the meals very bad?”

  “Monotonous. The same thing all the time. What I wouldn’t give for some knishes.” It had been his favorite food—round, flat dumplings, filled with potato or other fillings and baked.

  “How’s Mother?” he asked, reaching into the bag for another blintz.

  For a moment Kefira hesitated. “Well, she’s not as well as I’d like.”

  “That means she’s worse.”

  “I’m hoping that when spring comes she’ll be better. Maybe she’ll be able to get outside some.”

  “She’s not going to live, is she, sis?”

  “Oh, don’t say that, Chaim! She can get better. It’s possible.”

  To change the subject, she reached into the box again and began bringing out more items, small gifts she had worked extra hours to buy. “I’ve brought you some things. Just toothpaste and razor blades and some aftershave. It’ll make you smell good.”

  “I don’t think it’ll help much in here, but thanks, sis.”

  The conversation was difficult. Chaim almost seemed to be in a trance, and she knew he was depressed. He was older than she by eight years, but she had learned to read him even as a child. Putting her hand on his, she said, “It’s only a year and a half, Chaim.”

  He squeezed her hand so hard it hurt, but he seemed unconscious of it. His eyes grew flat, and he withdrew for a time. Then he shook his head and said, “Eighteen months. That doesn’t sound like much to someone on the outside. But every day in here is like a year. I don’t think I can make it.”

  “Of course you can!”

  “I have nightmares. You know you were always the one who had dreams, but now I have frightful dreams every night.”

  “You seem depressed.”

  “I guess I am. It’s my cellmate, Harold McKenzie. He got in trouble and was punished for it.”

  Despite herself, she asked, “What did they do to him?”

  “They gave him the water treatment.”

  “What … what’s that?”

  “They put you in a shower in a chair and tie your hands down. Your feet and head are locked in place so you can’t move. Then they put this trough around your neck that catches the water. It fills up as the shower runs and comes all the way up to your nose. You try to gulp the water, but you can’t. Finally it gets in your nose, and you pass out.” He shuddered and swiped his hand across his face. “Then they slap your face to bring you back awake … and they do it all over again.”

  It was such a frightening scene, Kefira knew she would have dreams about it. “I hope it never happens to you, Chaim.”

  “It already has—twice.”

  There was nothing to say to this, so she quickly changed the subject again. She talked of things that were happening in the world outside, and for a while he seemed mildly interested. Finally he ate another blintz and said, “It’s good that you’ve come to see me. Some men don’t have any visitors.”

  “That must be terrible.” She put her hand on his arm and squeezed it. “It’ll be hard, but one day you’ll be out. God hasn’t forgotten you.”

  Chaim turned to face her, a strange expression twisting his features. “You still believe in God? I don’t.”

  Actually Kefira had little faith in God, but she would not say so. “Don’t talk like that. You remember what Papa always said. ‘The Eternal One will help us.’ He said that a thousand times.”

  “Yes, he did.” He looked at her and shook his head. “But he was never in a place like this.”

  The visiting hour was quickly over. When she rose to go, Kefira said, “I’ll come back when I can. What can I bring you?”

  “I know you’re having a hard time making ends meet. Just take care of Mama.”

  She reached up, put her arms around him, and clung to him fiercely. Her heart smote her as she thought of having to leave him alone, but she could not let him see it. Smiling brightly, she said, “I’ll write you. You don’t have to write me back.”

  “Your letters help a lot, sis.”

  She turned and left the room, and at the door she took one look back and saw Chaim standing there, watching her with an empty expression on his face. He waved and then turned and, with his s
houlders slumped, passed through the door back toward the world that was destroying him.

  ****

  As soon as Kefira returned from her visit, her mother wanted to know every detail. Kefira sat down beside her, and the two drank cups of hot tea while Kefira gave her a report. “He looks fine, Mother,” she said, smiling. There was no point in telling her the truth. Anything she could do to make her mother feel better she would do, and a lie like this seemed to be the kindest thing.

  “I suppose he’s all pale and has lost weight.”

  “Oh, no indeed. He gets to go out in what they call ‘the yard.’ Of course, during the winter not so much, but when spring comes, he’ll be as brown as a berry.”

  “Do they treat him badly in that place?” Rachel asked in a trembling voice. She had a coughing spasm and covered her mouth with a handkerchief. “I’ve heard so many horrible tales.”

  “Oh, those are just newspaper stories,” Kefira said quickly. “He said the food was pretty good, and he has a good friend in his cell. They read the same books, and he has a lot of other friends there.”

  For some time Rachel sat drinking in her daughter’s words, and finally she sighed. “I’m going to see him in the spring if I get better by then.”

  “Of course you are, and you will be better.” Actually Kefira said this to encourage her own heart, but her eyes told her that her mother was not getting better at all. She was so thin now that her legs were like broomsticks, and her eyes were sunk back in her head. Kefira’s chest tightened in fear at the thought of losing her mother, and she tried to put it out of her mind. “I’m going to make some teiglach.”

  “I wish Chaim could have some.”

  “Next time I go I’ll make him some. He liked the blintzes so much.”

  Rising, she busied herself making the little cakes, which would be dipped in honey, and soon the kitchen was filled with the sweet smell of baking. Afterward she sat down and coaxed her mother to eat three of them, which was the most she had seen her eat in some time.

  “Will you read to me a while, daughter, from the Scripture?”

  “Of course, Mother.”

  Moving across the room, Kefira picked up the Yiddish Bible that was on the table. She brought it back and laid her hand flat on it. “How many times,” she murmured, “have I seen Papa put his hand on this book? He loved the Scriptures, didn’t he, Mama?”

  “Yes, he always did. I don’t think a day in his life went by that he wouldn’t read some part of it, if at all possible. And he had such a marvelous reading voice. I miss it so much.”

  “So do I. What do you want me to read, Mama?”

  “Read me one of the stories in the First Book.”

  Kefira thumbed through the book and came to the story of Abram. She read very well indeed. She had learned from her father how to put light into the readings. She always said of him, “He could make a telephone book sound interesting.”

  She read aloud the story of Abram, the first Jew, as her father often pointed out, who was called by God to leave his home and his people and go out into a land he had never seen. She made it sound like an exciting adventure as Abram and his wife, Sarai, left Ur of the Chaldees and settled in Haran, finally traveling to the land of Canaan that God had promised him. She read with vigor, and when she was finished, she smiled and took her mother’s hand. “That would take a lot of courage, wouldn’t it, Mother, to leave your home and family and go to a place you’ve never even heard of?”

  “Yes, it would. Samuel always said that Abram had more faith than any man in the Scriptures.”

  “I wonder if Abram heard the voice of God like you’re hearing my voice, or if it was just something that went on in his head.”

  “My Samuel thought he heard the actual voice of God,” Rachel said, remembering her husband with great fondness, “and he thought Moses did too. You remember in the next book it says that God spoke to Moses in the same way a man speaks with his friend. Samuel always insisted that it was the real, actual voice of God.”

  The two spoke quietly, and the presence of Samuel Reis was very real in the room. He had been a devoted husband and father, and after his death Kefira had seen her mother grow silent and lose all taste for life. She felt now, somehow, that even this physical sickness was part of her grief over her husband.

  “I like that story so much,” Rachel murmured. “We all have to go to a country that we don’t know someday.”

  Startled, Kefira looked up. Her mother had never before referred to death, and now a lump came to her throat. She did not know what to say, and her mother smiled suddenly and said, “I think about that sometimes, daughter, and I believe that I will see my Samuel again.”

  Tears filled Kefira’s eyes, and she could only choke out a few words. “I believe so too, Mama.”

  Her mother was tired, she saw, and after she got her to bed, Kefira cleaned up the kitchen. Her weariness was especially great this evening, and she knew that part of this, at least, was emotional. She went to her cold bedroom, climbed into bed, and fell asleep almost at once. She dreamed the same pleasant dream that had come to her before—walking down a road with hills and forests in the distance and fields on either side of the road. She could see the white house with its columns, with the oak-lined road leading up to it, but once again, when she moved toward it, it vanished … and the vanishing pierced her with a sorrow she could not express.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Learn to Love God …”

  For a special treat Kefira had packed half a dozen teiglach and a small jar of honey along with her sandwich. Now she sat with Millie at their lunch break and smiled. “I want you to taste some of my cooking.”

  Millie looked wan. She had been lifeless for some time now, and Kefira and Agatha had spoken of her. Agatha had revealed that she had taken Millie to an abortionist. From that time on, Agatha had tried to cheer the girl up, as had Kefira, but there was a deep sorrow in the young woman that words and sympathy could not heal.

  Outside, a small snowstorm had gathered, and pale light filtered through the snowflakes as they fell. They swarmed and fascinated Kefira, but she took her gaze away from the window to say, “Here. Take one of these and dip it into this honey.”

  “What is it?”

  “Just little cakes. We call them teiglach.”

  Millie dipped one into the honey, took a bite, and chewed, nodding, “These are very good! Are they hard to make?”

  “No, very easy. I’ll write down the recipe for you if you’d like to try it.”

  “All right.”

  The two girls ate all of the pastries and then sat waiting, savoring their brief moment of rest before they had to return to their workbenches.

  “How’s your mother?” Millie asked.

  “Not very well.”

  “It’s this terrible winter. There are people sick everywhere.” She looked down at her hands and said, “Do you think she’ll live, Kefira?”

  “I hope so. I hate to leave her alone, but I have to work.”

  “It’s too bad. I wish I could help.”

  Kefira reached over and patted the girl’s hand. “You would if you could. These are hard times.” She was actually very concerned about her mother. Rachel Reis had grown worse the past week, and it was hard for Kefira to leave her. Mrs. Simmons and other neighbors would come periodically to look in on her and make sure she was all right, but Kefira still wished she didn’t have to go to work.

  “I can’t help thinking of my baby.”

  Kefira looked up, startled. This was the first time Millie had mentioned the operation. Her lips were drawn together in a tight line, and tears rolled down her cheeks. “I can’t ever have him, Kefira.”

  Not knowing how to comfort the girl, Kefira reached over and held her hand. “Don’t think about it. It’s in the past. You have to start in where you are.”

  “But it’s so awful. I can’t have him—I killed him!”

  Distressed at this thought, Kefira began to urge Millie to
try to forget. “We all make mistakes,” she said. “You’re not the first girl to get in trouble.”

  “Getting in trouble is one thing, but killing my baby—that’s something else. I’m nothing but a murderer!”

  “Millie, don’t talk like that! You did what you had to do.” In truth this was not what Kefira thought. She had a deep aversion to the very thought of abortion, and she knew she herself would never do such a thing. Still, there was no point in berating the young woman. Millie felt bad enough already. So Kefira began talking about how important it was to put things behind you.

  Millie listened, her eyes fixed on Kefira and seeking for some grain of hope, but finally, sadly, she shook her head. “This is different from other sins, Kefira.”

  “Sins are all alike, aren’t they? I always thought so.”

  “No, they’re not,” Millie insisted. “Some things that you do wrong will hurt you but nobody else—but other sins hurt other people, so they’re twice as wrong. Don’t you see?”

  Actually this did seem true enough to Kefira. She sat silently, wishing she could think of something to say to comfort her friend, but she could only make sympathetic sounds.

  Tears ran down Millie’s cheeks, leaving silvery tracks. From far away came the sound of a siren, an eerie wail like the death cry of some fabulous monster. The sound seemed to hurt Millie, and she dropped her face into her hands and began to sob. “This sin was against my own child—and against God.” Her shoulders shook convulsively, and she cried out, “God will never forgive me!”