Under a Red Sky

  I stand in the second row, grateful to hide behind Claudia, whose giant white bow on the top of her head bobs up and down every time she opens her mouth to sing. Andrei stands next to me and smells of fresh soap and starch. His cowlick is slicked back with brilliantine, his blue eyes are fixed on the flags on the podium. We pledge allegiance to the Communist Party in front of the tricolor Romanian flag and the red flag of the USSR, with its yellow hammer and sickle. Comrade Popescu hands out the pins enameled with the Romanian crest and urges each of us to wear ours with great pride. She then turns to face the audience and makes a long speech about how we are the hope and future of Communism in Romania. Cousin Mimi keeps smiling from the front row with her lipstick-bleeding tooth. I look down to avoid her gaze and notice that Comrade Popescu has a run in her stocking that crosses its black seam from left to right and disappears below the rim of her left pump.

  Walking home, Cousin Mimi talks about how proud she is of me and how Communism may be a difficult path to follow but it is the right path nonetheless. To my surprise, Mama nods in noncommittal agreement. Neither of them looks up from their conversation as we pass Rabbi’s house, with its weathered gray door. I feel like a foolish yet proud impostor.

  COUSIN MIMI PAINTS MY PORTRAIT

  “YOU SHOULD HAVE SEEN how beautiful your daughter looked!” Cousin Mimi gushes to my father when we arrive home.

  “Eva always looks beautiful,” Tata mutters without looking up from his book. I stand speechless in astonishment since I have never, ever heard Tata pay me such a compliment.

  “Of course she’s gorgeous,” Mimi retorts, “but now that she’s a Pioneer there is something different about the way she holds herself.” Mimi closes one of her eyes and surveys me as if I were a statue standing in the park. Tata closes his book, picks up his pipe, and goes out to the terrace to light up.

  “What’s the matter with him?” Mimi asks.

  “Nothing.” Mama sighs. “Gyuri’s just tired of the Communist Party line. He can’t wait until we get out of here.”

  “He ought to be ashamed of himself!” Cousin Mimi explodes. “It’s because of the Communists that we are now free from the Nazis.”

  Mama sighs. “I don’t believe that’s quite how Gyuri sees it.”

  Mimi follows Tata onto the terrace while Mama settles on the bed and picks up her knitting. “How do you see it?” she asks him.

  “See what?” Tata draws on his pipe and narrows his eyes. I sit on my bed and watch them through the open door.

  “Communism,” Mimi says.

  “Let’s not get into this,” Tata says. “Then we can stay friends.”

  “Why not? If we artists can’t discuss politics among ourselves, then who the hell will take a responsible stand?”

  I start to change into my regular clothes while listening to their argument. Mama gets up and goes to the terrace.

  “Give me a break, Mimi,” Tata says. “You may be an artist, and a very fine one at that, but believe me, my dear, you know next to nothing about politics and even less about Communism.”

  “Don’t patronize me, you traitor!” Mimi screams.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “If you weren’t married to my cousin and Eva’s father, I would report you to the Securitate right now.”

  “Stop this! Both of you,” Mama interrupts. “The Russian neighbors downstairs will hear you.”

  Tata ignores Mama and continues to rant at Mimi. “Go ahead. Maybe then the Securitate would put me away and feed me for free rather than keep me in this giant jail of a place without being able to work.”

  “That was your choice,” Mimi hisses.

  “Choice? I didn’t choose to lose my job. I chose to leave this hellhole where all art has to pass the muster of the Artistic Content Committee and where I can’t even take care of my family.”

  “I am an artist, and I express myself just fine,” Mimi states solemnly.

  “Yeah, right, since you swallow all the Communist crap hook, line, and sinker. Don’t talk to me about how good the Party is, you who get chauffeured around in your husband’s limo from one museum opening to another.”

  Mimi slaps my father’s face hard, turns on her heel, and leaves. Mama runs back into the room and furiously resumes her knitting. Tata watches from the terrace as Mimi marches out of the yard and turns the corner. Two days later, Mimi telephones Mama and apologizes. Then she asks permission to paint my portrait in full Pioneer regalia.

  I AM STANDING in Mimi’s light-filled studio. It is Tuesday after school, and I am still wearing my red silk scarf around my neck, but not my white headband. Instead, my hair is held back with a bobby pin.

  Mimi is standing at an easel with a stretched canvas in front of her, and she keeps looking from me to the canvas and back. She holds one very long, thin paintbrush between her front teeth, and another in her right hand. Her eyes narrow as she stares at me for long periods of time.

  “Don’t move and keep looking straight ahead,” she says. “You can have a break in another fifteen minutes, and then we’ll have some lunch.”

  I don’t flinch, but I wiggle my toes, which are getting numb.

  “Don’t you have another pair of shoes besides these god-awful clunky ones?” Mimi asks.

  “No,” I answer.

  “Well. We’re just going to have to change that. I can’t paint you wearing these horrendous shoes. They’ll ruin the entire painting.”

  I eye the bowl that’s resting on a table next to Mimi. It’s full of oranges and bananas and other fruit I’ve never tasted.

  “Ever have a banana, Eva?”

  I shake my head no.

  “If you’re a good girl and have a bit more patience, you will. I promise you a banana for every sitting from now on. They’re delicious, and they’re good for you. Herman gets them for me through one of his foreign connections. How about an orange? Ever taste an orange, Eva? Don’t answer that. Keep your mouth shut and be still.”

  I move my head up and down to convey “Yes, I’ve tasted an orange before.” “I told you not to move,” Mimi mutters, still holding the paintbrush between her teeth. Her head moves from side to side, surveying my face as her green eyes reflect the light from the window. Mimi has the most beautiful and intense face I have ever seen. Her jet-black hair is straight and cut short and blunt, with a stylishly unruly lock that keeps falling into her eyes. She runs her fingers through her hair, forgetting that she’s got oil paint and turpentine on her hands.

  Finally she says, “Let’s take a break and eat,” and she steps away from the canvas and wipes her hands on the back of her pants.

  I walk toward the easel to take a look.

  “No! Don’t!” Mimi shouts, rushing to steer me away from the canvas. “I never show anyone my work until I’m completely done. Especially not my model.” Seeing the disappointment in my face, she adds, “Don’t worry, you’ll see it when I’m finished. Let’s eat.”

  Mimi’s housekeeper serves us lunch in the studio. We have a wonderful white bean soup with grated Parmesan cheese. A sprig of parsley floats on top of each bowl. There is also a tomato salad with black olives and a baguette still warm from the oven.

  “I want to see your face when you have your first bite of that banana,” Mimi says, peeling the yellow fruit and handing it to me. I examine the banana carefully. It reminds me of an ice cream cone, so I start to lick it from its base.

  Mimi bursts into laughter. “Don’t lick it. Bite into it,” she tells me as I take a giant bite and taste the strange new flavor. The banana is warm enough to soften in my mouth, and I finally swallow.

  “Delicious, huh?” she says. I nod and take another bite.

  Herman, Mimi’s husband, sticks his head in the doorway. “Hello,” he says, entering the room. “Look who’s here.”

  He is a very tall man with large hands and gray hair. He looks as old as Grandpa Yosef. He extends his hand to shake mine and joins us at the table.

  “So,” he says, looking
at Mimi, “how’s it going?”

  “Take a look,” she answers with her mouth full. She waves her fork toward the canvas on the easel.

  Herman gets up and stands in front of the painting. He bends his head to his right shoulder, then to his left, looking at the painting from different angles, but he doesn’t make any comment.

  “What do you think?” Mimi asks.

  “It’s good,” he says, bowing to me and excusing himself. “See you next week.”

  Mimi looks relieved. “He’s allowed to peek, because he was my art teacher when we met,” she confides. “Tanti Iulia, your grandma, never thought that we would last because he’s thirty years older than I am. But here we are,” she says, smiling. “Let’s get back to work before I lose my light. It’s good for another half hour.”

  Sitting for Mimi’s painting every Tuesday afternoon has become my second after-school activity. Mimi insists that I wear nicer shoes for the portrait, so I bring my black patent leather shoes that Cousin Netty sent from France two years ago, even though I have outgrown them.

  “Slide them on and see if you can take it,” Mimi says. “If they hurt too much, maybe you can crush the backs down and stand on them. At least until I get a chance to sketch them in.”

  I try, but the shoes really hurt. My toes have grown and my feet have gotten wider. I keep them on for as long as I can, which isn’t very long.

  Mimi decides that she needs an interesting, colorful background behind my checkered uniform. “Let’s go to my bedroom and see if we can find some fabric we can hang behind you.” I follow her, barely resisting the urge to peek at my portrait.

  Mimi and Herman’s bedroom is like a far-off land I have never imagined exists except in books. Every centimeter of wall space is covered with paintings. Mimi’s signature is in the bottom right-hand corner of many of the canvases. Herman’s paintings have a lot of triangles and cubes. There are works by other artists too; my favorite is of sunflowers whose giant yellow- and brown-petaled wheels look like the moving gears of a clock. When I finally take my eyes off the walls to look at Mimi’s bed, I wonder what it must be like to sleep there every night. There are tasseled silk pillows on a crimson bedspread, each a colorful jewel: red, gold, royal blue, purple, emerald green, and turquoise—I long to touch everything in sight, but I am too overwhelmed to do anything but take it all in.

  Mimi is oblivious to me. Her head is in her closet, her round bottom sticking out. She is intent on finding just the right piece of fabric to hang behind me.

  “Go sit at the dressing table, so I can hold these fabrics in the mirror and see what works,” she orders. I sit while she flips through a lot of fabrics quickly, her face contorted in disapproval as she holds up each one. My eyes fall onto her dressing table and an open treasure chest overflowing with beaded necklaces. I reach out to touch a carved green bracelet.

  “That’s Chinese coral. I got it on my last trip to Peking,” Mimi says. She looks at me in the mirror. “Want to try it on?”

  I shake my head.

  “Go ahead. You can try anything on,” she tells me, sliding a purple bead necklace over my head. “This is amethyst from Czechoslovakia,” she says, suddenly running to her bathroom and coming back with a striped bath towel that she holds behind me. “Finally! The perfect background for your portrait.” She smiles at my image in the mirror. “Get up, we’ve got a lot of work to do this afternoon.”

  Mimi makes strange faces as she paints. It is as if she is in another world, where she can see what other people cannot, and her face reflects that. Standing still for her isn’t any fun, but I start to look forward to my visits to her house, because each time I come, I discover something new. Her living room is filled with art books and even more beautiful treasures from her travels than her bedroom. There are African masks on the walls and a smooth white marble sculpture of a bird that looks like it is about to spread its wings. Mimi tells me that her tribal carpets come from Turkey.

  “Look at these amazing patterns. Each is more beautiful than the next. This is as much art as any painting, Eva.”

  AT HOME I ask Grandma Iulia about Mimi. How come she gets to travel all over the world when no one else I know is even allowed to leave the country?

  Grandma says that maybe Mimi got lucky being married to a big-shot Communist like Herman, who is the director of the National Museum in Bucharest, though he is old enough to be her father, and so what if Herman’s daughter from his first marriage is two years older than Mimi? Mimi deserves all the riches in the world since she suffered so much as a six-year-old girl who lost her mother.

  “I ought to know,” Grandma continues, “since I took care of her after her mother, Nina, died, because my brother, Sandu, married a series of gold diggers so he could drown his grief in their bosoms. Except he forgot his responsibility to that poor motherless child. All of her stepmothers hated Mimi, because even as a young girl, she was far more beautiful than all of them combined, and a constant reminder to Sandu of the woman he had lost. Mimi’s mother was one of the loveliest creatures ever put on this earth, and her daughter had to endure one rotten stepmother after another. So if you ask me, Mimi deserves a husband who worships her. So what if they’re both big Communists? They’re still Jews.”

  “Why did Mimi’s mother die so young?” I ask. I hate it when Grandma gets sidetracked.

  “Nina, God rest her soul, died of a burst appendix, and my brother didn’t treat her right in the end. But Mimi doesn’t know any of this, and you’d better not breathe a word about it, or I’ll kill you,” Grandma says.

  “What did Sandu do to Nina that was so bad?”

  “It’s not what he did.” Grandma stops to make her point. “It’s what he didn’t do! He refused Nina’s last wish. She asked him on her deathbed to bring a Romanian Orthodox priest to give her last rights, but Sandu wouldn’t allow it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because Nina had converted to Judaism in order to marry him, that’s why. But you see, in her heart at the end, she was still Christian.”

  “Then why did she convert?” I had never heard of anyone wanting to be Jewish before.

  “Because she was in love with my brother and he wouldn’t have married her unless she became a Jew. It was the only way to ensure that their children would be Jewish.”

  “I don’t understand, Grandma.”

  “A child is not Jewish unless the mother is Jewish. That’s the law.”

  “But if Mimi’s mother wasn’t really Jewish in her heart, how can Mimi be Jewish? And how could a Jewish man not have enough heart to allow his wife her last wish?”

  “You’re too young to understand the Halacha, Eva.”

  “What’s the Halacha?”

  “The Jewish code of law.”

  Grandma is right. I don’t understand the Halacha yet.

  FEATHERS

  THERE’S A BALLERINA in a pink tutu in our foyer. She is practicing lifting her leg up in the air, but I can tell that she’s not very good because she’s wobbly. She is wearing toe shoes, a sure sign that she hasn’t yet been scrutinized by my mother. Mama would never allow a beginner to go up on pointe. I wonder where my mother is and why she’s allowed a stranger to practice in our home without her. Since she lost her job, Mama has taken on a few select students who are applying to Bucharest’s famous ballet school. She is training them to take the entrance exam. The referrals always come through a trusted friend from the school.

  The ballerina’s back is turned, and she doesn’t see me standing behind her as she concentrates on walking straight across a length of string laid out on our foyer floor. Her back is muscular, as are her arms, and one of the thin satin straps has fallen off her shoulder. Her calves are thick and hairy, and when she lifts her arms, I notice her unshaved armpits. I wonder if Mama is so desperate for money that she’ll take anyone on for private lessons, even the clearly untalented and cloddy. Quietly, I tiptoe toward the dining room, homework in hand, but the ballerina becomes aware of my p
resence.

  “My dear young lady, would you mind standing on the end of this rope to hold it down? I’m afraid I may lose my balance.” Uncle Max’s voice resonates out of thin air. I stop in my tracks as the ballerina whirls around and bursts into laughter. “Aha! Fooled you, didn’t I?” Uncle Max booms, but I’m still confused. I take another look at the ballerina’s face and recognize the laughter in his eyes, but something’s very different. Then I see it—Uncle Max has shaved his mustache and he’s wearing a blond wig!

  “Uncle Max, what are you doing?”

  “I’m having a dress rehearsal for next week’s Purimspiel. How do you like my outfit?” He adjusts the fallen satin strap on his shoulder and tucks in a few cotton balls that have flown out of his brassiere. “I had to bribe your mother to borrow this from the ballet school,” he tells me. “If I’ve fooled you, I’m sure to fool everyone at the Purim party. Do you think your mother will approve of my ballet performance? I thought it would be a good idea to add a little suspense by walking a tightrope, even if it is on solid ground.” Uncle Max spreads his arms and demonstrates his walk across the floor. I’m hooting so loudly that Aunt Puica appears from the bedroom with curlers in her hair and Sabina rushes out of the kitchen.

  “Max, you crazy fool!” Aunt Puica yells between coughing fits and laughter. “You forgot to shave under your arms!”

  “I’m sure you’re looking forward to helping me with that, darling,” Uncle Max says, then plants a kiss on her cheek. “You know, I’d just as soon wait until Purim to shave so I won’t have to do it again. I dread getting a rash under my delicate armpits,” he says, pinching Aunt Puica’s rear end. Sabina goes back into the kitchen, her turban lopsided from laughter.