This Is How It Begins

by Joan Dempsey

Andrew looked full into Meck’s eyes and gave him a small and grateful smile. He pushed in his chair and walked somberly out of the room.

  “Just because we were assigned Kinney,” said Meck, “doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be vigilant. He takes his job seriously and will work hard to be objective. Having him isn’t any kind of guarantee—in fact, he’ll probably go overboard to make sure he’s unbiased. We have to do our jobs well. Our biggest coup to date is that we talked the ACLU into sending someone in person instead of just submitting a brief!”

  “Afraid not,” said Whit. “Zeilonka’s people got to them. They’re not coming.”

  “When did that happen?”

  “This morning—e-mail. I figured you’d already seen it. They’re pulling the brief, too, said something about ‘compelling evidence’ from the other side. Typical. I guess they weren’t ready to go up against the senator.”

  “Wonder which verse of Second Capitulations they’ll drag out to defend that decision?” said Dengler. John giggled again, and Ben joined him.

  “That’s okay,” said Connie. “We’re still in fine shape. Now, here’s our basic legal argument. I don’t think we’ll have much trouble, to be honest, given the evidence and the fact that the law is on our side, but whatever we accomplish here today will influence every other hearing across the state, so we can’t ever rest on our laurels, even if it seems like Kinney’s going to rule in our favor, okay? We’ve got the First Amendment: free exercise of religion and speech. And their equivalents in the state Constitution, which essentially says the same thing. And here’s our silver bullet: MGL Chapter 76 Section 5. I plan to hammer repeatedly on this one statute, because really it should be all we need. The law states in part that no person shall be excluded from or discriminated against in admission to a public school of any town, or—and this is the critical part—in obtaining the advantages, privileges and courses of study of such public school on account of race, color, sex, religion, national origin, or sexual orientation. We just need to prove our kids were discriminated against in such a way that they couldn’t obtain the advantages they’re due, and we’ve got plenty of evidence that this is the case. How can they learn in a hostile environment?”

  “Sexual orientation,” said Dengler with disgust. “Have you heard they’re trying to add ‘gender identity’ now, too? It wasn’t enough they got sexual orientation added to every last law on the books in ’93? And people say there isn’t a homosexual agenda. Judas Priest, it’s more like an epidemic.”

  It annoyed Meck, the way Arnie said “Judas Priest,” and he leaned farther forward to distance himself from Arnie’s heavy arm, which was still slung across the back of Meck’s chair. Meck lowered his head and rubbed his neck. He didn’t like his boys being exposed to such cursing. He could easily see John bursting out with something at church one Sunday, not knowing what he was saying, and Ben had that unconscious habit of mimicking people. Meck would have to talk with them later. Now he peered over his shoulder at Dengler.

  “Actually, Arnie, I think the fact that sexual orientation is included in the statute is helpful.”

  “I agree,” said Shaw.

  Dengler removed his arm and crossed both of them over his chest.

  “We’re not trying to discriminate against the homosexual kids,” said Meck. “We’re just trying to assert our equal rights under the same statute. Even the senator can’t argue with that.”

  “This is an important distinction Warren makes,” said Connie. “We need to keep the focus on equal opportunity and safe environment for our kids, and stay far away from any language that could be read as discriminating against Zeilonka because he’s a homosexual. We can talk about the curriculum, of course, but we all need to steer clear of any mention—nothing about Zeilonka’s agenda or lifestyle, not even a mention of the word homosexual if you can help it.”

  Shaw and Dengler exchanged a look.

  “What is it?” said Meck.

  “Criminy,” said Dengler. “That’s the whole point, isn’t it? That he’s a fag?”

  Meck rubbed again at the back of his neck and sighed.

  “You already talked about his lifestyle, didn’t you?” It wasn’t a question. “At the meeting.”

  “Well of course we did!” said Dengler. “We had to tell them what the parents and kids said, didn’t we? No getting around it. But that’s on them, not on us.”

  Shaw blanched.

  “Except when you told Tommy you could help cure him, Arnie. I tried to stop him, Warren, honestly.”

  Meck gave Whit a sharp look.

  “It’s not as bad as you think,” said Connie. “I’ve heard the tape.”

  “There’s a tape?” said Meck.

  He glared over his shoulder at Dengler and wondered again if he could be trusted.

  “You were also terribly kind,” Connie said to Dengler, “and I don’t think Pat Kinney’s going to fret too much about your language. I think we’re actually in good shape. Between Chapter 76 Section 5 and the First Amendment, we have a solid case. And we also have one more ace up our sleeve should we need it, but I truly hope we don’t. It would take us away from our focus on religious freedom and free speech, and that’s the key here. But, if we get into trouble, we could go with sexual harassment. The legal definition of harassment is as broad as your great chair, Warren. We could argue that Tommy’s choice of content is sexually suggestive, creating a hostile and offensive educational environment. It’s obviously different from arguing that he shut down the Christian kids from speaking their piece, but it would do the trick if we think Kinney might rule against us and put him back into the classroom.”

  Quiet descended as they each thought through the ramifications of what Connie had just outlined. In light of Connie’s calm confidence, Meck allowed himself a growing hope that they would win not only the Zeilonka case, but maybe the other ten as well. He made eye contact with Whit and could tell he was feeling it, too; they could salvage this campaign.

  “Five years ago,” said Meck, directing his comments toward Whit, “we teamed up with the pastor and dreamed about making inroads. And here we are, on the cusp of … I’m starting to think we might actually win, Whit. And if we win Massachusetts”—Whit gave a low whistle—“it’s a slam dunk for the nation.”

  John threw his arm into the air, fingers curled around an imaginary basketball, and flung it back down. His tiny hand slammed hard against the edge of the table, and Meck was instantly up and out of his seat, but John, who let out a yelp, gave his wrist a couple of quick shakes and then seemed to decide he was fine. He peered around at all of them, holding on to his hand, and broke into a big grin, but Meck, already halfway around the table, went to him anyway to make absolutely certain he wasn’t badly hurt.

  Part III

  24

  Starówka

  After the Nazis had finally gotten their fill of Warsaw, when the last men of the Verbrennungskommando had shouldered their empty Flammenwerfer 41s and retreated in jackboots away from the oily flames they’d just thrown, the people of Warsaw began to return, the people who decided almost at once to do the unthinkable, what no one at all would have blamed them for not doing, what must have repeatedly seemed at best ill-advised, at worst impossible: resurrect their decimated city.

  But resurrect it they did, and in such painstaking and excruciating detail that Ludka, holding tight to Izaac’s trembling arm, had been standing open-mouthed and speechless for a long few minutes in the snowy center of Rynek Starego Miasta, in the heart of Starówka. If it hadn’t been for one neon café sign touting modern beers—Carlsberg, Zywiec, Tyskie—and the intrepid tourists braving the cold to take photos with their phones of the famous buildings surrounding the square, it might have been 1934, when Ludka was ten, assisting her father as he created one of his popular snow sculptures. Once, she’d helped him build a small replica of Rynek Starego Miasta itself—a square within the square—large enough for children to walk through but small enough that adults could peer in
to it only from the outside. Eventually, the sculptures would erode and lose shape, and then the children would make them their own. Ludka wondered if she ever would have remembered such a thing had she not returned to Warsaw. It occurred to her then that her memories had seldom stretched back beyond September 1, 1939, when the Nazis had subsumed her childhood as thoroughly as they’d razed the city. Now she told Izaac about her father’s snow sculptures.

  “Your father created those? How could I not know that? I couldn’t have been more than eight or nine, but I remember that row of people like it was yesterday. They were just over there; do you remember? Everyone holding hands, like Christmas carolers, or some kind of human barricade.”

  Ludka hadn’t remembered, but remembered now it was the winter before the war, and one of her tedious tasks had been to bring her father bucket after bucket of snow; he couldn’t seem to stop adding more people, Jews and Poles alike, anticipating, perhaps, that the sculpture wouldn’t last more than a couple days before a gang of young men would bash through each pair of clasped hands. A year later, hauling snow had become a different job altogether—it was their primary source of water that first winter after the invasion.

  Ludka’s feet and ankles were still swollen from flying, and judging by the searing pain on the inside of her left anklebone, the skin from a throbbing blister must have sheared off. They’d been in Warsaw just long enough to get settled into the fifth-floor apartment on Plac Zambrowsky that Mandelbaum had secured for them, an airy space with heavy-beamed high ceilings and large windows the Royal Castle, and despite their utter exhaustion and the temptation of the king-sized sleigh bed, they had both felt the need to get out. Izaac had said they’d rest when they’re dead, and Ludka had responded that that might be sooner than they’d expected after twenty-two hours on the road.

  Arm in arm, they’d walked slowly up Swietojanska to the square, an unspoken and shared trepidation steering them away from the most direct route up Piwna, where the Zeilonka family apartment had been. The square was proving to be enough of a shock.

  “The stones I had forgotten.”

  Ludka felt rather than saw Izaac nod. The snow wasn’t heavy and in many places had been trampled or shoveled aside completely to reveal the intricately laid gray stones that paved the entire square. Streets throughout the Old Town, as they called it now, had been recobbled during the rebuilding; some stones were large and rounded, many small and square and worn smooth, nearly all of them salvaged from the rubble. Still clinging to Izaac’s arm, Ludka turned in a slow circle, pulling him with her. Airport security hadn’t allowed her to bring her spiked galoshes, and so she was relying on Izaac and her sensible boots to keep her steady. The golden light of the late afternoon sun swept across the north and east sides of the square, reflecting fiery light off the windows and heightening the colors of the plaster facades—salmon, putty, peach, cream, aqua. The buildings appeared unequivocally familiar.

  “But how is this even possible, Izaac?”

  Her voice sounded thin. She cleared her throat. Izaac squeezed her arm and said nothing. They were facing Strona Dekerta, the north side of the square, arguably the most beautiful of the four. But Ludka and Izaac both knew that Jan Dekert, while one of the most prominent Warsaw merchants of the late eighteenth century, had also been a vocal anti-Semite, and German by birth, the forefather, perhaps, to Ludka’s neighbor Adolf Dekert, a man whom Ludka’s mother had always said was aptly named. Izaac trembled again, and Ludka suggested they walk. The last time she had seen Strona Dekerta, the only thing that remained of the buildings had been their soot-smeared facades. The windows had been blown out, and the open casings looked like empty eye sockets in row upon row of stacked skulls. And through those openings there had been only sky. Miles and miles of sky in a place where previously no sky had been. Ludka raised her arm to point but paused, not sure where to even begin. She lowered it and covered her mouth with gloved fingers. She glanced at Izaac distractedly and swept her hand in an arc around the square.

  “It is miracle.”

  Izaac wiped the outside corner of each of his eyes.

  A short and stout elderly woman carrying bulging, pale blue plastic bags in each hand made her way diagonally across the square toward them, scrutinizing the trodden path. Her knotted head scarf, heavy wool coat and skirt, and thick hose were all in shades of brown and gray, and her ankle boots were not unlike Ludka’s own. Without glancing up, the woman stepped aside and paused to let three giggling young women wearing stiletto-heeled boots totter past. All three held cigarettes, and the smoke hung low in the cold air. When they were safely away, the woman stepped back onto the path and resumed her careful procession. As she got closer, Izaac pulled Ludka aside to make room for her to pass, and greeted her.

  “Dzień dobry.”

  “Dzień dobry.” The woman spoke quietly and didn’t meet their eyes. She gave a slight nod and trudged past, her flimsy bags rustling, an intimate odor of talcum and warm wool wafting behind her. Ludka was surprised to see poking from her scarf a tuft of bright crimson-colored hair. They watched her go, mesmerized, each of them thinking of their grandmothers before remembering that she might instead have been a former classmate. Before the week was out they would see many more like her, unapproachable old women with dyed hair, thick hose, and sensible shoes, and stern old men with crew cuts, overcoats, and scuffed-up boots, all of whom carried themselves cautiously and frowned suspiciously whenever Ludka or Izaac greeted them with American smiles.

  A small and chilly gust of air blew through the square, bringing with it a smell of sausage, sauerkraut, and boiled dumplings.

  “Good pierogi restaurant we must find, and then perhaps we should sleep.”

  “Even a poor pierogi would do me some good right now. Let’s not do more than that. I’m asleep on my feet. Plus, you need to be rested for tomorrow.”

  Since boarding the plane at Logan only twenty-four hours earlier, Ludka had thought of little other than tomorrow’s symposium. Mandelbaum had asked her to make a brief statement and be on hand to answer people’s questions, and Ludka was grateful when he told her not to feel obligated to join the prearranged panel. Also, a reporter from Gazeta Wyborcza would be there and had requested an interview, which Ludka had declined. It was one thing to make a remark or two about her work, quite another to answer a string of probing questions. She had finally allowed herself to be curious about the condition of her sketches, which had been sealed and buried in one of the large milk cans Ringelblum had prayed wouldn’t rust through. She couldn’t recall everything she’d drawn and worried that seeing them might bring on an episode. Mostly, though, since boarding the plane, she had thought about Oskar. He would be there, she was convinced.

  She searched for him now as she and Izaac walked out of the square and, in silent agreement, turned away from Swietojanska and took a right on Zapiecek, which would take them to Piwna. The sun no longer touched the tops of the buildings, and even though the sky was still bright, the street had grown dim, and the black iron lanterns hanging from many of the buildings had begun to glow. They passed the Galeria Zapiecek, but it wouldn’t be until two days later that they would learn it was the best modern art gallery in Warsaw. And then there they were, standing in front of the wide, solid wooden gates at 28/30 Piwna, which they knew opened into a courtyard that led to the stairs to their old apartment.

  “I guess I was inside so much, the gate doesn’t feel that familiar. Does it to you, kochanie?”

  Ludka nodded but all at once wasn’t entirely certain what Izaac had asked. She started to say something but couldn’t remember what it was she had intended. She felt her body go still and in a brief flash of clarity understood she was moving into a flashback. Just as quickly, the understanding was gone and then she was a young woman, rushing through the wooden gate, slamming it closed behind her and throwing the locks.

  Izaac felt her stiffen and knew at once what was happening. He tightened his grip on her arm and bumped against her repeated
ly, gently at first and then more strongly, saying her name urgently into her ear. He had a moment of panic, thinking she might collapse onto the street. He didn’t know if he could bear her weight.

  “Izaac, stop shaking me like rag doll!”

  He released a big breath and a nervous laugh.

  “I thought I was going to lose you there. But it worked! Your therapist was right!”

  “I was running from something. No, from someone.”

  In the same way a dream can prove elusive, Ludka found herself nearly grasping a particular memory, but not quite. She thought her Mama and Tata were there, in their apartment, and something else was there, too, something different, not Izaac, not another person, although maybe there was another person, she couldn’t be sure. Was it a dog? It was! A dog!

  “Ludka? Kochanie? Are you still with me?”

  She nodded. Her heart was thumping wildly, though, and a hollow fear had spread inside her chest. Danger, Ludka, uwaga! The dog had been a German shepherd. Straight-backed and all black but with expressive butterscotch eyebrows over warm brown eyes. He had been … What had he been doing there? She had felt sorry for him, that was it. So terribly sorry, the way he was straining against that tight leash … She shivered and closed her eyes. Somewhere in the distance she thought she heard a piano, and a group of drunk young men cavorted behind them, one of them singing loudly, the rest of them laughing and shoving each other. One of them bumped against Izaac and slurred an apology.

  “Hooligans!” Ludka said, her heart still thumping madly.

  She shook a fist, but feebly, and knew how ridiculous she must appear. Even her voice felt weak.

  “Did you remember something, kochanie?”

  She felt certain it was better not to think of the dog, and she latched her gaze onto the cobblestones, long rectangles with smoothed edges in shades of dusty rose and gray. Imagine if they’d been able to put every stone back in its exact place.