This Is How It Begins

by Joan Dempsey

  Senator Curtis, a gray-haired woman in a rose-colored suit and pearls, whom Lolek had told them was a friend, interrupted.

  “Mr. Dengler, have you ever been to Mardi Gras?”

  Dengler froze, a set of photos held out before him.

  “It’s a simple question, Mr. Dengler. Are you familiar with Mardi Gras?”

  Dengler lowered his arms.

  “You mean the crazy voodoo shenanigans they get up to in New Orleans every year, all those beads and masks and headdresses?”

  He smiled around at the crowd to see who might be with him at finding Mardi Gras crazy.

  “Sure, I know about Mardi Gras.”

  “Did you know, Mr. Dengler, that Mardi Gras has its roots in Christian tradition? That’s right. It takes place on the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, a final celebration before the Lenten season. I can see that surprises you. From the looks of these photographs, I assume they’re all taken from the Gay Pride march we have here in Boston every year, isn’t that right? That’s what I thought. And do you know the history of Gay Pride, Mr. Dengler? It’s a celebration of difference, and a public stance against the very kind of discrimination you’re practicing here. And just like Mardi Gras, it’s deliberately carnivalesque. I, myself have marched in the parade, alongside Mayor Menino. That’s all, Mr. Dengler; you may proceed.”

  Tommy’s leg went still. He smiled at Ludka with shining eyes.

  “You have marched in this parade?” she asked.

  Tommy nodded.

  “I always wear a cape! I can’t get Robert to go, though.”

  Robert leaned forward and whispered to Ludka.

  “It’s far too queer for my taste,” he said. “I mean, I’m a lawyer!”

  Ludka smiled uncertainly.

  Dengler cleared his throat, clearly derailed by the senator’s line of questioning. He handed the rest of the photographs to the committee, and as he returned to the table, a voice called out from the back of the room.

  “I’m a pediatrician, and I’m gay.”

  Everyone turned to see who had spoken. Ludka couldn’t tell who it might have been. Another voice, this time from the other side of the room, called out, “I’m a certified public accountant, and I’m gay.” This time Ludka saw the man, one of the singers, a balding man in his seventies with reading glasses hanging from a beaded chain around his neck. And with that the singers proceeded with another type of chorus, one after another calling out their professions at breakneck speed: development director, postmaster, artistic director, tax attorney, investment advisor, graphic designer, property manager, realtor, architect, psychiatrist, forensic biologist, chiropractor, short-order cook, botanist, veterinary technician, landscape manager, minister, dentist, climate change specialist, UPS driver, state senator. Representative Gauch hammered his gavel, but the men didn’t stop. The nurse Ludka had recognized stepped forth and declared himself. Will and Annika stood up as one and smiled at her as they said in unison, “I am an artist, and I am gay.”

  When Ludka had finally been cleared for entry to work with Żegota, her first official meeting had begun with code names. Many of those in attendance, including Oskar, had been active for some time, but new members numbered around twenty, all of whom needed names. When they’d each quietly chosen their own, the whole group, old and new, announced themselves one by one. Now, sitting in this hot room, her throat aching, the hair on her arms standing on end, hearing the individual resolve of what added up to an impressive and heartening collective resistance, Ludka felt exactly as she had in the damp and chilly bowels of St. John’s crypt, declaring to Żegota that her name was Apolonia.

  Despite the suffocatingly warm room, she shivered. She had witnessed enough during the war to know that Oskar had never meant to betray her parents, that he had honestly believed he could withstand the tortures of Pawiak. Divulging their names had not brought an end to his torment, rather it had signaled the beginning of the guilt-riddled life he had ended up living. There but for the grace of God, Ludka thought. She reached for Izaac’s hand, and held on.

  Now Chairman Gauch—repeatedly yelling “Order! Order!”—was standing, but so were a good number of other people. Izaac suddenly squeezed Ludka’s hand, and she followed his gaze to the other side of the room, where two muscular men stood against the wall, their arms crossed.

  “Those are the other men I told you about, from the radio station that day. Danny Kulek’s cronies. Clancy is that one, and Blair, I think is the other one.”

  One of the chorus members was returning to his place in the back of the room. As he passed in front of the men, Clancy threw out his foot and simultaneously slammed the singer across the back, throwing him against the edge of the nearest bench. Ludka heard the crack of contact as the man’s body caromed off the bench and smashed onto the floor.

  Gauch hammered his gavel. Senator Curtis rushed out one of the private exits. Members of the chorus went to the man’s aid, while others whipped out their cell phones. Clancy and Blair pushed their way to the nearest exit. Reporters and their teams broke like an impeded river into two branches that flooded the front and back aisles of the room as they raced to get closer to the scene. Senator Curtis reentered the room with two state troopers, and people began to shout and point to where Clancy and Blair struggled to get through the door. One of the troopers went after him, while the other checked the fallen singer and used his shoulder radio to call for an ambulance. And then he turned to the room and called for calm.

  34

  Testimony

  The hearing droned on without further incident. One after another people testified, and the temperature rose, and members of the crowd wandered restlessly in and out of the room. At one point Ludka, whose sitting bones ached, whose head hurt from dehydration, and whose astonishment at the hateful testimony had finally given way to a determined understanding and anger, had fallen asleep. She’d been jolted awake when her head bobbed up hard. Izaac looked on her with sympathy and asked Tommy to go fetch them all some water.

  Finally, the list of those testifying in favor of the bill had been exhausted, and Tommy and Robert, and Izaac, Marta, and Frank had all just spoken, testimony that moved Ludka in much the same way the chorus had. Lolek had come in earlier, just as they were about to testify, but the chairman had held up a hand to stop them when he saw Lolek.

  “The chairman recognizes the good senator from Hampshire, President Zeilonka. As I’ve mentioned before, our custom is to allow elected officials to speak at will, given their other responsibilities in the building. Mr. President?”

  “Thank you, Mr. Chairman, but I defer to those already standing to testify. It’s far more important that you hear from my family than it is to hear from me. I’m happy to wait until they’re done.”

  Lolek had been rewarded with smiles from both Tommy and Marta, and now they smiled again as they returned to their seats. Lolek went alone to the front of the room. He unbuttoned his suit coat and sat down. Ludka couldn’t get over how broad he was, how heavy he’d become, how even now his hair was the same unkempt mess it had been when he was born. Every member of the committee had their eyes on him.

  “Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, my name is Lolek Zeilonka and I am the state senator representing Hampshire County. I’m here to strongly urge you to vote against House Bill 1298, and I’ll tell you precisely why. The folks here on my right who have testified in favor of this bill have stressed the protection of their children and their children’s right to free speech and religion. They have suggested that only by allowing the board of education to define sound moral character will the problem of bad teachers be resolved. They have further suggested that modeling the definition on Christian principles and the Ten Commandments would be the perfect place to start.”

  Ludka and Izaac simultaneously reached for each other’s hands. “Our boy,” Izaac mouthed. Ludka’s throat grew tight.

  “I believe, however,” said Lolek, “that we need look no further than the people who ar
e behind this bill to understand what’s wrong with it. If you see who filed the bill, and the legislators who signed on, you’ll notice that every one of them is somehow affiliated with the Hampshire Redeemer Fellowship or one of its nine branches around the state.”

  “Ten!” someone called out.

  “Ten branches around the state,” said Lolek. “Now. On the face of this there’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, there’s a case to be made that this kind of show is laudable, a perfect example of democracy in action. There’s only one problem. Every one of them is homophobic. It’s a free country, you might say. People are entitled to their opinions, and that’s true. But some of them have been motivated by their homophobia to break our laws. Some of them are directly responsible for the violence you’ve both witnessed and heard about today. All you have to do is listen to Pastor Royce Leonard’s sermon from this past Sunday to understand he’s been encouraging violence. He’s smart, though. He never comes right out and condones the violence. But I have it on good authority, from someone who’s close to him, that it will be worth our effort to investigate him in relation to the assault on my son, the property damage in our district, and the arson at the house I grew up in, committed while my parents and my son and his husband were sleeping inside.”

  The crowd erupted with protests and speculation. Pastor Royce glared over at Meck, who stared straight ahead, his jaw muscle flexing. Pastor Royce bent down to retrieve his coat and slid out of the bench.

  “Not true, not true,” he said loudly. For a moment he stood awkwardly, as if trying to decide whether to stay or go, and then he pushed into a tight spot next to Ben and John, who stood against the wall. Meck called out to them.

  “Come away from there, boys.”

  Whit slid out of the bench to let the boys sit next to their father, and then slid back in.

  Ludka, who’d been listening carefully to Lolek, thinking of Sophie and Ashley and the fire, did not at first register the fact that Lolek had referred to Robert as Tommy’s husband. When she did, she turned first to Izaac, who was glaring at the pastor, and then to Tommy, who met her scrutiny with a sheepish expression.

  “I should have told you, Babcia,” he whispered. “We should have told all of you.”

  Ludka imagined Tommy and Robert standing on the altar at St. Hedwig’s, Father Skurski performing the ceremony, and to her surprise, perhaps because of her utter exhaustion, perhaps because she desperately loved these two young men, she began to laugh. Tommy looked at her with astonishment and smiled uncertainly, then fully. Izaac told her to hush. The bench shook with her repressed laughter. Lolek glanced around before continuing.

  “What does this have to do with our board of education defining sound moral values? I’ll tell you. The majority of members currently sitting on the board are also members of the Hampshire Redeemer Fellowship, encouraged to lobby the governor for those appointments by none other than Pastor Royce Leonard. So I ask you, members of the committee. Are these the sorts of people you want defining sound moral character?”

  Ludka’s mouth was suddenly dry, and her heart began to hammer as she realized that she wanted to testify after all.

  “I’ll leave you with that thought, and ask you again: give this bill your vote of ought not to pass and nip this discrimination in the bud, before it becomes institutionalized. And lest you think I’m overreacting to a few bad apples, allow me to share with you this quote, delivered just three years ago by the Nigerian ambassador to the United Nations, Joseph Ayalogu. He said, and I quote, ‘The notion that executions for offences such as homosexuality and lesbianism are excessive is judgmental rather than objective. What may be seen by some as disproportional penalty in such serious offences and odious conduct may be seen by others as appropriate and just punishment.’

  “This, ladies and gentlemen of the committee, is what happens when homophobia is allowed to take hold. Again, do not let this bill out of committee. Thank you.”

  Ludka stood up. Izaac, alarmed, asked her if she was okay.

  “Żydzi Wszy!” she cried, shaking her fist. “Jews! Lice!”

  Every head in the room turned. Chairman Gauch gave a look as if to say “oh no, not again.” Ludka, holding tight to the back of the bench in front of her, shooed Izaac, telling him she wanted to get out.

  “You’re not on the list, kochanie.”

  To Gauch she said, “I must give the testimony.”

  Gauch peered in confusion at his list, and Lolek approached him and spoke to him quietly. Ludka swayed at the end of the bench, holding on to Izaac.

  “The chair recognizes Professor Zeilonka.”

  Lolek hurried back and offered Ludka his arm. She took it. Together they made their way to the table. Lolek pulled out a chair. Ludka’s knees, still bruised from her frantic crawl across the living room floor, protested as she lowered herself into the hard chair. Now that she was here, she wondered what she might say.

  “State your name,” Lolek said quietly as he sat down beside her.

  Ludka frowned.

  “All day I have been listening, Lolek.”

  Lolek held up a hand by way of apology and sat back in his chair. Ludka sat as tall as she could, greeted the committee and stated her name.

  “Already you all think I am ridiculous old woman, shouting out about Jews and lice. You are right that I am old.”

  At this, people laughed.

  “Already I am oldest person in this room, followed only by your former attorney general, my husband, Izaac Rosenberg. And this means that I have seen more than any of you. I do not call out this Żydzi Wszy—which is Polish for Jews and lice—for no reason. I call it out because for seventy years I have tried to forget this terrible stereotype, this derogation plastered on posters all over Warsaw, where I lived during Holocaust. My husband is a Jew, and his father, like my grandson, was fired from his teaching job because of who he was, not because of how he taught. Nazi decree was to blame. In war, I was rescuer of Jews, including your attorney general. Now must I become rescuer of gays, of my grandson and his … husband? Do not make me do this. I am old woman only, with far better things to do.”

  Again, people laughed.

  “But this I will do if it needs to be done. I admit that I did not want to see the truth of this homophobia. I did not want to believe that such things can happen in America. But then my grandson was attacked. My house set on fire. And I am not glad for that beautiful singer today who got hurt, and I pray he recovers swiftly—but I am glad that you have all been witness. It is the wake-up call to all of you. This is not trifle! The Holocaust did not begin with the gassing of the Jews at camps. The Holocaust began here.”

  She struggled back to her feet. She pressed her hand over her heart, and turned a circle so everyone could see.

  “The Holocaust began in hearts of people. As soon as you go and say ‘that Jew,’ it has begun. That is where it starts. That is the beginning. Today I hear the vulgar terms, so many of them, used to describe my grandson, and I think Żydzi Wszy, I think it has begun. Today I ask you, what is equivalent of Mein Kampf? This book Hitler wrote was explicit—explicit! —about what he would do to Jews. No one then could believe such nonsense. Today you can read same terrifying plans on web, directed at my Tommy and my Robert, and all those others who testified today with the courage. Do not overlook what is obvious. This bill, this flimsy piece of paper, carries mighty words. I am telling you, this is where it begins. You must not pass this bill. That is all.”

  Her heart hammering, Ludka reached blindly for Lolek, who quickly stood and took her arm. Later, she wouldn’t remember walking back to the bench, or shaking Will’s hand as she passed by, or retaking her place, or hearing what Izaac and Tommy and Robert said by way of thanks.

  When Ludka finally settled down, when her heart was back to normal, the nurses had gone up to testify, and she was holding Izaac’s hand. She let go and bent over to retrieve her bag. Inside the bag she pulled out her scarf and immediately found what she needed. W
ith the exception of pushing past it for some other item, she hadn’t touched the new sketchbook since Director Mandelbaum had presented it to her, for happier times, he had said. She retrieved a pencil. She opened the cover to the first unsullied page. Next to her, Izaac watched from the corner of his eye, holding his breath. He thought of the crumpled sketch he’d found in the recycling bin, of the blond boy from the Westboro Baptist Church. He’d smoothed it out and tucked it into Ludka’s book on American collectors of Polish art, thinking he’d know when the time was right to retrieve it.

  Ludka stared at the blank page. She closed her eyes. She smelled Izaac’s warm corduroy jacket, her own stale breath, and a waft of saccharine aftershave followed by someone’s sharp body odor. She could sketch the broken window and the brick, the threatening note under the rock, the angry graffiti on Tommy’s house. She could draw the blazing curtains and the Black Madonna, and Izaac crumpled on the floor. She could draw her own sliced hand, and the smeared blood on the back of the Chopin. She could sketch Warren Meck and the man who’d fired Tommy, and the bedraggled pastor as he’d stood outside his church, and the singer being hit. She could sketch Tommy wilting into Robert’s arms, or Kulek holding him fast, or the Steri-Strip across his brow. She remembered how in the hospital she’d thought through a sketch of Sophie and Ashley with the Duda-Gracz, and that’s when she knew to begin at the beginning, to capture that moment in front of the Roslan she had nearly forgotten, that moment when Ashley laid her hand on Sophie’s shoulder, when the two of them had instinctively joined forces. In an instant she saw the blank page filled, Roslan’s Prelude, 1939 in the background, Will kneeling at the street busker’s feet. And in the foreground, seen from behind as she sat on the tufted black leather bench, shawl wrapped tightly around her shoulders, Ludka herself, bearing witness to it all. Ludka opened her eyes, touched the pencil to the page, and began.

  Acknowledgments

  A writer is never alone, and many people have supported me as I have written this novel. Every word has been buoyed by your support, and I am continuously, deeply grateful.