Her Sister's Tattoo

by Ellen Meeropol

  “I really wish she’d keep painting. She’s talented.”

  “Maybe she’d just rather do something else for a while,” Jake said.

  “No,” Esther said. “She’s scared she won’t be good enough. I know that feeling. But I wish Molly had more gumption. I wish Molly were more like my sister.”

  That ended the conversation.

  I can’t stop thinking about Molly and Sadako. Do you suppose it could be that mobile I hung over her crib? I was pretty obsessed with cranes too. Remember how I tried to convince you that our tattoos should be cranes? Remember our argument? Remember the concert?

  Until that trip, Esther had always listened to Mama’s gloom and doom stories and had never ever hitchhiked before—not even in the Midwest, much less all the way to Berkeley. She felt a fierce liberation in lying to Mama, saying they were leaving the driving to Greyhound and then cashing in the tickets and sticking out their thumbs. It was 1967 and the three of them—Rosa and Maggie and Esther—felt free and invincible. Esther was already pregnant with Molly but didn’t know it yet. She did know that something unusual was happening because her body hummed and glowed from the inside out, even though no one else could see it.

  The high point of the California trip was the concert. They almost didn’t go. They weren’t into the new rock group called the Grateful Dead. But a guy selling tickets in People’s Park convinced them that the concert would be incredible. So they took the standing room only bus up the hill to the university stadium in ninety-degree heat that everyone kept saying never happened in the Bay Area in the summer.

  Esther never forgot how the lyrics of the songs blazed through her bloodstream that day, detonating every cell. Maybe it didn’t seem like much all these years later, but that summer, they thought the music was utterly profound. With 20,000 other people in the stadium, they were part of something momentous. Right after the concert, they got their tattoos.

  Maggie thought we were crazy! She said it was that splendid Mexican weed making the decision and kept fretting about blood poisoning or some bizarre infection. But you and I knew what we wanted—to be branded as sisters in the revolution with our twin red stars, one each on our left breasts. I’m glad we did the stars, instead of peace cranes like I wanted. It was perfection.

  I’ll never forget that trip. I don’t think I’ve ever had that much fun, before or since. That was before Danny died, before the demonstration, before it all fell apart. I’m so glad I had that trip and that I didn’t know what was coming.

  “Esther, you’d better come look at this,” Jake called from the living room. “On the news.”

  She carried the notebook with her, a finger marking the place.

  Jake stood in the doorway holding the platter of chicken just off the grill and pointed the barbecue fork to the television. A black and white photograph, the photograph, filled the screen.

  “In a rare gubernatorial pardon,” the announcer said, “radical anti-war activist and convicted bomber Rosa Levin was released from a Michigan prison today, seven years before the completion of her sentence.” The camera zoomed in on Rosa, on her oval face and high voltage hair.

  The camera cut to the reporter. “Ms. Levin’s early release was based on information in the Church Committee report about the federal Counter Intelligence Program, known as COINTELPRO. FBI targeting of Ms. Levin and perjured testimony by federal agents at her trial were the basis for the pardon. The Governor’s statement alluded to collusion between FBI agents, elected officials, and Detroit Red Squad personnel.”

  Esther reminded herself to breathe as she watched Rosa walk down a long concrete sidewalk, flanked by Allen on one side and a girl about Molly’s age on the other. Emma. A crowd of reporters and photographers surrounded them as they reached a car parked at the end of the walkway.

  Emma looked smaller than Molly, but her hair was the same tangled mess. The color on their television was lousy, but Emma’s hair didn’t look red like her mother’s.

  “Ms. Levin made a short statement to reporters,” the anchorman continued. Rosa’s face again filled the television screen and she spoke directly to the camera.

  “I was entirely innocent of the bombing charges. But in 1970, the government found it easier to lock me away than listen to my accusations about the genocide in Vietnam. Now citizens know the truth. We know about Watergate and about COINTELPRO. We know what the government has been doing in our names. We have no excuse. We have a lot of work to do.”

  Rosa turned her back on the camera and edged into the car, awkward, less agile than Esther remembered. Rosa thrust her fist into the spotlight of the slanted November sun. Her face ducked away from the camera, toward the girl and the man next to her in the front seat.

  The camera panned the concrete towers and barbed wire crowned prison walls, then cut to a thin man, identified as the warden. “Ms. Levin is outspoken,” he read from a paper on his desk, “but she made significant contributions to the prison community through her literacy work. She earned the respect of both prisoners and Department of Corrections personnel.”

  Esther’s throat ached. Would that comment make Rosa proud or pissed off?

  Back in the newsroom, the camera returned to Rosa’s half of the old photo while the reporter wrapped up. “Ms. Levin plans to relocate to New York City, where she will live with her boyfriend, civil liberties attorney Allen Jefferson, and their ten-year-old daughter.”

  New York. Rosa in Manhattan, three hours to the south. Living the life they had imagined together as young women. Esther pictured a third-floor walkup in the Village. On the windowsill, a droopy geranium with curling brown leaves, forgotten in a life overflowing with activism and friends, meetings and art films and coffeehouses.

  And what about the daughter? What had Rosa told Emma about their history? Did Emma know she had an aunt, a cousin? Did Emma go to Loon Lake Camp, just four hours north of the relatives she had never met?

  Esther felt Jake’s arms around her, felt his kiss on her forehead. “It’s okay, Essie. No one here will ever suspect she’s your sister. It’ll be all right.”

  Esther shook her head, wordless. Sometimes Jake just didn’t get it.

  “Chicken’s ready,” he said.

  Esther rested her hand on his arm. “Start without me. I need a couple minutes.”

  At her desk, trying to ignore the conversation around the kitchen table, Esther opened the notebook and returned to the letter.

  I just watched your prison release on television.

  Do you ever think about seeing me? It would be legal now; my probation ended long ago. Did you know I had to sign an agreement that I wouldn’t participate in any demonstrations, organizing, or political meetings? And I had to agree to swear I wouldn’t hang out with any known felons. Even my sister. Especially my sister.

  Believe it or not, Rosa, I went to a demonstration last month.

  Esther wasn’t proud of how well that court-ordered proscription against activism worked; it was eleven years after August 17, 1968 before she attended another demonstration. She read about the pro-choice rally at the high school in Northampton and decided to go. It seemed pretty low-key, but Jake hated the idea.

  “But why?” he had asked. “You’re not active in abortion rights work anymore.”

  “That’s why,” Esther said. “Because I’m not active in any political work anymore.”

  “Sure you are. What do you call all those environmental groups you work with?”

  Esther shook her head, imagining Rosa’s opinion of her local Save the Earth committee. “That’s different. I want our kids to develop good politics about big issues—racism and feminism and the environment. How can they do that if we don’t set an example?”

  “That was some example you set,” Jake said quietly, then touched her arm. “Sorry. It’s just that I’m worried. Rallies can be dangerous.”

  Esther shook her head. “Not this one. It’ll be okay. Anyway, I’m going and taking the kids. You can come with us if you
like.”

  It hadn’t been okay. Esther had wandered by all the tables, read literature without really seeing a single word, listened to the speeches from the very back of the auditorium. She’d grasped Jake’s hand the whole time, hardly able to breathe.

  It was awful. I was so scared. I kept thinking about all those women we helped in Detroit. I kept looking around for the cops, expecting them to spot me, point me out to each other, arrest me, shoot me, worse, I don’t know. Jake was great. He kept the kids involved, although explaining abortion to Molly wasn’t easy.

  The odd thing is, I don’t know if I was so uptight, so uncomfortable, because I was afraid I would be identified. Or maybe afraid I wouldn’t be.

  Damn, I miss you, Rosa.

  But I’m not going to send this letter. You’re the one who called me a traitor, said I wasn’t your sister anymore. You have to make the first move. And I’m sick and tired of not living my life until that happens. So I’m not waiting anymore. You’re out of prison and starting a new life. And I’m going to forgive myself and start living fully, too. I’m going to make art again. Seriously.

  Esther tore the pages from her notebook, folded them, and opened the bottom desk drawer. The stack of letters to Rosa had overflowed the Japanese box and now filled a brown envelope with one prong of the metal fastener missing.

  CHAPTER 27

  Jake

  Jake pulled the car into the driveway, slowing down over the icy bump left by the snowplow. He hadn’t been looking forward to the weekend, but a winter camping trip was the only thing Oliver wanted for his seventh birthday, and it was more fun than Jake expected. He and Esther even managed a starry walk together, after Oliver’s friend Kenny finally stopped crying for his mother and the boys fell asleep. The snow in the woods was clean and sparkling. Too bad Molly refused to come, but no big surprise there. To a twelve-year-old girl, a weekend at her best friend’s house won out every time over listening to two days of nonstop fart jokes.

  After they delivered Kenny home, Oliver fell asleep in the back seat, surrounded by the smell of stale campfire and wet sleeping bags. Jake carried him up to bed, removing only his boots and snowsuit.

  “Would you pick Molly up?” Esther asked. “I’m going to soak in the bathtub.”

  Driving to Rachel’s house, Jake pictured Esther in the upstairs bath. The bay window, reaching from floor to ceiling, looked out into the heart of a swamp maple tree whose blazing red leaves heralded autumn every October. In lucky years, May brought a robin’s nest with startlingly blue eggs. They had searched for the right tub, finally found an antique cast iron clawfoot that was big enough to fit both kids and the necessary fleet of plastic tugboats and yellow duckies. Big enough for Esther to soak her whole body, up to her chin, one hand holding her book safe above the water, while the pages curled in the humid air.

  Molly was waiting and slid into the back seat.

  “Have a good weekend?” Jake asked.

  “Yeah. You guys have fun?”

  Jake heard the slight derision in Molly’s voice but decided to ignore it. She was still pretty reasonable for almost a teenager. Not that he was under any illusion that he had much control over the situation. At the office, he watched kids who had once listened with delight to their own heartbeat with his stethoscope become sullen strangers, unwilling to look him in the eyes or answer a simple question.

  “It was great,” he said. “What’s the homework situation?”

  “All done.”

  “Good,” he said. Sometimes he wished Molly weren’t quite so serious and conscientious. “After I check in with work, you want to play some cards?”

  “I guess,” Molly said. She leaned forward to rest her chin on the back of the front seat. “If I get to choose the games.”

  His answering service reported no urgent messages, so he knocked on the door of Molly’s bedroom, tucked under the eaves. He smiled at the handwritten sign in curlicue letters with flower decorations. Do not enter without permission. This is Molly Green’s private abode.

  “Who is it?”

  “Sting. I’m looking for a female vocalist for my next album.”

  “Right, Jake. Come in.”

  Esther had always insisted that their kids call them by their first names. Jake hadn’t argued with her, but sometimes he longed to be called Dad. “Where’s the TV table?” he asked. “And what do you want to play?”

  “Why call it a TV table when we’re not allowed to have TVs in our bedrooms, or watch TV when we eat?” She always asked that question, as if someday Jake would answer differently, but didn’t wait for his answer. “Steal the Old Man’s Bundle,” she said.

  Jake shook his head. “It’s all luck. How about Gin?”

  “No way. You always win. Casino or nothing.”

  “You drive a hard bargain.” Jake shuffled the cards.

  Halfway through the first game, Esther called from the bathroom, her voice muffled. “Jake, I need you.”

  “Be right back,” he told Molly. Esther probably needed help getting out of the tub. She had low blood pressure and often felt faint after soaking in a hot bath.

  Jake stopped just inside the bathroom door. Esther’s face was pale, not flushed pink from a hot bath. Both hands covered her left breast. He kneeled at the tub.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I found a lump.”

  Jake got Esther settled in bed, promising to call Ira after dinner. His med school friend specialized in breast oncology. He returned to Molly, sprawled on her bed with her worn copy of Rose in Bloom.

  “Your mother isn’t feeling well. Come help me make tuna casserole for dinner?”

  “I’ll be there in a minute. I’m at the best part. Charlie is dying and Rose is trying to be brave.”

  Jake twisted the stiff metal opener around the cans of tuna fish. Most breast lumps were benign; this one was probably just a cyst. Nothing to agonize about. By ancient habit, he squeezed the water with little flecks of tuna into a bowl for the cat. But Mustard had died last summer. The memory undid him and his eyes flooded with worry.

  Molly walked into the kitchen. “What’s wrong?”

  “Mustard,” Jake said. “I poured the tuna water for him.”

  Molly put her arms around Jake, hugging him without saying anything. The top of her head reached his chin, and he rested his cheek against her hair. Molly had gone with him to the vet that last day. Mustard couldn’t eat or drink or even lift his head, and his breaths came slow and jerky. He was so light his bones seemed empty. The vet asked Molly if she wanted to hold the cat and she said yes, even though Jake could tell she was scared. She cradled him and Jake stroked the pale yellow fur. The vet shaved a little rectangle of fur from his front leg and slipped the needle into his vein. She pushed in the clear fluid and then Mustard didn’t breathe at all. Molly’s cheeks were flooded and Jake realized that his were, too. The vet gave Molly an old towel, and she cradled Mustard’s body on the drive home. They buried him in the corner of the backyard, behind the black-eyed Susies, covered by a heavy piece of slate to remember the spot.

  Jake poured the tuna water into the sink. He hadn’t thought of Mustard in months.

  Six weeks after the mastectomy, Esther raised the issue of Loon Lake Camp. She had been moving food around her dinner plate, even though Jake had served her a tiny portion.

  “Molly,” she said, “how would you like to go to camp this summer? Loon Lake Camp, it’s in New Hampshire.”

  Jake stared at her, but Esther’s eyes remained fixed on the lopsided slab plate Oliver made her for Chanukah, holding salt and pepper shakers and extra napkins.

  Molly frowned. “I won’t know anyone there. I want to—”

  “Stay home. We know.” Oliver bounced from his seat. “But I want to go to camp. Why can’t I go?”

  “You’re too young, Ollie,” Jake replied automatically. “In a few years.”

  Esther’s red bandana had slipped on her smooth head and she tugged it down over her ear. �
��I told you about Loon Lake, Molly, remember? It’s where I heard about Sadako?”

  Molly had been crazy obsessed the year before about Sadako and the cranes. Jake figured it was probably the contemporary version of girls and horses. But really, Sadako was just what they needed in this family, another tear-jerker. They might as well rent the Love Story video and give up. Jake reached for the bowl of veggies and ginger stir fry. “Anyone want more?”

  “It’s the third time this week,” Molly groaned. “Can’t we have burgers?”

  “Ginger helps the chemo nausea,” Esther said. “What about camp?”

  “I’d rather stay home this summer. Ride my bike and—”

  “And hang out with Rachel,” Oliver said.

  “Think about it.” Esther pulled a folded brochure from her pocket and placed it on the table, next to the brown rice. “Take a look at this.”

  Molly ignored the brochure and slapped her brother. “Stop finishing my sentences. You talk too much.”

  Oliver balled up his napkin and threw it at Molly. “Do not.”

  Jake intercepted the napkin without comment and stared at the Loon Lake photo on the front of the brochure. When did Esther get that? Why hadn’t she mentioned it to him? Because she knew what he’d say, that’s why.

  He looked at Molly and grinned. “Did I ever tell you about the time I was an intern and a mom in the pediatric ICU climbed into the crib to comfort her sick baby? When she had to go to the bathroom, she couldn’t figure out how to get the side rail down. She pushed the code blue button instead of the nurse call button. You wouldn’t believe the confusion.” Jake knew he’d told that story far too many times before, and his family couldn’t care less about confusion in an ICU. A desperate measure, but it worked. They stopped talking about Loon Lake.

  After the kids went up to bed, Jake brought Esther a cup of chamomile tea. The kitchen window was cracked open and the murmur of the peepers was loud in the dark room.