My mother’s voice was small. “Was Steele awful to you? What was he like?”
“Angry,” I said. “And pathetic. I felt sorry for him. I talked with his daughter, and she was helpful. I liked her.”
“Did you find your answers?” Jake asked.
“A beginning. Next is the February 15 demonstration.”
“Yes.” Esther looked at me hard. “Will you see Rosa?”
“Should I?” That reminded me of the card, still in my bag. I made a mental note to mail it.
“I want you to read something.” Esther went to her desk in the alcove off the kitchen and carried back a small red box covered in fabric that had once been embroidered with a design of some kind, and a thick manila envelope. “Look at these, then decide.” She put them in my lap.
The fabric was see-through thin. I eased the cover off, spilling folded pieces of notebook paper, some folded with age, the torn edges caught on each other. Under the papers were four smaller boxes and a short braid of tri-colored hair. Gray and red and brown. Creepy.
“That’s our hair,” Esther said. “Rosa and me and our Grandma Leah. I’ve probably never told you about Leah, have I? She was a freedom fighter in Russia, against the czar.”
You come from a long line of activists, Gran had said. I hugged the red box to my chest and added, “There’s one more thing.”
They both looked at me. Jake’s bald forehead lined with worry. Esther looked expectant, and no longer scared.
“I want you to come with us to New York,” I said. “Both of you.”
CHAPTER 42
Rosa
“Damn.” Emma glanced at her watch as they hurried along the Chelsea sidewalk. “We’re late.”
“I don’t see any numbers,” Rosa said. Maggie had warned that the meeting hall was poorly marked.
“I bet that’s it.” Allen pointed down the street. “Picketers.”
“Big surprise.” Emma hurried her parents along. “Come on. It’s after eight.”
A scraggly line of demonstrators blocked the entrance to the union hall. “Human rights for the unborn,” a young man shouted at Rosa. He pumped his picket sign up and down in the air, making the image of a bloody fetus dance a macabre jig.
“How about human rights for all people?” Rosa shouldered past him. She frowned at a middle-aged woman wearing a sandwich board proclaiming Abortion is Murder.
They found three empty seats in the back of the auditorium as a woman draped in purple scarves stepped up to the podium and spoke into the microphone. “Welcome to the National Pro-Choice Coalition’s annual Roe v. Wade program. Every year we honor people who make significant contributions to women’s reproductive health.”
Rosa hadn’t seen Maggie often since her friend returned to school. Even after her release from prison, their visits were rare.
“This year’s award goes to a nurse who moved to the South in 1976 to work with under-served rural women who had few options for reproductive health care in general, and almost no access to contraceptive and abortion services. When she couldn’t find a job in a women’s clinic, because there weren’t any clinics, she went back to school and became a Physician’s Assistant. She learned to perform abortions and started a women’s center. Please welcome Maggie Sternberg.”
Maggie had always been into women’s health, dragging Rosa to abortion rights rallies in the late sixties. Rosa remembered her own eloquent arguments against going, that it was imperative to spend all their time fighting against the war. Maggie refused to yield, insisting that there was also a war against women who died on the battlefield of botched illegal abortions. It was a rally at the city morgue that finally convinced Rosa that Maggie was right. Hundreds of women dressed all in black—long robes and scarves or hats, some shrouded with veils. They carried only twisted coat hangers, thrusting them at the sky as a symbol of the brutality of self-induced abortions. No picket signs. No chants or songs. Instead, they keened. They cried and wailed, a cacophony of female voices wordlessly mourning their sisters and mothers and lovers and friends and daughters.
Next to her, Emma leaned forward in her seat and clapped loudly. Emma talked with Maggie every week, and she insisted that they attend this ceremony. “They picket her clinic every day,” she had explained to Rosa. “She gets death threats. The clinic was firebombed last summer and a week later the doc she works with was beaten half to death. Maggie deserves ten awards.”
Rosa massaged her aching knuckles and listened. She had missed so much of her friend’s life. She didn’t realize her cheeks were flooded until the woman seated on her other side patted Rosa’s arm and offered her a hanky smelling of gardenia. The woman leaned close and whispered in a heavy drawl that Maggie had performed her abortion, too. Saved her life because she would have killed herself if she had to have another baby by that jerk.
After the ceremony Rosa, Allen, and Emma waited by the door for Maggie.
“Come home with us,” Rosa asked Emma, “and visit some more with Maggie?”
“I can’t.” Emma pulled on her stocking cap and gloves. “Jeff’s in DC until Friday, Clara’s babysitter has a geometry exam tomorrow, and I have to be in court in the morning. Plus, they’re still fighting us on the parade permit for Saturday. The cops claim they can’t ensure order if we march, so we can only rally at the UN. Can you believe that?”
Allen made an expression of exaggerated shock.
“Okay, so big surprise,” Emma said. “We’ll win, but not without a fight. Besides, it looks like Maggie is ready, and you three probably have a lot to talk about.”
Gathering Rosa and Maggie into a three-way hug, Emma kissed the warm cave of each neck. “My two moms.”
An hour later, Rosa saluted Maggie with her wineglass. “Mazel tov. You are amazing.”
Allen echoed the toast and sipped his wine. “An award well deserved. You knew back in the sixties what you wanted to do, and you kept going until you got there. Very impressive.”
“Hardly.” Maggie waved her hand back and forth. “We’re nowhere near there yet. Poor women still can’t get services. Men slap women around every weekend. Abortion providers get shot in the clinic parking lot.” She raised her glass to Allen. “Besides, you’re still fighting the good fight too.”
“Guess I’m the only one who screwed up.” Rosa looked back and forth between Allen and Maggie. “Got derailed and spent a decade in prison.”
“COINTELPRO helped push your caboose off the tracks,” Maggie said.
“No.” Rosa shook her head. “I messed up.”
Maggie lifted her glass to Rosa. “You sure didn’t mess up with Emma. Or your work in prison.”
“You get a lot of the credit for how Emma turned out,” Rosa said.
“Can you believe she’s a lawyer with a six-month-old daughter?” Allen said. “That I’m a grandpa?”
Rosa clasped Maggie’s hands across the table. “Please stay an extra few days? You could spend time with baby Clara tomorrow and come to the demonstration with us on Saturday—it’s going to be huge.”
Maggie traced the swollen joints of Rosa’s thumb with her finger. “I have patients scheduled. An extra week makes a big difference in my business. Hey, how’s that friend of Emma’s doing? Poose?”
“Poose from camp and Swarthmore?” Rosa asked. “Is there a problem?”
“Oops,” Maggie said. “Forget it. How about some more music?”
Allen wandered to the stereo in the living room. “We’ve already heard every single Dylan song ever recorded,” he called out. “Do we start over or branch out?”
“What’s wrong with Poose?” Rosa asked again.
“I shouldn’t have said anything,” Maggie said, then called to Allen, “Anything’s fine with me.” She poured herself more wine and held the bottle over Rosa’s glass.
Rosa shook her head. “Tell me about Poose.”
“Dylan or Billy Bragg?” Allen asked.
“I can’t discuss it,” Maggie said. “I’m sorry. I assumed you knew.�
��
“No more Dylan,” Rosa yelled. And no Baez, either. That would invite Esther, now lurking in dark corners, into the middle of the room and right up to the table, and Rosa couldn’t bear it. Not yet.
The opening chords of “All You Fascists Bound to Lose” filled the silence hovering over the table. Rosa closed her eyes and let her head spin with the music and the wine. Poose must have needed an abortion. It was reasonable for Emma to seek Maggie’s advice. Allen must have known, too, the way he left the room. Why was she the only clueless one?
“I’m going to bed. It’s after one and I have work tomorrow. Today.” Allen stood behind Rosa’s chair and put his arms around her. He leaned forward to kiss her forehead, then kissed Maggie’s cheek. He pointed at the wine bottle. “Should I open another one?”
Maggie put her hand over her glass. “I’ve had enough.”
“I’ll just finish this.” Rosa emptied the dregs of wine from the bottle. “So, how’s your love life?”
“I’m still with Sarah. We’re good.”
“I’d like to meet her sometime.”
“So come visit us. It’s not Siberia, you know.”
“It’s hard.” Rosa sighed. “I can never thank you enough. I’m not good at grateful.”
“No, you’re not.” Maggie grinned.
Or at forgiving, Rosa thought.
“Let it go,” Maggie said.
“You practically raised my daughter. You were a comrade to Allen, a sister to me.”
“Now you’re getting maudlin.” Maggie laughed, then stopped. “What about your real sister?” “What about her?”
“You haven’t mentioned her.” Maggie swirled the last deep red drops in her wineglass. “Are you in touch?”
Rosa shook her head.
“Wasn’t she sick? Breast cancer? Is she okay?”
“I don’t know.”
Maggie put the palms of both hands on the table and pushed her chair back. “This is so stupid. I can’t believe you guys. Let’s just call her.”
Rosa pointed to the clock on the kitchen wall. “Now? It’s too late.”
“You are really something.” Maggie pulled her cell phone from her pocket. “Do you know what town she lives in?”
Rosa pointed to the basket in the center of the table. “In there.”
Maggie thumbed through catalogs and newsletters, grocery receipts and coupons. She lifted a square envelope. “From Esther?”
“Her daughter signed it. Molly.”
Maggie removed the card and looked at it. Her hand jumped to her mouth. “It’s you guys.”
“Did you find the origami crane?”
Maggie brought the card close to her face and studied it. “Oh,” she said. “There.”
“But why didn’t Esther write something?”
“She didn’t have to.” Maggie smacked the card on the table. “That picture? That’s the best apology you could ever expect. It’s your turn.”
She nodded. Maggie was right, but Rosa’s mouth and throat were filled with tongue and cotton, with no room for air. “Help me.”
Maggie dialed, placed the phone between them on the table and punched the speaker button.
The ringing filled Rosa’s head. The sound spiraling. Her head spinning.
“Hello?” His voice sounded groggy.
“Jake?” Maggie spoke quietly toward the phone.
“Who’s this?”
“Maggie Sternberg. I’m here with Rosa.”
“Oh.”
“Sorry,” Maggie said. “I know it’s late.”
“I was asleep. Is something wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong. We want to talk with Esther.”
There was a pause, then rapid words. “She’s sleeping. She’s been sick. A recurrence. She just finished chemo. She’s weak.”
“We just want to talk to her, Jake. Please.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea to wake her up.”
Rosa grabbed the phone. “Please wake her up.”
“Is that you, Rosa?” Jake’s voice sounded tight with emotion, but Rosa couldn’t identify it. Anger? Fear?
“I really need to talk to my sister.” She squeezed her eyes tight, feeling the enormous truth of her own words. “Please. Please wake her up.”
Jake hesitated. “Give me your phone number, Rosa. I’ll tell her you called. I promise.”
Rosa drooped forward until her forehead rested on the table. Jake had always tried to get between them. “Please tell her I’m sorry.”
“We’re sorry too,” Jake said quietly.
Rosa recited her phone number. Then she left the kitchen and stood just beyond the doorway. She leaned her head against the doorjamb. Listening.
“Are you still there?” Maggie asked Jake.
“Yes.”
“It’s time, don’t you think?”
“I don’t want Esther to be hurt any more,” he said.
“How bad is she?”
“It’s hard to tell. Not great.”
“Jake,” Maggie said, “Rosa’s ready.”
“So is Esther. I’ll give her Rosa’s number.”
“Thanks.”
“And Maggie,” Jake added, “give Rosa and Allen a message for me. Tell them we’re coming to New York on Saturday for the demonstration. Molly and Esther and me.”
The next afternoon, the smell of lasagna greeted Rosa in the hallway.
“We’re about to eat,” Allen called from the kitchen.
“Told you I’d be home on time,” Rosa yelled back. Allen had called twice, reminding her that Emma was coming to dinner with Jeff and Clara. “The wind was practically a tornado—if they have tornados here in the Arctic—but I’m here.”
She draped her coat over the bicycles by the front door and dropped a shopping bag on the counter. She accepted a glass of wine from Maggie, who was setting the table.
After her conversation with Jake, Maggie had decided to stay for the demonstration. “I wouldn’t miss this for anything.”
“How’s it going?” Allen asked Rosa.
“The press conference was fine, and everything for tomorrow is as ready as we can make it.”
“Did you write your speech?”
Rosa shrugged. “It’s only three minutes.”
“Three minutes in front of a million people,” Allen said. He pointed to the bag. “What’s that?”
“I need your help with a project tonight. You too, Maggie, and Emma and Jeff.”
“Sure, just take the bag off the dinner table,” Allen said. “What kind of project?”
Rosa looked at him, then at Maggie. “Cranes,” she said. “We’re folding origami cranes.”
When the dinner dishes were washed and put away, Rosa brought the shopping bag to the table, along with a sealed cardboard carton. Emma settled Clara on the rug with her stacking cups. “What’s in the box?”
“Relics from my past. Schmaltzy things I thought I’d never want to see again. Stuff Allen didn’t throw away like I told him to.”
Maggie grinned. “Getting sentimental in your dotage, Rosa?”
Rosa ripped the tape away, leaving a mud-brown stain on the cardboard. She opened the cardboard edges and lifted out a bundle of folded pages of notebook paper.
“Letters to Esther.” She put them aside. “Never mailed.”
She reached back into the box and brought out a short tricolor braid. She touched it to her lips and squeezed her eyes shut, picturing the women who grew the gray and brown hair. She handed it to Emma.
“The red’s yours,” Emma said. “Whose are the others?”
“The brown is Esther. The gray is our grandmother Leah. The one from Russia.”
“Who had a printing press in the outhouse—how could I forget?” Emma laughed.
“Hey, I remember this.” Maggie reached into the box for a small blue button with Go Michigan. Beat Thailand printed on it in yellow. “Thailand?” Jeff asked.
“Maybe my biggest contribution to the anti-war
movement.” How weird was that—after all she’d done, maybe designing a silly button was her most important role. Rosa pointed to her chest, over her heart, right over her tattoo, and Maggie pinned the button on her sweater. Rosa turned to Emma and Jeff. “We discovered that the university was developing counter-insurgency devices for the Defense Department to use in Southeast Asia. This button made Newsweek.”
Rosa fumbled in the box for a wrinkled yellow concert program. She handed it to Maggie.
“I remember that, too.” Maggie showed it to Allen, then to Emma and Jeff. “Rosa and I went to this Grateful Dead concert in Berkeley, the summer before the demonstration and arrest.” She looked at Rosa. “The summer you got the tattoo.”
“Esther too.” Rosa pulled a tube of posters, silk-screened on heavy paper, from the box. She unrolled them on the kitchen table, anchoring each corner to hold them flat. Esther’s favorite was on top: two Vietnamese figures carrying rifles, walking through shallow water, rice fields probably, morphing into a scene of shouting, angry protestors on a US city street. Iridescent scarlet and blue shimmered on the page.
Allen ran his hand over the rice paddies. “I haven’t thought about this poster in thirty years.”
Rosa looked at Emma. “Esther designed this for the graphics collective. My sister was very talented.”
“I know, Mom. Like the cranes memorial at camp.”
In the corner of the carton was one last item, a folded peace crane with “Happy 22nd Birthday and A Long Life” written with Esther’s signature flourish on the crane’s wing. Rosa put the origami bird on her hand and displayed it to the group. She removed a stack of brightly colored square paper wrapped in cellophane from the shopping bag, and a printed instruction sheet.
“Here’s our project. Esther’s cancer is back. She has always loved cranes and we need 1,000 of them. I never did learn to fold these things.”
“Why don’t you talk to her? Apologize?”
Rosa shook her head. “This is better. She’ll understand.”
Emma muttered something under her breath. Rosa couldn’t hear, and didn’t want to anyway. While the others read the instructions and began folding, Rosa lined up the cardboard backing from the origami package with the corner of the silk-screened poster. She drew pencil lines along the edges of the small paper, dividing the poster into eight smaller squares.
Her Sister's Tattoo Page 25
