The Girl From Over There

by Sharon Rechter

  “Why didn’t you come to the rehearsal?” asked Rina, who matched her steps to Miriam’s.

  “I didn’t come?!” Miriam exclaimed in wonder. “I waited for you for half an hour.”

  “When did you come?” asked Rina.

  “At six.”

  “Well, of course. You could have waited for us until tomorrow and it wouldn’t have done any good. The rehearsal was at four.”

  “At four? But Michal told me that …”

  “I don’t understand. Let’s discuss this tomorrow and sort it out,” Rina said.

  “Thanks,” Miriam said.

  But Miriam did not run off to the dining room. Instead, she turned back to the children’s room.

  I was still standing at the doorway. She asked me, “Are you going to eat?”

  “In a little bit,” I answered.

  “Can I join you?” she asked.

  “What do you want?” I asked, firmly.

  “Just to talk. You are the class queen, after all. Who better to talk to than the queen?”

  I could tell what she wanted from her tone and the look in her eye. And, to be honest, my conscience was weighing on me.

  “You … want … to know why I told you the rehearsal was at six?” I asked.

  “Only if you want to tell me; I won’t force you,” she replied.

  I looked at her again. She was a girl just like me, the same age as me, wearing the same clothes as me. What was I doing to her? I pondered this. And I decided to tell her. I built up the courage, and without forgetting my status as class queen, I said, “Because—”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Miriam cut me off good-naturedly and spared me the embarrassment of answering. “Friends?” she asked and put her hand on my shoulder. It was as if she understood me, and I was unprepared for her forgiveness.

  I moved my arm quickly, pushing her hand off my shoulder. I glared at her as if to say, Who do you think you are, touching me?!

  She said nothing more, but shuffled toward the door and stopped there. I expected her to burst into tears, to curse at me, to stare at me with hatred in her eyes. But she just shot a quick, arrogant glance back at me, and then ran off to the dining hall.

  I stood frozen in the doorway, ashamed of myself. I wanted to run after her and apologize, but I quickly changed my mind. Why should I chase after her?!

  Rina walked by and stopped. “I didn’t see you in the dining hall. Where are you headed?” she asked.

  “To the barn,” I said. “I’m still on duty.”

  “And what about getting something to eat?” Since I shrugged with disinterest, she added, “What’s troubling you, Michal?”

  “I …” I tried to answer her.

  She said nothing, but stood there, fascinated.

  “I … said …” I was able to add one more word to my previous sentence. But my voice was once again unsure of itself. Was this the right move?

  “I … I told Miriam to come to the rehearsal at …” I stopped and hesitated. I gazed at the ground and at my shoes. They needed mending, I thought to myself, as if trying to distract myself. But Rina wouldn’t give up, and she urged me to keep talking. At last, the words came out of my mouth. “I told her to come to the rehearsal at six instead of four.”

  “Well, then,” Rina said. “This means she’ll be getting her part back, and I think you should apologize to her.” She spoke firmly. I averted my eyes again. My shoes really did need mending. “Go get something to eat; you’re looking a little pale,” she added softly.

  “Yes,” I said. “And … thank you.”

  “Thank you, too,” Rina whispered to me.

  I ran toward the dining hall through all the buildings. I wanted to disappear as quickly as I could from Rina’s gaze, which kept following me and torturing me. And still, I felt relief. I could think more clearly.

  The Hanukkah party, which I’d looked forward to for so long and had such high hopes for was, eventually, a disappointment. Not because it wasn’t joyous, and not because the food wasn’t good, but because she was there— on stage, with her skinny body, playing the lead part, while I made do with a background part. It spoiled my holiday cheer.

  She played her part so beautifully that all the kibbutz members, new and old, were moved to tears by the story.

  I stared at the audience. Manek seemed odd, staring sharply at the stage. His eyes pierced her so deeply—as if he were trying to uncover her soul—and then filled up with love as he watched her move lightly and delicately across the stage. It was clear—she really did remind him of his wife.

  When the show was over, the members milled about the decorated dining hall, among tables set with all kinds of food: Hanukkah donuts, potato pancakes, and other special holiday treats that we never had on regular days. Manek walked over to Miriam, who was still buzzing with excitement from the play, and said, “You acted so well; it was so real.”

  “Thank you,” she replied.

  “Your movements were so graceful, I thought for a moment I was looking at my dear wife.”

  “Were you in Poland too?” she asked.

  “Yes, with my wife and my child, and we suffered like all the Jews.”

  Just then, David, the secretary of the kibbutz, interrupted and said, “Manek, we need you at the main office.”

  “Thank you, Miriam,” Manek said again.

  “Thank you, Uncle Manek,” she answered.

  As he left, Manek headed toward the kibbutz’s main office without turning back for fear that she would notice the tears in his eyes.

  Chapter 7

  That miserable night of the Hanukkah party would have stayed with me for days if our kibbutz hadn’t received waves of illegal immigrants smuggled in from Europe. They braved a treacherous journey to reach us. Most were penniless, without possessions or family. The sight of them was gut-wrenching.

  The order of the day was to be one great big family.

  In the evenings we gathered around them and listened intently to their horrifying stories of life in the ghettos, the extermination camps, and the forests. So sad were their tales that even the children cried, alongside their equally disheartened parents. Later, when we went back to our rooms, the adults muttered to themselves, “How? How could this happen?”

  Among the immigrants was Samuel, a skinny man who must have been in his thirties, though he looked much older. After spending several days with us without uttering a word, the members finally urged him to talk. As he did, his story was so horrific that they asked us children to leave the dining hall.

  Samuel sobbed bitter tears. He spoke of his children; he’d had two—a seven-year-old son and a four-year-old daughter. The three of them were sent to a death camp, and….

  That was all we, the children, were allowed to hear.

  The morning after Samuel told his story, Dan seemed exceptionally troubled. Right after the teacher dismissed us for recess, he ran toward the houses and stopped there. I walked after him, but he didn’t notice me. He sat under a tree facing Leah’s room and mumbled something to himself that sounded like, “She asked me to stop, said it was nothing. She said that she was just moved by Samuel’s story. But I know that’s not true … something happened to her yesterday, to Leah.”

  Dan looked over at the small shed. Its door opened slowly. Leah was about to step out, but when she noticed us, or rather him, she disappeared swiftly back into the shed and shut herself inside her house. I hid behind the olive tree. Dan got up and approached the house. He was about to knock on the door, but before he had the chance, it opened.

  Now I worried that Leah had locked herself in her room because of me. I came near the small shed and strained to hear what was said on the other side of the door. I knew it was wrong of me to eavesdrop, but I was mesmerized; I had to find out what was going on. Curiosity consumed me. I had to find out why they were having this mysterious meeting. Standing there, I looked to both sides, then put my ear up to the door. I heard fragments like “Smuggling …” “Underground
…” and “What do you know?” These snippets only fanned the flames of my curiosity.

  I knocked hesitantly.

  Leah opened up for me, and I immediately noticed the storm in her eyes. She slid her hand down my hair. “Come in,” she said, and sat me down on the little box in her room, which was small with white walls decorated with Leah’s paintings. Other than the box I sat on, there were a couple of painted wooden boxes she used for chairs and a small wooden table. Another small table stood out in the room, placed to the side of the metal bed. It was a round table covered with a handkerchief tablecloth, white with embroidered flowers. On the table there stood a framed photograph of a four-year-old girl.

  Leah had tears in her eyes, and she knew I could see them. She picked up the picture of the girl from the table (I could see her hands had a mild tremor) and tried to explain.

  “I don’t know why, but with the illegal immigrants coming to our kibbutz day in and day out, telling their stories and bearing their souls, it’s getting harder for me to keep my secret any longer. I’ve been so ashamed of it.” She fell silent, and then added, “I don’t know why I invited you, of all people, Dan. After you saw me crying the other day, while we listened to Samuel’s story, when he arrived at the kibbutz … they say children know how to listen. Yesterday I thought I’d have the strength to tell my story, but today … I’m not sure I can do it.”

  Leah was quiet for a while, and so were we. She stared at us, as if about to come to a decision, and then abruptly started speaking. “I’ll try … I’ll try to tell you something I’ve never told anyone before.” She said that, and once again went quiet. After a while, she broke her long silence with the words: “I lied to you! I didn’t come to Israel as a little girl; I came as a young woman, when I was twenty-two years old. All my friends came here from Europe by dangerous means, before the war, because they predicted the coming danger. They asked me to join them, to lay the groundwork for the arrival of other groups of illegal immigrants.” Leah’s breathing was erratic, and after a long pause, she whispered, “Most of them never got to see our homeland.”

  “I remember my best friend’s words: ‘Come, darling, come to the Holy Land, to plow and harvest, to raise your little Mary … come … come …’” Leah whispered, as if talking to herself. “And I really did want to go with them. The treacherous path, the dangers, they scared us all, but I wanted it so badly,” Leah said, choking on her tears. “That day, I was going to refuse my friend’s offer.” She spoke to the window. “Children were not allowed on the smuggling boats and having Mary aboard would have endangered the entire group. And I loved my Mary too much to leave without her. My Mary … the last thing I had left from Josef, the love of my life.”

  Leah quickly sketched the figure of a man on a sheet of paper tossed on the table. His hair was short, and his eyes were big and full of life. “Josef,” she mumbled. “Fate … took them away….” she added with anger, looking upward.

  Dan and I were alarmed by her odd behavior and rambling sentences.

  “In those days, after his death,” Leah tried to bravely keep going. “I was hurt, I was hateful, I was scared….”

  “Leah,” we whispered to her. “This isn’t doing you any good, telling us all this. Please, stop.”

  I tried to hug her, but she pushed me away.

  “Let me get it off my chest,” she begged us. “There is so much I’ve been trying to hide all this time.” She continued: “I held out hope, but now I know. None of them made it out alive.” She sat back down. “My good friend Sylvia offered to take care of my Mary because it was too dangerous to bring a child with me. We agreed they would join us in the land of Israel later, after I was settled.

  “I wish … I wish I’d never made it. I wish they’d made it instead of me, or at least my brother Jacob, who died in my arms on the way here. I still remember his last words. He whispered: ‘The homeland. How much I wanted to see it! But you, Leah, you will see it for me.’ And he smiled,” Leah cried out. “How could he have smiled like that, at his moment of death? Did my mother and father smile when they were taken to the death camps? And my Mary? Did she smile too?”

  Leah burst into tears. Dan and I shook her. “Calm down,” Dan pleaded. “All this is in the past; you shouldn’t do this to yourself.”

  “Dan!” She raised her voice. “Will I ever be able to stop the tears? Will I be able to forget the pain of giving my child away? Yes. Yes. I gave her to Sylvia because I was afraid of the danger ahead of me. I wanted to protect her. And now Sylvia, along with her own children and my Mary, are gone. How could I leave her, abandon my daughter—my own flesh and blood—and delude myself into thinking they’d arrive after me?” Leah’s shrieks terrified us, but she would not stop, no matter how much we implored her.

  Leah eventually calmed down and got her story in order.

  “I wanted to come to Israel and pave the way for my family and for others, but I was so afraid of giving Mary away. And yet, when the day came for me to give her to Sylvia, I still did it. I took her to Sylvia’s house, and it seemed so grand and safe there. The rooms were all so big and spacious, stylish and full of beautiful furniture. Sylvia was beautiful too; in her long, embroidered dress she looked just like a princess. She always wore a gold ring studded with a beautiful red ruby stone on her finger. She smiled at me, graceful and confident, and said, ‘Go, darling, make your dream—our dream—come true. And when you’re ready … I will … I will come to Israel with your daughter.’ Sylvia’s voice broke as she said this. And I …” Leah cried out. “I didn’t understand why she hesitated that way. But she knew! Then she said, ‘I promise I’ll guard her with my life; I’d give everything I own to keep your daughter safe. You can be sure of that.’ Everything I own,” Leah cried. “All that property of theirs—those beautiful things—it was why Sylvia stayed behind for so long. They waited just one more day and one more day, until it was too late. And now, because of all that property, Sylvia and my daughter are not with me today.”

  Leah tried to calm down. Dan and I looked at each other, stunned by the story Leah had kept locked in her heart all these years. I couldn’t even believe my own ears, and my mind was racing in disbelief. Leah had had a child; she could have been our age. A few minutes passed before Leah picked up where she had left off:

  “The man who’d married Sylvia was handsome and strong. He had fair hair and eyes as blue as yours,” she said, turning to Dan and looking deep into his eyes. She was speaking in a softer voice now. “They invited me to their holiday dinner before my trip. I walked into their house with Mary in my arms. Sylvia wanted to take her off my hands, but I refused. We sat down at the table, me, my Mary, Sylvia, her husband, and their little daughter, who was dressed in all white, and was so excited to hear that Mary would be staying with them. And I thought: How could war possibly come to such a peaceful place? What if the group and I are leaving for nothing? After all, we might not even make it to Israel. Here, in Poland, everything is so pleasant and beautiful, while our journey to Israel will bring nothing but danger. I almost changed my mind. I think I would have, had I known what was going to happen to them,” she added, as if trying to convince us.

  “The maid served us a big roast garnished with tomatoes and hard-boiled eggs. Sylvia’s husband picked up an egg and turned to Mary. ‘Look,’ he said, and peeled the egg in a funny way, in circles. Mary laughed. We ate quietly; we were all very tense. I looked at my watch. It was getting late. How could I have thought of the time?” Leah shouted. “This was the last time I saw my daughter! How could I possibly have thought about the time?!

  “Cruel,” Leah whispered to herself. “I got up from my seat and handed her over to Sylvia. ‘Guard her like you would your own,’ I begged her. Tears streamed down my cheeks. Sylvia came up to me. She took a white embroidered handkerchief out of her dress pocket and wiped my tears away. I held her in my arms. ‘I’ll take care of her,’ Sylvia said. ‘And we’ll come to Israel as soon as you get there and settle
everything.’

  “The handkerchief she used to wipe away my tears that night,” Leah said, “I have it with me to this very day.” She pointed to the white embroidered handkerchief that she’d used as a tablecloth on the round table. “Sylvia’s handkerchief saw some very difficult days with me until we made it to Israel, and afterward, too, but you, Sylvia … you never made it!” Leah cried, looking up toward the heavens.

  “She knew,” Leah continued. “She knew in her heart it would happen this way. All that property, the houses, the shops, the land … it seemed wrong to her to leave it all behind. Like many others, she hoped for the best.

  “Before I left that night, I spoke to my Mary. ‘Be a good girl,’ I told her. She looked at me. And all she whispered was, ‘Mama.’ I never thought it would be so hard to leave her, just for a few days, maybe a few weeks. But the pain was worse than I could have imagined.

  “I heard a knock on the door. My brother Jacob stood at the doorway. ‘Come in,’ Sylvia said. ‘I’ve come to say goodbye,’ he said, ‘and to pick up my sister. We’re heading out on a very long journey tonight.’ ‘Yes,’ I said to him.

  “Mary walked up to him on her little legs. ‘Uncle Jacob,’ she whispered. He hoisted her up in his arms and hugged her and kissed her. She played with a lock of his hair, and then he put her down and said, ‘Go upstairs, child.’ Then he hurried me too.

  “I looked around me, to take in every detail, to remember it all. I hugged everybody again, especially Mary. I kissed her and I whispered, ‘I’ll see you again, my dear, in just a little while, in Israel. In the land I told you about … we’ll pick flowers together … we’ll eat oranges … do you remember?’

  “Mary nodded at me. She didn’t understand why everybody was sad. She followed the little girl in the white dress upstairs. ‘Bye-bye,’ I said.

  “I left through the front door slowly, painfully. Jacob, noticing my reluctance, shut the door behind me and rushed me down the street. For a second I thought of storming back into the house, taking her back and staying in Poland. Life there was still good then, and it was a nice world to live in. When I stopped, Jacob gently whispered to me: ‘I know this is hard for you. But we both know we’re saving our lives, and paving the way for Sylvia, her family, and many others. And if we don’t do this, there will be no one who can promise us we will ever see our loved ones again. Come, quickly. We have to hurry, or else it will be too late.’