Journey to America

by Sonia Levitin

  “Yes,” Mother whispered. “We are from Germany—refugees.”

  “I understand,” he said. “Don’t try to talk now. I’m going to send for an ambulance to take you to the hospital,” he said in his deep, steady voice. “It’s nothing to be alarmed about, just a convenience. I know you’re feeling very weak, Frau Platt, and it probably hurts a bit when you try to breathe deeply, doesn’t it?”

  Mother only nodded, and her eyes filled with tears.

  “The children,” she whispered. “They were supposed to go to stay with some people this afternoon. The addresses are in my purse. The Resettlement Agency …”

  “I’ll call the agency and inform them,” said the doctor. “We’ll arrange to have your girls taken care of. Now you rest for a moment while I talk to Lisa.”

  “Where is your father?” he asked me softly.

  “In America,” I replied. “And my little sister Annie is staying with another family.”

  “Your Mother will be in the hospital for several weeks,” Doctor Gross said, frowning. “But she’ll be all right.”

  “Will we be able to visit?” I asked.

  “Not for a while. It’s contagious. It’s a wonder you and your sister haven’t caught it.”

  I explained that we had just returned from camp, pointing to our suitcases still unpacked.

  “Well, you’re certainly having your share of experiences,” he said, and I was thankful that he did not sympathize. It would have made me cry.

  He turned to Ruth. “Are you better now? Your mother is in no danger. I’m going to see to it that she receives the best possible care, that she gets lots of rest and good food. You’ll be able to telephone her every day.”

  “I’m all right now,” Ruth said, standing very straight. “Thank you.”

  Mother asked me to find the note in her purse. On it were written two names, “family Kunst and family Werfel.” My name was written beside the latter.

  “You will like it,” Mother whispered to me. “I met Herr Werfel. He has a daughter, too.”

  The next few hours passed in a haze, with the ambulance ending its terrible wail along the streets, doctors in white coats rushing in with a stretcher, Mother reaching out to touch our faces as they took her away. I felt that somehow I had lived all this before, and my body responded automatically, without feeling.

  “How can you be so calm?” Ruth asked me again and again, as we walked to the agency office, where we were to meet the people who were taking us to their homes. Mother had forgotten to leave money for bus fare, and we hadn’t thought to ask. “How can you be so calm? My whole body is shaking.”

  “I don’t know,” I replied.

  “I wish we could be together,” she said, biting her lip.

  “I’ll call you tonight,” I promised.

  “Mother said they have a boy my age,” Ruth told me. “I don’t want to go.”

  I laughed slightly. “He won’t bother you. Don’t you like boys?”

  “Don’t tease now, Lisa,” she said gravely. “You know what I mean. Oh, this suitcase is heavy. I feel like a gypsy.”

  I still felt nothing at all. I might have been watching from a distance. It was the same feeling I had the night Papa left, that the real me was only looking on. I put one foot in front of the other until we reached the agency office, and suddenly I found myself in the arms of the tall, graying man who was Herr Werfel.

  “My child!” he exclaimed. “Come, let me take that suitcase. They didn’t tell us you had to walk all this way. Come, come to the car, my dear. We’ll take you home.”

  Ruth, too, was leaving, walking beside a tall thin boy speaking with him shyly. She turned back to wave goodbye and I knew that she was satisfied to go.

  In the car something inside me gave way. I began to tremble violently, and tears slid down my cheeks, although I hardly realized I was crying.

  Frau Werfel put her arms around me, and I lay against her while she murmured, “There, there. Let it all go, my child. Don’t try to hold back. There is a time for tears—now, now all will be well.”

  I looked up at last and saw their daughter, Erica, looking at me with such consternation that I had to smile. “I’m fine,” I said. “Really, I’m sorry.”

  “When we get home,” Erica said, with a smile that made her whole face glow, “I’ll show you the rabbits. We have eight altogether, six babies. We keep them in the barn. Would you like to have one of the bunnies to keep?”

  I didn’t know what to say, and she continued, “We can sleep together in my room—if you want to, that is.”

  “I want to,” I said. She was so sweet, not pretty like Rosemarie, but her face was so frank and filled with feeling that I knew we would be friends, really friends, although she was nearly two years younger than I.

  “Let Lisa rest a while,” Frau Werfel told Erica when we reached the large old farmhouse. “Lie down here on the sofa, dear. Erica, don’t tire Lisa with too much talk. We’ll have many days together, I hope.” She bent down and kissed me, as if I were her own. I looked from one to the other, at Frau Werfel’s plump, motherly face, at Herr Werfel, tall as a reed, but gentle in his movements, and I could see that they really wanted me.

  The sofa was old and comfortable, like the house itself. I lay down against the soft cushions, and Erica sat beside me, fingering her long dark braids and smiling but not speaking.

  “I have never been on a farm,” I told her. “What do you grow?”

  “It’s not really much of a farm,” Erica said. “We have a few chickens and pigs, and a vegetable garden.”

  “Do you have a horse?”

  “Oh, yes. There’s the barn, you see, and it wouldn’t do to leave it empty, so we got the horse.”

  I laughed slightly. She was so serious, so eager to please, it seemed.

  “My cousins live just up the hill,” she said. “They have a large apple orchard. I’ll take you there one day, and you can drink all the apple cider you want. And you can ride the horse if you like horses, which I guess you do, because you asked about it. We have a hayloft. Have you ever been in a hayloft? Oh, there are a few little mice under the hay, but they won’t bother you. Sometimes you can hear them squeak, and sometimes they pop out, but then they run away and hide again very quickly.”

  She gazed at me for a long moment. “Do you want to sleep? Am I talking too much?” “No, not at all.”

  “I don’t suppose you play with dolls,” she said. “I don’t either, never did much. I’ve always had little animals, instead, like the bunnies. Do you like to play ball?”

  I nodded.

  “I do too. It’s something you can do alone. There aren’t many children in the neighborhood. That’s why I’m so glad you came to stay with us. It must have been exciting to live in Berlin. I have always lived right here.”

  Frau Werfel came in with mugs of hot chocolate. “Erica!” she reprimanded. “You’re talking too much.” But her eyes were gay, and she said to me, “I can’t really blame her. We’re all so excited about having you with us.”

  Frau Werfel thought of everything. After dinner she telephoned the hospital, and I was allowed to talk to Mother, but only for a few minutes.

  “Do you like the Werfels?” she asked me in a soft, weak voice.

  “Yes, yes,” I assured her, “very much.”

  She sighed. “I have a nice room,” she said. “The nurses bring me food every two hours.” She paused, as if speaking were an effort. “The doctor says I’m undernourished. But I’ll be well soon,” she added hastily. “Be a good girl, Lisa, and remember—remember all you have been taught.”

  I went into the kitchen, where Frau Werfel was setting out bread dough to rise overnight. Her movements as she kneaded the dough and the smell of yeast reminded me of home and of all the times I had sat at the kitchen table watching Clara.

  From the next room I could hear Erica and her father talking softly, laughing now and then. There was music from the radio, a pretty tune I had never heard
before, but somehow everything seemed familiar, too familiar. I was not really a part of it. How could I be? I could belong to only one family, and mine was scattered in different directions. I knew that I was wanted here, and welcome, but my mind and heart were divided into too many places, and I could not feel whole.

  Frau Werfel turned to smile at me. “Would you like to write to your father, Lisa? I’ve put out some stationery and stamps. You can sit here at the kitchen table.”

  I thanked her, marveling that she seemed to know just how I felt. I had wanted to write to Papa for weeks, but had not been able to for lack of paper and a stamp.

  It grew dark outside while I wrote, but I was too engrossed to notice anything around me. I gave no thought whatever to the organization of my letter. I simply wrote and wrote, leaping from one thing to the other, from one place to another, but always picturing Papa here beside me.

  When at last I was finished Herr Werfel called to me. “Come and sit with us awhile, Lisa,” he said. “Tell us about your family. Tell us about your father.”

  I began slowly, almost reluctantly. How could I possibly describe Papa? I told them some of the funny little stories Papa had told me, never make-believe stories, but real incidents that happened to him. He had told me many things about his childhood, and I could picture him and his four brothers turning the house inside out with their pranks. I told of the time when Papa, as a young boy, had eaten nearly a whole bushel of cherries, just to prove to his brothers that he could do it. I told how, at the age of fourteen, he was apprenticed to a tailor in another town, and how he ran back home one night, overcome with loneliness. I told about the time Papa had invented a new cleaning fluid, and how the bottle had exploded in the garage. And I told how, before our trip to Brazil, Papa had to go to Czechoslovakia to pick up Ruth from boarding school.

  “He needed money to pay for her school and to get to Italy, but he wasn’t allowed to take any money out. He had to hide it in some way.”

  Herr Werfel nodded, and Erica asked, “What did he do?”

  “He bought some grapes,” I answered. “He put them in a double bag, with money between the two bags. When the inspector came onto the train, Papa was sitting there eating grapes. He offered some to the inspector, too.”

  “What if he had been caught?” Erica gasped.

  “He would have gone to jail, I guess,” I said. “But he’s a good actor, my father. Oh, he can make anybody laugh!”

  I felt closer to Papa than ever, and when it was time to go to bed I was contented and whole.

  Frau Werfel had unpacked my clothes and laid my pajamas out on the bed beside Erica’s. My dresses were hung neatly in Erica’s closet, and now I saw how shabby they had become. I got into bed quickly, self-conscious about the patches on my pajamas.

  Frau Werfel did not seem to notice. She kissed us both, then tucked the blankets around me, saying, “Goodnight, Lisa dear. We’re so lucky to have you with us.”

  I watched as Erica knelt beside her bed to say her prayers, and I looked up at the picture of Jesus, the shepherd, that hung on the wall. When she had finished, Erica turned to me with her glowing smile and said, “Goodnight.”

  What was it, I wondered, that made these people so good?

  In the darkness I said my own prayer, ending as always, “and please let us all be together again soon.”

  Questions and Quotas

  IT HAD BEEN a wonderful week, each day filled with new, exciting things to do. I rode the horse every morning, a sweet, gentle old mare that had probably never received a cross word in her life. Her name was Stella, for she had a white patch, almost the shape of a star on her forehead. Sweet Stella, I called her, as she rubbed her nose against my hands and clothing, searching for the carrots and sugar lumps we always brought.

  That week opened a new world to me. Who in Berlin had ever picked peas fresh from the garden, or gathered eggs in a hen house? How could I ever have dreamed that a hayloft could be such a marvelous place for play, or for lying down and looking out of the loft window, or for jumping down onto the slippery, fresh smelling stacks below?

  I had never seen apples growing on trees. I had certainly never seen a cider press. We trooped up the hill, Erica and I, to her cousin’s house, about a mile along the country road, and then we went into the orchards, where the apples hung ripe on the trees and bushel baskets of picked fruit stood in rows. We brought a gallon jug with us, and Frau Werfel always said with a twinkling smile, “Now this time bring the cider home.” Erica’s aunt would fill the jug with cider, and on the way down the hill we were always tempted to take just a little taste, then another and another, passing the jug back and forth, until when we arrived back at Erica’s house the jug was empty. “Now go back,” Erica’s mother would say, giving her a playful swat, “And this time bring the cider home, you imps!”

  Then the last week before school would begin arrived. There is something about that last week of vacation—it is always the very best time of the whole summer. I remarked about it to Erica. “Haven’t you found it so?”

  “Only since you are here,” she answered, giving me a smile. “I wish …” She stopped abruptly.

  “What do you wish?” I urged her.

  “It’s selfish of me,” she said wistfully. “But I—I wish you could stay with us for a long, long time.”

  I didn’t want to think beyond that day.

  “Do you think your mother will let you stay with us,” Erica asked hesitantly, “until you leave Switzerland?”

  “I think so,” I replied.

  “My father will ask her today,” Erica said, for that afternoon they were taking me to the hospital to visit Mother. I had spoken to Dr. Gross on the telephone.

  “Yes, I think it would be good for your mother to see you girls,” he had said, “but only one at a time, and just for a few minutes. She still needs plenty of rest.”

  Doctor Gross was in Mother’s room when we arrived. I was struck with how fragile Mother looked in the great bed among the white linens and wearing a hospital gown. I rushed to her, but she held me away. “Not too close, darling. I don’t want to take any chances. Sit down there on the chair. Let me look at you. Your cheeks are rosy again!” She smiled and her eyes shone.

  “Your mother’s getting along fine,” Dr. Gross said, taking up his bag. “She’ll be up and around in ten days or so, but,” he turned to Mother, “you’ll still have to take it easy, and remember that people can’t live on tea and toast—not if they want to stay healthy.”

  “I’ll remember, Doctor,” Mother said meekly, half-smiling.

  “And you’d best try to keep your daughters right where they are. No use shuffling those girls around like library books!”

  “And what would I do all day?” Mother asked him boldly.

  “You’ll visit them,” the doctor said promptly, patting me on the shoulder as he turned to go. “Just a few minutes, now, Lisa.”

  The Werfels had left me at the door to Mother’s room, unwilling to tire her with too many visitors. They were to come back for me in ten minutes. My head was filled with things I wanted to say, but in my rush to tell everything I was, for a moment, speechless.

  “You like the Werfels, don’t you?” Mother asked.

  “They are the most wonderful people I’ve ever known,” I replied promptly. “Frau Werfel made me some pajamas to match Erica’s. She said it would be fun for us to have something alike, as if we were real sisters. She’s so kind!” Frau Werfel never made it seem that she was giving me a gift or supplying something I desperately needed. It was the same when she made us each dresses. “She says it’s just as easy to make two,” I told Mother. “How can that be?”

  Mother laughed, and her face looked pink and healthy again. “Have you been helping around the house?”

  “Oh, yes,” I said quickly. “But it’s fun. I mean, we get to feed the chickens, and Frau Werfel taught me how to darn socks. I made the nicest little patch in one of Herr Werfel’s.”

 
“Marvelous!” Mother exclaimed. “You’re turning into a young lady after all. And today? What did you do today?”

  I took a deep breath, then said rapidly, “We went to church. I—I went too. Is it all right?”

  “Of course it is,” Mother said, nodding.

  “The Werfels are Catholic,” I said.

  “I know.”

  “It was a Catholic mass,” I explained insistently.

  “You can pray wherever you are,” Mother said soberly, “and still be a good Jew. God is everywhere. I have prayed in many churches. But what’s the matter, Lisa? Were you uncomfortable?”

  “No,” I murmured. “It was beautiful.” I sighed, not wanting to ask, but needing to talk about the thoughts that had haunted me. “Do you think that’s what makes them so good? Going to church, I mean, and being Catholic?” Our eyes met intently, and there was silence for a moment. Then Mother lay back against the pillows, hesitating before she faced me fully and asked, “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head. I did not ask that nagging question, If I were a Catholic, would I be better, too? How could I ask it, even of myself? I loved the synagogue, the songs and prayers, the closeness to God. How could I question the faith of my fathers?

  There wasn’t time to pursue it, for a nurse came bustling into the room. “There’s a letter for you, Frau Platt,” she said.

  “A letter? But it’s Sunday.”

  “Special delivery,” the nurse answered briskly, already on her way out. “From America.”

  Mother ripped open the envelope.

  “Is it from Papa?” I asked, rushing to see.

  “Of course.” Mother quickly scanned the page, then she cried out, “Oh, no! He mustn’t.”

  “What? What is it?”

  “Papa says—he—he wants to leave America!” she said in a stricken tone. “He mustn’t! He says he got a letter from you and one from Frau Feldin, saying that I was very sick and in the hospital. Lisa, what did you write to Papa?” Her voice was shaking.