Dear Bill, Remember Me?

by Norma Fox Mazer

  “Ma—oh, God, Ma, I’m going to die, aren’t I?”

  “What! Lou—no, who said it? Who’s upsetting you? Was it Frank Weiss?”

  “Ma. Tell me. Say it. Do it for me, Ma,” Louise begged. “I need you to say it! ‘Louise, you’re dying.’”

  “No, no.” Her mother wept helplessly. “No.” Her cries rose shrilly. “No, no, no, no.” She bent her head.

  Louise was crying, too, rough gasps mingling with her mother’s cries. “Ma, Ma,” she wept, reaching out. They held each other, their tears, held back so long, telling the truth better than words. In a month she would be dead. Or it might be six weeks. Or two weeks. But soon.

  “What’s this? What are we doing?” her mother said, raising her head, wiping roughly at her cheeks. “Are we crazy—all these tears! We should be smiling—” She faltered, her eyes overflowing again.

  “Ma, don’t!” Louise held her mother’s hand tightly. “I know. Ma, I want us to be like before. You, me, Bethie. No lies. No more. There isn’t time.”

  Her mother slowly nodded her head. “I’ll get supper now,” she said. She smoothed the sheets over Louise. “I saw the prettiest linen in the store. Little bunches of flowers. Would you like that?”

  “Yes,” Louise said. From now on, forever, there would be only this bed, this room, this bit of sky. Beth, her mother.

  From the kitchen she heard the comfortable clatter of dishes. Her throat still ached from the tears, but she felt peaceful. She ran her hand over the wrinkled sheet. For the night, Beth would give her clean fresh sheets smelling of the iron. She heard kids shouting in the alley between the two houses and looked out the window. There was the ordinary house she had seen from this same window every day of her life. But now she saw it with extraordinary clarity—the peeling chips of gray paint, the rough spots on the boards, the long rusty discolored line that ran beneath the drain. Her heart beat roughly. How good everything was.

  In the little view of sky above roof, the layer of gray cloud lifted for the first time in a week, and a piece of blue sky appeared. Louise rolled over and pressed her face against the window, staring hungrily at the patch of sky, blue as the sea, clear, pure and perfect, coming to her like a gift.

  Zelzah: A Tale from Long Ago

  Her name was Zelzah. It meant Shade-in-the-Heat. She was the second oldest of five daughters. Before her came Ruth; after her, Shulamith, Anna, and Sarah. Zelzah, quiet, often wondered about the names her mother had given her and her sisters. Anna, for instance, whose name meant “grace,” was clumsy, with one leg shorter than the other. “Cripple, cripple, drown and dripple,” other children chanted at her as she limped and hopped in the dusty street outside their house. As for Shulamith, it seemed sometimes that she lived only to do everything possible to disprove the meaning of her name which was “peacefulness.”

  Shulamith went into a rage at the smallest detail. She insisted on fairness: the potato kugel must be cut into five equal portions for the sisters; a hair ribbon for Sarah must be shared with Anna; a letter from Aunt Hannah in America must be read aloud to everyone, or no one could hear it. “I insist,” Shulamith cried. “I insist on fairness!”

  The five sisters slept together in a large double bed. Although Ruth (friendship), who was wrong in the head, was the oldest, Shulamith dictated where each sister should sleep, and who would share what quilts. Anna and Sarah, the youngest, slept across the bottom of the bed, head to toe, reversing sides every night so that neither got poked too often by their elder sisters’ feet. Zelzah slept sandwiched between Ruth and Shulamith. All night, Ruth, who never said much during the day, only smiled at everyone and everything, groaned and muttered in her sleep, while Shulamith flung her arms around and turned a dozen times from side to side. Between these two, and with the little girls defenseless at her feet, Zelzah learned to sleep without moving, lying still on her back, her hands crossed over her belly.

  Still, she was only human and there were occasions when her leg or her arm slipped over the invisible boundary into Shulamith’s territory. At once, Shulamith screamed with fury. “Off my side, off, off!”

  “Shulamith, Shulamith, peace, peace,” Zelzah’s mother would say in despairing tones. The mother was a small woman: small-boned, small hands, small feet; she had once been a beauty. After five miscarriages and five live births, her beauty had faded: she had the worn, soft look of a piece of good linen that has been washed innumerable times. She had lived all her life in poverty and was an incurable optimist. Although her own name, Adah, meant ornament, and her whole life had been nothing but toil, she had still given each of her daughters a name she believed would help write her future.

  “You are meant to be a comfort to those around you,” she told Zelzah. “To your family now, to your husband and children someday. How wonderful it is to get out of the heat of summer into the shade! Just so, will your husband and children come to you for relief from strife and difficulties.”

  Zelzah loved this tiny mother who insisted against all evidence that names were destiny, and she tried very hard to live up to her name. She wanted to be a cool refreshing person, but summer or winter, her head sweated like a pig, her hands and feet were always red and burning, and in moments of stress she would be struck dumb. Thus, when Shulamith screamed at her in bed, “Off my side! Off, off, off!” Zelzah was helpless to calm her sister.

  The bed the girls slept in stood in a corner of the one large whitewashed room that was their house. Besides the bed with its scrolled wooden headboard, the room contained a high dish cupboard, two wooden wardrobes, a scrubbed wooden table and chairs, several metal trunks with rounded tops and leather straps, a stove, and their parents’ bed.

  Each one of the girls had been born in that bed, each one had slept there for three or four years with her parents before moving into the bed with her sisters, to make room for the new baby.

  Their father, Jacob, worked on leather; he was a tanner. He dragged himself home each night smelling horribly. His hands were permanently stained the color of old boots. Sometimes their mother wanted to sleep with the girls, but where could they find room for another body? They lived in Poland, they were Jewish, and all this was a good many years ago.

  Of course they were poor. All the Jews in the little village of Premzl were poor. In Warsaw, they heard, there were wealthy Jews, Jews with servants, even, but here in Premzl goats were tethered by the houses, and chickens pecked in the streets.

  Stories of America, the golden land, whistled between the houses like the wind. At night, Zelzah’s parents whispered in their bed. Zelzah’s mother sewed a pocket into the bottom of her mattress, and there, whenever she could, she put aside a bit of money. In the winter on market days she rose before dawn to bake rolls. She wrapped them in napkins, carried them to the marketplace, and sold them, singing, “Hot rolls, hot hot hot, hot rolls.” Under her skirt she kept a hot brick to warm her chilled feet and legs.

  The girls, too, did whatever they could. Anna, the cripple, ran errands for the neighbors, her shoulders listing, accepting the coins she was given with a sullen smile. Ruth would do whatever task she was set to in the house. If no one told her to sweep the floor, or stir the washing in the tub on the stove, she would pick up a stick, a bug, a crushed leaf, and bringing it close to her eyes, stare at it for hours. Shulamith and Zelzah did a bit of everything. Only Sarah, the youngest (“princess”), was petted and allowed to play all day.

  At the age of nine, Zelzah went to work on the farm of an elderly Polish couple. The woman’s fingers were bent like claws and she could no longer feed the chickens, do her housework, baking, and all the other things that had to be done on a farm. Zelzah took over these tasks. It was hard work, but she was well fed, and was often outdoors. She worked for the couple for six years, uncomplaining, walking three miles each way every day. Her hands were coarse and red. Her body became sturdy, and her arms were strong.

  Her parents began to speak of her future. They wanted a good husband for their Zelzah. T
hey discussed this boy, that boy, another one. Ruth, though older, would, of course, stay home with them. Zelzah would be the first of the sisters to marry. Zelzah listened, sometimes smiling, cracking her reddened knuckles, saying little. Then, on the farm, standing outside the cow’s stall, for instance, her feet planted squarely in the mucky yard, holding a bucket of fresh warm milk, the flies thick on the rim, some already drowned in the milk, she would lift her face and squint into the distance. Strange thoughts went through her mind. A wind might be blowing gently. Or the sun shining. Goldfinches dipped across the fields. Life seemed wonderful, although she didn’t know why and would never have said it aloud. The thought of marriage made her sigh over and over.

  “I want to get married,” Shulamith whispered fiercely into Zelzah’s ear at night. “Why did Mama have you before me? I want to have my own bed and sleep in it with a man!”

  Zelzah snorted behind her hand. Shulamith tickled her suddenly, and Zelzah thrashed around, shrieking with laughter.

  Later that summer, a letter from Aunt Hannah came from America, from a town named Stratton in a place called Vermont. Aunt Hannah had four sons, “all good, kind boys, and smart, too,” she wrote. One was already married to an American girl. One was still young. Two sons, Jake and Ephraim, needed wives. Aunt Hannah thought Zelzah, now fifteen, would make a good wife for her son Jake. She would pay half Zelzah’s boat fare.

  Zelzah’s mother counted her little hoard of money. There was enough for half a boat fare plus a little extra to give Zelzah wrapped in a handkerchief which was then tucked carefully into the wicker case with leather straps that held her clothing.

  Cold winds blew in the village when Zelzah left. The boat would be cold. She wore a gray wool blouse, a long black worsted skirt, a heavy coat that had been her father’s and that smelled like a tannery, a scarf on her head and a wool shawl over her shoulders. The shawl, gray, with black fringe, was her mother’s. On the boat, Zelzah wept into the fringe. She was not seasick, she endured without complaint the crowding, the stifling odors, the groans, noises, and cries of the hundreds of people with whom she was packed into steerage; once every day she ate bread and a bit of hard dry cheese with good appetite. Yet, for the forty-two days of the voyage, tears poured steadily from her eyes.

  Aunt Hannah met her at the dock in New York City. Thank God, Aunt Hannah looked like Zelzah’s mother, her very own sister! How else would Zelzah have known that this was, indeed, her aunt, and not just one of the hundreds of women milling around?

  Aunt Hannah hugged Zelzah. She was small, like Zelzah’s mother, with the same bright black eyes, but with prematurely white hair. And her cheeks, unlike her sister’s, were bright, blooming. She pinched Zelzah’s cheek and said in Yiddish, “You’re a fine, strong-looking girl. Tell me how my sister is, tell me everything!”

  “Yes, they’re fine, all fine,” Zelzah said, looking around. The noise made her ears ache. She longed to close her eyes against the swarms of people, carts, horses, buildings, signs, wagons, dogs, and God knew what else! It had really happened, then! She had left home, crossed the ocean, come to America. Remembering the tears she had wept on the voyage, her eyes ached as if to shed more tears. She stuffed the fringes of her shawl into her mouth and followed Aunt Hannah.

  They took a train to Vermont, and from the station walked two miles to the village. It was night. There was snow everywhere in great dazzling white drifts. The stars were icy in the dark sky. Zelzah walked beside Aunt Hannah, her breath blowing out before her in a white cloud. Her wicker case bumped against her leg, the snow crunched beneath her feet. Aunt Hannah told her about the small grocery store she and Uncle Morris owned in Stratton. In Zelzah’s honor, Aunt Hannah said, the store was closed early.

  They came to a wooden building, two stories high. Aunt Hannah led the way up a dim, narrow flight of stairs. “Here we are, dear child!”

  Zelzah was trembling. Her legs felt weak. There was a blur of male faces and voices. Uncle Morris, a short sweaty man with tight gray curls, embraced her, his long soft mustache brushing her face. His eyes were kind. Her cousins were introduced, one, two, three, Jake, Ephraim, Sammy. Michel, the oldest, was married and had gone west with his bride. All this Zelzah heard as if from a distance. Her stomach rocked as if now, off the boat, she was for the first time, seasick.

  “Sit down, sit down.” Uncle Morris pushed her into a large overstuffed chair. “Hannah, bring some wine. Ephraim, here, take your cousin’s case.” But Zelzah wouldn’t release her grip on the wicker case.

  The room she was in was crowded with furniture; couches, a dark oak sideboard on top of which trays, glasses, bottles, and framed pictures bumped against one another, many little tables with kerosene lamps, ashtrays, a piano, and a large gate-leg table overflowing with books and papers. Small woven rugs were scattered around on the carpeted floor, and thick red velvet curtains, their tassels sweeping the floor, covered the windows. Zelzah’s head spun, her ears were burning, her head sweating. With moist burning hands, she clutched the wicker case, nodding and bobbing her head.

  Downstairs, behind the store, there was still another room; here, Aunt Hannah had made a place for Zelzah. She had laid a colorful little rag rug on the wooden floor, and the rocking chair had a bright red cushion. A calendar hung on a nail, showing a picture of a deer fleeing into snow-covered woods. The date of Zelzah’s arrival was circled. There was a bed, and a marble-topped bureau with three drawers and a special place for the white chamber pot that had a bunch of daisies painted on the side.

  “You’re so kind, so very kind, too kind,” Zelzah said. It was very cold, the windows were iced with frost flowers. Zelzah stared shyly at the iron cot with its single mattress covered by a gray wool blanket. Imagine. A bed just for her.

  After Aunt Hannah left, Zelzah sat on the edge of the bed, staring down at her heavy black shoes. How handsome Cousin Ephraim was! There was something dashing and bold about him, about his bold black eyes, and thick black mustache. His eyes had danced over her as he greeted her in English. When she stammered something in Yiddish, he had laughed and pinched her cheek as if she were so much younger than he. Then he had turned to his mother and said something quickly, again in English, which had made Aunt Hannah laugh and swat his hands lightly. Zelzah was glad he was not the one Aunt Hannah wanted her for.

  As for Jake, she had only peeked at him, keeping her scarf over her head and drawn almost down to her eyes, out of fear and shyness. “How do you do, dear cousin, are you tired from the trip?” he had said. Such kind words. Jake wasn’t handsome like Ephraim, but—beautiful! She had never seen a man so beautiful. His eyes were as blue as the sky over the Polish farm on a summer day, his nose was long and fine, his mouth full, soft, gentle; He wore soft leather boots, and the hand that pressed hers in greeting was dry and cool. “Ah,” she sighed, astonished by his beauty.

  Each morning of her new life, Zelzah woke before dawn, as she always had, dressed hurriedly in the frigid room, used the outside “facilities,” and joined the family for breakfast. Sammy went each day to school, Ephraim to work in an office, Jake to work in the paper mill, while Zelzah joined Uncle Morris and Aunt Hannah in the store. On the first day, speaking kindly but firmly, Aunt Hannah said, “Now, Zelzah, no more Yiddish. You must learn to speak like an American.”

  Through the winter and into the spring, she worked in the store. At first she hardly dared speak, but little by little she learned American phrases, American money, and American behavior. She gave up wearing her shawl in public, and did her best not to embarrass the family.

  At night, though, she still slept with the shawl next to her face and often wept into its fringes. She thought of her sisters, and especially of Shulamith. How quiet these sons of Aunt Hannah were! She couldn’t get accustomed to sleeping alone in a bed, to being all alone through the night in a room with not another soul in it.

  Often she lay awake for hours, staring into the dark, straining to hear—something. A sigh, a groan, a cough, the whis
pers of her parents as they lay together. Outside, dogs barked. Or an owl hooted. Far away, a horse might whinny. The night was no darker than all the other nights of her life had been, but she lay awake, her heart swollen with terror and loneliness.

  Yet everyone was kind to her. Uncle Morris gave her chocolates and patted her head reassuringly when she made mistakes. Ephraim teased that he was getting tired of these American girls who couldn’t stay away from him, and said, laughingly, “Watch out, brother Jake!” Aunt Hannah was pleased with every American word Zelzah learned and praised the immaculate way she kept her room and her person.

  Her young cousin, Sammy, sometimes showed her his schoolbooks, pointing out a word here and there. As for Jake, he spoke to her gravely, asking her questions about her sisters, the work she had done on the farm, the village where she had lived. He listened to everything she said, his eyes melancholy. She wondered what made him sad. When she lapsed into Yiddish, he shook his head reproachfully. “Speak English, Zelzah. Yiddish is for greenies.” He spent most of his time reading books. Zelzah had never read a whole book. In the summer, they were to be married.

  The weather was still cold, although winter had retreated, when Jake came to Zelzah’s room one night. He got into her bed. His bony legs and feet were icy. Zelzah held him close, warming him. He came to her bed one or two nights every week. After his visits, Zelzah always slept more soundly. She thought Jake’s eyes were not so sad anymore. As he lay in her arms, she whispered to him in Yiddish, “I would like a cat when we have our own home.” She had never asked anyone for anything; it struck her that she was becoming brave, even American. She rubbed her hands in Jake’s hair. He smelled good, like fresh-baked bread. He was always cold, and she was always warm, burning, her head steaming: She thought of her name, Shade-in-the-Heat; was not warmth in winter just as good?

  In spring, Ephraim, who had many girlfriends, brought home a new girl to meet his mother. Her name was Grace. She was a college student and spoke quickly, laughing often. “How do you do!” she said to Zelzah, holding out her hand and then shaking Zelzah’s hand forcefully. She was a tall girl with long hands and feet. “So you’re reading Dickens,” she said to Jake. “He’s out of fashion, but I think he’s wonderful, don’t you?”