Then Sings My Soul

by Amy Sorrells

  “Catherine adored him,” Mattie said. “You’ll get to meet him tomorrow, since he’ll be officiating.”

  The next morning, Nel found Jakob standing at the stove making eggs, already dressed in his suit and tie. She leaned against the counter next to him.

  “Scrambled?” He winked.

  “Yep.”

  He poured a little water in them. “Makes them fluffier. Just a little smidgen of water.”

  “I remember.” She watched the eggs firm up as he stirred and scraped them around the skillet. “You look good, Dad.”

  “No one looks good when they’re my age,” he said, chuckling.

  “No, really. That’s a nice suit. Mom would say you’re handsome.”

  Jakob frowned and stirred. “Yes … I suppose she would.”

  “Did you get your paper yet?” Nel scanned the counters for the Herald-Palladium but didn’t see a copy. “I’ll go get it.”

  The sun shone bright that autumn morning, already melting the light frost on the east side of the house facing the street. She stretched and inhaled, the cool air taking the edge off the awkwardness of her mom’s absence back in the kitchen. She’d been hypervigilant since she’d been home, watching for signs of forgetfulness in her dad, and felt some relief when she’d seen how appropriate he’d been so far. She was a little ashamed he’d gotten dressed and started breakfast before she’d even woken up. Stiff from the plane ride, she bent to touch her toes and saw a brown envelope in the mulch of the flower bed alongside the steps. She hopped off the stoop and pulled it from under the overgrown yew, where it must’ve blown in the last day or two, judging from the dew stains.

  Addressed to Catherine, the postmark read New York City, and it was dated Tuesday, just before Mom died. Nel brushed off the envelope and pulled it open as she walked toward the end of the driveway to get the paper. Inside, she found a note on US Citizenship and Immigration Services letterhead explaining that therein was the information Catherine had requested from them. Behind that was a photocopy of a document titled “List of Manifest of Alien Passengers for the US Immigration Officer at Port of Arrival. Holland America Line.” The rest of the paper was filled with a list of names scrawled in barely legible handwriting. Columns next to the names requested information about every immigrant, including age; sex; occupation; whether they were able to read or write; nationality, race, or people; last residence (province, city, or town); final destination; whether they were polygamists or anarchists; how much money they had with them, if any; whether their passage was paid for and by whom; whether they were meeting anyone in the States; and various other details related to these questions.

  Paper-clipped to the manifest was an old photo of two boys, one quite young, barely five, perhaps, and another who appeared to be a teenager. Both of them held fur hats, the sort that have flaps that cover the ears, and wore multiple layers of woolens and jackets. Neither boy smiled.

  Interesting, Nel thought. Mom must’ve taken up genealogy recently. A lot of older people did. Curious she hadn’t mentioned anything to Nel about it.

  Nel set the papers aside to look into later. Perhaps she’d ask Mattie about it. For now she had to focus on getting Jakob and herself through the funeral.

  The Reverend Adam Winslow and his wife, Sarah, waited at the threshold of the white-trimmed and pillared red-brick Presbyterian church for Jakob and Nel when they arrived. Mortified she had squealed the tires of her father’s behemoth white Ford Crown Victoria when they’d pulled into the parking lot, Nel sheepishly reached toward Sarah’s outstretched hand.

  “You must be Nel.” A strand of faintly pink pearls peeked from beneath the collar of Sarah’s thick, ground-length, navy wool overcoat. She ran the church music ministry, which both Catherine and Mattie had participated in. “Your mother spoke of you often. I can hardly believe we’ve never met.”

  Reverend Winslow stepped toward Jakob, who was breathing loudly through pursed lips after trekking up the steps. “How are you holding up, Jake?”

  “Fine, fine,” Jakob puffed, waving his cane-free hand in the air as if to dismiss the reverend’s obvious concern.

  Inside the sanctuary, Nel and Jakob took their seats in the front pew next to the reverend and Sarah. Mike Wisowaty, two years Nel’s senior, straightened a wreath of flowers over the top of the casket. Catherine and Beth Wisowaty—Mike’s mother—had tried to match-make Mike and Nel for years. She felt relieved that hadn’t worked out. His face had rounded out considerably, as had his middle. If Nel had to guess, she’d say he had high blood pressure from the look of his blotchy, reddened cheeks and neck. He glanced her way, nodding with sympathy, and she smiled politely.

  She looked around the sanctuary as it filled, recognizing faces, forgetting some names, remembering others. Old teachers, shop owners, neighbors, parents of her schoolmates, couples, widows and widowers of Jakob’s coworkers from Brake-All—each person reflected how Catherine spent her life devoted to raising Nel and loving Jakob. The number of attendees was not overwhelming, and in other settings some might have been disappointed in the turnout. But Nel thought it was all perfect. The people who’d come mattered to Mom, and Nel knew Mom mattered to them.

  Then she saw David Butler. She hadn’t noticed him arrive, but he sat in the back pew, adjusting his tie in a way that made it obvious he wasn’t used to wearing one. His face was ruddier than when they’d been in high school. He’d aged well, the years adding definition and a sort of wisdom to his once-boyish features. His hair was dark, nearly black like hers, except for around the temples. She hadn’t realized she’d been staring at him until he nodded at her and grinned. She raised her hand and waved—Waved? How old was she, sixteen?—then snapped back around in her seat, annoyed at herself for blushing and acting like a teenager. The over twenty years that had passed since their senior year had done little to dampen her infatuation with him.

  Mike approached Nel and Jakob. “Excuse me a moment, Reverend. Jakob. Nel. Does anyone need more time before we make the final preparations before the service?”

  Nel shook her head, lowering her eyes to the handkerchief she’d brought, one she’d found in her mother’s vanity, hand embroidered with the letters CBS, Catherine Bessinger Stewart.

  “I said my good-byes to her every evening, and the other night was no exception,” Jakob said, looking wistful. His damp eyes regarded the casket. Then he turned to Nel. “You know, she had all the verses, the order of the service, “How Great Thou Art” for the hymn—everything picked out—and the instructions taped to the inside of her Bible?”

  CHAPTER 8

  Praise God from whom all blessings flow,

  Praise Him all creatures here below,

  Praise Him above, ye heavenly host,

  Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

  The pipes of the old organ belted out the familiar refrain, but Jakob did not sing along. He knew why Catherine had chosen this hymn to conclude her funeral, and he did not wish to comply with her reasoning.

  “Praise Him even when you don’t feel like it. Always, always praise,” she’d said.

  He figured she’d chuckle at his stubbornness, which transcended the fact that she’d passed. He was tired. Tired of funerals. Tired of watching everyone he knew and loved be buried while waiting for his own burial, which ever eluded him. Tired of the realization he’d had for some time now that life really was meaningless, as Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes. God seemed to be everywhere around the dead, but Jakob had yet to find much evidence of Him around the living, besides on the countenance of his wife and a few other exceptions like Mattie. More than that, why sing if you don’t feel like it?

  He felt like hollering this question out loud, jolting Reverend Winslow and the rest of the mournful assemblage, disrupting the plangent vibratos of Catherine’s octogenarian friends singing in the pew behind him.

  When he got home, he’d put a note on
the inside flap of his Bible telling people to read Ecclesiastes, the entire first chapter, at his funeral, about how none of the laboring, the sunrises and sunsets, mattered. How the generations are forgotten. How living long and getting old doesn’t mean a hill of beans. And how faith, once you’ve seen folks slaughtered because of it, becomes something you lock tight deep inside.

  As Reverend Winslow began the eulogy, Jakob flipped the pew Bible open to the eighteenth verse of the first chapter of Ecclesiastes. For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief,1 he read in silence.

  And with age, much pain. He couldn’t understand why everyone in America was so fixated on living as long as possible. His body reminded him of an old car, three out of his four major leg joints replaced, three heart catheterizations to keep his blood flowing, uric acid collecting in his gouty feet like oil sludge. He’d consider himself lucky if his alternator went ahead and gave out.

  More grief, Solomon had written.

  Indeed.

  He rubbed a large age spot on his hand, which trembled as he shoved the pew Bible back under the seat and grasped the handle of his cane.

  1908

  Chicago, Illinois

  CHAPTER 9

  When Peter and Jakob had learned English as well as could be expected, the Stewarts enrolled them in Saint Stanislaus Catholic School with many other lost and language-challenged children from the neighboring Eastern European immigrant sections of Chicago. Many of the children were from the Ukrainian Village neighborhood bordering Wicker Park, as well as from the surrounding Polish neighborhoods. This thrilled Peter and Jakob and all the children because they could talk in their native languages at recess, in the halls, and whenever a teacher wasn’t around to demand they use their English. No one cared whether they were Jewish or Orthodox or a combination either. Everyone honored whatever bits and pieces of faith—if any—had survived their journeys to the States.

  Jakob was in the second grade and Peter in high school, a couple of years older than many of his classmates so he could catch up with the language. On a Friday evening as the sun was setting, Jakob walked into Peter’s room to find him kneeling, holding the one frayed tassel from Papa’s tzitzit1 in his hands.

  “Do you remember when Papa made this and the others he wore on the four corners of his garment?” Peter asked.

  Jakob nodded. He remembered. Papa wound the strings, teaching them both in what seemed a lifetime ago, what the pattern represented.

  “Do you remember what the first seven windings are for?”

  “Creation,” Jakob said without hesitation.

  “Yes. And the second eight?”

  Jakob shook his head. He couldn’t recall.

  “That one is harder,” Peter reassured him. “Eight is the number of days from when the Israelites left Egypt to when they sang their song of deliverance when they reached the Red Sea. And the reason for the four tassels?”

  Jakob did remember this, but he wouldn’t say.

  “You don’t remember?”

  Jakob shook his head, unwilling rather than lying.

  “Then I’ll tell you.”

  Jakob wished he wouldn’t.

  “We’re supposed to look for Yahweh, to remember He is with us, on all sides of us. Helping us. Guiding us. Jehovah-Shammah.”

  Jakob frowned.

  “You don’t think so?”

  Jakob hesitated, then shook his head again. Where was Yahweh on the ship? Where was Yahweh in the woods? Where was he with the girl they’d found in the barn? And most of all, where was Yahweh in the horror that occurred in Chudniv? Yahweh had done nothing but abandon them.

  “Papa believed it. He said El Shaddai is always watching over us.”

  Jakob felt the sickness that always came deep from inside his belly whenever he remembered Papa. What he would give to see him again, to sink into his thick arms, to hear his laughter, his singing, his prayers. Yes, Papa had believed it. But if Papa had known everything that would happen to them, would he still have believed?

  “You are mighty forever, my L-rd; You resurrect the dead; You are powerful to save …,” Peter recited from the Amidah.

  Jakob’s sick feeling turned to anger. “Go on and believe the Amidah, the Shema, and all that old nonsense if you want to. But that’s all it is. Nonsense.”

  “Jakob—”

  “God may be real, but He doesn’t keep His promises. At least not to us.”

  “You don’t think there’s a reason we made it here and have been blessed with a new family who loves us? Abraham had to leave his land, his people, too, and he became the father of our faith. You don’t think perhaps Yahweh, even Yeshua, had reasons for delivering us?”

  “No.” Jakob nearly spat his answer into Peter’s face. “I wish Yahweh and Yeshua had delivered the rest of our family instead of me.”

  Peter, exasperated with what had become nearly constant sulking from his little brother, shoved Jakob onto the bed.

  “What’s that for?” Jakob held his shoulder.

  “Someone needs to put some sense into you. Do you think any of this has been easy for me? Don’t you think I wish it were them instead of me too? But I can’t. If I think that more than a second, I die inside. But I have to keep going. For you. And for them. They would want us to keep going too.”

  Jakob pounced at his brother, but Peter pushed him onto the bed again, this time climbing on top of him, straddling him, pinning his arms against his sides. Jakob’s chest felt as if it would explode.

  “Get … off … me!”

  “No. Not until you listen.”

  “You can talk all you want, but I won’t hear a thing,” Jakob gasped.

  “Listen anyway,” Peter growled. “Don’t you remember what Mama taught us about giving thanks, always giving thanks? Do you think I want to? No! But I do anyway. It’s only because I say the prayers every morning and every night, whether I feel like it or not, that my heart has not hardened like granite.”

  He crawled off Jakob and sat on the bed, and some of the patience that always comforted Jakob returned to his voice. “Don’t you think Mama and Papa would be happy we are alive? It wasn’t chance that made me turn around and come back the day after the raid. It wasn’t chance that I found you in the cupboard. It wasn’t chance that we made it through the mountains so many perish in before they ever reach the sea—”

  “Why did you come back? Sometimes I wish you’d never found me.” Jakob pulled his knees up tight against his chest.

  Peter fell silent. The only sounds for a long while were those of a mouse scuttling beneath the floorboards and of embers cracking and popping in the fireplace. When at last he spoke, he whispered. “I think about it sometimes too. About how much simpler it would’ve been if we could’ve either all died or all lived. But I can’t let myself stay in those thoughts or I’d go mad.” He put his arm around Jakob and pulled him close. “You and I have the job now of making the most of this freedom. We have to live and live well. We have to keep seeking God’s will, and somehow, in the midst of that, we have to keep thanking and praising Him. If we don’t, we die along with them, and they along with us.”

  Jakob knew Mama and Papa would be happy, yes, but he didn’t wish to acknowledge this. Shame and anger overwhelmed him.

  And grief.

  He missed them all so much.

  And for the first time since Chudniv, emotion overwhelmed him. Maybe he finally felt safe enough in the Stewarts’ home, where they were surrounded by down comforters and glowing fires. Maybe he was old enough to finally understand what he felt. Maybe there was no reason at all except that it was time for him to cry. Whatever the reason, before he could stop himself, he was weeping. He wept until nothing was left inside him except for the one thing he thought he could never confess. And finally, the confession emptied itself too. “She would’ve lived if I�
��d stopped them.”

  “What are you talking about?” Peter said as he scooted back on the bed to look at Jakob square on.

  Jakob hesitated. “Faigy.”

  Peter grasped his shoulders and looked into his eyes. “Faigy? What about her?”

  “Faigy and Papa’s second stone, the one he’d saved for their passage. They’re gone because of me.”

  “That’s crazy talk. You couldn’t have stopped the pogromshchik. No one could have.”

  “It was only one.”

  “One man couldn’t have done all I saw—”

  “No. Later. After the many left, one came back. And Faigy was alive,” Jakob interrupted. He hadn’t wanted to tell Peter, but since he’d started, he couldn’t stop.

  “Alive? What do you mean?”

  Jakob began to cry again. He explained how after the group of maniacs left the house, after they’d killed everyone, he heard Faigy. He’d thought she was dead too, but they must’ve just knocked her out, because he found her standing next to Zahava, trying to get Zahava to wake up, but of course she wouldn’t. Zahava would never wake up. “I found her doll and gave it to her, and it helped a little. She stopped crying. But there was nothing to give her to eat. The milk was spilled, the maniacs took all the food except a couple of potatoes. We both ate a little raw potato, but that’s when I heard the sound of horses.”

  “They came back?”

  “I thought it was all of them coming back. I tried to get Faigy to come hide in the cupboard with me, but she wouldn’t come. She was afraid of the dark, and she was afraid to move. She wouldn’t hide.” He buried his face in his hands.

  “Then what happened?”

  “I hid anyway. I couldn’t help it. I hid. And I saw the man through a crack in the cupboard door.” Jakob choked back tears. “I watched him … He grabbed Faigy and ransacked the cupboards and found Papa’s stones, the rest of the scraps, and the other aquamarine Papa had hidden in the back of the cupboard … and … I … I could have screamed. If I’d screamed … then she wouldn’t have been taken … or they would’ve taken me too … and at least she wouldn’t have died alone.”