by Carol Zoref
“That’s what Ray said we could do,” I told Noah.
“Attend church in London?”
“Why are you such a dope? Roll bandages for Spain.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because they’ll need them. Because there’s gonna be war. And because Mom and Dad might let me go with you.”
“Where?”
I wrote a letter to Miss Finn that night and gave it to one of the bargemen, along with three pennies to cover postage. I got the pennies from Noah. I did not ask where they came from. I wrote that Noah and I wanted to help Ray and could she please ask him where we could do this and how. An answer came a few days later.
“Ray says come to Brooklyn. A warehouse near the docks. We can go on Sundays. No one will even care.”
“What about Sofia?” asked Noah.
“She won’t notice,” I said.
“I mean why can’t Sofia go with you?”
“Because then Joey will come. Would you use a bandage rolled by Joey?”
Noah laughed. “Captain Otis will take you. He’s a big drunk. Just slip him a little something to whet his whistle.”
“You’ll send me on a barge with a drunk captain? And with booze that I get how?”
We returned our attention to the radio story. Word had arrived from Flanders that the Germans were now using chlorine gas. Barrels of baking soda were delivered to the church so the parishioners could prepare packets of powder. The soldiers soaked wet cloths with it and covered their faces until the fumes passed.
“You’ve got a point.”
“What?”
“The barge, the bandages. And look,” he said. From some odds and ends he stored behind the radio he unearthed a bottle of gin. “From Gray and Lois, a present for a rainy day.”
I did not look a gift horse in the mouth by asking what changed his mind.
We slipped out early the following Sunday. Noah spent the trip to Brooklyn at the side of Captain Otis, who happily sipped on better gin than he probably ever had in his life. He and Noah talked the whole time about this and that, about the barge and piloting ships. By the time we docked, Otis looked surprised that I was on board.
The address sent by Ray was a ten-minute walk from the pier. The children playing in the street paid us no mind, nor did the men on line for the soup kitchen at a church. At the far end of the street was a small building, the upper floors of which looked like people lived there, what with laundry hanging on a line out a window. The street level had no windows, only a set of double doors like on a factory or a warehouse.
I was surprised by how clean it was inside: just a couple of tables and some floor-to-ceiling shelving along the walls. The only one around was a woman, who we startled.
“We’re looking for Ray Whitmore,” said Noah.
“Ray sent us,” I said more gently, though I was already disappointed. I had been imagining a big greeting.
“You the kids from the garbage island?” she asked. She was a pretty woman, wearing a button-down shirt and khaki slacks much like Ray’s, like some kind of uniform. Only movie stars wore slacks in public, like Marlene Dietrich. But we were in a stark room near the Brooklyn waterfront, not Hollywood.
“We’re Noah and Marta Eisenstein from Barren Shoal,” said my brother.
“Barren Island?”
“Barren Shoal, next door. It’s just like Barren Island but smaller.”
“I thought I knew everything about New York, but Barren Shoal’s the fish that got away.”
“Well, look at who’s here,” said Ray, wheeling in some boxes on a dolly.
Noah and Ray shook hands and Ray patted me on the back. When his hand was gone I could still feel it where he touched me. The pretty woman was Dolores.
“She’s in charge; she knows Hemingway,” whispered Ray. Was Hemingway the kind of person that another person could meet? “It’s a big deal that you came. Not everyone can recruit two volunteers, never mind one. She may not look it, but Dolores is impressed.” We were the only ones in the room. “You won’t meet the others,” Ray answered the obvious question. “They come in twos and threes so no one outside catches on.”
“Sounds subversive,” said Noah, grinning.
“We’re helping freedom fighters, not the Boy Scouts.”
“We never had a troop on Barren Shoal,” joked Noah. “Offends their code of cleanliness.”
Dolores did not smile or laugh with us. I thought she looked exotic and mean.
“Come by me,” said Ray, leading us to a bolt of cloth and a sack of tobacco at the end of the table. “We’re rolling bandages and packing tobacco. When you get tired of doing one, you switch to the other.”
“Ray’s like a veteran out of uniform,” said Dolores, laughing. “He got bossy the minute he started.”
“And packing tobacco is my rest cure.”
Their friendly banter reminded me of Gray and Lois, except they were debating bandages and tobacco instead of martinis and finger sandwiches. They spoke in a code that only they understood, the way my parents spoke in Yiddish when they wanted to leave us kids out. Not that it made any difference. They were having fun and were doing something serious. We could have used a big dose of that on Barren Shoal, what with the boys so serious about the unions, my parents so serious about Zyrmuny, and Joey too stupid for Sofia to rag on.
“Ignore Dolores,” said Ray. “She’s just jealous because I got two volunteers and she’s got none.”
“Whoop-de-do,” said Dolores, waving a piece of muslin like it was a flag.
“If the show’s over we’ll get started,” said Ray. Noah and I drew closer. “Bandages aren’t one size fits all. You have to make ’em twelve yards by four inches, eight yards by three inches, eight yards by two and a half inches, five yards by two inches, and three yards by two inches. This here is soft, unglazed muslin. You have to tear it, not cut it, into strips. You sew the strips together with flat seams. When it’s long enough, you roll it tight, tight, tight and burn the loose threats with a match. Here’s a pencil for writing the size on the outside so the medic knows which is what. It’s the tearing that’ll get to you. You’ll see. You’ll get tired.”
We measured and tore. Ray also stitched. Noah rolled wool socks, pair by pair, from a basket filled with them, all brown, all as close to the same size as hand-knit socks can be. Dolores was at the other end stitching extra pockets into the lining of surplus WWI army jackets. It was a remarkable thing, Noah and me sitting on a couple of stools at a table with Ray Whitmore. Without anyone making speeches or asking why we were there or insisting on some schmaltzy pledge, we became volunteers in the struggle against the Spanish Fascists. All we had to do were things as simple as the things we did at home, as simple as folding laundry, darning sheets, and packing lunch.
Noah and I returned the next Sunday and the Sunday after that. Captain Otis was happy to oblige us for a few sips of gin. School was out, it was summer, and I had nothing better to do than pack tobacco and wonder about Ray. I imagined us having long conversations about the fate of Europe; I imagined us going to the movies or even to the opera, where we would bump into Lois and Gray, who would insist we join them for cocktails at intermission. But at the worktable, sitting close and feeling unsure, all I knew was to follow.
There was plenty to discuss as we worked. In the warm weeks of June there were radio interviews with the U.S. Olympic team. On July 9th, the mercury hit 106 degrees. There has never been a hotter day in New York City, at least not on record. The fighting in Spain broke out in earnest a week later. Our work took on new urgency. Dolores made sure of that. The harder she worked, the less she spoke to Ray; the less she spoke, the faster I sewed.
If my parents were worried about us when they found out, they never said so. Rolling bandages was safe work, not like going to rallies or walking picket lines. The only one who made a fuss about it was Mr. Paradissis, who hailed us as patriots and comrades.
“You think maybe Sofia goes with you sometime?
” he asked one evening.
“She’s not interested,” I replied. We were gathered in the garden, listening to the Joe Louis/Max Schmeling match at Yankee Stadium.
“You ask her?” he asked.
“She’d say no.”
“Not nice, Marta. You ask.”
Sofia and Joey were standing not ten feet away.
“If she wants to come, she’ll do the asking.”
“Girls,” he said, disgusted.
Everyone listened to the fight that night, even people like me who thought that a prize fight was a dirty dogfight. Everyone was brokenhearted when Schmeling knocked out Louis in the twelfth round. Well, maybe not everyone. Plenty of Americans rooted for the German, the same as plenty joined the Bund. I confess: I was delighted when Louis beat Schmeling at their rematch two years later. For as much as I hate fighting, there were some punches I wanted thrown.
Dolores turned off the overhead lamps at the warehouse during the heat wave and we worked in the dim light from the windows. Ray brought a fan and had blocks of ice delivered. The fan cooled the room with the help of the chill surrounding the melting ice; we collected the melted ice water for drinking. We took turns standing in front of the fan for a few seconds for a cold gust of air to the face. We had nothing like that on Barren Shoal, which stank worse than ever from one day on top of the next of crazy heat. Maybe it also stank worse because we were going back and forth to Brooklyn instead of never leaving.
I was always a little afraid of Dolores, but over time she acted more friendly. Her voice was stern, but she would crack a little smile when she spoke to me. That little crack was all I needed to put me at ease. When she asked me to wait in front of the building for a package on one of those horrendously hot days, I was glad to oblige. Not that I would have known how to say no.
The package was a waxed paper bag like the ones for tobacco.
“Give this straight to Dolores,” said the man who brought it. It was so hot out that it was hard to breathe. “From your hands to hers; no one else’s.”
Had he not made such a big deal about it, I would not have wondered. Back inside, Ray was helping Dolores fold jackets. Ray was taking them to someone who would deliver them to the next person on the long chain of people who smuggled supplies.
“I’ve got it,” I said, waving the packet.
Dolores jumped, tipping the stack of jackets onto the floor. Ray stooped to get them and I rushed over to help.
“Don’t sneak up on people like that,” said Dolores. Ray laughed. “It’s not funny,” she scolded. “It might’ve been anyone.”
“Don’t be such a worrier,” said Ray.
“Don’t you be such a smart aleck or I’ll assign you to leaflet duty,” said Dolores. Now she was the one laughing. “And you,” she said to me without a smile or a laugh or anything, “gimme that.”
We returned to our work, me watching Dolores out of the corner of my eye.
She opened the packet with a penknife, counted out some $20 bills, and slid them into the pocket she had sewed into the lining. I had never seen a $20, never mind a stack of them. Then she stitched the lining closed.
“It’s for Spain, silly girl.” Of course she knew I was watching.
“American money?”
“Nobody wants pesetas. At least not people selling guns.”
We had all heard about the riots in Madrid and the labor strikes. We had all heard about the fascist vigilante groups gunning down peasants. Anyone who did not know did not want to know. But I had never thought about smuggling money, about buying guns. Who could imagine such things?
“I know how to sew,” I offered.
“Tired of tearing bandages?” teased Ray.
“Aren’t you?”
I sometimes worked beside Dolores after that, re-stitching the seams of the jackets after she slid in the money. We didn’t sew many—not even one a day. We had to pull out the entire lining and re-sew it so that all the thread was identical and unbroken. It was meticulous, time-consuming, important-feeling work. Each little jacket felt like we were saving the whole, huge world.
On August 1st, Jesse Owens, grandson of a slave, marched in the opening ceremonies of the 1936 Summer Olympic Games in Munich. Owens won a gold medal for the 100-meter dash and a second medal for the 200-meter dash. All of us listened to the crowd going wild. After earning a third gold for the long jump, he took an arm-in-arm victory lap with Luz Long, the German athlete who won the silver. When Owens broke a world record by winning a fourth medal as a member of the 400-meter American relay team, Noah asked about the two Jewish boys, Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller, who had been scheduled to run. Word got out later that Avery Brundage, head of the U.S. Olympic Committee, agreed to remove them from the team at the request of the Germans. Glickman, later on, became a sportscaster. Stoller disappeared from public life, evidently utterly humiliated. No wonder. How could one man stand up to the terror that the world was bending over to appease?
Brundage instructed his American athletes to not become involved in “the present Jew-Nazi altercation.” Altercation? What the hell was he talking about, you should pardon me? He wrote this in a U. S. team pamphlet after the Nuremburg Laws had been passed and Jews were no longer allowed to teach school or practice medicine or hold German passports. I say, to hell with Brundage, the same man who alleged that there was a Jewish-Communist conspiracy aimed at keeping Americans out of the Olympics. This Brundage being the same man who later on, as president of the International Olympic Committee, insisted that the games go on at the very moment when terrorists were massacring Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. I repeat: to hell with Brundage. I make no apology for my language or my thoughts. Avery Brundage should rot in hell.
When the medals were presented to Owens and the U.S. national anthem rang out over the Munich stadium, the German chancellor stormed away. There was a snippet of Hitler’s voice on the radio that day, a stupid, screaming crow just like Father Coughlin. So much for Brundage placating Hitler, who flat out refused to present a medal to Owens. Hitler did exactly as he pleased. Jesse Owens, it should always be remembered, came to the defense of his Jewish teammates, publicly protesting Brundage’s decisions and telling the coach that the Jewish boys should run. That was a hell of a lot more than most did, you should pardon me. Riskier, too, him being a black man and hated almost as much in Germany as a Jew. The Germans would have killed Owens had the whole world not been watching.
On the other hand, that did not stop the killing later on. I have tried to understand this, but what do I know. And even then, even then...what is there to figure out? Why make it complex when it is so simple? Pardon me for repeating myself, but people do terrible things because that is what people do.
CHAPTER 18
It got harder to buy groceries and such after the store closed on Barren Island. More of the things people needed were brought over by a small boat, which meant people were told to ask for less. Everyone ate more fish, which meant more fishing. The boys started coming out more often, as did Sofia. As the landfill project linking Barren Island to the mainland came closer to completion, the shallows surrounding Barren Shoal rose higher as well, flooding the marsh grasses and drowning some of the better fishing spots. Mr. Goldstein, the widower who worked the night shift stoking the furnaces to keep them burning and who doubled as the island’s kosher butcher, announced he was going to live with his daughter’s family upstate, where his son-in-law had a job trimming leather at a factory in Gloversville. The day before leaving, he taught my father how to properly slit the throat of a chicken, drain its blood, and remove its innards. Cleaning fish is one thing, butchering chickens another. Oh, never mind. What does it matter?
Noah, through a stroke of dumb luck, inherited Mr. Goldstein’s job at the factory. Now all three boys were working, the very thing everyone said would never happen. Grandma Paradissis died in her chair one evening after supper, another victim of the heat wave. It was a couple of hours before anyone not
iced, her teacup still full and her needlework on her lap. The rigor mortis had already set in. All the neighbors attended a funeral service in the yard; Mr. Paradissis accompanied the body to a cemetery in Queens, where a Greek Orthodox priest could officiate. It was the first time Mr. Paradissis had left the island since arriving.
The family went into mourning and paid more attention to Grandma Paradissis in death than they had when she was alive. Maybe she had not asked for attention. Or maybe that was just their way. Why are there always so many questions? They were unable to go to her grave every night like they would have at a cemetery, so the family walked instead to the water, where Mr. Paradissis would say something in Greek and everyone would cry. There was something about the orderliness of it all that was mind-boggling, especially given that the Paradissis house was so loud and chaotic.
“Do you miss your Grandma?” I asked Sofia one night during the long, official period of mourning. She was trimming beans for the meatless meal they would eat on the designated vegetable night, as opposed to the night on which they ate only pasta. The rules for Greeks around death and mourning went on forever. I suppose they do for everyone, as if grief is the food that keeps people alive.
Sofia sighed. “It’s not like she did anything other than sit on the couch and sew. But somehow the empty place is bigger than the space she took up. That’s how it goes.” She drew a big circle in the air with her paring knife. Her face quivered; she tried to stop herself from crying. She did not succeed.
Noah still came to Brooklyn on Sundays, but soon announced he would drop me at the warehouse and return for me later. His factory job was all the excuse he needed to separate from me and from Ray, whose only work was rolling bandages and dreaming of Spain.
He went off to see Lois and Gray.
“Who?” asked Ray.
