My Family for the War

by Anne C. Voorhoeve

“Wake up, Frances,” my friend said. “Your problem is that you’re stuck between two chapters. One is over, and you’re not quite ready to start the next one. But if you just look at the one after that, the whole thing will fall into place. Stop agonizing about your mothers. Your future isn’t named Amanda or Mamu, but Walter. What does he have to say about all of this, anyway?”

  “Not much. That’s part of the problem. He was there when Uncle Erik got my mother out of Belsen, but he’s only mentioned it in passing. She was probably in such terrible shape that even Walter doesn’t know what to say.”

  “Wasn’t that almost two months ago? Surely she must be doing better. Why don’t you go to Holland during the holiday and see her?”

  “Because Uncle Erik wrote that she doesn’t want to see me yet. And if I leave England, I might not be allowed back in the country.” The old knife broke, and I threw it far away into the brush. “She must have gotten my postcard by now, but six and a half years is just too long. Too much has happened. No!” I exclaimed emphatically. “I’m not going to Holland. We would be like strangers to each other. It’s better if everything just stays the way it is.”

  “I believe I had your mother on the phone again,” Amanda said when I got home. “That was the third time this week the phone rang but no one spoke when I answered. I could tell from the clicking sounds that it was an overseas call, but the caller didn’t say their name and hung up after a few seconds.”

  “Why would she do something like that?” I asked.

  “Because she doesn’t want to talk with me. Maybe she’s scared.”

  “Mamu? Scared? Of you? That’s funnier than you know,” I said, but secretly I was slowly beginning to have my doubts. Could I possibly know anymore what my mother felt and thought?

  “It’s always late afternoon, just as I come home from the nursing home.”

  “Maybe you should call her by name,” I suggested hesitantly. “Margot.”

  “That’s a good idea. I’ll just start talking, tell her about you. I imagine she takes a walk alone every afternoon and passes by a public telephone. Because if Erik were there, he would say something, especially since you probably have to wait for hours for a connection.”

  Officially we had long since forgiven each other. At the same time, I couldn’t forget that Amanda had given me up; I distanced myself from her and hoped that it bothered her as much as it did me.

  The following afternoons I stayed within hearing distance of the telephone, but whoever it was that had called had apparently given up. The first week of my holiday passed, the Americans released atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the war that had begun in Poland found its end in the Pacific. The third anniversary of Gary’s death came and went and Amanda decided, “I want to go to the place it happened. Someday, if it’s possible, I’ll go there.”

  Hamburg, 13 August 1945

  Regarding: Liebich, Susanna, Hermann, and Rebekka.

  In response to your search request for the above named we have determined that on 19 October 1942 the entire family was deported to Lettland and perished there. We have forwarded the particulars to the World Jewish Congress in London. Should there be any further information there now or in the future, you will be notified immediately. We deeply regret that we are not able to convey more favorable news.

  Sincerely,

  The German Red Cross,

  Landesverband Hamburg, Foreign Services

  “Francesfrancesfrances…” My name, like a distant echo. In the entrance of the bomb shelter a play of light and shadows, a figure bent forward to peer in, coming toward me as if in slow motion. When we had to spend nights here, this cold little tube of corrugated metal protected me from the bombs. Now it was still and warm inside, it smelled of earth and summer, but there was no protection from a piece of paper.

  Deported to Lettland and perished there. Six words, thirty-four letters. The one and only constant hope I clung to. Bekka, who taught herself English, carried around secret escape routes in her shoe, who loved chocolate with nuts, adventure stories, and especially Shirley Temple, without ever once being allowed to go into a movie theater. She had managed to see half of one film at least, The Littlest Rebel, before the other children chased her out of the theater. Her eyes had glowed as she told me the end of the story, the ending she had thought up herself. “And when we’re in America, I’m going to see if the real ending is as good as mine!”

  She knew, I thought. She knew what the kindertransport meant, and what it meant to be left behind. She had braced herself; she had to have been among the survivors. Her world didn’t collapse when she was murdered, but a long time before that: When the chance to live fell to me and not her.

  I will never understand it, I thought. If you die and I live, then there are no rules in this world.

  Amanda sat down next to me. “It makes no sense whatsoever that she’s dead. It makes all the sense in the world that you live.”

  I can’t remember much about the two days and nights between the letter from the Red Cross and what happened next, but those two sentences remain: the attempt at an answer, if there can be such a thing at all. At the time I didn’t have an inkling that they would accompany me the rest of my life; I just clung to the hope that Amanda, who gave me that answer, knew something about it, because a mother shouldn’t have to survive her child any more than one friend should live instead of another.

  I suspected it wouldn’t help at all that my salvation hadn’t been my doing. The only comfort was that for a short time, Bekka and I had been allowed to be friends again.

  The second morning after the news about Bekka, light came through the window and swept over me and something took shape, sorted itself out. Maybe you can only see the flip side of things very early in the morning, in this other, still new light.

  I had two families—it was as simple as that. While many of the young people from the kindertransports were learning that their families had been extinguished, I had two mothers, a father, an uncle, possibly a future husband, and a good friend. Could anyone be any luckier?

  But I always wanted to remind myself that at least on that morning I could see something else too. I had lost Bekka, and Gary too, but they had left something behind for me. If I could manage to not let them die within me, to keep something of Bekka’s courage and Gary’s joy alive, then their lives hadn’t been extinguished, and there was nothing that couldn’t be overcome.

  It was lunchtime when my mother called. Amanda was in the kitchen making something for us to eat, and she was the one who answered. I was already standing at the stairs when she answered the phone: “Shepard residence.”

  There was a pause. That didn’t mean anything; any caller would first state their name and the reason for their call. But I felt it immediately. The absolute silence. The house stopped breathing; it was waiting for the magic word.

  Amanda said very gently, “Margot?”

  My foot hovered above the first step.

  “Please stay on the line. Don’t hang up. We’ve been waiting for you.”

  I always loved hearing Amanda speaking Yiddish, that warm, cheerful language, our language. A language like a bridge. “How good that you called, especially today. Your daughter is so sad. She had to hear that her friend Bekka died.”

  The soft wood of the stair railing stroked the palm of my hand, and I felt the familiar little groove in the middle of the stairs.

  “Do you remember that Bekka was supposed to come live with us? The war started just two days too soon.”

  The last step. Amanda stood with her back to me and our eyes met in the mirror, locked.

  “Now I can only give one child back to her mother,” Amanda said quietly to us both, and only then did I remember that she too had once made a promise.

  She closed the kitchen door firmly behind herself after she had handed me the receiver. For the first time in more than six and a half years, I heard my mother’s voice.

  “Ziska? My Ziskele! I’ve written almost th
irty pages to you, and now I don’t dare send them.”

  Chapter 24

  Mamu

  Anyone who returns to their mother nearly grown up after last seeing her as a ten-year-old shouldn’t count on a joyful reunion—even after talking on the phone every day for two weeks, when their voices have become more familiar to each other again. My stomach knotted as we saw the bright strip of the Dutch coast appear before us; I had remembered the crossing taking much longer. It was still hard to believe I was actually on my way, on my way back.

  At the pier in Harwich Amanda had bought a round trip ticket, and only a one-way ticket for me.

  “I don’t know if I’m still the kind of person a young girl should grow up with,” Mamu had objected timidly, who seemed to be much more scared of my return than I was.

  “I’m already grown up, Mamu,” I reminded her.

  “My goodness, I keep forgetting! That big British soldier who put me on the train, thank goodness Erik only told me that he was your fiancé afterward, otherwise I would have fallen over dead one step away from freedom.”

  “Well, he isn’t really my fiancé, but you should get used to seeing Walter again soon. He’s stationed in Lübeck and will definitely come by often.”

  “If you stay,” said Mamu, still unsure.

  “If I stay,” I confirmed.

  Uncle Erik’s concerns were more concrete. Was I aware that my mother wasn’t the same person, that she suffered from panic attacks, eating disorders, sleeplessness, and bouts of deep depression in which no one could help her, not even me? In contrast, I was the only one with a home, with plans and a future; Erik thought it might be stressful for Mamu to think of me giving all that up.

  It took a while until he understood that Mamu also belonged to my life, that there couldn’t be any future, any plans, any home that didn’t include her as well. I wasn’t giving up anything, but gaining something.

  Since I left Germany, I had been convinced that my mother could only have parted with me because I wasn’t especially important to her. While I knew that she saved my life by doing it, there had always been this little barb, even in my happiest moments: My mother had sent me away.

  But now my second mother was sending me on a journey too—and everything was different. I didn’t doubt Amanda’s love; I knew what I meant to her and Matthew. They needed me; it must have been infinitely difficult for them, and yet they let me go. They parted with me for no other reason than that they hoped for my even greater happiness.

  And so now, only now, I understood. It’s possible to let someone go because you love them. Maybe it hadn’t been any different for Mamu. Maybe I would know soon. Amanda held tight to her hat, braced herself against the wind whipping about the railings, and squinted her eyes straining to recognize the Continent, as she called it.

  Before we left, Matthew said, “No matter what you decide, you’ll never be anything but my daughter to me.”

  “I couldn’t go if I didn’t know that,” I replied.

  The train ride from Hoek van Holland to Groningen was difficult. After the Germans had blocked transport of coal into Holland in the last winter of the war, people had torn up railroad ties and burned them out of desperation. There were still stretches that hadn’t been repaired, and we had arranged to meet Uncle Erik and Mamu in Rotterdam and then travel farther north together a few days later. My uncle had suggested a certain café that he knew was open as a meeting point.

  As we walked the short stretch from the train station to our pension, I was appalled by the damage the war and hunger had left behind. Bombed-out ruins—still from the first summer of war—were certainly a familiar sight to me, but there wasn’t a single tree here, emaciated children stared at us, and fake cheeses and butter made of paper stood in the store windows. The people carrying their almost empty shopping baskets through the streets seemed gray and exhausted.

  Amanda and I were dressed very modestly ourselves, our coats and skirts patched and mended so often that we had all gotten used to moving very carefully so as not to strain the fabric any more than necessary. But everything we had experienced with rationing in London paled in comparison to the misery that had obviously befallen the Dutch, and when I addressed the woman in our pension in a friendly tone in German, I regretted it immediately. She glared at us with such hatred that Amanda and I were flooded with a long-forgotten, humiliating fear.

  “We come from England. We’re Jewish,” I reassured her quickly, but the damage was done, and the distrustful woman didn’t respond to English or French.

  “I won’t speak another word of German as long as I’m here!” I declared, shaken. “I’d rather they don’t understand my English than be stared at like that again!”

  We unpacked our few belongings and stretched out on the bed. We had more than two hours until we were supposed to meet Mamu and Uncle Erik, and since we had left England very early in the morning, we were getting tired. But the mounting tension, and probably to some extent the thought that these were the last hours Amanda and I would have to ourselves, kept me awake. Neither of us spoke. We had said everything to each other that was important, and I kept my thoughts to myself: I’ll never experience such trust with another person. Something like this only happens once in a lifetime, if at all.

  Uncle Erik proceeded very carefully. He had allowed two or three hours for our first encounter, then each of us should have time to go back to our lodgings and relax. The next morning we would meet again—“and then we’ll see how it goes.” I was glad for his caution. After all, he knew best how much my mother could handle.

  The closer Amanda and I came to the designated meeting place, the more nervous I became. When I opened my mouth to announce, “I think that’s the café ahead,” I didn’t recognize my own voice. It was flat and about an octave higher than usual.

  “We’re too early,” I groaned when we had taken a seat at one of the three small tables on the cobblestones in front of the café. An older woman came out, looked at us curiously, and told us she had sheet cake, malt coffee, and tea. With some effort, we explained to her in English that we were waiting for two more people.

  “Do you think they have bathrooms inside?” I asked shyly just as soon as the woman had left.

  Amanda looked at me with alarm. “My goodness,” she said quietly. “Is it so awful? Soon you’ll have it behind you. Just a few minutes, love. The end of the journey.”

  Tears welled in my eyes; I jumped up and stumbled inside the café, where two men sat with newspapers. The old woman approached me, a sweet, round, pale face. Was I all right? Could she bring me a glass of water? I looked at her through my tears and forgot all my resolutions, and said in German: “I’m waiting for my mother. We’re Jews. I haven’t seen her for almost seven years.”

  For a moment there was such a silence in the room that I was afraid I’d ruined everything. They were about to kick me out. Terrified, I blinked away my tears… and found myself looking into friendly eyes.

  “Why don’t you sit here, right by the window, then you can see her coming.”

  She adjusted the chair for me, and through a gray windowpane I had a view of the square. There was a stone fountain, like our old meeting spot in Tail’s End. Heavens, how should I even begin to tell my mother about my life?

  A few pigeons landed next to Amanda’s table and pecked hopefully around her. She sat so still the birds hopped over her shoes.

  What am I doing here? I thought with a stab of conscience. I have to go outside again, I can’t just leave her sitting there alone.

  And then: Amanda’s smile, the quick jolt that went through her whole body. The pigeons flew away, there was a brief, annoying flurry of wings, and there she was.

  Oh, my God. Is that Mamu?

  I recognized her because she was on Uncle Erik’s arm: an older woman in a light coat, with overly dyed blue-black hair that made the face below it look even more sickly and pale. In spite of the mild weather she was clearly freezing, and her steps were so s
low, as if she had lead weights on her feet. As they drew even closer, I saw that Mamu’s cheeks formed two little sacks that hung down limply.

  A surge of wildly mixed feelings gripped me: pity, love, rage, helplessness. Horrified understanding of what the Nazis had done—my proud mother! She hadn’t been killed, but was destroyed nonetheless. Her life had been taken from her too. They had taken everything.

  Everything?

  No, there had to have been something that made her endure. Something must have moved her to gather her strength, to risk the trip to Rotterdam and come here. Something made her color her hair and re-create an old, familiar trait: the trademark strands of hair that hung in her eyes, giving her haggard face a peculiarly stubborn, courageous, and provocative look. Something seemed to want to urge her to start over again.

  No. Not something. Me.

  Outside on the square, Amanda stood up and did the same thing she had done when we first met: She stretched out her hand and went toward Mamu, and in Mamu’s nervous face was suddenly reflected the warmth of this greeting, the smile of my other mother. Mamu’s hand still held in hers, Amanda turned around and pointed in my direction, said something, she and Uncle Erik laughed… and the loose ends of my life were woven together, Ziska and Frances, Mamu and Amanda, yesterday, today, soon.

  I felt myself being pulled through the room toward the door.

  “Is everything okay?” asked the woman in the café.

  “Absolutely.” Then I stepped outside. “Everything is fine just the way it is.”

  That would have been a good ending, I suppose.

  Epilogue

  The captain watched silently as the passengers helped each other on board. There were five—two couples and a little girl about three years old sporting a red life vest. They had found him through the owner of the pension in Ponta Delgada, as was often the case. The older of the two couples would be around fifty, a tall, serious man wearing a long coat and a hat, the woman slim and introverted with a delicate, attractive face and a warm smile.