The Night of the Burning

by Linda Press Wulf

  “Another helping, Devorah? Elizabeth’s stuffed cabbage is very good; couldn’t do better myself.” I was just about to agree when Mrs. Kagan, her big serving spoon hovering, went on. “You must be very hungry, my dear. Poor orphans, starving in the streets. Well, you won’t go hungry here.”

  Suddenly the pity in Mrs. Kagan’s voice felt unbearable. She wasn’t the only person in the world to give me meals. My mama and papa had fed me very well for many years and after that they’d done the best they could. Madame Engel had seated me like a princess in her huge restaurant kitchen. And I’d had plenty of delicious food at the orphanage before Mrs. Kagan marched me away. I wasn’t a starving child on the street! “I don’t need another helping, thank you,” I said stiffly.

  Dessert was fried bananas, and I almost smiled. If my sister had been with me, I could have whispered, “Remember the first time we saw a banana, on our bus ride from the Cape Town harbor to the orphanage?”

  A wave of tiredness made me long to lie down. “Is it all right if I go to bed now?” I asked as soon as Elizabeth had removed the plates.

  “Of course, dearie,” said Mrs. Kagan. “Want to settle in, no doubt. Say good night, Mr. Kagan.” Mr. Kagan obeyed with another warm smile and a pat on my head.

  Now I sat on the bed staring straight ahead of me, without the energy to move. Beyond the wall, Mr. Kagan coughed and the sound moved me to action. I put on the faded green nightdress Matron had distributed to me in the orphanage, brushed my teeth at the nightstand, and washed my face.

  Then I went to the little window to say the Shema the way my mama used to. She had always stood quietly for a moment and gazed out at the night before she began. She covered her eyes for the first important line, to concentrate better: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.” Then she continued softly to the end. And I next to her.

  Never, except on the Night of the Burning, had I forgotten to say the Shema before I slept. Since That Night I had added a personal thank-you to Aunt Friedka.

  “Mama,” I whispered. “Mama and Papa, are you up there?”

  The night blinked with its many eyes.

  “Mama and Papa, I’m in my new home, but it’s not my real home and I’ll never forget you. I will love you forever.”

  Then I climbed into the bed. It was a warm night in the middle of summer, but someone had taken the care to wrap a hot brick in felt and place it between the sheets for my feet. I had never had my own heating brick before, and it felt luxurious and warm against my toes.

  It may be all right here. I’ll wait and see, I decided, weariness pulling me deep down into sleep.

  “I WANT MY MAMA”

  1922

  When I woke up the next morning, the first thing I noticed was the silence. Where was the commotion of children’s voices, laughing and shouting and racing to get to the bathroom first? I scrambled off the bed and pulled on my school dress again. Then I opened my door and peered out. The only sounds came from the kitchen, so I walked slowly in that direction.

  Elizabeth stood at the sink, washing dishes. She was wearing an apron over her blue uniform dress. A matching blue scarf was tied around her neatly shaped head and knotted behind her neck.

  “Good morning, Miss Devorah,” she said to me with a quiet smile. Her high cheekbones were like little round apples. “I will make your breakfast.” She pointed to a small kitchen table where a single place had been laid. I sat down.

  “Where are—” I said and then stopped. I didn’t know what to call Mr. and Mrs. Kagan.

  Elizabeth had her own titles for them. “The master is working in his darkroom, and the madam has gone to buy more milk and bread,” she said.

  I was distracted by the tempting smell of the toast placed in front of me. At my side a plate of creamy porridge steamed, butter melting in the middle and sugar sprinkled on the top. I ate hungrily.

  Elizabeth seemed to have finished her work for a while. She sat down on a step stool, one arm folded across her stomach and the other hand supporting her cheek. (I’d noticed that when the black staff at the orphanage were not working, they could sit very still for long periods. As if they were waiting for something that might not come for a long time.) Then she began to sing a song to herself, in a pleasant soft voice that I liked.

  Suddenly my ear caught a name. Jesus Christ the Lord, she was singing, Jesus Christ our Savior. I dug my fingers into my palms. The song was about the god of the Polish peasants. If Elizabeth believed in that god, maybe she hated Jews. I was close to the door. Should I slip away quietly and stay near Mr. Kagan? But maybe I wasn’t allowed to interrupt him when he was working.

  It was a relief to hear Mrs. Kagan return noisily, bursting open the front door and marching into the kitchen.

  “Devorah, dear, having breakfast? Good. Nothing like porridge. Mail arrive yet, Elizabeth? A cup of tea for me, please. Nearly fainted in this heat.”

  She walked into the little dining area and sat down heavily, fanning her face vigorously. I trailed after her.

  “Matron up at the orphanage said you’re a good student, Devorah,” she announced. “Mr. Kagan and I were proud to hear that. Wasn’t much of a student myself. Which subject d’you like best?”

  I answered absently, “English … I like English class.” Then I took a breath and asked, “What must I call you?”

  Mrs. Kagan stopped drinking her tea for a moment. “You can call us Mother and Father, dearie. Children nowadays don’t seem to say Mama and Papa.”

  I stared at her. This large, red-faced woman slurping her cup of tea? Mother?

  My horror must have been visible, because Mrs. Kagan looked as though someone had smacked her. Her jaw hung for a moment and then she said stiffly, “At least, that is what we would like. You can do as you wish, of course.”

  She heaved to her feet and went down the hallway, shouting loudly to Mr. Kagan that she was back home. I sat quite still. I had hurt Mrs. Kagan’s feelings, that was clear. But I can’t call her by that name, I thought. I just can’t.

  Later that day, Mrs. Kagan took me to a shop downtown to buy a new school uniform.

  “Can’t wear that worn-out old thing when you go back to school tomorrow,” she announced. “You’re not an orphanage girl anymore. Not going to wear a faded secondhand uniform that someone donated.”

  Before I knew what was happening, I was fitted with a new yellow dress for summer, and a gray flannel skirt, two white shirts, and a school tie for winter. With them went a new hat, a cardigan, a navy blazer, and even regulation panties and socks. A pristine brown school case completed the ensemble. The clothes felt starched and smooth; they were newer and more expensive than anything I had ever owned before. I turned around in front of the mirror with wonder. Then I saw Mrs. Kagan carefully counting out the money at the cash register. I blushed at causing the Kagans such expense.

  “Thank you very much,” I said softly on the way home.

  Mrs. Kagan beamed at me. “It’s a pleasure, dearie. Want you to look just like the other girls.”

  Just like the other girls. I tried to read her face. Did Mrs. Kagan also know about the dangers of being conspicuous?

  The next day I returned to school, self-conscious but proud in my new clothing.

  “You came back to our school,” Zeidel greeted me with surprise. “I thought you’d go to a posh private school like your sister.”

  Little Faygele rushed up with a warm hug. “Ooh, your clothes are so new,” she said. “You lucky duck.”

  “What’s your family like? Do you have your own room?” asked Shlayma.

  “Did they buy toys for you, too?” asked Faygele.

  My cheeks burned with the attention. “They’re fine. Yes, I sleep alone. No, just the school clothes.” I would never admit to them that I’d trade a million new dresses to be back in the orphanage along with my sister.

  Zeidel fingered the neat label on my new school case. “Why do you still call yourself Devorah Lehrman?” he asked. “Don�
�t you have a new name now?”

  I frowned. I didn’t want a new name, would never agree to one. But I had been surprised when Mrs. Kagan wrote Devorah K. Lehrman. If she was going to take me into her family, shouldn’t she make Kagan my last name, not just my middle initial? Oh, I didn’t care.

  I was in the highest grade at Miss Rosa’s elementary school, and I would have to go to a strange new school, a high school, the following year. But for now at least, school was the same. Miss MacKay was telling us about the Great Trek, when thousands of Afrikaans-speaking white South Africans traveled by ox wagon into the wild interior of South Africa to escape English domination. There were many children the same age as Nechama and I on the dangerous journey to find new land. But they had their parents with them.

  I dreaded the long walk alone from school to the Kagans’. To occupy myself, I began picturing in my head, one after the other, the exact routes to the various “homes” I’d known in the last year and a half—the muddy, crooked pathways in Domachevo, the daily promenade home from Madame Engel’s restaurant to our battered building in Warsaw, the enchanted streets of London that led to our grand hotel, and the long driveway up to the orphanage.

  You can do it, I told myself. It will never again be as hard as this very first time. And it was true: in a few days my feet seemed to know the way back to Caledon Street on their own.

  If Mrs. Kagan was at home, I would go straight to my room after lunch, work on my homework, and then sink luxuriously into the world of a library book until supper. But if Mrs. Kagan was out, I liked to sit in the kitchen for a while after I finished lunch. Elizabeth sat silently on her step stool, her feet still and parallel in worn black shoes on the bottom step. Sometimes she sighed or clicked her tongue, shaking her head with a soft “Aai.”

  The songs she sang didn’t frighten me anymore, and after a while I even learned some of the words. But one evening Mrs. Kagan heard me singing in my bath, “Onward, Christian soldiers …”

  “Devorah!” said Mrs. Kagan through the bathroom door.

  I stopped singing abruptly.

  “I never want to hear you singing about Christian soldiers again,” Mrs. Kagan said angrily. “Christian soldiers have never been good for Jews, that’s for sure. You hear me?”

  “Yes,” I answered, just loudly enough to be heard. Mrs. Kagan had never rebuked me so firmly before. My face flamed with embarrassment.

  There were so many questions I wanted to ask. Why did some Christians hate Jews? And why did others not hate us? How could I know which ones to be wary of? But I just could not ask Mrs. Kagan. And there was hardly ever a chance to talk to Mr. Kagan alone. When he emerged from his darkroom or from the long rests he took in their bedroom, Mrs. Kagan was always there to fuss over him.

  I didn’t sing the songs myself anymore, but I still sat with Elizabeth some days. It was very peaceful in the kitchen, with the pots hissing and spitting a little on the stove. Elizabeth didn’t seem happy, but she didn’t seem sad, either. I thought we were quite similar, really. We didn’t fit in the Kagans’ home, but it wasn’t a bad place to be.

  Mrs. Kagan hardly ever sat quietly, and sometimes I felt my head would burst from her rapid conversation. Actually, it wasn’t really conversation, because that involves two people. Mrs. Kagan could keep going for minutes at a time even if Mr. Kagan and I said not a word in response.

  “Don’t know what this country’s coming to …” was a favorite beginning. Then Mrs. Kagan could swing just as easily into a speech on the price of fruit as she could into a lament about the lack of respect paid to dear King George’s portrait, which hung, undusted, in the post office. When she complained about so many little black children hanging around the streets instead of going to school, I squinted toward the kitchen uncomfortably.

  “Parents should be ashamed!” Mrs. Kagan would declare. “Children doing nothing but play all day. Girls wearing clothes so skimpy the boys can see their little black legs. Got to get them into uniforms and into the schools. Lot of nonsense!”

  I hated it when Mrs. Kagan spoke that way near Elizabeth. How did Mrs. Kagan think someone like Elizabeth could pay for her children’s school uniforms? But Mrs. Kagan never seemed to worry about whether Elizabeth was in earshot and might be offended.

  While Mrs. Kagan talked, Mr. Kagan ate his dinner silently, his tall, thin frame leaning down to the food. Somehow I never minded the way he bent over his plate, his knife and fork held awkwardly in his bony hands. But my nerves screamed when Mrs. Kagan smacked her lips loudly over her food or picked her teeth with a toothpick, one little finger held high in the air in a show of daintiness.

  Sometimes I just couldn’t stand it. “May I be excused from the table?” I would say suddenly, pushing back my chair. “I have lots of homework to do.”

  Mrs. Kagan would stop in mid-sentence and look bewildered for a moment. Then she would collect herself. “That’s all right, dear. Go right ahead if you’ve had enough to eat. Would never keep you from your schoolwork.”

  Mr. Kagan’s little smile was apologetic as he looked from her to me. Which of us was he apologizing to, I wondered briefly. Then I escaped to my silent room with relief.

  A couple of months after I moved to Caledon Street, I woke one night with a burning sore throat. It hurt too much to call out, so I lay whimpering for a long time, staring at the strip of light under my door. Then the door opened quietly and a tall shadow appeared. It was Mr. Kagan. I didn’t have the strength to wonder if he popped in every night to check if I was sleeping; I was just glad to have help nearby.

  “Sore,” I whispered with cracked lips. “Hot.”

  Mr. Kagan slipped rapidly out of the door again and I heard him calling Mrs. Kagan with urgency.

  Mrs. Kagan bustled in immediately, turning on the bright light overhead. I closed my eyes. A large hand was laid firmly on my forehead.

  “Fever,” Mrs. Kagan announced. “Aspirin. Cold water. And some cloths.”

  The light was too bright, the noise too loud, the cold cloths laid on my forehead too wet. I felt wretched.

  “Mama,” I whispered.

  “I’m right here, dear,” Mrs. Kagan replied in a glad voice.

  But I shook my head miserably. “I want my mama,” I cried, despite my thirteen years. And cried and cried.

  Now we were all wretched.

  Abruptly Mrs. Kagan made a decision. “Nice cup of rooibos tea with honey and lemon. That’ll do the trick,” I heard her say decisively as she left. Mr. Kagan turned around twice in his helplessness and then he thought to turn off the bright lights. I pushed fretfully at the cloths trickling water from my forehead down to my neck, and he quickly removed them. Grateful, I reached out to him, and he sat close to my bed, his long, thin fingers holding my hand gently. The cloths must have cooled me down because I felt better. As I drifted into sleep, I felt a tear fall on my wrist.

  It became terribly important to keep the fence up between Mrs. Kagan and myself. I had to show Mama that I wasn’t going to abandon her, no matter how hard Mrs. Kagan tried to be my mother. When I saw her fleshy, freckled hands setting the table for Shabbes dinner, I remembered how Mama used to call Nechama and me to join her as she stood quietly before the candles. Mama placed a white scarf over her hair and lit the wicks. Then she moved her beautiful slim hands above the burning candles in a circle once, twice, three times and covered her face.

  “Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who has sanctified us by Thy commandments, and commanded us to light the Shabbes candles,” she murmured, and we recited the blessing, too. But Mama wasn’t finished. She kept her hands over her eyes for what seemed a long time, and sometimes tears slid between her fingers before she uncovered her face and kissed us.

  “Why do you cry, Mama?” I asked once.

  “I cry because I think how much I want you and Nechama to be happy and to be good; and I cry for my own mama and papa, may they rest in peace; and I cry for our people,” she answered. At that time I d
idn’t understand. Now that I, too, wanted to cry for the same reasons, it brought Mama and me even closer.

  So when Mrs. Kagan put her arm around me after lighting the Shabbes candles, I kept my body rigid and unyielding. After a few weeks, she gave up pulling me closer.

  Once Friday night dinner was over, it was obvious that the Kagans were not particular about the rules of Shabbes. Mr. Kagan would turn on the light at his reading chair, and Mrs. Kagan clicked her knitting needles busily.

  “Would you like to learn how to knit, dear?” Mrs. Kagan offered brightly. “My mother taught me when I was much younger than you are now.”

  Mama had promised to show me how to do fine embroidery when I grew old enough. It would be disloyal to accept Mrs. Kagan’s knitting lessons as a substitute. “No, thanks, I’ll just read my book,” I replied.

  The uncomfortable chairs made my back ache, so I tried sprawling on the rose-patterned rug, but instead of feeling relaxed I simply felt childish and undignified. “Well, maybe I’ll go to my room,” I said after a few minutes. “Good night.”

  I’m so lonely, I realized as I closed the door and sat down drearily on my bed. If only Naomi were here, we could gossip about the other orphans at the supper table, and then in the bedroom we could laugh at Mrs. Kagan’s speeches. I closed my eyes and pictured my sister’s gay laugh and bright face. I always thought she needed me, I admitted ruefully. I didn’t know I needed her, too.

  I leaned over to my nightstand and pulled out one of the three books I was reading at the same time. It took just a few moments to escape from my own life. When I had first started to read English, in London, the vivid, magical illustrations became my best friends; now, less than a year later, I needed only words to draw pictures for me of Toad, Ratty, and Badger. Then I discovered my bosom friends, two storybook girls who also didn’t have mothers: the little Swiss girl, Heidi, and the first American girl I met, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. The hours passed quietly, marked by the turning of pages.

  A VISIT TO NAOMI’S HOUSE