An hour later, having filled out the form and been authorized to do my research, I sat with the Manifest of Alien Passengers for the Mount Clinton sailing from Hamburg to New York City. It was almost noon when I located Isabelle, number twenty-three on list eight. Isabelle Goldman: Age, seventeen; Occupation, maid; Nationality, Lithuania; Race or People, Hebrew; Name of Relative Joining, none. I wiped my eyeglasses. I was not seeing clearly. Josef Goldman: Age, ten months. Josef, her son? No mention of Bessie.
I wandered into the cold, grabbed lunch at a nearby coffee shop, and walked and walked. Where was Josef? Never mentioned by anyone, not with her when she modeled and lived with Peter Savinto, her artist savior. Seventeen, alone with a baby and not speaking English. Had her family thrown her out? The cruelty overwhelmed me.
I looked up. I was standing in front of St. Nicholas Church. I remembered the long flight of stairs, and now I climbed them, not knowing why.
The church was empty, except for a lone woman sitting in a back pew. I walked in, looking for someone. An old man dressed in priestly robes came forward from the alcove. “Is there some way I can help you?” he asked.
The words tumbled out. My thoughts were jumbled as I tried to tell him about Isabelle and the baby she might have left here. “I don’t know if you can help me, but I must help her. I have an aunt, or maybe she’s not really my aunt, who’s very old, almost one hundred, and she must tell me this secret or not die in peace. I think she left her baby here a long time ago, when she came from Lithuania.”
When I finished, I sat down in the nearest pew and wept, overcome by Isabelle’s heartaches, as well as memories of my own.
“Why would she come here, if she was not of the Christian faith?” I asked.
“Perhaps, because we spoke her language, and no nearby synagogue did.” The priest paused. “Or perhaps, the father was Christian.” I looked at him. That thought had never occurred to me. He continued. “And perhaps, the baby was not the result of a consented union.” What a polite way of saying rape.
He put his hand on my arm. “Go home and speak to your aunt. Put her mind at rest. Tell her you spoke to Father Christopher, and he can help her, if she wishes.” I started to leave, but he stopped me. He handed me a pamphlet with the church’s telephone number on it. “Call me if you need me,” he offered.
The ride home was chaotic. Rush-hour traffic, mixed with the beginnings of a snow storm, slowed traffic to a crawl. We inched our way through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. I didn’t arrive home until seven. Not sure where I’d gone, Amanda was frantic.
“I was so worried. You should have told me you were going into Manhattan.”
I hugged her and kissed her. I so desperately needed her affection at that moment. Isabelle did not join us for dinner that evening, asking only for a sandwich and coffee that Amanda later brought back uneaten. I paced my room. I had to confront Isabelle, to give her peace, as well as myself.
I tapped lightly on her door, and she answered immediately, as if she’d been waiting for that knock.
She lay in her bed, still in her nightgown. She’d not even dressed that day. She appeared exhausted, without even the strength to sit up.
“Isabelle, we have to talk.”
She looked at me. “There are things I must tell you before I die.”
“About Josef?” I asked, and threw caution to the winds. “About our secret visit to the church?”
She bent her head and wept. “I tried to keep him, but I couldn’t get any jobs.” I remembered that she sold herself. How desperate she must have been.
“But your artist, Savinto, didn’t he help you?”
“I’d given Josef up by then. Savinto found me foraging in the garbage cans outside the restaurant where he was having dinner.”
I was relentless. “Who was the father, and where was your family? Why did you leave and come alone to a strange country? And my mother, why didn’t you go to her?”
“My mother was dead.” Weeping, Isabelle continued. She told me how the Cossack had hit her father on the head as he sought to protect her, and she described the sight of her father lying on the ground, with blood seeping from his head, as the Cossack lifted her to his horse and they galloped off. She explained that they’d had little recourse against the Cossacks. “They were the Tsar’s own guards. They had unlimited rights.”
“Your mother and I were not really related,” Isabelle said. “We met in the park and got to talking. I was so lonely. I’d left Savinto by then. When I realized your mother and I both came from the same city in Lithuania, Kovno, it was like finding family.”
It was then I told her about my visit to the church and my conversation with Father Christopher. “He feels he can help you. Would you like to speak with him?”
She leaned close to me. “You don’t understand, I am accursed,” she whispered.
The snow fell all night, fully covering the ground and the trees. I paid a young neighbor to shovel the walkway. Such physical activity was beyond Amanda and me. Isabelle did not join us for breakfast, and Amanda brought a tray to her room.
I sat in the kitchen, watching a small bird peck at the crumbs I’d thrown on the snow, but my thoughts were miles away. Why did Isabelle feel she was accursed? What had she not told me? I decided to contact Father Christopher. Perhaps she could tell him what she could not tell me. She clearly had to tell someone.
By noon, the sun came out, and the temperature rose to forty degrees, causing a great deal of dripping. Dirty slush replaced white snow on the sidewalks.
I envisioned having a hard time reaching Father Christopher, but he came on the telephone almost immediately. “I need you,” I blurted out. “My aunt is in trouble.” When I told him who I was and reminded him of his kind offer, he agreed to come and see Isabelle on Thursday, two days away.
I prayed for good weather for Thursday, and I was rewarded. No promise of rain or snow and transportation moving smoothly.
It was almost seven before I saw Father Christopher alight from the taxi. I was at the door, opening it before he rang the bell. Isabelle was sitting in her armchair, dressed again in her blue dress, when we joined her. I introduced Father Christopher to her slowly and carefully, for I could see she seemed confused. In the last few days, her mental ability, so sharp for her age, had slipped precariously.
“I killed the Cossack, you know,” she blurted out, just barely after I’d finished. “I plunged his own saber into him as he lay, over and over again.” She tried to simulate the action, but could barely lift her hands.
Father Christopher stepped close to her and took her hand. “You only defended yourself. It was self defense.”
“His blood was all over me, but there was more, worse. It was Jacob and Reuben, my father’s workmen, who found me. They thought the blood was mine at first. They wrapped my naked body in the sheet they’d brought and took me home, the Cossack lying dead in the back of the wagon.
“What could we do?” she wailed. “If they found his dead body they would have attacked the village in anger. Another pogrom. We had to destroy the body. No trace could be found. The village council decided to burn his body and strew the ashes in the field, but the Rabbi was horrified. ‘It is forbidden to reduce the dead to ash. It is an offensive act, for it does violence to the spirit and letter of Jewish law. It can never be allowed.’ ‘But that is Jewish law and he was not a Jew,’ Jacob answered. ‘We must do this. His body cannot be found.’
“In the days that followed,” Isabelle said, “the Cossacks came to the village looking for their comrade, for they knew he had come this way. As he remained missing, they came again and again. Fortunately, they found no trace of his body.
“Jacob had married me as soon as he realized I was pregnant, but no one would believe the blond child I gave birth to was his. Uneducated and superstitious, and guilty over desecrating a dead body, they blamed all ills on me. The Rabbi’s sudden death, the illness of children, the failure of a crop. When Jacob was killed falling o
ff a ladder, they turned their faces from me, believing I had brought evil to the village, and soon I, too, came to believe it. I bundled Josef up and ran, with but a meager supply of food and money. I walked the fields, and when I could walk no more, I lay down, prepared to die with Josef in my arms, but a band of Gypsies found me and helped me.”
She closed her eyes and curled up in the chair, while we sat transfixed by this tale of horror. A mist rolled in from the Atlantic Ocean and I heard the fog horns at Norton’s Point begin their mournful wail.
I watched Father Christopher approach her, and listened to his soothing words, his promise of Heaven’s forgiveness, but I don’t think she heard him, for she had withdrawn to her private hell, and I to my own, for I had brought her no peace.
She did not linger long. She died two days later, when the weather turned unseasonably warm and promised an early spring. She’d left the house to me and a sum of money to Amanda to retire on.
Three months later, I stood by the window gazing out on the waters of the bay glistening in the sun as I prepared to leave, for I had sold the house to a young couple with a newborn baby. I so wished their happiness would chase out the memories of misery that invaded these rooms.
EVERYTHING IN ITS PLACE
Fran Bannigan Cox
“OH, I didn’t hear you come in, dear.” I turned from making my son’s dinner, frankfurters and Boston baked beans, his favorite.
His back was toward me as he fussed with the kitchen door lock. He didn’t turn around. Shy.
“You’re a sight for sore eyes,” I told him. Muddy sneakers and a torn shirt pocket. He had a drawer full of Van Heusen shirts, but only wore the one his father bought him before he got to be extra large. And I mean extra large. He had the appetite of a teen. The shirt was frayed and stretched across his chest, so hair peeked out between the buttons. It wasn’t cute in a man his age, but I couldn’t say a word. “Where’s your jacket, George?” I asked.
He took one of the franks. “Mind your own business, Ma.” A bit of frankfurter spluttered from his lips.
“Let me get you a plate, dear.” He was always a polite boy. But he didn’t like me to pry. What’s a mother to do? Such a handsome fellow; I could hardly resist ruffling his curly black hair.
“What’s that on your face?” A stream of blood ran down his cheek into the sink, cold water tinted pink splashing my apron. I skipped back. “Oops-a-daisy. Careful now.” My heart jumped a bit.
“Cut myself,” he said. “On one of your damn boxes.”
Now, that wasn’t fair. I’d kept everything of meaning from his childhood. It was all neatly boxed, labeled, and stacked. I knew he’d want it someday for his own children. All his toys and schoolwork were in the third bedroom, piled to the ceiling, so much treasure I could hardly open the door. All his clothes were in red boxes, distinct from the usual brown ones in the guest room. I had a straight line of shoes arranged by size going up the stairs to the third floor, thirty steps. Good that. Shoes on the steps without feet in them made me smile. The third floor was filled with the furniture I’d saved, fine pieces in such good condition. All the empty Lord & Taylor boxes were stored in my mother and father’s bedroom, four hundred and twenty-three by my last count, just waiting to be filled. I thought I might use one to store the new stainless ware I’d gotten at the church sale.
No time like the present, I always said. I got the twine from the utility drawer in the kitchen. The tape, string, and wire drawer had everything I needed for wrapping handfuls of new cutlery, a separate bundle each for forks, knives, and spoons. Twine for metal things, color-coded string for all others. I’d had a work drawer in every room for ages. No one could say I wasn’t tidy. Nothing worse than things out of place.
“Goddamn it. The other franks are burning,” George said, holding the pan off the heat.
No place to put it. The drain board was overflowing with pots.
I tried to think how I could help. “Let me wipe the counter first,” I said.
“Jeez,” he shouted. He backhanded a stack of pots and two kettles so they were crushed together in the corner of the counter. Such a harsh noise.
“Not like that, dear,” I said, bending to pick up the pile of spatulas that had landed on the box of pot lids next to the broom closet.
“Damn it. Get out of my way, Ma.”
“Watch your language, George.” I sat down hard on the kitchen chair, my hand to my chest. Such flutterings in my heart.
He stood with his back to me, eating the burned frankfurter, the sweep of red lights from patrol cars outside sliding between the cracks in the Venetian blinds over the sink. All I could think of was how he could eat with such dirty hands.
The sound of a helicopter passed overhead. I knew the difference between one of those and the jets leaving Kennedy Airport across the Belt Parkway, a double ribbon of headlights that passed continually by our front door on the access road. We always meant to move to the nice little brick house two blocks in, but somehow it had never happened. And anyway, George insisted he wouldn’t go. The wood wainscoting in my kitchen made me glad we didn’t move. I liked the houses in Ozone Park, not too big, snug, with good chain link fences and neat patches of green grass, not too much, just enough to separate the houses from one another and leave room for tidy concrete driveways. Admittedly, I had a few large bikes and sleds stored against the fence. I planned to move them when George got around to clearing out the garage. Useful, working people lived in my neighborhood and minded their own business.
We could time our days by the roar of the jets. Sometimes, I thought they would shatter the windows. The neighborhood association made a formal protest to change the jets’ routes, but the city council didn’t do a damn thing. But this helicopter was unusually loud. Odd. I turned around to see if it was the TV making all that noise. On the screen, there was just an uneven flicker of images I certainly didn’t want to see. I thought I’d turned the sound off earlier when they kept showing police cars arriving to block off the streets around our neighborhood. Apparently, they thought there was some fugitive loose in the area. The news people loved that sort of thing. They went on and on scaring people about things that turned out just fine in the end.
“Did the police stop you?” I asked George, who was stuffing down his third hot dog, mustard coloring his lips yellow. He’d been in a few scrapes. Nothing serious. Just boyish high jinks. “I thought they were stopping everyone.”
“It wasn’t a problem,” he said as he turned to smile that secret smile of his, the one that looked like my wrinkled version whenever he asked me where I put something he wanted. We both liked our hide-and-seek games.
“Two nice police officers came to the door,” I said. “They’ll be back, because I couldn’t find the key to the cellar. “Did you take the extra one?”
He gave me that secret smile again, then wiped his mouth with a paper napkin he threw on the floor.
I bent to pick it up. “They told me to stay indoors. There’s a criminal loose in the neighborhood.” I put the napkin in the trash. “They wouldn’t take tea. The younger one kept trying to move the boxes by the window so he could look out. He didn’t realize they all contain extra curtains right in place for when I need them. I know he admired my organization, because he said, ‘I don’t believe this.’”
Since George started working in the cellar, I hadn’t been down there, even though we kept a spare key in the hall closet. My boy was sensitive, and I had to respect his privacy.
“Did you take the key?” I asked again.
George just grunted, like his father used to before he left us to live in Florida.
“What should I tell them when they come back?”
George turned his back on me. “Whatever you like,” he said and laughed.
The crackle of a police radio, faint, but very different from the blare of my neighbor’s radio sounded outside the kitchen door. I lifted the blind to see what was going on.
Shirley, my neighbor, was le
aning on the cop car, her curlers bobbing up and down as she pointed to my house, shaking her head. Really! She had some nerve talking about us to perfect strangers. I considered opening the window to shout at her, but the polluted air from the cop car’s exhaust pipe would get in my kitchen.
One day, when I was moving Shirley’s garbage cans back into her driveway, she told me, among other things, that I should cut my hair. I liked my hair down to my tailbone. It wrapped up very nicely against my neck in a tight, brown bun. My brown-framed glasses matched my eyes. Brown was my favorite color. I dropped the edge of the blind. “There’s a police car next door in the Connor’s driveway and one on the corner, too.”
“So what,” he said, whirling from the sink to throw the fry pan against the wall behind me. It hit the stack of boxes holding my mother’s china. A frankfurter split when it landed on the linoleum.
My heart jumped, as it always did when he expressed himself so strongly. “Oh, my dear Lord! George. Please. The grease. It’s stained the label. Don’t be careless, dear.” Now I’d have to use more Pine Sol and I only had a carton left. It made the house smell so tidy, but I didn’t like to use it unless I had to. I shouldn’t have brought up the subject of police. Made him nervous.
He rushed from the kitchen and struggled with the cellar door lock. It stuck, because he was so impatient to get to his work that he jiggled the key too much. Eventually, he got it opened and clattered downstairs. He doesn’t walk, he runs.
He’d left the cellar door slightly ajar, so careless. I could see a sliver of light at the jamb. He certainly was in a hurry. I pressed my ear to the crack. Downstairs I heard the scrape of the coal cellar door opening. That noise grated on my nerves whenever I heard it. Always had. Couldn’t imagine what he could be doing in there. When he was a boy, he had a secret tunnel from there to the garden. It was really the old coal chute. I never liked to interfere with his imagination, but Marcus, my late husband, insisted on closing it up when George was away at college. Marcus came back to me from Florida when he got sick.
Family Matters Page 10
