The Blackbird Girls

by Anne Blankman

  The first snows had melted (“Snow never lasts long on the ground around here,” Feruza had explained) and the days were racing toward January when Rifka couldn’t stand it anymore. She was lying on her back in the big bed with the other girls, staring into the darkness and wondering if the Chorieva family would still be kind to her if they knew who she was.

  She rolled onto her side and poked Feruza. “Are you awake?”

  “I am now,” Feruza said crossly. “What is it?”

  Quickly, before she could lose her nerve, Rifka said, “I’m a Jew.”

  She waited. Surely now Feruza would demand that she leave.

  “Oh,” Feruza said sleepily. “Is that all? Good night.”

  Rifka waited longer. There had to be more.

  A light snore sounded. Feruza was asleep again.

  Something that had been tied tightly in Rifka’s chest loosened the smallest bit. She smiled up into the dark.

  December slipped into January, and then January into February, and still she heard nothing of Nathan or her family, although she asked every Ukrainian refugee she could find who passed through Tashkent. February became March, and she turned thirteen, and March stretched into the summer months. She played with Feruza and her siblings and helped Ona with the farm.

  Sometimes she surprised herself by thanking God for a beautiful day or for Ona or for Feruza most of all. And on her fourteenth birthday, she prayed the Shema Yisrael. Her father had told her it was the first thing she should say in the morning and the last in the evening. It felt good to say the words again.

  And life was good. She had learned Uzbek, from hearing Feruza and her family use it so often, and she had grown stronger by eating three meals every day and racing Feruza from their home on the outskirts of Tashkent to school. She liked her classmates, all girls with dark braids like Feruza, and she liked hearing the muezzins of the Muslim temples in the distance. Most of all, she liked Feruza.

  They played tricks on some of the fellows from the boys’ school, and they sang songs when they fed the chickens. They climbed trees and helped Ona make dimlama, a meat-and-vegetable stew. They hid in the barn to talk, and sometimes Feruza cried because she was frightened her father would die in battle and sometimes Rifka cried because she was scared she would never see her family again.

  But they made each other laugh, too. After school, they wrote funny skits and performed them in front of Feruza’s adoring brothers and sisters. They survived their mathematics classes by making faces at each other when the teacher’s back was turned, and at night, after the others had fallen asleep, they whispered secrets to each other. In the dark, if Rifka was the only one left awake, she could admit to herself that if it weren’t for Feruza, she would still wish she were dead. She thought having a best friend was like being given a new set of lungs when you had been gasping for air.

  If it weren’t for the refugees from other parts of the Soviet Union trickling into Tashkent, Rifka could have convinced herself there wasn’t a war at all. She saw no Germans, heard no warplanes, felt no bombs. The fighting was far away, in places like Leningrad and Stalingrad. She didn’t hear much of what was happening in the rest of the country; the Chorieva family didn’t have a radio, and she wasn’t sure if she could trust the rumors she heard at school and in the marketplace.

  Every day she wondered what was happening to her family. The Germans had conquered Kiev—she knew that much. Probably, Mama and the boys were struggling with food shortages. She hoped they were getting enough to eat. She hated to think of them going hungry.

  She turned fifteen, and then sixteen. She was beginning to think of a profession for herself—for she couldn’t remain in school much longer, no matter how much she wanted to—and she was considering teaching music when word spread across Tashkent like wildfire: the war in Europe was over. There was still fighting in the Pacific Ocean, but here, in the Soviet Union, the guns had silenced at last.

  “Don’t go back,” Feruza begged Rifka. “You don’t know how bad the fighting may have been in Kiev. It could be dangerous.”

  “I have to go.” Rifka folded her spare dress and placed it in her old satchel. “My family’s there. At least, I hope they are. If they’re not, I’ll find them.”

  Feruza sank onto the edge of the bed. “I know you have to do this,” she said in a low voice. “Please don’t forget us. I’ll never forget you. You’re the sister of my heart.”

  Tears rose in Rifka’s throat. “You’re mine.”

  “You’ve heard my mother’s story about the blackbird, haven’t you?”

  Nodding, Rifka closed the satchel. Over the years, she had heard Ona’s story many times. Blackbirds are almost magical, she would say, for they can walk on land like humans and swim in the sea like fish, but they can also fly into the sky. They are a link between heaven and earth, between sky and land.

  “They’re a symbol for eternity,” Feruza said. “And I think . . . like them, our friendship could last forever. If you want it to,” she added, looking quickly at Rifka.

  “Our friendship will last for all of our lives,” Rifka promised, and hugged Feruza. Later, as she walked away from the farm, she had to blink very hard so she didn’t cry.

  Most trains weren’t running yet, so she had arranged to ride to the border in the back of a hay cart. From there, she traveled any way she could. Sometimes it was in a wagon; sometimes on foot; and once she caught a train that went all of thirty kilometers before it reached a section of track that had been bombed out by the Germans and came to a stop.

  The farther north and west she went, the worse the sights were. Villages had been razed to the ground. Forests had been burned. Farm fields had been pillaged, leaving them fallow. And everywhere she looked, she saw desperate people: hungry children and mothers in rags, exhausted fathers in tattered uniforms returning home, gray-faced old men and women weeping over their ruined homes. A sick feeling grew and grew in Rifka’s stomach.

  By the time she finally reached Kiev, it was nearly the end of summer.

  The city was a wreck of broken stone and shattered brick. Some buildings that still stood looked like shells, with only a couple of walls intact and the insides reduced to rubble. Others were completely gone, leaving behind gaping holes. Silently, Rifka walked the streets. Was her family still here? Would she find anyone she knew?

  At last she came to Dorohozhytska Street. Parts of it, too, had been bombed out. But her apartment building was still standing. Mama and the boys must still live there, for they wouldn’t have left unless it had been bombed. She raced toward it, weaving among sad-faced people she didn’t know.

  Inside, the stairwell was just as she remembered: a rickety wooden structure whose third step creaked when she stepped on it. She climbed the stairs as fast as she could. Mama, and Papa, and the boys—she was almost to them!

  The apartment door was unlocked. She stepped inside. “Mama, it’s me, Rifka! I’ve come home!”

  The kitchen was empty. Mostly, it looked the same: an old black stove, a table and chairs, some wooden shelves nailed to the wall. The dishcloths, hanging over the lip of the sink, were the blue ones she remembered. But the shelves, where her parents had kept their books, now held a stack of white plates.

  “Mama?” she called again just as a middle-aged woman came into the kitchen from the direction of the bedrooms.

  The woman’s eyes widened. “Who are you? Get out of my house!”

  “But . . . this is my family’s house,” Rifka faltered. “The Friedmans.”

  “They don’t live here now,” the woman snapped. “This apartment belongs to me and my husband. Now leave before I call for help.”

  The sick feeling that had been in Rifka’s stomach for months was now twisting up her insides. “Where’s my family?” she heard herself ask. “Where did they go?”

  “They aren’t my concern,” the woman said. “Ge
t out of here!”

  Rifka looked around the kitchen again. “Those are my mother’s dishcloths. And that pot on the stove—I recognize it! These are my family’s possessions! Why do you have them?”

  The woman pushed her. “Stop asking questions!”

  A thought occurred to Rifka. She shoved the woman aside and rushed into the kitchen. As the woman raced to the window, Rifka ran her hands over the floorboards. It had to be here . . .

  The woman flung open the window and yelled, “Help me!”

  Rifka ignored her. There it was, the floorboard missing a couple of nails. Carefully, she lifted it up. In the hole below, flecked with dirt, lay her mother’s Shabbat candlesticks and a wooden box.

  Everything within Rifka went cold. Mama wouldn’t have left their home without their most precious possessions—not unless something terrible had occurred. What had happened to her? And to Saul and Isaac and Avrum?

  “Help me!” the woman shouted again.

  Rifka grabbed the candlesticks and the box containing her flute.

  “Thief!” the woman shrieked.

  Clutching her family’s treasures, Rifka raced out of the apartment. She didn’t stop running until she reached Melnykova Street and someone caught her by the arm.

  “Let go of me!” She pulled her arm free.

  The man who had grabbed her held up his hands, as if to show he meant no harm. He was an old man dressed in black. Something about his wizened face looked familiar.

  “Eliezer Leontyevich?” she gasped. He was a cobbler who had lived down the street from her family.

  “Rifka Friedman?” he asked. When she nodded, he sighed. “I thought it was you. My poor child.”

  “Do you know where my family is?” she asked. “I went to our apartment and . . .”

  She broke off as sorrow crossed his face.

  “My dear girl,” he said gently. “They’re dead.”

  Rifka jerked back. “You’re lying!”

  “No,” he said. “I’m not. When the city fell to the Germans, they ordered all the Jews of Kiev to appear right here—at the corner of Melnykova and Dorohozhytska Streets—at eight in the morning. Everyone assumed we would be sent to labor camps.

  “Thousands of our city’s Jews showed up at the gathering place. We were told to bring money, warm clothing, and identity papers. I didn’t go. I hid in a friend’s apartment.

  “But our friends and families went, Rifka. They were marched through the streets and the cemetery, then into fields outside the city. Finally, the soldiers stopped them at the Babi Yar ravine. They ordered everyone to take off their clothes.”

  “No,” Rifka cried. “No, please.”

  He continued talking as if he hadn’t heard her. “And then,” he said quietly, “the Germans shot them all.”

  Rifka left Kiev that night. All she wanted was to get away, as fast as she could. She couldn’t stay in the city where her family had been murdered.

  She hitched a ride with a group who was heading north and had bundled their meager possessions into a horse-drawn cart. She sat in the back, on top of a suitcase, and pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes, trying to push back the tears.

  Mama, dead. And Isaac and Saul and Avrum. Murdered only weeks after she had last seen them. Papa was gone, killed in battle. The old man, Eliezer Leontyevich, had told her that, too. And Nathan had never returned to Kiev and was either in the ground or had escaped elsewhere. Her aunts and uncles, her cousins and grandparents, all murdered at Babi Yar.

  There was no one left. No one and nothing, except for a flute and a set of candlesticks. She was alone.

  She stared up at the stars until she thought her heart would break. She would never hear Mama’s voice again or feel her embrace. Never laugh with Papa at one of his silly jokes or feel his hand on her head as he prayed over her. Saul, Isaac, and Avrum would never grow up. She would never know the men they could have become.

  She sat in the hay cart, crying silently, tears running down her cheeks until the stars blurred and the sky turned into a mix of silver and black. She wished for the oblivion of sleep, but it would not come. All she could do was cry until she felt empty.

  The people she was traveling with ignored her. They had sorrows of their own, she imagined. And she didn’t want to talk to anyone. She didn’t want to talk ever again.

  Morning dawned blue and warm. As the cart rumbled over the rutted dirt road, one of the old women travelers asked Rifka where she was going.

  “I don’t know,” Rifka said. She thought of Feruza. Maybe she ought to return to Uzbekistan. There, she had people who loved her and whom she loved.

  “I’m heading to Leningrad,” said the old woman. “Oh, I know what you’re thinking,” she said, although Rifka hadn’t been thinking anything at all. “I’ve heard the stories, too. It was under siege for almost three years, and there are bodies in the streets. I don’t care. Leningrad has the biggest synagogue in our country. I want to find other people like me, who survived.”

  Now Rifka was listening. “You’re a Jew?” she whispered, fearful someone might be listening. It was always a dangerous time to be Jewish.

  The old woman smiled at her. “Yes, and I can tell by the look on your face you must be, too. Come to Leningrad. We can meet others.”

  “Yes,” Rifka heard herself saying. “I’ll come.”

  * * *

  - - -

  Leningrad was a husk of a city. Entire blocks had been bombed out, and many of the buildings that were still standing were pockmarked with bullet holes. Rubble cascaded across the roads, and broken windows glittered in the summer sunshine.

  It should have looked like a dead place. But the water in the canals shone. The air smelled of soot and grass. People swept up crushed stone and brick and dust. The city was still alive, Rifka realized.

  The old woman from the hay cart found her a place to live with her third cousin’s husband’s family, a one-room apartment crammed with ten people. Rats came out in the dark, even though there was little food to be had, and the smallest children screamed from night terrors, ripping Rifka from sleep again and again.

  She had to get out of this place. She knew no one else in the city, though, and had nowhere else to go.

  Her first Friday night in Leningrad, she felt her mother’s presence around her like an embrace, and she knew she should go to Shabbat service at the Grand Choral Synagogue. She needed to say the Mourner’s Kaddish for her family.

  Before the war, she hadn’t gone to temple. Her parents had said it was too dangerous. Instead, they worshipped at home, with the curtains drawn so no one could see. For Passover, they bought matzah from their synagogue and ate it in secret in their apartment.

  So she didn’t know exactly what to do during the service. She bowed at the wrong parts. She said the words in the wrong rhythm. And when she began to say the Mourner’s Kaddish, she burned with anger.

  There was no mention of the dead in the Kaddish. The prayer contained two parts—an affirmation of life and gratitude for God. How could she proclaim the goodness of life when her life had been destroyed and her entire family wiped out? How could she be grateful to God, who had let all of this happen?

  She heard her mother’s voice in her head. God gave us free will. Those were the words her mother had said to her when she was little and upset because someone had spit on her in the street or called her family dirty Jew rats. That means, her mother had said many times, that we have the power to do terrible evil or great good.

  Tears flooded her eyes. God hadn’t murdered her family. The German soldiers had. People had killed. Not God. She didn’t have to hate God. She could love Him again.

  Continuing to recite the familiar Hebrew words, she felt her heart filling until she thought it would burst with love and grief for her family. And somehow she didn’t feel alone anymore. She wiped away her t
ears, and by the time she got to the final word, she was smiling a little.

  During the service, the women and men sat separately, but afterward the young people mingled together on the front steps. A young man—a boy, really—with a thatch of dark hair beneath his kippah approached her. “I haven’t seen you here before,” he said. “Are you new? I can show you around.” He flashed her a grin. “My name’s Yuri Goldman.”

  She wanted to tell him to leave her alone. There was something so beautiful about his smile, though, that she relented. “I’m Rifka Friedman.”

  “Rifka,” he said, shaking her hand, “may I take you around the city sometime?”

  “Maybe,” she said, determined not to say another word and encourage him. She had no use for boys, even boys with beautiful smiles.

  Yuri, she soon discovered, was determined, too. She had gotten a job in a seamstress’s shop, and one day as she was leaving work she bumped into him on the street, coming home from his factory job. Somehow, she found herself walking around the Field of Mars with him and laughing at his jokes despite herself.

  They were married three months later. They were young and poor and happy. They moved out of his parents’ apartment into a one-room place. On Friday nights, they went to services or Rifka lit the Shabbat candles at home. She always used her mother’s candlesticks. On Sundays, their days off, they walked hand in hand in the Summer Garden. In the evenings, Rifka played her flute and Yuri read books. Once a month, she wrote a letter to Feruza. And every day, she missed her parents and brothers.

  Five years after Rifka and Yuri’s wedding, she gave birth to their daughter. Rifka lay in bed, cradling their baby. “She’s the most beautiful baby in the world,” she told Yuri, who grinned down at her.

  “That’s because she looks like you,” he said, running one gentle finger down the baby’s cheek. “What shall we name her?”