Authors: Karen Hesse

Tags: #Emigration and Immigration, #Jews, #Letters, #Juvenile Nonfiction, #Language Arts, #General

Letters From Rifka (4 page)

BOOK: Letters From Rifka

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… Goal, there can be none before me,
Empty-hearted, idle-willed.
Life’s monotony rolls o’er me,
Tired with longings unfulfilled.

—
Pushkin

November 30, 1919
Warsaw, Poland

Dear Tovah,

What should I do? I hold the worst news in my heart. Whatever shall I do?

As soon as we finished our business at the bank in Warsaw, we followed directions to the steamship office. How rich we felt with all the money my brothers had sent us from America. How eager we were to start our journey across the ocean.

Before they sell you your ticket, though, Tovah, you must have an examination by a doctor.

I think doctors are the cruelest men upon this earth. This doctor, who worked for the steamship
company, took me and Mama into a room. He examined us for deformities and disease.

He examined our bodies and our eyes.

“Take off your kerchiefs,” he said. “I will check your scalps.”

My head had been itching terribly for the past day. I gladly removed my kerchief and gave my head a good scratching.

The doctor washed his hands after he examined me.

“Mrs. Nebrot,” he told my mother, “you have passed your examination. You may go now to buy your ticket.”

“Come along, Rifka,” Mama said, gathering her belongings.

“No,” the doctor said. “I am sorry. Your daughter cannot join you. Our company will not sell her passage to America.”

Mama said, “You don’t understand. She must go to America.”

“She can’t,” the doctor answered. “She has a skin disease, ringworm. You see these sores on her scalp?” I thought of the Polish girl on the train, the girl with the baby. She had sores on her scalp.

Mama’s dark eyes widened. “Rifka, Rifka,” she murmured. Her hands shook. “How do we get rid of this—this ringworm?”

“There is a treatment,” the doctor said. “But it takes many months.”

All of me went numb. Only my heart beat thickly in my chest.

Before he showed us out of his room, the doctor wrote something on a piece of paper. He handed it to Mama and told her to give the paper to the man at the steamship office window.

Papa tried bribing the steamship officials. It is a trick he learned in Berdichev from your father, a trick where money put in the right pocket can get you almost anything.

“Here,” Papa said to the man in the steamship office, pushing our precious money into his hand. “Please, take this to make my daughter Rifka a ticket.”

The man looked at Papa’s money. He looked at the five of us standing before him. “Wait here,” he said.

He went to the other room, the room where the doctor sat. He came back shortly.

“I’m sorry,” he said, returning to his post at the window.

“Is it not enough?” Papa asked, reaching into his pockets. “You need to have more?”

“No more,” the man said. “What you ask is impossible. The child cannot go.”

“Why can’t I go?” I demanded.

The man paid no attention to me. He spoke to Mama and Papa. “If the child arrives in America with this disease, the Americans will turn her around and send her right back to Poland. My company will have to pay the cost of her return. If my company has to do this for your daughter, the doctor and I will no longer have our jobs. I’m sorry. There’s nothing I can do.”

Tovah! I can’t go to America! They will let Mama and Papa and Saul and Nathan go. But they won’t let me. I cannot stay here in Warsaw without Mama and Papa! How can I live without Mama and Papa to care for me, to protect me?

Yesterday Mama gave me a handful of money and sent me outside to wait for her and Papa.

“You stay out of trouble,” Mama said. “We’ll try our luck at
this
steamship company; perhaps they will not mind about your ringworm.”

Outside, a bony old man with a nose like a parsnip sat with a basket at his feet full of round orange fruit. I stared at him and stared at him. Finally I went over.

“What is this?” I asked in Polish, pointing to the fruit. From a distance, I had seen a similar fruit in Motziv at the market outside our inn. That fruit was small, more yellow than orange, with patches of green. These were perfect autumn-colored balls.

“Oranges,” the old man answered. He had no teeth in his mouth.

“How much for one?” I asked, inhaling the bright smell of fruit wafting up from his basket. My stomach grumbled eagerly and my mouth grew wet.

“How much you have?” he asked. When he spoke, bits of spittle stretched between his lips. He stared straight at me. I was not being clever then, Tovah. I held out my handful of money. He took it all and handed me one orange.

A few moments later, Mama came out and saw me biting through the bitter skin of the fruit. “Where did you get that?” she asked. “Where is the money I gave you, Rifka?”

I took her to the old man, but the man cried, “There you are! Thief! You steal my oranges! Help! Police! What monster are you, to steal from an old man!”

“I did not!” I cried. “I paid you. You took all the money I had!”

“Liar!” the old man screamed. “Liar and thief!” His spittle flew through the air. A drop landed on the back of my hand. I rubbed and rubbed it against my coat but I could not get the feel of it off me. Finally Papa gave him more money to quiet him.

I lost our food money, Tovah. Mama yelled at me and Saul made a horrible face. I bit my lip to keep from crying. The taste of the orange still danced
in my mouth. I will never eat another orange as long as I live!

Mama said, “What will we do? We have to eat.”

“Hush,” Papa said. “I will think of something.”

“It is not your fault, Rifka,” Nathan whispered. He tried smiling, but his dimples barely showed.

Now we have no money for food. Tovah, I think there is no hope I will ever be clever.

That tells you about Warsaw. How can Mama and Papa leave me in such a city?

Warsaw is bigger than any city I have ever seen. The buildings are so tall, I get dizzy looking up at them. There are carriages that move without horses to pull them. They are called “cars,” and they prowl the streets like frenzied wolves.

Warsaw is a horrible place, Tovah. I can never stay here.

Pray for me, please,

Rifka

… As conquered by the last cold air,
When winter whistles in the wind,
Alone upon a branch that’s bare
A trembling leaf is left behind.

—
Pushkin

December 1, 1919
Warsaw, Poland

Dear Tovah,

Papa and Mama met with a lady from the HIAS. That is the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. They are a group of people who help Jews with troubles like ours. The lady said the HIAS has workers all over the world. I wonder why we never met any in Berdichev or Motziv. Have you heard of them?

The lady from the HIAS gave us money to buy food. She sat with us in our room and listened to our troubles. She was no taller than I am. Wisps of silver hair kept escaping from a bun on the top of her head.

She said, “Mr. and Mrs. Nebrot, you and your
two sons should leave for America as planned. But, Rifka must stay until her ringworm heals.”

“To leave a child of twelve?” Papa said. “How can we do such a thing?”

“It is not so unusual,” the HIAS lady said. “We have handled many such cases.”

Awful things are happening to me, Tovah. My hair is falling out, my long blond hair. I have a bald patch over one ear and another on the back of my head. I can cover it with the kerchief, but it itches and itches. I know I must be ugly because Mama’s eyes look away from me all the time now.

“Can’t Mama stay with me?” I asked.

The lady from the HIAS said, “If your mama goes to America, she can work and make money for the family. She can make a home for your father and your brothers. If your mama stays in Europe with you, she will cost the family money. Only you must stay, Rifka.”

“I will not stay in Warsaw,” I told the lady from the HIAS. “If my family leaves me in Warsaw, I will find a way back to my home in Berdichev.”

The lady from the HIAS said, “I want you to leave Warsaw also, but not for Berdichev. The cure for your illness awaits you in Belgium.”

Mama said, “Belgium? What is Belgium? I have never heard of this place.”

“It is the best place for Rifka now,” the HIAS
lady said. “The people of Belgium open their arms and their homes to immigrants.”

That is what I am, Tovah. That is what you are when you are wandering between two worlds. You are an immigrant.

The HIAS lady said, “We can arrange for Rifka to stay with a family in Antwerp. She will go each day to a hospital and get treatment for her ringworm. When you are all better, Rifka, you can sail to America right from Antwerp and join your mama and papa and all your brothers.”

“I don’t want to stay with a family I don’t know,” I said. I remembered the innkeeper’s daughter in Motziv, the one who ate my herring. What if the family I stay with in Belgium is like hers?

I do not want to be anywhere without my family. Even Saul would be better than no one. If they would just let Saul stay with me.

Saul does not want to stay. All Saul cares about is getting to America.

The HIAS lady said, “In Antwerp there will be someone from my organization to look out for you, to monitor your care.”

I said, “If I can’t go to America, please send me back to Berdichev.”

Papa said, “Rifka, the Russians are angry at our family in Berdichev. We have cheated them of five strong boys. The army wanted your brothers, they
wanted Isaac and Asher and Reuben and Nathan and Saul. I could not let them have my sons.”

Nathan sat with his hands clasped in his lap. Saul stood with his back to me, staring out the little window of our room.

“Rifka,” Papa said, “you cannot go back to our home in Berdichev. We have no more home in Berdichev. You, too, would meet your death if you returned now. Your coming back would put all the family remaining, Tovah and Bubbe Ruth and Aunt Anna and all the others, in greater danger.”

I don’t want to put you in danger, Tovah. I must go to Belgium, I see that, but I feel so frightened. What will become of me?

Tovah, I am like an orphan now.

Shalom,

Rifka

… Sleep evades me, there’s no light:
Darkness wraps the earth with slumber,
Only weary tickings number
The slow hours of the night … .

—
Pushkin

February 25, 1920
Antwerp, Belgium

Dear Tovah,

Saying good-bye to Mama and Papa hurt in my chest the way it hurt when Saul held me underwater too long. The night before, Mama had slipped off her gold locket. I had never seen Mama without her locket. It came from Papa, his wedding gift to her. Mama hung the gold chain around my neck. I wrapped my hand around it and felt Mama’s warmth in the etched metal.

Papa gave me his tallis, his precious prayer shawl. He said a prayer over it first, kissed the fringe, then handed it to me.

“Why should she have Papa’s tallis?” Saul muttered. “She is only a girl.”

“Hush, Saul,” Nathan said. “Don’t make things worse.

The HIAS lady in Warsaw put me on my train the same day Mama, Papa, Nathan, and Saul left. I waved good-bye to them until my arm ached, but too soon, crowds pushed between us, and they were gone.

My train took me through Germany and into Belgium. So now I am in Antwerp. It has taken me a little while to get settled. The first room the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society found for me was dark and stuffy, like the inside of your wardrobe, Tovah. Now I am in a very nice room.

The couple who own this house are older even than Mama and Papa. They tell me to call them Gaston and Marie. Can you imagine, Tovah? They have very nice things. A quilt of blue squares covers my bed and a little red desk sits under the window. I sit at the desk for hours, fitting perfectly because I am so short, and I look out the window at the park below or read our Pushkin. I have a pitcher and bowl decorated with tiny blue flowers and a chest to keep my clothes in.

There is a painting on the wall over my bed. It shows a countryside covered with wildflowers. When I look at it, I think this is what it is like in America.

I have a braided rug to warm my feet. The woman, Marie, made it herself. She has made many of the things here.

This is the nicest place I have ever lived. My room is almost as fine as the rooms in your house, Tovah.

But it is not home. It can never be home without Mama and Papa. I miss them so much.

Papa wrote that they have settled in New York City. His letters tell about their trip across the ocean and their apartment. They have water right outside their door and a real indoor toilet just down the hall. It is odd to think of Mama and Papa living in such luxury.

My thirteenth birthday came last week. I did not tell Marie and Gaston.

I had hoped to celebrate this birthday in America.

I remember my ninth birthday when you and Hannah gave me the doll. What a beautiful doll she was, with a china head. Every morning I would smear her face with herring, pretending she was eating breakfast too.

Mama and Saul took that doll. I remember how they took her, along with the dress Aunt Rachel had made for me. I could never tell you this. Papa forbade us to speak to anyone about such matters. But Mama and Saul took my doll and my dress and traded them
at the market for potatoes. I swore I would not eat those potatoes, but I got hungry and I ate.

In America, no one will take my gifts from me.

So I am thirteen now. For Nathan and Saul’s thirteenth birthdays, Mama and Papa did a mitzvah. I am just a girl. Still, girl or not, I think God would want me to do a mitzvah too.

Early on the morning of my birthday, I crept down the stairs and took broken straws from the kitchen broom.

Back in my room, I wove the straws into a Star of David, a fragile golden Star of David. It took patience and time to twine the straws so they would hold together. When I finished, I set my star on the red desk beside Mama’s locket and the sunlight fell on them both. I stood before the window, wrapped in Papa’s tallis, and recited all the Hebrew prayers I held in my memory. Maybe you would think me foolish, Tovah, but I did a mitzvah. I celebrated my becoming a woman, just like the boys do when they become men.

Later, I placed my Star of David between the pages of our Pushkin, so I could keep it forever to remember this day.

Before I went to sleep that night, I read over my letters to you. I ran out of blank pages in the book a long time ago. Now I write in the margins around the poetry. Someday I will get these letters to you,
Tovah. I promise. When I reach America, Papa will show me how to send this properly and you will have your Pushkin back again. In America, I can buy my own Pushkin … and any other book I wish to read.

My hair is gone. All gone. I am as bald as the rabbi of Berdichev. I cover my baldness with a kerchief, but still I look very ugly.

I don’t ever leave my room. It is winter. Back in our village, I was always first out to skate on the pond. In Antwerp, I do not go outside, except for my treatments.

The treatments are not so bad as I feared. I walk to the convent once a day. The nun in charge of my case is Sister Katrina. She washes my scalp with a green soap that makes my eyes water. Then she puts me under a violet light. The light warms my head.

“You don’t mind the treatments, do you, Rifka?” Sister Katrina asks.

I smile and shake my head. I do not mind. In Belgium, where I am neither held nor loved, it feels good when Sister Katrina touches me, even if she does so only to treat my ringworm.

When my scalp is perfectly dry, Sister Katrina sprinkles it with powder. She gave me two new kerchiefs, pretty ones. She boils and dries them each time before I can wear them.

“Cleanliness is important in curing your disease,” Sister Katrina says.

She also makes me clean my nails. “You can make the disease worse by scratching the sores with your fingers,” she says.

I tell her, “My nails are clean. See!”

She says, “You can’t see the germs that make the ringworm, Rifka. Here, scrub your nails.”

So I do.

I don’t scratch my head that much anyway. Just sometimes I can’t help it. Sister Katrina is teaching me Flemish. She taught me a prayer to say in my head when I need to scratch. I think saying the prayer is supposed to keep my mind off the itching. I am not sure it is right, though, for a Jew to say Catholic prayers. I say a Hebrew prayer instead.

The sister is nice. She has dimples even deeper than Nathan’s: so deep, I can see them even when she is not smiling. Papa sends me money in his letters. He writes that I must pay Sister Katrina for the care she gives me.

I count out the money they send. I think Mama and Papa must be getting rich in America, working in the clothing factory. I think soon they will be as rich as Uncle Avrum.

Then I worry that maybe they are going without food to send this money to me.

Sister Katrina accepts nothing. “Keep it,” she says. “You need it more.”

She talks with me during my treatment. At first we spoke only in Polish, but I am picking up Flemish quickly.

After my treatments she makes tea. Sister Katrina tells me I am clever because I learn Flemish so easily. I thought you would like that, Tovah, that someone thinks I am clever.

“Really it is not so clever,” I tell her. “It is nothing special. I just learn these things.”

“You will learn even faster if you get out of your room,” Sister Katrina says. “Antwerp is a lovely city. Go out, enjoy yourself.”

“I like my room,” I say. “It too is lovely. I am happy to stay there.” I can’t explain to her how I fear this city filled with strangers.

“You do not get enough exercise,” Sister Katrina says. “You go from your room to the convent and back again. Explore more. Go on. It won’t hurt you. What you need, Rifka, is some fresh Belgian air.”

It is not exercise and fresh air I need. It is Mama and Papa. How can I enjoy myself without Mama, without my family? I do not need exercise. All I need is to get better and to go to America.

Walking to and from the convent, I pass many
beautiful sights. There are gardens everywhere, and even in the winter I can see how fine they are. I pass a market filled with fruits and vegetables and buckets of flowers of every color. And smells that make my stomach always eager to eat.

Right now I am sitting at the little desk in my room, looking out over the park. There are children who come every day. I’m beginning to recognize them. There is one girl, built so much like Hannah, slender with dark eyes and dark hair. Once or twice I have almost gone out only to be near her.

I would like to play with her, to play with all of them, but what if it is like Russia and they hate me because I am a Jew? What if it is like Poland and they hate me because I am not a Pole? What if they hate me because I have no hair?

I wish I could be back with you, Tovah, and with Hannah. Remember how Hannah would dress me up and coil my hair around her fingers? When I grew sleepy, she would set me on the warm shelf of the tiled stove and cover me in furs and sing to me.

And you. You would talk, always talk.

“Listen to this, Rifka,” you would say, and you would read me something from one of Uncle Avrum’s big books. Or you would open the Pushkin and sometimes your voice would go deep and husky. I could not understand why, but tears would stand in both our eyes. Tovah, I loved the words that
sprang from your lips. It is you, my cousin, who made me want to learn.

Hannah is like a fairy princess, so delicate and beautiful and sweet. You, Tovah, are like an old rabbi, clever and funny and brave.

Is Hannah still taking piano lessons? Marie plays piano. She is playing now.

Don’t tell this to Hannah, but I used to hate listening to her lessons. The teacher would scream and tears would roll down Hannah’s cheeks. She never got the notes right.

It is you who can really play, Tovah, and never a lesson of your own. It amazed me how you could watch Hannah’s lesson and then sit down after and play the music yourself. I never understood why Uncle Avrum didn’t give you lessons.

When I asked Mama, she said, “Uncle Avrum won’t give Tovah piano lessons because of her back.”

“Well,” I told Mama, “just because Tovah’s back isn’t straight doesn’t mean she can’t play the piano. When she was a baby and fell from the table did she hurt anything else? Did she hurt her hands so she couldn’t play? No! So why can’t Tovah have piano lessons?”

Mama said, “You couldn’t understand, Rifka.”

“I can,” I insisted. “Explain to me.”

Mama said, “Uncle Avrum gives Hannah piano lessons so she can catch a good husband.”

“What about Tovah?” I asked. “Doesn’t Uncle Avrum want her to catch a good husband too?”

Mama said, “Some girls aren’t meant to marry, Rifka.”

“But Tovah is smart and funny!” I cried. “And so clever …” I thought everyone saw you as I did.

Now that I am bald, I wonder. Maybe Mama would think I am one of those girls too. One of those girls not meant to marry.

Sister Katrina says my hair will grow back. What if it doesn’t? I think you would still love me, just as I love you. Bubbe Ruth, my dear little grandmother, she would love me, even with a bald head. But you are both very far away.

My own mama watched with such sorrow my hair falling out, and she left before it was done. What would she think if she saw me now? I have started praying for my hair to grow back. Sometimes I even say Sister Katrina’s prayer, even if it is for Catholics. I hope that does not make things worse for me.

Shalom, dear Tovah,

Rifka

BOOK: Letters From Rifka

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