Rena's Promise (3 page)

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Authors: Rena Kornreich Gelissen,Heather Dune Macadam

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Historical, #test

BOOK: Rena's Promise
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Page 9
She pauses, looking across the room as if someone were standing there in front of her, someone I cannot see. Leaning forward, she smooths the cloth on the coffee table, making sure that the edges lie perfectly flat and at right angles to the table
.
She switches topics and begins to speak tenderly of the holidays
.
Frania was one of my best friends. She'd come over to our house to celebrate Sukkot, the harvest festival. We'd build an open-air shelter which we hung with little baskets with chestnuts or apples in them, colorful rings of paper, and nuts from the roof, which was made of tree branches. Then at Christmastime, Mama would let us go over to Frania's house and help her family decorate the Christmas tree.
My favorite holiday was Yom Kippur, because on that day everyone forgave each other and would hug and make up. I loved the whole idea of wiping the slate clean and beginning new and fresh. Being hungry was all in my mind. I would dawdle on the way home just to stretch out my fast as long as possible, eating my dinner slowly and thinking about how my hunger was already gone. There was a sense of accomplishment in fasting all day, and a sense of peace after the Day of Atonement.
When Zosia, Rena's second-oldest sister, got married, she begged their father to let her keep a little bit of her hair. Rena questioned the reason married women shaved their heads. It was a promise not to be attractive to other men, Mama explained, an acknowledgment of commitment to one's husband
.
Every few weeks Mama would take off her wig and I would shave her head, as is customary in Orthodox homes. With the washbasin and Papa's clippers I guided the teeth across her scalp, careful not to catch the delicate skin with the sharp teeth of the clippers. Mama would close her eyes as if in meditation, and I'd take that moment to study the serenity in her face. Then I'd wipe her scalp as if it were porcelain china. It was so clean and shiny, soft as a baby.
She would let her eyes remain shut for just a few seconds after

 

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I was done, then she'd call out to Papa so I could shave his head. As they changed places their eyes would lock together for an instant and Mama would smile affectionately.
I dreamt of the day that I would have my head shaved as a solemn vow to my husband. It was a rite of passage that we feared yet anticipated. Still, like Zosia, I worried about being ugly. To lose one's hair was not such a wonderful thing, but to be married, that was what we yearned for, to be married like Mama and Papa.
Every time Papa passed Mama he reached out and touched her. This is how it was with themsilent greetings and sweet hellos, a hand patting her gently between the shoulder blades.
The room is bright as the sun strikes its noonday pose. Hoping Rena won't notice, I glance at my watch quickly. We've been working for less than an hour
.
"Am I confusing you?" she asks. "I don't think I'm doing this right. I should've written everything down for you so it would be clear. I'm jumping around so muchI keep thinking you know everything already, but you don't."
"You're doing fine, Rena," I assure her while scanning my notes for names I've jotted down through her discourse. There is one name that stands out from the rest, but I'm not sure why. Maybe it was the way her eyes shifted into space that caused my elbow to tingle. I've scratched a star beside his name. "Tell me about Andrzej. Who was he?"
"Andrzej Garbera was the first boy I ever . . . I have his picture in one of my books. You want to see it?" She darts into the storage area, returning with an armful of books and notepads. "I've been writing everything down for years. Anytime I remember a date or a name I write it down. It's in Polish, but maybe it'll help us as we go along."
I scan her notes and the titles of the books she's placed on the table:
The Holocaust Encyclopedia, The Abandonment of the Jews,

 

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Anus Mundi.
I have a lot of research to do and I know I will read these and many other books in the course of this project, but not today
.
"Now I've gone and made a mess." She starts to rearrange the books according to size as I open one of them and look at a photograph of people in a forest clearing. A small girl, squeezing her little hands in front of her chest, stares into the camera. I try to read the caption, but my eyes keep blurringI know what it says: the child is dead, all of the people in the clearing are dead. I feel completely overwhelmed
.
"This is Andrzej . . ." She shows me his photograph in a book of Polish World War II heroes. "it doesn't do him justice." She sighs
.
"The marketplace in Tylicz was the center of our world and from there everything was downhill," Rena tells me
.
The kosher butcher and the Gentiles' butcher stood on the avenue, as well as the cheese shop and the city hall. Here the Garbera family lived, next door to Rena's close friends Erna and Fela Drenger. Danka and Rena spent many evenings at Erna and Fela's house. Dina, Erna and Fela's cousin, was also there. Playing dominoes and acting grown up, the girls would sit in the parlor confiding their dreams to each other
.
One cold winter evening as Danka and Rena stepped outside to go home, Andrzej greeted them. "I've been waiting to bring you both home. The hill is very icy and I wouldn't want you to fall and hurt yourselves."
After that night it became a habit for Andrzej to wait outside of Erna and Fela's and walk Rena home. She was never completely sure, though, whether or not she would hear Andrzej's voice from the shadows saying
, "Servus,
Rena. Can I walk you home tonight?"
One spring night as they ambled home, for no reason at all he took her hand. Rena does the voices for me again
.
"There's no ice on the road tonight, Andrzej," I told him.

 

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"No, there isn't." But he didn't let go. The sound of water dripping, unceasing, into the stone well drew us toward the side of the lane. He slowed down as if he were looking at something and then he murmured my name very softly. "Rena?"
"Yes?" I looked up into his face, and there, beside the village well, Andrzej Garbera stole a kiss from my lips. There was no walking from that point on; I ran the whole way home.
Mama was waiting for me at the door of our farmhouse with her lantern lit and bobbing in the dark.
"Rena!" I hear her calling my name.
"I'm coming, Mama."
"Where have you been? It's late. Come inside."
"I was studying at Erna and Fela's," I answer, wiping my feet.
"Studying, eh?" She pushed my hair back from my face, looking into my eyes. I wonder if she can read the truth in them. "Go get ready for bed."
"Yes, Mama." I kiss her cheek. She smells so good.
I notice, as Rena speaks, that she dissolves from past into present tense and then back again, wavering between the worlds of "was" and "is" as if there were no definitive separation between the two
.
"Her skin was so soft.," She inhales. "I can still smell her as if she were standing right next to me. A blend of challah and vanilla extract, that is how Mama smelled." Her eyes wince shut as if the breath itself were cutting her deep inside
.
Admiring myself in front of the mirror, I brush my hair for one hundred strokes while imagining that Andrzej is stooping for a kiss. Again and again I remember how his lips felt on mine. My heart races.
"I have been kissed." I confide this enormous secret to my reflection. We blush.
With my nightdress on I crawl between cool, clean, cotton sheets and wait for Mama to come tuck me in. "Rena, you are practically glowing. What have you been up to?"

 

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"Nothing, Mama. It's just such a beautiful night." I smile in the darkness.
"Sweet sleep." She kisses me good-night.
A tiny pit of sadness that my secret can never be shared overcomes me. I have grown up going to public school with Gentiles and being taught by Catholic teachers despite the fact that we are strict Orthodox Jews. Andrzej and I have played together since we were children, but he is still a Gentile. Nothing can come of his kiss, I know that.
I knew that.
Through their preteen years Rena and Andrzej flirted quietly. As time went on, though, Andrzej, who was three years older than Rena, started attending high school in Krynica, a larger town about seven kilometers away, and they saw each other rarely. Rena was thirteen when she met him in the marketplace again. Happy to see each other, they talked about their favorite books and subjects in school. Rena made sure she maintained the proper distance away from him at all times, as she'd been instructed, but she forgot to watch the time. It was almost dark when a member of the synagogue passed by on his way to temple and saw her. It was prohibited for Rena to speak with a Gentile boy, or any boy for that matter, without a chaperone, and the man reminded her of that before going to inform her father of her conduct
.
Rena hurried down the hill alone to face the wrath of her father. Her mother wept and her father sternly forbade her to have anything to do with Andrzej ever again
.
She rarely saw and didn't speak with Andrzej for several years. Then, one night when she was fifteen, he walked her home and told her he was leaving for Krakow to join the military. Rena would miss their chance meetings, but he promised to think of a way to write to her without her parents knowing
.
A few weeks later Andrzej's sister, Hania, met Rena in the mar
-

 

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ketplace and when no one was watching, slipped her a letter from Krakow. It took Rena quite a few days to get up the courage to write him back, but finally she answered, and from that time on, either Hania or Andrzej's mother would post her letters, so that no one in the village would know they were corresponding
.
Rena worked for two summers in Krynica as an apprentice to a seamstress, dating a few boys and going to picture shows. At seventeen, she was feeling very grown up and was starting to think about her future when Andrzej wrote:
Dear Rena,
I just got my officer's stripes and am no longer living in the barracks on the base. I am now entitled to an apartment in the city. I've enclosed enough money for the train to Krakow. Would you come to marry me? You can do anything you want to with the Jewish religion. You can bring up the children in the Jewish faith. I will buy you a silver candelabra so that you may light the candles on Friday night in our home just like your mother. If this is not acceptable to your parents, I will have myself circumcised and accept the Jewish religion. I have loved you since the first day I saw you when we were children. If you love me as well, why should we not be happy? If you would come to be my wife I would be the happiest man in the whole of Poland.
Rena longed to marry and raise a family. In one way, Andrzej's proposal was a dream come true, but she knew marriage with him was an impossibility. She wrote back:
Dear Andrzej,
My parents do not want you to convert to Judaism, even that would not be enough. You must be born Jewish. I thought you understood the strict rules of our faith and our people. I'm sorry if I have led you on in any way. For me to marry a Gentile would destroy my parents. They would mourn for me as if I had died and then treat me as if I were no longer their daughter. It is impossible for you and me to be together. Despite my feelings

 

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