The Belief in Angels (28 page)

I have not thought about my sister Anna for many years. I never met her. She is born after my parents came to live in America and died seven years before I came to live with them. Her passing a tragedy the family did not discuss.

Wendy, her child, was born in the mental institution Bellevue Hospital. When the infant was released to live with my parents after the birth, Anna remained at Bellevue. My parents trusted the nurses would take care of her. They thought she might be safer there. She passed a few years later from heart disease, a complication of her disorder. We never spoke of her again.

The child, Wendy, lived with my parents in Brooklyn for ten years believing herself to be their daughter.

Wendy’s father is a man we never knew. We only knew he was a monster. A man who fled after he forced himself into the apartment when no one was around and raped Anna, a woman with a mental disorder. Down’s syndrome.

The guilt my parents suffered. They were still working and sometimes left her alone in the apartment. She was twenty at the time and independent.

When I came to America and lived with my parents, Wendy was a youngster. I marveled at her intelligence and thought she would become the scholar my father had wanted each of us to become.

In the year I spent with them in the Brooklyn apartment, Wendy and I found a quiet appreciation for each other. Later came a time when she couldn’t stay with my
mater.
My
foter
passed and my
mater,
now sick and elderly, was barely able to take care of herself without assistance from the family. No one knew what to do with the girl. Oizer offered to take her, but he had five children and four grandchildren already. He already took so much on himself. None of the others could take care of the child. Rose and Mocher were too old.

I almost laugh out loud to think of it. I thought
I
was old. I was forty and Yetta … well, now I know Yetta was fifty-two years old when we adopted Wendy.

She kept this secret, like others, with her until after she died. Her youngest sister grudgingly gave me Yetta’s correct age when I needed it for the headstone recently. Yetta was the eldest, not the middle, sister. Not what the
shadchen
led us to believe many years ago.

In the end, I agreed to take Wendy. It was my responsibility to care for this child. Yetta and Rose arranged a quick adoption with Oizer’s lawyer.

We signed the papers. Yetta wanted her. Wendy was the child she could not, would not, conceive with me. I had never had a want, a need, for a child. Only work. But Yetta believed a child was the natural progression of a marriage, even at her age, and longed for someone to wrap her arms around and care for.

Those were the biggest stones that fell and created the wall between us all those years ago. She became absorbed by the child and gave all the love, all the kindness and gentle caring she possessed, to her. Spoiled her with attention.

I felt left out. I resented the child’s presence.

Yetta and I didn’t know that by behaving as we did toward each other, we shaped her understanding of what a marriage should be. All she saw was frustrated anger and silence. If we had battled like my TV wrestlers it might have relieved the tension.

I behaved like another spoiled child during those years. I shut them out. Work became my focus and my single goal the accumulation of wealth.

For what? For Wendy and her men? For the children? One now lying in the ground? All those years of work and saving.

I should have followed Rose and Mocher down to Florida long ago and retired. I had no need to work any longer and yet I still made the walk to the trolley, to the store. I still spent my days bent over a sewing machine, my shoulders hunched and stiff with arthritis. Every bone in my body aches now in the warm weather as well as the cold. The older, broken ones and the ones I tortured with my work.

I have more help now. The Chinese women who spend their time gossiping while they work. They are good workers. I have learned Chinese over the years and I secretly enjoy the chatter, although it annoyed me before Yetta’s passing.

These days this is the sole conversation I have besides the ones with customers, who come with less and less frequency. People don’t repair their clothing anymore. They buy new, cheap clothing and throw the old away.

Wasteful.

It is time. Time to close the shops and retire.

To what? What do I have to look forward to with a retirement? Long days with a TV and monthly visits from this one and the two remaining grandchildren?

Who will comfort those children?

When I went to the home to sit with the children before the funeral, I knew I would find it difficult to see their faces. I saw the same loss in their eyes I had seen in Reizel and Oizer’s all those years ago.

Who will comfort the children?

As the rabbi’s voice floats over us, I find the face of the young
shomeret.
I am thinking again, this face is familiar. How do I know this face?

Yet it is not her I remember. It is someone else.

I glanced down to the copy of the Bible she holds in her hands. Her hands.

A memory floods back to me.

A girl on a train.

A girl whose face I saw briefly in moonlight filtering through a forest on a train to Hell. A girl whose hand I held all night.

Rinna
.

Rinna.

I force my mind away from the memory of that moment, of that place. Dwelling there is not allowed. That is the place I lived as another.

The rabbi finishes and gestures to me to pick up the shovel. I do, carefully keeping the blade held pointing downwards because this use of the shovel is different from all other uses. I put three shovelfuls into the grave and stick the blade back in the earth. To pass it to someone would be to pass my grief.

I watch as the father, the hated man, goes to take the shovel. I am in front of him in two steps. “No,” I hiss at him. “You don’t deserve this
mitzvah.
You are the reason the child is in this grave. If you had been where you were supposed to be he would not be dead. You’re a good-for-nothing.”

I watch as my words, like blows, reflect on his face. He is shocked. Throughout his marriage to my daughter I never said to him what I thought of him. For years I felt he was better than nothing for her. Better married than divorced. When he stole the money I gave and spent it like a fool, gambling, I said nothing. I said nothing to the man who left my daughter, left my grandchildren, and moved away without making sure they were cared for.

He is not a man. He is a selfish boy.

I knew this when Wendy brought him home one day to introduce us to him. I knew this all along. There is no reason to deny this now. I could kill him. I could lift this shovel and smash it against his head. I could watch him fall into this hole in the earth with his child. I could do it easily.

I notice the man in the grave next to my grandson’s coffin. I recognize the uniform.

I will protect him now
, Pieter says in a woman’s voice.

I close my eyes to shut away the vision.

The rabbi’s hand is on my arm, leading me back to where I was standing before. I peer back to see the father turning away from the shovel.

I won’t go back to the home with the father. I won’t see him. I will go to my own apartment to sit
shiva.

My daughter walks forward in the disgraceful black dress. I see she is broken. She weeps as she shovels the dirt.

I want to go to her, embrace her, try to take her pain. I know this will be impossible. Nothing will take her pain. This is the day she will remember as the day her pain took up residence and charged
her
rent for the trouble.

This is good. She will know and understand what pain is. She will suffer for her sins. She will know suffering.

It hits me. Moses has drowned on the same day I lost Idel. September 19
^th
. Idel and Berl both gone on that same day. What can this mean? How can this be?

Moses and Idel.

And I realize it is also my sin I am angry with. I am remembering my failure.

I remember my granddaughter, who pleaded with me to let them come and live with us. To take the children so they could be safe from the monsters in their home. It is as much my fault, the death of my sweet grandson, as the parents’. I knew and I failed to protect them.

This is
my
failure.

Time for the Kaddish. The rabbi begins.

“Exalted and hallowed be His great Name.”

“Amen,” we answer.

“Throughout the world which He has created according to His will, may His Kingship reign and His redemption come forth and hasten the coming of His Redeemer. In your life and in your days and in the lifetime of the entire House of Israel, speedily and quickly say, Amen.”

“Amen.”

“May His great Name be blessed in this world and in all worlds. Blessed and praised exalted and extolled, honored, adored and lauded be the Name of the Holy One blessed be. Way beyond all the blessings, hymns, praises and consolations uttered in the world; and say, Amen.”

“Amen.”

“May there be abundant peace from heaven, and a good life for us and for all and say, Amen.”

Amen.

“He who makes peace in His heaven, may he make peace for us and for all Israel; and say, Amen.”

Amen.

The service is over. The father has already gone. Wendy and the
nebish
walk away. No words. No kindness. No acknowledgement to anyone, not even the rabbi.

Her rudeness, usually an annoyance, becomes a murderer’s stab in this moment. Every ounce of blood in my body turns cold as I watch her step into the sedan without a glance back. I go to the rabbi and thank him. I greet and thank the members of my synagogue who have come to mourn.

The
shomeret,
the girl, nods at me now. Her eyes are kind. She walks to my side and takes my arm to walk with me to the limousine. She is quiet and courteous with me. At the car she turns and faces me.

“My mother is here. We would like to come and sit
shiva
with you, if you would allow it?”

“Of course,” I assure her. “It would be an honor to have you and your family in my home.”

Such a good girl, this one. Why couldn’t Wendy be so good? The
shomeret
introduces me to her mother, who has followed us in the procession to the cars and now steps forward. The girl’s mother takes my hand. I look into her eyes and in one second the heart left beating in a ditch bursts in my chest again.

Szaja’s heart. A miracle.

The blank world is colored in this instant. We stand in a verdant meadow, not a cemetery. I understand why the
shomeret
appeared familiar. Here in her mother is the face burned into Szaja’s fractured mind.

The girl on the train.

Rinna.

How strange. Unimaginable. I spent many years wondering if she escaped or lived to work with the women somewhere in the camp. Or the worst.

“I’m sorry Szaja,” she says, and I know she knows, has known, who I am.

I cannot take in air. My throat is dry. A deep sob strains against my throat and I fight to keep it from escaping in a wild-sounding noise. I grasp her hand, her
hant,
and let my breathing come again.

Later, much later, after the joy of this moment and the ones that follow, I realize I have come to believe in angels again, in this moment, despite the new rabbi’s teachings. Only an angel could bring me a woman who could ease a life’s pain in the midst of a funeral.

Jules, 12 years | May 10th, 1974

AWAKE AND ASLEEP

Open.

I walk in the direction of my neighborhood from the elementary school I used to attend. Stillton. It’s sort of like waking up in the middle of a dream, but I don’t think I’m dreaming. I can’t gather any sense of the time, but it seems late in the day. I know this because of where the sun sits in the sky. There’s no traffic and there are no kids out playing. I think it might be dinnertime.

When I step into the yard at our house everything sounds quiet. I see a different car in the driveway. Someone must be visiting. Usually this means a party and loud music, but I don’t see Wendy’s car.