Under a Red Sky (6 page)

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Authors: Haya Leah Molnar

BOOK: Under a Red Sky
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TODAY IS MY FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL,
and I'm as excited as the day when I went to the market with Grandpa Yosef for the first time. It's 6:00 a.m. and I'm already up. My new school uniform is laid out on the chair next to my bed. The uniform is a black-and-white checkered cotton smock that is worn over my regular clothes like a coat, but it buttons at the back. Mama carefully starched and ironed its round white collar until it was so stiff that it leaves red marks against my neck. There's also a pinafore that wraps around my waist and ties at the back with a bow. It has wavy shoulders that remind me of butterfly wings. On regular school days we are to wear a black pinafore, but on special days and holidays, we get to wear a white one. Since the first day of school is a special occasion, Mama's been notified in advance that I'm to wear the white one. The notice also specified a white headband to keep my hair off my face, white knee-high socks, and polished black shoes. Finally, my teeth must be brushed thoroughly, and my nails must be cut and spotlessly clean. Each student's appearance will be inspected by the teacher. I'm nervous, but I'm ready. Eventually I will become
a Pioneer and get to wear a red silk scarf. But I won't be eligible for that until second grade.
I'm not hungry at breakfast, but Mama insists that I take at least a few bites of bread with butter as I gulp down my hot chocolate. After I've brushed my teeth and smiled at myself in the bathroom mirror to make sure they're white, Mama parts my hair precisely in the middle and braids it into two tight pigtails. She folds each pigtail in half and secures the ends with bobby pins that stick into my scalp. Then she ties two small white bows around the bunches and hands me the white headband. I slide it over my forehead and tuck in a few stray hairs. Everything feels tightly pulled back. I barely recognize myself in the armoire mirror. I have been transformed into a student.
I'm itching to get going, but Mama pulls me down to sit on the edge of the bed next to her. “I have something important to tell you before you take off,” she says in a serious voice I do not like. “Never, ever, repeat anything you hear in this house to anyone, especially any talk about before or after the war or about the Party. None of our conversations are to be discussed outside this house, not even with the other kids in school,” she adds, looking at me intently as if I've already done something wrong.
“But, Mama, I don't know any of the kids yet,” I argue. “I have no idea what we're going to talk about.”
“Say nothing,” she continues. “There are children who have gotten their parents in trouble just because they repeated things that they shouldn't have heard at home. Surely those kids didn't mean to cause any harm to their parents, but they did. What innocently came out of their mouths became a weapon the Securitate used as evidence against the parents. These kids
now live in orphanages like the one next door because their parents are in jail and there's no one who can care for them. We don't want to have that kind of thing happen to us, do we?”
Mama's left eyebrow arches as I shake my head vigorously. It occurs to me that Eugenia, the girl with the flying braids, might be one of these children. Mama surveys my face and nods in approval. “Good. If anyone wants to know anything about what we discuss at home, you come and tell me first. Just play dumb and tell them you know nothing. Understood?” I nod again, and she gives me a big hug and kiss. “You'd better run now. Your tata's going to take you this morning.”
 
MY FATHER IS WAITING for me in the foyer and offers me his warm hand as we walk out into the street. He seems happy, whistling a familiar tune and taking great strides past the old houses down our block. I have a hard time keeping up with him because his legs are very long and he walks quickly.
The school is a big red-brick building. In the lobby there is a giant framed print of a historic monument. “Stand right here next to this picture,” Tata tells me. “I'm going to take a photo of you in front of Trajan's column.” I lean against the wall and look up. I'm dwarfed as my eyes follow the length of the picture all the way to the vaulted ceiling.
“Look back at me and smile,” Tata says as his camera starts to click.
 
BEFORE I KNOW IT I'm standing in line in front of the classroom door along with many other boys and girls. The girls are all wearing the exact same uniform as I am, and the boys are wearing gray
trousers, white shirts, and ties. Tata whispers in my ear, “Just listen to the teacher, do as you're told, and you'll be all right.” He offers me his cheek, which I barely have time to brush with a kiss before he waves goodbye and I enter the classroom.
“Attention, everyone. Children, pay attention!” Comrade Popescu commands. Our teacher is a trim woman with steel blue eyes and a razor-sharp voice. “I want every one of you to line up according to your height, the shortest in the front and the tallest in the back.” We scramble as we look at each other to determine who is taller than whom, and we start to giggle. Comrade Popescu strikes a wooden ruler against her desk with a thud. Our sudden silence is interrupted by a fly buzzing right above my head and by someone whispering in the back of the room. “I didn't say you could talk while you do this. Silence!” Comrade Popescu says, striking her ruler like a thunderbolt.
Once we're seated according to height—the shortest in the front, the tallest in the back—Comrade Popescu reads our names off attendance cards in alphabetical order. Even though I'm sitting in the front row because I'm short, I am the last one on the roll call. “Zimmermann, Eva!” My name reverberates in the room. I raise my hand quickly and answer “Present!”
Comrade Popescu distributes pencils and notebooks. She outlines all the different subjects that we will be studying throughout the year: the Romanian alphabet, basic grammar, calligraphy, arithmetic, history, and geography. Each subject will have its own homework assignment to be completed in its own separate notebook and handed in the next day. We will be graded on neatness and penmanship as well as content. Attendance and behavior will count
equally. Whoever does not advance according to the curriculum will be left back to repeat the grade until he or she gets it right.
“Those of you who understand what I've just said, raise your hands!” She surveys our stiff, outstretched arms. “Good,” she mutters. She speaks slowly to no one in particular, as if all of us were one person. “Stack your notebooks on your desks, and place your pencils and erasers in your pencil holders. Now I want you to stand with your shoulders back and your faces forward. If you slouch, you will be detained in this room instead of going to recess with the rest of the class. You will exit the room single file in the order that you've entered it. Does everyone understand this?”
We listen in silence, still seated, until Comrade Popescu raises her voice and repeats, “Are all forty of you deaf and dumb? Do you not understand? Answer me, ‘Yes, Comrade Popescu, we understand, ' and stand up immediately!”
We shout, “Yes, Comrade Popescu, we understand!” Then we stand and march toward the door. Comrade Popescu is waiting as we walk past her single file into the yard. I'm close to the door when I notice a notebook on one of the desks nearby, its white pages turning with the breeze from the yard. I place my hand on the page to caress its smooth whiteness and quickly close the notebook when I feel the sting of Comrade Popescu's ruler on my knuckles. “I didn't tell you to touch anything,” she says in a calm voice. I nod and step into the blinding light of the courtyard, where my eyes well up and my head swims backward.
COMRADE POPESCU
is droning on. “Religion and superstition are one and the same thing.” This makes me uncomfortable because it reminds me of Tata, who sneers whenever the subject of religion comes up. “The Communist Party”—Comrade Popescu's voice sounds as if she's speaking from the bottom of a wooden barrel—“is our savior because it defines our economic existence and our ideological reality. All comrades can participate in the decision-making process because each and every one of us is a Romanian and a member of the Proletariat. We are all workers, united and equal in the eyes of the Party. Your homework for tomorrow is to write a short composition entitled ‘What the Communist Party Means to Me.'”
I've been waiting for the recess bell, but instead the church bells down the street start to peal, making the windows and wooden desks vibrate.
“Please remember that you will be graded on your penmanship as much as on the content of your composition,” Comrade Popescu continues as she crosses herself automatically at the ringing of the
church bells. If religion is just superstition, I wonder, why does the Party allow the church bells to ring? I decide at that moment that when it comes to religion and the Communist Party, nothing makes sense.
 
AT RECESS EVERYONE IS JUMPING around in the yard. A bunch of girls are playing hopscotch on the chalk squares drawn on the gray asphalt. Another group of kids are jumping rope and singing a tune I know, but I don't hum along. Instead I stand alone, leaning against the cool bricks of the building, and watch everyone else play. There are lots of questions in my head, questions I know I cannot ask because the answers may lead to trouble for me and my parents, the way Mama warned me on my first day of school. But I really do want to know why Comrade Popescu crosses herself when the church bells ring. What does the Party have against religion, and why does Tata believe in math and science instead of God?
 
SCHOOL TURNS OUT to be a lot more demanding than I expected. When Mama comes home from work, she spends at least two hours every night going over homework assignments with me. I dread doing this, not because the homework is so difficult, but there's so much of it, I have no time left for any reading—and that's the best part about going to bed at night.
“Don't complain, Eva. You started first grade after you turned seven, so you got to play for an extra year. When I was growing up, first grade started when we were six.” I roll my eyes, but Mama ignores me as she continues to check each answer in my math assignment.
Everyone in the class is terrified of Comrade Popescu, yet despite my fear of her, I find her lectures interesting. I love listening to her stories about Romania's past, about how we were once ruled by the greatest civilizations on earth—the Greeks, the Romans, and the Ottomans. Throughout our history, Comrade Popescu tells us, Romanians have survived invasions by many tyrants, including the Mongols, the Tatars, and the Huns—all savage tribes that pillaged the land, raped our women, and oppressed our people. She goes on to explain that even though our conquerors brought with them a lot of suffering, they also enriched our culture with many contributions.
“Do any of you know where black Kalamata olives, stuffed grape leaves, and feta cheese come from?”
Claudia, a girl with a huge white ribbon in her hair, raises her hand.
“Yes?” Comrade Popescu motions to Claudia to speak.
“All of these products come from our Cooperative Farmers' Market,” Claudia replies.
The look on Comrade Popescu's face is of utter disgust as she corrects Claudia. “Yes, of course. However, I didn't ask you how we purchase these products in modern times. I asked you where they originated from, culturally. You must listen carefully before you answer a question. Does anyone know from which country we inherited these foods?” We are silent. “Very well,” she continues. “Kalamata olives, feta cheese, and stuffed grape leaves all came from our Greek ancestors. They also brought with them baklava, our sweet pastry. But more important, they brought with them the way we reason, the way we think; philosophy, mathematics, and our love of theater all come from the Greeks. Anyone care to guess
which food that we consider the most basic Romanian fare was brought to us by our Roman conquerors?”
There are no raised hands.
“What's the matter with you all? Didn't your parents teach you to take any chances? I said you may guess, so take a guess.” She is still met with silence. “Very well, then,” Comrade Popescu continues. “Our m
m
lig
came from the Romans. In Italy they call it polenta. However, they do not serve it as we do, with feta cheese. They fry it or bake it. You see, we combined two culinary traditions, the Greek feta cheese and the Roman polenta, to make our very own Romanian m
m
lig
cu brânz
—polenta with cheese. The point I'm trying to make you understand is that our conquerors enriched us in many ways. We became more inventive, more versatile, because of them. Perhaps in spite of them,” she adds.
When she speaks about our ancestors, Comrade Popescu's blue eyes turn greenish. Her face relaxes and becomes almost kind, and her voice loses its edge. It is easy to see how much she loves many of the places that she is describing, how proud she is of the Romanian people.
“To the northwest is Transylvania, where my father comes from,” she says, pointing with her ruler to that area of the map. “This part of the country was once under the Austro-Hungarian empire, which is why most of the population there speaks Hungarian and German in addition to Romanian.” Her voice trails off as if she's lost her train of thought, and then she asks, “Do any of you know what we received from the Soviet Union, our Communist ally?”
My hand goes up as if it has a mind of its own.
“Yes?” Comrade Popescu motions to me.
“The color red?”
Everyone in the class starts to snicker, but Comrade Popescu isn't smiling. Instead she ignores my answer entirely and continues, “I'd like you all to think deeply about what makes each of you Romanian. Tonight's homework assignment is to answer the following question: What constitutes a true Romanian and how is our country influenced by our relationship to the USSR? I'm well aware that we have not discussed the Soviet Union yet, but I'd like to get your thoughts just the same. You are to write no more or less than one page. Any questions?” Comrade Popescu scans our blank faces, and since no hands are raised, she tells us to go home, think about this some more, and come back with our thoughts on the subject.
 
I'M SO EXCITED about this assignment that I run home and tell Tata all about it, hoping to impress him with my new knowledge of history. But instead of giving me praise and help with my homework, Tata gets upset.

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