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CHAPTER 1
Rivka
* WHEN I REMEMBER RUSSIA, I ache with longing for the village of my birth, where the beloved grandparents magically produced candy in a handshake and told stories of long ago when God spoke to humans and enchantments filled the world. On the day we left our village, Mama covered my face with a shawl to prevent me from seeing the heads of our elders mounted on spikes at the entrance. My grandmother's head stood on one of those spikes. Did I actually see the heads or merely imagine them? The images that remain with me from that leave-taking have a gauzy, grainy texture because of the shawl. Mama succeeded in protecting me and my sister, Ruth, from the details of the gruesome scene, a significant success since the details of life in turbulent times are the most poignant part of history.
Our village had experienced other pogroms, but none as brutal as the one that drove my family out. "This is no place to raise children," Mama said. Papa seized the moment and persuaded Mama to emigrate to Palestine, the ancient Jewish homeland, the land of milk and honey. Mama hoped to find richness and sweetness there. I think she did for a time, and then she didn't. Palestine was not exactly a safe place to raise children either. Now that I am a mother, I wonder if there is any such place on earth.
When our family fled to Palestine, it was a land largely inhabited by Arabic peoples reluctantly hosting the colonizing British, who believed they owned the land, as the British were apt to do in those days. A trickle of Jews from throughout Eastern Europe flowed into the region. We Jews called it the aliyah, or "ascent," which was our term for the return of the Jews to our ancient homeland. Upon our arrival, we set up a temporary home in a relocation camp. We were not there long before our family was transformed by the hand of an unlikely change agent.
The first time I saw Miriam, I was sitting on the step in front of our family's two-room living quarters. She was playing jump rope with the other children who gathered daily in the dusty road, jabbering at each other in a tangle of languages like the throng at Babel. Miriam was a bossy girl with a thick mane of curly dark brown hair. I had curly hair too, but mine was not as untamed as Miriam's. I watched her guardedly from my vantage point. Ever since we had left Russia, I had felt utterly uprooted. I was hesitant to enter our new life in Palestine because to do so felt like a betrayal of my beloved Russia. Unlike my parents, I did not blame Russia for the pogroms and persecution of my people and chose to remember my homeland with affection instead. Russia was the place where I had known everyone in my small world, and they had known me. After I left, the world was full of strangers.
My sister, Ruth, was eight years old, and I was six when we arrived in Palestine. She was less reserved than I and immediately began carving a place for herself among the children, her wavy brown hair flying up and down as she jumped rope with them, and her large hazel eyes flashing with the challenge of keeping the rhythm.
After her turn jumping, Ruth stepped aside as I heard Miriam ask her, "Why doesn't your sister play with us? What's wrong with her?"
Ruth shrugged and answered, "She's doesn't feel like it."
Apparently not satisfied with Ruth's answer, Miriam proceeded to investigate. She flounced over and drilled her little backside into the step next to me. My heart flip-flopped. At first, Miriam said nothing as we watched the others at their jump rope game. She was smaller than I, and younger. Her hair leapt wildly from her head, daring anyone to comb it into submission. I watched from the corner of my eye as she unwrapped a hard green candy with fingers that sported chipped red nail polish. I had never seen a girl my age wearing nail polish.
She offered me the candy and I took it hesitantly. As I put it into my mouth, I asked, "Your mama lets you wear nail polish?"
"My mama lets me do anything. She lives in heaven."
"I thought only dead people are in heaven."
"They die, then they go to heaven, then they live forever." She had a tone of authority in her voice that prevented me from doubting her and made me feel foolish, as if I should understand how heaven works. "Mama watches me from heaven and she'll never let anything bad happen to me. She's more powerful now than when she was here."
"How did she die?"
"In the Jewish and Russian War."
This answer made no sense to me since I was both Jewish and Russian. "If your mama lives in heaven, then who takes care of you?" I asked.
"Papa. He's working here in the camp. I come with him because my brother goes to school and there's no one to watch me. Papa builds things, so he goes wherever people need something built. Usually he works where there are no children around and I have to play by myself. I'm glad he is building things here because I have friends to play with. Do you live here?"
"Until we save enough money to move away from the camp."
"You're lucky. I wish I lived with these friends. Do you sleep over?"
"Sleep over?"
"You know, sleep over with your friends."
"I don't have any friends." I wondered where my cousins and playmates from Russia were and what they were doing at that moment. I would wonder that forever.
Miriam cast me a look of surprise, then offered, "I'll be your friend."
"You already have friends," I said.
She shrugged. "I have a lot of friendship in me. I haven't used it all up yet. Do you think your mama would let me sleep over?"
Miriam's proposition shocked me.
"Go ask her," she commanded.
I didn't know if I wanted this girl to sleep over. Her aggressively cheerful and inquisitive style frightened me a little. I stood slowly and went inside. Maybe Mama would say no and that would settle it. Mama was busy taking up the hem in a dress that Ruth had outgrown so that I could wear it. "Mama, I met a girl named Miriam. She's outside. She asked if she can sleep over."
Mama looked surprised. "Who is she? Perhaps I should talk with her mother."
"Mama lives in heaven. You can talk to her but she can't talk back," Miriam's voice piped up behind me. I whirled around to find her standing in the doorway.
Mama scrutinized the self-assured child. "So. This is Miriam, I presume? Let's have a look at you."
Miriam stepped into the room. "Papa is working nearby. I can bring him after work and we can ask him if I can sleep over."
"You bring him then and we'll talk about it," Mama told Miriam, with a touch of amusement in her voice.
"Come on," Miriam said, motioning me back outside with a wave of her hand. "I'll teach you a jump rope song that I just made up today." Miriam's vitality was contagious and made me want to learn a jump rope song. I wanted to watch those red fingernails swiftly turn a rope with absolute control.
That evening, a weary man appeared at our door. He crushed a limp cap in one muscular hand and held his daughter's hand in the other. Mama met him on the doorstep. "You must be the papa," she said.
He smiled and tiny crinkles appeared at the corners of his eyes. "Yes, that would be me. I am Meir," he introduced himself. "My daughter says that you have invited her to spend the night here with you." He raised an inquiring eyebrow. "She has made friends with your children?" He glanced from Mama to Miriam and back to Mama as Ruth and I peered at him from inside the doorway.
"My daughters played with Miriam today and Miriam asked if she could sleep over," Mama said.
Before Mama could continue, Meir turned to Miriam and, with a pronounced twinkle in his voice that belied the attempted sternness of his words, said, "So you invited yourself. You know that's not polite, sweet pea."
"I just gave them the idea," Miriam explained.
"I know how you are full of ideas," Meir responded.
I wondered what Miriam's papa meant by that. I glanced at Ruth, who was following the conversation intently and did not look in my direction.
"It's fine with me," Mama was quick to say. "She's welcome to stay if you don't mind leaving her with strangers." It seemed peculiar to hear Mama refer to us as strangers, but then I realized that to Meir we were.
"I trust her intuition. She can stay," he said. "I'll be back to work first thing in the morning. We're putting in a water system on the north corner. I can come by for her after work tomorrow, but if she causes any difficulty, then send her away. She knows where to find me."
"That's fine," Mama told him.
Miriam gave her papa a kiss good-bye and skipped over to me and Ruth. "Where are we going to sleep?" she asked eagerly.
Ruth and I took Miriam inside and showed her the little bed we shared. Miriam touched our worn yet brightly colored quilt with her fingertips as if memorizing every stitch.
"My grandma made this quilt for us from scraps of our baby clothes. She died in Russia," I told her.
"My mama died in Russia too," Miriam informed me, her eyes wide with astonishment, as if this was a coincidence that had solved a great mystery. "I bet Mama met your grandma in heaven and they decided to make us friends." The minute Miriam said it, I believed it.
The next evening, when Meir came to collect his daughter, Papa insisted that he stay for a cup of tea. Mama hastened to light the gas plate to heat some water.
"I can't stay long. I have to get home to my son," Meir said with a slight note of worry in his voice. "He is only ten years old."
"Who looks after him while you are at work?" Mama asked.
"Well, he goes to school most of the day, of course. And afterward he goes home. A neighbor checks in on him for me. I don't like to leave him alone for so much of the time, but I have no other choice. Thank goodness he is responsible." Meir sighed. "In Russia, I worked as a carpenter, but I seem to have a knack for building larger things than furniture. In Palestine, I have been fortunate to find work designing and building houses and other buildings, drainage systems, water systems, small bridges, anything at all. I have a good instinct for how much pressure something can bear before it will collapse." He paused and looked off into the distance. "Unfortunately, this instinct failed me when it came to my late wife. She did not have the temperament for life in Russia. She attacked a captain with a candlestick during a pogrom. It would have been a funny story about her bravery and spirit, I suppose, if he hadn't killed her. So now I am on my own with the children." I tried to imagine Miriam's mother, a heroine who had died bravely.
"Oh no," Mama responded, and it sounded as if all the breath had gone out of her. "I'm so sorry. We left after a particularly vicious pogrom in which my mother was murdered."
I thought about the ride past the wall of the village, my face wrapped in Mama's shawl.
There was an awkward pause in the conversation, which Miriam dispelled when she tugged at Meir's sleeve. "May I sleep over again?"
"You haven't been invited, sweet pea."
"She's welcome to stay," Mama offered. "She was no trouble at all. I would be happy to keep her anytime."
"See? They don't mind," Miriam pleaded.
"But I want to spend some time with you tonight. I miss you." Meir put his arm around Miriam's skinny waist. "Avram misses you too."
"No he doesn't," Miriam thrust out her lip. She turned to Mama. "Can I sleep over tomorrow?"
Mama laughed. "You must do as your father wishes," she said.
"You will wear out your welcome," Meir warned.
But she didn't. Miriam slept over most of the nights that week and the following week. On Friday, when Meir came to pick up Miriam, he informed us that he had completed the job for which he had been hired at the camp and he would be moving on to his next job. "You will have to say good-bye to your friends for now, sweet pea," Meir told his sorrowful daughter.
"I want Rivka and Ruth to come to my house," Miriam demanded. "Give them our address." She took a crumpled candy wrapper from her pocket. "Write it here." She pointed with a pink painted fingernail.
Mama handed Meir a piece of paper. "Yes, write down your address and we will come visit. Why don't we come on Sunday and I'll cook something for all of us for dinner? Something healthy. You let that child eat entirely too much candy," Mama scolded.
Meir looked sheepish as he replied, "I would love to have you cook something healthy for us on Sunday; are you sure it's no bother?"
"It would be my pleasure."
On Sunday, Papa raised his hand to knock on the door just as Miriam flung it open. Her eyes sparkled and her crazy mane flopped about her shoulders. "I have a plan, I have a plan," she sang merrily, dancing on her tiptoes.
"Come in," Meir greeted. "Look at all this food you have brought. This is too expensive. You must let me pay for this food. My goodness."
Miriam's brother, Avram, immune to his sister's exuberance, did not budge from his nest in a heap of pillows where he sat with a book propped against his knee. I had the feeling that I had seen Avram somewhere before. I could tell that Ruth remained unimpressed by him. He examined us with a thinly veiled expression of irritation before returning to his book.
An impish smile played on Meir's lips as he informed us, "Miriam has a plan."
"So we hear," Papa laughed.
"It is an excellent plan," Meir added.
"It is an excellent plan," Miriam repeated, fit to burst with her idea. "I thought of it all by myself."
"We propose that you live with us until you establish yourselves in Palestine." Meir held up a hand. "Before you protest, let me say that the arrangement would serve us both. You will have a home and I will have someone to care for my children while I am at work. And to cook for us. We will pool our resources. We will be better off together than we are separately," Meir argued his point, anxious to win Mama and Papa over. I watched my parents to see if they were being convinced.
"Say yes. Say yes, yes, yes!" Miriam shouted. "Then I can show you your rooms! Every night will be a sleepover!"
"You must say yes," Meir pleaded. "You have no idea what a relief it would be for me."
Mama wagged an accusatory finger at Miriam. "You rascal."
"She dreamt this up, but there hasn't been such a good idea since the fulcrum was invented," Meir exclaimed.
Miriam skipped to a doorway and announced, "This will be your room. Come see."
Meir suggested that Mama and Papa sleep in the master bedroom, where Papa, who was building a business as a tailor, would have space to set up his sewing machine. We girls would share a large bedroom at the back of the house, and Avram would keep his smaller bedroom at the front. When Meir said he would sleep in the living room on the couch, Papa immediately protested, "It isn't right to put you out of your bed."
Meir assured him that he could sleep through anything and it was the most practical arrangement. "When your tailoring business takes off, then we will be in a position to look for a larger house for all of us," Meir said. "That is, if we get along together. But there is only one way to find out."
When we moved in with Miriam's family, my childhood, and Ruth's, became inextricably bound with the childhoods of Miriam and Avram. Mama so thoroughly adopted Miriam and Avram that we almost could not remember a time when she had not mothered them. Mama felt it was her duty to stand in as a surrogate mother for Meir's children because she identified so profoundly with the woman who had run screaming into the street waving her candlesticks in fury. I think Mama must have sometimes wondered how close she might have come to that end herself had we remained in Russia. Every now and then I caught her speaking aloud to the absent woman whose children she was raising. "Look at your Avram," she would say (when she thought no one was listening), "how tall he is and how well he does in school. You must be so proud."
Papa and Meir, as it turned out, were like twins who had been separated at birth and found each other again later in life. They shared a passion for chess, which they played nearly every evening, while they rubbed their respective chins, leaned back precariously in their chairs, and read the Yiddish newspaper aloud to each other between moves and sips of tea. Mama never failed to chide them about tipping back in the chairs. "You'll break the rungs out of those chairs," she would complain, and then mutter something barely audible about men and their failings.
It didn't take long for Avram to warm to our family, especially me. We soon became inseparable. Avid readers, we passed books back and forth to each other as frequently as passing the salt and pepper shakers at the dinner table. We invented an elaborate game with sticks and rocks and other found objects. We created a town, with people, houses, and public buildings. Everyone in the town had a job.
"This is Mr. Kaplan, the shopkeeper," I said as I moved a twig to a cinder block and put more twigs there to represent Mr. Kaplan's family. "He has a large family and goats and chickens, and his wife is beautiful even though she's a little fat. But the other people in the town consider her beautiful."
"This is Mr. Cohen," Avram said as he placed another twig. "He's a teacher who's pious and studious. He doesn't care much for Mr. Kaplan, who is too ostentatious for his tastes."
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Memories from Cherry Harvest"
by .
Copyright © 2012 Amy Wachspress.
Excerpted by permission of Counterpoint.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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