Lilli's Quest (9 page)

There was also Isabel's friend, Ruth, the daughter of the Moskin family, the owners of the hotel. Although much of the placid and friendly twelve-year-old's time
was taken up serving as governess for the young children of the guests, she and I had become friends. Unlike Isabel, Ruth was soft-spoken, and sensitive to others. She told me that Isabel was boy-crazy and had had a crush on Roy, whom she had already run into near the bungalow colony
before
my arrival. So that accounted, I suppose, for some of Isabel's hostility toward me. Ruth, too, admitted she was anxious to learn how to attract boys, and offered to teach me the dance rage of the day, the Lindy Hop. We spent many an evening practicing to canned music in the empty casino.

In spite of my encounter with the crazed dog, I also resumed hiking in the early morning before breakfast. One morning, I crossed the road in search of the bungalow colony where Roy had been staying. I had a vague memory of his having shown me his cabin on that awful morning when I'd been bitten. I had brought Roy's directions with me, and a good thing I did, as the cottages, all twelve of them, looked exactly alike. They were painted dark green with white shutters, and had numbers nailed to the front doors. Without Roy's note, I'd never have known which one held the hidden key.

Although it was still very early, many residents of the colony were up and about, some heading for the nearby lake to fish, so I left the grounds and continued my usual outing before returning to Shady Pines. I arrived at the hotel in a pleasantly dreamy state. I was rid of Isabel,
and I would soon return to my aunt and uncle's house in Westchester, where I would attend the local high school, on a grade level appropriate to my age. I could look forward to mail from my friend Karl in England, and from Roy who, in my thoughts, had taken on a dangerous but thrilling allure.

On approaching the hotel grounds, however, my selfish meanderings fled, as it was immediately obvious that something serious was taking place. An ambulance was pulled up onto the lawn directly in front of the main building. Hotel guests and staff were milling about in a state of noise and confusion. Somewhere in their midst, I caught sight of my Uncle Herman, with his balding head and black-rimmed eyeglasses. He was waving his arms about and trying to make his way through the imploring crowd, which was apparently seeking information from him.

A pang of terror gripped me. I sensed immediately that something had happened to Aunt Harriette. I soon learned that, as in the case of Isabel and the Brandts, my aunt and uncle and I were fated to leave Shady Pines before finishing our intended stay. Although my aunt had never complained of illness, she seemed to tire easily recently. On this particular morning, she had awakened, cried out in pain to my uncle, pressed her hand to her abdomen, and fainted. An ambulance had been called to take her to the small hospital in Harper's Falls. The following day, she would be transported by long-distance
ambulance to a hospital in Westchester, and my uncle and I would follow in the Cadillac. Visits to doctors would ensue, and a sleep-in nurse would be added to the housekeeping staff in the big house. My brief idyll was about to come to an end. Once again, there would be a painful parting. My guilt at having taken Helga's place seized me as never before. My life in America would be changed forever, I was sure, and I would be punished, as I deserved to be.

Eleven

At first, the cause of Aunt Harriette's stabbing abdominal pain was difficult for the doctors to diagnose. She admitted to having had gripping attacks in the past, which she had managed to conceal. “I've always hated to spoil a good time,” she confessed to me as she lay in her hospital bed. Nearly a week had passed since my aunt had been hospitalized, and she was yearning to go home. “So many things to do. I want to get you some sports equipment, Helga, for when you enter high school, and ice skates for the winter. We have so many ponds that freeze over, as well as the town rink.” I stroked her smooth-as-silk hand. “Don't think about me, Aunt Harriette. Just think of getting well.”

The news of my aunt's impending surgery followed all too quickly. She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, a too-often deadly form of the disease. The only hope lay in the removal of the affected organs. Her total recovery time would be six to eight weeks. This devastating news was frightening enough, before my uncle told me, confidentially, that he feared for her survival.
Arrangements
,
however, had been made for me during the time of my aunt's incapacity—the Brandts had offered to take me into their apartment in the Bronx! Sally Brandt, Isabel's mother, would do anything for her longtime friend. I would go to school there, and share a room with my recent acquaintance, Isabel. My weak protests, promises that I would be no trouble if I was allowed to stay in Westchester and attend the local high school, that I wanted to be closer to Aunt Harriette in the hospital, were to no avail. Both my aunt and uncle decreed that they would be failing in their loyalty to Papa if they did not see to it that I was safe and in a good home during this trying time.

On a late-summer day, just after the start of the new school year, Mrs. Brandt and Isabel came to pick me up and take me home with them to the Bronx. The scene was Aunt Harriette's room in the hospital. Always anxious to appear bright and chipper, my courageous aunt had skillfully applied her makeup, eyes ringed as usual with black liner, eyelids shimmering with a purplish-blue hue that matched her eye color. She sat up against numerous pillows, wearing a luxurious satin bed jacket. The scent of her cologne overrode the antiseptic odor of the room. It was hard to believe that, within a day or two, she would undergo a painful and debilitating operation, as she commanded everyone, “No crying, no crying.”

Isabel and I just stared at each other dumbly at
first. She finally mumbled something about having sent a postcard to Ruth and me, and apparently not having received a reply. The card, which was addressed to Ruth, had explained about Isabel's brother enlisting in the Air Force, and I'd left it to Ruth to respond. After inquiring politely about my leg, the usual nosy Isabel emerged, asking if I'd been in touch with Roy, if Ruth and I had become friends, and whether we'd been spending time together. I found Isabel's questions annoying and out of place. But I suppose she was
trying
to be more friendly than on the day when she'd swept out of our room at Shady Pines.

When the time came to say our goodbyes, Isabel and Mrs. Brandt preceded me and waited outside in the corridor.

“No crying, no crying,” Aunt Harriette again insisted. “You know what that will do to my eye makeup.” Choking on unspoken words, I picked up my suitcase and tiptoed out of the room to join my new hosts for the trip to the Bronx.

It was early evening when we rose up in the elevator to the fourth floor of the brick apartment building on the Grand Concourse. The journey from Westchester had involved taking a bus, and then a very hot and airless subway train. Isabel assured me that the trip took much less time by car, and wasn't nearly so exhausting.

I had never been in an American apartment. The rooms were much smaller and lower-ceilinged than the ones we'd lived in on Heinrichstrasse. The walls were painted in colors like peach and aquamarine, and the rooms were crammed with furniture. The bathroom had blue tiles and wallpaper that depicted fish swimming in and out of intricate nets. There was a lot to look at.

I was invited to sit in a very plush chair in the living room, sipping an ice-cold lemonade while Isabel and her mother bickered about something in the kitchen. As I stared at my unopened suitcase on the floor beside me, I thought of my many arrivals in many different places. Harwich, where the Kindertransport had deposited me; the Rathbone farm where Tim had been crying in the doorway; the farm hostel where I'd had my clothing burned, my hair cut, and been given a longed-for bath.

Eventually, Mrs. Brandt entered the room. “All set,” she announced. “We have moved Arnold's bed from the dining alcove into Isabel's room. Once again you'll be roommates. Just like at Shady Pines, and you'll have space for your belongings. Come in, now, dear, and unpack.”

The following day, Uncle Herman picked me up at the Brandts and drove me to the neighborhood junior high school, the same one that Isabel attended, to register me as a legal alien, entitled to be educated in the City of New York. I could start regular classes the very next day.
I kept telling myself how much better off I was than at the Rathbones, or at the hostel, where I'd had no schooling at all. The American junior high had a ninth grade, after which I could transfer to a proper high school. All of this education was free, and maybe I'd even be able to go on to college.

After getting me registered, Uncle Herman left me in the school clerk's office so that I could walk home with Isabel when the dismissal bell sounded. To my surprise, as I waited uneasily in these strange surroundings, the assistant principal entered the room and offered to escort me to Isabel's seventh-grade classroom. I couldn't understand why I wasn't going to be presented to the ninth-grade class, or at least the eighth, since my passport as Helga Frankfurter indicated that I was fourteen. As it turned out, the authorities at Singleton Junior High had quickly decided that my English spelling and grammar weren't good enough for a higher grade. They had put me in the same home-room as Isabel! Shades of the village school that I had attended while at the Rathbones.

But this humiliation was not the worst of it. Mr. Lockhart, the dapper little assistant principal, introduced me to the class as a new student who was a refugee from Germany. He did not mention that I was a
Jewish
refugee, and I doubt that the seventh graders even knew what a refugee was. The word
Germany
was all they needed to hear. Boos and whistles were directed at me from the
back of the room, and one student raised his hand in the Nazi salute and stridently shouted out,
“Sieg Heil!”

We walked back to the Brandt apartment through a tumult of busy streets, filled with shoppers and auto traffic. I was escorted by Isabel and her apparently best friend, Sybil, a freckle-faced redhead with corkscrew curls. The latter had brazenly attacked my attacker, an overgrown boy named Danny Brill, in the schoolyard after dismissal. (He had received only a mild reprimand from Mr. Lockhart:
Now, now . . . we'll have none of that.
) Sibby, as Isabel called her, had pummeled the chest of the towering brute, while enlightening him about my status and the awful thing he had said. She called him an “ignorant slob,” and accused him of having seen too many war movies. All the while, I cowered miserably in a corner of the schoolyard, harboring bad thoughts, very contrary to what I had hoped for in America.

As we trudged home, Sybil tried to cheer me. After I sadly told her that the insult “didn't matter,” she assured me that it certainly did, as America wasn't Hitler Germany. “The trouble is that most Americans still know hardly anything about what Hitler is doing to the Jews,” she said. “When you meet Leona, you'll learn how little has come out in the newspapers about the Nazi death camps, and Germany's plan to wipe out the Jews and all other unwanted people.”

Leona, it later turned out, was Sybil's mother. She worked in a shipyard as a welder, taking the place of the men who had been called up to fight. Not too many American women had ever done that kind of job before, and she was one of the pioneers.

I tried very hard to dismiss the turmoil of that first day at school, telling myself that Singleton Junior High was nothing but a temporary annoyance, and that Aunt Harriette would recover from her operation and I would soon be returning to live with her and my uncle in Westchester.

But when Mrs. Brandt and I went to visit Aunt Harriette in the hospital several days later—once more by subway train and bus—I was stricken by her appearance. I told myself that her shocking pallor and the sunken and sharpened features of her face were due to the fact that she lacked the energy to apply her makeup. Her eyebrows were nonexistent, giving her an almost clown-like aspect. Her lips were bare and blistered; her glistening red hair dull and matted. Although she did her best to thrust her arms out toward us with enthusiasm, it was obvious that she was extremely weak, and also drugged for pain. We had been told that the operation had gone well, but this visit filled me with anxiety. Our time was cut short when Aunt Harriette called out for more pain medicine, the nurses hurried in, and we were advised to take our leave.

* * *

That evening at the Brandts, Isabel surprised me by asking me if I knew anything about the Kindertransport.

“How did you hear about that?” I asked her.

“Hmm,” she replied vaguely. “I guess it was when Sibby and I were talking to Leona. She told us you probably got out of Germany on the children's train and then sailed to England. Is that right?”

All of a sudden, Isabel appeared to care about my personal history instead of whether or not I had gotten a letter from Roy. Then I found out the real reason for her interest—she had to write a paper for her history class, and if I described my life in Hitler's Germany and my escape to England, she could get a good grade by writing about me.

Mrs. Brandt begged me to help Isabel, telling me she was a lazy student and that the only subject she cared about was French. So I told Isabel a little about saying farewell to Mutti at the railroad station, the train to Holland, and the ferry to England. She began to scribble notes and asked how to spell this and that. Mrs. Brandt, who was dabbing at her eyes with a table napkin, asked me when I had last heard from my mother. I told her it was a long time ago, and, suddenly overcome, fled to my room, where I started crying, for my lost past, my disappeared family, and now for Aunt Harriette.

* * *

I became curious to meet Sibby's mother, Leona. She sounded very aware of the world for an American, and her “man's” job in the shipyard was impressive. I could hardly imagine Mrs. Brandt or even Aunt Harriette working outside the home.

My chance to meet her came about a week later, when I received an invitation to accompany her and Sybil and Isabel to a USO club that had recently been opened in our neighborhood. I had no idea what such a club was until it was explained to me that it was an informal gathering place where soldiers who were awaiting transport to the war fronts could spend some leisure time, have coffee and sandwiches, write letters, and even get their socks mended. The “hostesses” were all volunteers and were mostly older married women, like Leona, who was thirty-five.

We all met in the lobby of the apartment building for our walk to the USO, and my first reaction to Leona was that I couldn't believe she was that old. Like Sybil, she had freckles and red hair, except that hers was rust-colored. She had dark, twinkly eyes, a friendly, slightly tough manner, and a youthful figure. She commanded me to call her Leona rather than Mrs. Simon and, as there was going to be dancing as well at the USO, she told Isabel and me to get “dressed up.” So I put on Mutti's flowered chiffon dress and a pair of black patent-leather pumps with heels that Aunt Harriette had bought me.

“You're gorgeous!” Leona exclaimed the moment she saw me. “You'll be a real knockout at the club. No flirting with the soldiers, though. Even a junior hostess has to be at least eighteen. So you're
my
responsibility.”

“And what about us?” Isabel piped up. “We're only twelve.”

“You two, also. So behave yourselves. You can dance with each other. Anyhow, we'll be plenty busy making sandwiches and serving and cleaning up.”

I was excited to go the club, as it reminded me of the thrilling weekly dances at the farm hostel, where I'd first met Karl. However, when we arrived, I discovered that the “club” was just an empty store, draped with American flags, colorful posters, and patriotic messages. Uniformed American soldiers sat around at small tables, over donuts, coffee, and soft drinks, or leaned against the food counter, smoking.

In a flash, Leona decided that the glum atmosphere needed some cheering up, so she thrust some money into the jukebox. The new Hit Parade song,
Deep in the Heart of Texas
, immediately blared forth, and everyone seemed to snap to attention. In no time, a soldier who had been smoking morosely at the counter was up on the floor, dancing with Leona. Never in my entire life had I seen such rapid rhythmic whirling and stomping. It was heart-stopping. Leona could have been in her teens, the very same age as her jazz-crazed partner. (I would learn
later that she had won all sorts of dance contests in her youth.)

I was still beholding her, mesmerized, when a soldier who had been seated at one of the tables tapped me on the shoulder. I looked up at him questioningly. He was extremely tall and a little awkward-looking. I wasn't old enough to be a junior hostess. Was it really all right to . . . ? Before I could say a word, he grabbed me in his arms and we were off on the floor. Soon the pulsating beat had me following his jumpy but rapid lead. Even though my heart was pounding recklessly and my head was throbbing, I was dizzily enjoying myself.

When the music stopped and a slow number came on, the tall blond soldier asked me to dance again. I said yes, and we started to talk.