The Sisters Weiss (42 page)

“I get that,” she answered stoically and without further explanation or apology, taking out a pen and writing down her address. “Next Tuesday would be best, at about two o’clock?”

“I’m looking forward to it,” Rose said, taking the note and studying the girl’s hands, once so soft and tender. Now they were red, work-roughened, the once-manicured nails chipped and stained, the cuticles raw. The sight of them filled Rose with sadness.

“Can I bring Hannah with me?” she added as an afterthought. “I know she’d love to see you. She has a new boyfriend. He wears a skullcap.”

“Really?” Rivka said, her eyebrows arching in surprise.

“She didn’t speak another word to Simon from the day you left. He dropped out of school, by the way. No one really knows why or where he is now.”

She shrugged indifferently, then changed the subject. “Aunt Rose, I have nothing against Hannah, but can we keep this first meeting just between the two of us?”

“Of course, of course, whatever you say…” Rose answered, disappointed. “Can I at least tell her I’ve seen you? She’s also spent years worrying.”

“Of course. But I’m not sure she and I should meet just yet. It’s complicated.” She glanced at her watch. “Oh, it’s so late. I’ve got to run.”

“I thought this was your day off?”

“It is, but I have other … obligations. I’ll see you next week?”

“Absolutely. Good-bye, my dear. It’s so good to see you.”

The phone call to Hannah was short, filled with exclamation points, and ending in disappointment.

“You mean she’s still angry at me, after all this time?” Hannah asked, wounded.

“She said specifically that she’s not! She just said she wasn’t sure about meeting you right now. I suppose it’s a bit overwhelming for her. That doesn’t mean she never wants to see you again.”

“But why you and not me?”

“Because I’m the photographer, and I think she’s looking forward to a professional opinion about her work.”

“And I, on the other hand, can’t offer her anything. Doesn’t sound to me like any radical character transformation has taken place, Mom.”

“Don’t be so harsh! She looked poor, as if she’s been working very hard and earning very little. I’m sure she’s not the same girl.”

“Well, take in everything. I expect a full report when you get back.”

“Will do my best.”

40

Brooklyn, New York, June 14, 2011

Rose looked out into the run-down street from inside the taxi, putting the strap of her purse protectively around her neck and slipping her arm around it before exiting. But when she actually stood on the pavement, the street seemed surprisingly benign.

The buildings were old but not particularly graffiti-scarred. Scattered among the run-down bodegas and dusty luncheonettes were charming little coffee shops and tiny boutiques selling trendy clothing. Young women pushed baby carriages, and men of every ethnic shade were dressed as if they were busy with some kind of useful employment. She relaxed, taking out the paper on which she had written Rivka’s address.

She walked up the cracked but well-swept stoop. No security system was in place, she noted apprehensively as she pulled open the massive old lobby doors. Inside, cracking, uneven floor tiles from another century gave the place a colorful antique ambience. The walls were grimy, but not criminally scarred with slogans and obscenities, which might have frightened her enough to turn around and leave. Instead, she searched without much hope for an elevator before beginning her long trek to the fifth floor.

The name on the door was written on a piece of paper taped just beneath the peephole. It said WEISS-GONZALES. Oh God, what now? went through her head.

Rivka opened the door. Her hair seemed to shine with its own light in the dark apartment as she ushered Rose over the threshold. A cursory glance showed she was wearing the same frayed pants and sweater.

“You found me!” she exulted, pleased.

The place was tiny. In one corner Rose glimpsed a kitchen consisting of two parallel walls just far enough apart for a slim person to stand in sideways. It had a stained sink, an old stove, and an ancient refrigerator—all pushed together like subway passengers during rush hour. In the living room, a couch covered with a colorful African-print throw stood against the wall. Completing the “decor” was an old armchair in frayed fake leather that reminded her of Hannah’s cushionless sofa, and a coffee table that consisted of a round piece of glass over an old porcelain elephant that had seen better days. The only other piece of furniture was a cheap, fragile bookcase whose shelves sagged beneath an eclectic collection in Hebrew and English: novels, biology textbooks, a prayer book, a Bible. The main decorations, as far as Rose could tell, were the walls, which were literally covered with photographs so closely hung that the wall color itself was almost impossible to discern.

“I see you’ve got your own gallery. It’s quite a collection!”

Rivka smiled with shy pride.

Rose walked up close, studying them. There was a beggar woman on Broadway, the complicated road map of her life traced across her old face in a hundred telling lines. There was a shadow that fell across the lawn of Central Park like a picnic blanket, shielding two lovers holding hands. And here and there and everywhere, there was a baby, and then a toddler with dark, curly hair, light eyes, and a winning smile.

It was the same child, she realized, feeling suddenly dizzy. She sat down heavily on the couch. “Rivka, would you be kind enough to bring me a glass of water, please?” She gulped it down quickly, wiping the beads of perspiration from her forehead, the feeling of faintness slowly giving way to an urgent question: “Who is he, the child?”

“Isn’t that obvious?” Rivka shook her head, sitting down beside her. “He’s my son.”

“Your son?” Rose repeated stupidly. “So you never went through with it, the abortion?”

“I never changed my mind. But my body refused to cooperate.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I was actually on the table getting prepped when I suddenly felt this thing … It was like I’d swallowed a bag of cats that were trying to punch their way out with their tiny paws. They told me it couldn’t be real; it was way too early to feel the baby move. They said I was imagining it. But after that, I couldn’t think about the abortion as if it was some tumor that had to be cut out. It was too late … too late.”

“Rivka, where did you go?”

“First, some horrible drop-in center in the Bronx where bag ladies go on rainy days. And from there to this home, a place for what they call ‘unwed mothers.’ I looked through the Yellow Pages for a Jewish home but couldn’t find one. In the end, I went to a Christian place. They were fanatic about privacy. We were all registered under the names of saints. I was Saint Agatha! Their shame issues are even worse than the Jews! Anyhow, there were lots of crosses everywhere with poor little Jesuses suffering away. I ended up eating mostly vegetarian food. Once in a while, someone told me ‘to feel Jesus’s mercy.’ You know what? I honestly tried! I was willing to take any kind of mercy I could get at that point. But I didn’t feel anything, except … I … just felt like I was on one of those people conveyer belts that move you around in airports that don’t let you get off in the middle. You have to run ahead or force yourself to go backwards to leave. I didn’t have energy for either! So I just went along, waiting for God to let me off.”

“You had the baby,” Rose repeated gratuitously, still trying to process that information.

“Yes, I did. The labor took two hours and twenty minutes, record time for a first birth, everyone said. The doctor and the midwives joked I was the type who could have a dozen, one after the other, with no problem. I wanted to tell them that the women in my family did exactly that and there was nothing funny about it! I guess those fertility genes got passed down to me, too. Funny, isn’t it? You can’t run away from biology.”

Rose hung her head in shame that her niece had gone through all this completely alone. She couldn’t even bring herself to ask: Why didn’t you call us? The answer was too clear. It was as if she were looking at herself forty years ago. “I’m … so … very, very sorry, Rivka, and so very ashamed that I let you down. Can you ever forgive me?”

She seemed amazed. “You’re sorry? As my friends in the home used to say, ‘Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!’ Why should you be sorry? You were very kind to me, Aunt. You are a world-famous photographer, a person who brings truth and beauty to the world. And who was I? A stranger, a mixed-up kid from a family that had rejected you and thrown you out, who suddenly landed on your doorstep, demanding you take risks and expose yourself to even more abuse. And you did. You went through tons of holy crap—oh, sorry, that’s also some of the other new words I learned there—all for my sake. No, no, I’m the one who’s sorry.”

How generous she is, Rose thought. I am not so generous to those who were unkind to me when I needed them. I will hold a grudge against every single one of them until the day I die. And yet I behaved no better to my own flesh and blood. “You are a good person, Rivka, you know that?”

The girl shook her head. “The jury is still out on that one.”

“Where is he?”

“Who?”

“Your child.”

“Or?”

“Or what?”

She laughed. “No, that’s his name. I called him Or, which is the Hebrew word for ‘light.’ He’s in daycare.”

“Why didn’t you give him up for adoption?”

“I thought about that before he was born, but never after. All my longing to be myself, to create a world of my own, and here it was, in this little creature, this little world that belonged only to me. I couldn’t give him away any more than I could donate my heart to someone who needed it. I needed him more than anyone did.”

“But how did you manage, all alone, with a new baby?”

She pinched her lips together, gnawing on them, then sighed. “You do what you have to do. When the good Christian ladies at the home finally gave up on talking me into signing him away for adoption or converting me, they put me in touch with social workers and city services and Jewish charities. I got some rent money and a few dollars for furniture and baby supplies. I found a job. And then I saw this ad on Craigslist for ‘a spacious one bedroom, prewar’—I guess they were thinking of the Civil War!—‘apartment thirty minutes from Manhattan.’”

Rose got up, looking around, peeking into the bedroom off the corridor. It had a bed and a child’s cot stuffed inside with hardly room to squeeze by between them. But it was neat, with a matching ecru and rose bedspread and curtains and a few crowded shelves of plush animals and toys.

“Not much privacy.”

“No. But thankfully my son and I get along,” she laughed. “I don’t expect to live here forever. I passed my GEDs last year, and now I’m enrolled at Hunter College. I go three nights a week.”

“It shows.”

“Really?”

“The last time we spoke, you would have said: ‘Three nights a week I go.’”

They both laughed.

“Do you still want to be a doctor?”

She shook her head with a grin. “I’ve grown up a lot since last we met. But I’d like to be a medical technician. It pays good, I mean well, and you get to help people.”

Rose cocked her head, incredulous. “And on top of school you work and take care of the baby?”

“Do I have a choice?” Rivka answered, her voice at once both challenging and resigned.

“And who watches him?”

“He’s in a free daycare center during my working hours. And at night, I have a friend who helps babysit.”

“A friend?”

“Okay, a boyfriend.”

“Gonzales?”

Rivka looked puzzled, then broke out in a wide grin. “No, she’s in Brazil. This is a sublet. Her mail still comes here, though.”

Rose exhaled. “Tell me about him.”

“He’s like me. We met at the apartment of this girl who runs an organization for people like us.”

“Like you?”

“Runaways from Haredi families. She got some funding. She runs GED classes, drop-in centers. We’re all in the same boat: no education, no family, no place to live, no jobs, no contacts. We help each other.”

“Does your boyfriend live with you?”

“No. I don’t want Or to see that kind of life. I want to be very, very sure before I commit myself to a man next time.”

“Do your parents know about Or?”

“No.”

Rose thought of Pearl and Zevulun, pitying them for their terrible loss. “Rivka, can’t you forgive them, the way you’ve forgiven me?”

“I told you, Aunt, with you there is nothing to forgive. But with them … it’s complicated.” She wandered around the apartment, studying the photos of her son, touching them, smiling here and there. For a long time, she said nothing. Then, she turned around and faced her aunt.

“It’s not anger, Aunt Rose. I just can’t risk them knowing about us. Remember Yossele Schumacher?”

It happened in 1960, but the Jewish world was still reeling from the story. Yossele Schumacher was a six-year-old boy kidnapped from his secular Jewish parents in Israel by his ultra-Orthodox grandparents and uncle. Taken abroad dressed as a girl by a woman convert to Judaism, he was kept hidden in France and Switzerland for two years, until the woman brought him to the States, handing him over to an ultra-Orthodox family in Williamsburg, who kept him, thinking they were saving his soul. Only when the crack operatives of Israeli intelligence got involved was he finally tracked down and returned to his parents.

“If they or someone else in the community kidnaps my son because they don’t think I’m pious enough to raise him, I won’t have the whole Mossad to help me. I just can’t take the chance.”

“But Rivka, that happened once, long ago … it’s not something normal. And I’m sure your parents would never—”

“I’m sorry, Aunt Rose.” Rivka cut her off. “I just can’t take that chance.”

Rose closed her eyes in sorrow. Frame by frame, images floated through her imagination: Her sister Pearl’s eyes bright with tears embracing her daughter. Zevulun lifting his beautiful little grandson into his big arms, his long beard tickling the child and making him laugh. The family sitting together around the table, glasses of kosher wine raised in a toast. Rivka and Hannah and their two boyfriends sitting side by side, their voices happy and friendly. She and Pearl setting down steaming platters of food on a large table, while the whole extended family sat around eating, speaking, laughing, all stiffness, silences, harsh judgments suspended in time, like a video set on pause. She blinked back tears, the images disappearing into the harsh, cold light of day.