Her Mother's Daughter (15 page)

Bella's heart leaped, and she ran toward them, taking one end of the rope from Gertrude, and chiming in on the chant, following their sounds—for she didn't understand the words, or if she did, they seemed to make no sense. After a while, Margie tripped, and took her end, and Bella jumped. She did it heavily, and tripped several times, but they didn't make her take an end, they said she could have another chance. Bella's heart was pumping, her face was pink, her hair flew. It was wonderful!

Then, suddenly, there was Momma, standing at the entrance to the hall, grey-faced. “Bella! Bella!” Her voice was harsh and high. “Stop that! You'll break your shoes!” And Bella paled, and looked down at her old boots, and understood there was no money for new ones, and reluctantly walked away from the girls, shyly turning to say (in English!), “I have to go in now,” and the girls watched her go, silently, understanding. Their lives, after all, were not so different.

Sullenly, Bella helped Momma chop the celery and the onions and simmer them in butter, and crumble the white bread. She wanted to beg a slice or two for herself: white bread was still a treat for her. But something stopped her, and she saw it all go into the bowl of stuffing, and watched Momma stuff the chickens and put them in the oven. Then Momma made her peel the hot boiled potatoes while she peeled the cucumbers and sliced them. It was easier to peel the potatoes hot, but they burned her fingers and she kept dropping them. She didn't care, even though Momma looked up each time she heard one fall into the bowl. Momma salted the cucumbers and put them on the cupboard shelf with a plate over the bowl. Then she took the potatoes from Bella, and swiftly, without minding the heat at all, sliced them into a clean bowl and poured the celery she had chopped for the salad. Then she poured hot vinegar and oil over them, and salt and pepper, and mixed it well. Bella looked longingly at the salad, but Momma didn't offer her any. Then Momma ran the cucumbers underwater and squeezed them, and poured vinegar and sugar and water on them, and put them aside again. Tomorrow morning she would immerse them in sour cream with dill sprinkled over it.

When this was finished, Momma sighed and wiped her hands on her apron, and poured a hot cup of coffee for herself. Bella knew Momma still had the ironing to do, and that she had been up since six, walked to work and back, and sewed for five hours that morning. She was ashamed of her sullenness. She looked shyly at Momma: “Are you tired, Momma?” “No, no,” Momma said, then looked at Bella and smiled. “Tonight I finish new dress for you, Bella.”

For
them,
Bella thought, then felt ungrateful and more ashamed. She went out to gather up the second load of wash, now dry, while Momma set up the ironing board. It occurred to her there was nothing for their dinner, and she ran inside, aghast.

“Momma! We forgot to get anything for
our
dinner!”

Her mother looked up wearily from the sheet she was ironing. “Oh, Bella, it doesn't matter. We can just have some eggs. There are some boiled potatoes left over. Fry them in bacon fat.”

The next morning, Momma wakened her early and they dressed in their good clothes. Momma put on her old black straw hat. She wrapped the food in towels and laid it in a flat basket with two handles, and added plates and knives and forks and napkins. Bella crept up to examine them, and was relieved: there were five of each. Then they picked up the basket, each holding a handle, and walked to the trolley. They rode one trolley to the end of the line, got off and took another. Then they were in the middle of the city, in front of a huge brown building that frightened Bella. Men in straw boaters were walking around, even though it was a hot August Sunday, and a woman in a great broad-brimmed hat with flowers on it was running toward the building, laughing with a man in a straw hat, while behind them stood a little Polaka carrying a great heavy bag. The woman turned. “Come on, Marija!” she called impatiently, and the girl ran as best she could, red-faced, tugging the heavy bag.

Momma and Bella went inside the building. The ceiling was high, and there were wooden benches in a great open room. It was cooler there. They walked to the wall where a man stood behind a cage, and Momma said something to him and gave him money, and he gave her two pieces of cardboard, and Momma turned swiftly and ran, and Bella ran after her, carrying the heavy basket alone now, until Momma realized, and stopped and took her end. They ran down some dark steps to a cavernous dark place with tracks running below a platform. Momma told her they were waiting for the train.

A train! Bella tried, but could not imagine what that could be, and when the thing came roaring toward them, she gasped and grabbed Momma and almost upset the basket, and Momma cried out, “Bella!” and shook her head at Bella's stupidity. But the big light on the front, and the roar of noise terrified her and reminded her, as it plunged toward them, of the trolley that had almost killed Euga. They took seats and rode for a long time. Momma was fanning herself with her handkerchief, and breathing in quick little gasps. The city gave way to miles of green fields. Momma said they were potato farms.

Bella found she could read the sign where they got off: Farmingdale, it said. She didn't know what
dale
meant, but she understood that the place was a place for farming. There was a small white house near the tracks, that people were coming out of to get on the train, but beyond them, for miles around, there was nothing at all but fields. Bella looked at Momma, expecting her to burst into tears, but Momma seemed to know where she was going. She set off, and Bella followed, dragging a little on the basket. They walked for a long time, down a road surrounded on all sides by fields. Then they left the road and walked across the fields. The sun was directly overhead now, and very hot. Far off in the distance, Bella spied a small lump on the horizon. That must be where they were going. It was still miles away. Bella wondered how Momma knew to find it, but then, she thought, Momma always did know where things were and how to reach them.

Eventually, the building took shape: tall, gaunt, dark redbrick, sooty with age. The narrow windows had bars on them, and there were rusting black fire escapes on the sides. Bella shuddered. It looked like a prison. They had to walk around it to the front, because it was enclosed in a high fence of black metal poles. They had to stop at the gate and Momma had to talk to the policeman there, who sat in a little booth. But once inside…there they were! Eddie, Wally, and Euga! And they cried out, and Momma cried out and dropped her end of the basket and ran to them, and they all ran to her, and then they were all mixed together, the four of them, all their bodies intertwined, and Momma was crying, and Wally was whimpering, and Euga was staring wide-eyed, and Momma picked her up in her arms, and she kept saying, “
Moje drogie, moje biedne sieroty
,” my dears, my poor orphans, and wiping her eyes, and hugging one of them, saying
“Moja najdroższa, najdroższal
My dearest! Sweetheart! Kochanie!”

Bella stood there with the basket, which was resting on the ground in front of her. Momma had completely forgotten her. She didn't matter. Then Eddie saw her, and came over and smiled and said, “You got something to eat?” and she was shocked: it was the first time he had ever spoken to her in English. She nodded, and he bent and lifted the handles and started toward the building. Wally was drawn toward the food, and he turned too, and Momma followed them, with Euga in her arms. At the door, she turned. Bella was still standing by the gate. “Come, Bella!” Momma called gaily, and she ran to join them.

They were sent to the auditorium, a large dark room with chairs fixed into the floor, and a stage in the front. There was no one else there. They sat on the chairs in a back row, Momma with Euga on one side and the basket on the other, and Momma took out the food. She didn't know where to put it, though, so Eddie got up and carried the basket to the wide aisle, and sat down on the floor beside it. They all followed, except Momma didn't sit on the floor, and she wouldn't let Bella sit there either. “You'll dirty your dress.” So Momma crouched down and laid the plates out in front of the three children, and put Bella's plate on a seat. Then she cut up the chicken, and spooned out the stuffing, and took the towels off the potato salad and the cucumbers, and let the children help themselves. Momma and Bella sat on their stiff seats, their plates in their laps. The children ate greedily, cramming food into their mouths with their hands. Momma said nothing. Momma hardly ate anything, she watched them, and sometimes she'd grab an arm or leg and cry out, “Oh, so thin, so thin!” and begin to weep. The children ignored her. They kept stuffing their mouths. They ate the two chickens, all the stuffing, all the potato salad, and most of the cucumbers. Then Momma uncovered the cakes, and their eyes opened wide. But they could not eat more than one big slice each, so Momma wrapped the rest up in a towel, and gave it to Eddie. “You keep it. You give it to Wally and Euga.” Eddie tried to explain that he never saw Euga, that she was in the girls' section, and boys were not allowed there. But Eddie stumbled over this explanation—he had begun to forget his Polish, although Frances, willfully perhaps, did not notice this. Bella had to help him out. So then Momma took another towel and cut off a big chunk of cake and gave it to Euga. Momma's eyes were still shining, and after she gave Euga the cake, she reached down from her seat and picked Euga up and rocked her against her body, saying
“Moja droga, moja biedna sierota,”
over and over.

Then a door swung open and a grey-haired woman carrying a whole ring of keys came in. She nodded to the children, who looked up at her blankly. Eddie turned to Momma. “We have to go now, Momma.”

“NO, NO, NO!” Momma cried, and began to sob again, as hard as she had the day they were taken away. The woman started to walk forward, her mouth a thin line, and Eddie glanced at her and got up. He wiped his mouth and hands on a napkin, and pulled Wally up by his arm. Eddie bent to kiss Momma, and Momma grabbed him and held on to him, crushing Euga on her lap. She was crying his name, crying out about her dears, her poor little orphans, and Wally came up and put his head on her lap, and she wailed louder, and the woman came near and said, “Please, Mrs. Brez,” but Momma didn't even hear her. The woman nodded her head at Eddie, and he walked toward her, pulling Wally behind him. Wally's mouth was smeared with grease and cake crumbs, but Momma didn't notice. Finally, the woman came and took Euga out of Momma's arms, and Momma's arms stayed extended long after they were empty, as she screamed in rage and sorrow. Euga was crying now too, peering over the shoulder of the woman and clutching her towel-wrapped cake. When they had all vanished behind the swinging door, Momma let her arms down, and her head fell, and she wrenched her throat with sobs, her whole body jolting with them.

Finally, she calmed down to sniffling, and bent wearily, the old Momma again, and cleaned up the plates, the forks, the unused knives, and stuffed everything back into the basket. She wiped her hands on one of the clean napkins, kept wiping them, over and over. She was still sniffling as they walked back across the fields, the sun halfway down now, but still hot, the grass whispering around their ankles. Bella noticed tiny spots of color among the green, and occasionally she would stop to examine them more closely. They were tiny wildflowers. She began to pick them. Momma turned around. “Hurry, or we'll miss the train,” she called. Bella ran, but she still stopped once in a while to grab a pretty blue, or yellow, or white blossom. Momma could carry the basket alone now. As they neared the station, Bella ran up to Momma and smiled, and held out her bouquet.

“Look, Momma, aren't they pretty? They're for you!”

“Oh, what do I want with a bunch of weeds!” Momma said in disgust, and taking them from Bella, threw them down on the tracks where the train would run over them.

After that, they went to the orphanage every two weeks. It was cooler in the fall, when the sky was a beautiful blue, and the clouds like white puffs. And one Sunday, Bella saw from the train, a line of trees with colored leaves—red, gold, orange—that made her gasp with their beauty. Aside from that, though, the journey was always the same.

T
HE NIGHT BEFORE SCHOOL
reopened, Momma reminded Bella that she had to get up early the next morning. Bella looked at her blankly, not thinking to ask what time she should get up, or how she would know what time it was. Momma always seemed to know what time it was, Bella didn't know how. She had no sense that Frances had been raised in the country, and told time by the sun; nor did Frances perceive that Bella did not share this ability.

When Bella woke the next morning, after a whole summer of rising after the room was soaked with heat, the room was already hot. She leaped up. Momma had long since gone. She was probably already late for school. She dressed hurriedly, her haste keeping her from the dreadful thought of what awaited her: repeating third grade. She had been taller than many of the other children even last year, partly because her birthday was in January, and many of the others had been born six months later. But she was just tall, tall and gawky. This year she would feel like a giant among the smaller children, a year or more younger than she. Humiliation sheathed her in sweat, and she grabbed her tablet and pen and ran out without even stopping to drink the coffee Momma had left at the side of the stove.

She didn't know how long it took to get to school from then-new house, so she ran all the way. But when she arrived, the schoolyard was empty, the doors of the school locked. She leaned against the fence and waited. She waited a long time, and her heart kept making little pings. Maybe Momma was wrong, maybe school didn't open until tomorrow. People would look at her and think how stupid she was, coming a day early. She stared firmly toward the yard, away from the street, so she would not see the people passing who might gaze at her as if she was an idiot.