Lilli's Quest (10 page)

“My name's Lenny,” he told me. “You live around here?”

“Yes, for the time being. I really live in Westchester.”

“Got no idea where that is,” he said with a grin. “I'm from Montana. Missoula.”

I couldn't help laughing. “I've got no idea where that is, either.”

Soon, the club began to fill up with more soldiers. The volunteers—who were mainly motherly women in hair-nets—bustled down to work making trays of ham-and-cheese sandwiches for Leona and we girls to pass around.

I carried a tray to the table where Lenny was now sitting with three fellow soldiers. He reached up for a sandwich and reminded me that I owed him one more dance.

“Ach, ya,” I replied. “Still I am dizzy from this song about the heart of Texas. It must be crazy in that place, but I would like so much to see it.”

One of Lenny's table companions looked at me suspiciously, as he caught my accent and my additional stupid and unnecessary words.

“Oh, yeah?” he said. “Where are you from anyway, girlie?”

Isabel, who was standing beside me with a tray of doughnuts, exclaimed irately that I lived right here in the Bronx with her family. The solider told Isabel she was a liar, called me a
Fraulein
, and declared, “I know a Kraut when I hear one!” adding, “What the hell's she doin' dancin' with G.I.s in a USO club?” He then rose to his feet and spat out the words, “Spying! Gathering information for the enemy! Somebody call the M.P.s!”

Lenny was also on his feet, and I watched, terrified, as he landed a crooked blow at the offending soldier's head, and then took a really hard punch in return. Instantly, a melee ensued, as soldiers from all around the room entered the fray, wrangling and hurling fists at one another. Although many bloody noses were now evident, it was doubtful that most of the participants even knew
what the fighting was about. Chairs and tables had been overturned, mashed food had been smeared underfoot, and spilled coffee and soda ran in rivulets across the dance floor.

Suddenly, in the midst of the furor, a shrill whistle rent the air. The M.P.s or, as I would later learn, military police, had arrived, reminding me all too vividly of the brutal Nazi police in Germany. Even in America, I was responsible for anger and hostility, and for endangering human lives. I was reminded, as on that first day of school, that clearly I was not wanted here. Coming to America had been a terrible mistake.

With the instinct of a fleeing animal, I snatched my coat from the clothing rack and fled out into the night, with no idea—none at all—of where I was going.

Twelve

With echoing thunder and the swift passage of air, a roaring subway train entered the dimly lit station beneath the Grand Concourse and screeched to a halt. The doors slid open. A large clot of passengers emerged and others, standing behind me on the platform, began to move forward. I quickly stepped away, fearful that I might be pushed onto the train without yet being certain that it was heading north and would take me to the same stop that Mrs. Brandt and I had ridden to twice before to board the bus to Westchester.

My first instinct on fleeing the USO club before the arrival of the dreaded military police had been to head underground. Once I reached the subway station, it was a simple matter to drop my coin into the turnstile and clatter down the uneven concrete steps to the train platform. Even if I could just find my way to the hospital, to Aunt Harriette, arrangements could be made for me to be taken to her house. Uncle Herman was surely home, and Maggie, the housekeeper, was always present.

More than ever, I needed a refuge, as my stay at the
Brandts clearly wasn't working out. Singleton Junior High (Isabel called it “Simpleton”) had put me in the awkward position of being in seventh-grade English, eighth-grade history, and ninth-grade mathematics. I was a stranger everywhere in the school, an odd duck who turned up here and there, had peculiar lunch hours, and couldn't seem to make any friends. And, worst of all, that first day, when I had been greeted with “
Sieg Heil
,” had become the talk of the school. Explanations that I was a Jewish refugee, a rare survivor of Hitler's murderous intentions, didn't seem to lighten the stigma. Now had come the madness that I had wreaked at the USO club. I would be sorry to lose the companionship of Leona and Sybil, just as I had been sad to say goodbye to Isabel's friend Ruth at Shady Pines. Why was it that I got along so well with Isabel's friends, and not with her?

Several trains had entered the station, coughed up their riders, taken on new ones, and rumbled away. I tried to recognize the abbreviated destinations on the cars and their route numbers or letters. But nothing seemed familiar. If only I'd jotted them down when I was traveling with Mrs. Brandt. Time was passing, my uncertainty was growing, and now, glancing down the long platform, I saw the figure of a New York City police officer. I told myself that I would board the next train wherever it was going. To be taken into custody before I could reach my family in Westchester was terrifying.

Impatiently, I stared down the track, listening intently for the distant roar that announced the oncoming linkage of clanging metal, even before the beaconed first car came into sight. At the same time, approaching quickly, was the dark-blue-uniformed officer, equipped with a gun in his holster and a swinging club, so much like those the Nazi police used to powerfully bludgeon the heads of so-called troublemakers. When I had first seen this and mentioned it to Mrs. Brandt, she had assured me that, here in the United States, these weapons were called “night sticks,” and were only used on “drunkards found lying in the gutter.”

“Help you, young lady?”

I turned, cowering in the presence of the puffy, red-faced officer, who seemed so much larger up close than when I had eyed him from a distance.

“I'm . . . waiting for a train,” I fumbled, “except I'm not sure which is the right one.”

“Yeah,” he replied a bit sarcastically. “I noticed. You been walkin' up and down here a long time. Where are you aimin' to go?”

“Oh, um Westchester . . .”

“You live there?” The officer's bleary, blue eyes, sunken and red-rimmed, perused me for truthfulness, instilling a fear of oncoming doom. My deep fear of authority figures, whether the Nazi police, the ominous Mr. Rathbone, or a New York City officer of the law,
overcame me. I dropped my head to avoid the officer's gaze, and gave my captor the Brandts' address on the Grand Concourse.

Isabel opened the apartment door and immediately shouted out, “She's here!” The living room resounded with exclamations of relief from Mrs. Brandt and Leona. Once released by the police officer, I ran so quickly to the room I shared with Isabel that the people in the apartment were a blur.

From behind the closed door, I heard the burly officer deliver a warning. He had at first figured me for a runaway. On being told of my German refugee status by Mrs. Brandt, he advised her to keep “close tabs” on me. “There's talk of spies getting into the country. If she finds herself in the wrong place at the wrong time, she could get into a lot of trouble.” Talk of being in “trouble.” I had experienced nothing but since that first day at school, where I had been teased with the undercover name of “Helga hot dog.”

But far more serious to my mind was the fracas I had caused at the USO. Surely, this was only the first step in my encounters with the law in America. Bitterly, I thought again of my sins. It was not right that I should have come here instead of Helga, and the punishment I deserved was being meted out to me like small doses of poison.

* * *

A week later, there was encouraging news about Aunt Harriette. She was recuperating well, and almost ready to leave the hospital. As Mrs. Brandt was preparing for her son, Arnold, who had joined the Air Force, to come home on furlough, she assigned Isabel to accompany me on the subway and bus journey to the hospital.

Aside from going to school, I had not left the apartment since the night I'd attempted to run away. Being out in public, even with the spunky Isabel, who really knew her way around, frightened me. For some reason, I thought I would be less visible to the police if I wore one of the khaki-colored caps and jackets that I'd brought with me from the farm hostel. I had chosen a cap with a visor and put all of my hair underneath it. Isabel eyed me suspiciously, but didn't say anything about my appearance, which was surprising.

On seeing Aunt Harriette lounging in a chair in her hospital room, her hair and makeup fully restored to their former luster, my heart leaped with hope. The room bloomed with flower arrangements. Uncle Herman was there, looking much less gloomy. Aunt Harriette urged him to take Isabel and me down to the coffee shop for lunch, but Isabel stubbornly declined, saying she wasn't hungry. So my uncle and I retreated by ourselves to the cafeteria-style eatery on the main floor of the building, while Isabel stayed behind in the room with Aunt Harriette.

I had always felt awkward with Uncle Herman when I was alone with him. I wondered if he, too, suffered from feelings of guilt because he had gotten out of Germany safely, and had been unable to save Papa and the rest of our family.

As we sat at a table over a lunch of soup and salad, my uncle reached into his pocket and put two letters in front of me. “A very popular young lady,” he commented. “I couldn't help reading the return addresses. I see they're both from male correspondents.”

I blushed and bashfully tucked the letters, one from Karl, the other from Roy, into the pocket of my jacket. They had been delivered, of course, to my Westchester address. What would I do if I never got to go back there? I could just imagine Isabel snooping around in our room and reading my letters, just as she had at Shady Pines. While Karl would have written in German, Roy had told me he couldn't spell in the language at all.

Following an awkward lunch (I couldn't bring myself to ask my uncle if he had any further information concerning Papa's fate), we returned to the hospital room. Aunt Harriette looked much more tired than when we had left. She was back in bed and her eyeliner was smudged. Had she been crying? What had she and Isabel been talking about? Sadly, I had to say my goodbyes to her, as Uncle Herman had to drive Isabel and me back to the
Bronx, where he had been invited to stay for supper on the occasion of Arnold's visit home.

When we entered the apartment, I immediately excused myself to go the bathroom—it was the safest place to read my letters from Roy and Karl. But I had to be quick. With so many people in the apartment, there was sure to be a tap on the door at any moment.

Roy's letter was on blue air-mail stationery. My heart pounding, I read:

            
Dear Sweet Helga,

            
So you're feeling better, I hope. Boy, I can't forget how you were crying that night, especially when we said goodbye.

My eye skipped anxiously to the next paragraph.

            
I can't tell you much about my life in the Navy. Censorship and all that, you know. But it's okay out here and I'm making some good pals. No women around, so you're perfectly safe, you sweet kid.

            
Sure hope things work out for you in your new life in the U.S. But you seemed so scared and not sure you would be able to stay with those people who brought you over. So remember what I told you if you ever get in any kind of trouble. I showed you where the key is hid.

            
Hey kid, I still don't believe that was your first kiss. How could anybody stay away from you? So be good, now. Close your eyes and think of me. Roy

My letter from Karl was a response to the first letter I'd written him. I had told him of my aunt's illness, my move to the Brandts, and my unpleasant situation at “Simpleton” Junior High School. Karl, as always, was practical and comforting.
Do not forget how lucky you are to be in the free world,
he wrote,
We are orphans, you and I, but not, thank God, in Germany!

After our hospital visit to Aunt Harriette, Isabel again started asking me questions about my life before I came to America. She told me that her history teacher, Mrs. Boylan, had been delighted with her report on the Kindertransport, and so Isabel was now anxious to learn about my life in England. Somehow, Isabel's story didn't sound believable. I kept thinking of Aunt Harriette's smudged eyeliner, and how she and Isabel had been alone in the hospital room. What had they talked about? Was Isabel just being nosy? Or had my aunt given her some kind of information that had raised her curiosity?

In response to Isabel's urging, I told her that the subject was too painful to talk about just now. Perhaps I would write it one day in German.

“In German! No. In English,” she demanded. “It will
be good practice for you. And not one day. Now! Do you want to be stuck in seventh-grade English forever?”

Reluctantly, I wrote about my life at the Rathbones, in poor English and with many misspellings. I included the part about the village children throwing stones at Tim and me and shouting,
The idiot and the Jew, get off with you. No one wants you here.
But I wrote nothing about Mrs. Rathbone's cruelty in not letting me say goodbye to Tim, or about Mr. Rathbone's leering eyes, too often focused on my breasts. Isabel seemed genuinely incensed at the idiot and the Jew part. She declared that if she and Sybil and Leona had been there, they'd have “smacked them around but good.”

Happily, at last, Aunt Harriette was home from the hospital! Not only that, but she and Uncle Herman planned to attend Thanksgiving dinner at the Brandts. Sybil and Leona would be there, too.

The odd (to me) American holiday was, it seemed, almost (if not more) important than Christmas. It appeared to be all about food, as for weeks in advance, the Brandts talked about the menu, which was to include a roasted turkey with stuffing, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, creamed onions, and cauliflower. Only the last two vegetables were at all familiar to me, from my life on the farm hostel. I had never eaten turkey or tasted a sweet potato, and I had no idea what a cranberry was.

In spite of the elaborate menu that was being planned, all I heard around me, even from Isabel and Sybil, were complaints about the shortage of butter for mashed potatoes, and of sugar for fruit pies, due to the war. Also, coffee was soon to be rationed. How innocent, I thought to myself, these Americans are. Even before I left Germany, sawdust was being added to bread flour, and “coffee” was being brewed from the roasted root of the chicory plant, and even from ground nut shells. These foods and many other products were knows as ersatz (imitation, or false).

At last the great holiday, always celebrated on a Thursday in November, arrived.

Aunt Harriette appeared, strikingly made up, garbed in a jewel-toned velvet suit, and wearing her mink coat, with hat to match. Despite these adornments, I realized how much thinner and frail she had become.

At dinner, Aunt Harriette drank several champagne toasts, along with the other adults, encouraging Isabel and Sybil and me to have “a few sips.” “One day,” she declared, “this terrible war will end in victory and our darlings will all grow up and have ‘champagne' lives!” But despite my aunt's optimism and high spirits, she was forced, by the end of the meal, to withdraw her earlier invitation for Isabel and Sybil and me to come back to Westchester with her and my uncle for the rest of the
Thanksgiving weekend. Both Mrs. Brandt and my uncle agreed that, despite the presence of Maggie, the housekeeper, so much company would be too tiring for my aunt. So the promises of skating, horseback riding, and hikes in the autumn woods for the three of us were canceled, and it was decided that I alone would spend the weekend at the big house in Westchester.

I packed a small bag, and we took off in my uncle's Cadillac. Sitting by myself in the back seat, I noticed that Aunt Harriette had slumped down in the passenger seat and likely fallen asleep. Her lovely fur hat of honey-toned mink slipped from her head and dropped over the back of the seat into my hands. I caressed it, with tears prickling my eyes, and acknowledged the unwelcome truth: Aunt Harriette's own “champagne life” was approaching its final days.

Over the weekend that followed, Aunt Harriette appeared to weaken visibly, and a private nurse was hired. On the Monday after the Thanksgiving weekend, I did not return to the Bronx for school, remaining in the house in Westchester. Miss Anderson, the private nurse, allowed me only brief visits with my aunt, claiming that “madame” must not have bad thoughts or be upset in any way.