Mother and Me (48 page)

Nevertheless, I was much relieved when the door was finally opened by a round-faced peasant woman in kerchief and apron, the sort of person I had seen many times before. “Come in quickly,” she said in her peasant-accented Polish. In her hand she held a candle in a metal candleholder with a polished reflector.

Mother pushed me inside ahead of her.

“I will see you in the morning,” Mr. Koppleman said, but the door was closed before he could finish. I took my hat off inside the house as I had always been taught. “Put your hat back on,” Mother whispered.

“Blah, blah, blah,” I heard a shrill voice cry from somewhere behind the peasant woman. The peasant woman stepped to the side quickly, giving us a view of a tiny woman wrapped in a gray shawl, making her slow way toward us with the help of a length of stick in her hand.

“I'm sorry, Rebbetzin,” Mother said. “We don't speak Yiddish.”

“You are crazy!” the woman said in the Jewish accent I had heard on the trolleys. “I say you are crazy in the snow with the baby.”

The woman shuffled across the floor, her feet, in wool socks, thrust into back-less slippers. Behind her, someone was coughing.

“We are going now because it will not be possible in the spring,” Mother answered in a surprisingly firm tone. “I have a young son, and I don't want him growing up a Soviet.”

The woman stopped directly in front of us, holding glasses on a silver stick up to her eyes. By the candlelight, the white skin on her hands and face looked almost transparent except for its variously shaped brown spots. A wrinkled fold hung down on either side of her chin. But in place of the white hair I would have expected, she had a full head of orange-colored waves and curls. Though she stood perfectly straight, she was no taller than I was. She examined us both through her handheld glasses. The peasant woman brought the candle a little closer to our faces.

“Why you don't speak Yiddish?” the old woman asked.

“I'm sorry, Rebbetzen,” Mother said. “My mother is Russian, and we spoke Russian and Polish at home, not Yiddish.”

The woman gave a grunt that showed her displeasure. “Go eat,” she said, waving her stick toward the back of the room. Following the stick, I could see a table near a stove, dimly lit by a lamp hanging from a beam on the other side of the stove. Two wooden armchairs stood at right angles to each other near the light, and for the first time I noticed a bundled figure occupying one of the chairs. It was a man with a long white beard and wearing a black coat, a wide-brimmed hat, and gloves with the finger-tips cut off. His steel-rimmed glasses were perched halfway down his nose. A cigarette dangled from one corner of his mouth. I saw him lick his bony fingers before turning a
page in the book he was reading. He seemed oblivious of our presence.

The old woman indicated that we should sit at the table.

“Take off your coat,” Mother said to me, “but keep your hat on.” I did not understand the hat business, but it was hot here near the stove. A strong meat and vegetable smell came from the stove, and I suddenly realized that I was very hungry.

We sat down across from each other, and the younger woman brought us blue bowls of steaming stew and wooden spoons. This was accompanied by a thick slice of unbuttered black bread for each.

“Blow, it's hot,” Mother said to me. The pieces of meat and vegetables had a very strong smell. I blew on a spoonful of the liquid and sipped it carefully. I didn't like the taste.

“It's delicious,” Mother said over her shoulder. “What is it?”

“Blah,” the old woman said.

“Goat,” the round-faced woman translated.

I actually heard myself gulp. There had been goats on the farm, smelly, aggressive animals that ate garbage and had horns and beards like Satan. That strong flavor now curdled on my tongue, and I began to gag.

I saw Mother look up at me from under her brows and fought to control the feeling.

“Eat,” the old woman encouraged. The sudden friendliness in her tone disturbed me further.

“Try it, Yulek. It's very good,” Mother urged quietly. There was no way that any of this was going to get through my throat, even if I wanted it to.

“You have to eat,” Mother said with more firmness. “We have a long trip tomorrow.”

I shook my head.

“Eat just the vegetables and the bread,” Mother said. She dipped a piece of her dry bread in the juice.

I shook my head again. I tried eating the bread, but without butter it wouldn't go down my throat either.

“You can't have butter right now,” Mother whispered. Then she turned to the two women. “He can't eat the stew. Is there something you can put on his bread?” she asked. The women exchanged some words in Yiddish.

I heard some shuffling behind me, and in a moment the younger woman had placed another slice of black bread in front of me, this one covered with a white jelly-like substance.

I bit into it hungrily. It was greasy and tasted like nothing I had experienced before.

The old woman must have noticed my reaction. “Schmaltz,” she said.

“It's goose lard, and it's delicious,” Mother said.

I put the bread down and shook my head again.

“You have to eat something,” Mother said. The taste of grease was still in my mouth, and I shook my head again. From the man in the chair, there now came a series of dry coughs.

“He isn't used to this kind of food,” Mother said to the women. “He needs to eat something—we have a very hard journey tomorrow. Can't you give him some butter or cheese? He hasn't touched the meat.”

The old woman sticked her way over to where the man was sitting. They exchanged some words that I couldn't hear, and he coughed some more. Then she hobbled back and spoke to the younger one. The peasant woman busied herself at the cupboard. Finally she returned with a plate holding another slice of bread. On top of the bread was a thick slice of white cheese. I hoped for a layer of butter under the cheese. In her other hand she carried a cup. But instead of setting them down, she indicated with her head that I was to follow her. Mother nodded her consent.

The cheese beckoned, and I picked up Meesh and followed.

The woman led me to the empty chair near where the old man was sitting in the light of the lamp and indicated that I should sit. I had the feeling that I was trespassing in a private
space I had no desire to occupy. The old man gave a cough and went on with his reading and smoking, ignoring my presence.

I sat down, squeezing myself against the side of the chair furthest from his, with Meesh between us. I pretended not to be looking at him, while the woman handed me the plate and the cup.

Resting the cup on the arm of the chair and the plate in my lap, I bit into the cheese cautiously. It had a tangy flavor and a creamy texture that I did like. The milk in the cup was thicker than what I knew and had a taste similar to the cheese. I ate eagerly.

At the same time I put my face down so that I could watch the old man through my lowered eyelashes. I had never been this close to anyone so old before. I saw his legs and feet bundled up in a blanket in addition to the coat and hat that he wore despite the heat from the stove. I wondered if he could walk. I watched him moisten his yellow-stained fingertips to turn a page and then brush the cigarette ash out of his beard without, it seemed, interrupting his reading. Then he would cough again out of one side of his mouth, while he held the cigarette firmly in the other.

I presumed that this was the Jewish priest who had grown too old to work. I wondered how he felt about his approaching death without the possibility of going to Heaven. I wondered if he knew about Heaven. It would be even worse if he knew about Heaven and knew he couldn't go there. Here, sitting in the chair right next to mine, I realized, was a man who knew that he would soon be dying. It might happen next month or next week, or even tonight. When my grandfather died, he hadn't been as old as this man and had had no idea he was about to die. But this man was just calmly sitting there waiting for it to happen.

He was even reading. Reading to put new things into his brain even though tomorrow that brain might no longer remember anything. I recalled how I had felt when Kiki and
I would build sand castles on the beach that I knew the sea would come and wash away soon. I didn't feel bad for myself, because I could always build another sand castle, but I felt bad for the castle, which didn't even know that its existence would be snuffed out by the next tide. But here was a man who knew and just sat there reading and waiting for it. It was so very sad—sad and so terribly fascinating. I could not take my eyes from the poor doomed man.

Then the old man caught me. As I turned my eyes up from my bread, I found myself looking right into the eye on my side of his face. He hadn't turned his head, but the eye bypassed the steel-rimmed glasses in the middle of his nose and was staring right at me. The brown pupil was set in a yellowish eyeball with red veins running in all directions, and it stared directly into my left eye.

I looked away instinctively. I would not look up again. But I knew that he knew that I had been watching him. I tried to turn my attention to Meesh, but could not wipe out the sight of that eye looking at me and knowing that I had been watching him. I wondered who else knew that I had been watching him. I kept my eyes on Meesh, on my lap, on my shoes, and on the floor in front of me until the younger woman took Mother and me to where we would be sleeping.

Three walls of our room were of stone, and the one window was a narrow slit just below the ceiling. I realized we were actually below ground level. A kerosene lamp that the peasant woman had lit for us, glowed on the table. Away from the stove it was very cold in this house. “We'll keep our clothes on tonight,” Mother said. I had no problem with that.

“Come here and sit down with me,” Mother said, seating herself on the bed. The mattress did not seem to give under her. “I want to tell you something.” In view of the day's activities, this was not unexpected. I sat down beside her on the bed. The mattress was actually soft, but resting on something that did not give.

“I told you, Yulek, that this is the home of a rabbi,” Mother began. “These people are very pious Jews. Do you know what that means?”

“That they pray a lot,” I speculated.

“That's right, they pray a lot. And they also obey very closely the laws that God gave them.”

This was getting interesting. “What kind of laws did God give them?” I asked.

“Well, one of them is not to eat meat and milk or things made from milk, like butter, at the same time. That's why you couldn't have butter on your bread while the stew was on the table.”

This seemed like a very strange issue for God to concern Himself with. “What other laws are there?” I asked.

“Well, I'm not sure what the exact law is, but Jewish men and boys have to keep something on their heads all the time and never cut the hair in front of their ears.”

God, I realized, must have been making fun of Jews. I didn't say that aloud, though. Instead, I said, “That's very different from the laws God gave Catholics.”

“Oh, what laws are those?”

“Well, they're laws about being good. One is not to kill people and another is not to steal anything.”

My mother surprised me by laughing at this. “Those are the Ten Commandments.”

“Yes, there are ten altogether, about lying and going to church on Sundays.”

“Yulek, God gave the Ten Commandments to the Jews. Don't you know that?”

Now I was confused. “Then how did Catholics get them?” This was more of a rhetorical question since Kiki had shown me a gray card with all ten printed on it.

“My poor Yulechek,” Mother laughed. “What has Miss Yanka been teaching you? Don't you know that the first Christians were Jews?”

Mother was talking nonsense now.

“Jesus,” Mother went on, “was a Jew.”

This was outrageous! “What do you know about Jesus?” I demanded.

“A few things.”

“All right, where was He born?”

“In Bethlehem,” she answered. “His mother's name was Mary, and his father was a carpenter named Joseph.”

She was right. She did know all about Jesus.

“Bethlehem was in Judea, which is Palestine now,” she continued. “That's where Jews used to live.”

I knew that my grandfather on my father's side lived in Palestine right now. “Well, if He was a Jew,” I asked, knowing that I had her now, “how come He's in Heaven?”

“Because God loves Him,” Mother said.

“God loves Jews?” This question was rhetorical as well.

My mother closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the wall behind her. “God loves everyone,” she said. “Didn't Miss Yanka teach you that? He loves Jews and Catholics and Arabs—who call him Allah—and Chinese people who don't even worship Him.”

“How about Negroes in Africa and Indians in America?”

“Even them. Even people who don't believe He exists.”

This seemed like a God that was much easier to live with.

“So does that mean that the rabbi will be going to Heaven?” I asked. “Even though he isn't Catholic? I mean when he dies?”

“Of course. What kind of God wouldn't let people into heaven just because they were born Jewish or Chinese? Would that be a loving God?”

She really had me there. It would be a cruel God who sent people to hell forever, just because they hadn't been born to Catholic parents.

“Of course the rabbi is going to Heaven when he dies,” Mother said. “He is a very good man. If the Russians knew that they helped people like us to escape, he and his wife would
be arrested. Maybe even shot. They're not only very good, but very brave people.”

Suddenly I had developed goose bumps. These funny people were real heroes, like the ones Kiki used to tell about, people who risked their lives to help Poland or to stand up for what was right, even if they were Jews. And here I was, right in their house.