My Canary Yellow Star (3 page)

“That’s fine, then,” Madam said. Her stern features relaxed into a half smile. “I am glad to see that you decided to take me up on my offer. You’ll make a wonderful apprentice. Your salary will be twelve hundred pengos while you’re training. More, of course, if you decide to stay on with me once you’ve finished the year. You will be responsible for sewing certain parts of my clients’ garments. In addition, all the apprentices take turns cleaning up the workroom. Do you have any questions?”

“No, Madam.”

“Good. You will start next Monday. Report to the workshop. The supervisor’s name is Gizella. She will orient you. The apprentices all wear black dresses and white aprons. They use the back entrance.” She glanced at me for a moment, then looked away. “There is something else, Marta.” She shifted in her chair and tapped her fingers on the desktop in front of her. “You are the only Jewish girl in my employ. If anybody is unkind to you, please let me know. I’ll take care of any problems.”

I thanked her and stood up to leave. I was already at the door when she stopped me.

“Marta, what do you hear from your father? Is he all right?”

“We haven’t had a letter for the past two weeks, Madam. Mama says he must be far from the mail or he’d write to us. The last we heard he was digging ditches near Bor. He said it was back-breaking work, but he was managing.”

“Please send your father my best regards, Marta. I have tremendous respect for him.” And she waved me out of the room.

A soft knock on my bedroom door. I sat up in my bed, still groggy from sleep. The door opened a crack and Ervin peeked into the room, beckoning me to get up. I rubbed my eyes and looked at the alarm clock by my bed. It was six o’clock in the morning.

Ervin was waiting for me in the parlor. He had a grim expression on his face and a white sheet of paper in his hand.

“Do you know what time it is?” I demanded.

“I got up early this morning to buy some milk at the grocer’s before it sold out,” Ervin explained, “and I found this announcement. It was tacked onto all the lampposts, to the front gate of our building, to the trees in the park.” He was waving the paper in his hand. He seemed on the verge of tears.

“What’s going on?”

“Read this!” he said, thrusting the sheet at me.

It was an official document, and I read it with growing dismay. It said:

“I can’t believe this. What does it mean?”

“What do you think it means? They want to isolate us, separate us, so that they can easily round us up,” Ervin said. His eyes were full of despair.

“You’re talking crazy! Why would they want to do that?”

“You’ve heard the same rumors as I have, Marta – that all the Jewish people in Poland and Slovakia were taken away to work camps, where they were killed by the Germans. It’ll make it much easier for them to do the same to us if we are marked by yellow stars.”

“Stop repeating such nonsense. Did you show Mama and Grandmama this announcement?”

“Mama has already left for work. Let Grandmama sleep. We’ll tell her when she wakes up.”

An hour later, my grandmother’s lips whitened as she
read the paper. “We’ll talk about this when your mother gets home,” she said. “Don’t leave the apartment unless it is absolutely necessary.”

“What about school?” Ervin asked.

“Stay home today,” Grandmama said firmly.

All day I read and reread the notice. No matter how many times I looked at it, I could not absorb the words. Why did we have to wear a yellow star? What would other people think about me when they saw me wearing it? I would be starting at Madam’s next week. She said I was the only Jewish girl in her salon. How would the other apprentices react to such a humiliating badge? I worried and fretted like that until Mama arrived late in the evening. I could see by the expression of defeat on her face that she already knew about the decree.

Over dinner, Mama told funny stories about her job. We talked about how lucky it was that Ervin’s school was still open, and I mentioned how nervous I was about starting work at Madam’s. Everyone praised the delicious dinner Grandmama had cooked – green peppers stuffed with rice. We talked about everything – except the only thing on our minds.

Finally, Grandmama said, “So, Nelly, our government had a nice surprise for us today.”

Mama’s expression was grave. “I heard that the same thing happened in Poland. I was hoping the war would end before it was our turn.”

“Mama, then you must also have heard what happened to the Jews in Poland! How they were taken away to work camps and murdered!” Ervin cried.

“Rumors,” Mama said; “Alarmist rumors. Have you ever met anybody who was deported to a work camp?” she continued, without giving Ervin the opportunity to answer. “When I meet in person someone who was actually taken away, then I’ll believe such rumors. Not a minute before.”

“You’re not listening, Mama. You’ll never see such a person. The Jews taken to the camps are killed!”

“Are you trying to upset us?” Grandmama asked.

“You have to listen to me! I heard that –”

“That’s enough, Ervin!” Mama said. “I don’t want to hear another word of such talk.” She turned to Grandmama. “Dinner was delicious, as usual.”

“The best I could do without meat.”

“I didn’t miss the meat at all,” Mama said. “I’ll help you clear the table, and then, unfortunately, it’s time to get to work.”

After we had washed the dinner dishes, Mama went to her room, reappearing a few minutes later with her favorite silk blouse in her hand. It was such a pretty blouse – canary yellow in colour, with long sleeves and a tie at the neck. Mama had lent it to me several times for special occasions.

“Oh, Mama! Not your beautiful blouse!” I ran my fingers over the delicate material. It was so soft and smooth.

“It’s the only yellow piece of clothing I own.”

She took a pair of scissors out of her sewing kit and cut the blouse in half. Then she stretched out the material by pinning down its four corners.

“Let me make a pattern for the star,” Ervin said. “Then we’ll be able to trace its outline onto the material without making any mistakes.”

He tore a page from one of his school notebooks and, using his ruler and a protractor, drew a six-pointed star on it. He then cut out the paper star and gave it to Mama, who copied its outline onto her blouse. She repeated this process several times, and then cut out the star figures from the yellow material with her sewing scissors.

“Come on, Marta, let’s see just how skilled a seamstress you are,” Grandmama said. She stitched one of the yellow stars onto the left side of her own jacket and another one onto Mama’s coat. I sewed more yellow stars onto my coat, the uniform I would be wearing to work, Ervin’s jacket and his school coat, and a couple of dresses my mother and grandmother often wore. I made sure my stitches were fine and small.

“That’s enough,” I said as I finished stitching the last star onto my favorite white blouse.

“What about your father?” Grandmama asked. “He’ll need to have a star on his clothing when he comes home.”

“You’re right, Grandmama,” Ervin said. “We have to be ready for Papa.” He sighed. “I wish he would write us more often.”

Mama and Grandmama exchanged worried glances.

“Your father must be far from the mail,” Mama said. I could hear the anxiety in her voice.

“Which one of Papa’s sweaters should I get from his bureau?”

“I’ll get his green one. It matches his eyes,” Mama said with a shy smile.

Within minutes, a yellow star had been sewn on Papa’s sweater, ready for his return.

“Well, we’re finally done,” Grandmama said.

“Try on your jacket, Marta,” Mama said. “Let’s see how the star looks on it.”

I put on my coat and turned around to model it for my family. They all stared at me, not saying a single word. Even Ervin, who never passed up an opportunity to make a sarcastic remark, was silent. I went into the foyer to look at myself in the full-length mirror that was hanging on the wall. Even in the dim light, the canary yellow star was ugly and garish against the navy material of my coat. The star felt heavy, as if it was made of lead instead of silk. I returned to the dining room.

“So what do you think, Marta?” Mama asked.

“It’s not so bad,” I said.

Early Monday morning, I approached the back doors of Madam’s workshop for the first time. My heart was in my
throat and my palms were wet. At the rusty metal doors, so different from the pristine wrought-iron gates that graced the front entrance, I joined a group of chattering girls hurrying into the building. They looked like penguins in their black dresses and white aprons. I saw them glance at the canary yellow star on my chest and begin whispering and giggling.

I followed the girls into the workroom. Fifty sewing machines were arranged in straight rows like desks in a school, and each apprentice sat down at her own station. A tall blonde girl, a little older than the others, stood at the front of the room.

“I am Marta Weisz, the new apprentice,” I told her. “Madam asked me to report to you.”

The girl looked me over, head to toe, her gaze resting on the yellow badge weighing down my heart. She was wearing an Arrow Cross pin, the emblem of the Hungarian Fascist party, on the collar of her dress.

“Jewish trash,” she said, sneering. “Don’t bother me!” She turned on her heels and walked away.

Somebody at the back of the room started to laugh. Another person hushed her. I stood staring down at the floor, not knowing where to turn, what to say, what to do. I could feel the heat burning in my cheeks. Finally, a small girl with a spotty complexion took two shoulder pads from a large bin in the corner of the room. She then went to a long metal coat rack that had dozens of blouses on hangers
dangling from it. The girl pulled a hanger with a pink cotton blouse off the rack and returned to her seat. She proceeded to sew the shoulder pads into the blouse. I followed her example. I picked two shoulder pads from the bin and pulled a white lace blouse from a hanger. I looked around the workroom. A sewing machine in the last row was unoccupied, so I sat down at it and began to work. The girls around me were brimming with good cheer, chattering to each other. None of them spoke to me. It was as if I was invisible.

“My name is Marta,” I said to a small redhead on my right.

“I am Magda,” she replied in a cold voice and immediately turned to speak to her neighbor on her other side.

At home, I had no difficulty sewing shoulder pads into my dresses or Mama’s suits. But somehow at Madam’s, I had become all thumbs. No matter how hard I tried to sew the pads into the lace blouse, the shoulder pads ended up lumpy.

A gentle touch on my back startled me.

“Let me help you, Marta,” Madam said, taking the offending object out of my grasp. I hadn’t even noticed when she came into the room. “See? You have to smooth the pad down first, then pin it to the blouse. That way, it will fit neatly.”

“I am sorry, Madam. I am usually not so clumsy.”

“It’s never easy to get used to a new place, to new circumstances,” Madam said. Her voice was kind. She motioned to the blonde girl in the front of the room to come over to us.

The girl with the Arrow Cross pin hurried to Madam’s side and smiled. “Yes, Madam?”

“Gizella, I’d like you to explain to Marta what she should be doing. Make her feel at home.”

“I already did, Madam,” Gizella said. She looked at me, daring me to contradict her.

“Fine, you may go then,” Madam said. Gizella returned to her post, and Madam turned to me. “Come and see me in my office at the end of the day, Marta.”

At seven o’clock that evening, I knocked on Madam’s door.

“Come in and sit down. You look tired. Don’t worry, the work will get easier as time goes by.”

I sunk gratefully into a chair.

“How was your first day?”

“Fine, Madam.” I wasn’t telling the truth. The girls in the workroom had ignored me the entire day, but what was the use of telling Madam? She spent most of her time with customers and came into the workshop only a few times a day. What could she do? Order the others not to hate me? Not even Madam had the power to do that.

She looked hard at me. “I am glad to hear that everything went so well for you. How is your dear mama?”

“Fine, Madam. Working hard.”

“Please say hello to her for me. Here, take these cakes home with you,” she said, pointing to a plate of pastries on her desk. “I keep them around for my customers. They didn’t eat everything I had put out for them.”

She helped me pack them into a box.

A
ll that spring, I trudged down to Madam’s workshop on Vaci Street early in the morning. At first, every workday was the same as the one before, but in the middle of May everything changed. I was sweeping the workshop floor one day when Madam appeared. Fifty sewing machines fell silent. She announced that a staff meeting was to be held in the large salon at the end of the workday.