The Night of the Burning (13 page)

“Oh good, melktert for dessert,” Nechama murmured as she caught sight of a maid carrying plates of sweet custard pie on a large tray. “That means we won’t be having meat for the main course, though. I like lamb chops … and steak and chicken, too.”

“You little piggy.” I laughed. “You like dairy foods, too. You even liked the baked fish in cheese that Cook tried on us last week. I think you just like
food
.”

We ate well at the orphanage and never quite got used to having meat at least once a day and as much fruit as we wanted. Dessert was served after every supper, and three times a week it was served after lunch, too. There were stewed apricots with yellow custard; bread and butter pudding with a crusty meringue on top; English trifle made with cake pieces softened in jelly and whipped cream; and—my favorite—hot round crumpets served with melted butter and Lyle’s Golden Syrup.

On that Monday, however, we never ate the melktert. Just before dessert, Matron appeared in the door of the dining room. She had finished her weekly meeting with the members of the Governing Board of the orphanage. She was a kind but extremely busy woman. “Nechama, Devorah, I need to talk to you in my office, please,” she called firmly over the hubbub of voices.

Nechama and I gave each other puzzled looks as we pushed our chairs back and followed her. Were we in trouble? Nechama chattered too much in school, and I
had lost my school hat for a short while the previous week, but Matron didn’t usually call children into her office for such small offenses.

Matron sat down rather heavily behind her large desk, which was stacked with carefully arranged files. Framed photographs of groups of children hung on the walls, each one with a different year printed underneath. Nechama and I had each been given our own copy of the most recent photo, in which we stood at opposite corners of our group.

“Please be seated, Devorah and Nechama,” Matron said formally, and pointed to two tall chairs still warm from the board members who had sat there.

We perched ourselves awkwardly. I felt the twitch begin in my eyelid, and I pressed a finger to my eye to try to stop it.

“As you know,” Matron began, folding her hands on the desk in front of her, “soon after you arrived, eight of our children were lucky enough to be offered homes by relatives or families. We were sad to see them go, but we are very grateful that they will grow up in private homes with loving new parents.”

I sat dead still, but my mind raced ahead of Matron at the speed of light. A family, a home. Were we going to have those things again? Would we have Shabbes together, and jokes and laughter? Could it be?

“Mr. and Mrs. Stein wrote to us the week after your ship arrived. They wanted a little boy at first,” Matron went
on. “But there was a mistake and all the boys of the age they wanted were sent to the orphanage in Johannesburg. When they came to the ballet performance last month, they saw Nechama in the audience and they changed their minds. They have chosen a girl. Nechama.”

I stared blankly at Matron, but Matron was looking only at my sister.

“Yes, they chose you, Nechama,” she said. “The board asked if they would take two girls, both of you, but the Steins want only one. I know the separation will be hard for both of you at first, but you’ll still see each other, and Devorah can visit you in your new home and—”

Matron’s voice came to a stop and there was silence in the room. I felt frozen rigid, numb. I felt again like the Devorah who had awakened the morning after That Night. Nechama looked from one face to the other. She didn’t seem to understand. Matron cleared her throat and then addressed herself again to Nechama.

“I’m sure Devorah will be happy for you when she gets used to the idea,” Matron said with a smile that did not reach her eyes. “This is a wonderful opportunity for you, Nechama. Louis Stein owns one of the biggest ladies’ tailoring shops in town, and he and his wife have a beautiful home. She is on the Women’s Committee for our orphanage and has raised a good deal of money for us among her friends.”

Matron stood up from her chair. “You may go now, girls, and spend some time together. Mr. and Mrs. Stein
will be here tomorrow to take Nechama to her new home.” We slid off our chairs with a simultaneous thud and slipped from the room. Neither of us had said a word. I heard Matron sigh. Then the door closed.

As soon as we were out of sight, I grabbed Nechama’s hand and pulled her through the front door toward some tall bushes a distance away. Nechama almost lost her footing, but I dragged her frantically. Behind the bushes we would be completely hidden.

Once there, I wheeled her around to face me. “We have to leave here right now. We have to grab our things and run away right now.”

Nechama’s eyes widened in horror. “But we don’t have anywhere to go. We don’t have any money.”

“Never mind money, Nechama. Don’t you understand? We’re in terrible danger again. They’re tearing us apart. We have to run. Fast, like on That Night.”

“No,” she whimpered. Then she pulled away. “I’m too scared out there. We’re only little. We can’t live alone outside.”

I glared at her in rage and fear. She was right; we couldn’t run away. I couldn’t take care of her alone. I had failed. I had forgotten to look out for danger and it had found me unaware, unprepared. I had no money, I hadn’t learned enough in school yet, I didn’t even know my way around Cape Town.

I threw myself to the grass. Tears poured down my
cheeks, burning hot like a volcano. “Mama! Papa!” I called. “They’re taking her away from me. Don’t let them do it!”

Nechama knelt next to me and sobbed loudly, too.

I pounded the ground with my fists. “How can they do this? After we survived everything together …”

“You’re scaring me!” Nechama cried, and I held her tightly, our cheeks slippery wet. We clung together, moaning. But no one heard us.

After a long time, I couldn’t cry anymore. My fists hurt from beating at the ground. The ground was too hard; I couldn’t make a mark. I felt so drained, so helpless. Nechama’s fingertips dropped out of my own.

Finally, it was Nechama who searched for a handkerchief in my pocket and wiped both of our faces with it. Then she patted my back with her little hand. “Devorahleh,” she said softly, “don’t worry, we will still see each other sometimes.”

“Sometimes!” I broke into fresh sobs of frustration, kicking wildly at the grass.

That made Nechama cry again, too, but soon she grew quiet. “It might be nice,” she began thoughtfully, “to live in a beautiful house and have a new mother and father.” Her hand continued to pat me a bit absently.

I sat up in one fast movement. “You’re
mine
,” I whispered fiercely. “There’s no one else in our family. They can’t tear us apart.”

She dropped her chin and pulled at a dandelion.

A brilliant idea struck me. I grabbed her wrists.
“Nechama, I’ve got it. You must tell them you won’t go. If you kick and scream enough, they won’t want you and they’ll choose someone else. You have to tell Matron you don’t want to go. Let’s go tell her right now.”

Nechama dissolved into tears and pulled her hands from me to cover her face. “I can’t say that to Matron, I can’t!” she cried.

“Why not?” I demanded.

“Because … because … Matron will be cross with me,” she ventured through her fingers.

There was something about the way she wouldn’t look at me. A terrible suspicion seeped like poison into my brain. “Nechama Lehrman,” I said slowly, forcing each word out of my mouth. “I think you want to go to those new people. I think you want to leave me.”

“I don’t! I don’t!” cried Nechama.

What did she mean? What was she really saying? Surely I just had to push her a little, force her to face the truth, and she would come to her senses. “I think you want to leave us all, Mama and Papa and me,” I dared to venture. “I think you want to forget everything and start again as if nothing had ever happened to us.”

Her only answer was violent sobbing. I waited, but I knew already—I would not get the passionate denial I needed. My heart hurt me as it drummed under my tight ribs. I folded my arms against the pain.

“We’re a family, Nechama,” I said in a hoarse whisper. “We’re the only ones left of our family. I promised Mama
that I would take care of you. How can I take care of the family if we are apart?”

Nechama sniffed loudly. She didn’t have any answer.

And then, for the first time, I gave up. I flopped down onto the grass and curled into a ball on my side. My arms had no strength left in them. “It’s finished,” I said. “I tried so hard, Mama, Papa, but I can’t do it. There is nothing I can do now.”

1921–22

After Nechama skipped away from the orphanage, looking back only once, the days passed very slowly for me. I sat on my bed for hours, thinking of nothing, or stared out the window at the hot garden with its strange, too-bright plants. First Mama and Papa had left me; then I had lost Aunt Friedka and Madame Engel. Now Nechama had gone off with strangers she was ready to call her parents. I felt as heavy as a stone. One night I dreamed that I was Papa, pulling the laden cart behind me. When I woke up in the morning, the weight hardly seemed to lift.

Daddy Ochberg and Mr. Bobrow were concerned about me, I could see that, but I took pleasure in their worry. Resentment boiled in me. How dare they separate my sister and me? Hadn’t we suffered enough? And how could Nechama possibly bear to leave me? Then the anger burnt out and I sat picking at the threads in the bedspread, feeling numb.

At school, my fury served me well. I felt it pushing me, driving me to learn. I had to find out how to speak and read English perfectly, to add numbers and understand money, to know about cities and people around the world. Then I would be stronger. Then I would be able to take better care of myself. Then maybe I could get my sister back.

Nechama was doing well, I was told. The Steins had given her an English version of her name, Naomi. And she was attending a fancy private school near her new home. When I asked to see her, the grownups said it was best to let a few weeks go by first. To give her time to adapt, they said.

But what about me? Every morning, every night, there was an empty space next to me that my sister had once filled. For twenty-one days I ached for her, ached to touch her curls and see her eyes and hear her laugh. And yet I hated her.

At last Nechama-now-called-Naomi came to collect me for a visit to her new home. I was waiting for her just inside the big doors of the orphanage, my palms sweating. When I saw her halo of curls, I forgot my anger. Without a word, we clung to each other, mercifully alone in the dim entrance hall.

“Devorahleh,” she murmured.

A driver in a uniform waited in the car outside. We held hands in the back of the car all the way, and my sister found her tongue again. I barely listened, conscious only
of her soft little fingers in mine, the fine leather fragrance of the car, the suburbs we were reaching too quickly. I wanted the drive to last forever. But soon we had pulled up outside a large, handsome home and I was being welcomed by bluff, joking Mr. Stein and delicate, elegant Mrs. Stein. Naomi, they kept calling her. Naomi. Naomi. I was to call her Naomi, too.

Naomi herself seemed oblivious to my awkwardness. “Come to my room, Devorah,” she chirped. “Come and see how pretty and pink everything is, and look at my bird in its cage. You can hold my doll. Isn’t she beautiful?”

We entered a pink dream of a room and I took the heavy doll obediently. Naomi had vowed in London that she was going to have a fancy doll one day; I wished I could have been the one to give it to her. I examined the huge, rigid doll from its fancy hat down to its black patent leather pumps. “It’s got lovely clothes,” I said finally, “but I don’t think the face is as pretty as the ones on the dolls Papa gave us.” I smiled, but Naomi looked puzzled.

“At home,” I prodded her. “Remember the dolls with yellow hair and blue eyes? We each had one and we used to play with them under the quilt on the big bed.”

“I don’t remember,” Naomi said, turning to something else. “Come and look at my hand mirror with silver rosebuds carved on it. It belonged to a great-aunt who was also called Naomi—see the
N
on the back?”

So that was where my sister’s new name had come from—a “great-aunt” who wasn’t related at all. My anger
rose. Was it really possible that she didn’t remember the dolls?

“Necham—Naomi, please listen to me,” I blurted. “I’m your real family. These people aren’t your real family. Tell them you want to go back and live with me. Tell them you want to go home.”

Naomi turned to me and I saw incredulity in her eyes. Then she gave a winsome smile and stroked my hand.

“But I like this home,” she said softly. “It’s prettier than the orphanage and everyone spoils me. I do miss you at night, Devorahleh, but I don’t want to leave here. Can’t you ask them to adopt you, too?”

“They won’t,” I muttered. “I’ve asked Matron already.” I didn’t elaborate on the humiliating conversation we’d had just after my sister left, in which Matron told me sadly that she’d implored the Steins to take both of us, but they had insisted that they wanted only one daughter. Like wanting only one cake, or one dress.

Naomi squeezed my hand in sympathy. Then she darted across the room and brought some exquisite doll clothes to show me, like a mother trying to distract a child.

After a few minutes of Naomi’s chatter and my brief, sullen replies, a brass bell echoed through the house. “That means lunch is ready,” Naomi interpreted. “Let’s go. Everything tastes so, so good here.”

I followed her silently, my feet sinking into the thick cream-colored carpeting, until we entered a cheerful green dining room with white-trimmed French windows leading
to the garden.

“Look, Devorah,” Naomi called, dancing up to a place lovingly decorated with freshly picked grapevines and white daisies and jasmine. “This is your chair.”

“It was Naomi’s idea. She picked everything in the garden herself,” Mrs. Stein said proudly, and Mr. Stein teased my sister about how carefully she had chosen the decorations to match the dining room.