The Old Brown Suitcase (13 page)

(MONTREAL, 1948)

MR. CELLINI, THE
Latin teacher, was short and bulky with a mane of grey hair that made him look like a small lion on the prowl. When he wrote on the blackboard or paced up and down eyeing his academic prey, there was no doubt in my mind who was the king of this jungle.

Many of the students in my class who were good in math or science seemed inept at languages. But I found Latin interesting and did well without working hard at it.

One day, Mr. Cellini called Esther Goldberg to the board to conjugate the verb to love —
amare.
She giggled and wrote:
ameo ameas ameat ameamus ameatis ameant.
I think Esther had a little crush on Mr. Cellini. When he asked the class if Esther’s conjugation was correct. I put up my hand.

“It’s wrong,” I said. “It should be
amo amas amat amamus amatis amant
, without the
e.
”

Mr. Cellini asked the class, “Who agrees with Elizabeth?”

Only Miriam put up her hand. No wonder. Who would agree with someone who was failing most of her subjects?

“And how many think that it is spelled correctly on the board?”

All the other hands went up. Esther was stuck-up, but she was also one of the best students in class. Of course, I thought, why not side with her?

The little lion smiled and said, “Well, all of you are wrong; Elizabeth is right.”

Not a sound was heard. Miriam gave me a triumphant look, and everyone else looked at me with surprise. For the first time, the name “Elizabeth” sounded good.

Mr. Cellini called me aside at the end of the lesson and told me I was the best grade nine Latin student he had ever had. “Keep it up and you can expect an A on your final report card,” he said.

Despite Mr. Cellini and the Latin class, things were not going well. Except for French, I struggled with other subjects to no avail, and life was even worse outside of school. Father was ill, and Joshua far away.

One Friday afternoon, just as school ended, Miriam asked me why I looked so glum. I wasn’t in the mood for a heart-to-heart, so I said sarcastically, “Why, everything is just pie à la mode!”

“Come on, Polachka, don’t give me that,” she pressed on. “You’re just miserable because your love life is in Rockville.”

I had to laugh. I hadn’t exactly thought of Joshua as my “love life.” Miriam always managed to pull me out of my gloom. Then she asked if I was coming to the dance in the gym that afternoon.

“You need some fun, and the dance lasts only two or three hours,” she insisted.

I hesitated for a few minutes, thinking that I wasn’t properly dressed for the occasion in my moth-eaten sweater and old grey skirt. Then I said okay and called home to say that I’d be late. Soon, Miriam and I were in the washroom dolling ourselves up: fire-engine-red lipstick, pinched cheeks, slanted eyebrows and eyes half-hidden by hair.

“Not bad,” we chorused, as we marched arm-in-arm to the gym. Someone was playing the “One O’Clock Jump” on the piano. The music was fast and frantic.

“Smile, for heaven sakes, or you’ll be a wallflower,” whispered Miriam.

“What’s a wallflower?” I asked, but Miriam had already disappeared onto the dance floor with Mark, with whom she had made up several weeks ago. I soon found out what wallflower meant! For at least fifteen minutes, I stood supporting the wall, wistfully watching the dance floor.

The dancers looked as if they were struggling with each other. The boys pushed and pulled, and the girls turned and whirled, as they danced the “jitterbug.”

I continued to stand alone against the wall, ignoring the laughter and chatting all around me. The gym was decked out in pink, blue and white balloons gently swaying like monster flowers. Matching streamers coiled in the breeze like snakes. In the emptier corners of the gym sat several teachers, surveying the dancers.

I practised smiling, till my jaws felt stiff. When that didn’t work, and still no one asked me to dance, I decided to practise something new. I tried catching the eye of a dark-haired boy who reminded me of Joshua. That didn’t work either. When he looked away, I decided to hypnotize him mentally into asking me to dance. I concentrated so hard, with my eyes closed, that I almost went into shock when a voice said, “May I have this dance?”

The dark-haired boy was standing in front of me.

“My name is Paul. What’s yours?” he said, almost yelling above the din of the music.

“Elizabeth,” I replied, feeling awkward.

“Come on, let’s jive,” he yelled. For the next ten minutes, he pushed, hurled and twirled me until I was dizzy. At one point I fell, and he just stood there and laughed for a moment, before helping me up. He smelled of sweat, and his hair was greasy. On closer contact, he didn’t appeal to me at all. His eyes were dull. But I closed my eyes and pretended that he was Joshua.

At the end of the dance, I searched frantically for Miriam, but she was nowhere to be found. Sweaty Paul was following me around.

“Can I walk you home?” he asked, sliding his dirty fingernails through his gluey hair. What will my parents say? I wondered. But I didn’t know how to refuse him.

Although we didn’t speak much on the way, he insisted on holding my hand. This was a new experience, and my hand felt like a blob of jelly in his. We reached our block, and just as I feared, Father was pacing up and down in front of our building. In the cold, his breath came out in white puffs as he paced.

“What’s your name, young man, and where do you live?” he questioned Paul as if he were cross-examining a criminal.

“Paul, sir. I just live two blocks away.”

“What were you doing with my daughter?” asked Father, thrusting his face closer to Paul’s.

Paul backed away from Father, looking at him as if he were a maniac.

“I was just walking your daughter home from the dance.”

Father’s face reddened. “What dance? She is not allowed to go to dances. I didn’t give her permission to go to a dance. Slava, get in the house!” Then he turned to Paul and said, “My daughter is quite capable of walking home on her own. And if she isn’t, she has me to pick her up. You are not needed here.”

I was aghast at Father’s speech, heavy with a Polish accent.

Paul turned around and began to walk away.

“It’s dark out, Papa. I didn’t want to walk alone. We only walked,” I explained. Father didn’t seem to be listening. Instead, he lifted his hand and slapped me across the face, and then again on the other side. The hot pain sent a current of rage through me. But I said nothing and followed Father into the house, like an obedient servant.

We ate dinner in silence, except for Pyza who sang “Old MacDonald” and ran around the table. Mother looked tired, but said that she had to return to work in her dress salon. After she left, Father put Pyza to bed.

I went to my room and sat at the desk, stonily staring at my homework. But all I could see before my eyes was what had happened in the street.

After a long while, I cooled off somewhat. I felt hurt that Father didn’t trust me. Why had he found it necessary to make fools of both of us with his old-fashioned ways in front of a Canadian boy.

There was a knock at the door.

“Come in.”

It was Father. He sat down heavily in the chair and asked if I would go with him to a textile factory tomorrow, to pick up some work.

“It’s amazing that I have to make a living from my hobbies,” he said. “In Poland I used to love painting, particularly flowers. I showed a friend of mine several of the jewellery boxes I had painted in Poland. He liked them a lot and told me that there is an opening for a part-time screen printer in the textile factory where he works. I am to pick up some designs for their floral patterns and work on them at home.”

Father grew silent.

My heart softened. How he struggles to make a living, I thought. For a moment I forgot all the hurt. Enthusiastically I agreed to go with him.

When Monday came around I worried about how I would explain Father’s outburst to Paul. I needn’t have worried. He said only a stiff hello when passing me in the hallway. I hoped that he would stop and chat. I hoped that he might get my telephone number from Miriam, that he was secretly pining away for me. None of that happened.

Over a Coke after school, Miriam told me not to waste my time on Paul.

“If he were a real man, he would have stood behind you, Polachka. He is just a worthless slob.”

I had to agree with her.

I went home to turn this event into a story. My folder, which I kept in the old brown suitcase, was now full of little stories, some written during the war, others from the time of the Ghetto and afterwards. The earlier ones were in Polish, of course, but as I learned more English I found that writing in English offered me a challenge. Besides, my written Polish was getting rusty.

The many mistakes that I still made in my English stories bothered me. After thinking about it for a long time, I decided to send the Ghetto stories to Joshua for correction. Also, I felt that he would be interested in them.

I waited impatiently for an answer but much time went by and no answer came. I was becoming disillusioned even with Joshua. I could not believe that he was the kind of “slob” that Miriam thought Paul to be.

One day I decided to send Joshua a short dry note. After all, I felt that my stories were my very soul and that it was in his possession.

After I mailed the note, I felt better. He deserved it, I thought.

Schoolwork was still tedious, and my soul was filled with bitterness. Nevertheless, I continued to write stories in my uncertain English, using a Polish word here and there. Writing was like entering a world of words — where I felt almost totally free.

One day a letter from Joshua arrived. I tore open the envelope.

Something shiny fell out of the envelope. I picked up the tiny object with uncertain fingers and examined it. It was a star, the kind worn on the arms of Jewish people in the Warsaw Ghetto, the Star of David. Attached to it was a thin gold chain. I put it around my neck and re-read the letter.

Joshua was right. Maybe I was mistrustful and bitter and full of hate still. There was such secrecy and silence surrounding the murder of our people that even my parents and their friends hardly ever mentioned it. It was as if they were ashamed to talk about it.

I wrote back to Joshua immediately, saying that I was sorry about his and his mother’s flu, and that I hoped everyone was better. Most of all, I apologized for the coldness of my letter. Although I knew that I cared for Joshua, somehow I couldn’t sign the letter “Love, Liz.”

After thinking hard about it, I figured out why it was so difficult to write something that most Canadian teenagers wouldn’t think twice about.