Too Jewish (23 page)

"She's going to brainwash our child," Bernie said.

"Oh, come on," I said. "Darby's too smart to be brainwashed in a month. My mother didn't brainwash me, and she had me for twenty years."

Bernie gave me a cockeyed look. "Well, not for lack of trying."

"And look how well I turned out despite her."

He came over and gave me a little hug. "Her value system might look very good to a thirteen-year-old girl who didn't have a running start," he said. "If she lets Darby buy everything she wants, Darby will come back wanting to move in with her."

I reminded him of Darby's trip to Canal Street when she came home with a can of peanut brittle. I could see her coming home from a month in Europe with nothing more than a bar of Swiss chocolate. "You're insulting Darby," I said.

"No, I'm not. She's only human. I've sacrificed too much to let her go gallivanting across Europe spending money like there's no tomorrow."

I guess we were louder than we realized. There was a knock at the door. "What," I said.

Darby didn't come in. "I can hear you from my room. I know what you're talking about."

I said to come in. Darby had Catherine with her. They were so innocent in their pajamas. It didn't help that Darby's came from Japan. One of my mother's week-long jaunts.

"This is not being decided by committee," Bernie said

"Daddy, we're doing European history this year. It would be so great if I could go. I mean, we started with the Etruscans and everything."

"Then I'll take you," Bernie said.

"Now?" Darby said.

"One day," Bernie said.

"But I think I can take modern history next year."

Bernie knew when he needed to do the right thing. That always was the trouble.

"Will you let me figure this out?" he said to Darby.

Darby hugged Bernie. Then she hugged me. Then she hugged Catherine. She knew she was going to Europe. She wasn't thinking about her traveling companion. Darby was used to paying steep prices.

Bernie started whispering when the girls left the room.

"We'll have a chance to be together," he said.

"We need that," I said. "No outside interference. No inside interference." I put my arms around him.

"I only have one stipulation," he said.

I was ready.

"They absolutely cannot go into Germany. I do not want her knowing anything about that. There is too much to find out."

I said that was eminently fair. I had only one concern. Telling my mother not to do something was never a good idea. If she hadn't thought of it before, she would think of it then.

I'm only a high-school sophomore, so I would think that what's happened in my life wouldn't be worth enough to be part of an oral history, especially of Jews in the South. But then I think of two things. I think how Anne Frank had been dead for three years when she was my age, and more than that almost, I think that as the daughter of a Holocaust survivor I have some kind of legacy. Especially when I'm not sure I can call my daddy a survivor. I mean, his life story isn't exactly one of defying the odds, so I need to tell everything I remember.

I talked to my mother before I started, because I knew she'd done this a couple of years ago. My mother coached me to sort of follow her lead. But she didn't want me saying, Oh, I know my parents both said what their favorite TV shows were, so mine's
Amos n Andy.
She said that show's not on anymore because it's not right about Negroes, but it's still really funny. So I'm saying that first because I want to come across as the real me, and then for the record I can put down that I really like
Twilight Zone.
It's the truth, and my parents are proud of me for liking it more than variety shows and stuff. My favorite episode was the one where the guy thought the Earth was moving closer to the sun, but he really was in a fever dream, and he woke up and found out it was moving away from the sun, and everyone was going to freeze to death.

That's one thing about me. A second thing about me is that I'm allergic to bees. That's not a big deal, but I say it because I like the way the word "bees" sounds. Bees. We learned the word onomatopoeia in English last year, and it has that quality to it. I'm allergic to be-e-e-s.

The last thing about me is a secret. It actually got me in a world of trouble, and I'm going to tell all about it eventually. If I'd kept it to myself, terrible things probably wouldn't have happened. But now there's no point in keeping it to myself, and besides, it's part of an important memory. I speak German.

* * *

I heard it a lot. When I was a baby, my father supposedly said to my mother that English was my mother tongue, and he wanted me to be an English speaker. I guess she'd asked him if he wanted me to learn German, the way kids who come from other countries sometimes arrive in school not even knowing English. I don't know why he did it behind her back. I don't even know when he started. He must have waited until I was maybe four, because I knew never to let on in front of my mother. But a four-year-old picks up language almost as easily as a newborn. I'm completely fluent.

I learned a lot of German when Daddy took me to visit the Scheinmanns. They were his German friends, but really only because they spoke German. Daddy explained to me that I couldn't tell anybody, but people like him and his friends were really sort of Polish and Ukrainian, but their families had been in Germany for a couple of generations. If my grandparents had known he was of even worse Jewish blood, they'd have been horrified. It's hard to explain because I didn't know what he was talking about. I figured if Daddy had to escape the Nazis, and the Scheinmanns lucked out by leaving before the Nazis had power, then they were Germans.

When I was about ten, Daddy went to play cards at the Scheinmanns' so he could talk German and eat these little tortes. Their apartment was so dark, mostly because of the wood of the furniture, since the walls were white, and the curtains were open. I wasn't passing judgment, but there was something really heavy about Jewish decorations that I didn't like. I know that came from inside me, because my grandmother was really critical of the one thing my father ever owned, what he called an esrog box, which was silver and very swirly, with a very detailed silver lion on the top. That's the way everything was in the Scheinmanns' apartment, very swirlily decorated, paintings that had a lot of red and blue, and a menorah as big as their television. All of their books matched. They were encyclopedias, I think. I wasn't judging them. But I also wasn't copying my grandmother, because I thought my grandmother was an awful person. I just was a little depressed by how they spent their money decorating. It was like they weren't thinking.

That afternoon Daddy was at one of two card tables, and I was watching him play. I understood bridge pretty well. I also understood that I shouldn't whisper to him because he had to make his decisions in his head. He asked me to get him a sandwich. In German, of course. Not a word of English was spoken the entire time we were over there.

Mrs. Fuchs said how well I understood German. I was probably the only child in New Orleans who did so. Well, the only child born here. Everyone there had grown children. Daddy told her how my speaking German was our little secret, that even my mother didn't know.

"
Ich spreche nur für meine Katz,
" I said. I speak only to my cat.

Everyone laughed.

"Better you should teach her Yiddish," Mr. Fuchs said. "She's more Jewish than German."

Daddy said he didn't know very much Yiddish. He sounded like he was confessing something. Mr. Fuchs turned to me and said, "You'll pick it up along the way." I thought he was right, but I also thought I was going to pick it up from somewhere besides people.

Mrs. Scheinmann asked what she always asked. Why didn't Daddy bring my mother?

And he explained as he always explained. He tried once to teach my mother German. I'd never seen it, so it must have been before I was born. Or at least before he started teaching me. "She would need a class," he said. "Children are different. You just talk to them. I know Letty would want to join us."

"So just teach her how to say three no trump,'" Mr. Fuchs said. It was a good joke. I loved Mr. Fuchs. Daddy reminded everyone that he'd have to teach my mother bridge first. "I thought all those people play bridge," Mr. Fuchs said.

"Her mother plays bridge all right," Daddy said. "Letty says that's why she refuses to learn. She has her limits."

He knew he could say that in front of me.

"I like that Letty very much," Mrs. Scheinmann said. She knew she could say that in front of me, too. I mean, she could say it for that particular reason.

Mrs. Scheinmann waited until everyone had been there for an hour before she brought out the best snacks for the buffet. Daddy followed her into the kitchen to help, and I followed him. "Are you doing all right?" she asked him.

"Things could be worse," he said.

"Things could be better?" she said.

Daddy looked at me. I knew he wanted me to leave the kitchen. I knew he also wanted me not to be able to understand German, but it was too late for that. "You're a happy girl, aren't you," he said.

"
Ich glaube es,"
I said. I guess so.

Daddy turned to Mrs. Scheinmann. "You see, I don't see how I can take her away from here. I definitely can't take Letty away from here."

"It's funny, you know what my Nathan said about you the other night? He said, That Bernie, he's got himself a mixed marriage.' Like you're married to a Catholic or a colored or something."

"That's a good one," Daddy said.

I could tell he was being sort of polite. It really wasn't nice to make jokes about Negroes. On the other hand, he knew who was at the top, and who was at the bottom according to my grandmother. She might have not hollered at her maid named Louise, but she wasn't very nice to her. And it was the same way with Daddy.

"You know what's the trouble with that mother-in-law of yours?" Mrs. Scheinmann said. She didn't wait for an answer. "That woman wouldn't be caught dead in my shul. But she has you convinced you'll get rich if you go to that so-called temple of hers. I don't know where being rich suddenly became a religion. Is money such a nice God?"

"In New Orleans he is," Daddy said.

I didn't know what Daddy thought, but I didn't believe in God. When my friends at school figured out Santa Claus, I figured out that everything else that older people were telling us was made up, too.

"Look," Daddy said. "Letty's never lived anywhere else." He looked at me. It went without saying that I
really
had never lived anywhere else. "I can't manage to take her out of her culture. She has something to prove right here. How can I take her to New York when I can't even take her to your postal zone? I happen to love her, you know."

"But you're the head of the house," Mrs. Scheinmann said.

"The head of the house needs to do more than sell knickknacks one at a time," Daddy said. My poor daddy.

"Since when?" she said.

"Since I've been in New Orleans, I guess," Daddy said.

"You need to take that girl away from her parents," Mrs. Scheinmann said. "Having a nice little business is fine work. Most parents would respect that."

"They're the only parents I have, too," he said. I couldn't believe it.

Mrs. Scheinmann slammed her hand down on the counter. Her hand was wet, and it made a nice, sharp sound. "From what you tell me, they've put you up for adoption. I'll be your mother. A hundred-sixty dollars. Feh! If I'd been here, you'd have had the hundred-sixty dollars."

In the car going home, I asked Daddy what she meant. I'd never heard about that amount of money. I'd heard about other amounts, but never a hundred sixty dollars.

He didn't want to tell me. Not that it was a secret, but that it was off limits to talk about. It sounded too important. "Does Mama know?" Yes, she knows. He could see I was going to ask her if he didn't tell, so he forced himself to explain why I couldn't know.

"I needed that much money during the war," he said. "You can imagine that your grandparents could have loaned me that amount a thousand times over. But they refused. They said I was a scam artist, playing on your mother's sympathies. Okay?"

He didn't need to say more. I knew this was about something frightening.

I felt terrible. He wasn't keeping secrets because of any unfair reasons. So I was wrong to have my own. It was a rule in our house that I was never supposed to know anything about what happened in Europe in the Second World War. But I had read Anne Frank's diary. I kept it in my desk at school.

Catherine and I were spending the whole weekend together, Friday night at her house, and Saturday night at mine. Catherine was my best friend, and we were lucky to have each other because, let's face it, Newman wasn't a great place for finding friends. Especially in middle school, where all the rules were plain stupid. You had to wear Pappagallos and you had to live in a two-story brick house. I lived in a perfect Victorian cottage, and Catherine lived in a three-story house with balconies in the Garden District, and sometimes we wore our gym shoes to school. Catherine and I liked to read for pleasure. The girls in our class read books on the required list based on the number of pages and the size of the type. Everyone had read
Animal Farm.
No one had understood it.