A thirst in spirit, through the gloom
Of an unpeopled waste I blundered …
—
Pushkin
November 3, 1919
Motziv, Poland
Dear Tovah,
I am doing much better now.
When I was well enough to move, Saul went out and found a new room for us to live in. “We cannot stay any longer in this shed,” he said. Papa’s family did not try to keep us from leaving. We had brought illness with us, and bad luck. We had taken from their table food they could not spare.
The room Saul found for us is in a cheap, rundown inn. The innkeeper hosts a large market outside his establishment every Wednesday. Merchants bring their wares and the innkeeper sells tea and rolls and buns. I think he makes a lot of money.
Market days are noisy. When my head aches, I
cannot bear it. On my good days, though, I like to look out at the commotion.
Saul says the innkeeper is a thief, but we will stay here until Mama and Papa and Nathan are out of the hospital.
Saul found work to pay for our room and our food. He sorts apples in an orchard outside the village. At dawn, before leaving for work, Saul goes out to the street. He brings back breakfast for us, a herring and two rolls.
Each morning, when he comes with the food, Tovah, he splits it exactly in half. Even though he is bigger and needs more, he divides our food evenly.
Each day, we eat our herring and roll in a few bites and lick our fingertips to catch the crumbs. Then Saul leaves.
One day I took only a bite of my herring and decided to save the rest.
I told Saul I was not hungry.
It was a lie. I was hungry. I am hungry all the time. When I am awake, all I think about is food. When I sleep, I dream of it. My stomach twists and burns with emptiness.
But on this morning I thought, for once Saul is nice to me. I should be the same with him. Saul is working, he needs to eat more than I do. If I save
my share of breakfast, it will be waiting for him in the evening when he returns.
I was still weak, but I knew I must get up and stow the herring and roll in the closet near my cot. If I did not put it away from myself, I would eat it.
My stomach knotted painfully, and in spite of my best intentions I took another bite of the herring before I closed the closet door. I hope you will not think I am too selfish, Tovah.
I turned my back on my precious food and tumbled into my cot, falling asleep immediately.
Movement in the room awakened me.
At first I thought Saul had come back, but it was not Saul. It was the girl whose father owns the inn. She sat on the edge of my cot, her thick, greasy braid hanging down her back.
She was eating something, herring and roll. The closet door was open. She was eating my herring and roll!
“Thief!” I cried in Russian. “Give me back my food!”
She ignored me. She sat on my cot, chewing.
I tried to get my roll back from her. She brushed me aside and laughed at me, Tovah.
She has so much food of her own. Always, when I see her passing by my room, she is chewing, her red cheeks swollen like a squirrel with a nut. The girl had spied on me. She had seen me save my food
in the little closet and had come in and taken it for herself.
That family, they have rolls and buns all the time. It is the father’s business. I drag myself from the drafty room Saul and I share and stand, swaying unsteadily in front of the bakery cases, staring at the innkeeper’s food. I am so hungry, but no one offers me a crumb. The girl will be chewing, her tongue flicking out to catch a piece of bun and bring it back into her mouth again. She has all this food and she has to steal from me.
When Saul got back that evening, I told him about the girl stealing my food. I thought he would catch her and beat her up. Saul said, “Next time don’t save your food, Rifka. Eat it. Then she can’t take it from you.”
And that was that.
With Saul gone all day, I felt lonely. Not that he was such good company, but I hated being alone, separated from Mama and Papa. In Berdichev, I could have gone to you, or to Aunt Anna, or to Bubbe Ruth.
But I was in a strange country, with no one to go to. I certainly would not go to the innkeeper’s daughter, that dirty thief.
So when I grew strong enough, I started walking around Motziv. I found my way to the low, sprawling hospital where they were keeping Mama.
I discovered a wooden ledge outside the window of Mama’s ward and climbed on it to look in on her.
Mama lay in a narrow bed, as white as the sheet on top of her. Everything about Mama was white except her black hair. Her hair was like a dark stain on the hospital linens and her eyes remained closed, her thick lashes resting on white cheeks. She looked dead, Tovah, and I kept staring, waiting for her to move.
When the hospital workers caught me looking in at Mama, they yelled at me. They chased me away from the building. They couldn’t understand that I needed to see Mama move. I needed to know she was alive. So the next day I came back, and the next day, and the next.
The Polish language has started making sense to me, Tovah. I didn’t need to be clever to know I should stay out of the hospital workers’ way, but I could not stay away from Mama.
Then, just this morning, a doctor caught me looking in at Mama. He did not chase me away. He lifted me down off the ledge.
“What are you doing here?” the doctor asked.
“I am watching over my mama,” I explained.
The doctor asked, “Have you had the typhus?”
“Yes,” I told him. “But I am better now.”
The doctor said, “Come.” He led me inside the hospital and sat me in a chair next to Mama’s cot.
“Once you have suffered through the typhus, you cannot have it again,” the doctor explained. “It will do you no harm to sit with her. It may do her some good.” I held Mama’s hand and talked to her all the rest of today.
I even got to eat a potato out of the big pot brought by a lady who feeds the hospital patients.
They were good potatoes, Tovah. Since I have been sick, everything tastes good. How skinny I’ve become. But not Saul; he is as big as a horse. His legs have grown so long just since we left Russia. You should see how they sprout from his pants.
Even with all my things on, my underwear and my two extra dresses, and my cloak and shawl, I still do not look fat. Remember how in Berdichev the Russian guards would come to inspect the homes of the Jews? They made certain we owned no more than our allowance. Always, when the guards were coming, Mama would say, “Rifka, put all your clothes on.” I would rush and throw my dresses over my head and stand out in front of the house to watch.
The guards would search through our rooms. They did not find more than two of anything. How could they find anything extra in our house? In your house there are many fine things, Tovah, but they never inspected your house.
The guards would look at me, layered in all my belongings, and say, “Hmmm, fat kid.” With my
dresses and my cloak and my shawl piled on top of me, I looked as short and round as a barrel.
I am no longer round, but I am still short. I wonder if I will ever grow, Tovah. Maybe it will be all right that I am short in America. If I could get Bubbe Ruth to come, there would at least be two of us.
If I could get Bubbe Ruth to come. She does not stay because she is comfortable and safe like you and Hannah and Uncle Avrum. Bubbe Ruth stays because she is afraid to leave, afraid for things to change. I am afraid too, but not so afraid that I want to come back.
I would like it best if you and Hannah and Uncle Avrum and Aunt Anna and Bubbe Ruth and all the others were coming to America too. I am trying to be clever, Tovah, but how much more clever I could be surrounded by my family.
… In hope, in torment, we are turning Toward freedom, waiting her command …
—
Pushkin
November 27, 1919
en route to Warsaw
Dear Tovah,
Many of the typhus patients at the hospital in Motziv died. We all survived. Now, at last, we are on our way to Warsaw. All of us—me, Mama, Papa, Nathan, and Saul.
Warsaw is where we pick up the money for our steamship tickets. My older brothers, Isaac and Reuben and Asher, have worked hard to save the money so we could join them in America. These other brothers of mine, they left Russia fourteen years ago, before my birth. Do
you
even remember them, Tovah?
They are my brothers, my family, but I don’t know them. Papa showed me their letters. In my
mind the letters came from strangers living in a distant land.
Then, only the day before we fled from Russia, the Red Cross posted the message on the board. Isaac and Reuben and Asher, they were sending for us. Remember how I ran to tell you our news? I wonder, Tovah, if the message still hangs there in the center of the village.
I am certain Warsaw is a wonderful city. When people in Motziv say the word “Warsaw,” their voices deepen and they give a little kick on the end, like this: “Warsaw—ha!” It reminds me of the way we do in Berdichev when we speak of America.
Our train passes small herds of cattle grazing on yellowed grass and I remember the cows of Berdichev. The peasant girls drove them along the road past our house every night at sunset. Those cows were not bony as these are. I loved sitting on the front step watching the fat brown beasts lumber past. The earth shivered beneath their clopping weight as the sun set in a ball of fire. Those girls sang in such beautiful harmony.
When I read your Pushkin, I remember those cows, and the girls’ singing.
Poland is so cold and flat and colorless. Only pine trees, scrubby, wretched pine trees, sweep past the window of the train. Maybe in the spring it is better, maybe there are flowers. Maybe the sky is
something other than gray. Now, it is nearly December, and I shiver at the cold of Poland.
It is odd to see Mama and Papa and Nathan so changed. In Berdichev, Mama kept us all well on practically nothing. You know what a baker she is. Always the smell of yeast clung to her.
Many times she would send me to your house with a basket of pastries or a cake, or her thick dark bread. There is no baking for her now.
Papa’s dark eyes have lost their spark since the typhus, and Mama’s long black hair does not shine as it once did. Even Nathan, with his thick black curls and his strong dimpled jaw, has hollowed cheeks and circles beneath his eyes. I cannot tell how I look, but Mama sometimes strokes my cheek and sighs. Her fingers are bony and rough.
Only Saul still glows with health from his clumsy feet to his big red ears.
I must tell you of this noisy, crowded, stinking train we are riding north out of Motziv. The freight train from Berdichev was more comfortable. Here people push against one another on every bench. The cars are drafty and reek of old bedding. Between the chugging and the clacking tracks and the endless Polish babble, the noise never stops pressing against you. Worse still, there is no place to relieve yourself and I drank two cups of tea before we boarded. I could not sit still a moment longer.
“I am going for a walk,” I told Mama.
Mama nodded, still chewing slowly her lunch of cold potato and roll. I had finished the last bite of mine long ago.
At the back of our car a peasant girl sat on a bench with a baby sucking at her breast. At first I thought the girl was older, but when she looked up, I saw she was your age, Tovah, near sixteen.
Her blond hair hung thinly down from her kerchief, tickling the baby’s bald head. The baby’s fingers played on the girl’s cheek as it nursed.
The girl noticed me staring. “You like babies?” she asked in Polish, talking over the heads of the passengers beside her.
I nodded and fiddled with the knot of my kerchief.
“You have beautiful hair,” she said. “Mine …” She took her free hand and flipped the wisps of hair over her shoulder. “My sister used to fix my hair. Until she married and moved away. I am going to visit her now, my sister.”
I do not know what made me offer. Maybe it was the sweetness of the baby, maybe the friendliness of the girl. “I used to fix my cousin’s hair,” I said in Polish. “I could fix yours so you will look nice for your sister … if you’d like.”
She was happy to let me fix her hair. I pushed
into the narrow space between the bench and the back of the train car and removed her kerchief.
Her head stank. Strands of hair clustered in oily clumps. Most terrible, though, were big round sores all over her scalp.
My fingers hesitated. I did not wish to touch the girl’s head, yet neither did I wish to insult her. I gathered the ends of her hair and began unknotting the tangles.
Tilting her head back, the girl sighed as I worked my fingers through the snarls.
The baby pulled its mouth off the girl’s breast and looked up at me. Its mouth opened into a milky smile.
“You have a nice baby,” I said.
The girl turned and looked me over. “You are not Polish.”
I was afraid everyone on the train heard her. I worried they’d send me back to Berdichev as the Polish border guards had threatened, or that they’d chase me away as the nurses did in Motziv. To my relief, the other passengers ignored us and the girl turned back around.
“I am from Ukraine,” I whispered. “I am going with my family to America.”
“America!” the girl said. “America.”
The man sitting beside her inched away, forcing
an old woman on the end of the bench to plant her feet firmly on the floor to keep from falling.
“America,” the girl repeated. “What will you do there?”
I was silent for a little time.
“I will do everything there,” I answered.
The girl threw back her head and laughed. Standing over her, I saw that several of her teeth were missing.
She said, “Why would you want to go to America? You can do everything you want right here. I would never leave Poland.”
“Never?” I asked.
“I can’t imagine going out my door and finding anything else. Look at it out there. That is home.”
I looked out the train window. There was a boy running across a frozen field with a black dog loping along at his side. For a moment I saw Poland as she saw it.
Then my eyes saw the bleakness outside the window again and I felt a chill creep down my spine.
“There,” I said, smoothing out the last tangle from her hair and backing away shyly. “I must return to my family.”
She put a finger to her lips, revealing a cracked and reddened nail. Her baby slept with its little nose squashed against her breast.
“Good luck to you in America,” she whispered.
I stumbled back up the aisle of the lurching train, thrown against this one’s shoulder, squeezing past that one. The smell of cheese filled the car. My mouth watered at the stench of it.
I slid back into my place between Mama and Nathan and looked around at the other people in the car, listening to their conversations.
I felt your Pushkin inside my rucksack and I wanted to get it out and write my thoughts. I am filling the pages of our book quickly, Tovah, even with my writing so small and fine.
“Mama?” I asked, feeling her elbow rub against my ribs with the motion of the train. “Can I get off for a little while at the next station? The stops are so long. Could I get off just for a moment?”
“No.”
“But Mama, I have to go …”
“No,” Mama said. “I told you not to drink that tea this morning.”
“I’m bored, Mama,” I said.
I was afraid to tell her the truth, Tovah. To tell her I wanted only to find a quiet corner, where I could open our Pushkin. She did not like your teaching me Pushkin in Berdichev. If Mama had her way, I would know how to cook, and sew, and keep the Sabbath. That is all.
“You are bored?” Mama said. “So I’ll hire you a band. You are not getting off this train, Rifka.
What if it left without you? You want we should get separated? You want to spend the rest of your life in Poland? No, Rifka, you stay right where you are. Here I can keep an eye on you. Here you are safe.”
So I kept my thoughts in my head until this moment. Mama and Saul snore softly at the end of the bench. Papa and Nathan have gone off to stretch their long legs.
As I write, I am thinking that sometimes I don’t like growing up, Tovah. Sometimes I wish I could run back to Berdichev, into Bubbe Ruth’s arms, and lose myself inside her warmth. She protected me from everything around me and inside me.
But then at other times I am so glad to be who I am. Rifka Nebrot. Only daughter and youngest child of Ethel and Beryl Nebrot. Baby sister of Isaac and Asher and Reuben and Nathan and Saul. Traveling forward—to America.
When I think of myself that way, even though we are homeless and our lives are in danger even now, still I believe everything will turn out well.