Authors: Kim van Alkemade
She hadn’t quite finished when the spoon dropped to the blanket. “That’s enough,” she said, without even a thank-you, as if I were a waitress in a diner. She dropped her head against the pillow and let her eyes drift closed as her tongue circled her lips. “That taste takes me back. My mother used to make me chocolate pudding for breakfast. When I had chicken pox, all I could stand to eat was cold pudding. Even after I got better, I refused anything else in the morning. I remember her standing at the stove after supper, stirring a pot of pudding to leave in the icebox overnight. Is there any smell more wonderful than milk just before it burns?”
“I remember my mother lighting the stove in the morning,” I said, then stopped myself. Reminiscing with Mildred Solomon was not on my agenda. “Listen to me now. I had an appointment with an oncologist this morning.” She didn’t respond. “About my tumor, remember you felt it?”
“I remember. I’m not senile. Did he think it was malignant?”
“He’s performing surgery next week. He’ll examine the cells while I’m on the table. I won’t know until I wake up how much will be left of me.” I thought of my child-self strapped to her table, Dr. Solomon dripping chloroform onto the mask. I took her chin in my hand and made her look at me. “It’s from the X-rays you gave me. From your experiment. You did this to me. What do you have to say for yourself?”
Her gaze never wavered, though her eyelids twitched and fluttered. “You think everything is my fault. Women have breast cancer all the time. So maybe you have cancer, that’s terrible, sure. But what about me? It was probably giving all those X-rays that put this cancer in my bones. I’m not sorry about that, how could
I be? It’s a waste of time, regretting the past. Besides, you don’t know for sure.”
“Even if it’s not cancer, I’ve gone through my whole life damaged.” I touched my wig. “Damaged because of you.”
“You think being bald ruined your life? So what if you wear a wig. So do the Orthodox, so do a lot of women. Look at you. You’re a pretty girl. You have a good job, a profession. Are you married?” She paused, considering. “Were you able to get pregnant, after the X-rays?”
As often as I regretted not having children, I’d always thought it was my own nature that denied me mothering. Now I wondered if Mildred Solomon hadn’t robbed me of that, too. “I don’t know, I never tried.” I hesitated, wavering between the truth that felt like a lie and the lie that felt like the truth. “What if I am married, what’s it to you?”
I instantly regretted it. She seized on my words. “Then you have something I never did. I could never get married and keep my career. We can’t all be Madame Curie, can we? I know what those other doctors used to say about me behind my back, some of them to my face even. You have no idea what I went through.”
I didn’t want to see anything from her point of view. It muddied my anger, confused my sense of justification. Still, my mind conjured an image of Dr. Solomon as a young woman with that little tie around her neck, pushing her way through a crowd of white-coated men. I knew all too well what words they would have called her.
I clutched my breast. “But what about me? What will be left of me after this? Don’t you feel sorry about that?”
“At least you have someone who’ll be with you when you die. Who do I have?”
“You have me.” I tried to sound sinister, wanting Dr. Solomon to realize how helpless she was, how completely in my power. Instead, the three words were a simple statement of fact. Of all the people in the world to have at her deathbed, she was down to me.
Mildred Solomon’s mouth hung open; she was panting from the pain. “I’m ready for another dose.” She spoke like a doctor giving orders. “We can talk more later, Number Eight, but only if you give me some now.”
“My name is Rachel, I’ve told you that. But you don’t care, do you? Even now, I’m just a number to you. All the children at the Infant Home were nothing more than numbers to you.” I thought of the tattoo on Mr. Mendelsohn’s frail arm. “Just numbers, like in the concentration camps.”
She gripped the sheets. “How can you say such a thing? You were in an orphanage, not some concentration camp. They took care of you, fed you, clothed you. Jewish charities support the best orphanages, the best hospitals. Even this Home is as good as it gets for old people like me. You have no right to even mention the camps.”
Of course the orphanage wasn’t a death camp, I knew that, but I wasn’t backing down. “You came into a place where we were powerless, you gave us numbers, subjected us to experiments in the name of science. How is that different from what Mengele did?”
Dr. Solomon sat up, the movement agonizing her hipbones. She pointed a wavering finger at me. “Don’t you dare call me a Mengele! He was a sadist, not a scientist. And how did you come to be in the Infant Home anyway? Were you rounded up by Nazis
and stuffed into a boxcar? Of course not. The agency was just taking care of you, so you didn’t end up on the streets. You might as well blame everything on whatever it was that killed your parents. My research was your chance to give something back to society, for all that was given to you.” She lay back, her hands cupped around her hips. “I saw those newsreels, just like everyone else. What we did was nothing like the Holocaust. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
But I did know. “My brother, he was in a unit that liberated one of the camps.” I lowered my head, my voice a whisper. “He said all those women with their heads shaved, they reminded him of me.”
If Mildred Solomon had chosen that moment to offer me the smallest kindness, a tender touch, I would have dissolved into tears in her withered arms, lavished her with painkillers, served her chocolate pudding for every meal. All I’d ever wanted from this woman, I realized, was the faintest echo of a mother’s love. Couldn’t she sense it?
“Nonsense. Now you listen to me, Number Eight. Either smother me or give me some morphine, because if you don’t I’m going to scream bloody murder.”
Defeated, I squeezed just enough morphine into the IV to shut her up. Her eyes sank back into her head, her mouth relaxed into a slack oval. What remained of her dose filled my vial. I sat on the edge of her bed, watched as the pain eased its grip on her tensed muscles. It wouldn’t last long. What else could I do, what other words could I deploy, to wrench from this woman even a hint of contrition? How could she deny me this, after everything I’d given her, all she’d taken from me? If it hadn’t been for me and the other orphans she used as material, she couldn’t have conducted
the study that earned her a coveted position. If she didn’t regret how she’d used us, she should at least be grateful. After all, her career was built on our bodies.
No one else looking at the frail creature in that bed would have seen her for what she was: obstinate, selfish, cruel. Curled up, she took up such a small corner of the mattress. What time was it anyway? The watch face on my wrist looked blurry. I hadn’t realized how very tired I was. I felt myself keeling sideways. My shoulder reached the mattress, then my head. I pulled up my knees, nudging Mildred Solomon over to make room for my legs. I folded my arm under my head and fell asleep at her feet.
R
ACHEL STOOD ON THE PORCH OF THE HOUSE ON
C
OLFAX
Avenue, hesitant, now, to ring the bell. Coming here had seemed such a good idea when it occurred to her. She’d asked Mr. Lesser to give her a ride in his delivery truck, making up a story about meeting Max in Denver. She’d put a sandwich in front of him while she gathered her things, helping herself to a wool coat and a pair of sturdy shoes from the shop, not even bothering to cover her theft in the ledger. Her uncle could consider it a bride price, she thought. The bride who got away.
When Mrs. Abrams opened the door, it took her a moment to put a name to the young woman with the cloche hat and cardboard suitcase.
“Is that you, Rachel? Come in out of the cold.” Mrs. Abrams drew her into the foyer. She placed her palm on Rachel’s cheek, concerned. “Is everything all right, dear?”
At the tender touch, Rachel burst into tears. “My parents are gone, Mrs. Abrams. I’m an orphan now. I didn’t know where else to go.”
Mrs. Abrams wrapped Rachel in her strong arms. “My poor, dear girl. I’m so sorry for your loss.”
Soon they were sitting by the fire, hot cups of coffee in their hands. Rachel told Mrs. Abrams a convincingly simple story. “By the time I got to Leadville, Papa was on his deathbed. Mama had worn herself into sickness caring for him, and a month later she passed, too. I was left alone with my father’s brother. That’s why my parents went to Leadville when Papa got sick, because my uncle was there. After Mama died, I thought I could stay with him and keep house, but yesterday he told me I could only stay if I married him. I don’t want to do it, but I hardly have any money, and he says I have nowhere else to go.” Rachel looked down. “I didn’t know who to talk to about it, until I thought of you.”
Mrs. Abrams was indignant. “My God, Rachel, no man should bully you into marrying him, your own uncle least of all. Women have the vote for heaven’s sake, have had it in Colorado for decades already. Look at me, dear.” Mrs. Abrams took Rachel’s face in both her hands. “You’re a person, Rachel, your own person. You don’t have to go back to Leadville. You’ll stay here, with us, in the Ivy Room, until you decide what’s next for you.”
It was more than Rachel had hoped for. “I promise I’ll find work and pay my way.”
“Well, we’ll figure that out later. Dr. Abrams will be home soon. Come, help me set the table.”
Over a dinner of brisket with carrots and kasha, Mrs. Abrams presented Rachel’s plight to her husband.
“If Jenny wants you to stay with us, then of course I agree,” he said. “I’m glad to hear you intend to find work. You do know the
Hospital for Consumptive Hebrews is a charity? With this stock market crash, I expect we’ll be getting more and more patients, especially with winter coming on. Our nurses are going to need all the help they can get. Why don’t you come work for us?”
“Oh, thank you, Dr. Abrams, that would be perfect, then I can pay my room and board.”
“You don’t need to pay us, Rachel,” Jenny Abrams said. “Taking you in, that’s our mitzvah. Save your money or spend it how you decide. We’re expecting Althea to come out in the summer, maybe by then you’ll want to travel back east with her family. For now, though, you have a home with us.”
“And, if you work hard,” her husband said, “a place at the hospital.”
Rachel was flooded with gratitude until a doubt cramped her stomach. “Dr. Abrams, I don’t know what Mrs. Cohen told you, but I hadn’t finished my nursing course when I had to come out here for my father. I was only helping in the orphanage infirmary, for an apprenticeship. I don’t have my degree.”
Dr. Abrams raised his eyebrows. “Althea may have exaggerated your credentials, but it’s no matter. I’ll start you off as an aide, and the head nurse will judge your skills from what you can do. Was it in Manhattan or Brooklyn, your apprenticeship?”
“Manhattan.”
“Then that would be the Orphaned Hebrews Home, am I right?”
Rachel was surprised he knew it; she had no idea how renowned the Home was in charitable circles. She nodded without considering the consequences. “Thank you both so much.” She threatened to cry again, but Mrs. Abrams stopped her.
“That’s enough, dear. You’re a Coloradan now.” As if that explained everything. And somehow, it did.
That night in the Ivy Room, Rachel luxuriated in the warmth of an eiderdown quilt. Again Sam had left her behind, and again she’d managed to make her own way. She gave a cruel thought to where her brother was at that moment—huddled in the corner of a freezing freight car, or maybe warming his hands at some hobo’s campfire? Wherever he was, she hoped he was miserable.
Mrs. Abrams accompanied Rachel to the hospital the next morning, taking her on the streetcar that came up Colfax Avenue. Through the fogging windows, Rachel watched the downtown mansions getting shabbier with each passing block. They gave way, finally, to a jumble of shops and bakeries and a synagogue until the city opened up, flat and broad.
“Here we are,” Mrs. Abrams announced, pulling the cord. Rachel looked around for a big castle like the Home, but there wasn’t one. Instead they started down a dirt street with large tents pitched along its length. At the end of the street was the main hospital building—no turrets or towers, only two stories high, with a wide porch on which beds were lined up. In each bed, a tubercular patient was bundled under a thick quilt, puffs of breath visible in the cold.
Mrs. Abrams noticed Rachel staring. “Didn’t your father take heliotherapy?” Rachel shook her head at the unfamiliar word. “No wonder, then. It’s the only reliable cure for tuberculosis.” Rachel remembered reading in Nurse Dreyer’s copy of
Essentials of Medicine
that treatment for the disease consisted of rest, rich food, fresh air, sunlight, and, if possible, freedom from worry. She wondered how someone with tuberculosis could not be worried.
Mrs. Abrams introduced Rachel to the head nurse before excusing herself. “I have a million things to do today. I’ll see you home for dinner. You remember the streetcar stop, don’t you?” Rachel assured her that she did.
After a brief interview, Rachel was given a uniform and put to work. She was relieved to find the nurse’s cap was shaped like a hood that tied behind her neck, covering her head entirely. She spent the morning dealing with bedpans and bleach. At lunch, she was enlisted to bring trays to the patients. The food confused her until she caught on that the Hospital for Consumptive Hebrews, unlike the Home, kept kosher. Meals were rich and ample—that day it was whole milk and soft-boiled eggs for lunch, veal cutlets and roasted potatoes for dinner. The nurses kept coats hanging in the corridors for when they went out onto the porches to care for the patients, whose ruddy faces were turned to the November sun. The tents along the street, Rachel learned, also housed patients, the cold, dry air deployed like a weapon against the bacteria burrowed in their lungs.