Authors: Lois Ruby
The other thing about school was a half-decent lunch for a few weeks. It's a mystery how they came by food, when no one else could. The school was named for the Kadoories, a very rich family of Iraqi Jews who'd settled in China way before war refugees ever dreamed of being stuck there. So thanks to Mr. Kadoorie, for a short while we ate like pigs, carrying our trays back for seconds. Some of us hid food in our book bags to take home to our families. I didn't. I'm ashamed to say this, but I felt that Mother's betrayal entitled me to everything I could get my hands on, and I gorged myself at school until my stomach ached and I was left sluggish through the afternoon.
I told no one at school about Mother. Tanya might have sensed that something was wrong if she hadn't been head-over-heels in love and dreaming of a wedding. Once, I passed Shlomo and his study partner on the street. They were arguing Torah as usual and didn't notice me, so I had a chance to study Shlomo closely. His face was merry and animated, and I guessed that it wasn't just the Talmudic discussion that brought the color to his cheeks. It was the knowledge that each jaunty step down Chaufoong Road took him closer to the wedding chuppah where Tanya would join him.
All that bubbling joy just made me feel more miserable. I slogged around, sullen and cranky, and turned in half-finished assignments. My papers came back with gigantic question marks at the top. What a silly rebellion, but my heart felt pierced. Even the skin on my arms and legs felt bruised and tender.
It wasn't bad enough that the Japanese were taking Mother away from us at such a terrible time for our family. They also demanded that she provide her own bed and bedding, towels, cooking utensils, and a reading lamp. We sold everything we could spare to buy these things, which had to be shipped forty-eight hours before Mother was to report to the camp. She'd have to carry all other itemsâclothes, hygiene supplies, books, personal effects, food, photographs, medications, whatnots.
Mother met with other people who were being sent to internment camps. They became more her family than we were. No one knew which camp they'd be going to, what the conditions were, or how long they might be interned: A month? A year? No one knew when the Allies would win the war to set them free.
“
If
the Allies win,” Father reminded us. “If they are defeated, your mother will become a prisoner of war.” He made it sound like that was his wish. If my anger at Mother bubbled at a slow boil those two weeks, Father's must have been roiling. Anger seethed in sorrowâa deadly recipe.
He did only the minimum necessary to get Mother ready. He refused to meet with a man who'd been interned and was released to care for his dying parents. When the American, Mr. Henderson, arrived at our apartment, Father brushed past him and ran down the stairs.
I wanted to ask the man a thousand questions about life in America, but his time was short, and he had many stops to make.
“Mrs. Shpann, there are some things you should take that no one will tell you about who hasn't been there. Rope, for instance, for a clothesline. Seeds to plant, as large a Thermos as you can handle. Dried fruit; western peanut butter, if you can find some on the black market. Japanese peanut butter is not palatable. They mix it with soybean powder, but you will need protein, so eat it anyway. Also, take as much salt and sugar as you can get away with. Hard-milled soap that will last a long time. A musical instrument. Money, of course. A few valuables to trade or barter with, such as earrings or an extra wristwatch.”
At this point, Mother took off her watch and handed it to me. “Yours,” she murmured. “It belonged to your grandmother, you know.”
Mr. Henderson didn't approve of such sentimentality. “I warn you, Mrs. Shpann, a watch is a necessity. Also, it'll be a long, hard walk to the barracks. Don't pack more than you can carry, but you can find ways to pin or tie items to your clothing so you can take more.” He slipped some money into Mother's hand. “I know what it's like there, Mrs. Shpann, believe me.” Despite her polite protests, Mr. Henderson closed her fist around the two bills. Wincing in pain, she nodded her thank-you. “Whatever is vital to your mind, body, and spirit, carry with you. God knows, you'll need it.”
Mother was strong. Her body would survive, her mind also, but her spirit? We just didn't know, especially since Father barely spoke to her.
We had only days left to live together as a family, and we were at each other's throats. I wish I'd been kinder to Mother, but the hurt I felt at her betrayal sank into my soul like sand in the sea, and I had no heart for what she was feelingâher guilt, her loneliness, her fear of the frightening unknown that spread endlessly out in front of her.
Somewhere in the midnight thoughts that keep a person's eyes wide open in the dark, I felt a stab of grief that Mother was leaving us to care for ourselves. Dovid was always on my mind those weeks, fueling the realization that sooner or later, everyone I loved would leave me.
The week before Mother left, I asked Erich, “What's REACT doing about the internment camps?”
“Plenty. They've infiltrated some of them. REACTors smuggle in supplies and information. I'll find out more when we know which camp Mother's going to.” That boosted my own sagging spirit, but of course, I couldn't tell Mother.
Before my sixteenth birthday she and two hundred others of various nationalities reported to the American Country Club on Great Western Road. From there, they'd be trucked to a bombed-out campus in Chaipei, just north of the International Settlement. All of them were bent with their loads. Chinese and Japanese people watched the parade, witnessing their disgrace, some taunting the internees.
“Now you're the same as us,” one man called in a trembling voice, “poor and doubled over like a peasant.”
Not all of them were heartless, though. One of the internees, a woman hobbling on swollen legs, dropped her water canteen. A Japanese man rushed forward to pick it up and tucked it into the crook of her arm, backing away and bowing in respect for her age. I watched all this through tears that were like a tattered veil.
Father, Erich, and I carried Mother's things as far as we were allowed to go, then settled them in her free arm, on her back, in her pockets, under her hat. She could barely lift the bulging suitcase an inch off the ground. Mother had never been demonstrative in public, and she wasn't about to create an emotional scene with so many people watching us. She brushed her dry lips across Erich's cheek, across mine, gave Father a lingering look, and marched forward, never glancing back.
Suddenly Father broke through the crowd despite a Japanese guard trying to prod him back with the butt of his rifle. Father pushed the guard away.
They'll shoot him!
I thought. We'll be left without either parent. Selfish. Mother had always reminded me how selfish I was. Dovid, too.
Father reached Mother just before she boarded the bus. I don't know what he said to her, but I was sure his words would sustain her in the loneliness and despair of the camp. I had to believe that. Otherwise she'd never come back to us.
If Mother thought she and I were alike in our impetuousness, she would be horrified to see how little of her Austrian sense of order I actually inherited. I never realized how much effort she'd given over to keeping our little box fit for living in. Within a week of her leaving us, we could barely walk across the floor, even with the mattresses rolled up. Laundry was a wretched burden, since the few clothes we had needed to be washed every two or three days. We had no hot water, and precious little soap. We hung wet clothes on a rope strung across our room, dodged drops, and stepped around puddles. The room smelled musty all the time.
“Do me a favor and don't get dirty,” I warned Erich. He was gone more and more hours. Working with REACT? He wouldn't tell me. How he snuck past the ghetto guards in the black of night was a mystery. All I knew was that when I asked him about my next REACT assignment, he clamped his hand over my mouth and hissed, “Shhh. Too dangerous for you.”
And so I scrubbed out my frustration on the laundry washboard. Father was no problem in the laundry department; he rarely changed his underthings. I think he was embarrassed to have me wash them. He began practicing again. The Kawashimas must have been going loony with the repetition and the unceasing music pounding the walls. I certainly was. But they never complained, bless their hearts.
The music didn't earn Father a fen.
“We can't live on the few coins I get from my deliveries,” Erich growled. I remembered how even when things were lots better in our beautiful wedding cake room in the International Settlement, Erich used to joke, “You call this living?”
This
, in the ghetto, without Mother, definitely wasn't.
I realized how hard Mother had worked to make something out of nothing for our meals. Coal briquettes were scarce, cooking gas and electricity impossible to come by, so I began using briquettes molded of coal dust and sand and strawâa foul mishmash that nearly asphyxiated us with its acrid fumes. Matches were hard to find. Everything we desperately needed was in short supply. We even bought toilet paper by the square and used it sparingly. “Only for major productions,” Erich said. He was a master of black humor tinged with white rage.
“Erich, remember the breakfast scones we used to eat? Dotted with bits of orange marmalade or loganberries? Oh, and eggs fried in fresh creamery butter until their golden suns barely jiggled on our plates, remember?”
“Don't, that's torture,” Erich said.
“I know.” Because for breakfast in the ghetto we ate
paofan
, which was nothing more than a runny cereal made from reheating and mashing last night's rice. If we had a pinch of sugar to add, we went ecstatic, or a splash of soybean milk, or a tangy pickle. We craved flavor, texture, any scant crumb of variety.
Hunger was the topic in every language. The Kadoorie School ran out of food to serve us for lunch, so in our Jewish studies, Mr. Rosen made a whole lesson out of the Hebrew proverb “Without bread, there is no Torah; without Torah, there is no bread.” That reminded me of the Yiddish proverb Dovid had told me: “Love is good, but it's better with bread.” And Mr. Hsu, the letter writer, had taught me to write the character
fu
, “happiness.”
“You see, young lady? The character for happiness is formed around the idea of a full stomach. How can one be happy if one's stomach is as hollow as a gourd?”
Very good question. In the third week after Mother left, I announced to Father and Erich, “Starting tomorrow we go to the Ward Road Home for supper every night.” They barely raised an eyebrow.
Tanya and Mrs. Mogelevsky and thousands of other starving people were already taking their evening meal at the homes. So as the chill and soggy winds returned, we bundled up in our tattered winter coats and mittens with half the fingers gone to slog through the slush.
“And for nothing,” Erich complained. “What? For a bowl of hot vegetable stew with a few strands of stringy meat, all of it swimming in grease?”
In a rare burst of my old optimism, I told Erich and Father, “The grease is good. We need the fat.” That earned me a pair of scowls.
At the home we filled up on hot tea and our slice of bread. I tore mine into at least twenty bites and let each one melt on my tongue, while Erich rolled his bread and violently stuffed the whole thing in his mouth. No more did he stash away half his meal for a midnight snack. “Who knows? I might not be alive by midnight.” More black humor. His hunger, his anger, had no relief.
Father barely noticed how demeaning this miserable handout was. To him it was only a minor intermission in the violin concerto. The orchestra continued playing in his memory. We watched him counting, counting. Every so often his face snapped to attention at his cue to come in on the concerto. He'd sit up straighter and close his eyes and sway a bit with the music in his mind. How I wished I could be lost in something as thoroughly as he could, but I didn't have that privilege. I was the mother, the daughter, the sister, the cook, the housekeeper, the laundress,
and
the student.
Life was very unfair. We had heard that U.S. troops had landed in Normandy, France, that there was a Resistance uprising in Paris. Others in our ghetto dared to dream that the war would end soon; but for us, hope was lost. I thought of Erich's words, “
Lucky man, Dovid
.” He was out of this misery, and I was deep in mine.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
1944
Mother was allowed a one-page letter per month, going each way. Erich and I worked on our letter to her a little every day, writing in the tiniest possible hand. I told her the homey details of my daysâthe stinky coal briquettes, my studies, Tanya's latest love-struck wedding plans, as if anybody could plan a future here. I wrote in my letter,
Today I passed a bunch of the yeshiva boys on the street and winked at poor Shlomo until he blushed like a tomato. Do you still think I should have married him? Oh, and Mrs. Mogelevsky is collecting scraps and patches to make Tanya's trousseau. She'll look like a ragamuffin on their wedding night!
All of this nonsense yammering helped to tame some of my anger, which I gave up a little morsel at a time. Too much, too fast, would have left me feeling exposed, like when ice hits a tender tooth.
I made my parts of the letter to Mother funny, suspecting that her life in the camp and the agony of being separated from us weren't easy to bear. At least the three of us were together; she was alone.
We waited for her first letter so we'd know where to send ours. It came nine long weeks after she left, slipped under our door by some courageous soul:
Dear Ones, First, I am well, no need to worry. We are encamped in the Great China University, which hasn't been occupied since the bombings in 1932 and again in 1937. You can imagine the condition things are in. Ilse, remember what you said about Chinese toilets? There are 50 women in my barracks. We have formed quite a community. We've given our empty days some structure. Everyone has a job. There's not much need for an English teacher, as we are mostly Americans. (Are you laughing? I hope so.) I am a cook for the midday meal. So far we have enough food, although my first job of the day is to sort through the rice grain by grain. You never know what organic or inorganic substances might be in it. Use your imagination. Rats are everywhere. We bake with bean flour, which turns out a very ugly brownish bread difficult to digest. It's palatable if you leave it outside in the sun to toast. A smear of jam is welcome from time to time. Meat is scarce, and when we get it, we are never sure what animal it comes from. Some say it is the sad remains of the Japanese cavalry's stable. I am out of space on my allotted sheet of paper. Please write to me, dear ones. I miss you so. Jakob? Write to me
.