The Old Brown Suitcase (14 page)

In Polish, the word love has a much stronger meaning. You wouldn’t say “I love oranges” in Polish; you would say “I like oranges.” In English you can use the word “love” for just about anything. It’s used loosely, I thought, and therefore loses some of its true meaning. I wasn’t really sure what Joshua meant when he wrote, “Love, Joshua.”

I asked Miriam about the “love” business. She told me that I was too analytical and paranoid. “Joshua sounds like the kind of a guy who means what he says,” she told me.

June brought summer and the end of school. My report card showed good marks in Latin and French, a mere pass in English and a C- in history and geography. I failed biology and math. Mother came to school with me to see the principal in hopes of convincing him not to make me repeat grade nine. They worked out a compromise.

Because I was good in languages, I could study grade ten French and Latin with a tutor during the summer and write grade ten exams in August. With these subjects out of the way, I would concentrate on the other subjects, do the same thing next summer, and maybe skip a year if I showed great improvement.

“You were putting in too many hours at the deli and in your social life,” said Mother on the way home. “There is no room in your life now for frivolities. They will have to stop.”

They did.

On sweltering summer days, when other kids were playing tennis, swimming and going to the country, I studied Latin and French. Mother put in extra hours at the salon to help with expenses, and had to arrange baby sitting for Pyza at someone’s home.

Father still worked at home on the floral designs, but his health was failing. He could only stand up at his work table for short periods of time. I missed Miriam, who had gone to the country with her parents. The brightest moments were Joshua’s letters, which I would pick up at Miriam’s mailbox with the key she gave me. It was a thrill to hear that he would come to Montreal at Chanukah with his basketball team. But that was still such a long way off.

The Montreal heat made study difficult. On especially hot days I would sit on the balcony unable to concentrate on the work in front of me. Instead, I contemplated dramatic things. Should I jump into the river, or slash my wrists like a heroine in a movie?

One night I dreamed about being pursued by men on horses, high up in the Caucasus Mountains. I was the Princess Dzavaha, falling into the River Kura and being rescued by a beautiful boy who resembled Joshua … but he disappeared and I continued to fall deeper and deeper into the water …

I woke up with a start.

“You had a bad dream, little one,” said my father’s voice. I breathed easier. He took me in his arms and held me. It felt safe. But I realized how pitifully thin he had become. I hugged him as his voice continued softly in the dark.

“Don’t worry so much about school,” he said. When your English improves you will do better. It will be a struggle. But you must promise me, that no matter what, you will pursue your education. Because without it you will never get anywhere. Do you promise?”

“I promise, Papa,” I said fervently, and felt less anxious. Father had always been able to make me feel better when I was low. Just as he was about to leave, he noticed the star dangling on my neck.

“What’s this?” he asked. I told him that it was a gift from Joshua. He thought for a moment, then said, “It’s an especially thoughtful gift. I remember him. He is a very fine boy, Slavenka.”

It felt like old times when Father and I were so close. I slept soundly for the rest of the night.

In August I wrote my Latin and French exams and passed both with an A. My parents rejoiced.

My sixteenth birthday was a happy occasion, which Miriam and Mother organized at our home. Father was in good spirits. He gave me a carved jewellery box on which he had painted a large, bright sunflower. I kept Joshua’s star in it when I took it off at night.

My joy was short-lived. The next week at a medical checkup, the doctor said that Father would need another operation.

A few weeks later, the day after the operation, Mother came home from the hospital with a sorrowful face.

“It’s cancer,” she said. Her voice was unusually deep. “Papa doesn’t know. He thinks he will get better, but the doctors are not at all hopeful. They didn’t diagnose it soon enough, and now it has spread into his stomach and liver.”

I felt numb. I didn’t want to believe it. Father must get better. He must. After all, we had survived the war and immigration. Why should this happen now?

But Father didn’t get better.

During this time, Miriam often took me away to a movie, or to her house. I was glad to get away from home. But in the end there was no avoiding it. I’d return home in the dark. No one waited for me or asked where I had been. My sister was asleep and Mother was at work. Father lay in his bed moaning in pain. I heard him say, “I wish I were dead, I wish I were dead,” over and over again. There was nothing I could do, save making him tea and talking with him for a bit when the pain lessened.

The smell of sickness was beginning to pervade the house like the smell of old blood. I sat in the living room listening to Father toss and moan. I was angry, so angry. Couldn’t the doctors do something? I thought. Must this suffering go on and on and on?

One morning I woke up to a commotion in the apartment.

It was the ambulance people. They came and took Father to the hospital. Mother went with him. I stared at his rumpled bed, and in spite of a terrible emptiness in my heart, I felt relieved. His suffering had become too hard to bear.

It was midnight when Mother came home. The apartment was cold and dark. She drifted into my room like a shadow, and said in a hushed voice, “Papa is no longer with us.”

(MONTREAL, 1949)

IT TOOK ME A
long time to get over Father’s death.

Eventually, however, the pain lessened. During this period, my faithful Miriam helped me. Her house became a second home to me.

She helped me take my mind off my father’s death with her chatter. We never ran out of things to talk about, especially boys. She had finally settled on Mark as her steady, and they often invited me out for a movie and a soda afterwards.

After so much bad luck, life was becoming easier for us at home. Mother’s dressmaking became so successful that she and her partner opened an elegant shop on Sherbrooke Street. Our money worries finally behind us, Mother was able to hire a Russian immigrant woman to help with the house and take care of Pyza. So Pyza wouldn’t feel too lonely with Father gone and Mother at the shop, I always put aside some time to spend alone with her.

The best thing was Joshua’s visit at Chanukah. His uncle had moved to Montreal from the prairies, so now Joshua had a place to stay and a reason to visit more often.

I couldn’t believe how he had changed. Now seventeen, he had grown taller and was even more handsome than when I had met him in Rockville. Having skipped a grade, he was now in grade eleven. Once Miriam met him, she assured me that he was a great “catch.”

It was miraculous seeing him at our dining room table, lighting the Chanukah candles in the menorah he had given me the year before. I looked at him through the flaming candles and felt an overwhelming love for him. But I wasn’t certain if his feelings were the same. Perhaps he just cared for me as one would for a friend.

Mother said that I was too young to feel this way. But Miriam said that I was long overdue. She told me that she started having those feelings when she was twelve!

A few days later, Joshua was invited to come with us to the Rosenbergs for dinner. Dressed to kill as always, Ina ignored me and put on a show for Joshua. It seemed to me — or was I just imagining it? — that he wasn’t altogether indifferent to her, and kept on looking at her tight black sweater. He certainly paid her a lot of attention.

I was wearing a boring loose white blouse Mother had made me put on, a pleated navy skirt and low-heeled shoes. I felt as though I was being swept along by waves of unfamiliar feelings, both pleasant and painful. Later on, Miriam told me that I was jealous, and had good reason to be.

When Joshua left again for Rockville, I felt confused and lonely. He never said anything about Ina, and I was too embarrassed to ask.

In the months that followed, I worked really hard at school, trying to keep my promise to Father. Even though I was making progress, I often felt ridiculous, being the oldest girl in my grade nine class.

Sometimes when I was alone at home, with Pyza in bed and Mother out working, it seemed as if I could still hear sounds of Father tossing about. I struggled with my grief as one would struggle with an enemy. I cried and had bad dreams. I wrote to Joshua about it and anxiously awaited an answer.

In the meantime, Miriam decided that I needed a break, and took me shopping for clothes, so I wouldn’t look so dowdy the next time Joshua came to Montreal.

“Clothes for girls our age are boring,” said Miriam browsing through the teen girls’ wear at Morgan’s. “I mean they’re so juvenile. There is no difference between what thirteen-year-olds and sixteen-year-olds wear, unless you spend gobs of money and shop at boutiques.” She looked at me with a roguish smile and added, “Like your friend Ina, for example.”

Then I saw it: hanging next to a fitting room was the outfit, the one I’d been looking for all my life! A dark orange skirt with black tassels at the bottom, and a matching triangular scarf.

“Not bad,” judged Miriam. “But your mother will have a fit. It’s so flashy.”

“Well, I’m in a flashy mood,” I said. After a while, my enthusiasm diminished at the thought of what Mother would say when she saw the outfit.

“If you like it, buy it,” said Miriam with her usual optimism, “but at least get a snug black sweater to go with it.”

On that one shopping trip we spent all the earnings I had made working at the deli in the past year. We even bought my first pair of high-heeled shoes in black leather.

On the way home I stopped at the mail box and, to my absolute joy, found a letter from Joshua.

I read and re-read the letter, savouring each word. There was so much in it to think about. I read it to Miriam over the phone.

“Don’t read too much into it, Polachka,” advised my friend. “It says what it means. I think it’s great that you have a date. I mean, it’s about time. So are you going to wear your new dress?”

“I guess so,” I replied. “Mother hasn’t seen it though. So far it’s sitting under my bed. I think I’ll go try it on again.”

I pulled out the the outfit from under my bed and put it on with the high-heels. Then I went into Mother’s room and surveyed my image in the mirror. I could hardly recognize myself. I was two inches taller. The skirt was full and the tassels just swished above the ankles. The black sweater made me look at least five years older, and when I threw the scarf over all this, I thought I looked very dramatic. Almost like a film star. I practised walking and fell over a chair. Some movie star!

“What’s going on here?” called Mother’s voice from the doorway.

Oh. Oh!

“Now that looks vulgar!” exclaimed Mother.

“But Mama, all my clothes are so juvenile,” I whined. “And Joshua has asked me out to a big party when he comes to Montreal next month,” I added, knowing that Mother approved of Joshua.

“Well, you’re not exactly an old woman yet. Besides, don’t you want to look elegant?” asked Mother. “A boy like Joshua doesn’t want to be seen with a sleazy-looking girl. You should return it to the store, and I’ll see if I can pick you up a more suitable dress.”

Feeling like a naughty child, I took off the outfit and placed it in its box under the bed. I did not intend to take it back. Instead, I called Miriam and consulted with her, half-whispering on the phone.

First she had to tell me “I told you so,” and then she offered to keep the outfit for me in her room so that I could change into it at her house on the day of the party. After hanging up, I surveyed the piles of homework on my desk. Why couldn’t March be tomorrow instead of two months from now?

I sat down to work on math and struggled with it for an hour. Then I turned to something more satisfying. In English class, Miss Bird had asked us to write an essay based on something we knew well, about a person, a place or an event. The best essay in grade nine and ten would win a prize. I knew that I didn’t have much of a chance because of my weak grammar and awkward sentence structure, but Miss Bird once said that I had a knack for good description.

I leafed through the stories I had written. Among the pieces written half in English and half in Polish was one entitled “The Gardener of Children.” It needed a lot of work, but I thought it would make a good essay.

The story was about Dr. Janusz Korczak and his orphanage — the one I had visited in the Ghetto, having seen him tending his flowers on his balcony. From then on I had the image of him tending orphans with the same loving care that he gave his flowers.

I reworked the story, trying to maintain the images of gardener and garden, but I knew there must be a lot of mistakes in the grammar. At first this discouraged me. Then I had an idea. Since I owed Joshua a letter, I scribbled a note asking him to read and correct the English in my story. Then I ran to the post office with the envelope and mailed it right away.

February flew by in a hazy maze of history, geography and math. I had little time for socializing, save for once a week when Miriam and I would see a movie.

One bit of rainbow was a short letter from Joshua.

I looked at the essay with its corrections and studied them. Then I set out to copy it and when I had finished, I re-read it.