ON NEW YEAR'S DAY
Mama bakes a cozonac. She hasn't baked one since my birthday in April, ages ago. I follow her into the kitchen to watch her knead and braid the dough. She begins to whistle a tune as she searches the pantry for raisins and sugar.
“Grandma used to say it's bad luck to whistle in the house,” I tell her.
Mama laughs. “Don't be silly, Eva. I'm happy.”
“I know, but Grandma Iulia says that whistling indoors calls in the devil.”
“That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard!” Mama says, looking up from her mixing bowl. When she sees the mortified look on my face, she stops whistling.
“Happy New Year to the Child!” Uncle Max bursts into the kitchen, takes me in his arms, and starts planting one loud kiss after another on both of my cheeks, my hands, and all over my body.
“Stop it! Your mustache itches,” I tell him, pushing him away.
“She's not five anymore, Max,” Mama scolds, but she's smiling.
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FOR THE FIRST TIME since my grandparents and Uncle Natan left, we eat together at the dining room table as a family. Sabina brings out one dish after another. Aunt Puica has fried an entire carp that Uncle Max was able to buy by bribing a friend with connections. Tata used the extra money he made from his holiday portrait shoots to buy meat. Sabina has put the meat through the grinder, and Mother has rolled it into mititei and spiced it so that my mouth waters even before I taste any. There are crispy French fries, and both Tata and Uncle Max are drinking beer. I am stuffing my face and swallowing food before it is fully chewed. I'm already thinking about Mama's cozonac for dessert.
“Do you want the fish head or the tail?” Aunt Puica asks Mama.
“I'll take the tail since I know you're dying for the head,” Mama says, trying to be nice.
“Great.” Aunt Puica detaches the head of the fish with her fork, scooping it from the platter and slurping the eyes before the rest of the head hits her plate. “Delicious.”
“It's all yours.” My father watches her in disgust since he hates all fish and he's made a big concession for New Year's just to eat at the same table where a fish dish is served.
Uncle Max ignores all of us. He's too busy cutting his mititei, pouring salt on his French fries, and forking them into his mouth.
“So,” my mother begins.
“So,” Uncle Max answers without looking up from his plate.
“So,” Mama says again as Sabina enters carrying a casserole filled with steaming cauliflower, feta cheese, and bread crumbs.
“So?” Uncle Max repeats, his eyebrows going up as he helps himself to a huge portion of cauliflower. “Mmmm, this is so good. Try some,” he tells Aunt Puica, motioning to the dish.
“I've made a decision,” my mother says.
“Good. Decisions are terrific, especially on New Year's,” Uncle Max says with his mouth full.
Tata looks surprised as he lifts his beer glass and takes a sip.
“We're leaving for Israel,” Mama announces.
Everyone, including me, stops eating and looks up.
“That's not news,” Aunt Puica says, breaking the momentary silence. “We've been leaving for a long time.”
“Yes.” Mama's not addressing her sister, she's talking to all of us. “But now it's time that we go.”
“What has gotten into you, Stefi?” Tata asks in a soft voice.
“Don't patronize me, Gyuri,” Mama answers him calmly. “I've had enough and I'm going to do something about it.”
“About what?” Tata and Aunt Puica ask in unison, and then laugh in embarrassment.
“About our situation,” Mama answers.
Aunt Puica looks at Uncle Max. “She's gone cuckoo.”
“I'm not crazy. I'm going to have a talk with the Securitate officials where we filed our application.”
“Stefi.” Tata tries to contain his voice. “That's not a good idea.”
“Do you have a better one?”
My father gets up and starts to pace. Uncle Max and Aunt Puica are both staring at Mama.
“I don't understand why you're all so upset,” Mama continues.
“We were told we could leave. That was almost two years ago. We've lost our jobs and we're still waiting. How much longer is this crap going to go on?”
“As long as they want, Stefi,” my father suggests.
“No. That's not acceptable.”
“I'll tell you what's not acceptable. You being picked up by the Securitate isn't acceptable.” Tata returns to his seat but continues to stand as he holds on to the back of his chair. “That's not acceptable to me, Stefi.”
“Stefi,” Uncle Max interrupts, “be reasonable. I never thought I'd agree with Gyuri about anything, but this isn't a good idea. You're talking nonsense. It's too big a chance to take.”
“I'm taking a bigger risk living like this. I'm not stupid, Max. I'm not going to be rude or show my anger to the authorities. I will simply ask them to let us all goâor to give us back our jobs so we can at least survive.”
“Whoa ⦠just a minute,” Aunt Puica snaps. “Max already has a job. Don't rope us into any of this.”
“Suit yourself,” Mama answers. “I won't say a word about the two of you. But I will remind them that there is a large bedroom with access to the only terrace for them to reappropriate just as soon as they let us go.”
“Some sister you are!” Aunt Puica shouts. “You want to leave us with more goyim in the house? Two isn't enough for you?”
“You're the one who said you don't want to be included,” my mother says, glaring at her sister.
Uncle Max sticks his two fingers into his mouth and blows a loud whistle. “Ladies, ladies!”
Tata turns to Mama. “I want to speak with you alone, Stefi.”
Mama gets up from the table. Tata follows her to our room just as Sabina brings out the cozonac.
THE DAY THAT MAMA
goes to visit the Securitate offices is cold but sunny. She wears an open-necked white cotton blouse and an orange silk scarf with black polka dots. She takes extra time in the bathroom to apply her eye makeup and lipstick, and brush out her curls. I get a whiff of her perfume as she sits down on her bed to pull on her stockings. She slides a straight black skirt over her head and adjusts its waist before zipping it up. Then she slips on her heels and takes a look at herself in the mirror. “I'm ready,” she whispers, brushing a small piece of lint off her skirt.
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ANDREI IS TRAILING BEHIND me as we walk home from school. The afternoon is still crisp, and I am dying to get home to see if Mama's back. Usually he's faster than I am, but today Andrei has a hard time keeping up.
“Hey, what's the big rush?” he asks.
“Andrei, do you know what time it is?” Neither one of us owns a watch, so we rely on public clocks and asking adults.
“I don't know,” he tells me, slightly out of breath. “About two thirty, I think. I'm starving.”
I break into a trot, and Andrei catches up and overtakes me.
“Hey,” I yell. “Wait up!”
“Hey, yourself,” he yells back. “You didn't wait for me!”
I catch up with him just as we enter the yard gate. He runs up the back stairs to eat lunch at his house, and I bound up the front stairs, two steps at a time. Aunt Puica's on the telephone in the foyer. When she sees me, she pulls the phone into her bedroom and closes the door. I go into our bedroom. My parents' bed is made neatly, but neither Mama nor Tata is here. I look into the bathroom just to be sure and stick my head onto the terrace. Empty. Back in the foyer, I see the phone cord is pulled taut into Aunt Puica's bedroom, so she must still be yakking. The dining room is empty except for one plate, which Sabina has set for my lunch. I run into the kitchen hoping that Mama is feeling happy enough to bake another cozonac. Instead, I find Sabina in her seat near the window.
“Oh, you scared me to death, Eva. I dozed off,” she says, yawning and adjusting her turban. “You must be hungry. I made you a Swiss cheese sandwich.”
“I'm not hungry, Sabina. Do you know where my mother is?”
Sabina shakes her head. “No idea, Miss Eva. She's been gone since before I came downstairs this morning.”
“Did she telephone?”
“You know I don't answer that thing. Go ask Doamna Puica.”
“Aunt Puica's on the phone, Sabina.”
“Nothing new there,” she mutters.
I run back to my room. The hands on our clock point to ten minutes to three. When will Mama be back? Why has she been
gone this long? Where's Tata? I grab The Adventures
of
Tom Sawyer, an old favorite, and go out to the terrace. It is chilly outside, but in the sun it's warm enough for me to spread a blanket and sit with my book. From this vantage point I can survey the entire yard through the railing. I open my book, but I can't read and watch the yard at the same time. The yard wins out. Every detail takes on a new importance. A sparrow has just landed on the branch of a tree. The tree is still bare, but when I take a closer look, I can see the beginnings of tightly knotted buds. On the yard pavement, the chalk lines of my hopscotch game are partially erased. I think back to when I last jumped around the grid, and suddenly I'm thinking about Andrei, how he is my best friend yet I haven't been able to tell him what's really on my mind. I wish I could tell him how terrified I am that my mother may be in great danger, but I've promised Mama not to talk to anyone about it, so I must keep her secret. I wish I could tell Andrei how much I want to leave Bucharest and go to Israel, where my grandparents live, yet I know no other place except here, I have no closer friend than Andrei, and the thought of leaving him and everything I am familiar with fills me with great sadness as well as great excitement and trepidation. I am tired of watching my parents in their suspended state of dread, tired of being a Jewish Communist Pioneer, tired of waiting for Mama, who has gone to a dangerous place from which she may never return. I fall asleep waiting.
Uncle Max's familiar I'm-home whistle wakes me up as he approaches the house. I'm slightly disoriented, and my eyes are still heavy from sleep. I rub them and quickly rise from the blanket and lean against the terrace railing. Uncle Max is now in the yard trailed by a small stray dog with a wagging tail that has followed
him home. Uncle Max picks up a stick, and the dog bites down on it and starts to pull. Uncle Max is laughing and having as good a time as the dog.
“Uncle Max!” I shout from the terrace, and he looks up, squinting against the glare of the sun. I wave at him, and he pulls the stick out of the dog's mouth and waves back with it. “Please come up, I need to talk to you!” My voice must sound urgent, because Uncle Max instantly drops the stick and bounds up our front steps.
“What's the matter with the Child today?” he asks once he's on the terrace.
I pull him back inside and sit with him on my parents' bed. “Uncle Max, Mama went out early this morning to speak with the SecuritateâI'm certain of itâand she's not back yet.” My words spill out so quickly I don't know if I'm making any sense. “And Tata's not here either and Sabina doesn't know anything about it and Aunt Puica's been on the phone since I got home and I'm so worried about Mama that I don't know what ⦔
Uncle Max pulls on both ends of his mustache. He wraps his arms around my shoulders. “It's going to be all right,” he promises. I shut my eyes and hold on to him. Then Uncle Max releases me and rushes out the door. I follow him to his bedroom door, where he takes off his shoes before entering.
“Puica, get off the phone right now,” he says, firmly taking the receiver out of my aunt's hand and placing it back on its hook. “Stefi may be trying to reach us.” Aunt Puica looks astounded, but before she has a chance to speak, the phone rings. She reaches for it, but Uncle Max answers it first.
“Allo! Max Albala at your service,” Uncle Max says with a serious look on his face. “Stefica, I'm going to kill you! Where the hell are you?”
The rains start soon after Mama returns home that evening. She is too exhausted to do more than relate the events of her day to us, but the next day, she bakes another cozonac, and she fills the house with a lightness I have never felt before.
IT RAINS ALL NIGHT
and throughout the next day. Sheets of water cascade down our windowpanes until you can't see the front yard. The gutters make gurgling sounds that rival Uncle Natan's loudest allergy attack snorts. Tata telephones that he is stuck at Victor's house and will come home just as soon as the rain stops. Mama is in the kitchen baking her cozonac.
Mama tries to excuse Father's absence to Uncle Max. “Gyuri couldn't sit home and wait for me yesterday. The tension of my going to the Securitate offices of the National Commission for Visas and Passports was enough to make him jump out of his skin.”
“He shouldn't have left the Child to wait by herself,” Uncle Max argues, swiping a fistful of raisins from Mother's mixing bowl.
“Try to understand, Max. Gyuri is a scarred person, and spending time with Victor calms him. They went through hell together in the lagers.”
“The Child was out of her mind with worry for you, Stefi, and I don't blame her. You're lucky they didn't arrest you. We're lucky they haven't come to the house to interrogate all of us. Maybe
they'll still come after the rain stops. You're not just sticking your neck out, Stefi. Remember we're all guilty by association.” Uncle Max laughs dryly. “And I'm the one Silviu used to call reckless. Why didn't you at least call home sooner?”
Mama waits out Uncle Max's rant while kneading the cozonac. Eventually, she says, “I tried, Max, but the phone was constantly busy thanks to Puica. I stayed away intentionally, because I didn't want to implicate anyone.”
Uncle Max's eyes bulge. “I thought you were a smart girl, Stefi. Do you think the Securitate doesn't know where you live? Don't they arrest people in the middle of the night? What's the matter with you?”
“I know all that, Max. But I figured that going to Mimi's house was the safest bet, since she and Herman are such big shots. I thought the Securitate wouldn't dare mess with them.”
“Maybe. Maybe not,” Uncle Max answers. “Was Mimi upset?”
“No. I called her and told her I had just been to the Securitate about our passports. She checked with Herman to see if it was all right for me to visit, and they both said âNo problem, come right over.'”
Uncle Max is surprised. “That's very brave of them. Do me a favor, Stefica, no more heroic attempts at visiting the Securitate. I just want the Child to grow up knowing her mother.”
“That makes two of us, Max,” Mama answers as she places the cozonac pan in the oven.
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THE SAME TWO MEN in raincoats who came to look at Grandma Iulia and Grandpa Yosef's bedroom have reappeared in our yard. I stop in my tracks, but Andrei throws them the ball and one of the
men catches it, though he doesn't throw it back. “Are your parents home?” he asks. I shake my head no. The man is clearly annoyed, but his partner tells him, “It's all right, the kids can show us around.” To which the first man replies, “Good thinking, Boris. I don't want to come back tomorrow.”
“Come upstairs with us,” says the first man, walking toward our front steps without waiting. When he reaches the first step, he turns around and throws the ball back to Andrei.
I tug at the back of Andrei's shirt and whisper, “Please come with me.”
Andrei dribbles the ball on each step and follows me upstairs. “You must be Eva,” the man who threw the ball to Andrei says to me as he enters our bedroom. I nod. The two men survey our bedroom. One of them opens the curtain that hangs between the wall and my parents' bookcase, revealing my unmade bed. He walks around the room, opens the bathroom door and sticks his head in. The other man is out on our terrace. “Hey, Liviu,” he says, “come take a look. Great place to set up a table and have lunch in the sun.”
While the men are on the terrace, Andrei and I sit on my parents' bed and wait. I wish Mama were home. For a moment I consider knocking on Aunt Puica's door, but I decide that's not a good idea. She might get hysterical. The men are back in the room, and one of them takes out a tape measure from his raincoat pocket while the other one goes into the bathroom.
The man with the tape measure motions to Andrei. “Hold the end so that I can measure the room.” Andrei helps him out while I stand and watch them measure each wall and the ceiling height. When the other man emerges from the bathroom, he writes down
in a little notebook the dimensions that his friend dictates, then they leave as quickly as they came, with a nod of their hats and no message for my parents.
Mama is dancing on air when she finds out that our room was visited by the authorities. “It's a sign that they're working on our passport file!” she tells Aunt Puica, but her sister is hardly enthusiastic. Uncle Max is surprised that this inspection comes so soon after my mother's visit to the Securitate.
“It's not over until after we have crossed the border,” Tata tells us as we sit gathered around the dinner table that evening.
“The next step,” Uncle Max says, “is the Letter, which, if my calculations are correct, should arrive anytime within the month.”
“And the Letter states ⦔ Tata urges.
Uncle Max replies across the table: “The date, the time, and the place where you must report to the Securitate offices of the National Commission for Visas and Passports in order to have an interview with the authorities who will process your passports.”
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“IF YOU SEE THE POSTWOMAN coming down the street, you must run and let me know immediately,” I tell Andrei on our way home from school.
“How come?”
“Because she might be carrying a very important letter. My mother and father have an envelope with a fat tip ready for her, and they gave me permission to give it to the postwoman if she arrives when my parents aren't home.”
“So what's in this famous letter?”
“I can't say.”
Andrei looks at me, annoyed. “You want me to help you but you can't tell me what this is all about?”
I feel my cheeks flush as I shake my head. “I can't talk about these things.”
“Suit yourself,” Andrei says, but he is clearly hurt.
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ANDREI AND I can't play in the yard because it's raining hard again. I'm so anxious about the passport letter that I ignore my homework. Instead, I'm perched behind the blackout curtain on the window ledge in Aunt Puica and Uncle Max's bedroom, where I have the best view of the yard. I wait for the postwoman, who is now late, most probably because of the downpour.
Aunt Puica is in bed engrossed in a thick romance novel and picking at her toenails until tiny red chips of nail polish fly off and land on her white sheets. The only light in the room comes from her metal-shaded night table lamp. It casts a yellow glow against the dark furniture. I press my nose against the windowpane and fog it with my breath as I listen to the rain.
A slick black umbrella appears below my window. The postwoman is leaning against the gate, the hood of her raincoat dripping water. She reaches inside a giant pouch and takes out an envelope that immediately disappears under the black umbrella. I start knocking on the windowpane as loudly as I can, and the umbrella tilts up, revealing Andrei, who is waving the white envelope at me. I bound out of the room, letting the door slam behind me.
“What do you think you are doing?” I ask Andrei before he's had a chance to catch his breath and hand me the wet envelope. I snatch the letter from his hands and run into our bedroom to find the fat tip my parents have prepared for the postwoman.
“Here, Andrei, please give this to her and tell her thank you!” Andrei grabs the money like in a relay race and runs down to the yard gate again, where the postwoman is still waiting for him in the rain.
We sit together on my parents' bed and finger the damp letter. “Aren't you dying to know what's inside?” I tease Andrei.
“No,” he answers. “You are.”
I shrug. “I know how to steam open an envelope and reseal it without anyone else catching on,” I tell him, but Andrei does not react. I take the unopened letter and prop it against my father's clock.
“Andrei, I am Jewish,” I tell him.
“I know that,” he answers.
“I'm leaving for Israel soon.”
“I know that too.” His wet socks are bunched around his ankles as he sits next to me, swinging his legs against mine to the sound of the rain.