While We're Far Apart (37 page)

“I’m not quitting and I’m not coming home,” she said. Her voice shook as she stood up to them for the first time. “I’m not a child anymore. You can’t tell me what to do.”

Her mother couldn’t speak, as if shocked that Penny would defy her this way. Her father wagged his finger at her. “Someone has had a very bad influence on you, and I want to know who it is. We didn’t raise you to lie to us and deceive us.”

His accusation was the last straw. “No?” Penny shouted. “No? Then why have you been lying to me all my life?”

“What are you talking about?” her father said. “How dare you speak to us that way?”

“I know that I’m adopted.”

It was as though a bomb had gone off in the apartment, leaving her parents stunned. They stared at Penny, eyes wide with shock.

“I needed my birth certificate to apply for my new job, remember? And when you wouldn’t give it to me I went out and ordered a new one.” Her father’s face turned so red she feared he might have a stroke, but Penny was too angry to stop. “I found out that you aren’t my parents at all. You adopted me. You’ve been lying to me all this time. Why didn’t you tell me the truth?”

“We did it for your own good,” her mother said.

“My own good? I don’t understand why you ever adopted me in the first place. All my life, you’ve acted as if I’m a huge inconvenience to you, like I have no common sense. You’re always telling me that I’m dumber than everyone else is. Why did you adopt me if you didn’t want me?”

“You want to know why?” her father asked. His face resembled simmering coals that were about to burst into flames. “I’ll tell you why.”

“Albert, no! Be quiet!”

“She needs to know, Gwendolyn. She needs to hear the truth before she turns out to be just like her. This is how it all started with Penny’s mother, too. Remember?”

“Albert! Shut up!”

“First, Hazel started lying to us, telling us she was going one place when she was really going someplace else. And that’s exactly what Penny is doing – telling us she works at the bus station when she doesn’t work there at all. Running all over Brooklyn with no thought to the danger she’s in. You want the same thing to happen to Penny that happened to Hazel? You want to go through this all over again?”

“Stop it, Albert!”

“Like mother like daughter! That’s just how she’s turning out!”

Penny groped for a chair as she realized what her father was saying. She had been standing all this time, but now she had to sit down, too stunned to remain on her feet. “Hazel is my mother, isn’t she?” she murmured.
Her sister was really her mother.
Everything made sense now. Why hadn’t she seen the truth before?

Mother began to weep. “See what you’ve done, Albert?”

“How else was I supposed to keep her safe at home where she belongs? You want her to end up getting raped like your other daughter?”

Penny stopped breathing. Raped
?
Her sister had been
raped
? No wonder Hazel hadn’t wanted her. Penny was a reminder of an unthinkable act. No wonder her parents had always been so protective of her, so fearful of strangers.

Penny couldn’t take it in – didn’t want to take it in. Her real father was a
rapist
? Mother had always said that she wasn’t like other girls and now she knew why. Her father was a criminal. A rapist.

“You’ve had a good life here with us up until now,” her father said. “Why couldn’t you leave well enough alone?”

Penny wished that she had. Everything that she had believed about herself had been wrong. She had been conceived from an act of violence. Even if Eddie did fall in love with her, she didn’t deserve a good man like him. She couldn’t be a good mother to his children. Not with a criminal’s blood flowing through her veins. Not with a rapist for a father.

Without saying another word, Penny stood and walked out of the house.

C
HAPTER 32

M
ORNING PRAYERS AT
the newly rebuilt shul had come to an end. Jacob removed the tefillin from his forehead and arm and waited for Rebbe Grunfeld to f inish his duties. He stood by the window of the study room, watching as a steady spring rain made puddles on the sidewalk and turned the steely gray city green. His friend Meir Wolf came to stand beside him. “Are you taking care of yourself, Yaacov, my friend? Your heart is fine now?”

No. Jacob’s heart was breaking. The Nazis were in Hungary.

Not a day went by that Jacob wasn’t aware of that horrific reality. He tried in vain not to imagine what might be happening to his family, his homeland, but his work with the War Refugee Board had made him all too aware of what the Nazis were doing to the Hungarian Jews.

“I am fine, yes. The doctors say that I did not have a heart attack. They called it a heart arrhythmia.” He did not tell Meir, but they also said that the shock he had received probably had caused it. He should rest, the doctor said. Let younger men be involved with fund raising for the Refugee Board. Don’t put himself under such stress. But how could Jacob sit and do nothing?

“I am happy to hear that you are well,” Meir said, patting Jacob’s shoulder. “And so pleased that you are praying with us again. We have missed you.”

“Thank you.” He did not tell Meir that he still questioned his decision to return to the shul. Meir and Rebbe Grunfeld had brought him home from the hospital after his collapse and had visited him every day. The congregation had showered him with food.

“We are able to have daily prayers at the shul once again,”
the rebbe had told him.
“The building is not completely finished, but there is now a room where we can pray. Please come back and join us, Yaacov. Prayer is more important than ever before with the Nazis in Hungary, yes?”

Jacob had agreed, reluctantly. Praying was the very least he could do.

“What’s more,”
the rebbe had said,
“I believe I have finally convinced the police that you could not possibly have started the fire. But it would be good if you came back to pray with us, to show them that we are united.”

Jacob still saw the two detectives roaming the neighborhood from time to time. He knew they had not given up on finding the arsonist. And they had seemed so certain that it was him. But maybe if the rebbe had convinced them, Jacob would have one less thing to worry about.

And so he had crossed the street every day to pray with the others, putting on his tefillin for the first time since Miriam Shoshanna had died. At times he silently raged at Hashem for allowing a man like Adolf Hitler to live, questioning Him, arguing with Him. Sometimes when Jacob’s faith was at its lowest ebb, he knew he was simply going through the motions of prayer. Today had been one of those days.

Rebbe Grunfeld finished storing the Torah scroll inside the ark. “So you are ready to leave for our meeting in Manhattan, Yaacov?”

“Yes, Rebbe.” Jacob unfurled his umbrella and stepped out into the rain. After a long subway ride on an overcrowded train, they arrived, damp and rumpled, at the synagogue where the meeting was being held.

The moment Jacob walked through the door, he felt the now-familiar tightness in his chest, the knot in his stomach. The weekly mixture of good news and bad, the journey from hope to dread and back to hope again always took a toll. At a previous meeting the State Department had confirmed that Hungary had been close to negotiating a peace agreement with the Allies – it was what had prompted the Nazi invasion.

On May 10, a
New York Times
article had said that the Nazis were “now preparing for the annihilation of Hungarian Jews.” Jacob had read those words, and for a moment he hadn’t been able to breathe. The world should be horrified. This should be front-page news, not just a small, insignificant article lost among all the others. Why wasn’t it in the headlines? No one seemed to be paying attention. Americans were focused on winning the war, not on the fate of the Jews. Especially when they had loved ones of their own engaged in combat.

“At least the fate of Hungary’s Jews is before the entire world,”
the State Department spokesman had said.
“Whatever the Nazis do, it will not be done in secret.”
President Roosevelt had broadcast statements around the world, promising that those responsible for genocide would be punished. Leaders from Protestant and Catholic churches in America had publicly pleaded with Hungarian Christians to protect their Jewish neighbors. But would all of these efforts save Jacob’s family?

At last week’s meeting he had learned that the United States, working through neutral nations, had agreed to accept Jewish immigrants from Germany and Hungary if the Nazis would allow them to leave. Thousands of visas would be authorized for Jewish children and for Hungarian relatives of American citizens. The news had seemed miraculous, an answer to Jacob’s prayers. The visas that Avraham had tried so hard to procure for his family would finally be issued.

Today Jacob had brought with him a three-page list of names and addresses of relatives who still lived in Hungary. He was filled with hope, eager to begin filling out the visa applications. But his hope began to sink when he glimpsed the somber faces of the government officials.

“I am afraid I have bad news,” one of them began. “The Nazis have refused our offer to allow the Jews to emigrate.” A fist squeezed Jacob’s heart. “Nevertheless, we will accept your visa applications in the hope that the Nazis will change their minds in the near future.”

Jacob sat in a daze of disappointment as the rabbis and Jewish leaders debated the other items on the agenda. He wished he could go home. The strenuous emotions and angry tempers exhausted him. But he would remain until the very end in order to fill out every last visa application, just in case Hashem decided to answer his prayers.

The roomful of tightly packed tables and chairs, the rows of overstuffed bookshelves all faded into the background as Jacob listened to one of the leaders talk about the possibility of Allied bombing raids on Hungary. “Why not send American planes to destroy the railway junctions used for deporting Hungarian Jews to Poland?” the man asked.

“American bombers have been flying missions from a Soviet air base at Poltava,” the spokesman confirmed. “But they are concentrating on military targets. Besides, the railway junctions could easily be repaired, causing only temporary delays in the deportations.” Judging by his bland expression, he might have been discussing transports of cattle, not human beings.

“Yes,” the rabbi replied, “but every day that the trains are delayed, lives would be saved.”

Jacob rested his elbows on the table and put his head in his hands as he listened in despair to a proposal to bomb the Nazi deportation camp at Auschwitz.

“But thousands of Jews are being held there,” a rabbi protested. “They would all be killed!”

“The plan is to put the camp out of business. True, some Jews might be killed – but if they are doomed anyway . . .”

“Then the Germans could accuse us of atrocities. We would be the ones massacring Jews.”

Jacob listened until he could no longer remain silent. He stood, requesting permission to say something. “I speak for those of us who may have loved ones in those camps, and I beg you not to risk killing a single innocent person. Let the Nazis be accountable before Hashem for their deeds, not us.”

When the debate ended, the Jewish leaders and rabbis unanimously opposed the plan to bomb Auschwitz.

The final topic of discussion was a “blood for goods” deal offered to the Allies by the Nazis. “The lives of one million Jews would be exchanged for ten thousand trucks and other military supplies that the Nazis need,” the State Department spokesman said. “The British have refused to discuss this proposal, but President Roosevelt has ordered the negotiators to keep talking to the Germans.”

“Why should we give food and army supplies to the Nazis?” someone asked.

“Because as long as we continue to talk about it, those one million Jews may continue to live.”

Once again, Jacob asked to speak. “Food . . . trucks . . . wouldn’t you willingly pay any ransom they demanded if it might spare the life of your child?”

When the meeting ended, Jacob filled out visa applications for all his family members and wearily left for home. “You shouldn’t put yourself through this, Yaacov,” the rebbe said as they stood on the subway platform. “It is too hard on your health.” The underground air smelled of hot steel and too many people. The afternoon rush hour had begun, but Jacob and the rebbe managed to find empty seats in the overcrowded subway car. Commuters crammed the aisle beside them, gripping the leather straps, swaying with the train’s movement as if in prayer.

“No, it is much worse to be at home doing nothing,” Jacob replied, “wondering what is going on. As difficult as it is to know all these things, it is much harder not to know them. I find the silence unbearable.”

At last they reached the final stop and climbed the steep cement stairs, emerging from underground for the short walk home. “What about those names I gave you?” Jacob asked the rebbe. “Has there been any progress in finding those people?”

“You mean David and Esther Fischer? I have sent inquiries to rabbis in other shuls in Brooklyn. Some I have heard from, some I have not.”

Weeks had passed since Esther and Peter had shown Jacob their birth certificates and the Shaffers’ marriage license. “We found out that Mama’s maiden name was Fischer,” Esther had told him. “Now what do we do? How do we find our grandparents?”

Jacob had realized the truth the moment he saw the names. Their mother, Rachel Fischer, was Jewish. How could he have forgotten? Miriam Shoshanna had told him about it shortly before she died. At the time, Jacob had been outraged to learn that Rachel had abandoned her faith to marry a gentile. He didn’t want Miriam to have anything to do with her or her children. He had been so unbending back then – just as Rachel’s parents no doubt were. They had disowned her, considered her dead to them, and Jacob would have done the same thing. Now he saw it differently. Why allow anything to separate a family? His son, his daughter-in-law, his grandchild might all very well be dead, but the Fischers’ grandchildren were not.