Unravelled (12 page)

Ever since then, I became obsessed with the idea of being a lawyer, wearing a beautiful tailored suit as I stood in front of the court, pleading my client's case. I would serve justice, bringing a little bit of light into the world. And, I would be living on my own, making my own money, without depending on a man to take care of me. It's not that I didn't have a desire to get married and have children, I did, I just wanted to taste life on my own terms for a bit before giving myself over to a family. Growing up, I would often watch my mother as she went about her daily chores. She fed our dog, Gable (named for Clark Gable, my mother's favorite actor), washed the clothes, scrubbed the floors, cooked three meals a day, went to the Piggly Wiggly and then changed the routine by giving me or Gable a bath. It seemed like a prison, like a never-ending cycle of boredom. How could a woman feel fulfilled if she didn't do anything but work at home looking after her family?

I had secretly been gathering up applications for pre-law programs in the area. I had Bobby Johnson get me one from Berkeley on his visit there with his father, and Eva and I had gotten one from San Francisco State while pretending to run errands. It wasn't so much that I was afraid my parents would disapprove, they wouldn't. Like any Jewish family, they valued intelligence and hard work. But the final decision might come down to money, or lack-there-of, or the need to go to work to pitch in with the expenses in the house. I wanted to prolong the "No," the final word, until I could come up with a plan. I would write everything down, show them exactly how much it would cost every year, get a scholarship and a living stipend and type it all up on my father's typewriter. They would be so impressed by my thriftiness and adultness that they would have no other choice but to let me go.

Eva exchanged a knowing smile with me as she finished decorating the cake. She was thinking of going to college, too, but for something a little less ambitious. Eva wasn't looking to conquer the world, the way I was. Instead, she wanted to earn an Associate's degree or something similar. When she spent the night at our house on weekends, we would sit up until the wee hours of the morning, playing Frank Sinatra records at the lowest volume we could hear, giggling and laughing about the day when we would be roommates in college.

"All done," Mother smiled, looking at the cake she had decorated. She smiled crookedly as she cocked her head to the right and then the left before letting out a whistle of a laugh. "It looks terrible, doesn't it?"

She had attempted to write "Welcome Home" in Hungarian, but the words had blurred together to make one long red clump. The letters were indistinguishable from one another, appearing as if they had been haphazardly placed on the cake instead of put on with a steady and diligent hand.

"Art's not your strong point," I smiled, putting my tongue to my teeth. "She'll love it anyway, I'm sure."

And with that, the three of us left the cakes to sit, pulling out a game of Parcheesi to pass the gray, lifeless afternoon.

12 CHAPTER twelve

✪

Mother ran around the house in a daze the last few hours before Aliz's train was scheduled to arrive. She counted and recounted the sheets and towels, folding and refolding them periodically. She fluffed up the pillows on her new bed again and again until they were so plump that the stuffing threatened to burst at the seams.  She straightened the colorful Degas ballet paintings she had nailed to Aliz's wall, making sure they stood in line like wooden soldiers. She wanted everything to be perfect, flawless. Mother didn't say so, but I knew this was the moment she had been waiting for, for years.

An hour before Aliz was set to arrive, Mother pulled on her sweater and sunglasses, stuffing her hands in her gloves.

"We want to get there early," she nodded. "In case her train is a little early. I don't want her waiting at the station, scared to death."

She snapped her black and gold purse shut, sliding her feet into her slightly worn black heels.

Uncommon of women in our neighborhood, Mother drove. Father had taught her how to do so a few years ago as I sat on the front porch with Gable, watching my mother steer the car up and down the street with all the grace of a child at a fair, making his way through a sea of bumper cars. I don't quite know if she drove because of her own insistence, or because my father had secretly been planning his getaway and wanted to leave her self-sufficient. Either way, he had left mother his old cream-colored Studebaker while he bought a brand new, sleek black Ford.

The new Ford had most definitely been a source of contention between the two, Mother telling him she didn't think now was the time to buy a new car when they could barely afford the one they had. They argued in hushed tones, with the door to their room sealed, thinking I couldn't hear them over my Perry Como records. Occasionally their voices would rise just high enough, just above the threshold, so that I could hear every word they uttered.

Even though she could drive, Mother was by no means good at it. She clutched the wheel as if it would protect her from unseen danger and shifted nervously in her seat. She kept the Studebaker at a good ten miles per hour under the regular flow of traffic, prompting even old men who could barely see over their steering wheels to honk at her and then ultimately pass in front of her. Her mind seemed to always be elsewhere, always in Hungary, even when she was driving. She narrowly missed one of the neighborhood children running out in the street to catch a baseball a few months ago, prompting his mother to run out into the street, red face and give my mother a talking-to. Mother simply nodded every few words to make it seem like she was listening, but kept her eyes looking toward the sky, away from the angry words.

We arrived at the train station almost a full hour before Aliz was set to arrive and wordlessly made ourselves comfortable on the hard waiting benches. They reminded me of pews in a church, the kind I had seen when I had gone to volunteer for a church bazaar a few years ago to help needy children in Europe and Asia. My mother folded and unfolded her hands, crossed and uncrossed her legs, jiggling the balls of her feet on the linoleum floor and clearing her throat. She ultimately took off her gloves, revealing the modest wedding band my father had bought her all of those years ago, back when they were in love, back when they were different people.

I busied myself at the newsstand, flipping through colorful pages announcing the new movies that would come out in the next few months. Glamorous women in long dresses and simple up-dos and men in dapper tuxedos and slick hair smiled back at me with impeccably white teeth. It was as if in their world, the war had never happened. Auschwitz had never happened. Children were never left abandoned by their governments. People were never burned. Atom bombs never fell. Mothers didn't spend their entire lives in one country, with their heads in another.

As I mentally took note of the movies Eva and I would see with our baby-sitting money during the rest of Christmas break, I heard the sharp whistle of a train announcing its presence. With steam, the train screeched to a halt, clouding the platform next to it so that the well-suited men and women waiting coughed ever so slightly.

"San Francisco! Station stop, San Francisco!" a shrill voice came from the front of the train, announcing the arrival to the passengers and those waiting to board alike. The train, crowded with businessmen, honeymooners, families and even a few servicemen buzzed with life as those getting off tried to push their way onto the platform, while those trying to board were desperately searching for their train car.

Mother immediately began looking around, her senses on high alert as she scanned the busy crowd for Aliz. We had received a picture of her just a few months ago, one that had been taken to post on survivor boards in Displaced Persons camps, in case her parents or other relatives recognized her and wanted to know her whereabouts. In the picture, she sat on a dark toned block, her back slightly slumped, her hair cut to her shoulders. Her big eyes drooped,, her mouth curled slightly up as though she had decided to smile at the very last moment before the photographer captured her.

Herds of passengers made their way into the station, stopping to buy chewing gum, check their luggage, hug those waiting for them or simply sitting for a moment at the diner while they chewed on a sandwich.

And then she appeared. She turned the corner, around a Grecian inspired column, a gloved hand held tightly in the hand of a woman in her late 20s or early 30s. The woman looked positively exhausted, large bags under her eyes, her face puffy as though she had just been awakened moments ago in order to make her way off the train with Aliz.

Aliz had started her long journey from Katowice almost a month earlier. Escorted by several different chaperones, she had taken the train from Poland to Germany, where other children were picked up. Then, together, they had gone to London. What would have been a few days trip before the war had turned into an Odysseus-like journey. A year and a half after the war's end, train tracks were still in ruins from enemy bombs, forcing passengers to ride only as far as the tracks would go until they switched trains, going sometimes hundreds of miles out of their way.

From England, Aliz had met another chaperone who escorted her and several other children on a ship bound for New York City. They slept together in a crowded third class cabin; barely enough room to stand up, let alone room to put all of their things.

After landing in New York, where a few children were dropped off with new guardians, Aliz spent several nights. She was evaluated by a group established for Jews who had come from war-torn Europe, and again it was recommended through the phone wires that she be put in an institution, or at least receive intensive therapy.

She then boarded a crowded stream train bound for Chicago, before making her way west to San Francisco, each stop providing her with a different escort and chaperone who took copious notes about her behavior, diligently noting any changes or anything unusual. The trip had been, simply put, extremely long and totally exhausting. Even just thinking about it made me want to curl up and sleep for a week. I couldn't imagine how Aliz must have felt, starting a journey at her home in Szeged two years ago, only to find herself in a totally foreign country with relatives she had never met.

"This is Aliz," the woman said. Her yellow blouse was slightly stained under the armpits, her gray skirt wrinkled from hours of sitting down.

Aliz let go of the woman's hand, placing her gloved hands on the blue skirt of her dress. Obviously donated, the dress was at least two sizes two big for her small frame, hanging at an odd angle on the shoulders. She wore an extremely full crinoline under the dress, making a swishing noise as she walked. She frequently licked her lips, opening them and closing them as if in a nervous habit. She looked as if she hadn't aged past eight years old, but at the same time, her eyes bore the look of an old woman, saddened and tired from too many years on earth.

"Hello, Aliz!" Mother burst, bending down and giving the girl a huge hug. It was as if my Mother's arms had swallowed the girl whole. Instead of hugging her back, Aliz stood limply, not reacting, her hands at her side like a little soldier. She swallowed loudly as my Mother retreated, studying me and then my mother.

"Let me grab her file," the woman clicked her tongue and sat a briefcase down on one of the pew benches, opening the case's gold lock with a loud clink. As though a hurricane had struck, papers flew in every direction. The woman bent down to grab them, hair escaping from her tight bun as she knelt on the ground, scrambling.

"She was evaluated in New York," she began explaining from the ground, making sure she had everything in order before standing up, looking my mother in the eye. Clearly, she felt Aliz's English wasn't up to par to be able to understand her diatribe. "She's eleven, but has missed a lot of school. Really, they think she shouldn't be living at home. But when she does go back to school, she should be put in first or second grade. Her English is very limited, not very good. She can do advanced math problems fairly well, but she's not very good at reading, even in Hungarian. She doesn't talk very often. She said two or three words to me during the entire trip, and she didn't speak in complete sentences. She spends a lot of time scratching herself, banging her wrists on the bedposts and rocking back and forth in a chair. Sometimes she acts like one of the childhood schizophrenics. We haven't had a lot of time to find a place for her in San Francisco, we have so many cases. But we have leads. A lot of good ones. I've written a few phone numbers down. Oh, and Dr. Berman in the Castro. He's a great psychiatrist, works really well with disturbed children. He might have some answers for you."

The woman droned on about Aliz, about her quirks, how certain things set her off (like men in white coats) and how she sometimes spent days crying or banging her head against the wall until a welt developed. She hadn't even bothered to introduce herself, simply spouting information out as fast as possible. Aliz stood next to her, taking off her white sweater and putting it back on. Each time she did so, angry marks appeared on her thin, gray arms. Some were scratches, others looked like purple and black burn marks. They were in all different stages of healing, from fresh wounds, to dripping scabs to scars, dotting her sallow skin like small constellations.

"Okay, Aliz, be good," the woman finished her speech, buttoning Aliz's sweater over her chest. "There you go."

Aliz simply stared at her, her face expressionless, the way my mother had stared when she found out about her family. The ends of her mouth and eyes turned down, as if the weight of the entire world had been placed on her. She let out a small shiver, even though it was fairly hot in the train station and then knelt next to her one small suitcase. Clearly donated as well, it was a medium sized pink and brown plaid case with the initials LSJ printed over the top in curly white writing. Aliz traced them and then opened her suitcase with a clink, rifling through it for a mysterious object.

"Aliz, not here," the woman told her, looking away as if her actions were somehow embarrassing her. "You can wait to go through your things at home."

But Aliz didn't stop. She kept digging through the throngs of stuffed animals, shoes, and dresses, making a small cloud of her things next to her on the dirty floor of the train station.

"Okay, that's enough," the woman cried helplessly, as Aliz continued her quest, like a toddler plowing through bubbles in the bathtub.

"Aliz!"

The woman pulled her up by the waist, setting her down on her feet, which were clad in dull patent leather Mary Janes. Aliz put her hands to her mouth and screamed, tears springing to her eyes, falling fast and then gathering speed as they fell, making a small pool on her blue skirt.

"See what I mean?" the woman sighed, the three of us bending down to collect her things and stuff them back in her suitcase. "They were taken away on trains initially, so I guess it must be hard for them to, you know, go on one again."

Aliz opened the suitcase again struggled to move back in between us and throw the things around again, but the woman finally stood, holding Aliz to her chest and letting her scream until we had collected her meager belongings. We had placed them in messily, Mother having to hold the suitcase together while I struggled to close the lock. I traced the LSJ at the top, wondering silently who LSJ was and if they had ever entertained the idea that this suitcase would end up in San Francisco, making a journey halfway around the world with a child survivor of Auschwitz.

"You do know she was experimented on, don't you?" the woman asked, leaning close to my mother. She was still holding Aliz to her chest, but speaking over her head as if speaking above her meant she couldn't hear what was being said.

"What do you mean?" my mother asked furrowing her brow. She began stuffing her hands into her off-white gloves. They had a mark on the inside from when I had shoved them on my dirty hands in fourth grade. I had tried to put on my mother's eyeliner a few moments before, leaving a smudge down my left cheek and all over my hands. I had been punished what I thought was severely: no radio shows for an entire week, prompting me to wail all night. In light of what Aliz had been through, the entire thing seemed trivial, stupid even. A pang of guilt seared through my chest as I looked into her big brown eyes. She was studying my face with the same intensity my chemistry teacher had when he peered through a microscope to examine small samples of students' blood in class labs.